Rath's Trial (The Janus Group Book 4)
Page 22
In the air taxi, Beauceron re-read his notes. Atalia watched him, a bemused smile on her lips.
“Do you want to talk it through?” she asked. “Or should I just be quiet and let you think?”
“Um,” he said. “I don’t …,” he trailed off, flipping back several pages through his notes.
“I’ll shut up,” she decided.
Beauceron turned his holophone on, and pulled up the photos of the purchase receipts. He read through them, twice. Then he wrote something else in his notebook, feverishly, and turned back to his holophone.
“It can’t be. He’s been dead for over two hundred years,” Beauceron muttered.
“Uh oh,” Atalia commented. “I think he’s got it.”
Beauceron ran a search query, skimmed through several news articles, and then exhaled slowly, turning off the phone. He glanced over at his partner.
“I think I know who’s on the Rampart Guardian. I think I know who bought the drones and tested the high energy device over New Liberia.”
“Okay,” she told him. “I’m ready to hear it.”
“I don’t think you are,” Beauceron said. “This is the crackpot theory to end all crackpot theories.”
“Try me,” Atalia suggested.
39
The female guard slung her rifle over her shoulder and took Rath by the elbow, hauling him to his feet. The van’s driver joined them at the rear door, and fell into step on the other side of Rath without a word. The cavernous cargo bay held numerous other small craft, of varying sizes and shapes, all of them shrouded under tarpaulins. Rath guessed they had not been used in some time. He spotted a stack of engine lubricant cans, their yellowed labels peeling with age.
This place feels like a museum.
His guards marched him out of the bay, through several dimly-lit corridors. Rath saw no other crew members. Finally, they arrived at an interior door, and the male guard pressed a security panel in the wall. The panel looked to have been repaired several times. The door slid open, and Rath was ushered into a conference room with a low ceiling – six grey-haired men and women sat around the table. At the center of the table, a young man Rath’s own age stood. He wore a dark blue uniform, with the insignia of the Interstellar Police stitched on the lapels.
I recognize him, Rath realized. I’ve seen that face hundreds of times in old news footage and in history books.
“Welcome, Rath,” the man said, smiling. He gestured to Rath’s guards. “Free him.”
They removed Rath’s chains, and then the disruptor collar around Rath’s neck. Rath saw the diagnostics screen appear on his heads-up display. With a rush, his implants came back online, the enhanced sensations flooding over him as if he had just emerged from deep underwater. He could hear the sigh of air coming out of a vent on the far side of the room, and smell the cracked leather of the conference room seats. He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Rath felt the ship shudder, and heard the engine’s pitch change. We just went to FTL.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked him.
Rath nodded. “I know who you appear to be,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But you’re supposed to be dead. Long dead.”
“Indeed I am. And you’re supposed to be in jail,” the man pointed out. “It seems neither of us are very good at doing what we’re supposed to do.”
“Who are you really?” Rath asked.
“I am exactly who I appear to be, Rath Kaldirim.” He put both fists on the table and leaned forward, meeting Rath’s gaze without flinching. Rath saw the fire in his eyes, then: the famous charismatic energy that had inspired men by the thousands to join his crusade. “I am the man that started the Third Colonial War, and the man that will win it – for the war is not over, not yet. I am a traitor, an Interstellar Police officer, and a revolutionary. I am the worst nemesis of the Federacy, and its final hope for salvation.”
“Anders Ricken,” Rath said.
Ricken smiled. “The same. Now, come: join us.”
Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt from Rath's Rebellion, Book Five in The Janus Group series:
The two guards turned and withdrew from the ship’s conference room, the metal hatch sliding closed behind them. In the silence that followed, Rath cleared his throat.
“Anders Ricken,” he said, disbelieving.
The young man in the faded police uniform nodded, gesturing to a chair at the well-worn conference table.
“Please, sit,” he said.
Rath walked forward and sat down slowly, cautiously, and then glanced briefly at each of the table’s occupants. Four men, two women, none of them younger than sixty. Can they really be the Council? The six policemen who helped Ricken start the Third Colonial War?
Rath turned his attention back to the younger man seated across from him. “How are you even alive?”
Ricken arched an eyebrow. “Misdirection. A tactic you’re most familiar with.”
“You faked your own death?” Rath asked.
“I did,” Ricken agreed. “And then I went into hiding on this very ship. For over two hundred years.”
“How?” Rath asked. “How did you know they wanted you dead?”
“The man the senate sent to kill me may have been a skilled mercenary, and for all intents and purposes his mission was the pilot test that formed the Guild,” Ricken said, tilting his head to one side. “But he was no guildsman – he didn’t have your enhanced capabilities, and he lacked the training and subtlety that you and your peers employ today.”
To Rath’s left, one of the old men seated at the table grunted. “He was a common murderer.”
“He was indeed, Lonergan,” Ricken agreed. “And not a very smart one. We caught him trying to infiltrate our base of operations. When we questioned him, he revealed that he had been sent by a group of senators. That shocked me, but it also gave me pause.” Ricken shrugged. “Our rebellion was failing, and I knew it. We had lost the initiative, the momentum was with the Federacy – we had the funds to continue fighting, but our supporters were growing weary of the fight.”
“We asked too much of them. It was a long war,” the elderly woman seated next to Ricken pointed out.
“Far too long,” Ricken said, nodding. “So I reevaluated our strategy. I realized that the galaxy was not ready for the radical solution I was proposing. Some people were, but not enough. And I saw that if the Senate was willing to secretly dispatch a man to kill me, the corruption I was fighting against could only increase over time. I needed time – time for that corruption to fester and spread, time for more people across the Federacy to be exposed to the injustices of our political system.”
“So you weren’t on the ship that exploded?” Rath asked.
“No. We paid the assassin handsomely and set him free. In return, he was more than happy to shoot a video of us boarding that ship, and the ship taking off … and then exploding in the upper atmosphere. But through some sleight-of-hand, we exited the ship unseen before it launched. The senate got what it wanted, and we won ourselves the time we needed. Time to plan, to regroup, and to start anew.”
“To start anew?” Rath asked, warily. This might just be the most dangerous place in the galaxy. Apart from my cell back on Scapa. He eyed Ricken with suspicion. “You want to start another war.”
“No. I want to start a revolution,” Ricken corrected him. “There’s a vast difference.”
“That’s what revolutionaries always say,” Rath said. “Either way, innocent people tend to get killed in the process.”
“Not in this revolution,” Ricken said. “Not this time. That’s another thing we learned – the more blood you spill, the harder it is to justify the fight. And retaining the moral high ground is paramount in this fight. This time, no one dies.”
Rath crossed his arms over his chest and cocked an eyebrow, but remained silent.
“But we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Ricken said. “You haven’t met my lieutenants yet, the Council of Six.”
&nb
sp; So I was right, Rath thought. But they’ve aged, and for some reason, Ricken hasn’t.
“… my trusted advisors – police officers all, like me, who joined the cause in the early days, and have been with me ever since. For a long time, now.” Ricken smiled sadly.
“This is Egline Ursson, my Head of Intelligence,” Ricken continued, indicating the woman to his left. She met Rath’s gaze evenly. “Next is Kolim Yaite, Personnel. Wasan Prevol, Supply and Logistics … Linn Mei, Public Affairs; Marec Lonergan, Operations, and last is Georg Swan, Communications. Last but not least, Georg.” The old man acknowledged Ricken’s joke with a smile.
“I’d say it’s nice to meet you,” Rath said, “but I’m not sure … well, I’m not sure what to think, right now. Am I your prisoner?”
Ricken laughed. “No! No. We broke you out of jail, Rath. We likely saved your life.”
“I’m grateful for that,” Rath said. “Though some part of me feels as though I deserved jail. And maybe even death.”
“I’ve been following your trial closely, my friend,” Ricken told him. “I wanted to know what kind of man you were, before I brought you here. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you deserve to die. We’ve all made mistakes in our life. Many that we regret deeply. But everyone deserves a chance to make things right again. To atone for those sins.”
“Is that what you’re hoping to do?” Rath asked him. “Make up for the lives you took during the Colonial War?”
“Yes,” Ricken said, softly. “The lives we took, and the ones who gave their lives on my behalf. I owe it to all of them to see this through, to achieve the vision we struggled so hard for.”
“If I’m not a prisoner, then what am I doing here?” Rath asked. “Why did you rescue me?”
“I rescued you because I need your help.”
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After he’s found guilty of murder, Rath is saved from a death sentence by a mysterious new ally. His newfound friends have a daring plan to rekindle an old revolution, and they want his help. If it all works, Rath could clear his conscience at last, and pay his debt to society. But starting a rebellion will put him squarely in the sights of Beauceron and Paisen as they rush to prevent the looming war. And even Rath’s best-laid plans can go astray …
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Text copyright 2016 by Piers Platt
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