Pax Imperia (The Redemption Trilogy)

by Mike Smith

  “What is going to happen to me next?” Harrison asked softly.

  “There will be a full investigation,” Jon replied tiredly. “It will have to be held in open view of the public. Too many people have died and justice will need to be seen to be done. Somebody needs to be held accountable for this. The people will demand it. Witnesses will need to be called; your crew, your officers, your Commanding Officer Admiral Sterling—” Jon noticed the Captain stiffen at his name, but continued on unrelentingly. “—And your family.”

  This caused an immediate reaction, as the Captain suddenly looked up, the horror etched clearly on his face. “My family?” he repeated. “This has nothing to do with them. I have already told you that I acted alone. Keep them out of this.”

  Jon stared at Harrison, unsurprised at the outburst, before continuing on thoughtfully. “Of course, at the moment there is not much of a judiciary left to hold such a trial, so perhaps I will just dispense with that. I will simply announce that you have confessed to your crimes and have denounced all your fellow co-conspirators.”

  If Harrison looked horrified before, this declaration almost sent him into shock. “I have already told you, repeatedly, that nobody else was involved, that I acted alone.”

  Jon simply shrugged his shoulders, with an unconcerned expression. “Then you will have no problem with me announcing that. After all, seeing that you acted alone, there is nobody else to be concerned that you implicated them.”

  Harrison, meanwhile, turned such a shade of grey that for a moment Jon was concerned he was going to collapse. “You cannot do that. Please,” Harrison begged of him. His earlier quiet, demeanour now totally stripped away. “I beg of you, please, do not do that.”

  “Why shouldn’t I, Captain? Give me one reason why I should not announce to the entire Confederation how you confessed to all, and identified all those involved?”

  Harrison seemed to stop breathing completely, closing his eyes, bowing his head. “My family,” he whispered. “They will hurt my family.”

  Jon heard the pain in the man’s voice and took no pleasure in knowing that his earlier guess had been correct. The one thing, the only thing that the Captain valued above all else was his family. Jon took his seat once again, observing the ruined man sitting across the desk from him, before inquiring compassionately. “Who has your family, Captain?”

  “I don’t know,” he uttered. “I received a call from the kidnappers, but it was heavily encrypted and untraceable. They didn’t identify themselves, just claimed to have my wife and daughter and that they would kill them if I did not do exactly what they said.”

  “How did you know that their threat was real? That they even had your family?”

  Harrison finally looked up from his lap, looking Jon straight in the eye, as he replied in a dead voice, “They forced me to watch while several of them took turns raping my wife. They told me that if I didn’t watch, if I looked aside even for just one moment, that they would kill her.”

  It was Jon who looked away this time, not able to stomach the expression on the other man’s face, the total helplessness and despair that he saw. He could not block out the Captain’s words, which continued on, relentlessly.

  “After they had finished, they told me what I had to do. They warned me that if I told anybody, or did not carry out their orders to the letter they would do the same to my daughter. By the Maker, she is only seven years old. I couldn’t. I had no choice, I had to—”

  Whatever else he was going to say was lost to the sound of sobbing as he broke down completely. Jon could not look at him, instead thinking about the options available to him. He realised there were very few. He had not been lying when he said that justice needed to be done, or at least seen to be carried out. The Captain’s actions, no matter the reason behind them, could not go unpunished. Somebody would have to pay the ultimate price. “There will be no public trial,” Jon uttered quietly, causing the man opposite him to fall silent. “No witness will be called and I will be making no announcement regarding any co-conspirators, or anything else that you have confided in me. In return I promise you that every effort will be made to secure the safe release of your family,” he stated, taking a deep breath.

  “But, a price must be paid for this. Too many people have died, too many lost their lives as a result of your actions. Therefore a sacrifice must be offered up to appease them.” Jon insisted emotionlessly. “I can give you five minutes alone with your family.” He leaned forward to activate the holo-projection. Staring at the image for a moment longer, Jon rose from his seat, adding gently. “They are both very beautiful.” With a final meaningful glance at the pistol still resting on the desk, Jon took a few steps towards the exit, but stopped before the doors sensed his arrival.

  He remembered the closure that he felt in his dream, as he exchanged those last few words with this family. He felt this man deserved something similar. Therefore, keeping his back towards him, so he could not see the lie in his eyes, Jon stated. “Your father-in-law, Admiral Sterling, asked me to give you a final message. He told me to tell you that he loves you very much and is proud of you. Nothing that you have done, that you could do, would ever change that.” With those final words he stepped from the room, the doors sliding shut behind him.

  Jon was unsurprised to see the Sergeant-at-arms waiting impatiently just outside the entrance. He looked up in surprise at Jon’s exit. Stopping for a moment to exchange a few words with the marine, he continued on his way after the marine nodded in understanding at his instructions.

  Jon’s stride only broke momentarily when, just before he reached the end of the corridor, the crack from the single gunshot echoed down the hall.

  He promised himself that he would find the people who hid in the dark and had been the cause of all this pain and misery. Jon knew perfectly well that such monsters existed, and that is why he always carried his sword at his side, to slay such vile creatures wherever he found them.

  Chapter Six

  The Protector, Flagship of the Confederation 12th Fleet

  As Jon stepped out onto the bridge of the Protector, everyone fell silent. All conversation ceased, as all eyes turned to face him. Based on their reaction, he assumed Admiral Sterling had already forewarned the senior officers about the change in command. Therefore, without offering any explanation for his presence on the bridge, Jon approached both the Captain and the Admiral as they rose quickly to their feet.

  With all eyes still firmly affixed upon him and, without having uttered a word, Jon calmly took the seat that had been vacated by the Admiral only moments before. He could hear the indrawn breath at his impetuous actions, as Jon had not even glanced at the Admiral. It was an obvious sign to all that he was now in charge of the ship and the fleet.

  “Captain?” Jon left the question hanging in the air, glancing at the man standing next to Admiral Sterling.

  “Morden, sir. Uh Commander, sorry, I mean Emperor, sir,” Morden stuttered, unsure of how to correctly address the man.

  “I have always simply preferred Commander,” Jon replied calmly, not paying any attention to the hesitant answer, instead continuing on, “I need you to open a communication channel.”

  “A channel?” Morden replied hesitantly, exchanging a glance with his Communication Officer. “A communication channel with whom? Commander,” he quickly added.

  Only then did Jon push the dark hood of his cloak back slightly, so he could look the man in the eye. “Why, a channel to everybody Captain. You are to take command of the Tachyon communication relay network. You will broadcast my message to everybody, every man, woman and child in the Confederation. They will all need to hear what I have to say.”

  Captain Morden could only gape in surprise.

  The discovery of the Tachyon particle was an unexpected result of the in-depth research conducted into quantum mechanics via massive particle accelerators, late in the twenty-first century. The concept of quantum entanglement had long been recognised. Namely t
hat when two particles became entangled at the quantum level, when separated—even by great distances—the two particles would always share the same value or direction of spin. Later research in this area discovered that this unique property continued even when they were separated by huge distances, as if they were connected by some unknown bond. What was even more incredible was that this bond seemed to travel faster than the speed of light. After much research, it was ultimately discovered that Tachyon particles were the cause of this phenomenon, although it was later discovered that they did not travel faster than light but passed through quantum wormholes, literally gaps in space-time. This allowed them to move between any two points in the universe, almost instantaneously. This phenomenon became the founding principle for faster-than-light (FTL) travel, although it took a further three decades for that theory to become reality.

  The theory of quantum entanglement was soon put to good practical use in communications. With humanity spreading throughout the Sol System, this discovery immediately overcame the limit imposed by the speed-of-light on real time communication throughout the Sol System.

  Massive tachyon relays were built around every planet and many life-supporting planets in adjacent systems. These worked on a packet based delivery system, for if a relay did not know the destination for a particular communication packet, it could pass this on to a subsequent relay to route the message. The system was a proven one, having been perfected over a century before via the development of the Internet. Within a decade all other forms of communications had become redundant, as they were replaced by the now ubiquitous Tachyon relay system.

  While widely known as a universal communication and message relaying system, the Tachyon relay had another mode of operation, known to very few. The original designers of the system had envisaged that one day there would be a need for an emergency broadcast system—the ultimate loudhailer. It would be able to reach every single person via any device with a receiving function that was connected to the system, and could be done instantaneously.

  There was only one override ‘code’ for this system and it was built into the very hardware, the nano-circuitry, which comprised these relays. It was impossible to find or modify, and there was only one person who knew the code.

  Unfortunately he had been brutally murdered only days before.

  However, while some father-in-laws gave their sons furniture as a wedding gift Jon had been given the ultimate set of override codes. These would open every door in the fleet, ensuring no ship would ever deny him access and all computerised control systems would immediately respond to his call.

  As he entered the complex set of codes into the closest Tachyon relay, it suddenly fell silent, no longer processing the usual packets of messages. It was ready to transmit only one message, for its new master. The Tachyon relay around Eden Prime, one of a dozen master relays, instantly notified those relays connected to it to stop processing and await further instructions. This call was repeated and spread out across the entire Confederation, until every relay fell silent. For the first time since the invention of modern communication systems, humanity fell silent, waiting for the message Jon was about to deliver.

  At a nod from the Communications Officer, Captain Morden turned back to Jon, confirming that he could proceed.

  Jon took a deep breath, wondering what he was going to say, but, after a sudden flash of insight, he understood exactly what needed to be said.

  “Citizens of the Confederation, I have an important announcement that I need to pass on to you and would ask for your attention, for just a short while. Many of you will not know me; my name is Commander Jonathan Radec. For over a decade I served in the Imperial Navy, for almost half that time as Commander of the Praetorian Guard. During that time my duty was to protect the Emperor and the Imperial family, to keep them safe and protect them from harm.

  “Yesterday, I failed in that duty.

  “Sadly I have to inform you that following a shocking, unprovoked attack on Eden Prime, at the very heart of our Confederation, the Senate has been destroyed and many thousands of people have been killed.

  “It is not just the Emperor, my master, that I grieve for as I stand before you today. For he was also a man I called “Father”, and his daughter, my wife, also died in this attack. But I do not grieve alone, for today, on many planets throughout the Confederation, there are families that have lost loved ones. For the first time in over five hundred years we are all united, in grief. Children who no longer have a mother, or a father. Parents who have lost a son or a daughter.

  “History is full of such tragedies. It teaches us that we must accept those things that we cannot change, to move on and continue with our destiny. Those who have died just become footnotes in the story of the rest of our lives.”

  Jon paused for a moment, tears blurring his eyesight, as he tried to imagine ever being able to contemplate such a thing. He could not. Marcus and Sofia were more than just his family. They had taken him in when he had nowhere else to go and they had given him a home, a purpose in life. Without even realising it, Sofia had stolen his heart. His very life was intimately bound to her and the thought of moving on was unimaginable.

  “I cannot and will not do that.” Jon stated in a tone of such finality that not one person listening to the broadcast doubted his words. “I will not let these events go unanswered and become just another episode in history. Instead it will become a turning point, a watershed in history that people remember for the rest of their lives and pass on to their children. This will become a moment when we, who have all lost so much, stand up and say, “No more.” For those who instigated this horrific attack on us think that a government is an institution, a bureaucracy that can be attacked, that can be easily swept aside and replaced. What they do not comprehend is that buildings, rules and laws are just symbols and can be easily changed. What cannot be so easily replaced are the ideals that lie behind these; hope, freedom, and liberty. These are the principles under which we all live and they cannot be destroyed, as they live inside each and every one of us. However, they are not an automatic right and we need to fight for them, protect and cherish them. My father-in-law understood this, as did my wife, and they spent every day of their lives struggling for these basic rights for all and they died believing in them.

  “I will not allow their deaths to be meaningless. Therefore I swear an oath now, before you all, on their very lives, that I will continue their struggle in memory of them. I will fight for their beliefs and ideals, to make sure they are never lost nor forgotten. The people behind this attack want confusion and instability. They desire death and destruction. They want a war. Why? Because all this fosters fear, which can be a person’s greatest strength or their ultimate weakness. It can be used to twist people and make them say things they will never otherwise contemplate, believe things that otherwise they would never believe. For over five-hundred years the Imperium has stood as the last bastion against fear. Its founding reason was to end the war that had wrecked so many lives and thereby protect the weak against those in power who would exploit them. It is a stronghold that has stood the test of time and stands for stability, safety and protection. Yet, this very day, it faces its most difficult test, as it is under siege from those who would try and destroy it. Today we are at war against all those who wish to tear down what we stand for.

  “In a time of war we need a leader who will stand above the rest and take charge, whilst making the required difficult decisions. Needless to say, I have no desire or wish for such a role, but others have thrust it upon me and I recognise that if I do not accept it, then confusion and instability will soon follow. Those who strike out at us will win and I cannot allow that to happen. It would destroy everything that my wife’s family has spent five generations establishing. Therefore, a few hours ago, I took the mantle of Emperor and secured full control of the Confederation Navy. Until such time as the Senate can be safely re-elected and reconvene, I am suspending the constitution of the Confederatio
n and declaring full martial law throughout the Imperium. The powers of the office of the President and the Senate will now revert back to the Emperor. Planetary control will pass to civilian governors who will remain in control of civil law enforcement and the judiciary. All other arms of the military will, as of now, come under the combined authority of the Imperial/Confederation Navy, under my personal command. I will mould these into a blade, a sword that will smite the stars themselves. The final part of my message, is a warning: To those of you who conceived, plotted and carried out this cowardly, despicable act. I give you due notice that you have made a terrible mistake, as you should have killed me when you had the chance. Instead you have taken from me everything that I once held precious in my life. I now have nothing, no other aim or purpose left, except one.

  “Revenge.

  “Understand this clearly, I Jonathan Radec, the last Emperor of the Imperium, will hunt you down. It matters to me little how long it takes, for I have the rest of my life to find you. Run, hide or fight, I care not, but understand this—there is nowhere that you can go, no place to hide where you can escape my wrath. When I do find you, I will make you comprehend the pain and agony that you have inflicted this day on so many others. Before you die, you will feel their pain, as I will inflict it personally upon you. This I swear to you on the lives of my dead family and all the others that you have killed. Tremble, for I am coming.”

  At a nod from Jon, the Communication Officer closed the channel, leaving a void of sound on the bridge. It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room, and nobody could speak or even dare to breathe.

  Standing, Jon looked each and every officer on the bridge straight in the eyes. He held each person’s gaze, only for a moment, but it was as if he was looking inside each of them and inspecting their soul. More than one officer shuddered after his gaze had moved on. “Admiral Sterling,” Jon whispered softly, but his words carried easily across the stillness of the bridge. “I will leave you and your crew to carry on with your duty. You have your orders. If you need to contact me I will be on the Relentless, Admiral Romanov’s flagship.”