Shanna

by Bill Nolan

  Shotana then turned to Robert. “Tocal Robert Allen, I hereby request refuge and hospitality. If you can find a place for me, I would like to live in this ship. I have some money I can contribute, and I will be glad to work at any task assigned. I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t take me in.”

  Chofma was the closest to her, and he caught her as she fell. General Aranna was at her side in an instant, and Shanna summoned Crylth. Robert asked Crylth to see to her. “When she wakes up, tell her I said ‘OK.’ She’ll know what you mean.

  Robert turned back to Nante, and, in the same teasing tone he had often used with her mother, he said, “Well, Queen of the Galaxy, what are you going to do now?”

  Nante still looked at ease. She looked around at the people in the room and slowly smiled. “I’m going to kill a few people and make peace in the Galaxy, just like my father taught me. I’ll need a lot of help. I know that with the To’Ach’an all deals are personal, and your arrangement was with Mom. I hope we’ll be able to come to some similar accommodations.”

  Later that evening, Nante came to Robert’s office to see him alone. “Well, Robert, how did I do?”

  “You did very well, daughter. You have done well from the first day I met you. Do you remember? When you found out you were staying here in Shanna, it took everything you had not to break down in front of everyone, but you managed it. Then, a couple of hours later, you had your composure back.”

  “Well, Tovey really helped. It was weeks before I knew Shanna had sent her. When I found out I was staying, I was sure there was nothing I could learn here. Now I wish I could spend another couple of years in Shanna. This has been the best time of my life, but there’s a lot more I could learn.”

  “So what’s stopping you,” Robert answered. Once we get this little mess cleaned up, you can do what you want. After all, you’re the Queen of the Galaxy, aren’t you? You can rule from anywhere you like. Assign some good people to handle things for you. That way you only have a few people to watch. If you try to micromanage the whole Empire, you’ll get so bogged down in petty details it will all fall apart. Appoint 5 or 6 good people, with a new title, like ‘sector governor’ or something, and then appoint another person to oversee them. Maybe somebody like General Aranna would be good at that. Then you really just have one person to worry about. Just don’t be like me and forget the most important thing.”

  Nante grinned. “Alright, I’ll bite. What’s the most important thing?”

  Robert’s voice got quiet. “The only people who can betray you are the people you trust.”

  Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Then Nante said, “You’re saying I shouldn’t trust anyone?”

  Robert shook his head. “Of course you have to trust some people. There are several people in this ship that I trust completely. Just don’t be in too big of a hurry to trust someone. It’s a fine line. A man from my home planet once said, ‘I know I’m being paranoid, but am I being paranoid enough?’ You’ll figure it out.”

  By the next afternoon, she and General Aranna had it all planned. Nante was going to create two additional layers of oversight. The big problem in the past had been that the Planetary Governors were out of control. In theory, they reported to the Empress, but there are thousands of planets important enough to have a Governor, so the result was almost complete lack of supervision.

  Some of the Governors were fine, but many had become vicious and petty dictators. Nante and the General had decided to divide the Empire into 25 sectors, each with a Sector Governor. General Aranna would supervise them, and they would supervise Sub-Sector Governors who would control the Planetary Governors, most of whom would have to be replaced. Nante knew that many of the Governors would be leaving office in boxes. She was determined to root out the widespread corruption that permeated all levels of Empire government.

  Finality

  Tocal Robert Allen proved to be correct in his prediction concerning the other rogue To’Ach’an ships. It was less than two weeks before they arrived. There were three of them. Chola, bonded with Awkin Forlar, Kirta, bonded with Huggew Kant, and Shiog, bonded with Kal Mora arrived together. Shanna tried to hail them, but they didn’t respond, simply moving to attack. Robert and Shanna sat waiting just beyond the Ort cloud, acting injured, moving very slowly. The three ships closed around her.

  “OK, Shanna, let them get a bit closer. Wait. OK, now!” Using the device Robert had developed so that Miko’s ship Morkalla could jump, Shanna suddenly increased her spatial distortion field tenfold, extended her jump field, and jumped toward Earth’s Sun, taking the three rogue ships with her. Morkalla and Bankor were waiting, and the three traitors were trapped. Without Robert’s distortion field device, they were unable to jump so close to a star, while Shanna, Bankor, and Morkalla were not so limited.

  That was only half of the trap. Jane was also ready. She had been speaking with Earth’s Sun, who called himself Khshaita. (The ancient Persians had it right.) He once again sent a flow of mental energy, which they had learned would pass through their shields easily. Jane channeled it and used it to drop the shields on the three rogue ships. In an instant all three control rooms had been taken out, just like on Bankor. The fight had lasted almost 42 seconds. Chola and Shiog immediately surrendered, but Kirta chose to self-destruct instead. Shanna ordered the other two out past Jupiter, and they began the process of determining their fate.

  Like Bankor, Chola and Shiog had opposed the plan, but had been forced to attack, and also like Bankor, only a small number of people on each ship had been involved. It took about three weeks to get everything (and everybody) sorted out and the two ships partially repaired and battle ready. Meanwhile, Shanna and company had been doing some travelling. Nante was now able to access the Empire network, and so they were able to intercept two fleets of ships controlled by Lord Smalic. Once they were eliminated, the problem was confined to various planets.

  Robert had said he was going to war, and he meant it. Nante had turned the loyal Empire forces loose, and they quickly cleared most planets. Shanna visited other planets where the opposition had substantial forces. Using his teams on the ground and Shanna from above, they rained destruction on any who resisted. The other necessity was to eliminate the remaining cousins who were trying to put their side of the family into power. Miko’s job was simple. He ferried Kysandra from place to place. The Yellow Demon, as she had been known for years, went to work – her special kind of work. People died.

  The other three ships easily handled any elements of the Empire Navy who had gone over to the other side. At the end of three months, most everything was under control. Almost all of the corrupt Planetary and System Governors had been replaced with loyal people. By her own request, Kamci had been there when Nante herself visited Wotara and “replaced” Jamer. Nante and Kamci had become good friends, and Nante handled that particular execution herself, backed up by Leida’s team. Things were becoming pretty stable. The only real issue was locating Lord Smalic himself, who had vanished. Nante had a lot of people looking, and a very large reward was on the table for anyone who found him.

  Back on Earth, things were getting pretty interesting. Governments were falling as more and more areas chose to take the protection and increased help that came with loyalty to the Empire. The remaining countries, including the United States, were falling apart. One state, Arizona, had asked to come under the protection of the To’Ach’an, and after consultation with his team and the other Tocals, Robert had agreed, subject to a public referendum on the idea. It passed with over 60% of the vote. Naturally the U.S. Government had objected rather strongly, but they weren’t foolish enough to try any military action. A month later, Utah held a special election and petitioned to join. Texas and the southern half of New Mexico soon followed.

  Most of the people really opposed to the idea left these areas as quickly as they could, while a lot of others, from not only other parts of the U.S., but all over the world, asked to enter. As quickly as possible
things were reorganized on a model closer to the To’Ach’an way of doing things. If you didn’t have work, you were assigned a job doing something within your capabilities. If you refused to work, you were on your own. To help with the transition, a large number of people were “borrowed” from the Empire. Whatever their other faults, the Empire knew a lot about how to run a Galactic style government. Within a few months, the new country, named temporarily the Colorado Trans-Pecos Union, after two great rivers in the area, was the most stable and prosperous part of the old USA.

  Fred and Betty Fontaine had been in real trouble for a while. Her auto insurance agency had taken a big hit from the aircars, and the cell phone company Fred worked for had laid off ¾ of their people, including Fred. What saved them came as a surprise. Empire people were on Earth looking for products that might sell on other worlds, and they ran across her unique wood turnings in one of the little galleries where she displayed some of her work. They wanted everything she could turn out, and they were offering very high prices. It seems that handcrafted art pieces like that were in demand. Suddenly they had lots of money, and it was the much more valuable zarigs of the Empire.

  While Betty did all of the turning herself, Fred was put to work doing the glue ups. Many of Betty’s pieces consisted of literally hundreds of small pieces of various woods. Pretty soon they hired another woodworker who specialized in elaborate inlay on boxes. She didn’t like marketing, though, and coming to work for Betty let her concentrate on her art. Another man, Herb Peterson, who spoke both Spanish and Portuguese fluently, was hired to travel in South America and trade for the wood they needed. Going to the source let them get a much larger variety at lower cost. Before, international trade had been the domain of large corporations, but now it was easy for anyone with an aircar to get into the import/export business.

  Finding Lord Smalic took longer than expected. It was almost four months after all of the rest of the Empire was secure before he was located. Robert Allen and Nante immediately went to visit him.

  Lord Smalic looked startled when Nante and Robert entered his room. “Who are you two, and how did you get in here. Guards!”

  Nante walked into the light. “Don’t you recognize me, cousin? I’m Nante. I know we’ve never met, but you must have seen a picture. Are you surprised to see me? Don’t bother to watch the door. There won’t be any guards coming.”

  “So, the Butcher Princess herself. You’ve been killing a lot of people. Are you here to kill me? Who could have known that such a murderous strain ran in our family? Your mother, the Empress, is a sweet woman. I oppose her, but I admire her. Too bad you’re not more like her.”

  “If I was more like my mother, I’d be dead now. I got the warlike genes from my father, and, by the way, my mother has abdicated. I’m the Empress now.”

  “Really! Well, you’ll have to tell the General for me that his daughter did well.”

  “General Aranna is not my father, Lord Smalic. Is that what you thought? No wonder you made so many mistakes. My father is the same man who saved my mother the first time you tried to kill her. Lord Smalic, I’d like you to meet my father, Tocal Robert Allen.”

  Robert stepped forward, but said nothing.

  Lord Smalic started laughing. “So, that’s what happened to all those soldiers I sent to kill Shotana. Half To’Ach’an, it figures. No wonder you’re the Butcher Princess. I guess you’re the Butcher Empress now. Are you here to kill me?” As he was speaking, his hand had slipped into the pocket of his robe. It came out holding a gun.

  Nante was fast, but Robert’s pellet was on its way much faster. Neither missed. The war of succession was over.

  An excerpt from Book Two of the series: Serena

  Judy Davis was terrified, and she could barely bring herself to keep moving. The incredible fear actually made it hard to breathe. She stopped and took a few deep breaths, and then forced herself to walk. She couldn’t help but think about her daughter, Daisy, lying in a hospital in Chicago, dying of cancer. When she left her daughter to come to Tucson, Daisy had been probably only a few days from death, maybe less. Since that part of the old USA had not joined with either the Empire or the To’Ach’an, none of the advanced, alien medical care was available to the residents there.

  Judy had travelled to Tucson supposedly to visit a relative, but she actually had no relatives there. Now she was trying to sneak into the new medical facility being built by the To’Ach’an. She was hoping to find and steal some miracle medicine that would help Daisy. She knew it was a long shot. OK, she was a doctor – a first year resident in oncology (of course) – but she still didn’t know how she would even know which drug to steal. It was the wildest kind of gamble.

  The new facility was still under construction, and she had climbed the fence surrounding it. It didn’t seem to trigger any alarms. As she crept slowly toward the main building, she tried to stay in the shadows. She had worn dark clothes, and her dark skin seemed to be an advantage for once. Even her small size seemed like a plus. She had always been able to hide pretty easily. She was starting to get a tiny bit calmer when someone behind her grabbed both of her arms just above her elbows. She gasped a big breath to scream when a second person jabbed their fingers into her belly, right under her sternum. Just like that, she couldn’t breathe at all. The person holding her arms picked her up like she was nothing and carried her into the building, down a flight of stairs, and into a room shaped like an egg, with curving walls and ceiling. The door slid shut behind them, and the two people – one man and one woman – stripped her clothes off and threw the clothes and her pack into an opening which had opened in one wall.

  Judy was frantically trying to explain that she had just been trying to help her daughter, and she wouldn’t have hurt anyone or anything. It was as though they couldn’t even hear her. They gave no sign that they understood, and her struggles were completely useless. They never spoke, and once she was naked they just dropped her on the floor and left the room. The panel with her clothes slid shut, and she was alone. A moment later she was pounding on the wall where the door had been and screaming for someone to come and help her. The wall wasn’t exactly padded, but it gave when she struck it, so she didn’t injure her hands. After a few minutes, Judy sank slowly to the floor, sobbing quietly. What had she been thinking? Daisy was going to die, and she wouldn’t even be there to hold her.

  It was hours later when a female voice spoke into the silence of the room. “Tocal has looked at your case. You broke into our facility with the intent to steal from us. As punishment, you will be confined where you are for a period of 19 Earth days. Food and water will be provided. Let us know if you need to use a toilet. You will be showered once a day. Welcome to Tucson.”

  The voice had barely stopped speaking when water jets in the ceiling began spraying pleasantly warm water over her from several directions. At first it was foamy, but then switched to clear. The water ran down a drain which had appeared in the floor. When it stopped, air jets blew through the room, again hitting her from several directions, and by the time they stopped, she was dry. Then a panel opened in one wall, and there was a tray with food and water.

  “Please, please, I’m sorry. Please let me see my little girl before she dies.” Judy was answered by nothing but silence.

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  About the Author

  Bill Nolan lives in Willcox, Arizona, on 5 acres in the country, along with his wife, Sara, their dog Allie, their cat Bandit, eight turtles, and a few hundred fish. The property is certified as wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. Animals which have visited our ponds include mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, kit foxes, gray foxes, coati mundis, skunks, javalinas, cottontails, jack rabbits, lots of lizards of various kinds, box turtles, and half a dozen kinds of snakes, including, of course, rattlesnakes. It is Arizona, after al
l. We have also identified over 100 species of birds. Bill taught College for over 30 years, and is very active in community affairs.