A Show of Force

by Ryk Brown

  She was standing partly in the shadows, yet bathed in sufficient light as to showcase her exquisite form. She was not too young… maybe early to mid-twenties, and she appeared quite fit, with long, dark hair that cascaded across her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of black shorts that had been cut incredibly short, and a black T-shirt that had been cut away so high that he could almost make out the underside of her breasts.

  His first thought was to circle around at least once or twice to make sure she was not just some young lady innocently waiting for a friend. That had happened to him on more than one occasion, and such misunderstandings were never pleasant. However, something made him stop…and stare. Perhaps it was disbelief, or perhaps he really was just a lecherous old man. More likely, he did not want to run the risk that someone else would initiate a transaction with this lovely young woman while he was driving around the block, racked with indecision.

  “Hi, there,” the young lady said in Jung.

  The old man found her accent odd, but her smile warm and inviting. “Good evening,” he responded in the same language.

  “Are you looking for some company?” the young woman asked, her smile even more beckoning than before.

  “An interesting idea,” the old man replied, in as non-committal a fashion as possible. “Perhaps we can discuss it further?” He reached over and opened the passenger door on his vehicle. “Interested?”

  The young woman bent over at the waist, peering into the old man’s car, searching the interior with her eyes. She smiled again. “Why not?” she answered.

  The old man found her response odd. She sat down in the passenger seat and closed her door. “To the corner and around, two blocks. Hotel Barto, on right.”

  The old man pulled away from the curb and turned the corner as instructed. “My name is Glaudar.”

  “Lylah,” the young lady answered. “Nice to meet you, Glaudar.”

  “I have not seen you out here before,” Glaudar said.

  “I am new to the area,” Lylah explained. “I have been here but to only days of a few.”

  Glaudar looked at her with some suspicion. “No offense,” he said, switching to Cetian, “but your Jung is horrible.”

  Lylah looked relieved. “Some of the other girls told me to always start off in Jung, but I don’t have much experience in the language.”

  Even in Cetian, her syntax was odd. “You are not from Cetia, are you?” Glaudar wondered.

  “No, I am from a village in the hills,” Lylah explained. “Here,” she added, pointing at the hotel.

  Glaudar pulled his car into the lot and parked. He looked around outside as the young lady opened her door and exited his vehicle. She walked around the front, then stopped to look at him.

  “You are coming?” she asked with that same curious smile.

  The old man smiled and opened his door. He half expected to be attacked by the young woman’s accomplices, she was that much more attractive than the other providers he usually hired. However, there was no one else about.

  He stepped out of his vehicle and followed Lylah from a distance, admiring her assets from behind. He waited at a distance as she went to the window and passed a credit chip to the man on the other side, receiving a room key card in return. She turned back toward him, waving the key card in the air in seductive fashion, signaling Glaudar to follow her.

  Glaudar followed Lylah through the lobby and up the stairs. This hotel was no different than any of the others in which he had conducted transactions. Always dimly lit, and always in dire need of a substantial cleaning.

  Lylah passed the key card over the door lock. The lock clicked and opened slightly, allowing her to push the door inward and step inside the room. She passed her hand over the light controls on the wall as she entered the room. The lights came up to a warm, romantic glow. The young woman might be new to the area, but she was not new to her trade, of that Glaudar was certain.

  Glaudar entered the room somewhat tentatively, looking about suspiciously, still finding his good fortune hard to believe. However, here he was, alone in a seedy hotel room, with a beautiful young woman with whom he was about to become intimate.

  “Please to be comfortable,” Lylah said in her odd, lyrical style of Cetian.

  Glaudar sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on Lylah. “How much is this going to cost me?” he wondered.

  “How much have you?”

  Glaudar smiled. “More than enough.”

  Lylah smiled seductively. “Five hundred credits,” she told him confidently.

  “Five?” Glaudar smiled again, this time with one eyebrow rising. “I have never paid more than three.”

  “Then you have been the buyer of inferior products,” she replied.

  “How do I know that you will be worth so much?”

  Lylah smiled, licked her lips, then pulled her top up over her head, revealing her naked breasts and tossing her skimpy blouse aside on the floor.

  Glaudar suddenly forgot about his time constraints, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a five-hundred credit chip. “There is more available, if warranted,” he told her, barely able to hide his eagerness.

  Lylah took the credit chip from Glaudar and put it into the pocket of her shorts. “That was a mistake,” she told him in yet another language.

  Glaudar looked confused. She was now speaking a language that no one had spoken on Kohara for as long as he could remember.

  “Hand it over,” she told him as she picked up her top and put it back on. She looked at him, noticing that he was not moving. “Your credits, dumbass. Give them to me.”

  “I meant them as an incentive,” he explained, “so that you would…”

  “I know what you meant, pops,” Lylah interrupted.

  “Then…” Glaudar’s eyes suddenly widened.

  “That’s right, fella, I’m stealing your credits… all of them.”

  Glaudar looked at her. She had an unusual expression on her face. She no longer looked sexy and seductive. Instead, she now carried a far more determined look, a certain toughness that was wholly unfamiliar to him.

  “And if I do not?”

  Lylah shook her head in disbelief. “Then I beat the shit out of you and take it anyway.”

  Glaudar took offense. “I may be an old man, but I am more than twice your size…”

  “Just shut up and hand it over,” she insisted.

  Glaudar immediately jumped to his feet, swinging at her with his closed right fist. She stepped backward, her left hand reaching up and blocking the old man’s swing. Her right hand punched him hard in the gut, then she knuckle-punched him in the throat. Glaudar fell backward onto the bed, gasping for air and clutching at his throat, a panicked look in his eyes.

  Lylah moved around the bed and sat down beside the old man as he wheezed with each labored inhalation. “I warned you,” she told him as she reached into his pocket and removed all of his remaining credits. She rolled him over slightly and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. She pulled out his ID and placed it on the bed next to the credit chips. She looked at him again. “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to breathe normally soon.” She picked up his ID and looked at it. “Glaudar Sandall. Are you married, Mister Sandall?”

  Glaudar nodded, still unable to speak.

  “Kids?”

  Again he nodded.

  “You really should be ashamed of yourself, Glaudar,” she continued. “Let me tell you how this works. I’m going to take all your credits, as well as your ID here, and I’m going to go about my merry way. I know, it sucks,” she sympathized, “but trust me, I need these credits more than you do. Hell, in a few weeks, you’ll be thanking me. Well, you would if you were able to connect the dots, but…”

  Lylah turned to look in his eyes, switching back to the Cetian language. “Consider yourself lucky, for I have killed many, all of them stronger than you. I will leave, you will stay. Later, you will go home. You will tell no one what happened here this night. If you do,
I will find you, and I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  Glaudar nodded in the affirmative, a look of terror in his eyes.

  “Honestly, I’m not a bad person,” Lylah said, switching back to her third language as she rose and gathered her things to leave. “Who knows, maybe someday, after this is all over, I’ll look you up and we can have a big laugh over all of this.” She turned back to look at him. “Then again, maybe not.” She moved to the door, then called back in Cetian, “May your evening go better than this.” Then she left, leaving Glaudar lying on the bed, struggling to regain his breath, thoroughly confused, and wishing he were home.

  The door to their hotel room swung open, startling Naralena. Jessica walked confidently into the room. As she crossed to the dresser, she reached into her pocket and pulled out two five-hundred credit chips and several one-hundred credit ones. “I told you it would work,” she said as she tossed the credit chips onto the bed in front of Naralena.

  Naralena looked at the chips in disbelief, taking a quick tally of their new funds. “There’s got to be at least thirteen hundred credits here,” she exclaimed. “How many guys did you, what did you call it…?”

  “Roll?”

  “Yes, roll.”

  “I only had to roll one,” she said as she headed for the bathroom. “The right one.”

  * * *

  Suvan Navarro stood on the balcony of his hotel room, looking out over the waters surrounding the island resort. The waves, now calmer at this late hour, glistened in the moonlight. He much preferred this season, when only one of Takara’s three moons was visible in the night sky. The single shadows its moonlight cast on his homeworld were far more dramatic, and far easier to understand. When there were three moons overhead, everything washed out, appearing almost two-dimensional. It was hard to distinguish any detail under such conditions.

  Takaran politics seemed much the same way. Caius might have been a maniacal ruler, but he had been a single point of control that brought prosperity to Takara, and had grown the count of noble houses to many times what they had been prior to his reign.

  But at what price?

  Suvan’s train of thought was broken by the sound of the door sliding open behind him, and the rustling of his wife’s robes in the late-night breeze.

  “Suvan?” his wife queried as she stepped out onto the balcony. “What are you doing out here in the cold?”

  “I did not mean to wake you,” he said, looking back at her over his shoulder. “I could not sleep.”

  “You never could, after being away for so long,” she reminded him. “The low rumble of the ship, remember?”

  “Ah, yes,” Suvan replied. “You become so accustomed to it, you do not realize it is even there, until it is not.”

  Tylia Navarro looked at her husband’s expression. Their time together had been minimal since he took command of the Avendahl, but she could still read his moods, and this one was pensive; troubled. “There is something bothering you, isn’t there? What is it?”

  “It is not important.”

  “It is important enough to keep you up at night. Perhaps if you share it…”

  “Then we can both lie awake till dawn?” Suvan replied.

  “Suvan…”

  Suvan sighed. He looked out at the water again, as his wife moved to the balcony rail to stand beside him. “What do you think of Casimir Ta’Akar?” he asked.

  “Good intentions, but somewhat naive… at least when it comes to Takara. He has been away too long, and he has aged more than most. He has lost touch with Takara.”

  “Then you do not believe he made the right decision… turning power over to Parliament?”

  “It may have been the right decision, but it was the wrong time,” Tylia said. “Takara needs a strong leader right now, one that will guide its recovery, at least until it can guide itself.”

  “And the Alliance?”

  “It got Casimir what he wanted… to overthrow the empire and unseat his brother. Aside from that, I see no continued value in membership.”

  Suvan looked surprised. “What about the Data Ark?”

  “What could possibly be in there that would be of benefit to us?” she wondered. “Anything found there would be a thousand years old. Surely we are far more advanced than anything contained within those files.”

  “I have heard rumors to the contrary,” Suvan told her.

  “And I have heard rumors that Caius is not really dead, that he escaped and is in hiding. Then there is the one about the old man living on the dark side of Yonbladt.” Tylia smiled. “Shall I go on?”

  “Does there always have to be a benefit… a reward for doing the right thing?” Suvan wondered.

  “Suvan, I know you are enamored of the Alliance and its war to defeat the Jung. Nothing would please you more than to pit the might of the Avendahl against such adversaries. You long for the same glory as your father, and his father before him.”

  “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “Other than dying?” Tylia exclaimed. “Why all this? Why now? What has happened?”

  “Nothing,” Suvan assured her, “but soon, I may be forced to make some difficult decisions… ones that, if incorrect, could bring great disfavor to our house, possibly even ruin.”

  “Then choose wisely, my husband.”

  “Easy to say, my wife, but I am afraid that there is no clear answer.”

  “Then you must make the only choice a truly noble man can make,” she told him. “You must do what you, Captain Suvan Navarro, believe to be right.”

  “Even if it means doing something terribly wrong?”

  “Better to do the wrong thing for the right reasons, is it not?” She pulled her robes tighter around her body as the breeze picked up. “It’s too cold out here. Come to bed, Suvan.”

  “Soon,” he promised. “Soon.” He watched over his shoulder as she slipped back into the bedroom, closing the sliding glass door behind her. Again his gaze returned to the waters below. The wrong thing for the right reasons, he thought. It was part of a very old saying whose origins were unknown to him. He had never much liked it, as it had always seemed like an excuse, or a way to justify one’s actions, even when they were incorrect, and it helped little with the problem at hand. What is the ‘right’ thing to do?

  * * *

  Senior Commander Levinar stepped onto the deck of the command and control center to begin his shift as commander of the watch. As usual, a mug of spiced Mavaran tea was waiting for him at his station on the central command platform. He took his seat and picked up his mug, sipping carefully as he slowly rotated in his chair. One step below him was a ring of senior controllers, each of them monitoring the various departments of the massive battle platform. Walking behind them and peering over their shoulders, were his two primary control officers, whose duty it was to pass information onto him, and then give the appropriate instructions to the various senior controllers based on his orders. It was a convoluted process, but a necessary one, considering the size and complexity of the Ton-Wanori.

  On the level below, beyond the ring of senior controllers that surrounded him, was the main floor. Also organized in a circular fashion, it was filled with dozens of secondary controllers and technicians who were tasked with the monitoring and operations of the thousands of systems that made up the platform. It was just as the platform’s commander, Admiral Dugnaro, had always insisted. ‘A battle platform is more city than warship. It is just a well-armed city… one that can be relocated when necessary.’ It was because of this that the senior commander had applied for transfer on more than one occasion. He longed for more conventional duty, aboard true ships of war, not mobile spaceports. Unfortunately, transfer was difficult to obtain. Officer positions within the fleet rarely opened up, due to the fact that actual armed conflict was rare. The Jung had nearly completed conquering the entire sector, meaning there were very few adversaries remaining. If the senior commander wanted a command of his own, he needed to see actual c
ombat. That meant a transfer to one of the ships heading out beyond such stations as Tanna, Ulysses, or Warank. The only combat anticipated within the core was in the Sol system, and by now, he expected that it too was completely conquered by the Jung.

  Senior Commander Levinar sipped his tea again as he contemplated another boring shift of routine problems and solutions, as well as a few battle drills thrown in to meet minimum ongoing training requirements. Such was his life, and at times he felt guilty for complaining. Within a few years, he would be able to establish a residence on Pylius, and his wife and children would be able to join him. Such luxuries would not be available on a ship in the frontier.

  Still, he couldn’t help but dream…

  A rumble of words, urgent in their tone, washed up from the lower levels, interrupting the senior commander’s train of thought. He looked at his primary control officers, who seemed tense. He glanced up at the major systems status displays on the ring of view screens around him, noticing that the platform was automatically raising its shields and coming to alert status. “Report!” he barked, unwilling to wait the few seconds that it took for the senior controller to assess the situation and pass it up the chain of command.

  “Sir! The Jar-Alatt…” The senior controller turned to look at his commander, just as one of the overhead view screens changed to show the ship in question. The senior commander’s mouth fell open at the sight of the battleship. It was engulfed in a massive collection of secondary explosions from within its hull. Debris was hurtling outward from its underside. The ship was destroyed.

  Alarms filled the control center as the ship came to alert status, the call having been appropriately made by one of the controllers on the main floor below.

  “…She has been destroyed,” the senior controller finished in disbelief.

  “By whom?” the senior commander demanded to know. Another glance about the overhead view screens told him that the platform was indeed coming alive in preparation for battle. Shield status screens were changing from red to green as their shields began to charge. Weapons status screens flickered to life as gun crews and automated defenses powered up and became ready for action.