Waypoint Magellan

by L S Roebuck

  Audible gasps rose from the crowd. Slapped with surprise, Amberly began to tear up.

  “Governor, she is not a hero, she is a betrayer,” North continued to look directly into Amberly’s eyes. “God as my witness, I don’t know why I ever let myself love her. I don’t know why any of you trust her professed good intentions behind her traitorous actions now.”

  A single tear welled up in North’s stoic gaze. “I can’t believe you, Amberly. I don’t know about your father, but your mother surely was proud of how you followed in her footsteps, a manipulator of people, to achieve your own goals, covert and twisted. My conscious is clear. I vote that you are guilty of treachery that led to the deaths of hundreds.”

  Amberly was emotionally overwhelmed, supremely shamed by North. She collapsed to her knees and buried her hands in her face, sobbing. The crowd murmur intensified. Kora and Lydia rushed up from their seats, pushing past a guard to come and kneel next to the devastated woman.

  Moreno was shocked. She decided the most merciful thing to do was to end the proceedings immediately. She stood up and in a commanding voice, spoke, “The business of this tribunal is concluded, and therefore we stand dissolved. You are all dismissed.”

  As the tribunals stepped off the platform and moved toward the milling crowd, Dek lunged toward North, and pulled his fist back. “How could you do that to Amberly?” Dek shouted, after being physically restrained by two Marines. “I thought you loved her.”

  North was heading for the command center access exit, but when he heard Dek, he stopped, turned around and took two paces toward Dek. “I did the right thing today, Dek. I was right to spare you, and I was right to condemn Amberly. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard, but I wouldn’t expect your crooked mind to understand that. Goodbye, Dek; I hope we never see each other again.”

  Dek was already calming down at this point, and North turned and followed Thor and Rita through the door into the command center. Dek turned back to Amberly, who was now encircled by her friends and started walking over to join them. The MPs immediately restrained Dek. “Sorry bud, you’re headed back to the brig,” the more burly officer said. Dek paid no attention to the officers as they dragged him away. He couldn’t stop looking for Amberly.

  The next morning, the Macready sisters were up early. Amberly was wearing the same black dress she wore the night she met Dek at Rick’s. Kora, on the other hand, was wearing a conservatively cut blouse and black pants. The sisters were very somber as they both had hard tasks ahead of them that day. Now that he was out of solitary confinement, Amberly would be visiting Dek.

  And although North would not see Amberly, he would see Kora.

  With Magellan patched up, the aid of Magnus was no longer essential. Captain Obadiah wanted to move as quickly as he could to take control of Waypoints Cortez and Marquette and confront the rebellion at Arara if possible. That was a three-year journey, with news of the existence of the warship getting to Arara with a least a year’s time for their forces to get ready to confront Magnus, the most powerful vessel humanity had ever constructed. Obadiah had great faith in the power of his ship to steer the course of history, but he wanted the Chasm rebels to have as little time as possible to mount a resistance.

  Amberly and Kora walked together, arm in arm, silently until they reached the Church Commons, where Kora boarded the tube for the Marine HQ and Amberly took the artery corridor leading toward Magellan’s brig.

  North was sitting in the guest chair in Commander Anderson’s old office, remembering the murderous events that took place there more than three months ago. Moreno and Kora walked in.

  Moreno turned to Kora, “Here he is. I’ll give you two a moment.” Moreno exited the office, leaving North and Kora alone.

  “I am glad you came by to see me,” North said, smiling at his friend, “but I don’t want to talk about Amberly.”

  “That’s too bad,” Kora said, “because that’s all I want to talk about.”

  “I can’t afford to think about her anymore,” North said. “And it would just be a futile effort anyway.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you are the naïve sister,” North laughed. “She made it clear to me how she felt in the Shard Caves. She made it clear how she felt when she professed her love for Dek. And even if she hadn’t, doesn’t she see how everything is changed now? The life we used to have is broken. I’m broken.”

  “I know,” Kora empathized. “But that doesn't mean —”

  “I’m not the same man I was when the American Spirit landed,” North said. “I don't think that man is coming back, Kora. Who I am now, and Amberly becoming her mother. It wasn't meant to be.”

  “That's not fair,” Kora shot back. “Amberly is not Kimberly. You are too hard on her. She may never be able to forgive you for what you did to her at the trial, North. Can’t you at least tell her you’re sorry?”

  “You can tell her that I forgive her.”

  “Friend, you are such a stubborn ass,” Kora said flatly. “I see where things stand. But take this,” Kora handed him an encryption key.

  “Amberly wanted to be able to send you private messages. If you get one, maybe you should read it.”

  “I shouldn’t take this,” North said. “I have to stay focused, and thinking about Amberly, corresponding with her, would compromise that focus.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kora said.

  “Our waypoint is safe, but for how long? How long before the Arara rebellion burns and tries to consume Magellan again?”

  “Stay here, patch things up with Amberly,” Kora pleaded.

  “I am answering the call to service,” North said. “Because of my combat experience on a waypoint and my time spent growing up on Arara, Captain Obadiah believes that I would be an important asset in the coming war against Chasm. Magellan is my home, and if I die defending it lightyears away, all is well.”

  “What about Amberly?” Kora wanted to slap some sense into North.

  “She has Dek. She should go with him back to Earth.”

  “She’s not going with Dek, North. I told you that was a ruse,” Kora said with a growing frustration. “She saved us. She turned Dek at the right time to save you. She turned Sparks at the right time to save us all.”

  “Amberly is so messed up in the head, she doesn’t know what she wants,” North said, trying to hold his bitterness at bay. “She doesn’t know up from down. Right from wrong. Probably never has.”

  “You are wrong about her,” Kora said, resigned that she was not going budge North. “But I understand why you believe what you do.”

  She changed the subject. “Hey, what’s this I hear about Sparks going on the Magnus?”

  “That was my idea,” North said. “We think she could have important intelligence that could help us in our coming battle. Magnus is the most powerful military force mankind has ever created, a space warship — but it may still be one ship against a planet.”

  “Sparks has agreed to help?” Kora asked.

  “No, we’ll have to break her.”

  Kora frowned.

  Moreno walked back into the room, with Skip in tow. “Better move, Jarhead,” Skip said to North, trying to joke through his sadness. “Your ship is about to sail.”

  Kora hugged North. “You take care of yourself. I am not going to be around to patch you up, and we want you coming back in one piece.”

  “I am going to miss you … and Amberly. The incomparable Macready sisters,” North said, thinking of peaceful days long gone. “I’ll take the key, but I won’t promise that I’ll use it. Pray for me, Kora Macready.”

  “I will. Pray for us, too. Pray for Amberly.”

  “That’s the awesome thing about prayers,” North said. “They are the only things that travel faster than light.”

  The MP let Amberly know that she would only have five minutes. Once the American Sprit was away, the exiled would enjoy slightly more freedom, but until then
, everything was high security with captured Chasm agents who avoided the airlock.

  Amberly sat down across the table from Dek, and smiled awkwardly. She didn’t know if she could do it. Dek was beaming with excitement to finally see Amberly after so many months of solitary confinement.

  “I never thought I’d be so excited about getting off a spacious waypoint and onto a cramped deep space ship for 17 years,” Dek said. “But spending those years with you, I’m sure will make them go by in a flash. Who knows, we may like Earth … if they don’t execute us when we get there.”

  “Don’t joke like that,” Amberly said, looking into Dek’s blue-grey eyes.

  “Hey, everything is going to be okay,” Dek said. “We survived this far? If Raven One couldn’t separate us, what can? I know we’ll do fine, as long as we are together.”

  Amberly looked away. She was trying to find the strength to confess her lie.

  Dek picked up on the cue. “Except you’re not coming, are you?”

  How could she tell him now that not only was she not taking the long journey with him, but that she never loved him? She played him like she played North. She was convinced that the truth was the best option, until now. Amberly saw now that the truth would destroy Dek. She knew it was wrong, but she had no strength left. She held onto the lie. Well, it is a half-lie, Amberly rationalized. She was attracted to Dek, and in another impossible set of circumstances, one where Chasm had never been conceived, she could see them together. But that was a fantasy world, much like the utopia Chasm was trying to build.

  “Dek, I’m sorry. You mean so much to me,” she said. “But I can’t leave Magellan. This is my home. I can’t leave Kora. She is my family.”

  Dek was dumbfounded.

  “Dek, this is the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life, but since Chasm came, everything is changed now. If I went with you, even with our ... love, eventually we’d fall apart.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know, my mom loved my dad, despite her double identity. But I saw the bitterness grow in her,” Amberly said, “How she loved my dad, but resented being away from home. She was a woman torn, and my dad saw her suffer something exponentially worse than homesickness. And he could do nothing about it. It destroyed him too.”

  “Amberly, I—”

  “Please don’t say anything. There is nothing to be said. Magellan is my home; I will never leave. I wish you could stay, with all my heart I wish you could,” Amberly lied. “If I went with you, it would be unfair to you, and it would be unfair to me.”

  “Amberly. You are confused,” Dek said.

  “Honestly, Dek, I am thinking more clearly now than I ever have.”

  Amberly stood up, and stepped around the table, and kissed Dek gently on the cheek as the MP entered the room.

  “Goodbye, Dek. I’ll never meet anyone like you again.”

  Tears were rolling down Dek’s face now.

  “Amberly Macready, I will always love you. I will come back to you someday, I promise.”

  Amberly didn’t protest Dek’s pledge. They both knew the promise would be impossible to keep. She smiled one last time at Dek, turned and walked out the door, not wanting him to see she was tearing up as well.

  Lydia, Amberly and Kora looked out of the large portal in the Science Corp lab’s conference area. It was almost four months ago when she first saw Dek and Sparks standing on the observation deck of the American Spirit through this window.

  The three women drank tea and now admired the Magnus, a gleaming light blue ship, which sat docked just outside the lab window.

  “How did it go with Dek?” Kora asked.

  “I lied, “Amberly said, sipping her tea. “Then I kissed him goodbye.”

  “That bad?” Lydia commented.

  “And with North?” Amberly asked.

  “I called him a stubborn ass,” Kora reported. “But he took the key.”

  Lydia stood up. “Let’s go watch the ceremony.”

  Down in the hangar there was a big celebration, as Captain Obadiah and XO North prepared to board the ship. Many of the lab windows opened into and had a great view of the hangar. Most corvettes and runabouts had been repaired and polished for the ceremony. Someone seeing the hangar for the first time today would find almost no evidence of the battle that took place here three months ago.

  Governor Rillio and Commander Moreno presented the captain with a Magellan flag, as was the custom for departing ships that had visited the waypoint for the first time. The Marines assembled gave a salute, and the governor and the captain shook hands. Some grand words were exchanged that the women could not hear.

  North looked up at the lab, and caught Amberly’s eye. The two held the gaze for a moment Amberly wished would last forever. North gave Amberly a slight smile, one that Amberly knew she may never see again.

  North winked, then turned with the captain and entered the gangway connecting to Magnus. The crowd cheered.

  Kora put her arm around her sister.

  Amberly looked at her and smiled. “Let’s go home.”

  Follow the continuing stories of the brave men and women of humanity’s waypoints in Flight of the Magnus (working title), the next exciting novel in the Waypoint Series from Shadowlands Press. Sign up for e-mail news and announcements online at ShadowlandsPress.com

  To report errata and other mistakes found in this edition, please e-mail us at editor@ShadowlandsPress.com.