by Dave Walsh
“Okay.” He stood up, leaning up against the window and watching the subterranean city whiz by. “So who is this Uncle Peter and how can we get into contact with him?”
“He was my father’s right-hand man, Peter O’Neil, the captain of the Omega Destiny and—”
“The Old Man?” he said with scorn, an unsettling revelation.
“He hates that name.”
“The Shadow Emperor, then?” The pent up rage inside of him was beginning to surface, his willpower starting to fade. “That’s who your Uncle Peter is? My Gods.”
“Oh please,” she let out what sounded like a legitimate laugh. “That’s all talk, he’s just old and has been around. My father trusted him with his life and I’ve known him for the entirety of mine. My father was a good, idealistic man, but it was Uncle Peter who helped ground him and push him in the right direction when he needed it. When Cronus murdered my father he helped me escape.”
“So you really think he did it, then? That Cronus killed your father?”
“Yes,” she said, wiping away the last few tears with the edge of her shirt. “My father, like I said, was an undying idealist. In a way, he was a fool. My uncle is a fool as well, but a different kind of fool. Together they were almost the perfect fool, which meant that they saw trouble ahead. My father saw the evil inside my brother, he saw what he was capable of.
“In a perfect world…” She was beginning to calm down a bit, her shoulders relaxing. She didn’t make eye contact while she spoke, but he let her continue, intent on listening. “My father wanted a perfect world, which is funny, but in a perfect world he thought he could help Cronus grow to become a better man, a better leader, but he still understood that Cronus was full of rage and anger. He left me a message just in case something happened. From what I understand, the thought that I’d never had to see it and that things could progress the way that he wanted them to, but…”
“There’s always a but, isn’t there?”
“Oh yeah, and this is a big one,” she said. “He knew that the Republic couldn’t continue on without him. He didn’t even want to be emperor, but they weighed the situation and knew that people needed a strong leader. My father had dreamed of humanity living free, picking their own leaders and for the people to have a voice. His last request of me was that I would be left the Andlios Republic as the empress, then I would dissolve my own position and hold open elections.”
“Wow,” he couldn’t help but feel taken aback. “Are you serious? Open elections, like a democracy?”
“Right,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “That’s what he wanted from me, but I couldn’t do it.” She was back to fighting back the tears. “I tried, but I had to run. I had to. Cronus framed me for Dad’s murder and…Oh gods…”
“Hey, hey.” Jace sat down next to her, wanting to console her but feeling awkward about it. He started to put his arm around her back but pulled back before finally resting his hands at his side. He wanted to be angry with her, but he felt more angry with himself for not noticing, plus she was clearly not in a good way, and one more person upset at her wouldn’t make this situation any easier for either of them. “I know that this situation is awful and all, but if you look on the bright side…”
“The bright side?” She looked up at him. “What bright side?”
“They all think you are dead now!”
“How does that help me?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been planning,” he started, patting her gently on the back. “But whatever it was, it will be a whole lot easier now that they think that you are dead.”
“Well thank Freyja for that, right?” she said. “At least they all think I’m dead.”
“Hey, I’m serious.” He stood back up, pacing around the small car. “He probably had death squads out looking for you, but now? He thinks you are dead. This all got a lot easier. We’ve gotta get out of here, first.”
“Okay,” she said. “But what do we do about the rendezvous I missed? I don’t have a direct line to Uncle Peter anymore and I’ve never missed a rendezvous before. We have to try to find his agent so we can get through to him. He’ll know what to do.”
“I’m on board with you getting into contact with the Old Man, for sure. But if you think for one second that Jol’or didn’t recognize who you were in there, you are mistaken. In fact, we need to get off of this rock as fast as we can. That rendezvous has long since passed and if you were to do it now, well, it would probably be a trap.”
“What? Why?”
“Didn’t you hear him back there? They have a princess—one that isn’t you—who they are planning to use to try to take over the goddamned system. Imagine if they had TWO princesses with claims to the throne? My gods.”
“So we are in trouble, then?”
“Fuck. We are in a lot of trouble. He probably scanned you or something, I mean, I looked up your picture. He can do a lot worse with his connections.”
“I thought he wasn’t a part of their government?”
“That’s part of the problem.” He pulled his pistol from the holster and checked the charge on it. The charge read full, which was good, but he sure wished he had something else with him at that moment. “He’s a dangerous man who knows dangerous people. You don’t have a weapon, do you?”
“I have these.” She hefted a knife out of her boot; it was long and slender with an ornate handle, clearly something that had been a gift from someone with money.
“Dammit,” he said. “Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
“I have two knives and a gun,” she said. “But a gunfight? If things go bad we end this quickly and quietly, we avoid blasting our way out of this, are we clear?”
“Sure, but just in case, we have to be ready for anything.” He couldn’t help but feel the pressure now. Somehow he found himself having to protect a princess from the clutches of evil men; it felt like something out of a bad book he had once read. “But just stay behind me.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“With knives and handguns?” he asked. “I appreciate the vigor and all, but that’s not how this works, Princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said. “I’m probably better trained than you are, anyway.”
“I’m not calling you Kat anymore, that’s for sure.” He was looking ahead to their stop; there wasn’t anyone visible, which was a good sign. “We need to find you a new name and some documents. I know a few guys who can help, but it’ll cost us.”
“Fine,” she said. “We can work all of that out later, but for now I get the impression that we need to get the hell out of here.”
“I can agree to that.” He stood near the door to the car as it came to a stop with his pistol at the ready. “Just stay behind me, alright? Fuck, I hate this.”
“Okay, Mr. Hero.” She rolled her eyes, which forced him to swallow his anger. She was a princess, after all; he couldn’t expect her to understand the gravity of this situation. He simply continued toward the hangar, gun at the ready.
Jace stood with his back to the wall right next to the door, Kat standing next to him, her knife gripped with the blade facing down. He did his best to ignore what she was doing, as long as she was out of the way. He pushed the controls to open the door and quickly rounded the corner with his gun pointed straight in front of him. The hallway was clear. He quickly made his way down the hall toward the bay doors to where the Pequod was being kept, took a deep breath and opened the doors only to find himself staring down the barrel of a gun. There was Jol’or standing with a handful of armed and armored men, all pointing rifles at them.
“Mr. Krios,” Jol’or sounded as warm and inviting as ever. “I was quite surprised to find you traveling with a dead woman, and at that, a dead princess. Quite the company you are keeping lately.”
“Go figure,” he grunted, keeping his pistol trained on Jol’or.
“We can’t let you leave with her.” He twirled his finger around in the air. “But I�
��m sure that you know that already.”
“All that I know is that you are in our way, Jol’or,” he gritted his teeth. This was going to get ugly, he thought to himself.
“Your problem is with me,” Katrijn’s voice rang throughout the bay. “So why aren’t you talking to me?”
008. The Fallen Empress
Kara
Now tell me.” O’Neil was leading Kara through his hallway. “What has he done now?”
“Describing my son’s madness is never easy, Peter.” She trailed closely behind, but still felt jittery after the night she had been having. “But I think he’s finally lost it, just completely lost it.”
“You can speak freely here, Kara.” He led her back into his office, and she carefully scanned the area just in case.
“I know, but can we not be stuffed up in your office like before, though?” She was feeling like the walls of the palace were closing in around her and needed to feel the cool night air.
“Sure.” He motioned for her to follow him out into the garden. “I was out here anyway when you called.”
“At this hour? Oh gods.” She dusted off a bench with her hand absentmindedly before just sitting down anyway, operating on reflex. “So you’ve heard?”
“Heard what?” He sat down next to her. “I really haven’t heard anything, I was just decompressing and checking up on a few of my agents out in the field.”
“He murdered Senator Pelan.” The words escaped her mouth like it was a natural phrase to utter, but her verbalizing it brought back the image into her mind of her son, ax in hand, driving it into the senator’s head in a blind rage. Pelan’s still, lifeless eyes pierced through her while he lay on the marble floor, blood pooled around his body like an amorphous outline. His once-white head of hair had been stained pink and his wrinkled face looked as if it had begun melting in horror.
“Wait, what? In cold blood?”
“Yes,” she said, holding herself together, still in shock. “Pelan was arguing with Cronus late into the night. Cronus was talking about just dissolving the Senate altogether and Pelan was pleading with him. I mean, you know how he is, he hasn’t taken their advice throughout his whole reign. It’s just been you and I trying to keep things together, but, oh gods…”
“So he just…murdered him right then and there? In cold blood? In front of witnesses?”
“Witnesses? Ha!” She let out a laugh; the idea of anyone speaking up against her mad son was truly funny to her. “Who will oppose him? He’s surrounded by yes-men and everyone is so afraid of him. It’s like the news of the death of his sister has removed any sense of logic or any of the restraints that were on him.”
“This is not good.” O’Neil got up and stood out overlooking the garden while Kara sat there, feeling a cool breeze run by. A part of her felt guilty for bringing such a monster into the world, that maybe she had done something wrong along the way, but it was too late to fix it.
“Of course it’s not,” she said. “Peter, we need to stop him. We need to find a way to get him out of power. He’s not well; his father believed that he could still be saved, you know this, but it’s gone far beyond that. We need to do something.”
“I know,” he said, just staring off into the distance. “We really do.”
“He won’t listen to me anymore, I know that much, and I’m not sure he really listens to you, either. In fact…” She picked herself up and walked up next to him, staring out over his little kingdom with him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was actively looking for a way to dispose of both of us at this moment. That Giger is in his ear and we are nothing but liabilities at this point since we oppose him at every step.”
“That we do,” he said. “I wish Jonah was still here, he was always good to talk this stuff through with, believe it or not. He wasn’t as out there as everyone believed, but you know that. I mean, hell, you shot him and he still loved you and felt he had to make things right by you.”
“I know, trust me.” She felt the emptiness inside her. “I miss him every day. Even if he was a fool, he was my fool. I wasn’t always great to him, he wasn’t always great to me, but at the end of the day, it’s hard to believe that we both created that monster in there.”
“Well, for every monster you created, you created one good one, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
“Katrijn,” he took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “That girl was Jonah’s hope for the Republic. Hell, she was my hope for the Republic. I had to let her go, Kara, you know that, right?”
“I know.” She fought back the tears, refusing to look weak in front of Peter. “If only we knew what happened to her. You haven’t heard anything still?”
“No, nothing yet,” he said. “My agent on Cyngen is supposed to make contact in the morning. They were supposed to rendezvous a few days back, but as you know, the whole thing with the exploding ship and all. Cyngen was still the closest planet and there was one life pod that wasn’t accounted for. She’s a smart, resourceful person, Kara. You raised one hell of a girl.”
“I didn’t really raise her,” she said, feeling regret over the things she’d missed from Katrijn’s childhood. “I wish I had, I wish I wasn’t so blind to how much she needed me. I just saw Cronus and wanted to fix him; Katrijn was always a good girl, she just, well, she didn’t need much from me. You and Jonah raised her more than I ever did.”
“The past is the past, Kara.” He placed both hands on the small of his back and stretched. “If she’s still out there, we have to find her, but until then, we have to keep the beast at bay.”
“I’ve been doing that his whole life. Clearly, I’ve failed in that regard. I’m not sure how much longer I can placate him before his rage turns to me.”
“Then we have to pretend.”
“I guess so. It won’t be easy, but until we have a better plan, I’m willing to do what it takes.”
They both sat in silence for a while, Kara’s mind floating back to Cronus’s childhood when he was just a little innocent prince. There was no malice in his heart yet, just a little boy who would grow up to live under a microscope and feel the pressure the whole time. He was such a sweet boy, always by her side and cried for her when she had to leave him with one of his nannies. It was a far cry from the man who had murdered another man in cold blood for simply implying that he was wrong.
Peter was lost in thought when they said their goodbyes; she composed herself and headed out toward her own chambers. She realized she was a panic-stricken mess before, but it was late so there weren’t many around to witness it, just a few guards who she had known for years and trusted with her life. She knew deep down that if Cronus ever turned against her that there would be someone to protect her—at least that was her hope. Even at his maddest he wouldn’t dare hurt her—would he? She wasn’t so sure about Peter, but he knew how to take care of himself.
It felt impossible to shake the image of her son burying an ax into Senator Pelan’s skull, nor would the sight of the guards who stood by and did nothing. The guards were just as sick as he was, a few laughing while Pelan had pleaded for his life, none looking away when the ax was driven into his skull and he let out a whimper. They were his personal guards, which meant they were used to his outbursts, but the cold efficiency in which they dragged the body off while it was still warm chilled her to the bone. She cursed Jonah for leaving Cronus as her responsibility.
Jonah had never had much of a connection with Cronus, which led to the boy growing up full of resentment and anger. He had never felt as wanted as Katrijn was, knowing that his sister was being groomed to rule, leaving Cronus as the clear number two. In a family that was ruling over a Republic, the idea of one child being excluded could—and did—turn out to be a lethal mistake. She felt naked once the secure doors to Peter’s wing of the palace sealed shut behind her, leaving her just wandering the hallway on a rather auspicious night.
“Mother!” Cronus appeared coming from his own wing of the p
alace, flanked by two of his elite guards wearing their ceremonial Krigan armor, Cronus’s crest emblazoned on their chests.
“I’m here, Cronus,” she offered a faint smile toward her son. “What are you still doing up so late?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “I’ve dissolved the Senate.”
“I see,” she said, trying to hide her horror at what that had entailed. “A…wise move, my son.”
“Yes,” he said. “You saw that sniveling coward Pelan pleading with me before. He had proven to me that the Senate was simply dragging my Republic down. It was an attempt to shackle my power, to question my authority.”
“Your father found the Senate useful for a time.” She made sure to tread lightly around the topic. “But I trust your judgement in this matter.”
“Good!” He clenched his fist and his mouth formed a deranged smile. “I’m sure Father needed the help, but my Republic is nothing like his, it is larger, more complicated. It is precisely that reason why there need to be fewer voices in play; I’m sure you understand. To rule such an expansive Republic as the Andlios Republic, there need to be no questions, no doubts. The Senate was a group of old men who second-guessed their own every move. Now is a time for action, to solidify my name in the stars.”
“The people should consider themselves lucky to have my son as their emperor,” she said, forcing out a yawn. “Dear, while I am excited to talk about what comes next, I truly am exhausted. I got up just to go to the kitchen to have some tea, and now I really need to get some rest.”
“Yes, of course,” he waved his hand to dismiss her, Kara quickly nodding and heading toward her own quarters, feeling the panic welling up inside her. How many were dead? She had known those senators for over twenty cycles, many were even personal friends. She knew all their families, their spouses and children. The horror washed over her while she walked into her quarters and locked the door behind her. She knew it was a silly gesture, but it made her feel just a bit safer for the time being.