The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Incoming fire,” Roach snapped. Red icons blazed to life on the display. “Multiple missiles incoming; I say again, multiple missiles incoming!”

  “Launch decoys,” Kat snapped. In hyperspace, point defense would be dangerously unreliable. “Return fire!”

  Lightning shuddered as she unleashed a broadside, aimed right at the Theocratic vessel. Kat braced herself as the wave of incoming missiles altered course, some suckered away from her vessel by the decoys, others picked off neatly by the point defense. But two survived long enough to slam into her shields.

  “Energy disturbances registered,” Lieutenant Robertson reported. “Hyperspace has started to become dangerously unstable.”

  Kat winced. “Pull us away from the disturbances,” she ordered. On the display, the enemy ship had taken seven hits and was spinning out of control. “Raise the Theocratic ship. Order them to . . .”

  She broke off as the enemy craft exploded, ripped apart by the disturbances in hyperspace, her crew wiped out before they could hope to get to the lifepods. Kat felt a moment of true horror at what she’d done, then pulled herself back to reality. If their actions provoked a full-scale hyperspace storm, escape would become extremely difficult. Fortunately, hyperspace seemed calmer than she had any right to expect.

  “Target destroyed,” Roach said. “I’m not picking up more than a few fragments of wreckage.”

  “Understood,” Kat said.

  She shuddered. The war might have just begun . . . assuming, of course, the Theocracy figured out what had become of their vessel. It was quite possible they’d assume the destroyer was lost in hyperspace, particularly if the freighter they’d been chasing was desperate enough to ram them amidships.

  “Contact the freighter,” she ordered. “Inform them they are to hold position, stand down all weapons and shields, and prepare to be boarded.”

  The XO looked at her. “With permission, Captain, I should accompany the Marines,” he said. “One of us may have to make decisions in a hurry.”

  Kat hesitated. It was possible, although unlikely, that the Theocracy had been in the right. If so, their crew had fought and died for nothing. But it was far more likely they were dealing with political refugees or defectors. Either case would require some quick decisions.

  “Do so,” she ordered. “But be careful. This could all have been arranged to trick us into lowering our guard.”

  “They threw away a destroyer to do so,” the XO pointed out. “It doesn’t seem likely.”

  “We shall see,” Kat said. “Watch yourself.”

  She watched the XO leave the bridge, then turned to watch the display. The freighter seemed innocent, too innocent. Kat felt suspicions flickering through her mind as the marine shuttles launched, heading right towards the freighter. What was it carrying that was so important that an enemy commander had been prepared to risk almost certain death just to prevent the ship from falling into Commonwealth hands? Or was it meant to convince the Commonwealth that they’d captured something vital?

  All she could do was wait.

  Up close, it was alarmingly obvious that the freighter had been in a battle. Scorch marks covered its hull, revealing moments where the shields had failed and allowed directed energy weapons to caress the ship. Someone had bolted weapons and sensors—even shield generators—from several different eras to the hull, trying to give her some extra—and unexpected—punch. William was alarmingly impressed with whomever had done the work, even though it was far too sloppy to be tolerated on a Royal Navy starship. They’d somehow managed to get the different systems to work together.

  He pushed his admiration aside as the shuttle dropped towards the nearest airlock. According to the plans, they should be within a few meters of the bridge—much of the freighter was nothing more than cargo holds—but it was impossible to be sure. The freighter was old enough to have been refitted to be anything from a passenger liner to a garbage scow. A dull clunk echoed through the shuttle as she mated with the airlock, and then a hiss sounded as the hatch opened and air pressure matched.

  “Stay here,” Davidson said to the XO. The armored marines would take the lead. “Watch our backs.”

  William scowled as the marines stepped through the airlock, ready for anything. Cold logic suggested it wasn’t a trap, but he had to admit the captain’s paranoia was grounded in reality, particularly after hearing some of the tales from the refugees. The Theocracy hadn’t hesitated to call down strikes on their own positions just to kill insurgents and freedom fighters. If they thought it was important enough, they could have easily sacrificed a destroyer just to make sure the freighter was taken into custody.

  But if they intended the ship to serve as a Trojan Horse, he thought, it wouldn’t work. We’d never allow it anywhere near the fleet base without checking it thoroughly first, would we?

  “Commander,” Davidson said, “you might want to take a look at this.”

  William stepped through the hatch. Inside, the vessel was as dull and gray as any other freighter from the early expansion era, but it wasn’t the bulkheads that caught his attention. The men standing at one end of the chamber, their backs pressed against the gray metal, were cyborgs. Their bodies had been extensively modified in a manner he could only deem crude. Half of them had had their arms replaced by weapons, the other half had electric eyes or implants growing out of their heads. And they looked . . . oddly unconcerned.

  “They’re under orders to do nothing,” a soft voice said. “They will obey.”

  William turned to see a slim man wearing a white robe. There was something effeminate about his movements—and his face, come to think of it. If he hadn’t had an Adam’s apple, William would have wondered if he was a girl, pretending to be a man.

  “Obey?” Davidson repeated. “What have you done to them?”

  “They volunteered to be bodyguards,” the man said. “The doctors programmed them to be obedient.”

  William felt sick. It was easy to use implants for thought control, to direct someone along an approved route of thinking—or simply to puppet their body like something in a simulation. But it was banned, so completely that anyone who dared suggest using it risked being summarily sacked, while standard implants had built-in safeguards to prevent anyone from hacking them and turning the user into a slave. It wasn’t something he would have used on anyone, even a volunteer.

  He gathered himself. “How many people are there on this ship?”

  The young man hesitated. “Will you swear not to return us to the Believers?”

  William felt his eyes narrow. The Theocracy called its people the Believers, but hardly anyone else did. He’d thought he was dealing with refugees from a border world, yet the presence of the cyborgs argued otherwise. Something was deeply wrong. He drew on his experience and studied the young men, then pasted a reassuring expression on his face.

  “If you’re seeking political asylum,” he said, “the case will be heard at the nearest naval base. However, I can assure you that you will not be returned unless you are guilty of crimes under interstellar law. The ship may have to be returned; you can stay. But we need you to cooperate now.”

  The young man took a breath. “There are seventeen crew, nineteen bodyguards, and twelve passengers on this ship,” he said. “The passengers are important.”

  William gave Davidson a sharp look, then looked back at the young man. “There isn’t any more time for games,” he said. “I need you to answer the questions. Who are the passengers and why are they here?”

  The young man straightened upright. “They are the Princess Drusilla and her maidservants,” he said. “And they request that you protect them from their enemies.”

  Davidson could only gape. “Pardon?”

  “Search the ship thoroughly,” William ordered. He’d expected a defector ever since he’d seen the bodyguards, but he hadn’t anticipated a princess. Everything they knew about how the Theocracy treated women suggested they were neither seen nor heard. How
could one of their princesses have stolen a ship and escaped? “The captain will have to meet with the princess, in person.”

  “She cannot meet any unrelated male,” the young man said quickly. “She . . .”

  “Will have to get used to our customs if she wishes to stay,” William said. If the princess couldn’t meet an unrelated man, what about the man facing him? Or her cyborg bodyguards? But the cyborgs could probably be programmed to ignore her. “Now, if you don’t mind, we will search your ship.”

  Kat had grown up in a society where men and women were largely equal. A baseline woman might be physically weaker than a man, but an enhanced woman could be stronger than an unenhanced man, and technology had liberated them from the drudgery of life in the past. She had to admit she was curious about a woman from a very different society, particularly one who had managed to escape her family’s grasp. Kat could sympathize. But, at the same time, it was a major diplomatic headache.

  She felt a trickle of dislike as soon as Princess Drusilla was shown into her Ready Room by two female marines. The princess was slender with dark skin, darker eyes, and an air of helplessness only betrayed by the sharpness in her eyes. She was no fool, Kat knew, despite her air of fragile vulnerability. This was a woman skilled in manipulating others to get her way.

  Just like Candy, she thought, but Candy could have abandoned her manipulations at any point and lived her own life. She had a feeling Princess Drusilla would never have been able to live on her own. Nothing they’d heard from the refugees had suggested women had good lives in the Theocracy. It seemed to be more common for them to become nothing more than baby factories. Given the Theocracy’s expansion rate, Kat could well believe it.

  “I did not believe them when they told us a woman commanded this starship,” Princess Drusilla said. Even her voice was enchanting. Kat couldn’t help being affected, although she was well aware of the manipulation. By now, it was probably habit for the princess to manipulate those round her. “And you’re so young.”

  “Thank you,” Kat said, tartly. She swallowed her reaction as best as she could. “I just killed a destroyer to help you escape, Your Highness. Your mere presence is going to cause considerable problems for my government. I don’t have time for games.”

  The princess lowered her eyes. Kat wondered, absurdly, if she really thought a gesture of submission would help her case—or if she was thinking of Kat as a man in a woman’s body. The thought made her smile. Swapping sexes permanently wasn’t common, but anyone who felt they’d been born the wrong sex could have a proper sex change. She shrugged, dismissing the thought. Under the circumstances, it hardly mattered.

  “I need answers,” Kat said. She kept her voice under tight control. “Why did you come here?”

  “To escape,” the princess said. Her voice became urgent. “And to warn you. They’re already preparing to attack your worlds.”

  Kat studied Princess Drusilla carefully. She certainly sounded as though she was telling the truth, but . . . but it was hard to be sure. Growing up while considered to be an inferior being would have taught her how to lie and mask her reactions far more effectively than anything Kat had endured.

  “I think you’d better start from the beginning,” she said. “And don’t leave anything out.”

  The princess bowed her head, then began.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “My father is the Speaker,” the princess said. Even on a display screen, she was stunning. “I was his oldest daughter.”

  William frowned, studying her. The princess hadn’t been crude, but she had been alarmingly seductive. He wanted to make her happy, he wanted to protect her . . . and, even though he knew it was an act, he still found it hard to resist. Making a mental note to ensure she only dealt with female crew, he watched as the recording played out.

  “He wants to launch an attack against the Commonwealth while he’s still in office,” Princess Drusilla continued. “I believe he thinks such a proof of God’s favor will ensure his son can take up the role of Speaker after him. The attack fleets are already being positioned to take the offensive against your worlds.”

  “And why,” the captain’s recorded image said, “did you come to us?”

  William glanced at the captain. The way she sat suggested she was tense—and that she disliked the princess on sight. William wasn’t sure why, but he knew that women tended to pick up on subtle points men missed. Or maybe she just felt dowdy when compared to the princess.

  “My father promised me as a reward to the admiral who conquered the Commonwealth,” Princess Drusilla said. “I protested. He told me I would be . . . rewritten to suit the admiral’s tastes in women. It would kill me, destroy my personality. I planned an escape with the help of my bodyguards and made it off world. But then they gave chase.”

  The princess leaned forward, her every motion screaming earnestness. “I have copies of some of their plans,” she said. “You have to believe me. I won’t go back. I can’t.”

  William could well believe it. If the Theocracy took a dim view of backsliding among new converts, he dreaded to think what they would do to the daughter of their leader if she betrayed them. And she had betrayed them, unless it was an elaborate trick. But his years of service in the Royal Navy told him it was too elaborate to be a trick. They’d have to be damn near omnipotent to pull it off successfully.

  The captain tapped the table. “Doctor?”

  Doctor Braham leaned forward. “I have examined the princess and her handmaidens,” she said. “The princess is not baseline human—there’s some genetic engineering and reshaping in her DNA—but she isn’t outfitted with any implants, not even a basic neural link, apart from a simple tracking implant. I think it is comparable to a prisoner tracking implant from Tyre, although it doesn’t have a stunner included. Fortunately for Princess Drusilla, the implant was apparently disabled. I have since removed it.”

  “Good thinking,” the captain said.

  “Her handmaidens don’t have any implants either, but they have definitely undergone some conditioning,” Doctor Braham said. “They’re very . . . obedient. Princess Drusilla is apparently their mistress, but they will obey any orders as long as they don’t conflict with any from the princess. However, they may well have other orders in their minds that might be activated at any moment. We lack the deep-scan facilities to make sure of it.”

  William shivered. Conditioning—a form of brainwashing—could be used on almost anyone, unless they had implants to prevent it. The technology was the stuff of nightmares, he knew all too well; a loyal officer could be turned into a spy with only a few hours of enemy conditioning. Or worse. Someone could be turned into a slave if they encountered someone with bad intentions and no scruples. There were always lingering rumors about rings that specialized in conditioned slaves . . .

  “The conditioning wasn’t perfect,” Davidson said. “Not if they weren’t able to alert the security forces that the princess was planning an escape.”

  “Or they might not have known what was in the princess’s mind,” Doctor Braham said. “I think they’re also very ignorant, at least outside their specialized fields. One of them is clearly a doctor, charged with tending the princess, but she knew almost nothing about life on a starship.”

  She paused. “I can’t offer any guarantees,” she added. “I simply don’t have the equipment to be sure they don’t have additional commands buried within their minds. All we can do is keep them in stasis until we return to Cadiz.”

  William nodded. The crew of the Theocratic freighter had, much to their relief, already been moved into stasis and placed in storage. He had a feeling that none of them would want to go home, no matter how terrifying they found the idea of living among infidels. The Speaker would probably have them tortured to death for daring to assist in his daughter’s escape. And the bodyguards, after a brief set of scans, had joined them in stasis.

  “She claims she would have been brainwashed,” Davidson said. “Is that pl
ausible?”

  “The technology to create Stepford Wives—or Husbands—exists,” Doctor Braham said flatly. “It isn’t actually that difficult to remove a person’s ability to decide which orders to follow, or have their minds automatically interpret any instruction as an irresistible order. There have even been worlds where such techniques were used regularly, particularly on companions and servants of the local rulers. Would it be used in this case?”

  She sighed. “Princess Drusilla has no implants, nothing that would protect her mind,” she added. “It’s certainly possible that someone could use the technology on her.”

  “We already know what the Theocracy thinks of women,” the captain growled. “It might well seem an ideal solution for them.”

  William wondered, absently, if any of Tyre’s aristocracy had ever used such technology on their wives or children. It was certainly possible . . . and someone with the wealth and power of the captain’s father could have covered it up afterwards. But if it got out, it would utterly destroy the perpetrator’s family. They’d be lucky if they weren’t lynched in the streets by outraged citizens. No one took the idea of having his or her mind altered lightly.

  And if the princess tells her story back home, he thought, the public will be outraged.

  “We have a problem,” the captain said, tapping the table. “Is this a genuine defection or is this an elaborate trick?”

  She keyed a switch, activating the holographic display. One star glowed red. “If the princess is telling the truth,” she added, “the Theocracy’s attack fleet is gathering here, preparing to surge across the border and invade. But she doesn’t know when the attack is actually planned to start, which leaves us with a dilemma. Can we believe her?”

  William looked at Doctor Braham. “Can you confirm her identity?”

  “No,” Doctor Braham said, shortly. “We don’t have any DNA records from her family for comparison. However, I monitored her brainwaves while she was speaking to me and she certainly believes she’s telling the truth.”