Shadowplay: Book One of the Starcrown Chronicles

by Jon Gerrard

  Chapter Seventeen

  “That’s quite some claim,” the Admiral said calmly. “But why should I believe something so preposterous? You see, I knew King Jason personally. He served under me for more than three years when he was the Crown Prince. I also attended his funeral. I saw the body.” He looked at me. “I think I would know the King if he were sitting in front of me.”

  “I understand how this sounds, sir, but his face was surgically altered. And until a few days ago his memory had been blocked and he didn’t even know who he was himself.”

  Now I was confused. “How long have you known?” I asked her.

  “I first suspected your memory had come back when you were able to get around Captain Saha’s encrypted finger drive,” Alex answered with a self-conscious smile. “The newly installed neural assayer in the middle of sick bay was also a bit of a give-away.” She sobered and it seemed like I caught a trace of sadness in her eyes. “Sire, forgive me, but I’ve always known who you were. It was my job to protect you.”

  “Protect me? What are you talking about? Sebastian dumped me on that prison transport with a new face and a wiped memory to get me out of the way. How could you have known?”

  “Actually, Your Majesty, Duke Sebastian knew nothing about it. We blocked your memory and had your face changed to get you away from him. We learned about your abduction a few hours after Sebastian’s phony attack on your motorcade. We knew that once the Duke had your security passcodes he was going to have you killed, so we put together a plan to get you off planet without arousing his suspicion. The plan was to alter your appearance so we could switch you with one of the prisoners being sent out to Demerl. That part went fine. A body with your general build was surgically altered to look like you and the switch was made. All we had to do then was slip you in with the prisoners being sent off planet and let the Royal Department of Corrections transport you for us. But there was another problem we hadn’t planned for. Sebastian’s interrogator had beaten you so savagely that you’d suffered severe brain trauma. You’d suffered multiple concussions and were delirious, Sire. Even after the doctors had reduced the swelling in your brain we were afraid that you would say something while you were unconscious to give yourself away. We were working on a tight schedule so we had your memory capped as a last resort. I was brought on board to go with you to Demerl and watch over you until our escape could be arranged. Then the pirate attack complicated everything.”

  I stared at her for a moment as my mind whirled. Too much information was coming at me too quickly to process it all. “Who the hell is we?”

  “The Diadem Order, Sire, or at least my father’s cell. He recruited me into their service a few years before you assumed the throne. I’ve been his personal agent since then, keeping an eye on you for him.”

  I looked at Alex as if seeing her for the first time. Suddenly, I had a brief memory flash. In my mind I was seeing her in a uniform of some kind. Fleet? No a ... Marine uniform. Her hair was short, like it was when we first met aboard the prison transport, but it was definitely her. Yet I couldn’t recall where it was that I had seen her. Then a second image popped into my head. This time I saw her dressed in a dark suit and sitting at a desk watching a bank of monitor screens. But again I couldn’t quite place the memory.

  “Your father had you keeping an eye on me? Who is your father? For that matter, who are you?”

  “My real name is Morgana. I am the daughter of Morgan Ardent, your father’s foreign policy advisor.”

  Morgan had not only been my father’s foreign policy advisor but was also a close personal friend. As a child he was always ‘Uncle Morgan’ to me whenever he came to visit. And during those early visits he’d always had a girl with him. She was a few years older than I was but that didn’t stop us from running around the capital grounds together and getting into mischief. I remembered her as a bundle of energy, all long, skinny limbs and scabbed knees. Then one day she wasn’t there anymore.

  “We used to play together as children,” I said.

  “A few times,” Alex–Morgana–admitted, “before I went to live with my mother.”

  “So that’s what happened to you. But, why did Morgan want you to keep an eye on me?”

  “As you know, the circumstances of your parents’ death were always suspicious.”

  “I saw the findings of the investigators,” I said. “According to the flight data recorder, the crash was due to pilot error.”

  “I know about that report, but my father never believed it. And neither do I. Not just anyone can be cleared as a pilot for Space Fleet One. Not only does he have to pass an extremely thorough background check, but anyone who is going to be the personal pilot for the King has to have top notch flying skills. The pilot flying your parents that day was Captain Mitchell Davis. I’ve gone through his records. He was a decorated veteran of two combat tours, and had been the academy’s top flight instructor for several years before being given that assignment. He was the best of the best. He was too good a pilot to have made the mistakes the recorder says he made one right after the other to cause that crash.”

  “So you think the flight data was tampered with. Conspiracy theorists have been saying that for years.”

  “I’m no conspiracy theorist. I prefer to deal with facts. And I don’t know what actually happened that day. What I do know is that your parents’ deaths on the way to that international peace conference were just a little too convenient for certain parties, your uncle Sebastian chief among them. The death of Gilead’s monarchs at that time nearly ignited an interstellar war. Your uncle used that emergency to quickly step in and grab control as Regent in your stead.”

  “There was no other choice,” I pointed out. “By law I couldn’t assume the throne until my twenty-first birthday.” The idea was that any younger than this and a monarch would not have enough life experience to govern effectively, despite being groomed for this very purpose since birth. It was just too much power in one person’s hands. At the time I resented the law which had made me wait to claim my inheritance, although now I had to admit that I not only understood the rationale, but agreed with it. I was only seventeen when my parents died and would not have been ready to rule the nation. As it was I wasn’t sure I had been ready at twenty-one.

  “Sebastian’s regency was the only logical alternative,” I said, but the words sounded hollow even to me.

  “Like I said, very convenient.”

  She was giving me a lot to think about. Whatever was going on, Sebastian was certainly involved. But had he really had a hand in the death of my parents? Conflicting emotions began tugging at me. Recalling the death of my parents was like opening an old wound. A deep wound. It brought back much of the grief I had felt at the time. But the thought that Sebastian may have in fact orchestrated their murder was causing a burning hatred to bubble up inside me. Since I had gotten my memory back the one thing I was focused on seeing through was Sebastian’s arrest for treason. If it were true that he had actually had my parents killed I was going to personally extract my revenge from his flesh.

  “If you will forgive me for interrupting what is proving to be a very fascinating little exchange,” Admiral Magnus said, “you still haven’t given me any proof to support your claim.”

  Alex met his gaze squarely. “You have the means to confirm what I’m telling you.” She glanced at the bulkhead to his left and the device set into it.

  Magnus nodded. “Yes, but I wanted to see if you would be willing to suggest it.”

  The machine she had indicated was a biometric scanner. It sampled five different sources of data from a subject and cross-referenced them. If the person’s data were stored in its memory files his identity would be proven beyond any doubt. I started to rise to my feet but the Admiral waved me back down.

  “I’d like the lady to go first,” Magnus said, studying Morgana’s face. “I’ve never met Minister Ar
dent, but there is something very familiar about you.”

  Morgana allowed a trace of a smile to touch her lips. Standing up slowly she walked over to the machine under the watchful gaze of Captain Saha and placed her hand on the black scanning plate, activating the device. The screen glowed to life at her touch as the first of the scans began. The touch plate read the triple combination of her palm print, the vascular pattern in her hand and her bio-electric pattern, each of which is unique to every person. Then a light shone briefly in her eyes, scanning the retinal blood vessel patterns. The final clearance required her to say her name aloud so the machine could match her voice print.

  “Morgana Tricia Ardent-Mitchell,” she said.

  A moment later the data screen flashed: Identity confirmed–M. Tricia Mitchell. Military record available.

  Magnus frowned at her. “Tricia ... Mitchell?”

  “My mother’s maiden name, sir. My father thought it was better to keep our family connection hidden.”

  As Magnus stared at her recognition slowly dawned on him. “Didn’t they used to call you, ‘Tizzy’?”

  “Yes, sir. I served under your command when you were captain of the GSS Javelin.”

  That’s where I had seen her, in the corridor outside the auxiliary control room. Even in standard fatigues she was striking. But I never saw her on the ship again after that and I never knew who she was. Nor was it surprising that Magnus didn’t remember her at first either. Aboard ship it was standard practice for the Marine units to remain isolated from the regular Fleet crew. Although Captain Magnus had known everyone under his direct command on sight, it was possible for him not to have ever seen any number of the Marines stationed aboard his ship. Although a basic personnel file on each one was part of the ship’s database, the records weren’t anything to make someone stand out as a three dimensional person in the reader’s mind. This made the Marines something apart from the regular crew, which was part of their function as elite combat troops. The other part was their constant readiness to be deployed into situations that would give most combat veterans pause. Since Marines were expected to be ready to be dropped into a fire fight at a moment’s notice, their ‘free time’ was structured. A Marine posted aboard a Fleet ship did two things when he wasn’t on duty: maintain his equipment and train. This kept them far too busy to interact with the general crew. Contact was not actually forbidden, it just didn’t happen often. But I also knew Magnus. He would have had his ear to the ground and he would have known everything he could about every one of them.

  “Tizzy Mitchell,” Magnus said thoughtfully. “You were one of Major Koster’s top people, the one they said could shoot the eye out of a mouse at a hundred meters.”

  “Some of the men liked to exaggerate, sir.”

  “Well, your CO certainly wasn’t someone who gave compliments lightly, and he had nothing but good things to say about you. You were one of the few people he didn’t rotate off the ship after the usual six month tour. In fact, as I recall you were with us for several years, right up until ...”

  “Until Prince Jason resigned his commission to assume the throne. Yes, sir. The Prince had been an officer aboard your ship for several years by then. I was kept aboard so that I could watch over him. More of my father’s influence, sir.”

  “Maybe so, but Major Koster would not have kept you on for tour after tour if you couldn’t pull your weight and then some.” The Admiral glanced at the computer screen on his desk where he had just called up her file. “Your file says you resigned your commission right after that. Then your record just dead ends.”

  “I was recruited by a federal agency. It was a position that required a high level security clearance. You wouldn’t have access to those files, sir.”

  The image of her in the dark suit came back to me then. “You went to work for the Protective Service Agency,” I said, suddenly placing the other memory I had of her. The PSA was the agency charged with protecting the Royal Family and senior members of the federal government. I had seen her manning one of the many security monitoring stations in the capitol but had never made the connection.

  “That’s right, Sire. My father wanted me close to you because he suspected that Duke Sebastian was planning something.”

  “But you were never part of my personal security detail.”

  “No, Sire. That would have been too obvious.”

  I paused for a moment to digest what I was hearing. Uncle Morgan had been having his daughter keep tabs on me for several years because he suspected there was a plot against me, and for all that time not only did I have no idea that I was being watched over, I had never even heard of this group he was supposed to be a part of.

  “This Diadem Order that Morgan recruited you into, what is it exactly?”

  “Actually,” Admiral Magnus said at that point, “before we continue along this line, I’d like to confirm your identity.”

  “Admiral, you’ve seen my file,” Morgana said. “You know I’m telling the truth.”

  “In fact I do believe you, Miss. Mitchell. I believe that you believe this man to be King Jason. But before we reveal anything more in his presence I need to establish his identity to my satisfaction.” He turned to me, looking me up and down. “Please step up to the scanner, sir.”

  Following Morgana’s example, I stood slowly and walked over to the biometric scanner. I placed my palm on the reader plate, felt the warm tingling in my hand as the scanner collected its data, waited for the light to shine into my eyes, and said aloud: “Jason Asche Raynor.”

  Moments later the screen displayed: Identity confirmed–Jason Asche Raynor. Royal Family.

  I turned and arched an eyebrow at the Admiral. He rose to his feet and stepped from behind his desk. Walking up to me he spent several moments searching my face for some trace of the man he had known.

  “You’ve changed,” he said finally. Then, glancing at Captain Saha, he motioned for him to lower his weapon. “Put that away, Captain. You’re holding a gun on your King.”

  I felt a knot that I hadn’t even realized was there beginning to untie itself in my gut and a smile slowly unfolded across my face.

  “It’s good to see you again, Admiral,” I said, extending my hand.

  Magnus took my hand, squeezing it warmly as he returned my smile. “And you, Your Highness. I was beginning to give up hope that our nation would ever recover from your loss.”

  “Don’t you mean from King Sebastian’s tender care? Yes, there’s a lot that needs being put right. But first, tell me about this mysterious organization of yours that no one seems to know even exists.”

  Magnus gestured me back to my seat. Perching himself on the edge of his desk he folded his arms and stared into the distance as he marshaled his thoughts.

  “I don’t even know everything about it. Very few people do, aside from those who actually run it. That’s part of what helps us maintain our secrecy. You see, we’re organized into cells. Information is passed up the line through contacts known to the cell leaders and instructions are passed back down the same way. Most of us only know the members of our own cells.”

  “Cells? Information passing up and down a chain of command? It sounds like a military organization.”

  “I suppose that’s natural, considering that the majority of our members are recruited from within the Fleet. As far as what the Order itself is, well, quite simply we exist to protect the Royal Family. Since the first days of the nation we have stood quietly in the shadows keeping a watchful eye over the King and his family.”

  “What about the Protective Service Agency? Aren’t you just duplicating their efforts, or are they all members of the Order as well?”

  “Not as many as you would think. As far as I know, very few Order members are actually part of the PSA.” He shot Morgana a quick look. “Of course, our people are placed in all branches of the government for any number of reasons. But, to use Miss. Mitchell’
s words, that would be too obvious. Don’t misunderstand me, Sire, the Service is very good at what it does, but everyone knows about them. Our strength comes from the fact that we operate clandestinely. No one knows we exist.”

  “So you’re telling me that this Order of yours has been around for hundreds of years and no one in the Royal Family has ever known it even existed?”

  Amusement twinkled in the Admiral’s eyes. In that moment I was a junior officer under his command again, learning once more from a leader experienced not only in military matters but in life. “No, Your Highness, every reigning monarch since the founding of the nation has been informed of our existence, once he or she has ascended to the throne. In fact our authority extends from the very first of the Gileadean Kings, Arturo the first. He was the one who established our group as the last line of protection for his family and their descendants. When we join the Order, each of us is shown the original charter bearing King Arturo’s signature so that we understand that we are not some rogue entity beholden to no authority. We exist to serve the Royal Family and each of us swears an oath to give our lives if necessary in that cause. Unfortunately, we were not able to reveal ourselves to you because the Duke moved against you so quickly after you were crowned.”

  I had been King for less than a month before I’d been abducted. There had been a brilliant explosion ahead of my motorcade one day, bringing the procession to an abrupt stop. A second explosion moments later sent my own car spinning into the air and then everything went black. The next thing I remembered was waking up in that underground holding cell and having Sebastian’s man working me over for my security codes. He was a sadistic little bastard who enjoyed his work and who I’d love to meet one on one again when my hands weren’t tied. While I knew that my uncle had disagreed with many of the reforms I had started making once I ascended to the throne, I never suspected he would try to depose me. It didn’t seem like him. But I had seen several changes under his regency that I didn’t like and I knew I needed to move quickly to turn things around as soon as I was crowned. One of the things in particular that I knew was making my uncle uneasy was the way many of my proposed changes would undercut the power of the Nobility. I must have scared him more than I realized. Or maybe I had started to get too close to his dealings with the pirates.

  Then something occurred to me. “King Arturo is one of the most thoroughly researched historical figures of our nation. Nowhere in any of the laws enacted under his rule is there any record that he organized a group of personal bodyguards.”

  Each member of the Royal Family spent a good deal of our education becoming well versed with the legislative history of each monarch who had ever reigned. King Arturo was a personal favorite of mine and I knew virtually everything there was to know about him, or at least I thought I did.

  Magnus’ lips twitched into a half smile. “Actually, there is an obscure decree by the King establishing ‘An order to provide for the protection of the Royal Family’. The exact month, day and year of this proclamation can be found in the historical records of the time, but as with so many ‘small’ items it was overshadowed by larger issues of the day. To most people it is just one obscure proclamation amid a mountain of bills and legislative changes during the formative years of the nation. Most historians who even know about it believe it to be an early reference to the Protective Service Agency, but the Service was not actually put into place for almost another two years.” His smile broadened into a grin. “Hidden in plain sight. The very fact that it appears so plainly among hundreds of other seemingly minor bits of legislation was the perfect way to keep it secret. And we have kept that secret for more than two hundred years. A secret it has been an honor to protect.”

  I sat for a moment absorbing what I had heard, then looked up to find Magnus studying me.

  “I don’t have the words to even begin to express my thanks,” I said. Magnus started to say something but I waved him back. “I do have to thank you, admiral. All of you.” I looked at Morgana and she lowered her gaze. “So many of you have given so much of yourselves in ways that I can never repay.”

  “Your Majesty, with all due respect, you will never have to thank any member of the Order,” Magnus said. “Gilead has only been able to become the great nation that it is today because of your family. None of the other star kingdoms have a system of representative government like ours. We, the people, elect our leaders from within our own ranks. Those leaders, responsible to the demands of the citizens, truly run the nation. On those – infrequent – occasions when a Gileadean King has stepped in to impose his will, it has always been to address a problem that an overburdened system is unable to correct within the strict boundaries of the law. In contrast, many of the other stellar monarchs are tyrants who look upon their citizens as little more than serfs.

  “But the Raynors have always valued the basic human dignity all people have a right to. And more than that, you don’t put yourselves up on a pedestal. By your own laws, a member of the Royal Family must also serve a minimum two year tour of military duty before he can be crowned as monarch. During that tour you take no special privileges and are sworn to follow the orders of superior officers, whether commoner or Noble. You serve alongside your own subjects as one of us, literally putting your lives on the line for the sake of a principle. Such a gesture inspires loyalty, Sire, the kind of loyalty that cannot be bought.”

  The Admiral’s words touched me. I recalled how my father had once tried to explain to me that we had no right to rule if we were not willing to put our own lives on the line for the nation. I hadn’t fully understood what he was trying to tell me then, but Magnus’ words brought that meaning home to me in a way I had not been ready to understand at the time. What father had meant was that our willingness to risk our own safety made us more worthy to rule in the eyes of the people. Because, ultimately, it is the people who allow a leader to rule. Even the most oppressive dictator cannot remain in power without a cadre of men willing to carry out his orders. But the services of such men is only bought with power and privilege. And such rulers invariably sow the seeds of their own undoing, for in creating a class of elite who enjoy the privileges of society which are wrested from the hands of the oppressed, they cause deep resentment among the populace. Ultimately, that resentment will spread throughout their society like a cancer, bringing social decay, economic disaster, and ultimately, rebellion.

  But Arturo had understood that no leader rules without the will of the people. That lesson had been handed down from King to King for more than two hundred years. In fact, the members of the Royal Family had it impressed upon us from a very early age that we were ultimately accountable to our subjects.

  But it seemed that not all members of the Royal Family shared that philosophy.

  “And King Sebastian?” I said, fixing Magnus with a look. “Has he inspired the same loyalty?”

  A weaker man might have looked uncomfortable. Magnus met my eyes levelly as he answered. “Until a few minutes ago I would have truthfully told anyone who asked me that my allegiance was to my King and country. As the crowned monarch, I would have given my life in the service of King Sebastian.” A sudden hardness came into his eyes then. “However, should a King prove himself to be an enemy of the nation it would be my sworn duty to see him removed from power.”

  “So you sent Captain Saha to find evidence to use against him.”

  Magnus nodded. “If it could be shown that the King were involved in high treason, the Senate could remove him from the throne. Rumors had been circulating throughout the Order since before you assumed the throne that there was some connection between the pirates and Duke Sebastian, but there was no hard evidence. Then, a few years ago, we got our first solid lead.

  “I actually came across the first evidence of a link between your uncle and the pirates through chance. Shortly after you resigned your commission, I was promoted to Admiral and assigned to Fleet opera
tions. As with so many things it all started with what appeared to be a minor clerical error. My office couldn’t account for a ship that had supposedly been decommissioned. It was a relatively young ship with no serious damage which would have necessitated it being taken out of service. That was slightly unusual in itself, but what we couldn’t explain was why it was not in the scrap yard it had been assigned to. A little digging turned up paperwork which showed that it was supposed to have been disassembled and destroyed. The problem was that the breaker yard which was listed as having handled the job had been shut down for repairs during the time the ship was supposed to have been scrapped.

  “That started me digging around further and I began to notice that a number of relatively young ships had been decommissioned early over the past several years, ships whose service logs showed that they should still have been in active service for many more years. Something didn’t seem right and I started quietly reaching out to people I knew who might have answers. Eventually I learned that shortly after he assumed the regency, Duke Sebastian had begun a program to overhaul the fleet by phasing out certain classes of ships and replacing them with newer ones.”

  The other shoe dropped. “Let me guess. He was phasing out subs.”

  “Yes. Of course, this in itself meant nothing. If the Regent wanted to upgrade the Fleet with newer ships it was his prerogative to do so. The problem was that I couldn’t account for what had happened to any of the ships that had been taken out of service. Some of them had records showing them scrapped by plants which had been shut down at the time. Others had supposedly been disassembled by plants which had been engaged in servicing other ships at the same time, which is clearly impossible. Still other ships were simply found to be missing from their assigned slots in Fleet scrap yards.

  “When I correlated the data and noticed that pirate activity began to escalate in direct relation to the numbers of missing Fleet ships, the Order felt that we had to do something. If the King were truly behind this plot we needed to find evidence we could present to the Senate. Several ideas were proposed to ferret out this link, one of which was to send people out to search for answers. There may have been other attempts to discover the details of Sebastian’s treasonous activities but I only know about the operation I was in charge of.”

  Evidence that Sebastian was perpetuating the sale of military technology to pirates who were then using them to strike against our own ships would indeed be enough to have him removed from power. In theory. But everyone in the room knew that it would not be as easy as that. Sebastian would have insulated himself with as many staunch supporters as possible. No matter how strong a case the Order managed to assemble against Sebastian, the most probable outcome of such an accusation would be civil war. Just imagining the numbers of innocent people who would lose their lives because of the selfish desires of one man was turning my stomach.

  “I assume that my uncle is not aware of the existence of the Order,” I said, my mind branching off onto another track.

  “No, Sire.”

  While I was relieved that Sebastian did not know about the Order, I was starting to worry about just who was in control of this force. Magnus must have read something in my expression.

  “Please understand, Sire, the Order did not come to this decision lightly. It is clearly spelled out in the articles establishing the Order that our purpose is to protect and preserve the Royal Family, not necessarily to support the ambitions of any one person. We would, every one of us, still carry out our mandate to protect the King to our best ability, no matter what his policies. But we are not obligated to reveal our presence to him if it is determined that his actions are against the best interests of the nation.”

  The Admiral’s words reminded me of a famous legal case from Old Earth I had once studied. It concerned a store owner who was accused of distributing pornographic materials. The lawyer for the defendant tried to pin down the judge in the case by asking him to define what he meant by pornography. From the bench the judge replied: ‘I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.’ His statement had turned their legal system on its ear. In the end, after years of lawsuits, countersuits and appeals, it was determined that no one should have the authority to arbitrarily decide the standards of behavior for the general public.

  “And who decides what is in the best interests of the nation, Admiral?”

  Magnus nodded slowly, like a master teacher acknowledging the achievement of a student. “And so we arrive at the crux of the problem. Normally, legally, it is the right of the King to decide what is best for the nation. But what is our responsibility when that King is engaged in treason? That very point has been at issue since Sebastian came to power. There are many in the Order who believe that it is our duty to reveal ourselves to King Sebastian. If we continue to function without the knowledge of the King, who are we serving? But our charter also mandates that the Order conduct a thorough investigation of the King once he assumes the throne. King Arturo established the Order to not only protect the Royal Family but also to serve as a safety measure to ensure that whoever sits on the throne is truly acting in the nation’s best interest. That final decision we will leave to the courts. Our function is to utilize our extensive contacts to investigate every aspect of the King’s background, and when necessary to gather evidence of any wrongdoing. Something no one else can do.”

  “And now that Captain Saha has brought you that evidence, what will the Order do?”

  “The one thing we will not do is stage a military coup. The only person who has the authority to command a mobilization of the Order is the reigning King. The information we have gathered will be channeled to the appropriate people within the government who will put it before the Senate. The nation, the people must decide for themselves what to do. But, we have been presented with an unusual situation. You have been returned to us, Sire. As King you can command the Order into action.” Magnus sat studying me, waiting for my response.

  It was tempting. To march into the capitol in command of my own private army and remove Sebastian from the throne at gun point had a very real appeal. But I dismissed the idea even as I considered it. It was not a civil war I was after. I needed to have Sebastian removed publicly and peacefully. And above all, it had to be done in such a way that would have the support of the people.

  “No, Admiral, I think your first idea was the best one. I think you should arrest me.”