by M. D. Cooper
Commander Ross coughed lightly. “Lady Katrina, why is there so much secrecy? Is there a security concern?”
“No, and there isn’t going to be an opportunity to have one. This is a large operation; we will be out for a solid six months, if all goes well.” The Cavalry had standing orders to follow if things did not go well, but that was for smaller, less dangerous endeavors. “The safety of Sanctuary and those we leave behind is more important than any success. If you should feel compromised in any way, you will make for our backup rendezvous just off Calibri Station, and wait to hear from Captain Jordan or Captain Norm.”
Now the general mood changed toward comradery. This was a group of people with a common goal more important than personal likes or dislikes. Katrina felt it and shrugged off Troy’s remarks.
Every member of the command structure represented at this table was from the original group that had chosen her over Midditerra. She had never had a reason to doubt them, and had never given them a reason to fear her as the Warlord since that day.
“Are there any questions?” She smiled slightly and spoke to Malorie privately,
Malorie was the most bizarre set of contradictions.
Commander Deluca half raised his hand. “My crew has not had station leave for well over a year. Am I going to be able to give them an opportunity before the Cavalry goes dark?”
Several commanders looked from Deluca to Katrina. His was not the only crew that would be affected by the Orfa campaign’s disruption of leave. She felt another tug of the Warlord persona; no one would have dared ask her such a frivolous question.
She scowled inwardly, which made her eyes harden as she returned Deluca’s gaze. He drew back slightly. It was a micro exchange, but she felt it and it made her uneasy. She would not be that person.
In her best Matrem voice, she replied, “You bring up an important point. The short answer to your question is no.”
Deluca and several others looked about to speak, so Katrina held up her hands in a swaying motion to keep their attention.
“But the longer answer is that our previously haphazard approach to station leave will have to change to something more constructive.
“It is one thing to let the privateer side of our little civilization go dormant, but it is quite another to become completely cut-off from the rest of civilization. Station leave will become a tool, used for both rec time and intel-gathering missions. Just because we will be shutting down the Cavalry, so to speak, does not mean the anonymous raids on the slave trade will end. If it did, then our anonymity in that activity would be irreparably compromised.
“We will go over the details of how our operations will change after we are all home safe and celebrating our success. For now, your crews will have to be satisfied with knowing that the tighter security around this mission is for both their safety and the safety of Sanctuary. “
Deluca nodded, as did several others. Many people had formed family units that lived full-time on Sanctuary.
Katrina made a decisive gesture, putting both hands flat on the table, and leaned forward with a confident expression.
“Good! Now, each of you has been assigned to a squadron commanded by Captain Norm or Captain Jordan. Please report to them when your ships and crew are departure ready. If other concerns arise, speak to your squadron commander. You are dismissed.” She watched as they all began speaking in low tones as they made their way out of the room.
Not unexpectedly, Commander Gavetts reached out with a request for a private channel. She would make an excellent senior captain when the time came for Katrina and Troy to return to their own people—but in the meantime, she was often a pain in the ass.
Katrina passed her tokens and signaled Troy to be sure he was listening.
Gavetts did not reply for nearly a minute.
Katrina wondered what the other woman would think of a leader who planned for failure to such an extreme degree. Gavetts had been in the MDF, and Katrina knew that her choice to leave Midditerra stemmed from a deep hatred of slavery. She had never been able to save a single soul until she became a part of the Cavalry.
When she finally replied, the response was exactly what Katrina had hoped it would be.
Gavetts had made the subtle turn from subordinate to peer. Katrina felt relieved, and less guilty over the idea that she and Troy would be leaving these people behind someday.
THE RAID
STELLAR DATE: 12.22.8537 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Voyager, Cavalry One Battle Group
REGION: Outer fringes of Bollam’s World
Katrina was sitting at a table in a bar on Nesella Station, having dinner with Juasa and Markus. They were talking about Victoria and their house. Juasa was going to love living on Victoria; she was so excited.
Kruger walked up to the table with a bottle of champagne and three glasses.
“From the ladies at the table in the corner,” he said.
Katrina leaned forward to look beyond him and saw her three alter egos, ever present in her dreams now, sitting at a table in the corner, lifting a glass in a toast to her. They were laughing.
Why were they laughing?
Katrina sat back and motioned Kruger away. “No thank you.”
“Oh, why? I’ve never had champagne, Katrina, please?” Juasa’s expression was one of sweet innocence. She winked, and Katrina laughed.
“Alright, but just one.”
As Kruger poured the sparkling liquid into three fluted glasses, Markus smiled across the table, taking his glass and raising it slightly.
“To what shall we toast?”
Juasa raised her own glass, yelling exuberantly, �
�To the last drink I will ever have in Midditerra, to the big goodbye, to kiss my ass, you worthless excuse for a star system!”
“Goodbye, indeed, little girl, but not the goodbye you are expecting.”
The words were a low rumble from behind Katrina; she paled and turned around to see her father take a seat at the table next to her. He looked evil and shiny, like there was oil on his skin. Then another man at the table came into focus, and Katrina went for the pulse pistol that wasn’t in her coat.
Jace!
He was laughing.
“What’s the matter, Warlord? Surprised you invited all of us to your little dinner party? Or just surprised that we all showed up?” His voice had that same cruel arrogant sound, like he was the only person intelligent enough to realize what a lesser joke other people were. “I, for one, would not have missed it for the world. Finally, I get to meet all the facets of the great Warlord, Savior of Midditerra, monster, wife, murderer of tens of thousands, stateswoman and founder of Victoria, killer of her own lover.” His laugh grew louder.
Now everyone was laughing.
Katrina noticed that her alter egos had come to sit at her table, and everyone had a fluted glass raised to toast…what? What were they celebrating?
The beautiful Lumin Katrina tilted her head, and in her sarcastic tone of boredom, spoke with a lift of one brow.
“Don’t you know? We’ve all come to say goodbye. Goodbye to the fragmented, weak, shell of a woman you are, the irritating whining of your useless remorse is finally going to end.”
“Katrina! Be nice, it is her last night, after all.” The Matrem turned a kind smile to Katrina. “I understand, and don’t worry; you will be remembered more for your good deeds than your bad.”
Warlord Katrina gave a harsh, angry laugh. “No she won’t! She will best be remembered as the Warlord, mass murderer of Persia. But that’s OK, I would rather not be forgotten.”
Katrina stood and backed away from the table, yelling at them all, “I am not any of those things and I am not dead!”
“But you will be soon, if you keep listening to them.”
Katrina heard her own sultry voice and turned to see Verisa standing in the doorway of the restaurant, one hand outstretched.
“Are you coming?”
She didn’t even hesitate. If she were going insane, she would at least do it well-dressed. Without a backward glance, she reached for the gloved hand….
And woke up face-down on the floor with one hand stretched out toward her boots. With a nervous laugh, she rolled over and thought about the irony of wanting to run away in her dreams and actually reaching for her boots in reality. At least she was going crazy with a sense of humor.
She sat up, taking a deep breath, and checked the time, as she had been doing at the start of every shift for the last ten days.
Katrina winced. Troy sounded bored, as if he were on auto repeat.
When she came out a few minutes later, Troy picked up the conversation as if it had not been interrupted.
She left her cabin to head for the bridge as she continued to make her case.
Katrina gritted her teeth and felt the Warlord’s ghost standing at her shoulder. She made a sound of impatience and went up the next ladder as if she were being chased.
Katrina didn’t reply, but she stumbled at that, realizing Troy was right. For them, it wasn’t home.
Maybe after this raid was over, they should talk about changing things for themselves in a more permanent way than the rest of the Cavalry. Maybe the pirate life was taking a toll on Troy she had not considered.
She reached the bridge and returned the salute from the crew on duty. She smiled, but no one attempted to open a conversation.
Was she that unapproachable?
She felt uneasy. It was a facet of the Warlord’s personality to remain distant from the subordinates around her. She cared about her people; the Warlord had not really cared about anyone except Juasa. She looked around the bridge, feeling the stare of her ghosts just out of her line of sight.
Something dark was coming. She could feel it like a knot in her stomach. Was it instinct or just bad dreams?
* * * * *
Katrina stared at the Voyager’s forward holo, which displayed the Calvary One battlegroup as it was arrayed near the jump point that the Orfa Shipping vessel was expected to use.
The Castigation was in the center, with two frigates flanking it on either side. The Voyager was above the dreadnought and a little further back, ready to provide support where needed.
It was a rarely used jump point, on the far fringes of the Bollam’s World System—nearly two hundred AU from the star. On the starward side lay a field of dark matter, denying transitions to the dark layer. It was there that the Cavalry battlegroup would strike.
A sigh escaped Katrina’s lips. She’d been watching the scan readout and ticking off the minutes in her head for more than two hours. The knot in her stomach was getting tighter, and she was seriously considering that Troy might be right in saying they should return to Sanctuary.
Fine, it’s too much of a long shot at this point.
She straightened in her seat, ready to give the order for the fleet to break up and depart, when a ship dumped out of the dark layer right at the edge of the dark matter field.
And just like that, the wait was over and there was no more consideration given to leaving.
Katrina nodded as she focused the optics on the ship, examining its hull profile as the ident came up: OSS Melrose, just the ship they’d been waiting for.
The vessel was huge, as were many of the Orfa long-haul freighters. Measuring just over three kilometers from bow to stern, the Melrose was covered in external cargo pods, with barely any of the hull visible beneath.
Going to be hard to hit critical systems, she thought.
As she reviewed what scan told her of the enemy vessel, Major Aerns and a pair of his security team entered the Voyager’s small bridge, making the space feel overcrowded. It was their job to keep Katrina safe until the ope
ration was completed. Aerns always made sure that his team was with her from the moment the quarry dropped out of FTL to the moment the Voyager dropped in.
Katrina hated this part of every operation. She would not control anything for the next hour. She would be silent on comms until her team boarded the captured ship and headed for the captain’s cabin. Even then, Aerns would relay any messages between herself and Jordan. The only other people that would even know where she was would be the people that physically saw Katrina during the operation.
The Orfa vessel had turned and begun its braking maneuver, just as she would expect, which meant that its engines now faced the Cavalry battlegroup, limiting its own ability to see the ships that were preparing to strike.
The Melrose crossed over the hundred thousand kilometer mark, and Jordan issued the order for the ships to begin their acceleration burn, as a series of warning shots lanced out from the Castigation.
No reply came, but that was not unusual. Right about now, the ship’s captain would be receiving reports of system failures all over the ship. Life support failures, decks on lockdown for no reason, weapons going offline, and network outages throughout the ship would be adding to the general confusion.
A smart person would know it had to be sabotage, which it was. Cavalry operatives onboard would be breaching key systems and locking down the ship’s AI, or NSAI, if that’s all they had.
However, after the third hail, there was still nothing from the Orfa ship, and Katrina was starting to get a bad feeling about the massive ship’s unwavering silence.