Worlds Away (The Interstellar Age Book 3)

by Daniels, Valmore

  It was several hours later, when the dumbwaiter once again sounded that a meal was being delivered, that Sian glanced at Chow Yin, who nodded confidently.

  Tza, seeing Sian get up and approach the panel first, laughed and said to the others, “Do you believe this? Some people never learn.”

  Chow Yin, still at the farthest table, waited for Sian to bring him his meal.

  Sian, sweating and shaking in fear, grabbed two plates the moment the door panel opened, and hurried over to Chow Yin’s table.

  Tza guffawed at the action, and slowly stood up. He put his fist in his hand and cracked his knuckles.

  “Watch this,” he said, and lumbered over to Chow Yin and Sian. He stood over the two, as if deciding which of them to punish first.

  Chow Yin pushed his plate a centimeter toward Tza. “We were foolish to try to take what is rightfully yours,” he said, his words obviously surprising both Sian and Tza. “Please accept our apologies.”

  “Damn right, it’s mine,” Tza said, and reached down to grab the plate.

  Tza’s eyes bulged when Chow Yin casually flicked his hand out and stabbed the smuggler in the neck with a short shiv, slicing into the carotid artery.

  Both the body and the wheels of Chow Yin’s wheelchair were made of plastic. For the past few hours, Chow Yin had loosened one plastic axle a few centimeters, and snapped it off. He had spent the rest of the time rubbing the shiv against the bottom of the metal table, sharpening the point.

  It was obvious Tza could not figure out what had happened. As the opium smuggler fell to the deck, clutching at his neck and trying to stem the flow of blood, Chow Yin casually took his plate back and began to eat.

  A biosensor detected Tza’s condition, and an alarm sounded. By the time the soldiers entered the hold to assess the situation, Tza was dead.

  Though the guards did not seem to express any outrage at the death of a known criminal, they had to follow protocol, and the remaining prisoners were secured to their cots for the remainder of the trip. From that point on, they were only released one at a time for meals and biological needs.

  The restrictions did not matter to Chow Yin; he’d already achieved his goal. By the time the military transport arrived at the penal station, the remaining prisoners had sworn complete allegiance to him.

  ∞

  For the next twelve years, Chow Yin did not simply rule the cadre of criminals in the penal station. He enforced a strict regimen of education on them. Doing what the justice system could not, he turned these criminals into productive soldiers in his burgeoning empire. He found out what each inmate’s unique talents were, and schooled them on how to use those abilities more effectively. Whenever a transport came, he would sort through the newly arriving prisoners and indoctrinate them to his cause.

  No matter how much control he had, however, he could not tip his hand to the outside world. Whenever the military inspectors arrived, they found what they’d always come to expect: a typical prison environment, the station maintained to its minimum standards, and the occasional dead body—if the soldiers reported back that everything was perfect, that would arouse suspicion.

  Though there were grumblings from his subordinates that their escape was taking too long, Chow Yin knew that any premature action would result in their recapture. Freeing himself of the penal colony was a secondary consideration; before he could make any move, he had to be certain that his escape was permanent. His ultimate goal was not simply freedom; the only way he could ensure his future was a complete reversal of the game he played on Luna Station. He would not skulk in the shadows. It was time for him to seize control of his future, and nothing less than the complete domination of Sol System would do.

  All electronic communications were monitored by the government satellites throughout the Lagrange Point, so Chow Yin had no way to communicate with the rest of the solar system. Before he left Earth, he’d managed to send out a short message to a trusted subordinate through one of his lawyers, but he had no way of knowing if it was received, or if the man would be successful.

  Finally, his patience was rewarded.

  When the monthly military transport arrived, the entire population of the station gathered in front of the docking bay doors, as they always did.

  This time was different. When the ship opened its cargo doors, instead of prisoners disembarking, seven soldiers marched out onto the dock and formed a line in front of the gate.

  To the inmates’ complete surprise, the pilot of the ship, a grizzled officer, opened the gate and took a step forward. He stood at attention in front of Chow Yin and, with a salute, said, “We are at your service, Emperor Yin.”

  “It took you long enough, Mr. Leong.” Chow Yin’s words were only half-reproachful.

  It would have taken Captain Leong years to get himself assigned to the penal station duty, and to get the military transport staffed with those who were loyal to the movement.

  During the months of his trial, Chow Yin had spent a considerable amount of time listening to the news. He realized that there were people from all areas of China who had become disillusioned with the policies that had turned the PRC from one of the most powerful nations in the world to its current state as nothing more than a puppet for the Earth Council. The military, becoming less of a necessity as China slowly moved away from communism and toward democracy, had particularly suffered in the interim. Many officers and enlisted, who had dedicated their lives to the defense of the country they loved, believed it was time to restore the old system of divine leadership. The Emperors of China had always relied heavily on their military to enforce their rule.

  Before he’d been captured on Luna Station, one of Chow Yin’s hobbies had been genealogy. He had been able to trace his lineage back to the Qing, the last imperial dynasty of China two centuries before. With a legitimate claim through bloodlines, all he had to do was to get a message to imperialist sympathizers of his incarceration.

  Before his exile from Earth, Chow Yin had managed to convince the imperialists, through Leong—who had never managed to make a rank higher than captain in the PRC Space Force—that they should set their sights higher than simply retaking China. With Chow Yin as a figurehead, it was only a matter of time before the disillusioned officers managed to organize and put their plan into effect.

  Captain Leong said, “My apologies for the delay, Sire.”

  “You are here now,” Chow Yin said, then added, “General Leong.”

  Though the newly promoted general’s expression did not change, Chow Yin saw that he stood a little straighter.

  Chow Yin gestured to the inmates of the penal station. “I’d like to introduce you to our newest recruits.”

  General Leong took a step forward and surveyed the growing crowd of convicts.

  He spoke in a booming voice for all to hear. “We don’t have much time before the false Chinese government realizes we’ve commandeered their ship, so I’ll be brief. We need to ensure no one suspects that we have liberated you from the station. Your cooperation is mandatory.” He made a gesture, and four of his men came out of the ship, carrying two heavy crates between them. They set the crates down beside the general and pulled the lid off.

  General Leong continued his speech. “I need everyone to grab an incendiary canister and bring it to your quarters. Place it in the center of your cell. They’re connected with a remote, which we will activate once we have left dock.”

  One of the inmates, the serial killer named Sang, spoke up. “What about our stuff?”

  “You must leave all your personal possessions behind. Inspectors will come. If you’ve packed all your things, they will know the escape was planned. We want them to investigate all possibilities; this will delay their efforts.”

  Chow Yin cleared his throat and gave the general a furtive look.

  General Leong opened his holoslate and said, “Would the following prisoners please step forward.” He read off a list of eleven names, including Sian, the hacker.

>   As the eleven men separated themselves from the main group, four more soldiers jogged out of the transport ship, pulse rifles in their hands, and circled them.

  Sang said, “What’s this all about?”

  Holding up a hand, General Leong gave the man a conciliatory nod. “Not to worry. There are some who do not deserve to be part of the new Empire. We will ensure the purity of our cause.”

  Giving the eleven another assessment, Sang nodded. “I see what you mean.” The separated men shared common traits: they were all considered the weakest of the inmates. Over the past few years, Chow Yin had had to intervene several times to spare them a beating from one of the other more violent inmates. “Besides, you probably want to leave a few bodies behind to throw off the scent.” A number of the other prisoners chuckled.

  Sian gave Chow Yin a look of panic. Chow Yin did not even glance in his direction.

  General Leong spoke in an authoritative voice. “Gentlemen, we are embarking on a new chapter in the history of Sol System. Today marks the first day in the rule of the First Empire of Sol. Please do as I instructed.”

  With alacrity, the seventy-one remaining inmates rushed to the crates and picked up an incendiary canister. As they filed out of the docking area and back to the main compound, Chow Yin looked up at General Leong.

  “Tell me she is safe.”

  Nodding, the general said, “It wasn’t easy, Sire, but we’ve secured her for you. You were correct; she was integral in developing the weaponized Kinemet.”

  “Good.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, General Leong said, “I have other news, Emperor. Klaus has been located. He has made himself a hidden base on Venus. We believe he has made a breakthrough in the process—”

  Chow Yin waved an impertinent hand at him. “That will be our first destination, then. I trust we have enough resources to accomplish our objective.”

  “Yes, Sire. More than enough. General Zhang has given us his full support, and he controls over a hundred-thousand troops. We also have four colonels, six members of the state council, and several private sector CEOs who have chafed under PRC rule. We have people in every level of government. As you suspected, all seven nations we reached out to have informally offered support and a willingness to sign fealty to an imperial charter—it seems the USA, Inc. stranglehold on future technologies is a sore point with them; they’d like nothing more than to see the giant fall.”

  “Excellent,” Chow Yin said.

  Once the last inmate to grab an incendiary left the bay, General Leong signaled his men surrounding the eleven who had been held back. The soldiers all raised their pulse rifles.

  “Quickly now,” the general said to the eleven in a low voice, “board the ship. Not a word.”

  Confused, the men stared at him.

  “Would you rather be shot?” the general asked. “Move it!”

  The men, glancing at the soldiers nervously, did as they were told, and hurried aboard the ship. Sian tried to catch Chow Yin’s eye, but the self-styled Emperor was wheeling his chair to a control center at the main bay doors of the prison.

  As he tapped out a few commands, one of the prisoners, Sang, was returning to the dock area from his task. The bay doors began to close.

  “Hey!” he called out, and broke into a run. A soldier who had been standing watch over his Emperor raised his pulse rifle, leveled it at Sang, and fired. The electric whir of the rifle was followed by a meaty thud as Sang’s dead body fell to the cement floor. A few other prisoners noticed the closing doors and the body, and within a few moments, they stampeded for the docking bay.

  The soldier only had to fire two more shots to put down the lead prisoners before the door closed, locking electromagnetically.

  Shouldering the rifle strap, the soldier quickly raced behind Chow Yin’s wheelchair, grasped the handles, and wheeled his Emperor onto the ship, which immediately lifted off.

  Once Chow Yin was on the bridge, General Leong issued a command to one of the other officers. “Detonate the incendiaries.”

  Chow Yin could not observe the dozens of small explosions within the prison compound, but he knew the fire would quickly spread throughout the station and gut the colony.

  If there was one thing that serial killer Sang was right about, there would be plenty of bodies for the Chinese investigators to find.

  ∞

  Sitting in his wheelchair on the bridge of the ship six weeks after breaking out of the penal station, Chow Yin forced himself to keep his temper in check.

  General Leong carefully watched the monitors at his station and did not turn around to face his Emperor. If he knew how angry Chow Yin was, he didn’t give any indication.

  First, they’d arrived at Lucis Observatory too late: Klaus was already dead; his research destroyed. After questioning Klaus’s uncle, Gruber, they’d learned two things before the man had succumbed to the wounds sustained during questioning. The first was the general process Klaus had used to develop the Kinemetic conversion—the Kinemet had to be ‘primed’ somehow. Secondly, Gruber told them that Major Justine Turner had been converted to a Kinemat and was on the way to Canada Station Three, where Alex Manez was kept under military protection.

  Chow Yin glanced at Sian, who sat at the main computer terminal. The programmer had been able to monitor the communications between the Earth Council and Canada Station Three, and learned about the injunction against Kinemetic research. He’d also picked up a message that the Arab Conglomerates were sending a team of observers to CS3—Chow Yin, knowing Alex and Justine’s history, made a guess that they wouldn’t just sit idly by and wait to be put under a microscope. “We need to be ready to intercept them,” he told his crew, and General Leong put in a course for CS3.

  His hunch had proved correct: Alex and Justine were trying to get away from CS3 before the observers arrived, and Chow Yin ordered General Leong to pursue them.

  “How many of the Kinemetic torpedoes do you have on board?” he asked.

  “Three,” the general responded. “If we use them, we’ll destroy their ship.”

  “That’s the idea,” Chow Yin said. “According to Captain Gruber, no one knows Klaus’s process; the secret died with him. The last thing we need is for someone to leak the information; we cannot have competition. In order for us to control space, we need to have a monopoly on the technology; anyone who is undertaking research must be eliminated.”

  “Understood, Sire,” General Leong said, but their efforts to destroy the Ultio and its passengers fell short when, to everyone’s surprise, their first Kinemetic torpedo detonated before it impacted. When the general ordered the launch of the remaining two torpedoes, the Ultio quantized and disappeared from normal space.

  The silence on the bridge stretched out for several minutes before Chow Yin finally spoke.

  “Well, there is no help for it.” He turned to General Leong. “We must return to our original plan.”

  The general nodded, and gave the order to his pilot. “Lay in a course to Qin Station.”

  Chow Yin swore under his breath, “It’s time I took back what is rightfully mine.”

  ∞

  Over the following four years, Chow Yin wrested control of all space operations in Sol System through a combination of force and misdirection.

  His greatest asset was to use the paranoia of Earth’s nations against them. Before he launched his first strike against Luna Station, he arranged for the detonation of a Nepali nuclear warhead on Bhutan soil. Key members of the PRC Parliament, as directed by Chow Yin, called for immediate sanctions against Nepal.

  India, a long-time ally of Nepal, called for sanctions against China, who then declared war on India. Within months, nearly every nation on Earth was taking sides, and military conflict was at an all-time high.

  Once the superpowers withdrew the bulk of their military forces back to Earth, Luna Station was Chow Yin’s for the taking. The most tenuous moment in his plans for empire came when the United States Space
Force launched a major offensive to retake their four mining stations near the asteroid belt—which was important to the war effort, since asteroid mining was the only way to replenish their stocks of metals. Earth had been depleted the majority of their resources long ago.

  Instead of protecting those mining stations, Chow Yin ordered their complete destruction—which served as a warning to any other nation that attempted a similar action.

  In a public relations move, he relocated all the personnel on those stations to the Qin Station. He made it a point to have the news feeds report that there had not been any loss of life in the action. The reality was that Chow Yin valued those engineers and scientists more than the stations they worked on.

  At the same time, Chow Yin informed every news agency about the catastrophic losses of Chinese military in the conflict, most of whom had died at the hands of American soldiers. With world sentiment rising against the USA, Inc., Chow Yin instructed the members of the PRC state council who were loyal to him to declare war on USA, Inc.

  The declaration went through, and China launched its first strike—Chinese troops managed to get a foothold on the pacific coast before finally being repelled from American soil.

  The conflict proved an effective distraction, and kept the news focused on the terrestrial conflict, and away from events in space, which was what Chow Yin wanted in the first place.

  Any vessel—whether military or civilian—launched from Earth was intercepted, the crew given the choice to swear fealty to the new Emperor of Sol System, or be ejected into space.

  His military strategy, however, was considerably more successful than his scientific ones. After four years, his team of scientists was no closer to figuring out the key to Kinemetic conversion. Not that they hadn’t tried. Chow Yin had no problem coming up with hundreds of ‘volunteers’ for the experiments, none of whom survived.

  The furthest they’d been able to push his technology agenda was to convert Kinemet to a super fuel, giving their ships the ability to fly at ten times the velocity of ion pulse engines. The first Orca mission to Pluto had taken nearly six months; Chow Yin’s engineers had developed engines that would propel their ships from Luna to Pluto in two-and-a-half weeks.