by Terry Mixon
“And that’s true,” the Rebel Empire noble said. “I have an encrypted file with the codes we need. Once we’ve accomplished the new mission, the System Lord at our new destination will decode it for us. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll sign off and see you momentarily.”
She cursed when he disconnected without another word.
“It seems we have a new problem,” she told the others. “Our lives just got more complicated.”
3
Angela slammed into the mat with bone-jarring force. She landed flat on her back and, even with all her Marine Raider enhancements, the titanic impact knocked the air out of her.
It was so hard, in fact, that she couldn’t effectively defend herself when Princess Kelsey jammed her knee onto her neck. Angela tapped out rather than try to extract herself from the untenable situation.
Kelsey hopped to her feet with far too much energy as Angela tried to get her lungs working again.
“Four falls out of five?” the small woman chirped. “I’ll take it!”
“I’ll bet you will,” Angela grumbled, sitting up and rubbing her throat. “Even with the same hardware, your experience keeps handing me my ass on a platter. That’s damned unfair.”
“You’ll get the hang of things and the situation will reverse itself shortly,” Kelsey said as she offered Angela a hand. “I’m not really in your league when you take the Marine Raider enhancements out of the equation. You’ll pound me into the mat once you get the hang of your new body.”
“I don’t think so,” Talbot said from where he was sitting off to the side. He was still recovering from the first set of Marine Raider surgeries. Well, technically the second, as he’d already had cranial implants, and the upgrade to Marine Raider medical nanites was pretty straightforward.
His most recent session had seen his pharmacology unit implanted and his ocular, auditory, and olfactory enhancements installed. He was sitting down because the procedure screwed with his balance for a day or so.
In a few more days, Doctor Zoboroski would coat his leg bones in graphene and weave artificial muscles into his real ones. That would be even more disruptive, she knew, screwing with his ability to walk until he adjusted.
In about a week, he’d have his torso and dominant arm done. They could’ve done both arms at the same time, but he needed one hand that wouldn’t rip things out of walls or crush them with no warning before he mastered the increased strength.
Perhaps three days later, he’d have his last arm done. That meant that in about two weeks from now, he’d be right where she was. Hopefully exactly where she was: flat on his back on the mat with her doing the tossing.
That last thought made her smile darkly. It was the price of speeding up the implant process. The Old Empire gave the new Marine Raiders six sessions rather than four and spread them out over twice the time. The New Terran Empire just didn’t have the time to dawdle.
When they finished with Talbot, they had a host of other people to start down the road to becoming the crew in truth of the Marine Raider strike ship Persephone.
And Commodore Zia Anderson on the carrier Audacious had already put in her marker for some Raiders of her own. Hell, most of the marines with them on this trip would get the treatment if they had enough time.
Some of the roughly battalion-sized group weren’t going to make the cut, she knew. They had to be sure that only people who could ethically use power like this got it, because the process wasn’t reversible. A closet psychopath with Marine Raider enhancements was a terrifying vision they all wanted to avoid.
Still, the marines were pretty good at weeding out that kind of thing, so Angela hoped there wouldn’t be many people they’d have to reject. They needed every fighting hand they could get.
She stretched and tried to work some of the soreness out of her still-adjusting body. “What does that mean?” she asked Talbot.
“Kelsey isn’t giving herself enough credit,” he said calmly. “She still thinks of herself as the woman she was before the expedition. She’s wrong.
“Yes, the Marine Raider implants and enhancements gave her a serious edge at the start over anyone she fought, even without any skills to go with it, but that situation isn’t true anymore. It hasn’t been for a while.”
Angela continued stretching and watched as Kelsey walked over to her husband, a confused look on her face. “Expand on that.”
“Sure,” the large marine said with a grin. “If you’ll sit here on my lap, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I am not sitting in your lap,” Kelsey said firmly. “Cough it up.”
“You’ve mastered the Marine Raider unarmed combat form, you’ve had years of experience fighting with your new body, and even with her longer time as a marine, Angela is probably never going to be your master at hand-to-hand.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Angela said, frowning. “I’m almost a meter taller than Kelsey, and I outmass her by a significant margin. I’ve been fighting hand-to-hand for fifteen years.”
He shook his head as he turned his attention to her. “That’s where you’re wrong. You haven’t been fighting like this at all. Sure, you know some martial arts and have significant unarmed combat chops, but that almost doesn’t count at this level of the game.
“Tell me, what is the biggest difference between what you already knew and the Marine Raider hand-to-hand art?”
“The first thing I know is that that name is too unwieldy,” Angela said. “We really need to call it something shorter. Why the Old Empire Marine Raiders didn’t is a mystery to me.”
“Call it the Art,” Kelsey said. “That makes it sound all mysterious.”
Talbot considered that and slowly nodded. “I like that. Now, again, Angela, what is the biggest difference between the Art and marine forms you already knew?”
Angela felt her eyes narrow. “A lot of the skills and moves are different. Why don’t you tell me what kind of answer you’re looking for?”
“Speed and size have advantages in a lot of the moves Kelsey is using,” he explained. “Not large size as in overpowering but getting inside her opponent’s moves and using her smaller size to throw them around the mat like she just did with you.
“Here, your larger size is a disadvantage, and her mastery of the Art is as good as your own. Perhaps somewhat better. Tell me how you’d overcome her size advantage.”
Angela opened her mouth to answer but stopped herself and really considered the problem.
While she thought about the question, Kelsey nodded. “I think there has to be more to the Art than what Ned taught us. He tailored my education to what suited me. That’s what I passed on to everyone else. That had to affect the curriculum.”
The idea of the artificial intelligence that had thought it was Major Ned Quincy living inside Princess Kelsey’s implants had always freaked Angela out a little.
She wondered if her friend was glad that Carl had transferred the AI safely to a specially designed computer made to support it while he searched for an answer to getting Ned his own body. Personally, she’d have been ecstatic.
“I’ll have to work on some other moves outside the Art or find out if there are extra moves we didn’t learn that might favor my greater size and longer reach,” she finally said.
“That’s a good answer,” he said with a satisfied nod. “There are a lot of martial arts styles, and nothing says you have to keep using the one that favors Kelsey. Though I’m starting to suspect that the way Ned taught Kelsey might have implications we haven’t considered just yet. I’ll have to think about that a bit more before I’m ready to broach the subject.
“In any case, every move used in the Art came from another martial art in its day. The Marine Raiders stole what they liked the best. That doesn’t mean that everything else is without merit under the right circumstances.
“Old Terra had an astonishing array of martial styles. Do some research and surprise her with something she isn’t expecting. Adapt and overcome.”
“And speaking of adapt and overcome, I have a new challenge for you, Raider,” Kelsey said to Angela with a grin. “Now that you’re fully enhanced, it’s time you had a new job.”
“I’m still getting used to acting as your second in command,” Angela said dryly. “I’m a marine—a Marine Raider now, I suppose—and I’m not really all that skilled in running a ship, even now. What other pond filled with alligators do you have in mind for me?”
“Major Angela Ellis, by the authority granted me as the crown princess of the New Terran Empire and senior officer of the Marine Raiders, I hereby order you to assume command of the strike ship Persephone,” Kelsey said formally. “Persephone, log the change of command and acknowledge that the transfer is complete.”
“Orders received and executed,” the somewhat artificial computer voice said through the overhead speakers. “Command authority is hereby transferred to Major Angela Ellis.”
Angela gaped, and her mouth moved without sound for a few moments. “Kelsey, I’m not ready for this,” she finally said.
The smaller woman reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “You’re far readier than I was when I assumed command. Serve the Empire well, Major.”
Kelsey took a deep breath and settled into the mindset she needed to act like the Rebel Empire noble she was pretending to be. She was so into that that she barely reacted to the Bastard coming into the compartment.
She stopped and forced herself to correct that. Jared Mertz wasn’t the Bastard here. Of that she was now almost certain, as hard as that was to believe.
Still, she couldn’t stop the wave of loathing that washed over her every time she saw the man. No matter who he might be here, she doubted she’d ever get over that feeling.
“How long do we have?” Olivia asked Mertz as he sat.
“Two minutes, max,” the man said. “Sean will be here just before him. Let me brief you about what we learned this morning. The plasma charges are too dangerous to try to disarm. We’ll have to play this out.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Olivia said, her jaw obviously tight. “Fielding dropped a surprise on me via the com moments ago. He doesn’t have the codes to extend us more than the week he already used.
“It turns out that he has a little side mission for us to carry out, and the System Lord there will decrypt a file Fielding has from his System Lord to give us the extension to get to Terra.”
Mertz growled under his breath. “Perfect. Any idea what the mission is supposed to be?”
“Not a clue. The theatrical bugger wants to tell us himself.”
At that moment, Sean entered the compartment at a fast jog. “Did I miss anything?” he asked a bit breathlessly.
“Fielding is changing our plans,” Mertz said. “Sit, and we’ll find out how in a minute.”
Sixty seconds later, two of Fielding’s guards came into the compartment and scanned it for threats.
As if every one of the people on this mission wasn’t a threat. All of them, with the exception of Austin, wore neural disruptors to continue the tradition of the original crew. Theirs were set to stun, but none of Fielding’s people would know that.
And the Rebel Empire Lord seemingly didn’t care. Without him, they’d die, and he knew they knew it. Hell, he’d given Austin a code to disable the bomb in his head. Not that he’d needed it, as Doctor Stone had already removed the device after replacing the corrupt code in the young man’s implants.
Though, to be fair, that only saved him from it going off automatically if he did something it thought compromised the mission. Anyone else with the right code in transmission range could kill him in a gruesome manner with a thought.
Kelsey made a mental note to try and talk Austin into using the disarm code his uncle had given him under Doctor Stone’s observation. Fielding wouldn’t have given it to his nephew if he hadn’t expected Austin to use it. It wouldn’t kill the young man. She hoped.
Of course, it might not work with the implant code altered. There was no way of knowing other than trying. She supposed the odds of it going off were still greater than zero.
Moments later, Fielding and his remaining two guards came into the compartment. The older man smiled with false joviality as he took a seat at the table while his guards spread out to cover all approaches.
“Good morning,” he said. “I hope you all had a restful evening. Are you as famished as I am?”
“You have no idea,” Kelsey said. “I’m starving.”
And, sadly, it was true. Even with everything she’d already eaten, she was still hungry. It was humiliating.
“Then by all means, let’s get something to eat.” He peremptorily waved at Commander Cannon, who was already coming over to take any special orders.
Which of course Fielding had in spades. He ordered his eggs done in a very specific manner. Sort of like over easy, but with restrictions on how crisp the whites were. Then he described the level of fluff he wanted in his pancakes.
The list of how he wanted things went on and left Kelsey boggled. She’d been raised in the Imperial Palace, and no one there would’ve dared to tell a chef how to do their job so brazenly.
Then she came to a realization. The man was trying to irritate them. His behavior was another provocation. She had no proof, but she’d seen others act like this kind of ass before.
Her eyes briefly flashed over to Mertz before returning to Fielding. There might be more similarity between Fielding and the Bastard than she’d imagined. It made for an interesting thought experiment.
When her turn came, she ordered more than a woman of her size normally would, but not by a tremendous degree. Added to her earlier meal, it might just tide her over until lunch.
Once the orders were complete and the drinks had been delivered, Olivia got right to the point. “You mentioned a side mission for the Lords so that we can get the code we need to proceed to Terra. Obviously, time is a precious commodity that we cannot recover once we’ve spent it. What are the details of this mission?”
The older man smiled indulgently. “There’s no need to rush things. We have plenty of time to get where we need to go and do what we need to do. The first few flips are already in your flight plan. We don’t deviate until just shortly before you’d have met the other ship.”
Olivia set both of her hands flat on the table and stood, her expression rock hard and unflinching.
“You’ve made an error in judgment, Lord Fielding. You might have the codes I need, but I command this mission. If the Lords want us to divert and take care of something for them, we will of course obey, but I will not be toyed with by you on my own ship. I am mistress here.”
That wiped the expression of joviality off the man’s face. He glared at Olivia for a few seconds but then smiled in what seemed like a more genuine manner.
“It’s good to see you have some steel in your spine, Lady Keaton. You’ll need that at Terra, I’m sure. Very well. We’ll be diverting to the Bradley system to perform a somewhat delicate task for the Lord there. One you and your people are uniquely suited for.”
“And what might that task be?” Mertz asked as the food started arriving.
Fielding grinned at him. “The Lord there has suffered some hardware failures, it seems, and become somewhat erratic. Perhaps paranoid is a better word.
“The Lord in my system has been tasked by his associates to send a repair team to restore their brother to health. As the Lords control our very lives, they feel they can trust us with this… delicate task.”
Delicate wasn’t the word Kelsey would’ve chosen.
From her expression, Olivia shared Kelsey’s doubts. “So we’re supposed to just coast right up, talk our way past a paranoid AI, and convince it to allow us to send a repair team on board? You make it sound so simple. What it if won’t let us in?”
Fielding spread his hands. “I suggest you be convincing, since we’ll all die if it either opens fire on us or simply refuses us access. Only it can decrypt the codes
we need to keep the plasma charges from destroying this ship and everyone on it.
“In any case, we are limited in the number of people that are cleared for this work. While either you or Lord Gust can lead the mission, my nephew and Lady Oldfield will be the only ones allowed to see the inner workings of the Lord at your sides.”
Kelsey blinked before she could stop herself. Jocelyn Oldfield, the woman she was pretending to be, might have been an adept engineer, but Kelsey wasn’t. Far from it.
Austin seemingly had the chops to do his part, but she’d be putting their lives at risk with her ignorance. Worse, she might do something that she wasn’t even aware of that set the AI off.
“Why me?” Kelsey asked slowly. “I don’t know the systems I’ll be looking at.”
The man shrugged. “It’s a small risk, but I have complete confidence in your exemplary technical ability. After all, as the woman who designed the containers for our deadly cargo, you’re undoubtedly a very savvy engineer. You’ll be fine.”
Kelsey put on a confident smile, but inside, she knew that they were screwed.
4
Talbot left Kelsey and Angela talking as he headed back to his makeshift office aboard Persephone. As fun as watching that fight had been, he still had an extraordinary amount of work on his plate. More specifically, he had a number of prisoners that needed dealing with.
He might as well start with the newest batch, he decided as he sat. He had his implants signal Commander Veronica Giguere.
“How can I help you, Colonel?” the former Rebel Empire Fleet officer asked once she’d answered.
“I think it’s time we have a conversation with your old friend. Would you bring Commander Sommerville to my office, please?”
“With pleasure. He’s been hounding me for details I can’t give him, and I have a few questions of my own about that ship of his and where he was taking it.”