by Jay Korza
Emily tied up the loose ends in her mind. “A lot could go wrong with that plan, but it’s the best one we have so far. Let’s run it by the president and see if he’ll go for it.”
Emily and Seth left to go to the dropship to make a call to the president.
Chapter 15
The empress sat at her desk and stared at the image of the Coalition president on her video screen. She truly didn’t know what facial expression she was feeding him. With so many emotions and thoughts running through her mind, it was difficult for her to keep track of what she outwardly displayed.
“Thank you, Mr. President, for updating me on my people. I regret that my quick reaction forces could not reach the special research team in time. It is a huge loss for everyone, not only for the brave soldiers we lost but also their invaluable contribution to the war effort.”
“Yes, I could not agree more, Your Highness. I will of course send you all of the data we acquired from the latest mission site, after we have been able to retrieve it.”
The empress didn’t want to appear too eager with her next line of questioning, but it was important that she ask. “Will the Coalition dispatch another research team to pick up where the first one left off?”
The president knew she had taken the bait. “We do believe their work was important, but as of yet, it hasn’t produced anything that is directly valuable to the war effort itself. We plan on handing off the data to a non-military research team and letting them go through it. If they find any actionable leads, we will put together another team to follow up on the leads.”
The empress made sure to not let her inner smile escape to her lips. “That seems a pity, to not continue with their field work. There’s only so much one can accomplish in a lab.”
“I agree, but unfortunately, we are being hit hard on all fronts right now and we can’t spare another large group of Special Forces personnel. They are desperately needed on the front line.”
“If I might offer a suggestion, sir?” The empress was uncharacteristically meek.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
“I have a team of archeologists who have been going over the information your team has shared with us. They have volunteered on more than one occasion to join your team to assist with the research. Up until now, that request has been denied; the Coalition team was already heavily staffed and more bodies would have just slowed things down.
“But given the current circumstances, that is no longer an issue. My scientists would be honored to pick up where yours left off, to complete the work in their names. To ensure their sacrifices were not in vain.”
The empress paused, tilted her head to the side as though she were receiving information from an aide off screen. “In fact, I have just received word from one of the archeologists that they are aware of the tragedy and are willing to step in.”
“News travels fast on your world.” The president didn’t believe for one moment that this was anything other than the empress staging a show for him.
“Yes.” She was taken aback for a split second at being called out on the floor about the information leak. “Major Telfer was an alumni at the university where our premier archeologist is a professor. He has been very good at using his collegiate ties to stay informed about this operation from the beginning. I can’t blame him for being so interested in the occult history of our people.”
“Of course.” The president let her off the hook. It wouldn’t help the plan any if the empress thought he was skeptical of her. “Back to your plan then—I don’t see anything wrong with your people continuing with the research. You are not a member of the Coalition, so we couldn’t stop you anyway, but I do appreciate your asking rather than telling. We won’t be able to offer your team any military resources for protection or transport.”
“I understand, Mr. President. Rest assured we can handle that on our side. All that we will need to start is the latest information they uncovered. We would also like to compare our files with yours to make sure we haven’t misplaced or failed to receive anything that has been sent so far.”
The president knew diplomatic talk when he heard it. She was really saying, If there is any information you haven’t given us so far, for whatever reason, now is the time to hand it over and we won’t ask why we didn’t get it in the first place.
“Of course, Your Highness. My technicians are putting together a data packet now. I’m being told it will take another ten hours to complete, in order to incorporate the latest pieces of information. If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask. Godspeed and good luck, Empress.”
The president terminated the call without waiting for the empress to reply. He had done that for the last year, just so she couldn’t get the last word in. He knew it must upset her every time he did it, but that was the point after all. He had never liked her and now he had solid reasons to embrace those feelings.
The president entered another code on his console and the faces of Emily and Seth came up in place of the empress’s. “What did you two think of that?”
Seth jumped in first. “It proves we were right about her, at least in the fact that she is trying to do something behind our back. She didn’t correct us when we told her about the Nortes soldiers responding to a distress signal. If they were in the area for any legitimate reason, she would have corrected our assessment of the situation. Her smugness wouldn’t allow her to pass up the opportunity to point out if we were wrong about something.”
“I agree,” Emily said. “I also believe we should move forward with our plan.”
The president sat forward. “Absolutely. She played into our hand better than we had expected. Once you have your falsified information ready, get it to my technician and he’ll send it along. And we’ll let the wild-goose chase begin.”
“Yes, sir,” the captains said in unison as the president terminated the call.
~
The empress was just opening her mouth to speak when the president killed the video feed. Her fists clenched and her jaw became rigid. “Every time, he does this to me! That man has no honor!”
Although the empress’s aide was loyal to her and the empire, and generally agreed with everything she said, he still took some pleasure in the president’s antics. The empress was a bit full of herself, so unlike her father, that she could use some humbling every now and then.
“Yes, Your Highness,” the aide obligingly agreed.
“Leave us,” she demanded of her aide.
With the aide gone, Hugany sat at her desk across from U’Lal, her minister of interplanetary affairs. He was much older than she and one of the main leaders of the cabal.
“Your Highness, we must move quickly. It seems our plans are safe for now, but if they figure out what they have in their possession…” He let the thought linger in the air between them.
“Agreed. If they can find the warriors’ birthing planet and figure out how to get past its defenses, at best they stop us from gaining control of it. At worst, they take control of it and the Coalition becomes unstoppable.”
So far in its history, the Coalition had always worked with other governments in peaceful ways, or at least they attempted to. There were wars and skirmishes along the way, but the Coalition had never been a group of conquerors. They tended to give in more often than not in an attempt to reduce the amount of galactic tension.
Even so, the Nortes cabal had grown from their hatred of Emperor T’Leh and his secession from the original Nortes Empire. They preached a return to the old ways, of being the rulers of the galaxy, and not trusting any other race or government to ever have their best interests at heart.
So while the Coalition had always respected the Nortes government desire to not become a member, the cabal didn’t trust the relationship.
U’Lal looked at the latest intel update on his datapad. “We have four cabal teams strategically deployed in different sectors. Once we have the rest of the Coalition research, we will know which team is cl
osest to the objective.”
“Good. I am glad you thought ahead. That will save us some time.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
Chapter 16
The entire team, including the shooters and looters, sifted through the data they had acquired so far. Emily assumed they had the information they needed in front of them, otherwise the empress wouldn’t have made such a bold move, but they still had to figure out what it was they had.
“I think I found our next stop.” Jenarah held up her datapad.
“What have you found, sister?”
Jenarah being blind didn’t slow her down at all in the research department; she just went at it from a different angle. Instead of reading through the data, she searched for keywords or phrases using voice commands. She was very good at clumping data together in useful packets that could then be read to her by the computer or sent to someone else’s datapad to be reviewed.
“In her notes, Hugesh mentions a planet in the Delaz system. It wasn’t high on her list of destinations, but I found some information that should bump it up on our list.”
“The Delaz system? You can’t be serious?” Emily came over to look at Jenarah’s datapad.
“Why is this system so exciting?” Seth’s attention perked up.
“Because Captain Riley wrote about it when she was sixteen and again in her doctoral thesis.”
Without even looking at the datapad, Emily made the connection in her mind. “The Unwutine tribe! Of course! Hurlkaferncherta!”
“Um, bless you?” Joker said, and then added, “Is she alright, Doc?”
“I’m better than alright! I know exactly where we need to go!”
“The Delaz system?” Seth asked.
“No. We can skip that step. We need to go here.” Emily pulled up information on her datapad and sent it to everyone in the room. “I’ll save you the trouble of making you read through both of my papers. The short story is, when I was sixteen I went on an archeological dig with my aunt. We found ruins with undecipherable markings on a door that we weren’t able to open.
“The markings were possibly a match to a word from the dialect of the Untuwine tribe, who live in the Delaz system. The word is Hurlkaferncherta.”
When all she received were blank stares from her companions, Emily growled. “Ugh! Hurlka-fern-cherta!”
“Cherta? The Untuwine tribe are actually Chertas?” Joker still didn’t get it.
“No.” Emily was exasperated but reminded herself that she was the only one in the room who had years of research on the subject locked away in her head. “The markings on the sealed door are from the Cherta. They created those ruins and went to great lengths to hide them and keep them sealed. There isn’t anything in the notes about those ruins, which means Hugesh hadn’t found them yet. So working backwards, she would have found the Unwutine tribe and from there eventually the ruins. Let’s skip all the middle stuff and go right to the finish line.”
“We can be packed and ready to lift in four hours.” Surgeon had worked out the departure logistics while he waited for Emily to finish her story.
“Make it happen,” Emily ordered.
~
“You have news?” Jenny, the Cherta minister of soldiers asked her aide.
“I do. The team is on their way here. They are bypassing the other seven stops. They will be here much sooner than we had planned.”
“Emily Riley.” Jenny was impressed. “She figured it out sooner than I expected she would.”
“Shall we make new preparations?”
Jenny closed her eyes, tilted her head back and sent her questions and prayers to the Protectors. She knew she would not receive a response, but the ritual always helped to bring clarity to her thoughts.
“No. We will keep our plan in motion as it was set by the Protectors. Although I may not have been able to predict this turn of events, I have to assume that they did and all is still going according to plan.”
“Yes, Minister.”
The aide left the room as quietly as he had entered. Jenny went back to reading the latest engineering report from the vault room.
The machinery in the vault still worked and communicated as it should, but time had taken its toll on some of the moving parts to the entrance door. The engineers worked around the clock to repair the damage and it would not be long before they completed the task.
However, the Cherta had not expected the Coalition team to arrive so soon. They would need to double their efforts to ensure they completed their mission before Emily Riley arrived and figured out the last piece to the puzzle.
~
Emily sat in her bunk, eyes bleary and head dropping as she constantly fought off the urge to sleep. She wanted to make sure she read every last note and field report from Hugesh before they reached the abandoned dig site.
Seth walked in without an invitation after he rang her chime five times and Emily hadn’t answered. “Hey, Em, how are you?”
They hadn’t moved on to pet names yet, but Seth had taken to calling her Em when they were alone.
“I’m sorry, did I miss dinner again? I must not have heard my alarm go off. I started setting it for meal times so I wouldn’t keep missing them.”
Seth laughed a little, though he was more worried than amused. “No, you didn’t miss dinner. We had that eight hours ago. I came by because you’re still on your datapad. I’m here to put you in timeout. You need to sleep.”
“You’re right. Thank you for checking in on me. I just need to make sure I figure this out. We never found out how to open that door at the dig site. No one since has either. I’m hoping I can find something in Hugesh’s notes and/or combined Cherta information we’ve found along the way.”
“I understand. But hey, we bought ourselves an extra month of travel time today. So I think you can relax a little.”
This got a cold stare from Emily. She was not at all happy about the delay. As they got closer to their destination, they found there were at least two Cherta cruisers in the system they were heading to. Their confiscated Cherta transport wouldn’t be able to handle those cruisers in a fight and it was doubtful they could slip into the system undetected.
The updated plan called for them to wait for backup from the Coalition’s Seventh Fleet that was nearby; at least, in galactic terms it was nearby. Which meant they had to wait for the much slower Coalition ships to rendezvous with them before they headed to their final destination.
Emily relinquished her datapad and slipped under the covers. She pulled Seth down to her. “Lay with me until I fall asleep?”
Seth hated to leave Emily but he hated to share a military sized single-person rack even more. He smiled anyway. “Of course I will. That’s only going to be about ten seconds anyway.”
“Jerk,” she teased as her eyelids closed. Suddenly, they popped open again. “How did you know I was still on my datapad?”
Seth was caught red-handed. “Uh, well…”
“Out with it, pretty boy.”
“I had Jeeves sneak a monitoring program onto your datapad.”
That elicited a punch from Emily.
“Hey now. It doesn’t tell me what you’re doing on your datapad, just when and how long it has been in use. You could be playing solitaire for all I know. I just wanted to make sure you were getting enough rest and that was the only way I could figure out to monitor your activity so you couldn’t tell me you were getting rest when you weren’t.”
Emily was in a huff, but with how exhausted she was and how much she knew Seth was just caring for her, she didn’t have it in her to push the issue. “When I’m conscious, we are going to talk about this. If I can remember later how mad I am. If you’re lucky, I’m too sleep-deprived right now to be able to produce the neurological chemicals necessary to create short-term memories.”
“I love it when you get all sciency on me.” Seth ran his hand through her hair and it had the desired effect. She was unconscious once more.
Set
h left Emily’s quarters a few moments later and returned to his. Nitaha slept in a hammock they had put together using cargo netting. He had offered her the bed and even her own room, but she insisted on staying with him and she hated human beds. Fang had helped her make the hammock that resembled the one he had made a part of his permanent travel kit.
Nitaha was a light sleeper and Seth felt bad for waking her for the second time this early morning. She flopped her head over the edge of the hammock and sniffed the air. She knew where Seth had been.
“How is Aunt Emily?”
“Exhausted. But she finally went to sleep. Which you should be doing right now.”
“I would be if you were not such a loud animal,” she teased.
“My daughter, the comedian. Let’s both get back to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us later.”
Seth hadn’t turned on the light when he came in; the glow from his charging datapad had given him enough light to find his rack. Now he turned the datapad over and put his quarters into complete darkness.
Nitaha took the opportunity to sneak out of her hammock, slither onto Seth’s bed and curl up with him. Physical bonding played an important role in Shirka development and pack cohesion, so Seth didn’t object to the overcrowding of his small bunk.
“Daughter.” He acknowledged her while he stroked her face.
“Father.” She nuzzled him back.
Seth woke up to find Nitaha already gone; only some of her fur remained stuck to his face and lips. She tended to get up early and run around the ship. Fang had told Seth it was a predator thing. Shirkas liked to be up early to scout their surroundings to see whether other predators had moved into the area during the night or whether there were any fresh prey signs that needed following up on. It didn’t matter that they were on a ship in space; her genetic habit had to be satisfied if she were to have a good day.