Had the admiral chosen the cottage simply for privacy? Or was this a subtle reminder of old loyalties? Was it possible tonight’s conversation was going to veer in a wholly different direction than Alek feared? One thing was certain—he wasn’t going to find out what the admiral wanted while sitting like a lump in the front seat of his groundcar. Another silent shiver shimmied up a spine that had always refused to acknowledge fear. Until now. Not so much for himself—he hadn’t reached his rank without accepting the consequences of his decisions—but his officers, his crew, his family . . .
No. If the admiral was going to take him down, he would have done it at Fleet headquarters, not at an isolated cabin in the woods.
Alek climbed the three steps up to the hideaway’s front porch to find Admiral Rigel waiting in the doorway. He was alone, Alek noted as he shook the admiral’s hand and stepped into the main living area. Alone was an oddity, as top admirals, even retired ones like Vander Rigel, customarily traveled with an entourage of aides and bodyguards. Rigel was definitely up to something.
The admiral had aged, Alek noted with regret. Only a few years ago his hair had been as blond as Tal’s, the few gray hairs barely visible. A dynamic, handsome man, his skin showed only the wrinkles expected from someone who had spent his life looking into the vastness of space and, when necessary, ordering men to fight and die. Now, however, the admiral’s thick waves were almost solidly gray, the lines in his face pitted by grief . . . and maybe something more. Alek suspected Admiral Rigel’s burdens were greater than his own. And, frankly, at the moment his own worries were hard to top.
“Thank you for coming, Captain,” the admiral said, when they were seated with hefty glasses of well-aged karst in their hands. “Our families have been close for many years, have they not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I hope the friendship we have enjoyed through the years makes it possible for us to speak freely here, to agree or disagree, but still keep our words private.” The admiral ran his hand through his hair in a gesture Alek recalled Tal doing when situations got tight. “Put another way, no matter where our loyalties lie, it is vital that what we say here stays here.”
“Agreed, sir.” Good. His voice sounded casual, even though his warning instincts were going nova.
“I am told Tycho was involved in both attacks on the rebel S’sorrokan.”
Fyd! The admiral hit the top of Alek’s list of topics-to-be-avoided on the first try. “Yes, sir.”
Admiral Rigel took a sip of karst, setting it back down with a thump before giving Alek the look that had been pinning young officers to their seats for more than a quarter century. “I’ve heard talk that Tycho’s guns did little damage to S’sorrokan’s ship.”
“A vicious rumor, sir—I fear there was resentment when I was promoted to captain Tycho, but proof is difficult to come by with S’sorrokan gone on the wind.”
“Perhaps your gunners were having a bad day?”
“My gunners are the best . . . sir.” Alek hoped he showed no sign of the snake slithering up his spine. But just in case, he hid his face behind his glass.
“Or perhaps your gunners were firing practice rounds.”
Caught mid-sip, Alek choked, spluttered, coughed. “Beg pardon, sir?”
“I’ve seen the vids, Rybolt. Not a single round from Tycho, explosive cannon, torpedo, or laser, touched the rebel ship. And, no, I don’t expect you to answer that one. I have a good idea what happened. So tell me about the rebel ships,” he added in a startling switch of topic. “You got a good look at them?”
“There was a great deal of smoke,” Alek hedged, “not to mention the rather incredible illusion that told us the Psyclid Sorcerer Prime had to be on board one of the ships.” He paused, frowning. “Sir, may I ask how anyone could tell if Tycho’s rounds hit or not? The vid cameras couldn’t see through that lot either.”
Rigel’s lips curled into a thin smile. “I fear I was exaggerating. If the Command Staff had been able to see as well as I indicated, you and your crew would be in the brig by now. But the rumors are strong and growing stronger. I thought you should know. So, Captain, tell me about the rebel ships.”
The admiral was playing with him. If only he could figure out why. Was he talking to a five-star Fleet admiral or Vander Rigel, father?
A question he was unable to answer—the only hint of the admiral’s leanings was the privacy of this meeting. Yet this was it, the moment he wove a lie that would likely come back to bite him. Or told the truth, which would almost surely end his career in Fleet—no matter what the admiral said about their words staying in the room.
“We picked up a rumor on Tat that S’sorrokan had gone to Bender’s Folly—the planet many called Hell Nine. We considered it strong enough that we assembled a battle group and were waiting for them when they came out of the first jumpgate. Except . . . well, sir, what we saw shocked us all.” Alek paused, the moment as clear in his mind as a vid pic—the rebel ship framed by the black depths of space that stretched to infinity.
“We weren’t expecting a huntership, sir. Oh, it had been tarted up here and there, her ident changed, but it was a huntership, one of our own.”
“Every gunnery officer demanded confirmation of orders,” Rigel said, clearly having read the reports.
“Yes, sir. Tycho got off some shots, but the rebs managed a nice bit of maneuvering that took them out of sight long enough for the Sorcerer to lead us astray with an illusion of the rebel ship. It was brilliantly done. We didn’t catch up with them again until they were between Tat and home.”
Once again Alek wondered if he was speaking to the admiral or the father. Did it matter? Either way, his career in Fleet was about to end.
“By then I’d had time to . . . let’s call it speculate. We knew Scorpio had defected, of course, so it seemed logical to suppose that was the huntership we were seeing. Yet somehow the ship that came out of the gate from Bender’s just didn’t feel like Scorpio. And when we finally caught up with the rebs again, there were two of them. Two hunterships. “And well, sir, that was impossible. We were only missing one huntership. Scorpio.
“No, Captain. As reason must have told you, we are missing two hunterships.”
Slowly, Alek nodded, eyes bleak. Whatever he said, his words would hurt. If he denied the huntership was Orion, he would be confirming Tal Rigel’s death. If he affirmed the ship was Orion, he was telling the admiral his son was a traitor—most likely, S’sorrokan, leader of the rebellion.
Admiral Rigel spoke for him. “Scorpio and Orion. The only logical conclusion.”
“And Tal on the bridge,”Alek admitted. “I’m almost certain of it.”
“Which is why you ordered your gunners to fire practice rounds.”
Alek drew a deep breath, shoulders slumping. “Four of my senior officers came to me after the initial encounter, demanding to know if what we’d seen was one of our own—for it fydding sure wasn’t a ghost ship or an illusion. That huntership was solid, and captained by someone with Fleet training. We all agreed on that. And, days later, when we saw the two ships together, we knew. And had to make a decision.” Alek paused, shaking his head. “In the end it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be.
“Did we know it would eventually come out that we were tossing our careers away? I really don’t know. But in that moment when we had Orion in our sights, we discovered we couldn’t take her out. Too many friends on board, too many memories. Not what we were taught, I know. Not Fleet, not Regulon, but it happened. And, oddly, I can’t even regret it.”
Admiral Rigel closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, unmoving except for his Adam’s Apple as he swallowed a good measure of karst.
“There was something else, sir—you’ve probably heard about that too. Orion held us off while Scorpio made a run for the gate. And then Orion simply disappeared—one moment she was taking heavy fire, almost dead in space, the next she was gone. Perhaps through some wormhold we didn’t know existed. How t
hey did it I have no idea. Something to do with sorcery, no doubt.”
Admiral Vander Rigel sat up—Alek would swear he looked ten years younger. “Let me tell you a story, Captain. About a girl who lived in the Interplanetary Archives for four years.”
Psyclid
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into this,” Jagan grumbled as Tor brought their aging nondescript groundcar to a halt in a heavily forested area about half a kilometer from a towering security fence. They’d gone invisible just before turning onto the narrow winding road that once led to a wilderness park, renowned before the Occupation for its wildflowers, so Jagan had no worries about them being seen. But the rest of M’lani’s absurd plan was something else again. He’d even let her talk him into giving his two Reg marines the slip.
Probably not a good idea.
“Jagan.” M’lani spoke in the long-suffering tone females seemed to reserve for the men closest to their lives. “It is night. We are invisible. You can teleport us over the fence. We have Tor as lookout. What can possibly go wrong?”
Her logic was impeccable, but he had a bad feeling . . . “There are plenty of vehicles sitting outside the hangers. We don’t need to go over the fence.”
“But I like to fly.” She flashed an impish grin at the stolid Tor. “I am sure Tor does too.”
Tor, being Tor, said nothing at all, but Jagan felt a ripple of response from his faithful bodyguard that almost made him smile. The giant from Hell Nine did not look forward to flying.
“We shouldn’t have come alone,” Jagan muttered. “I knew better and still—”
“Great goddess, stop complaining! I told you I needed to test what I’ve been practicing without T’kal Killiri and the others looking on, ready to laugh. And what better place than the Reg Heavy Weapons Depot? There’s a whole field of war machines out there, all lined up and ready—and none of them manned.”
“And guard towers every fifty meters.”
“So I’ll start with the ones in the shadows—it’s not like they can possibly guess what’s happening. They’ll just think the mist is coming in, reducing their vision. Jagan, stop looking like that. We can do it, really. Let me take out just a few, to see if I can really do it. You promised.”
Back in the courtyard in Crystalia, when M’lani first proposed this excursion—while the Archeron Ambassador was supposedly courting the Princess Royal—it had seemed logical. Perhaps the blasted girl was developing mesmerist skills as well. But now they—the Sorcerer Prime and the Princess Royal, future King and Queen of Psyclid—were actually here, he recognized the absurdity of the risk. They were about to attempt to break into the most tightly secured area on Psyclid, and invisibility wasn’t the guarantee of success M’lani thought it was. What if the Regs had every vehicle “painted” on a screen with sharp-eyed comp specialists eager to find any aberration in the boredom of their watch? What if, during the years he’d been on Hell Nine, the Regs had developed sensors that could pick up body heat even through an invisibility cloak? After all, they knew that on Psyclid they had to cope with people with special talents.
Or could something as simple as smoke trip them up, their invisibility bubble clearly outlined for all to see? “How about just one from this side of the fence?” Jagan offered. Was that a surge of relief he felt from Tor?
“This is a practice run,” M’lani declared. “We need to practice clearing the fence as well.” Glaring, she crossed her arms over breasts he had only recently noticed were a far cry from the flat-chested, annoying playmate of his childhood—always the second princess, struggling to keep from being overshadowed by her dynamic older sister.
“You know fizzeting well I can clear the fence!”
“Tor’s a lot heavier than I am. So show me you can do it.”
Jagan choked back outrage exacerbated by knowing every word she said was true. “L’ira took five of us up and over Crystalia’s fence at one time.”
“Telekineses is her specialty, I’m not so sure about you.”
Jagan’s temper flared, enough to fly all three of them over the fence, landing them with only a slight thump on the other side. No shouts, no glare of searchlights, no shots, no red beams from laser sights.
“See?” M’lani purred.
“Fine,” Jagan growled. “Let’s find a dark corner and you can show me you’re able to disintegrate something larger than a chandelier.”
Their eyes now well-adjusted to a night as dark as it ever got on Psyclid, with only a crescent of Red Moon hanging high above them, they examined the seemingly endless rows of hulking shadows parked side by side and nose to tail. Fyd! Jagan breathed. How did rebels armed with nothing more than their minds compete with this?
That’s why you’re here, stoo-pid. You brought your own secret weapon.
Thanks a lot, Jagan jeered right back. You want me to pit a pretty princess against the mightiest military in the Quadrant.
Just do it!
Fine. “See anything you’d care to blow up?” Jagan inquired, wincing at the doubt in his voice even as he said it. It wasn’t that he didn’t know M’lani was dangerous, but in spite of her assurances that she’d been practicing, he had doubts about her ability to control her talent. A few of her younger brother’s aberrations flitted across his mind.
M’lani gave him a scathing look that easily penetrated the darkness before turning toward a groundcar, undoubtedly an officer’s transport, and blowing it away, leaving nothing but piles of ash slowly subsiding onto the ground.
Tor, who had not witnessed M’lani’s talent before, yelped.
“Quiet!” Jagan hissed. “I’m not sure how much our invisibility bubbles dampen sound.”
“Sorry, boss.”
M’lani surged ahead, moving toward a row of hovercars. A sleek silver one vanished. A wave of triumph rippled through her. Blessed goddess, she was doing it. Destroying the Regs’ precious war machines.
A black hovercar was next. M’lani, riding high, looked for bigger game. Oh yes. Forty or so meters away was a cluster of armored cars, duplicates of the ones that accompanied her shopping excursions. In rapid succession, she took out three of them, relishing every moment. The power, the glorious power . . .
Which was fading. Her mother had warned that major use of her talent would be debilitating, requiring time to rest and recover. But she couldn’t stop now. Not yet. She needed something bigger, more of a challenge. M’lani charged toward a row of giant black shadows towering against the faintly reddish-tinged sky. T-bots. War machines so large they rolled on a set of giant treads and were controlled by operators in an armored cab high above the ground.
Waiting only for Jagan to catch up, M’lani steadied herself by grabbing his arm before gathering one last mighty surge of power and concentrating every bit of her being on the T-bot. The towering weapon was the enemy; she, the rebellion. If she could topple this symbol of Reg might, she could do it all. A T-bot today, the Empire tomorrow.
Somehow, in spite of M’lani’s previous successes, they expected the huge machine to topple over, crash to the ground. Not disintegrate into a million lethal pieces exploding in every direction. Fortunately, recalling the chandelier, Jagan had added a force field to their invisibility bubbles, or the three of them would have been ripped to shreds.
Jagan echoed Tor’s resounding, “Fyd,” even as the giant from Bender’s Folly scooped up the collapsing M’lani and threw her over his shoulder. Oh yes, this night was going to wipe that condescending smirk off Killiri’s face. The pampered princess had proved she could destroy them all with the blink of an eye.
Of course Killiri wasn’t the only one who needed to remember that.
Regula Prime
“So you’ve known all along,” Alek said when Admiral Rigel finished his tale about his son’s determination to save a young Pysclid cadet, a determination so strong he enlisted his father’s aid to hide the girl from their own government.
“Suspected,” the admiral corrected. “Sometimes I fe
ared my wife and I were indulging in nothing more than sheer fantasy, holding on to hope that could only make the final reality more shattering.”
For all Alek was pleased to confirm the admiral’s hope that his son was alive, he could hear the death knell tolling somewhere inside his head. They’d managed it, come out of the battle with the rebels with nothing worse than a few taunts about bad marksmanship and badly calibrated targeting devices. But he should have known Tycho wasn’t the only ship to recognize Orion. His long-time friendship with Tal Rigel was bound to set rumors flying, particularly among those who envied his rapid advancement.
“Tycho, sir—will they take her away from me?”
“So far your reputation and wiser heads have prevailed, but the sooner you get orders to ship out the better. At first all seemed well, but the past few weeks I’ve felt a change. An odd glance here and there, old friends gone silent . . . a wall building between me and men I have worked with for a quarter century. It’s clear others saw what you did—Orion with Talryn at the helm. Which launched whispers of ‘Traitor,’ now rising to the point of accusation. With both of us targeted.”
“Then come with us, sir, you and your family. Somehow we’ll find Tal and—”
“No.” Admiral Rigel held up his hand. “My place is here. Even if my son doesn’t know it, not all the rebellion is occurring off-planet.”
Realizing his mouth was agape, Alek snapped it closed. “You’re . . . you’re . . .” His voice trailed away. He couldn’t say what he was thinking out loud, not even in this hideaway in the woods.
“Someone must do it, Captain. Ever since the little Psyclid lured my son into rebellion, I realized the time had come to act according to my conscience, not as the Empire demands. Making war on a peaceful, neutral planet like Psyclid pulled the blinders from my eyes. So, yes, I will play my reputation as a five-star admiral for all its worth—grand indignation, sheer horror that anyone could sully the name of Captain Talryn Rigel, hero of the Empire. His mother, brother, and sister will once again shed tears that will rend hearts on every vid screen. Never fear, Captain, somehow we will survive.”
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