by Mark Henwick
A Threat Among
the Stars
A Science Fiction Novel
by
Mark Henwick
Published by Marque
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A Threat Among the Stars: Science Fiction Adventure Novel
ISBN : 978-1-912499-07-6
Published in Januaryr 2019 by Marque
Mark Henwick asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.
© 2019 Mark Henwick
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters and events portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, legal entities, incidents or localities is entirely coincidental. The laws of physics, chemistry, biology and psychology may not work as depicted.
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Afterword
Author’s Note
This is a continuation of the story started in A Name Among the Stars. It is advisable to read that book first.
Chapter 1
Kattalin
The high sierras near Cabezón, Newyan
Kattalin has been walking all day, hurrying through the thick mountain forest, trying to stay ahead of the Syndacian mercenaries.
Now the sun is dipping toward the horizon and the woods are gloomy, full of ominous, swaying shadows.
Kattalin can’t see any of the other cadets at the moment, can’t hear them. For a few seconds, there’s only the gurgle of the stream at her feet and her heavy panting. She’s been walking fast, but she’s shivering—she has been since she saw the first movements in the trees at the base of the valley below them, just as dawn broke over the peaks.
The pursuit has been there the whole day. A kilometer or two behind. Relentless. Remorseless. Merciless. Syndacian mountain troops, from the most violent of Frontier worlds.
Around midday, there had been gunshots. Maybe a hundred or so in bursts, over fifteen minutes, then silence.
Some of the others must have stopped to fight, buying time for the rest of them.
Had Commander Benat ordered it?
She tries to think what it would have been like, if he’d given her that order. Would she have had the courage to follow it?
She doesn’t know.
She’s scared in a way she’s never been scared before, shaken to the core of her being.
She repeats the last lines of the oath to herself: I have embraced my death. Only my duty remains.
The words feel a lot more real now than when she first joined the Resistance’s Training Company Bravo. They had begun to feel real yesterday, when they were all huddled together listening to Commander Benat.
“Comrade Cadets,” he’d started in his usual jaunty, energizing way. Then he’d stopped and looked seriously around the group, meeting every eye, before continuing more quietly: “My beloved brothers and sisters. The call has come, as we all knew it might.”
The hairs had stood up on her arms.
“To the High Command, every single one of you in the Resistance is a true hero, but war respects the merits of no single person, no group of people. This is how it is, my brothers and sisters: to allow our main force to get through into the provincial capital of Cabezón, the Syndacian troops have to be diverted from there. Once our main force takes Cabezón, the Hajnal invaders won’t be able to hide the revolt of an entire city from the rest of the planet. The lies the media have been telling will be exposed. The planet will be in an uproar and the Terran marines will arrive to restore order and crush the invasion. But everything hinges on diverting the Syndacian cohort from their base at Cabezón.”
He stood silent for a moment, his handsome face dark with outdoor living and lean as a wolf’s.
His next words fell like pebbles into a deep pool. “And there is only us. The High Command has called on Training Company Bravo. We must lure them away from Cabezón, into the high passes, and ambush them. We will certainly die in that battle. But we will die proud, free people, and because of us, Newyan will rise again. Newyan will rise again! I know each one of you will do your duty, for only our duty remains.”
That was yesterday. He’d left them proud and scared, feeling like heroes.
She doesn’t feel like a hero today, and the pride has leaked away.
More shots behind her. Much closer.
She kneels beside the cold stream and fills her canteen. Her throat is dry and she drinks hurriedly. This may be the last chance. The pass isn’t far ahead. The last stand.
Her hands nervously flutter to check the scrap of red is still pinned to her chest to identify her to any of the other cadets waiting in ambush.
If I’m going to die, I want to be facing the right way. I want to take some of them with me.
Barely a hundred paces further on and Benat’s senior lieutenant, Ohana, appears out of the shadows like a forest dryad.
The fear solidifies in Kat’s belly.
Ohana holds a finger to her lips and waves her to the side.
There, a bit of earth has been hurriedly shoveled into a small bank. A net with twigs and leaves entwined is waiting for her, just as Benat had said there would be.
She looks down at it.
This will be my grave.
Ohana has tears streaming down her face. Wordlessly, she unpins the red warning sign on Kat’s chest, gives her a hug, and kisses her forehead. Then she is gone, slipping through the forest to the next
position.
A few of the other cadets pass her as she gets herself ready. The little red flags make them stand out easily. Some give a wave, some a poor salute. They all look terrified. One or two keep looking back down the slope.
Soon the Syndacian troops will come, grim and pale and silent as ghosts, and the killing will begin.
She knows she’s been given a position of honor. This is in the first rank of concealed firing positions. The first that will be overrun.
She will slow them down, kill a few, and then she will die.
Tears spill.
I wish I could have been a better daughter, Mama, Papa, while you were alive.
Now, I have embraced my death. Only my duty remains.
The rifle is warm against her cheek, slightly oily beneath her fingers. It’s an old police weapon from her great-grandfather’s time. Her ammunition is stacked and waiting beside her. She’s stuck her knife into the ground, if it comes to that. The net camouflages her. She concentrates on breathing smoothly and being invisible.
She’s lightheaded. She hasn’t eaten all day, but she has no appetite now. Tiredness and sadness, hunger and fear will all cease to matter in a very short time.
Her trembling eases away and her dark, oval eyes look up into the deepening sky.
Goddess, Lady of Mercy, look down on Newyan as the light fades, she whispers. Remember all your children and speed us on our way. And hold your hand over blessed Zarate. May her steps always be sure, and may her words always strike true, that all Newyan will be delivered from the enemy. Forgive me what I must do this day, for we are all your children.
Forgive me. Forgive me.
Into your hands, Goddess, I commend my soul.
Only my duty remains.
It’s time.
Far down the slope, shadows sway and ghosts begin to drift through the trees.
Chapter 2
Zara
Welarvor Coast, Kernow
"After escaping a revolution, thwarting a planetary invasion, and barely surviving being murdered, I would never have thought you'd find hosting a children’s party so stressful." Hwa is teasing me mercilessly.
This afternoon is officially a summer holiday celebration for the local schoolchildren, but it’s really a celebration of life. No one actually speaks openly of it, but I see it in all the parents’ eyes: the lingering shock of learning about the Hajnal conspiracy barely in time to stop them from taking over Kernow, slaughtering the Founding Families, and destroying our way of life, as they’d done on my home planet of Newyan.
They’re all thinking: How did we let it get so close?
I try to push such thoughts to the back of my mind.
“You’re not helping,” I tell Hwa, and she laughs.
On the lawn in front of us, a fat bear sings a silly song as he rushes in a circle, keeping a dozen plates spinning, balanced improbably on the tips of poles stuck in the ground. He seems to get later and later: every plate is wobbling more precariously as he reaches it.
The man is dressed as something apparently called a panda: a clownish black and white Terran bear that none of the watching children have ever seen before. The sun’s strong this afternoon, and he has to be incredibly hot in that suit, but he’s still singing in tune.
Aside from the singing, I’m impressed by his ability to get just one spinning plate to balance on the top of a pole, let alone keeping twelve going at the same time.
The children are open-mouthed and completely absorbed, but I have a feeling that what grips them is the eager anticipation of disaster. They won’t blink because they might miss a plate falling and breaking. Or even, oh! what delight, all of them, one after the other.
I feel I have a lot in common with the bear.
Yes, I’m stressed.
Partly, it’s because of the parents watching me. Evaluating this young adventuress that has suddenly entered their lives as the new Duchess Aguirre-Tremayne, marrying the duke in indecent haste on a spaceship, without pomp or ceremony.
On first meeting, not a few eyes linger on my belly.
Without justification.
It doesn’t help that at least some of those present today last saw me at the Summer Ball, fulfilling my duties as the lowly Dancing Mistress to Duke Bleyd Tremayne’s daughter, Rhoswyn. Saw me and dismissed me as trash, the sort of girl desperate to claw her way up the social ladder by bedding her employer.
We’re having the party at our neighbor’s estate, Pyran Manor. Bleyd and I are living here with our family at the insistence of the owner, Lord Marik Roscarrow, while our own house at Stormhaven Cardu is rebuilt after the Hajnal skimmer attack that destroyed half of it. It’s a kind gesture by our neighbor, and it’s no fault of his that I shiver every time I step into the sunny library where his sister, Lady Emblyn, drugged me and tried to kill me.
Put it all behind you.
Focus on what’s in front of you.
Today, that’s my adopted daughters.
My eyes light on my younger daughter, Alexis, sitting nearby watching the bear’s antics. She gasps and presses her fingers to her mouth as a wobbling plate almost falls, before the panda flicks it with his paw and sets it neatly spinning again. She claps and laughs.
My heart cracks a little at that laugh. For a long time after after she came to us, Alexis’ smiles were few and far between. Her mother, Hanna—elegant and beautiful, accomplished and courageous—had been an enemy, and then a friend. She’d sacrificed herself to save Rhoswyn from the Duke’s enemies, and neither Bleyd nor I would ever forget what she’d done for us.
I miss her every day.
I remind myself to go up to the Goddess’ shrine where Hanna is buried. I’ve missed going all this last week through the pressures of my new position. Hanna would understand, but that’s no excuse.
There are one thousand and one issues screaming for my attention. The management of the estate, the rebuilding of Cardu, the demands of the news media, my introduction to the people of Welarvor, my support for Bleyd in his task of making a robust new governmental structure for Kernow—executive, legislative, judicial.
My husband is a one-man storm, working with the aim of establishing a system of checks and balances so that never again will Kernow be vulnerable to the type of attack that so nearly succeeded. I’ve barely seen him since we returned from our appeal to the Terran Council.
Despite all that, I love my new life here on Welarvor. And reunions with my husband make the waits worth while.
But today is about helping my daughters make and keep strong friendships, to help them weather the inevitable political storms that will continue to buffet Bleyd and me—and all those we love.
I see Gaude, the Cardu estate manager, scanning the crowd for me. I know what he wants—and I’m putting off speaking to him as long as possible—so I move off, leaving the panda to his oncoming disaster.
Hwa senses what I’m thinking and joins me.
Other people find it uncanny the way Hwa and I can tell what the other is thinking so accurately, but they don’t know how uncanny it really is.
We shared a mind and body once. Hwa’s consciousness was contained in a peculiar quantum gel that coated my back and slipped phantom fingers into my brain. It was the only way to save her from being discovered as the Hajnal tried to take over Kernow.
Then when Shohwa, her ‘parent’ Self-Actualized Entity, returned to Kernow, Hwa insisted on being transferred to a cloned body, so she could continue to learn from her ‘human’ perspective.
We keep things like that secret. Artificially intelligent computers and human clones are illegal and their idea frightens most people.
Luckily, there’s no easy way for these people to find out what Hwa is.
We make our way to the swimming pool, where Rhoswyn and her friends are gathered.
I’ve borrowed a low-power acceleration compensator which sits at the bottom of the deep end and is creating a twelve foot tall waterspout in the middle of the pool. It’s something
I once saw on my former home world, Newyan. No one has ever seen it done here and it’s a huge hit with the older children.
“Score one for Zara, cool mum,” Hwa whispers.
However, some of the parents are lingering near the pool, nervously standing on the balls of their feet or clutching their throats in the mistaken impression that it’s dangerous.
“And score minus ten for the new duchess,” I reply. “Bad parent.”
“Oh, yes, indeed!” Hwa imitates Lady Polkynhorn, who really doesn’t like me. “This sort of irresponsible behavior must be a result of her upbringing—if you can call it that—on Newyan.”
It would make me laugh, but mentioning Newyan to me is like a cloud slipping across the face of the sun.
“Sorry,” Hwa says, immediately realizing her mistake.
I explain, even if I probably don’t need to. “Bleyd keeps telling me we have to leave it to the Terrans, and Gaude backs him up, of course.”
If we can’t trust Earth, Gaude said to me yesterday, who can we trust?
I try, but I can’t.
I know in my bones it’s not going well. After the interminable discussions, there was a period of hope when the Terran Council gave the order to dispatch naval ships to every planet where the Hajnal were believed to be active, using a comprehensive list compiled by the Xian Hegemony’s huge trading fleet.
A battleship went immediately to Tavoli, the center of the conspiracy. The case there was unanswerable: Tavoli had sent a ship full of mercenaries to seize Kernow by force. They bombed Cardu and tried to assassinate the duke. They tried to kidnap Rhoswyn.
Terran marines have now been deployed on Tavoli, and the Terran Council, with the agreement of everyone other than the Hajnal worlds, has taken over the administration of the Tavoli system.
But that was two months ago. Since then, not so much. No news on the departure of the ship detailed to visit Newyan, and what scant information we can get from the planet itself is like a drip of acid on my heart.
Something has gone wrong. I just know it.
Unfortunately, I’ve stood still too long. Gaude appears out of the crowd, murmuring, “Pardon me, Duchess, but I really must speak to you for a few moments. There are decisions that must be made so that arrangements may be set in motion.”