The Alembic Plot: A Terran Empire novel

by Ann Wilson

  27a. At Harmony Lodge

  The next three weeks went by both too quickly and too slowly forCortin's taste. It took the Imperials only a couple of days to find aplague vaccine, but they were unable to find a cure; according to theirmedical people, it caused permanent physical changes. That was finewith Cortin. She'd put a lot of time and effort working for the socialchanges the plague had made necessary; she had no particular desire tohave that work wasted, and she wanted even less for her Family andherself to go back to their pre-plague selves.

  To Cortin's amusement, when Conley was introduced to the rest of theFamily she developed an almost instant crush on Tony Degas, the mostclassically handsome of the Family men. That, since Degas enjoyed theattention, kept them both busy while Cortin was working, and oftenafterward.

  There were only two untoward incidents during the three weeks beforeMedart's arrival. The first was the arrival of a prisoner forexecution, which wasn't at all unusual in itself--but the interrogationreport she got with him didn't feel right, and the prisoner had beenmuted, which, with the other, could mean someone didn't want herquestioning him. She didn't normally do that with executionsubjects--they'd been questioned and sentenced before coming toher--but she decided to delay executing this one until Medart arrived.Mike said the Empire had something called a mind-probe, and thought itlikely a battle cruiser would have one, unlike a scout; with that, sheshould be able to question the prisoner and get responsive answers.

  The other was an attack on half a dozen Imperials and two Strike Forcetroopers on the way back from town, by twice that many Brothers ofFreedom. There were casualties on both sides, but to Cortin'sunconcealed delight, no fatalities on either. She left interrogationof all but the leader to the Detention Center's staff of Inquisitors,since they were unlikely to be either knowledgeable or particularlydifficult to break. Even the leader wasn't too promising, given theBrotherhood's secretiveness, but Cortin took him anyway; theseImperials were her responsibility, and she wanted to personally punishthe one in charge of harming them.

  And she did get some useful information from him. The Brotherhood'sstill-anonymous new leader was no fonder of the Empire than she was,but instead of bowing to the inevitable and making the best of it, hevowed to destroy all he could. Killing Imperials was to take priorityeven over killing Strike Force members, including Cortin the Bitchherself. When Cortin passed that information along and it reached thepublic, the general attitude toward the Imperials became morefavorable; for most people, anything the Brotherhood wanted to destroymust have its good points.

  Return to main storyline: 29. Arrival