by Mike Smith
“He looks nothing like him,” he exploded. “The boy has blond hair and blue eyes.”
“Men,” Carol sighed rolling her eyes. “Always taking everything at face value, never looking deeper. Yes, Marcus has blond hair and blue eyes, just like Jon’s father. Paul also told me that Sofia’s mother had blue eyes, as did her father. Seems like it runs in the family. Furthermore I have spent the past few months with the family. It’s the little things, the way that he looks at you with his serious expression, the way his lips curl up when he finds something funny. The misery in his eyes when he thinks nobody else is looking. He is his father’s son.”
“And Jon’s parents know this, and didn’t say anything?” David asked incredulously.
“I’m sure that they must have their reasons,” she replied evasively.
David simply sighed, resting his head against the cool bulkhead. Perhaps if he hit it hard enough it would solve all his problems. “What can I do?” he asked despairingly. “I either hand the three of them over, or I condemn us all to certain death, including you and your family,” he reminded her.
“That is not my decision to make,” she insisted. “But consider this advice that I give my children. You never give into bullies. Why? Because if you give into them once, they will own you forever. If Malthus doesn’t get what he wants this time, what is to stop him coming back and demanding more? Who will it be next, my children? For it had better not be, as he will take them over my dead body.”
*****
“What did they say, sir?” Chris inquired as soon as David had slumped back into the command chair.
“They volunteered to go,” David replied miserably. “They even thanked us for our hospitality.”
“They are good people, sir,” Chris replied carefully. “I can see where the Commander gets his strong moral values from.”
“It’s worse than that,” David continued on. “Turns out the boy, Marcus, is actually the Commander’s son.”
“Does the Commander know?”
“I don’t think so, he never mentioned it.”
“What are you going to do, sir?” Chris added worriedly.
“Bloody hell, I don’t know. It’s times like this that I ask myself, what would the Commander do?”
“Uh, so what would the Commander do?”
“Probably demand their immediate surrender, before inventing some incredibly crazy plan that would never work, miraculously pull it off, and thereby snap victory from the jaws of defeat.”
“So we’re going to give that a try, sir?” Chris grinned manically. “As I must inform you I don’t have any plans, crazy or otherwise, that will work.”
“Me neither,” David sighed gloomily. “Guess that means we’ll have to go with the original plan.”
“Incoming transmission from the enemy fleet, sir. Looks like our twenty minutes are up.”
“Put the Senator on.”
“Lieutenant McNeill, I trust that you have had sufficient time to talk to the family?” Malthus smiled confidently. A cat that had trapped the mouse by the tail and was now just playing with it.
“Ryan and Irene Radec confirmed that they’d depart with you. They don’t want to risk any other lives.”
“And the boy?” Malthus interjected sharply.
“He will also be accompanying them,” David reluctantly agreed.
“Excellent, I will send a shuttle to pick them—”
“Just one minute Senator,” David interrupted him. “While they might have agreed, I have done nothing of the sort. I take distinct exception to your threats. Additionally, I have absolutely no confidence that you will offer them safe passage. Quite the opposite, as I desperately fear for their safety. I fully expect you to threaten them, to use them for the purposes of blackmail, most likely torture them and then simply murder them if it happens to suit your purpose. I am the Head of Security for this station; it is my job to protect its occupants, all of them, and to keep them safe—from people just like you. I would consider myself an extremely poor Head of Security if I were simply to hand them over to you. Therefore I give you fair warning. This station is heavily armed and I fully plan on using every weapon in its arsenal to keep it, and its occupants, safe. That is my responsibility and one I plan to carry out to the best of my ability. So come and get them if you want them. I’ll personally kill the first one of you that steps onto my station.”
Malthus blinked in surprise, his confident expression slipping slightly. “You would risk the lives of every man, woman and child on this station for just the three of them?” he asked incredulously.
“I know I speak for everybody on this station when I say that if you want one of us, you will have to take all of us. We won’t give them up.”
Malthus was silent for a few moments, as if digesting this surprising piece of news, before nodding thoughtfully. “Very well. I can respect that, even if I cannot comprehend the logic.” He shrugged. “I was fully planning on killing you all anyway, as a warning to Radec. I was just planning on being more courteous about it.”
With that the view-screen went blank.
“Now you can sound General Quarters, Lieutenant Patterson,” David confirmed with satisfaction. “Power up all the station’s weapon systems. We’ll just take as many of the bastards with us as we can.”
“That’s your plan?” Chris demanded incredulously.
“Sure,” David shrugged. “I always think the Commander overcomplicates his.”
As the sound of the General Quarters alarms started to vibrate around the station, heavily armoured plating around the hull started to retract to reveal rows of heavy railguns, missile batteries and multiple pulse cannon emplacements, the turrets swinging around to target the advancing enemy warships.
*****
Sofia didn’t think she would ever recover from the trauma.
First the knowledge that Jon knew about their son, or at least that she had a son, for he had somehow leapt to the mistaken conclusion that he wasn’t the father. If that wasn’t bad enough, she would forever be scarred with the mental image of Jon and Miranda, passionately kissing, as she had just observed them.
Surprisingly, instead of the utter despair she expected to feel, all she felt was an all-encompassing fury, first at her husband for his lack of faith in her and then for Miranda for all her lies. As the younger woman had, little more than a year previously, sworn to her that she and Jon never had the kind of relationship she had just so visibly observed.
While there was little that she could do about Jon at the moment, Miranda was a different matter entirely. A reckoning was long overdue, and now seemed like the ideal time to put her in her place, and remind Miranda it was her husband she had just been kissing, the father of her child, and that she would fight to keep him.
“Are you okay?” a concerned voice inquired behind her, reminding Sofia that she wasn’t alone.
“I’m fine thank you,” she assured Robert. “It was just the shock that was all.”
“You have a son, truly?” he sounded surprised.
“Yes, I do,” she replied resignedly, but it was not to this man that she owed an explanation. “Thank you for helping me, but I now have to leave. I hope that you realise that you were mistaken about Jon. He’s a good man, he’s just trying to do the best that he can in difficult circumstances.”
Robert seemed unsure, especially considering Jon’s most recent outburst, but finally nodded his head in acquiesce. “Thank you for protecting me, again.” He smiled self-depreciatingly. “I will repay you one day, that I promise.”
Nodding her head in thanks, Sofia stalked off to find Miranda. She did not have to go far. As she found the younger woman gazing longing in the direction that Jon had just departed, not noticing her own approach.
“We need to talk. Now,” Sofia snapped, eyes blazing. It felt good to be able to finally take control of her own destiny. For too long she had felt powerless, under lock and key. First she would deal with this harlot, then go and find
her husband and make him listen, even if she had to do it at gunpoint.
Miranda looked up at Sofia, eyes widening in surprise, with more than a hint of alarm. “It’s not what you think—”
“What I think,” Sofia snapped, interrupting her. “Is that we need to find someplace private to talk, unless you wish to have an audience while you explain why you are screwing with my husband.”
Cheeks glowing red with humiliation, and noticing Robert scrutinising the pair of them, Miranda ducked her head through the nearest door and, finding the room empty, she stepped inside, Sofia following close behind.
The door slid shut, locking firmly behind them.
As Miranda turned around, Sofia took a step forward, raising her hand to slap her hard across the cheek. The resounding crack echoed through the darkened room, the only light coming from the pair of moons, drifting through the windows that overlooked the dark, landscaped gardens of the imposing residence.
The two women angrily faced off against each other, Sofia’s hand caught in a firm grasp by Miranda, neither of them prepared to back down. “You don’t lay a hand on me,” Miranda threatened. “I swore to myself that after I started my new life on Terra Nova, that I would never let anybody hurt me, again. Not ever.”
Sofia snatched her hand back as if it had suddenly been scolded, shocked by Miranda’s words.
“You find that surprising?” Miranda continued on with an angry stare. “I didn’t have the fortune to grow up on an Imperial Flagship, surrounded by my family, and an army to protect me. I had to learn to protect myself, although it took many years and many painfully hard-fought lessons. It’s sad, isn’t it, that for twenty-five years I thought a relationship involved me having to protect myself from men, who thought nothing of just taking what they wanted from me.”
“Until you met Jon,” Sofia assumed, averting her gaze, remembering that not everybody had such a sheltered upbringing as her.
Miranda nodded. “For the longest time I just couldn’t understand my feelings for him. He never seemed to demand anything from me, but constantly pushed me to do better, achieve greater things. By the time that I realised that I was falling in love with him, it was already too late.”
“Because of me.”
“Yes, because of you,” Miranda agreed. “I couldn’t understand why you ever let him go. If Jon loved me I would hold onto him with everything that I had. The first time he kissed me, it rocked me to my very core, but it was only later I realised he had really imagined it was you. Ever since that day I have constantly been comparing myself to you, but I could never compete. He loves you utterly, and yet all you seem to do is to repeatedly hurt him.”
“That’s not true,” Sofia cried. “I loved him for many years, but there was always something that kept us apart. I was an Imperial Princess. You cannot imagine what it was like, seeing him every day, falling in love with him, but knowing that one day I would marry another. Then after my world fell apart, and all I had left was him, just like today, I found him kissing another, caught in a passionate embrace.” Sofia sighed resignedly. “History can be painful, and Jon and I have too much of it. Too many secrets, too many lies.”
“Like having another man’s baby, you mean?” Miranda stepped closer in a belligerent tone, for if Jon would not be angry with Sofia, she would, on his behalf.
“It’s Jon’s,” Sofia uttered desolately. “I never told him.”
Miranda’s eyes opened wide in shock, before she shook her head in disbelief. “That’s even worse, you know. You let him leave thinking that there was another. You never even tried to stop him and explain. Your silence condemns you.”
“Do you love him?” Sofia demanded instead, knowing that what Miranda said was true. She should have told him the truth, long ago.
“Yes, but he doesn’t love me. He never has,” she was quick to add. “Even when he thought that you were dead, and promised us a future together, I knew that he still loved you. While I might have had his body, I would never have all of him—not his heart and soul, because they always belonged to you. I hated you in that instant, as even in death I could never compete against you.”
For the first time since she had laid eyes on Jon and Miranda in that corridor, she felt a spark of hope blossom within her chest. For if Jon still loved her—she could still fix this. She just had to find him, and explain.
“I’m sorry,” Sofia uttered sincerely, hesitantly touching Miranda on the shoulder. “I know how you feel. That evening on Eden Prime, when I found Jon with another woman, I wanted to kill her—and him. Instead I decided to hurt him, just like he had hurt me. I finally ended up in Paul’s arms that night.”
Miranda looked at her in astonishment. “Paul?” she exclaimed. “You and Paul Harrington?”
“Sure, why not?” Sofia shrugged. “He was the first person that came to mind, and even back then was very handsome. Anyway I knew that it would hurt Jon the most. Turns out that Paul is one deadly kisser.”
“I cannot believe it. You and Paul,” Miranda laughed. “I would never have guessed, but I doubt that he is as good as Patrick, not that he kissed me back much. I think he was too shocked at the time.”
“So how do they compare to Robert?” Sofia giggled.
“You didn’t?” Miranda gasped.
“Nope,” Sofia smirked. “But I always shamelessly encouraged him, it used to drive Jon crazy.”
A blazing light outside turned both of their heads, as a solitary flaming light suddenly shattered the darkness, far up in the night sky. A shooting star, first one, then another, and then the entire sky erupted into a thousand trailing fireballs. The sight was awe-inspiring, enthralling both women who observed the scene in wordless silence.
“It’s the debris from the orbiting defence stations,” Miranda suddenly realised. “They must only now be entering into the upper atmosphere.”
“What happened to them?”
“You didn’t hear?” Miranda asked, surprised, before recounting the brief and very one-sided conflict.
“I hope nobody was hurt?” Sofia replied, horrified that somebody could have been hurt or worse, fighting over her.
“No,” Miranda reassured her. “They were all automated, but I dread to think of the cost of replacing them. It’s certainly the most expensive fireworks display in history.”
As the two women continued to observe the wondrous scene outside, separated by only a few feet, but from backgrounds light-years apart, they both realised that perhaps they were not that much different after all.
“I need to go track down my wayward husband,” Sofia broke the stillness of the moment, as the wondrous display finally drew to a close. “I think it’s time for me to correct some misconceptions that he has. However, I seem to find myself lacking a ship—and pilot. I understand that you have both?”
“We can depart whenever you are ready.”
“Thank you,” Sofia said, putting an arm around the other woman. “We can compare notes on the way, to determine who is the best kisser. If nothing else I can use it to shamelessly tease Jon about, when I finally corner him.”
*****
Unfortunately before she could correct her husband’s misconceptions she had to find him—and he was being particularly elusive. Having finally tracked him down to the Relentless, and after finally convincing them to allow her to dock, with suitable threats, she now faced her next obstacle—
The two obstinate marines guarding her husband’s personal quarters.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” the first Marine insisted firmly. “Lord Radec left clear instructions that he was not to be interrupted, by anybody.”
The second just stared at her contemptuously, as if he thought that would intimidate her. She had faced her father’s wrath on a daily basis, and his gaze could turn the stomach of the strongest Fleet Admiral or Senator. She was hardly impressed.
“Do you know who I am?” she demanded.
“Yes, ma’am,” the first marine replied, rolling his eyes.
“Then you know that as the Confederation President, I am technically your Commander-in-Chief and I’m ordering you to get out of my way.”
“I’m sorry ma’am,” the first Marine insisted, resolutely. “Lord Radec was quite specific that nobody enters.”
The second simply scoffed at her.
Unfortunately, as neither knew her well, they were not aware that this simple refusal wasn’t going to doing anything but incense her further. Therefore they were not prepared when, with an especially evil glint in her eye, she leaned forward, and in a particularly saccharine voice reminded them. “But I’m not just anybody. I’m Lord Radec’s consort, and right now you are standing directly between him, our bed, and me. And I am feeling distinctly turned-on by all this testosterone on display. So do you want to be the one that tells him that you turned me away?”
At this pronouncement both marines’ jaws hit the floor simultaneously.
“I didn’t think so,” Sofia smirked, pushing past them. “Oh, by the way, just so you know, Lord Radec is an absolute beast in bed, he’s simple insatiable. We will probably be going at it all night, and most definitely don’t want to be disturbed.” At this she turned to glance at the second marine, who had been glaring at her, letting her gaze linger on his groin. “As for you, I saw you checking me out earlier. I can in all honesty say that you are most definitely not packing. Stick to your other sidearm for shooting things with sailor.” She shot him an impish grin, before disappearing through the doors to Jon’s apartment.
Leaving one highly amused and one extremely red-faced marine guarding the entrance, both counting down to the end of their shift.
Both painfully hard.
*****
Miranda looked up in surprise, as Sofia stepped out onto the bridge. “That was quick,” she congratulated her. “I thought that Jon would have been more obstinate, and you would’ve to hit him over the head with the truth, repeatedly.”
“He’s gone,” Sofia replied despairingly.
“Gone? Gone where?”
“He’s not in his quarters, and I checked with the computer. His last call was to his ship in preparation for departure.”