by Terry Mixon
“Forgive me,” Kelsey snorted, “but what does he know about flames? You grew up a lot like I did, I bet. A life of privilege and being shielded from danger.”
That offhand, dismissive tone ignited a burn in Elise’s belly, but she kept her expression compassionate. “Perhaps, but we always knew we were one attack away from the horror that found you. And not just weeks of it, but for the rest of our lives.
“Princess or pauper, each of us lived every day knowing exactly how horrible an end awaited us. Did you know I carried a small knife in a necklace since I was a girl? Useless little thing.
“Unless you needed to slit your wrist. Let me tell you, having the Royal Physician give me a lecture on the best way to kill myself at ten is a memory I will carry to my grave.”
Kelsey sagged as the fire went out of her. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry for being a selfish bitch.”
Elise smiled sadly. “I’m not trying to equate our situations or make you feel better toward our Kelsey. She caught some breaks that you didn’t. And she had Jared. Believe me, that makes a difference. At least in this universe.”
“I hate him, too,” Kelsey said bluntly. “But I get it. He’s not the same man as in my universe. Everyone here gives him so much respect that he must’ve earned it. It’s difficult to believe my eyes over my heart, but I’m getting there.”
The other woman rubbed her face. “Are all the prisoners under lock and key? By the way, they tried to kill me right off. Is everyone else okay?”
A glance at Lily told Elise that not everyone had made it.
“We lost nine people taking the ship,” Lily said. “That included Doctor Dishmon and Commander Pence in engineering. It sure looks as if they started with the lethal option.”
“From the first shot,” Kelsey agreed. “We had total surprise. They had no idea whatsoever that we were here. I don’t get how they could go right for the kill.”
“That’s a great question,” Elise said with a nod. “Olivia is going to handle the questioning. She was one of their class her entire life. The rest of us might slip up and let them realize we aren’t from their society. She won’t.”
Kelsey stared at her with unblinking eyes. “I’m still sorry I killed those two, but not because they didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry because I have to live with the memory of killing them.
“Still, it’s far from the most terrible thing I’ve ever done. If she needs someone to make an example of someone, I can hardly have fewer nightmares.”
The idea of having someone do something like that, knowingly inflicting harm on themselves in the process, sickened Elise. This Kelsey really was a different person than her friend. One with different moral standards, it seemed. A bit more brutal and deeply hurt inside.
“That won’t be necessary,” Elise said firmly. “If Olivia needs to get answers from someone that doesn’t feel like sharing, I’m sure Lily can come up with a drug to help.”
“Don’t worry about making them pay for what they did,” Lily said, stepping closer. “They will pay for the lives they took.”
The doctor frowned. “Now that I think about it, why were they all armed in the first place? Surely, they didn’t expect trouble here in their own system.”
Elise couldn’t begin to guess the answer to that. She’d be watching over Olivia’s shoulder with interest via her implants when the interrogations started.
Of course, that wasn’t without risk either. Olivia West had been the Coordinator of Harrison’s World, a powerful leader in the Rebel Empire’s higher orders, even if she’d secretly been an Imperial loyalist.
She was like this Kelsey in a lot of ways. Ruthless. She might not need someone to be the bad guy in the questioning. Maybe watching this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Athena didn’t have a real brig, Olivia discovered, much less an area capable of holding dozens of prisoners. Jared Mertz had put them into individual compartments with marine guards.
The guards were out of uniform to maintain the ruse that they weren’t military, even though that was a tad threadbare. The men and women looked exactly like marines out of uniform.
So, she’d concocted a ruse to explain why they had implants: they were former marine officers. Still odd, but not so dangerous.
They couldn’t afford to trip any of the buried subroutines in these peoples’ corrupted implant code. Keeping someone like that locked up would be a nightmare.
The New Terran Empire destroyer had been racing across the next system over from El Capitan for almost four hours. No one had come after them. It appeared as if they’d gotten away.
Jared had sent people to look at the crates and found them sealed with what certainly looked like explosives. In this case, plasma grenades or the equivalent.
Since he now had control of the computer again, he’d locked the prisoners out of the com net. They had original Old Empire implants, so without a headset their top range was ten meters. Enough to communicate with those close to them, but nothing more.
She’d have preferred keeping them from communicating at all, but that was impossible. A destroyer just wasn’t big enough to spread the prisoners out far enough for that.
So, she’d decided to pick the prisoner most likely to talk and ensconced him far away from the others. He’d crack eventually, she suspected. He just wasn’t as hard as the others.
He hadn’t even been armed. He was the only one of the intruders not carrying a neural disruptor set to kill. That marked him as special and perhaps not as dedicated to their cause as they were.
These people had fought hard from the very first moment. They’d expected trouble and hadn’t believed themselves safe even in their own system.
Discovering why was her first order of business.
The man Kelsey had captured at the maintenance tube seemed more of a technician than the rest. Of course, he was a member of the higher orders. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him.
Olivia had him tied to a chair with actual cord rather than plastic restraints. She’d made certain his legs were tied to the chair legs and that his hands were very secure.
She’d bound his wrists behind the chair and tied his upper arms together behind his back. Then she’d secured them to the chair.
It wasn’t that she feared he’d get loose. The marines would keep her safe. No. She wanted him to feel powerless. It was purely psychological.
That theme could’ve been taken further. She could’ve blindfolded him. She’d decided not to because she’d wanted an unobstructed view of his reactions.
He’d already proved that consideration valid. The prisoner—his first name was Austin—had actually been awake for the last few minutes, but he gave no sign of it. Only the medical monitor she’s put on his wrist let her know when he’d awoken.
All of the other prisoners had been included in the database the resistance had sent Olivia. Not him. A curious omission. She wondered if that was because the man just wasn’t considered important or if they’d excluded him for some other reason.
In any case, it was time to get started.
“I know you’ve been awake for the last few minutes,” Olivia said, leaning a little forward in her own seat placed a few meters in front of him. “You might as well open your eyes.”
The man’s eyes popped open and his head came up. So, she could surprise him. Good.
His eyes narrowed. “Who are you? Why have you attacked us?”
“I’m the woman in charge now. You can call me Olivia. Now that we have that settled, I’d like you to state your full name for the record.”
Austin’s eyes narrowed. “For what record?”
She almost smiled. “You’re full of questions. You don’t have the need to know. Let’s just say that not every part of the Empire is behind your mission and I was sent to ask a few questions.”
“We have orders from the Imperial Lord. You wouldn’t dare to defy him.”
Now she did smile. “And yet, here I am. Every single one of yo
u is my prisoner. Your name, please.”
“Austin Darrah. I found your command tap, by the way. You were just a few seconds too late to stop me from disconnecting it.”
It took her a moment to figure out what he’d probably meant. It was probably what had allowed Jared to command Athena remotely. Until it had stopped working.
“Do you feel proud?” she asked, allowing a hint of sadness to seep into her tone. “You’d still be our prisoner if you’d left it in place, but we wouldn’t have had to kill any of your companions. Or lose our own people.”
He swallowed, but put on a brave face. “I did what I had to do. I’d do it again, too.”
His eyes flicked over to the marines leaning against the bulkhead. “They’re military. Officers of some kind. Marines?”
“Ex-marine officers, yes. What’s in the crates you brought aboard and why were your friends so quick to jump to lethal force?”
“If you don’t know, can’t tell you.” He put on a brave face, but she could see the fear in his eyes.
“You’ll talk,” she assured him. “It can be voluntarily or with assistance, but you will tell me everything I want to know.”
Some part of her conviction must’ve gotten through to him, because he swallowed again. “You’re mistaken. I literally can’t.
“The System Lord implanted explosive devices in our heads. He amended the code in our implants. We cannot tell you anything about this mission or we’ll quite literally lose our heads.”
Right at that moment, a low alarm began sounding. Not ear-splittingly loud like the call to battle. This was lower key.
An implant call from Jared came a moment later.
Olivia, there’s been a situation. The prisoners have some kind of suicide charge in their skulls. They all just blew up. Are you okay?
She eyed the man, wondering if he was going to explode. Probably not, if someone else had to send the signal. He’d been too far from the rest to get the signal.
I’m fine and so is my prisoner. He’d just told me about the devices when the alarm went off. He says he can’t talk about his mission because the device will kill him.
Jared was silent for a moment before he continued. Break off questioning. Get him to the medical center and let’s see what Lily can tell us about the device. If we can disarm it, then you can pick up right where you left off.
He’s the last surviving member of this Rebel Empire crew and we can’t risk losing the chance to find out what they were up to.
29
Cleaning up the compartments they’d used for holding the now dead Rebel Empire nobles was a grisly task, Sean decided. Whoever had put those bombs in their heads had used far more explosive than was necessary to kill them.
The blasts had painted the compartments with blood and brains while causing significant damage to their torsos.
It had also gotten the unfortunate marines keeping watch over them, too. Perhaps it was meant to make a lasting impression on anyone around the unfortunate bastards.
It wasn’t hard discerning the order of events. The prisoners had begun waking up and discovered their new circumstances. The woman who had been in Jared’s seat on the bridge had taken a good look around her just before the suicide charges went off.
She had to be the trigger woman. She’d sent the destruct order, killing herself and her crew.
Not everyone was in range of her implants, but they’d been close enough to their friends. The signal traveled out in a relay from person to person, each retransmitted the destruct code before they blew up.
The only person out of range had been the young man Olivia had been questioning. Since he hadn’t blown himself up, he either didn’t have the codes or wasn’t interested in killing himself just yet.
Sean wondered if the self-destruct command had been meant to blow the cargo, too. He’d have done it that way. Thankfully, the prisoners hadn’t been close enough to the cargo bay to trigger the plasma charges.
Equally good was the fact that Admiral Mertz had locked the prisoners out of the ship’s systems. The computer could’ve relayed the woman’s command all over the ship.
As a precaution, Sean had had the engineering team—now working under Lieutenant Commander Anthony O’Halloran—look over the destroyer’s systems closely. He’d been afraid of a larger self-destruct option, like setting off one of the fusion plants.
Thankfully, it seemed as if they hadn’t felt the need to go that far. Or they’d believed they’d have time to set one off manually.
“Commodore?” one of the engineers asked. “I’ve found something you might be interested in.”
Sean pulled himself together and looked up from the engineering console he’d been staring uselessly at. “Talk to me, Tony.”
“The computer had logs of the activity on all the consoles, including the bridge. I found some calculations from Admiral Mertz’s position. The Rebel Empire commander was plotting potential courses.”
He smiled. That was useful.
“Where was she going?”
“Terra. She had a single course laid in and marked each system with a very narrow window of dates. Some also had long codes next to them. Possibly passcodes. Sir, she was in something of a hurry. She has them arriving in three weeks.”
Based on his research, Sean thought that was a bit aggressive for a realistic timetable.
“They must’ve been on a pretty tight schedule. I wonder if their little bombs were on a timer, too. Show up on time or not at all.”
“It’s possible,” the engineer said with a shrug. “There’s not enough left of the bombs to be sure.”
“Not in the dead ones,” Sean agreed. “I’ll go see what Doctor Stone can tell us about the survivor.”
He rose to his feet and headed for the lift. Too bad the people Princess Kelsey had killed had been close enough to pick up the destruct command. That would’ve made discovering the particulars of the explosion easier.
Sean walked into the medical center to find everyone clustered around the heavily-guarded prisoner. The ludicrously over guarded prisoner, in his opinion.
There were six marines present, two in unpowered armor. The man himself was secured to an exam table and his wrists and ankles were bound in flex cuffs.
Olivia was standing off to the side, observing Doctor Stone scanning her patient.
He stepped over to his wife. “He looks dangerous. You want someone in powered armor? Just to be sure.”
The look she gave him indicated that she thought he needed to work on his delivery. “Funny. Also, not my call. Jared said he wanted to make sure our young friend didn’t even consider getting froggy.”
He felt the corner of his mouth quirk upward. “Froggy? Is this something Kelsey taught you?”
“Obviously. A frog on Terra has long, powerful legs and can jump quite a distance. So, the meaning is that we don’t want the prisoner to try anything.”
“You heard what happened to the rest. Any concerns that he might blow his own head off?”
Olivia shrugged. “Not really. It seems as if he’d already have done so if he were so inclined. And he’d warned us that he couldn’t talk about what they were doing before the others popped their corks. He mentioned the explosives and it hardly seems likely he’d have done so if he intended to use them later.”
He chuckled. “You have picked up quite an arsenal of sayings.”
Lily Stone murmured something to the prisoner and stepped back from the exam table. Once she turned and saw Sean, she headed over.
“I’ve done an initial scan,” the physician said. “He definitely has some kind of explosive charge in his skull. I’ll have to actually open his scalp and take a closer look before I decide if it can be safely removed.”
“I didn’t realize bomb disposal was among your list of talents,” Sean said with a slight frown. “If that thing goes off, it could kill you at that range.”
“I’m a Fleet officer,” she retorted. “I could die any number of terrible wa
ys. If I started letting that drive my decision making, I’d need to retire.”
She looked back toward the prisoner. “My initial scans don’t indicate any antitampering mechanism. It’s probably linked into his implants. If they think he’s being messed with, they could set it off. If so, I may be able to take them offline and remove the explosive charge.”
“I don’t want you doing something overly risky,” Sean said firmly.
“I agree,” Olivia added, “but I want him to answer questions, too. We need to know what’s in the cargo area. He needs to tell us what they planned to do.”
Sean couldn’t really argue with that. He was about to reluctantly agree when the hatch slid open and Kelsey walked in.
The petite woman stopped when she saw the prisoner. Then she eyed the enhanced guard detail before walking over to them.
“Should I get into my powered armor and make sure he doesn’t try anything?”
Sean laughed. “I said something very much like that, Highness. How are you feeling?”
“A little better,” the woman admitted. “Oddly, them killing themselves made it clear to me that the people in the computer center would have done something terrible if I hadn’t stopped them. They were fanatics.
“People willing to kill at the drop of a hat—whether themselves or someone else—are too dangerous to be allowed to walk around freely.”
“I’m going to see if I can remove the risk for this gentleman,” Lily told Kelsey. “Would you care to observe the process?”
Kelsey’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like a trick question. Is it going to be gross?”
“I’ll have to make an incision on his skull, but it shouldn’t be terrible. Unless he explodes on the operating table, that is.”
The princess sighed. “The way my luck has gone recently, you might be better off without me. Still, this could be something we need to do in my universe. If he explodes in my face, I’m making you pay for my therapy.”
“If he explodes in our faces, we can attend sessions together. Come on.”