by Lisa Eskra
The President approached the window and stood beside her. Though he was an obese man, his studied demeanor always garnered respect. Everyone who knew Admiral Scheidecker had a very high opinion of him because of his fairness and honesty. "How's he holding up?" he whispered while he stared outside.
Nadine sighed. She didn't want to give him the impression Bryan couldn't deal with the pressure even if it was the truth. "I'm doing everything I can to help. He's managing. What about you? Did you think anything like this would happen?"
"I've learned to expect the worst. That way when things turn out well, you're never disappointed. But being a chronic pessimist hasn't been easy. I've wasted far too much of my life worrying about things that've never come to pass. Yet here we are, facing a bloody war led by councilmen who've never fired a weapon in their life." He shook his head in dismay.
The console on the wall across the room started to beep and he turned to head toward it. The Vice President joined him, but Nadine remained where she was like a spider on the wall to listen to the conversation.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Chairman Dodd bellowed. The second lady cast a sidelong glance in the direction of the viewscreen where she saw his bulbous face and blackened soul. "I plan to bring a proposal to the council today regarding the hostile alien mothership assaulting Astra. Admiral McKirin has had his hands full with battle simulations and possible strategies against the Xuranians thanks to data gathered by our probes."
"Chairman," Bryan interrupted, "I'd like to remind you that the war is not a precondition. Diplomacy is still an option we should not take off the table."
"On the contrary, Mr. Taylor," the chairman snapped. "The council vote was nearly unanimous. War has been declared, and there's nothing you can do to change that. Bring it up again and I'll see that you're removed from the council."
He narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw but said nothing. Nadine had never expected war to make a dictator out of Kenneth Dodd, yet it had done just that and no one would be able to stop his agenda.
"Admiral McKirin made an unusual request of me during our conversation last night. He asked if you, President Scheidecker, could be reinstated into the military to assist the war effort. I can think of no one with more leadership experience to gear up the fleet for the conflict ahead of us."
The statement puzzled the President. "Are you asking me to step down as President of Chara to lead the Allied Fleet?"
"Of course not. This is purely temporary. I want you to coordinate with Admiral McKirin and assist the military. Help them strategize. I'd like a solid plan of attack as soon as possible, and we can't waste time or resources on issues that don't affect the AC as a whole. Make it your top priority. Vice President Taylor should be able to handle the UE until the Xuranian threat is gone."
The leaders of Chara stared at one another. "You should probably take the reins, Tom."
"We need the hero of Tau Ceti, the man who faced off against six PAU battleships with a single cruiser and lived to tell of his tactical genius," Dodd beamed. "I plan to open the subject to the council for debate, but I'm certain the proposal would be supported. Your contribution toward humanity will not go unrewarded, I assure you."
Scheidecker nodded. "Anything to help the fleet."
The chairman smirked. "Excellent. I'll see the two of you then during the council session at 1400 hours." His image vanished and the cool gray screen was once again blank.
What in all of Astra was Chairman Dodd getting the AC into? They needed to negotiate now before anyone got killed—before there was too much hate in everyone's hearts to reach a modest agreement. But perhaps that time had already passed. The AC had been itching to pick a fight for years. And the Xuranians were furious at the nonsensical death of their beloved queen, Luxina. The closest to divine there was. Killed by these reckless savages they'd extended a hand in friendship.
She knew the Xuranians weren't evil, otherwise they would've already ravaged Astra and laid its systems to waste. Perhaps they wanted to see if humans were willing to compromise in the face of certain doom or if they'd send every last ship after them in a hopeless battle to the death. It was only a matter of time before the sky was streaked with blood so thick that humans would lose all hope. That was the prophecy. Those were her visions.
The future was already written. What future? Who knew. And who would live to see it was anybody's guess.
***
After sharing a sense of mutual dread with the leaders of Chara, Nadine headed out to a quiet spot in the Red Room to recover. Only cabinet members had access to the third story of the Capitol Building, and for the time being the area remained vacant. The circular chamber had a high ceiling painted with a celestial mural. Garish drapes in a faded shade of crimson framed the large windows overlooking the street. Golden sconces adorned the walls at five-foot intervals; the warm luminescent light they exuded made her feel at home.
She stayed on edge all morning from Dodd's transmission. Visions of chaos and mayhem clouded her mind and made it difficult to focus on her voyage to the Academy. A few times she fought back her tears as she curled up on a velvet couch, but the images persisted. Full-scale combat. Bodies strewn in the streets of Northampton. Amii and Magnius standing together crying in the snow. Nadine pulled her knees to her chest as her heart raced with anxiety.
She feared the unwavering path of fate now more than ever.
To take her mind off the future, she leaned toward the window and stared down at the lunchtime crowd scurrying past. Men in dark suits sweltered from the noonday sun. They toted their briefcases on their way to business lunches without worry of the war brewing on the horizon. Parents visited the capital with their kids, who stared with awestruck wonder on these reverent grounds. It depressed her to know the months ahead would bring them nothing but sorrow.
She lost herself in the sights and sounds of the city. A flock of quilled pigeons soared past the window and settled into a large orange tree on the lawn of the Westwood Estate. A teacher guided a dozen excited elementary school students up the steps of the Capitol. An even distribution of yellow taxis mingled with personal hovermobiles at the congested intersection of Westminster and 85th Street.
A thunderous growl from the north broke the rumble of ordinary street traffic. When she glanced in that direction, she spotted a hoverbike turning right onto Westminster and smiled. It was Magnius and Amii, though their helmets hid their faces from the prying eyes of the city. Traffic slowed as drivers stared at the bike, which gleamed under the bright sun like a faceted amethyst. It passed the Capitol and turned left on 87th Street, where the hyperdiamond fence soon obscured it from her view.
Her heart lightened at the sight of the two getting along. They gave her hope the future wouldn't be doomed after all.
She brushed herself off and headed downstairs to make one final stop before she boarded her transport to the Academy. Prior to leaving, she needed to make a quick detour to her office. She'd forgotten her itinerary for the trip on her desk, and while she didn't need it, having the information would make her life easier.
The blustery spring breeze dissimilated her perfect curls in one fell swoop after she stepped outside, but she tucked her hair behind her ears and pressed onward. She jogged across the street in spite of her white heels and headed toward the side entrance of the Westwood Estate. Security allowed her immediate access, and she hurried up the stairs to her office.
All at once an urgent sense of foreboding consumed her. She grabbed the handrail and slowed her pace to give herself a chance to assess the sensation. A calculating persona. Merciless and unrelenting. In search of something…anything. When she closed her eyes, Tiyuri's face formed in her mind. He was here.
Her heart kicked into overdrive. Fortunately, Magnius was out cruising the streets. The assassin had no doubt searched the premises for him already while she'd been away and had remained on an investigative mission for information on his whereabouts.
His trail led straight to her of
fice. She'd left nothing incriminating out in the open, but he had extensive experience tracking down psions who didn't want to be found. He wasn't a hacker but had close ties to people who were. While her careful subterfuge would be invisible to the UE government, a hound like Tiyuri would root Magnius out in a day or two.
As she approached room 217, she took a series of deep breaths, but the act did nothing to calm her fraying nerves. Tiyuri invaded her visions more than he should have, and now she understood why. He wouldn't stop until he returned to Superbia with Magnius in his custody, yet how he would or even if he would remained a mystery.
She waved her implant in front of the handle to the door and heard the latch disengage, but the door remained shut. After summoning all her courage, she wrapped her fingers around the knob, turned it, and pushed. The door didn't budge. Something prevented it from opening. When she put more force into the act, the door began to give slightly. She spotted a metallic rod barring the other side of the door and heard the sound of footsteps beyond.
The more she pushed, the more the rod bowed from the strain. No movement caught her eye in the space beyond, but she still sensed his overwhelming psionic aura in the room. She put all her weight behind it and after several seconds, the obstruction broke. The suddenness of it plunged her into the room, and she stumbled into the pair of chairs fronting her desk before she had a chance to regain her bearings.
The gauze curtains of a window behind her desk fluttered in the breeze. She darted toward it and glanced down into the garden for any glimpse of him. But he was gone. His mind slipped away from hers as she tried to pinpoint him, which his rapid escape made possible.
Tonight, he'd kill the telepath who'd replaced the IDs.
Tomorrow, he'd be back for Magnius.
She promptly cancelled her trip to the Academy and contacted Amii.
"Get back to your room and pack your bags. The two of you are leaving tomorrow."
Chapter Sixteen
Amii watched Magnius pace back and forth around their room as she sat in the kitchen eating a bowl of unsweetened porridge with raisins. Night had fallen over Northampton hours ago in a blanket of warm, black silk. They'd met with Nadine upon returning to the Westwood Estate, and her ominous words made their last night in the city a quiet one.
As expected, they'd been tense all evening after their romantic afternoon together. At long last he approached the table and sat in the chair next to her. She glanced at his arm where he'd been cut almost thirty hours ago. The gouge had faded a bit but left an ugly mark. "How long is that going to take to heal?"
He rubbed his wrist. "In another day it'll look better. In a few more it will be gone. My psychometabolism isn't half as good as Aliane's or Tiyuri's. This was your fault, you know."
"That's not how I recall things happening. You were the one who moved."
"Well, if you hadn't—" He caught himself and curled his hand around his mouth to shut up.
Once she finished eating, Amii put down her spoon and knitted her hands together. "What's wrong?"
"You didn't have to…"
"To what? Since you think you know me so well."
Magnius directed an angry stare at the table. "I'm mad enough that you're dragging me to Xur. We might as well just shoot ourselves now."
"Shut up already and grow a pair of balls."
"What?"
"I told you to shut up. Are you dense too? Should I add that to your list of irritating qualities as well?"
"No, that's not what you said at all. You insinuated I'm not man enough to go on this fool's errand with you. This isn't a teenage dare we're talking about. They're likely to kill us and not even think twice about doing it."
"Let me show you something," she said. She retrieved the disruptor from under the mattress and brought it to the table. After removing the bullets and the power source, she disassembled it over the course of the next few minutes. Putting it back together took longer, but she did it.
"Why in Astra would someone who helps design robots in their spare time know how to do something like that?" He curled his hands into fists. "Feels more like you're Xander's damn bodyguard."
"Do you think I can hit the top of the Capitol Building from here?" She glanced through the sight and aimed it at the floor.
"200 yards with a 380 Prime?"
Amii raised her eyebrows and moved toward the window. "Let's see."
He grabbed the weapon and slammed it down on the table. "We're not on Pisa. Did you fucking forget that? Just having that gun could land you in prison for ten years."
"You'd defend me, wouldn't you? I mean, with my memory loss and all, there's got to be some way to get me out of it. If you ever needed to."
"I was a prosecutor, not a defense attorney."
She rubbed her cold fingers against her legs. "Is that a no?"
His voice lowered to a growl. "Would you sweet talk me the same way you did that loser in Quad Three? I mistook you for someone who respected yourself. I guess I was wrong." He turned toward a door on the north side of the room and grabbed the handle with whitened knuckles. Magnius didn't even turn back to look at her before walking through the door and slamming it behind him.
She frowned and blinked in that direction several times. Why had he stormed out onto the balcony? She hoped he didn't intend to drop downstairs and violate curfew. Hundreds of citations were issued every day, and many of those were to people who worked unusual hours and hadn't yet gotten their ID registered for clearance.
She picked up a green opalescent bottle sitting in the middle of the table, and the glass sparkled under the light. Nadine had dropped it off earlier but did not tell either of them what it was. Amii broke the seal on the ground glass stopper and smelled the dark liquid. The acrid odor hit her hard, and she quickly turned her head away from it and coughed until she was out of breath. Were they supposed to drink this or use it to strip the paint off the walls?
With a few deep breaths to purge her senses, she headed into the bathroom for a quick shower. The grime from her day in the city disappeared down the drain, and afterwards she dressed in a long cotton robe. She hoped to find him in the kitchen, but he hadn't yet returned.
She walked to the balcony door and peered through the window. Magnius sat in a wrought-iron chair with his head in his hands as though grieving his shattered illusion of her. She couldn't figure out why in this day and age of free sexuality it mattered to him. Losing one's virginity was as basic as learning to ride a bike and happened at roughly the same age. The art of seduction had become another tool at her disposal to get by in this unforgiving world.
And yet, she couldn't go to bed without trying to make things right with him.
Amii cracked open the door and slipped outside before shutting it behind her. She found the silence of the street below unsettling because it felt like the Xuranians had already won the war. The rustic street signals continued to flash at regular intervals, unaware not a vehicle had passed by them in several hours. She could smell the distant orange blossoms on the balmy spring breeze, the rapturous fragrance slinking by in a wave of olfactory pleasure.
"Yes, I walked out the wrong door," he said without moving a muscle. "You don't have to tell me how much of an idiot I am. I've already lost what was left of my dignity."
While she did feel sorry for Magnius, she wished he'd stop feeling sorry for himself. But she couldn't help him fix that problem. After all, that wasn't the sort of thing men enjoyed sitting around talking about without being pissed drunk first.
She glanced up at the clear sky. The stars looked like glitter thrown against a black canvas. She loved the fact they looked so alive. "I'm surprised the light pollution doesn't block out the stars."
He stood and leaned against the thick stone railing of the balcony. "They use special lights. They radiate down, not up. But I'm not a scientist; I have no idea how they work."
"Do you recognize any of the stars?"
Magnius pointed to a bright white star high ove
rhead in the sky. "Vega. I can't believe I've been away for two months. Feels like it's been a year. But I guess I really don't have much to go back there for anyways."
He turned to the northwest and pointed at a bright yellow-orange star. "Canopus. When I was little, my mom told me a story about how the star was the guardian of the two bears, and it was kind of silly because there were no constellations in the sky. Superbia doesn't rotate so the sun is always in the same place. The three other companion stars always move around and a handful of others bright enough to make it through. That was one of them."
Amii twisted her lips as she stared at him, wondering if the error had been his or his mother's. "That's Arcturus, actually. Not Canopus, which is a white star, and we're much too far north to see it in the sky."
"And I should take the word of a woman who doesn't remember where she grew up?"
She flipped her hair back out of her face. "Touché, Mr. Zoleki."
He smiled. "So then tell me, genius, where's Sirius?"
She drummed her fingers on her leg while she glanced around the sky. "I don't think we can see it from here…can we?"
Magnius circled around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her so they faced southeast. With his left arm he pointed toward a blue star just above the far end of the Capitol. She thought the home of the PAU would be more menacing somehow, as though looking at the star would give a person bad luck for a year. Instead, it seemed ordinary—bright in the sky only because of its proximity.
His face hovered over her right shoulder, and in the quiet air she could hear his breathing. A moment later she caught a whiff of his earthy cologne. She could feel the rhythm of her pulse throbbing in her neck driving her into an emotional state she experienced for no one other than him. She turned toward him and saw his mahogany eyes glisten in the incandescent streetlight. Being so close to him brought on her instinctive desires, and before she had time to consider her options, she kissed his lips.