by Trevor Wyatt
He barely heard what Cassius was saying, but he just smiled and nodded repeatedly. The old words came back to him, and he understood them now more clearly than he ever had;
I am not afraid.
Fear kills the mind, clouds the thoughts.
Fear is nothing but a doorway.
I will face my fear.
I will open that door and pass through it.
And when I have gone through, I will know what is beyond.
I will remain, without the fear.
Cassius had stopped speaking. “What are you smiling about?” he asked Thomas.
“I was just thinking about fear,” Thomas replied. He slid his hand into his pocket. “Are you ever afraid, Cassius?”
Cassius’ eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about, Thomas?”
“I’m not afraid, that’s all,” Thomas said. He took out the gun and aimed it at his former ally’s chest.
Cassius’s expression didn’t change, and he didn’t move.
“You don’t want to do this, Thomas,” he said in a quiet, almost mournful, voice.
“You’re right—I don’t. But I have to. You see, Cassius, you’re becoming a worse monster than the ones who came before.”
Cassius shook his head. “I’m doing what’s necessary to bring Centralia back from the brink of self-destruction,” he said. “You must see that.”
“I—you know, Cassius, we’re not going to have a debate about your intentions. I’m weary. I’ve spent my career talking and debating, and now that I’m an old man, I know I no longer have the strength for it. I’m sorry, I really am. I don’t want to do this, it’s true...but I have no choice.”
He held the gun steady, and felt proud that he could.
“You’re an old man, yes. But I’m young. And I’m strong. Thomas, stronger than you know. I’m not going to let you shoot me. For one thing, if you were to do that, you’d never make it out of this building alive.”
Thomas laughed softly. “I never intended to.”
“Do you know what the headlines will say tomorrow?” Cassius asked. “They’ll say, ‘The hero of the people bravely fought off his assassin and turned the gun on him.’”
Thomas shrugged. “Young you may be, but you can’t get out from that desk quickly enough to stop me before I fire,” he said.
Cassius sighed and walked towards him slowly. Thomas knew it was the perfect moment to shoot Cassius, but somehow, his hands started to shake.
C’mon, do it! Do it! He thought to himself.
Then, he found himself standing face-to-face with Cassius. They stood like that for a minute, before Cassius kicked the needler out of his hand in one motion.
Thomas looked at his shaking hands in shock, while Cassius dove right away for the needler.
He aimed the gun at Thomas’s chest. “I’m sorry, Thomas, I really am. We were friends.”
“It’ll be quick, won’t it?” Thomas said, eyeing the weapon. It filled his vision until it became the world.
“Very quick indeed,” Cassius said. “You’ll make a splendid scapegoat, Thomas, in case anyone else tries to investigate me. I assure you, this is for the greater good of Centralia.”
It happened quick.
As Thomas fell down to the floor, he was smiling.
Forget Centralia, he thought into the gathering mist. Grace…
Chapter 29
A Message from the Office of the Chancellor of the Human Confederation
Cassius took his seat in front of the cameras and straightened his tie. He was in fine spirits. This was an interview he had been looking forward to for some time. It had been over a year since he gave his last one, to the same journalist he’d be speaking with tonight.
Ketra Wolakkan stepped up onto the small stage, awash in bright light for the cameras, and sat across the table from Cassius.
“Good evening,” Ketra said to him. The cameras weren’t live yet. “I’m a little surprised you agreed to talk with me tonight, Chancellor. How long has it been?”
“Long enough,” he said easily. “I see you’re growing your hair out on that side.”
She patted the side of her head. “I felt it was time for a change.”
“Oh, I agree. It certainly is.”
He couldn’t keep all of the satisfaction out of his tone. The woman was perceptive, and shot him a look.
“Ten seconds,” the director said, looking at his tablet. “And 3, 2, 1...”
He pointed at Ketra as the camera lights blinked red.
“Good evening, I’m Ketra Wolakkan, and here with me is the Chancellor of the Human Confederation, Cassius Ojun.”
On the monitors, Cassius saw a close up of his smiling face, and he nodded pleasantly.
“Good evening, Ketra. It’s nice to see you again.”
The view cut to a shot of the two of them, facing one another across the table.
“Thank you, Chancellor. First of all, let me congratulate you on your amazing first year in office. You’ve united the Human Confederation, something that no one thought possible.”
He inclined his head graciously. “Thank you. The Terran Union has wronged the Confederation a number of times. We felt it was necessary to promote a unified voice for the Confederation.”
She nodded. “And you have certainly done that. Yet your efforts seem to have come at the expense of living conditions here on Centralia. The latest polls—”
He chuckled and made a dismissive gesture.
“Oh, the polls! You know, I don’t pay any attention to them, they’re non-factual information that only serves to confuse people.”
“But sir, your own daughters, Peyton and Sienna, are being schooled far away from here, ostensibly for their safety. Your critics say that’s because the standard of living in Mansionland—in all of Fairdale—has declined.”
He frowned. “That’s simply not true. There’s plenty of poverty and unhappiness everywhere in the Terran Union. What about the Tyreesians? And all the misery they’ve caused?”
“Are you trying to deflect the argument, sir? With all due respect, the Tyreesians aren’t the issue,” Ketra said, frowning. “There’s no moral equivalency between them and what’s happening in your administration.”
“All that’s happening in my administration is that we’re preparing for conflicts,” Cassius said. “We don’t mean to stop with unifying the Confederation, either. There are tyrants all over the galaxy, many of them operating under the guise of humanitarianism. We want to start the process of destabilizing and ultimately toppling the repressive governments in other star systems.”
He watched Ketra shift in her seat, taking pleasure in her discomfort.
“So you think that tampering with the politics of other worlds is ultimately a positive thing?”
“Of course. The people of these worlds all think alike; it’s their corrupt leaders that have repressed them time and again.”
“I see. Can you give specific examples of this repression, sir?”
“You see, this is the problem with you people in the media,” Cassius said, shaking his head. “You feel free to inject your opinions into every discussion. This makes for a lot of noise, a lot of non-factual information that people have to sift through. I’m trying to eliminate that.”
He made a gesture to someone outside of camera range.
Several of Cassius’s bodyguards, their weapons prominently displayed, pushed the camera operators aside while being careful to leave the vidcams focused on the small stage where spotlights pinned Ketra and Cassius to their chairs.
Cassius watched the monitors with satisfaction. They showed the guards approaching Ketra and securing her.
She struggled in their grip. “What are you do—Chancellor Ojun! What’s this all about?”
“Peace, Ms. Wolakkan. Peace. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to establish martial law here in Centralia. There have been too many terrorist attacks of late, and we’re very concerned that your news feed, here, has been used
to send coded messages to certain factions.”
“That’s not true! Why would we do that?”
“To destabilize the government, of course.”
“That’s what you said you meant to do!” The guards forced her to stand, but she remained visible in the monitors.
“But not here on Centralia. I’m sorry, Ms. Wolakken, but we’re forced to detain you for questioning.”
“You won’t get away with this, Ojun,” she yelled as she was dragged out of the camera view.
He remained seated and sighed. He turned to the camera and smiled benevolently. Moments later, his smiling face was replaced by a screen reading PLEASE STAND BY.
Won’t get away with it? He thought as he looked around the petrified production crew.
I rather think I will.
I rather think I will.
The Mariner
See where it all started. Read The Mariner, A Pax Aeterna Prequel, for free, exclusively at this link: https://claims.instafreebie.com/free/yaoQE
First Contact
Call of Command Book 1
A Pax Aeterna Novel
Copyright © 2017 by Pax Aeterna Press
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work intended for adults only.
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Part I
Book I
Jeryl
The vastness of space was always disquieting. It was beautiful, but in the back of Jeryl’s mind they were simply hurtling through empty space in a microcarbon tetrapolymer tube. One small deviation from some pretty tight specs and their ass was grass—lungs bursting as they depressurize.
No matter the stellar phenomena that they charted, no matter the beauty that they saw—in the end, space was unforgiving, cold, and empty. It didn’t care who was good or evil. It didn’t care about political factions. Or whether the Captain of the TUS Seeker hooked up with his first officer on shore leave.
Space killed with impunity.
Jeryl sat in CNC on the Terran Union Starship called The Seeker. He used to hate that name when he first took command. But now, he loved it. Two years of commanding an Armada frigate patrolling the border with the Outer Colonies would do that to anyone. He knew each of his crew personally. Hell, he had hand-selected almost all of them at some point or another as people left and needed replacing.
“We’re approaching the last known coordinates of TUS Mariner, Captain,” the navigator, Henry Docherty, called out from his station.
“Cut FTL drive and return to normal space,” Jeryl ordered, leaning back on his chair. He could feel the hum of the ship change as the FTL drives disengaged. The ship materialized into normal space, out from the folded space it was travelling in.
“Visual,” Jeryl ordered. The view screen lit up in front of him. It dominated the far wall of CNC and gave him the visual sensors to see what was happening outside of The Seeker. Double-plated transparent microcarbon glass panels line the sides of CNC, but Jeryl had no idea what the designers of the frigate assumed they would do—they were as big as portholes on an ancient seafaring craft. He couldn’t hop on tip-toed and look out to get a view of the outside, and more importantly, he couldn’t make command decisions.
But Jeryl guessed it was done to bolster morale, to prevent people from becoming claustrophobic. To not have them dwell on the fact that they were in a box travelling several times the speed of light through the cold unknown.
“Mr. Lannigan,” he said to his Science Officer. “Coordinate with Ms. Gavin and scan the area for The Mariner.”
The science officer nodded and made room at his station as Ashley Gavin—the shapely First Officer of The Seeker—walked over to join him. Not for the first time had Jeryl sighed at the sight of his First Officer.
He had done everything that a Captain could do in this situation. He had delegated tasks to his crew and now all he could do was sit back and wait for the next piece of information on this godforsaken mission.
He knew he didn’t sound too happy, but that was only because he wasn’t.
They were out here in the far fringes of the Terran Union. The closest station—Edoris Station—was 20 light years away. That was roughly 20 days that they’d been travelling. No colonies. Just empty space and giant balls of gas and dust.
“If it’s something involving the Outer Colonies trying to come through our back door,” Admiral Flynn had said to him, “there’s no other person I want investigating it than you.”
The Admiral had been insistent that The Seeker had to go see this out. The only problem Jeryl had with the Admiral’s insistence was that the Outer Colonies were all the way on the other side of the Terran Union. Even if they had ships as powerful as the Union’s, he doubted they could get all the way around it without attracting some sort of attention.
Besides, the distance to traverse through empty space would be prohibitive. Which meant, the more that Jeryl thought about it, that whatever caused The Mariner to stop responding to the Edoris Station wasn’t related at all to the Outer Colonies.
And Jeryl would know; he had had experience on the border. Most of his time in the Armada had been rotating on and off ships that patrol the border. There were brush fires, isolated incursions; more to harry and provoke The Union than anything else.
There hadn’t been a war from as long as he could remember. Hell, since as long as anyone could remember. From what he knew, the last sustained conflict was during The Schism, about fifty years ago, back in 2147. The only reason everyone knew about it was because it was taught through History classes; no one who lived through The Schism was serving in The Armada now.
So all they had to go by was what they learned in school—how Earth had sent out her children into the stars. And how those children had grown older and began to help their ailing parents from the ravages of its nuclear war. How rebuilding Earth was deemed to be impossible—after the nuclear wars that rocked the planet, scientists of the mid-21st Century said it would take at least a thousand years of rebuilding for the planet to go back to pre-World War III conditions.
But they hadn’t factored in space travel, or colonies. They hadn’t factored in humanity’s drive to survive when backed against the wall. From the ashes of post-atomic horror, Earth came together and did away with the old institutions, and implemented a unified voice. Earth looked to its children to go into the stars and send back the resources to rebuild.
And rebuild they did—to the exclusion of all else. Large percentages of colony budgets were earmarked for rebuilding efforts for Earth, and for the first generation or two, it was done with pride. People were contributing toward the rebirth of the cradle of humanity.
But fast-forward to another generation, and one would see the grudging acceptance of the sacrifices that had to be made so that a world, one that very few had ever seen, could prosper. Hostility festered in future generations, hostility aimed at sacrificing all their hard work for a world hundreds of light years away.
And the farthest of Earth’s children—those in the outermost colonies—said one day that they’ve had enough. They threw off the yoke, as they believed it to be. And once again, humanity went to war.
But that was fifty years ago. The Terran Armada then was nothing compared to what it was today. Rebuilding was the focus. There was very little need for defensive or offensive technology. Humanity hadn’t encountered any alien lift and it still hadn’t. The few frigates and cruisers that were in service were used to ensure hostilities didn’t get too bad. And in addition, to ensure that the proper material flowed back to the Homeworld.
Eventually, with the Colonies being granted their independence—all 57 of them—tensions cooled and the long vigil across a border bega
n. That was the last conflict anyone had ever fought.
All the research and all the exploration hadn’t uncovered any trace of alien life. They found moss growing on a rock on New Chrysalis; some vegetation here and there—a sign that the universe wasn’t asleep while the humans destroyed themselves, but still no sentient life. For as much as they all believed, humanity was alone in the universe, left to explore on its own; left to fight amongst each other as they colonized the stars.
So then if it wasn’t the Outer Colonies, and if there was no such thing as non-human life, Jeryl was left to wonder what could be preventing The Mariner from responding to them
Solving that problem, he thought. That’s the only mystery that makes this mission worth a damn.
The Mariner was a deep space exploration vessel, with a small crew complement. A part of Jeryl betted that those egghead scientists were just lost in their own little bubble, exploring some stellar phenomena of the month. Not realizing that The Seeker had to be pulled off their course to go rescue some scientists with their heads in the clouds.
We’ll probably find them and they’ll realize they somehow turned off their communications grid, Jeryl thought. Or maybe they took it offline so that nothing would bother them with their research. I’ve seen it happen before. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He was thinking about the scientists when Ashley walked toward him.
Jeryl could tell she was coming up to him even though he was looking down at his pad. He could smell the slight perfume that she indulged in every morning; the smell that he remembered before he went to sleep at night; the smell that he had breathed in when they were on shore leave in New Sydney, when they found themselves accidentally at the same resort. They had drinks and dinner. A bottle of New Sydney wine in his suite. Then, a night of sex.