The Terra Gambit (Empire of Bones Saga Book 8)

by Terry Mixon

  “We have a lot of ships, but not enough to stop them if they come for us. A few less won’t make much of a difference if it comes to that kind of fight. Still, that’s beyond the purview of what I can negotiate anyway. The second option really depends on what’s in the Harrison’s World system.”

  Scott stared at him. “A dead world, a blown up space station, and a lot of nothing.”

  “Sometimes there’s more than meets the eye. I assume you’re taking us there.”

  “The fleet is waiting for us,” Scott said. “We’ll get you all into Captain Meyer’s hands so he can decide what we need to do.”

  “Then it’ll be easy to see if I’m right. If so, I think we’ll be giving you a serious boost at no cost to ourselves.”

  The second idea was also not one he’d run past Admiral Mertz. That could be bad, but it would build a hell of a lot of good will. He’d just have to take the chance.

  It put out some risks for the Jared Mertz in this universe, too. Yet after speaking with Princess Kelsey, Sean had the feeling that this other Mertz was more like what Sean had thought of the admiral before he met him.

  It was a hell of a risk that might have terrible consequences, but these people were already fighting a civil war. The only winner if they didn’t end it would be the AIs.

  Elise sat on a bed in the small bunk room that her compatriots had turned into a prison cell for them. “What did you think they would do? Welcome us with open arms?”

  “I didn’t expect Scott Roche to lock me up,” the short woman growled as she paced. “We worked out a code so that he would know it was really me.”

  “One we could have gotten from you,” Elise said reasonably. “This probably isn’t some dark plot, just a sensible precaution. He’ll be along soon enough to verify who you are.”

  “What is he doing?” Kelsey snarled, stopping to glare at Elise with her fists on her hips. “Why make me wait? Why interrogate Sean first?”

  Olivia chuckled from where she sat across from Elise. “Because he knows Sean better than he knows you, I’d wager.”

  “Explain that. He’s been with me for over a year.”

  The coordinator from Harrison’s World shrugged. “I don’t know the specifics, but they’re both Fleet. They served in the same task force for a long while. Odds are they knew each other earlier in their careers. This isn’t a difficult jump to make since he did start with Sean.”

  Kelsey collapsed onto another of the tautly made bunks and draped her arm across her eyes. “This is maddening. We have so much to do already. This is going to set the timetable back even further.”

  “I’m pretty sure that Jared didn’t expect us back right away,” Elise confided. “He said he didn’t, anyway. He told me that he’d allowed time in the schedule for you to convince your people we were making an honest effort and for you to select those you’re bringing back.”

  That didn’t really satisfy the other woman, but what could they do other than wait?

  In the end, it was almost an hour before Commander Roche showed up in the company of Sean Meyer. The Fleet officer watched Sean and Olivia embrace with an odd look, but kept most of his attention focused on his princess.

  She climbed to her feet and gave him a stony look that didn’t bode well for him in the short term.

  “My apologies for the delay, Highness,” he said deferentially. “I needed to ask Commodore Meyer a few detailed questions. Let’s get your identity out of the way, shall we?”

  “Space is big, but the Empire will one day fill it again,” she intoned.

  “That’s not the passphrase,” Scott said with a scowl. “You’re an imposter.”

  Kelsey frowned. “What? Yes it is!”

  The man smiled. “It is. Just checking to be sure.”

  “And because you want to see me squirm!” the blonde woman said in an accusatory voice.

  “That, too. We’re on our way to Harrison’s World at flank speed. We’ll make the flip in about two hours. Perhaps you should take the opportunity to have dinner.

  “I’m assigning marines to watch over you all, so please don’t get any ideas. They have orders to stun everyone if need be. Including Princess Kelsey.”

  The Crown Princess of the Terran Empire nodded. “I’m starved. Let’s go.”

  Sean and Olivia followed her out. Scott Roche fell in beside Elise as she brought up the rear. Marines trailed them.

  “Princess Elise,” the man said cordially. “I apologize for needing to take such precautions, but we can’t be too careful.”

  “I can’t argue,” she said with more than a bit of amusement. “We’re likely to do exactly the same once we return with your people to our universe. None of us really knows one another, even if we’ve known our counterparts for years.”

  “So I discovered when I got into some of the more recent events in Commodore Meyer’s life. Might I ask a question about your universe?”

  When she nodded, he continued. “I’m dead there, aren’t I? He never said so and it seemed strange to ask the question of someone I’ve known so long, but I’m getting a bad vibe.”

  “You died at Harrison’s World,” she said sadly. “You and your ship. Very few of your crew survived.”

  “I thought as much,” he said with a sigh. “Tell me then, what is Jared Mertz in your universe?”

  “Did Sean say something?”

  “No, which only makes me more curious.”

  Elise imagined Sean hadn’t wanted to fall down that particular rabbit hole. “It’s not as if we haven’t told Kelsey. He’s not the man you think he is. Not in our universe, anyway. He’s a hero there. He didn’t cause the civil war you suffered under, but he did his part to stop it.”

  Roche shook his head as if it were filled with cobwebs. “That’s going to be hard to accept for all of us. I might never believe it.”

  “Another difference between here and my own universe is that I married him.”

  Roche stopped dead in his tracks. “You what?”

  She tugged him back into motion with a smile. “You heard me. I married him. He’s really a good man. Honestly, that’s the reason I talked him into letting me come along on this trip.

  “He needs an advocate. Your Kelsey has accepted that the facts in our universe aren’t the same as in yours, but she’s never going to be his champion. Not like our Kelsey.”

  “And you kept your Princess Kelsey over there so as to avoid confusion?”

  “Actually, she’s off on a mission. Both Jared and I wish she were here. It would make this so much easier.”

  The marines split them into two groups at the lift. Roche stared at her as if he couldn’t believe anything she was saying. He probably couldn’t.

  “I think I’d like to hear more,” he eventually said. “Captain Meyer is going to get as much of the story as he can, but if our peoples are going to work together, you’ll need to convince many more of us about the…about Jared Mertz.”

  “Certainly. If it helps, I brought a ton of data and recordings with me. More than enough to convince anyone with an open mind that our Jared isn’t a villain.”

  “That’s going to be a tough sell, but I’m willing to let you make the pitch.”

  The lift returned, they walked in, and it whisked them away. She knew just how hard convincing them would be. The time she’d spent with their Kelsey had convinced her of that.

  Still, Roche wasn’t related to Jared like her blonde friend. He hadn’t grown up with his prejudices. It might be possible to create enough doubt to give this a chance. If she could do that, he might set the tone for others.

  Well, nothing worthwhile was ever easy.

  17

  In the end, Kelsey was annoyed at how easily Captain Sean Meyer accepted what his counterpart from the other universe said. Honestly, one hardly seemed to need to even finish sentences before the other was nodding.

  She, on the other hand, got questioned for five hours after they returned to the Harrison’s World syst
em. Kelsey finally called Sean on it inside his office on Spear.

  “Why are you picking my story apart and accepting what other you says at face value?” she demanded. “Exactly who’s side are you on, anyway?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched up and he rose from behind his desk. “Yours, of course. I’m sorry I gave you that impression. Drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having. Just not beer.”

  She shuddered. Everyone in the other universe seemed to think she loved the stuff. She couldn’t understand it.

  He gave her an odd look, but said nothing as he poured her a glass of wine. He handed it to her and resumed his seat.

  “I distrust everything that man says,” Sean said. “I’m just very good at understanding him while he makes his pitch. Whereas I trust everything you say while still finding it hard to believe.”

  “That’s convoluted,” she said, sipping her wine. The red had good body. Pentagaran wines were the best.

  “This entire situation is convoluted,” he said. “I’m giving him the chance to prove at least some of what he says while Scott takes the other ladies to the corpse of Harrison’s World.

  “He asked me to take him to one of the gas giants. I have no idea why, but I suppose we’ll find out shortly. What I really want to know is what you believe.”

  “That’s not an easy question to answer,” she said after thinking about it. “A lot of what I’ve heard is difficult to believe. Impossible, in some cases.

  “Yet, I’ve seen an Old Empire superdreadnought. I’ve talked with what I’m assured is a sentient AI. I’ve even seen mountains of evidence that Jared Mertz in that universe isn’t an unmitigated bastard and traitor.”

  “Seeing evidence is not the same thing as being convinced by it,” he observed. “Knowing the Bastard as you do, is this other man the same person?”

  She sighed and sipped her wine. “I honestly don’t know. Other you believes in him. The Senate testimony I saw had the other me give a him a ringing endorsement on video. My father—the man he murdered in our universe—blames Ethan for the coup in his and trusts Mertz implicitly. So does Elise.”

  Kelsey threw up her hands in frustration. “Hell, it might all be true. There, at least. I still do not believe our emperor is insane or a murderer. There are so many details that differ between the two universes, that’s even believable, if you hold your nose.”

  The com on his desk sounded and he answered it. “Meyer.”

  “Bridge, sir. We’re in orbit around the gas giant.”

  “We’ll be right out.”

  He rose to his feet. “Let’s go see if there’s anything more than gas to my doppelganger’s story, shall we?”

  Kelsey followed Sean onto the bridge and stood beside the command chair when he took it over from his executive officer.

  “Anything on scanners?” he asked the tactical officer.

  “Nothing, sir. All clear.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow at Kelsey.

  “I’ll see what he has to say,” she said as she headed for the lift.

  Twenty minutes later, she was back in marine country. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what the other Sean Meyer was playing at. There was nothing in the gaseous clouds below them.

  The only saving grace to going along with his odd requests was that she couldn’t imagine this as an assassination plot. It was far too strange.

  The pinnace detached from the heavy cruiser but stayed in orbit near it.

  “What now?” Kelsey asked the other Sean.

  “I need to send a com signal. This will either work brilliantly or I’ll look like an idiot.”

  “I’m voting for option two at the moment. Go ahead.”

  He sat at the marine commander’s console and worked silently for a few minutes. Then he looked up at her. “Here goes nothing.”

  Moments after he touched the control, she saw a response over his shoulder. A shoulder that relaxed just a bit when it came in, she noted.

  “What the hell is that?” she asked, leaning forward. “Where did that come from and who sent it?”

  “That’s the big surprise,” he said with a relieved grin. “There’s a hidden station down below the clouds in a clear band of atmosphere. We found the one in our universe and I have control codes that allow us safe passage. I was hoping they were the same here and I got lucky. So did you.”

  She felt her eyes narrow. “A hidden station on a gas giant? What’s in it?”

  “Why don’t we go take a look? Let me start a homing beacon and you can have the pinnace take us down.”

  Kelsey gave the pilot orders to take them down and watched the console over Sean’s shoulder. The clouds were opaque to the visible spectrum and nothing was showing on regular scanner returns. She had no idea if that was normal or not.

  As the pinnace settled into the atmosphere, the scanners started picking up something below. The gas giant made a good hiding place. But why put a station deep into an out of the way place like this? It made no sense.

  While she still couldn’t see it, the scanners finally got a good reading on the station. It was small and wholly unimpressive.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “That little thing?”

  He grinned at her. “That’s the defensive station above the main one. See all the missile tubes along the top? It protects the prize.”

  “Which you’re not going to tell me about,” she said with a sigh. “Fine.”

  The Fleet officer killed the scanner readout and only left the visual display up. As they were inside the clouds, there was nothing to see.

  “Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said smugly.

  Not for the first time, she wished this was an Old Empire pinnace that she could link her implants with. That would’ve made life so much easier. The things the people in the other universe had taught her to do had highlighted the limitations of her ignorance.

  With no warning, the pinnace came out into a clear zone. Layers of colorful clouds above and below bracketed an incredible sight. A massive space station with some kind of odd projections on four sides.

  Projections that supported massive grav cradles holding…

  Kelsey sucked in a shocked breath. “Are those battlecruisers like Courageous?”

  Sean smiled widely. “Indeed they are. And, unlike Courageous, those four are in perfect working order. The AIs stashed them here as a reserve force. You’ll need people with implants to effectively run them, but I can turn the keys to you today as a gesture of goodwill between our universes.

  “They’re currently set up for automated use, so the living accommodations are extraordinarily underwhelming, but that can be remedied. You’ll want to disable the AI controls as soon as practical, too.

  “You won’t need to scrub the computers. It’s all separate hardware. In fact, the AIs left the original systems intact. All that data we gave you about the Old Empire will be inside them. You can verify it all. Hopefully, there won’t be a lot of differences in the historical record.”

  She stared at him in shock. “You’re just giving them to us?”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not. They were never ours in the first place. This is your universe. Those have always been yours. You just needed a little help finding them.

  “Let’s go down and take a tour. You’ll want a lot of video to take back to other me. He’s a suspicious sort. He doesn’t trust me and will want proof. And while we’re there, I’ll tell you the story about how you captured that station from Rebel Empire loyalists in our universe. You’ll like it.”

  Kelsey’s brain didn’t want to work. All she could do was stare at the huge space station and the four Old Empire warships in shocked awe. This was the break they needed. Now the Empire stood a fighting chance.

  “Well,” she said after a long moment. “I’d say this settles matters for me. I’m going to urge Captain Meyer to trust you. We’ll get the people selected to go back over with us as soon as we get back to Spear.
>
  “Once Elise and Olivia are done at Harrison’s World, we can head back to your universe. I know your boss is champing at the bit to head for Terra. Now, so am I.”

  Elise stood beside Commander Roche’s command console as Ginny Dare neared Harrison’s World. “You say you found no one alive on the surface? Did they use a biological weapon of some kind?”

  He shook his head. “Mobile weapons platforms with Old Empire weapons, Highness. The surface is swarming with them. We didn’t dare send people down.”

  She’d seen those damned weapons after Jared had captured this system in their own universe. They’d been manufactured on Boxer Station by the humans under the control of the System Lord. Nasty things.

  “How many are we talking about?” she asked

  The man shrugged. “Hundreds of thousands? Millions? More than enough to exterminate every living person on the surface over a decade.”

  Just the idea of such a slaughter made her want to throw up.

  “We’re in orbit, Captain,” the helm officer said.

  “Are we over the target coordinates?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roche turned his attention to the tactical officer. “I want a detailed scan of the zone. Locate as many weapons platforms as possible and tag them for the team.”

  The woman turned from her console. “We’ll have to get drones into the area to get detailed readings, but I don’t see much aerial activity. Maybe a dozen are moving fast enough for me to detect from orbit.”

  Roche rubbed his chin. “I wonder how well they communicate with one another. If we eradicate them, will more come looking to see what happened?”

  “In our universe, they were remotely controlled with only certain responses programmed in for very limited situations,” Elise said. “You could try jamming them to see if that gets the other platforms excited.”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” he admitted. “Paula, get the marines ready to depart. We’ll use their drones to disrupt communications down there while we examine the target coordinates.”