by M. D. Cooper
Katrina didn’t hesitate this time. She tossed her two rifles aside, and then passed the command for her armor to unfold around her. Once all the sections had opened, she stepped out and glared at Jace.
“Now get her some help.”
“I know a damn thermal-ballistic sub-layer when I see one,” Jace said. “Take it off.”
Katrina pulled the seal down on the sub-layer and stepped out of it. She was still wearing her black and red skinsheath, and Jace chortled at the sight of her.
“I should have known you’d dress like a Boller floozy.”
“Help her,” Katrina pleaded as the pool of blood slowly grew around Juasa.
Jace nodded at one of the soldiers, who stepped forward and sprayed a canister of biofoam into Juasa’s wounds before picking her up and carrying her away.
“She’ll be all right,” Jace said with a grin. “If we have to, we can just put her in a stasis pod, too. Pop her out and let her die a bit more each time you act up. Those things are going to be so handy. I wonder what other lovely toys you have on your ship.”
“You’re a real fucker, you know that, Jace?” Katrina said through gritted teeth.
Jace laughed. “Yeah, I really am.” He glanced at his soldiers. “Secure her.”
Katrina readied herself as two of the soldiers approached, one on each side. When they were half a meter away, she leapt at the first one, depositing a dose of nano onto his armor, and then spun behind him, ready to do the same to the other.
The second soldier lunged for her, and Katrina grabbed his wrist, sending a passel into the joint. She was about to duck back behind the escape pod when a pulse blast hit her, sending Katrina flying across the deck.
She rolled to a stop and struggled to her feet, only to have another crushing shockwave slam into her body, and knock her down once more.
“Collar her,” Jace called out, and Katrina heard the sound of boots hitting the deck growing louder as she pulled herself to her hands and knees.
Something cold touched the back of her neck, and then clasped around her throat. She reached a hand up to it, prepared to use a passel of nano to open the collar, when a punishing shock coursed through her body.
EM burst, she thought as a blinding headache overcame her.
“Do you like that?” Jace said as he approached. “I know that you Streamers—at least ones from far back enough to have stasis pods—are pretty tricked out. I had my squints make up this collar special for you. It’ll fry your nano any time you try to use your tech—probably start to damage your nervous system after a while, too.” Jace laughed, and she felt a boot press against her butt. “You’ll probably want to behave.”
Katrina couldn’t form words. Everything hurt too much, and she fell to the deck, gasping for breath under the weight of Jace’s boot on her.
She heard scuffling around her, and things went dark and then light again as consciousness came and went. She wasn’t sure how long it lasted. It felt like hours, but it must have just been minutes.
Suddenly she was pulled to her feet, and an open palm slammed into her face, startling her awake. Her eyes snapped open, and she was staring into Jace’s bearded face, only centimeters from her own.
“What did you do? Where did it go?” Jace screamed.
Katrina managed a slight smile.
Troy…you and Carl did it. Good job, guys. Go find Tanis….
“That ship doesn’t have FTL! There’s no way they could have upgraded it that fast!” Jace yelled.
“Apparently there is,” Katrina whispered.
Jace turned to address someone next to him. “Has the team hit the Havermere yet?”
“Yes, Chieftain. They’ve just secured the bridge.”
“At least there’s that,” Jace replied sourly. “Could be that they have other goodies from this bitch’s ship. Space force is sending a scout ship to see what the ruckus is about out here, though. Tell them to jump it out to the rendezvous. At the very least, we’ll have a new ship and some meat for the mill.”
He turned back to Katrina, his eyes narrowing. “You and I are going to have a number of long chats about where your ship went, and about all the tech you have in that pretty little head of yours.”
Katrina mustered up the courage to spit into Jace’s face, and had the pleasure of watching the spittle run into his beard before he tossed her to the deck.
“Put her in one of her pods. There’s no way she can cause any trouble in stasis.”
Katrina struggled to rise, and took a swing at the first person that approached her; or at least she thought it was a person. She was seeing double of everything.
Someone laughed, and then another pulse blast hit her, slamming her back into the deck, and darkness returned.
ESCAPE
STELLAR DATE: 11.17.8511 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Voyager
REGION: Scattered Disk, Bollam’s World System (58 Eridani)
Stupid human! Troy thought as Katrina severed the connection.
There was no logic in her actions. She couldn’t save Juasa. Now that pirate would have both of them—and the Voyager, too, if they didn’t get the graviton emitters working.
“Yeah, I know that, Troy!” Carl snapped. “I’m just getting everything situated. Kirb is picking up another converter from your fab shop. Once we get this one working, we should have enough to do the whole field.”
Three emitters, when Carl’s initial plan called for five.
From what Troy understood of the dark layer, it was a place of absolute nothing—except for dark matter, which you wanted to avoid colliding with at all costs. Staying in that nothing required creating a special gravitational field, mixed in with some rather intriguing forms of exotic energy.
If Troy didn’t have the evidence of his own sensors witnessing so many ships appearing and disappearing, he would have dismissed the dark layer transition as utter nonsense.
She’s been over there for too long already, Troy thought. Soon he’ll start torturing her for access to the Voyager’s command systems…
Unless we go.
He hated that Katrina had sacrificed herself. Hated it. For a woman she had just met, no less. Troy thought that he had meant something to Katrina. She had saved him from death on Victoria’s moon…he had stayed with her for decades, been her constant companion.
This was their quest, their mission.
And then she told him to carry on alone. Troy knew folly when he saw it, and what Katrina had just done was utter folly. Still, he would not abandon her. Once they had FTL, he would follow these pirates, and work up a strategy to take them down and free Katrina.
“OK,” he heard Carl say. “Converter is in place. We have three-phase power.”
“And just when I thought there couldn’t be an AI grumpier than Sam,” Kirb muttered.
“Yeah,” Carl replied. “But you understand about vector, right? You have to boost on the path I provided, or we’ll drift into a field of dark matter.”
Troy replied.
“Good,” Carl said. “OK, I’m activating the field.”
Troy fired the attitude jets, then fired a burst from the Voyager’s AP drive and signaled to Carl to perform the transition.
“Here goes nothing…” Carl said nervously.
Troy detected gravitons surrounding the ship, and a bubble of sorts snapped into place. Then the stars were gone.
“It worked,” Carl cried with delight, and Troy watched him slap Kirb on the back. Rama and Camille were cheering from their stations at the other emitters, and Troy felt like cheering, too.
Except that it meant they were leaving Katrina behind.
He was about to congratulate Carl on a job well done, when a spike registered
on the power grid. One of the power converters was drawing too much energy.
Carl saw it too. “Damn, gotta power it down, or we’re gonna twist.”
Troy had seen images of twisted ships, and had no desire to experience that. Before Carl could drop them out of the dark layer, Troy activated the stealth systems, praying that they would mask the ship the instant it returned to normal space-time.
When the stars snapped back into place, Troy performed some rapid triangulation, and was amazed to see that the ship had moved over a hundred thousand kilometers.
He directed passive scan toward the Verisimilitude and the Havermere, seeing that both ships were still present.
Then the Havermere’s engines flared, pushing the ship forward before it disappeared. Gone into the dark layer. A moment later, the Verisimilitude’s engines also came to life, and the ship accelerated on a course toward the Voyager.
Troy checked the stealth systems. They passed systems tests. There was no way that the Verisimilitude could see them. Yet the pirate vessel continued to approach, boosting as though it was trying to achieve ramming speed.
It closed within fifty thousand kilometers—then forty, thirty, twenty. As it was passing by the ten thousand kilometer mark, Carl burst into the cockpit.
“Do they see us? I thought you said this thing had some sort of stealth tech!”
“Yeah, well it sure looks like it can—” Carl’s words cut off in mid-sentence as the Verisimilitude disappeared. “Well, I’ll be…they were getting more v before dumping to the DL…just happened to be on a vector right for us.”
“So, what now?” Carl asked. “I know I just met you, but we’re kinda stuck together for now.”
Troy said dryly.
“Uhhh…I like to think so,” Carl replied. “What are you getting at?”
Carl smiled. “I feel like you and I are on exactly the same page.”
“Yeah,” Carl nodded. “And now that we’re not rushing around while shitting ourselves with fear, we’ll get it right.”
Carl shook his head. “Yeah, I know what you mean. We owe those girls a lot. Not gonna let them get…whatevered…”
HOMEWORLD
STELLAR DATE: 12.25.8511 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: UNKNOWN
REGION: UNKNOWN
“Katrina,” a soft voice whispered.
Katrina heard the voice, heard the word, but it didn’t register as anything she needed to concern herself with.
“Katrina,” the voice whispered again, more urgently this time.
She turned over, tucking her head under her arm; whatever the voice wanted, it could wait. She was tired and she ached—ached everywhere.
Just a little more sleep.
“Katrina, wake up, it’s Juasa.” A hand touched her shoulder, gently stroking her arm.
Suddenly, recognition surged through Katrina, and her eyes snapped open. She turned her head toward the sound of Juasa’s voice. A smile spread across her dry lips, and she reached out a hand.
“Juasa…I had a terrible dream. You were shot.”
Juasa gave a pained smile. “That was no dream, Kat. I was shot.”
Katrina pulled herself up to a sitting position, only now realizing that she was on some sort of dirt—or maybe sand—floor.
Juasa was wearing a simple white shift, and Katrina reached out to touch her side. “Are you…OK?”
“Yes,” Juasa said with a slow nod. “That was over a month ago. They patched me up, and I’m better now.”
“A month,” Katrina whispered, looking around at the small chamber they were in. The floor was stone, covered in dirt and sand. The walls were stone as well, and a steel door was set into one of them. “Where are we?”
Juasa sighed. “Hell.”
Katrina looked down at herself to see that she too was wearing a simple white shift. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“This is Jace’s castle,” Juasa said after a moment.
“Castle?” Katrina asked, barely able to assign the utterance any credence. “We’re in a castle?”
Juasa nodded. “I think so; we just got here yesterday. Took a while, too. I think we’re on some planet…maybe thirty light years from Bollam’s World. I’m guessing it’s where he has his headquarters.”
“In a castle.”
“I don’t know, Kat. Look around, it looks like a castle, right?”
Katrina took a deep breath, trying to get her bearings, when a loud clang sounded in the small room. Both women turned to watch the door open. A glowing, golden figure stepped into the cell, and Katrina shaded her eyes from the bright light. The intense radiance pouring off the person slowly diminished, until at last Katrina could make out Anna’s grim smile.
Katrina groaned while Juasa rose, her hands clenched into fists. “Anna,” Juasa hissed. “I’m going to kill you for this.”
“Really?” Anna asked, while putting her hands to her chest, an expression of mock fear on her face. “Be fun to watch you try. But for now, why don’t you two come with these two large men? It’s time to start your training.”
Anna stepped out of the cell, and two men entered, one after the other. They were so massive that Katrina wondered if they were human, or some sort of over-muscled automaton.
“C’mon,” one said in a deep voice. “Time to earn your keep.”
Juasa looked at Katrina, her eyes wide. “Kat, what are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry,” Katrina whispered as they walked out of the cell. “I’ll figure something out.”
THE END
THE WOMAN WHO SEIZED AN EMPIRE
THE WARLORD – BOOK 2
FOREWORD
I often start these forewords by telling you that a book was a joy to write, or the words flowed like honey poured from a jar held by Athena herself.
Not so this book. This book involved spending a lot of time in the mind of someone beaten down and worn thin. The words flowed quickly, but it was more like pouring molten iron from a crucible.
It’s easy to remember Katrina as the loving wife of Markus, the woman who stood by his side during the Victoria years, and later took over as president to complete his vision.
But before that, she was raised by a cruel and capricious father, and worked as a spy for the Lumins in Sirius. Even when she was helping the Noctus rebellion, she wasn’t against sacrificing pawns to achieve her goals. More of that Katrina came out during her time in the Bollam’s World System.
Now, as she is tortured by Jace and others, the other Katrina emerges in full force. She is not a kindly person; she is fueled by rage and anger. A rage and anger that she will gladly unleash upon her captors.
Sometimes I feel as though I method-write, and writing this story made me feel Katrina’s despair, her anger, her rage, and ultimately her triumph.
If I’ve done my job well, you’ll feel those things too.
M. D. Cooper
Danvers, 2017
IF ONLY A DREAM
STELLAR DATE: 12.28.8511 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Jace’s estate
REGION: World of Persia, unknown system
The sound of soft moans woke Katrina from her fitful sleep.
It took her a moment to get her bearings. There was only a meager amount of light filtering in through the cracks around a door.
Door. I’m in a room.
The light barely illuminated the space, but was enough to reveal that it was small and featureless. As he
r bleary eyes focused, Katrina was able to make out the stone walls, and their pattern jogged her memory. She was in the cell.
With that realization in place, Katrina took stock of her body and how much it hurt.
She was laying on her front, cheek pressed against the cold stone floor of the cell. Slowly, fighting against her aching muscles, her inflamed skin groaning in protest, Katrina turned her head and saw the source of the moaning: Juasa.
Is she asleep? Katrina wondered.
She didn’t want to speak and wake Juasa if that was the case—sleep was so hard for them to come by these nights. Even though they were exhausted after a long day, the searing fire that raged across their bodies made for no comfortable sleeping positions.
Lying on their backs was totally out of the question. That skin—and it barely even counted as such anymore—was beaten and burned, covered in blisters and welts. Sleeping on one’s chest on a dirty stone floor was no picnic either, but the burns were less severe there from spending their days crouched in the dirt.
Six days working the sithri fields in Persia’s hot sun, naked, whipped, beaten with rods and canes. It was an effective torture; one that would have broken Juasa long ago—if she had anything to offer.
“I’m awake,” Juasa said in a whisper. “Sorry that I disturbed you.”
Katrina reached out and touched the underside of Juasa’s chin—probably the only place that didn’t scream in agony on their bodies. “It’s OK. I wasn’t really asleep.”
Juasa gave a wan smile. “You were snoring.”
“Oh…got me, I guess.” Katrina let out a long sigh, watching the dirt on the floor roll away from her hot breath. “I’m so sorry about all this.”
“I know you are, but it’s not your fault. It’s Anna’s. That dumb bitch….”
Juasa’s words were harsh, but there were tears in her eyes. Katrina wanted to wipe them away, but Juasa’s cheeks were bright red from the burns, and she daren’t touch them.