Nix sat on the couch covered in a blanket, watching the news feeds on Dothin’s wall screen while Pattie sat next to him. He watched satellite footage of the gubernatorial palace and its surroundings lighting up, big lights were explosions and little ones were weapons fire. He watched on-the-ground footage streamed out by a dozen or so amateur reporters showing fighters zooming overhead, gunships dropping off ground troops. The consensus on the ground was that the initial attack on the palace was quick and deadly, but then a concerted response by local Meritine guardsmen aided by other local defense forces were holding out in certain sectors and such were threatening to retake the palace.
No one discussed where the governor was, nor on whether or not he was still alive, though one reporter, a wide-eyed man with sandy hair stated that the governor’s schedule had him in the palace at the start of the attack. No one knew the status of the governor’s daughter, Ashla Vares. When the off-site news channels had finished playing all the feed they had for the tenth time they would show pictures of the governor’s daughter, the system’s resident sweetheart, stating that this shocking attack happened only two days after a terrifying assassination attempt on the sweetheart at one of Eltar’s starport stations.
There was no word on Dothin. He was only one of a thousand of bystanders caught in the middle of the battle. Why didn’t the reporters understand that Dothin was the most important person down there? Before tonight Nix didn’t even know the name of the system’s governor, and he had never cared about some pampered palace brat who was beloved only for having a perfect camera face.
Nix fell asleep on the couch. His dreams were a mishmash of confusing images. At one point, Lodebar was under attack from the same black-clad forces on the news feeds. Nix had to rescue Dothin from there, then Dothin was there and fine and they had to get together to rescue Pattie. Then he was down there on the surface of Eltar, packed into a locker and staring out the vent while those black-clad men passed by, ever searching for him. Dothin, Pattie and others called out for him, but he couldn’t move, frozen in terror until one of those battle helmets turned to stare back at him.
Nix awoke with a start. He sat up on the couch and looked around.
“Ms. Pattie?”
No one responded. Nix pulled his link, synced it to the wall screen and switched back to the news feeds. The first one reported on some beauty contest taking place four systems over. Nix flipped to the next. This one was a discussion between four red-faced and sweaty men arguing over tariff laws. Nix switched to the next.
Channel after channel brought him information on an approaching sports tournament, the opening of a new zoological venue, a story about the firing of some Alliance big wig, and on and on. Nothing about the attack on the palace and nothing, even relating to the local system.
By the time he came to the last channels Nix was on his feet. Had he imagined it all?
The front door slid open. Nix gasped, turned, hoping it was Pattie. But Pattie rang the doorbell. For a second his tongue felt swollen and his throat was so dry it threatened to choke him. The door slid shut.
“Hello?”
Gan materialized in the kitchen. Nix felt his heart threaten to pop out his open mouth, then he breathed.
“Void,” he said, “you scared me half to death.”
Gan’s facemask dissolved, revealing the familiar chiseled features, tanned skin and dark eyes.
“Did you hear?” Nix asked. “The capital was attacked! It was all over the feeds last night and now—”
“I know,” Gan said. “You’d better sit down. It’s worse than you think.”
Chapter Eighteen:
A Lying Tongue
A: Glad to hear you’re doing better.
N: Liar.
A: But seriously, I wanted to ask you an important question.
N: Which is?
A: How much do you care about keeping your promises?
N: _
A: Well?
N: I care very deeply about keeping my promises.
A: Now, as I recall, you made a promise to keep the girl safe.
N: The void are you getting at?
A: Did you or did you not promise the governor to keep his precious little daughter safe.
N: I did.
A: And do you intend to keep that promise?
N: What is this about?
A: Do you?
N: Yes. Jin. Yes. Now what the-
A: Then you’d better go find her. Keeping one little girl safe in the mess that’s about to drop on your head is probably not easy.
N: What?
A: _
N: Where are you?
A: Very close. We’ll see each other soon.
A distant rumble startled her and Cel woke with a start. She lifted her stolen plasma repeater and checked the narrow doorway. The light out in the stairwell flickered, then reasserted itself. The stairwell was empty. For now.
Cel looked across the doorway to Lita Tarquin. Lita slept with her back against the wall, a pistol cradled in her slack grip. Lita had an excuse not to wake from the sound. It was supposed to be Cel’s watch.
Cel shook her head, half to shake the cobwebs away, half to berate herself. Any Defense Force oaf could have stumbled in and Cel wouldn’t have known. Couldn’t this war have happened after she was fully recovered?
She glared into the darkness of Ashla’s bedroom, her eyes, now accustomed to the dark, could make out the shape of the big canopied bed, the vanity, the dresser and the wardrobe. Ashla’s bedroom suite took its position at the peak of one of the palace’s four main towers and though it seemed like a fragile position in a battlefield it was quite secure. Behind the pink wallpaper and faux stone bricks stood half a meter of armor, made up of layers of corrugated titanium interspersed with nano-carbonate columns and all packed into a Kevlar-netted concrete.
Ashla’s massive windows were now covered by the emergency shelter panes which were as strong as the walls, though not as dense. Nothing but an orbital bombardment would take this tower down. Aside from that, nothing but a manned assault would cause Ashla harm and Cel would have something to say about that.
Cel struggled to her feet, the pain in her shoulder, her ribs, her thigh, all went from a series of dull aches to flashes of agony. She groaned, grunted, but refused to cry out. She was stiff, still sluggish from the synthetic blood flowing through her veins, but she didn’t have time for the doctor’s regimen of rest and physical therapy.
More to work the stiffness from her muscles than because it was a concern, Cel checked the stairwell outside to make sure no one was trying to sneak up on her. Then she padded to the bathroom, opened the door and examined the sleeping body on the floor.
Ashla Vares lay huddled in a mass of blankets and pillows on the floor of her lavish bathroom. She tossed and turned, moaned and breathed words of gibberish.
Cel sighed. The night had been long and hard for all of them, but Lita and Cel were experienced combatants. The deafening rattle of weapons fire, the feeling of teeth rattling against nearby explosions, the screams of men dying, Cel and Lita were accustomed to these things. The battle had still been hard, mostly due to the desperation. Cel, trying to sneak from floor to floor, searching for Ashla as she improvised her way past combat encounters. Lita, fighting her way through the palace with Ashla in tow, finally coming to the tower and waiting to be overpowered and killed.
But it was hardest on Ashla. She had just gone through an attack on the station, which was one thing, but to experience the same thing in her own home?
Cel still felt the girl’s arms wrapped about her torso from when Cel had made it to her bedroom. By then Lita looked almost ready to hug her too.
The rest of the night had been wave after wave of assaults that would have swiftly turned into a desperate melee and then death had Cel not been able to bring weapons and ammunition with her. Twice had the assaulting forces tried tossing grenades into the room, but Lita’s fast work and the awkward angle of the stairwell thwar
ted them. Three times she and Lita took advantage of the enemy falling back to loot corpses for more ammunition.
Finally, Cel asked Lita to cover the door during one of the fall-back sessions to message her contact one last time.
N: Call your goons off the Northeast Tower.
A: Goons?
N: Call them off NOW!
Cel stuck her link back in the pocket of her scrubs and didn’t know if the contact responded further. The fighting lasted another fifteen or twenty minutes, but then subsided and Cel thanked the Benefactors when the enemy asked to be allowed to send medics to attend to their wounded.
Ashla stirred, mumbled, turned. Cel shouldered her weapon, gritted her teeth in preparation for pain, and lowered herself to one knee. She reached out, not sure what she was doing, and stroked Ashla’s hair. Maybe Ashla felt safe in the connection, maybe her bad dream took a break, but the girl quieted, her body relaxed.
“Celestine Numbar,” came an amplified voice from down the stairwell. Cel jolted, grunted to her feet and turned to answer.
“Cel?”
She turned.
“It’s okay, Ashla. It’s okay.”
Cel moved to the bedroom door. Lita was awake now, and standing, weapon in hand and ready to fire. Cel ignored the question on Lita’s face.
Cel resumed her position beside the door, drew her plasma repeater and said, “I’m here.”
“Celestine Numbar,” the voice repeated. “You have been asked to come out and meet with Defense Minister Anatheret. If you come out, Minister Anatheret promises that the persons with you will remain unharmed.”
Cel nodded. “Give me a minute.”
She turned and saw Lita’s pistol pointed at her forehead. She expected Tarquin to figure her for a traitor, just not quite so quickly.
“What the void is going on?” Lita asked. “How do they know you’re in here? Why do they want you?”
“Lita—.”
“Are you a traitor, Numbar? Is that what this is?”
“Cel?” Ashla called from behind. Cel turned to see her out of the corner of her eye, standing at the door of the bathroom, her eyes big and scared. Cel turned back to Lita.
“You would probably be justified to shoot me in the head,” Cel said, and hoped Lita wasn’t quite that decisive. “But if you want to protect Ashla, I’m your best bet.”
Cel raised her plasma repeater.
“Don’t!” Lita said. Her finger was on the trigger. A little pressure would end it all. Cel made the repeater safe and held it out to Lita.
“I don’t know what my part in this is.” Cel was pretty sure that was a lie. Maybe she hadn’t known before the attack. Maybe she’d deluded herself to think her reports were ending up in some databank no one would ever look at. But now she knew. She had a responsibility in this, but she couldn’t answer for it yet. “But I promise my only intention is to keep Ashla safe.”
“Cel?” Ashla’s breathing got heavier and quicker. “Cel, did you have something to do with this?”
“I can’t...answer that right now, Ashla. I promise. When I come back I’ll tell you all I can.” Cel turned her attention back on Lita, who still held the weapon to her head. “Lita. I think they’ll keep their word. But if they don’t, you’ll need this.”
Lita stared at her for a moment. Cel felt naked under Lita’s gaze as Lita searched for the slightest lie in her. If Cel was lying, at least about keeping Ashla safe, Lita might be better off killing her. Either way she and Ashla were doomed.
Lita sighed. “Don’t be lying to me.”
“I’m not,” Cel said. “I think my record shows that.”
Lita holstered her sidearm and took the repeater from Cel. “Had this happened before the station incident, I would have shot you.”
“Who would have blamed you?”
Lita made a nervous smile. Cel handed Lita her own sidearm and the rest of the ammunition on her person. Lita tucked Cel’s heavy particle pistol into the back of her belt.
“The energy shield is almost dead,” Cel said, handing it to Lita, “but it’ll be good for a few shots if worst comes to worst.”
Lita put the shield on. Cel could tell it wasn’t her usual fare but Lita was familiar with it.
Cel drew her saber and presented the hilt to Lita.
“You know how to use one of these?”
Lita took the sword and gave it a few practice swings. “Three years of combat fencing in the Academy.”
“Nonetheless, I hope you don’t have to use it.”
Lita nodded.
“Celestine Numbar,” came the impatient amplified voice.
“I’m coming!”
“Cel.” Cel turned to Ashla. The girl was shaking her head.
“I promise,” Cel said. “I’ll come back.”
“And you’ll explain what your part was in destroying my father’s government?”
The edge in the girl’s voice made Cel wince. She had misjudged Ashla. Those sad eyes weren’t for her, they were because of her.
Cel nodded. “I’ll come back, and I’ll explain.”
Where Ashla had once been putty, she was now cold steel. Her eyes were wet, but her expression could have cut diamonds. She shivered but stood tall, defiant. She was more than the pampered palace brat Cel had taken her for when she accepted the assignment.
“Maybe I’ll welcome you back,” Ashla said.
Cel nodded, turned to Lita. “Good luck. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Lita nodded. “It seems our luck is in your hands.”
Cel turned. “I’m coming out.” She walked out the half-open doorway, lifted her hands to her head and strode down the stairs. The beginnings of dawn streamed in through the windows, shining off the tiled stairs where they weren’t blackened by plasma or covered in blood.
Half a floor down four men waited. Their armor and weapons were Alliance Defense Force, but they wore no insignias, no rank patches, nothing identifiable. Three of them wielded plasma repeaters like the one Cel had stolen, the other wielded a pretty standard particle pistol. All four raised their weapons to Cel and for a second, she knew it was a trap and they were going to blow her out the window. Then the weapons dropped, and their heads tilted.
“What are you supposed to be?” The leader with the pistol said.
These men seemed raw. The way they didn’t keep their weapons drawn on her. The way they looked around. The way leader boy didn’t order at least one of them to keep an eye out for an ambush.
“You dropped a platoon of our guys in that getup? You’re one tough jag. Anyway,” the leader started waggling his gun at her, “let’s go. You’re wanted by the—”
Cel pounced. She grabbed his weapon hand and used the momentum of his turn to swing him around and slam him into the wall. He dropped it in surprise. Cel caught it and spun him around as a shield between the three others and her, holding the pistol at his head.
The three men shouted in shock, raised their weapons, spouted threats. Cel silenced them with a word.
“Listen! Up there,” she nodded up the stairs, “my friends are up there and if any of you so much as levels a word of harsh language at them I will hear of it and I will find you.”
Rather than give them time to respond she shoved the leader into the other men, flipped the pistol such that she now held it by its barrel and held it out for the leader to take.
He snapped the pistol out of her hand but didn’t respond.
“Ikey, Lon, take her to the Minister.”
No one responded. One of them waved Cel on with his weapon. She went.
Nothing in the palace remained unsullied by the battle. Blackened carpet here, blast marks on the marble there, a shattered bust and some clever kank had shot a hole straight through the governor’s forehead in the painting they’d just commissioned.
If she narrowed her scope of vision she could sometimes find sections of untouched luxury. If she closed one eye she could see a pristine half of a parlor with chairs, a bril
liant green rug and a case full of curios, but with both eyes open the third chair and the second case had been blasted into blackened kindling.
As she walked, she passed maids and workers whose faces she recognized, if not their names, working under the watchful eye of the unidentified soldiers. In one wide foyer she watched two men lifting the lifeless body of Officer Berus. He had been Cel’s executive officer during her first stint in the Guard.
As she walked, Cel continued to wonder, Did I do this? Am I at fault for this? Did that man die because of me? In the meantime, she wondered where Annister was. Was he dead? And if so was it her fault?
They passed through a wide foyer. There were desks set up and men and women sitting behind them. Lines of exhausted, dejected-looking people stood before the desks. Cel eyed them all but didn’t pay them much mind, too wrapped up in determining her own guilt, until she heard a familiar voice.
“Ma’am, I’m trying to find my way off-world. You see I have things to attend to and...”
Cel’s ears perked up. She turned and at the closest line found a weathered man with short-cropped graying hair speaking to one of the people behind the desks.
“I’m very sorry...Mr. Lanseidis,” said the clerk, eyeing the identification credentials on the familiar man’s link. “But no transport is permitted off-world until further notice.” The clerk spoke with the disengaged monotony of someone who has repeated the same words hundreds of times. On second glance the clerks all looked local. She recognized most of their faces, though couldn’t place names on any of them. They were probably conscripted into these jobs by the conquering army to keep the peace and process all the strangers in town.
Cel stopped, watched Dothin Lanseidis nod and shrug as the clerk rattled off her script, watched him turn and head down the back of the line, then waved.
“Dothin Lanseidis?” Cel called.
“Ey!” one of her captors called. “This isn’t time for a social call. You’re wanted—”
“One minute,” Cel said.
“Ms. Numbar?”
Cel nodded. “Don’t tell me you were making a delivery in the middle of all this.”
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