by Jay Allan
They were currently much closer to the new capital than the old. The imperial ship had set down somewhere in or near New Vostok, which was more than thirty-five hundred kilometers from the old city. The Claw landed on the outskirts of the thick band of agricultural estates that surrounded the new capital, about four hundred kilometers from the city itself.
Blackhawk stared across the slowly rising ground. Whoever it was they were facing, they weren’t great soldiers. They thought they were in cover, but to a trio of killers like Blackhawk, Shira, and Ace, they might as well have been standing in the open. Blackhawk figured his people could have picked off half of them before they even realized what was happening, but a fight hundreds of kilometers away from the core was the last thing he needed now. One of the ways Blackhawk had become such a great warrior was knowing when not to fight.
He just had to hope he could talk them out of this one.
“As I said, our ship was damaged. We had to drop out of hyperspace and land to make repairs.” He didn’t suspect these peasants knew much about space travel other than how to unload a freighter. They’d probably never been farther off the ground than the second floor of a building.
“So why are you prowling around? Why aren’t you fixing your ship and leaving Saragossa?” The voice was suspicious, but Blackhawk could hear confusion as well. He doubted the speaker knew a thing about spacecraft or what it took to repair them.
“Our engineer is working on the ship now. We are just scouting the area.”
“We saw a vessel land, but now it is gone.” The voice’s skepticism was growing. “I will give you one more chance to tell the truth: Were you cast out from your vessel? Did it depart somehow without our notice?”
Blackhawk sighed. The field. They’d probably scouted the area where the Claw landed, but the field would make the ship effectively invisible to them. An experienced eye could sometimes detect a distortion field from small inconsistencies in the images projected, but to these peasants, the ship was completely undetectable. He stood up, holding his rifle out to the side as he laid it against the wall. “I am going to come over there.” He unbuckled his belt, letting it—along with his pistol and sword—fall to the ground. “I am now unarmed.”
“Ark, are you crazy?” Ace had opened his mouth to say much the same thing, but Shira beat him to it. “Get down. We don’t know anything about these people.”
“I’ll be all right, Shira.” She looked at him like he was crazy. Shira tended to think the worst of anyone she met, and her primary strategy was to strike first, just in case the other side was hostile. Blackhawk wasn’t the most trusting soul, but he tended to be more subtle, to play a situation by intuition as well as intellect. “Trust me, okay? You guys stay put.”
Without waiting for their response, he held his arms out to the sides and walked slowly around the end of the stone wall. “We are not hostile. We mean you no harm.” He started moving toward the ridge.
“Stop or we’ll shoot.” The voice was getting shakier.
Blackhawk kept walking. “If you want to shoot me, shoot me. But I think we can help each other, and I’m going to come over there to talk about it.” The closer he got, the more he was confident they weren’t going to fire. He was alone, clearly unarmed—and they had no way of knowing that even without weapons, he stood a fair chance of taking out all ten of them if he got close enough. If they wanted to shoot him, they would have done so numerous times by now.
Of course, if he was wrong—if they did shoot him—he could imagine what Ace and Shira would do to these peasant soldiers. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight. But he was sure that wouldn’t happen.
Pretty sure, at least.
CHAPTER 9
“IT IS TIME, MARSHAL LUCERNE.” THE CHAMBERLAIN’S VOICE was tentative, nervous. He stood by the door, clearly not wanting to interrupt the pensive military commander.
“I will be there in a moment.” He waved his hand, dismissing the timid servant. He frowned. Is this victory? Lucerne thought. To seize power with such brutality and force even my servants to step around me in fear?
Lucerne was unique among those in history who had marched out to the drum to conquer or die. He did not seek power for himself, nor did he crave the acclamation of those he ruled. Indeed, he considered all of it a burden, one he wished with all his heart he could lay aside. Everything he had truly cared about in his life had been sacrificed to the insatiable demands of war. But he knew his calling: to unite the people of the Far Stars, to make them strong enough to remain free and resist the encroachment of the dark empire that lay across the great Void.
For all its constant warfare and disunity, the Far Stars sector was the only place in man’s dominion where the fire of freedom still burned, at least dimly. Lucerne had visited the empire in his youth. He’d seen the terrified and subdued masses, broken to the will of their masters. He remembered the dead look in their vacant eyes.
Men in the Far Stars were different. They fought over gold; they battled for power; they killed for women. They waged war because they felt insulted or to avenge a perceived wrong. They killed and destroyed for a host of terrible reasons—and for one good one. Only in this most remote bastion of human habitation did men still stand up and demand the right to choose their own path, and they defended it with sword and fire. There was plenty of oppression in the sector and untold millions toiling in servitude and serfdom. But the spirit of independence was still alive. Nowhere else in the galaxy had humanity successfully resisted the deadening hand of imperial rule, and Lucerne was determined to ensure that continued. He would destroy the worst of the planetary regimes—freeing their people from the brutality of their oppressors—and he would entice the rest into a confederation, a united front against any future imperial encroachment.
It was a worthy goal, one he prayed would prove to be worth the untold thousands who had died in his wars, and the multitudes that would surely fall as the struggle continued. Worth the parents and siblings he’d left behind, the wife who died alone and abandoned, and the daughter who was now a captive, her life in danger because of who her father was.
He stood up slowly, the ache in his joints reminding him he was no longer the youthful soldier, naive and optimistic, who’d set out after a dream so many years before. Today, a part of that vision would be realized, as he officially became the head of state of the united planet of Celtiboria. It had taken thirty years to achieve that goal. Three decades of blood and death and struggle. After three hundred years of fragmentation, of rule by the warlords, there would again be a Celtiborian Senate, a governing body for a single, unified planet.
Lucerne had begun his quest with the purest intentions, but his youthful fervor had long since faded away, replaced by a pragmatic cynicism forged over years of struggle. He knew that democracy was no magic bullet. There still needed to be good men and women to ensure the government worked. And that’s what worried him, that with the warlords gone, the new representatives would simply become the next generation of oppressors. Lucerne didn’t know, but he suspected they would. Unless someone was watching them, keeping them from following the path of corruption and madness for power.
The past said yes as well. The dictators Lucerne had spent his life deposing had sprung from the carcass of the old republican system, and most of the warlords were descended from the ancient senatorial families. It had been a gradual evolution from planetwide republic to fractured dictatorships. The same political dynasties had been repeatedly elected by an unfocused and disinterested public, and senatorial families grew more and more entrenched in their power, eventually dispensing with even the form of electorally derived authority to hereditary “representatives,” ultimately evolving into the warlords who ruled their domains by force and fear.
Lucerne sighed, pulling himself from his deep introspection. He looked down, smoothing out the bright white pants of his uniform. He’d considered wearing the garb of an old-style senator, but in the end he’d decided against wearing civilian
clothes. No one had sacrificed more for victory than his men, and they deserved to see their marshal, dressed as a soldier, climb the steps to the high podium. See their leader accept the appointment as consul, the ancient Celtiborian title for a military commander assuming absolute power in a crisis. The fight would continue, he knew, in space and on other worlds now, and Lucerne would rule with all the absolute power any warlord had wielded.
He felt the hypocrisy, the conflict between his rhetoric and his actions. Even as he decried the oppression of the warlords and sought to overthrow them by force, he pursued his own power as absolute as that of any of his adversaries. But he was true to himself as well. When the confederation was at last a reality, when the Far Stars worlds were prepared to ensure its freedom, Augustin Francois Lucerne would willingly—and gratefully—surrender his powers and retire to private life. Until then, he would do what he had to do, take whatever actions were necessary to see his efforts through to their successful conclusion. Failure to do so would render all the sacrifices already made by so many pointless, and Lucerne couldn’t imagine a worse crime.
He stood in front of the mirror, taking a last look at himself. He certainly looked the part of the glorious conqueror, resplendent in the ancient uniform of a Celtiborian consul. His dark blue coat was covered with gold lace, and his chest bore a tangled nest of medals and decorations. His knee-high boots were polished to a glossy sheen, and his white breeches were spotless, almost blindingly bright.
He shifted uncomfortably, the blue uniform jacket, knee-high boots, and all the decorations feeling binding and tight. Not just physically, but also emotionally. Lucerne had always hated ceremony and fancy uniforms, preferring to maintain a low profile and lead his men as one of them, not raised on some pedestal. He had always been known among his soldiers for his simple dress, for his habit of wandering his battlefields wearing a plain enlisted man’s coat, the row of bright silver stars on his shoulders the only distinction of his usually mud-splattered uniform.
He was more accustomed to wandering the camps, sharing a simple meal with a random platoon of troopers, than he was to the prattling of insincere courtiers and flatterers crowding the halls of government. He never had been able to tolerate the pandering of those who sought to empower and enrich themselves at the trough of government. Such behavior disgusted him, and thirty years in the mud and blood of the battlefield had done nothing to change that.
But he realized it wasn’t just about him now, or his soldiers. He was performing for all the people of Celtiboria and for that audience, trivialities like fancy uniforms and elaborate ceremonies mattered. Hell, he was enough of a politician to realize even his soldiers would expect to see him in his glowing finery, basking in the glory of victory. He knew it was dishonest, but he would play the part, give the war-weary crowds someone to cheer, a larger-than-life figure to follow. Because he would need their enthusiastic support if he was to unite the Far Stars. The wars on Celtiboria paled in comparison to the task that lay ahead.
Even now, the first ships of the fleet were set to launch, to take war to worlds across the Far Stars, planets ruled by petty dictators and brutal monarchs. Their oppressive regimes would be destroyed, their people freed—at least from the sadistic monsters who ruled them now. Lucerne knew he wasn’t truly bringing freedom to these worlds, but the leaders he would install would be far preferable to those they replaced.
Lucerne was confident he could win some allies through negotiations as well. Indeed, there were already a dozen worlds ready to join his new confederation. But he knew many worlds would have to be brought in by force, their self-appointed rulers destroyed, totalitarian regimes replaced with new quasi republics. There would be a lot of fighting, and dying, before the Far Stars Confederation became a reality.
He walked through the heavy oaken door and out into the corridor, his boots rapping loudly on the polished stone floor. The walls were lined with guards in dress uniforms, and they snapped to as he walked by, presenting arms to their revered leader. The soldiers were veterans, selected for the duty by their comrades. All his guards had been drawn from the ranks, from among his bravest and longest-serving soldiers.
On the battlefield, Lucerne knew the risks. He could see his enemies clearly. In the political swamp of the capital, conspiracy lurked in every shadowy corner. A knife in the dark or a poisoned drink could end his crusade in its tracks, and the unification bought with three decades of blood and pain would be lost. Lucerne trusted few people, and almost no one outside the ranks of his veteran soldiers. When the time had come to establish a Consular Guard regiment, he’d rejected the insiders and the sycophants flocking around him demanding appointments. He decreed that every member of the unit be drawn from soldiers with five years’ experience or more in his army, and that they be named directly by him or nominated by the acclaim of their comrades in arms.
He walked slowly down the hall, turning and nodding to the old sweats standing grimly at attention. Some of them had scarred faces, badges of honor won on the battlefield. Others had grown gray in Lucerne’s service, locks of silvery hair protruding from their headgears. All stood rigidly at attention, watching their beloved commander walk slowly by toward his destiny.
Lucerne walked through another set of doors and out into the main hall. He had chosen the location with care. It was the last seat of republican government on the planet. Three centuries before, the Celtiborian Senate had met there for the last time. Once again, the massive structure would become the center of government of the largest, most populous world in the Far Stars. In a few minutes, Augustin Lucerne would address the entire planet, the four hundred million people of Celtiboria watching in rapt attention to see what their new ruler had to say. To many, Lucerne’s victory heralded the start of a golden age, bringing freedom from the oppression of the warlords. Others were less sure, wondering if they had simply traded one tyranny for another.
They aren’t wrong to doubt, he thought. There’s no way to know how this will turn out. But I swore an oath on the blood of my men, on my family. So doubt they might, but if they tried to oppose him . . .
A grim determination set in once more.
Lucerne climbed the podium and waited for the transmission to begin. He’d fought brutal enemies in some of the most horrendous battles ever fought. He’d been wounded a dozen times, and he’d lost count of how many friends he’d lost. But Augustin Lucerne had never been as scared as he was now. He’d rather face any enemy on the battlefield than play at politician. For all his republican ideals, he’d become far more comfortable using force to compel rather than persuading with words.
He stood stone still, watching the display count down to zero. He’d written a speech and revised it several times, but he still wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to say. He knew the address was superfluous in many ways, that his armies could compel obedience from the people of Celtiboria despite any resistance they might offer. But Lucerne wanted to avoid that road—the path to true tyranny—if he could. He would try to make his case to those he now ruled, attempt to bring them willingly behind the crusade.
Yet even as he tried to focus, all he could think of was Astra. He’d always imagined that when he finally united Celtiboria, his daughter would be there at his side. Now his triumph had finally come, and the one person closest to him was somewhere unknown, possibly suffering, certainly in grave danger.
He tried to put the worries about her out of his mind, but her image was still there, in the forefront of his mind. He told himself to have faith in Blackhawk’s loyalty and abilities, that his friend was one of the most formidable and capable men in the Far Stars. And he did have confidence in Blackhawk, but it was becoming harder and harder to rely on that as time passed. Not even Arkarin Blackhawk could succeed on every mission, and searching the entire sector for one person was a monumental task, one possibly beyond even Blackhawk’s ability.
But now it was time to address the people of Celtiboria. Lucerne had been a creature of duty
his entire life, and that wasn’t going to change now, no matter how dead and empty he felt inside. He turned toward the camera, clearing his throat as the clock counted down to zero.
“My fellow Celtiborians, I am here to speak with you on an auspicious occasion.” Even from the chamber he could hear the people massed outside cheering. He rallied his discipline, closed his mind to everything but the task at hand. This was a crucial milestone, and Lucerne the soldier, the leader, was firmly in control.
CHAPTER 10
“TO NEW FRIENDS.” BLACKHAWK RAISED THE DENTED METAL CUP for an instant before putting it to his lips and taking a tentative sip. The clear drink felt like liquid fire sliding down his throat. It was rakin, a home-brewed whiskey made by the peasant farmers of Saragossa. He was about to pull the cup from his mouth when Hans chimed in.
You must empty your cup on the first drink. To do otherwise is to give grievous insult to your host.
Blackhawk tilted the cup and drained it. He almost gasped for breath as the caustic fluid filled his mouth and poured down his throat, but he fought the impulse, staring back impassively at his hosts.
Turn your cup upside down, and hold it out in front of you. Then lay it in front of you upside down. It is the custom.
Blackhawk followed the AI’s instructions, staring right at the rebel group’s leader as he did. He placed the cup on the ground in front of him, and he glanced quickly at Ace and Shira, who were staring at their own drinks with doubtful expressions on their faces.