“And you declared war on the League of Systems when you captured the Intrepid in League Space,” Sarah countered. “The easiest way to defeat an Emperor is to end his life; so surrender or die, either way the League wins this war now!”
Ettac IV collapsed into his seat. He pressed a red button on his communications console. Instantly his image was displayed on all the screens in the Arena. It was also displayed throughout the Empire on every receiver that was active.
“This is the Emperor Ettac IV. We order all our troops to stand down. All ships in all regions of the Empire are to stand down and return to your bases. We hereby surrender to the Stellar Corps of the League of Systems.” His voice weakened on the last sentence. He looked at Sarah, “Is that sufficient, Captain?” he asked.
Sarah nodded. “Now order the immediate release of all the Stellar Corps prisoners currently being held,” she ordered.
“Even the ones in the kitchens?” he asked.
“Especially the ones in the kitchens!” Sarah told him.
“I can free the ones held in Gethor, and the females at the Holding Centre in the Palace, but I have no override button for the kitchens. I can only give them the order if they are present to answer the communicator.”
“Then you had better try fast!” Sarah ordered.
In the Arena the Galoran soldiers were laying down their weapons and raising their hands. The Corps troops moved quickly to pick up the weapons and corral the fighters. In the Emperor’s box he gave the order to release the prisoners in the prison and the Holding Centre, but as he said might be the case, no one answered in the kitchen. Sarah thought of Peter; afraid of where he might be, wondering if he was alive. She needed to get to the palace, but didn’t know how to get there without leaving the Emperor unguarded. She glanced at the troops in the Arena and an idea struck her. She turned to Ettac IV.
“Press that red button again,” she ordered. He complied. She indicated that he should move back. When Ettac IV did, she replaced him in the field of view, took a deep breath and gave her beast approximation of Mandy’s hunter battle cry.
In the middle in the fray below, Mandy heard Sarah’s call. She barked an order and her second-in-command stepped in to direct the mop up. She called to Séamus O’Gill, “O’Gill, you and your people with me,” and lit out in the general direction of the Imperial Box. As they drew close Sarah ordered Ettac IV to open the passage for them. Within minutes Mandy, O’Gill, and his troops were in the Emperor’s box.
Sarah’s report was short. “They’ve taken Peter to the kitchens. We have to get there fast, but I can’t leave him here,” she pointed to Ettac IV.
“So we take him along.” Mandy said. “Our landing vehicles are all down there,” indicating the bowl, “but we can probably get there faster in that.” She pointed to the private landing bay behind the Imperial box that currently housed the Imperial skimmer.
“…or get shot down trying,” Mandy continued, “but then the stakes are worth the risk.” Then, leaving some of O’Gill’s crew with Melgr and the others, Mandy, Sarah and Ettac IV, with O’Gill and the rest of his landing team, boarded the skimmer. Sarah took the controls. She barely cleared the top of the Arena, travelling at top speed. Séamus leaned closer to Mandy and whispered, “I love the way she flies.”
As Sarah passed over the walls, the main palace courtyard spread out below the skimmer. At various locations Mandy’s landing forces could be seen rounding up the staff and Palace Guards. For a moment Sarah paused in flight and turned to Ettac. Placing her blade to his throat, again, she commanded, “Point out the kitchens!”
The defeated emperor pointed, then in a last burst of defiance he said, “You’re wasting your time. My chefs are very efficient, if your crewmate was brought in this morning, he is already on the luncheon menu.”
Sarah pressed the blade against his neck once again. “You had better hope not, or I’ll feed your body to the protein re-sequencer, and hang your head from the main gate.” As Sarah took the controls again, he glanced around the cabin. Not one of the assembled troops had batted an eyelash at Sarah’s threat. The former ruler of the Empire had troubled controlling his bladders.
Sarah landed without question, but was immediately met by a circling landing boat and two Star Hawks. When they saw the League uniforms, the ships departed as quickly as they arrived. Sarah forced Ettac IV to open each of the doors and activate the elevator to the kitchen level.
As the doors parted Sarah heard a muted scream. It was Peter. She charged forth with Ettac in tow, to find that the chef had just started in on Peter. He was suspended on meat hooks through his shoulders. His right arm was missing and his right leg had just been severed. She raised her sword intending to take the chef’s hand before he could go after Peter’s left leg, but Mandy’s tomahawk split the chef’s skull first.
“Medic” Sarah cried. A young lieutenant from the Dublin stepped up. She placed a nerve blocker just below Peter’s ninth vertebra and his whole body went numb. Sarah picked up the cutting tool and cut the meat hooks on which Peter was suspended, while the medic and Séamus O’Gill held him steady until they could lower him to the table. Mandy had already called for an Evac Shuttle.
The Medivac team from the Victory arrived within minutes. They found Peter, now unconscious, lying on the preparation table with Sarah cradling his head. The rest of the rescue team was standing guard against fleeing palace troops.
The Medivac crew quickly loaded Peter onto their stretcher. As they were hustling him out to the evac ship he briefly came around, and looking over at Sarah, he managed a weak smile and asked, “Sassy do you really have something against wearing pants?”
Up until then no one had noticed that all she was wearing was the tunic of Captain’s Grifn’s uniform. Peter’s joke momentarily caused the Dublin’s medic to look at Sarah. That was when she noticed the long gash in her left side. The tunic had long since stopped absorbing the blood flow, and it was running down the outside of her left leg. As the adrenalin rush began to wear off, she sagged into the medic’s arms.
Sarah turned to Mandy, “Captain Running Deer, take charge of the prisoner, and if he does anything at all, treat him like an Eater!”
Mandy clamped a very firm hand on Ettac IV’s shoulder. “Aye, Captain, with pleasure!” she responded. In response to the ex-emperor’s worried look Mandy explained, “Eaters get no mercy – EVER!”
Sarah and Peter rode the Evac Shuttle back to Victory together. Even though she was weak from blood loss, Sarah sat beside Peter holding his remaining hand. At one point on the trip, when she thought no one was paying attention, she leaned close and said to him, “In answer to your previous question,” she said, “I just wanted to see if you would notice.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. Across the room a very observant medic smiled.
The Evac Shuttle was met in the landing bay by Captain Grissom. The Victory’s medical team insisted that Sarah be transported to Med Bay by stretcher. They argued their point by telling her that they needed to begin working on Peter as fast as they could to prepare him for limb replacement or the procedure might not be a success. Her walking with him would slow things down considerably. Sarah consented. They only paused on their way to Med Bay long enough for Sarah to ask a favour of Victory’s captain.
“Thom, there is the body of a dead Zaran in the Palace Arena. Could you make sure it is recovered, please? I’ll explain as soon as they’re finished with me in Med Bay.” Then as an afterthought, “…and please, get rid of that damn armour he’s wearing.”
Forty-eight hours later Sarah and Peter were transferred from the Victory to an Earthside hospital. Sarah’s injury had been treated relatively quickly, and the task of cloning Peter’s new arm and leg was well underway, though it would be another week before they would attach them.
As soon as Sarah was released from the Base Hospital her debriefings began. Admiral Flyn and now Vice-Admiral Grissom met with her at her parents Manhattan home.
“You�
��re looking much better than the last time we met,” Grissom began. “We’re sorry to press you on this, but you can appreciate that the information is important. The moment we officially took Ettac IV into custody he screamed bloody murder, and claimed that you came to Galor Prime as an assassin. He is claiming that you set up the whole thing, even to the hiring of Theodore Querryl as your accomplice, to trap them. He’s demanded a hearing with our Interstellar Court of Justice. If he wins he is hoping to keep the Intrepid as compensation, and extradite you to Galor Prime to face new charges that don’t allow you to have a trial by combat.”
Flyn picked up the narrative, “We have been trying to find Querryl, but he seems to have taken their money and run.”
Sarah interrupted her there. “Dekert, first off, Querryl was Winston Dekert, as we expected. Second, the only thing you might find of him is his head. It was on the floor of the abattoir of the Palace kitchen on Galor Prime. It seems as if Mr. Dekert became the victim of his own brand of treachery. They probably killed him rather than pay him half a billion Galoran credits.”
“To pick up where someone just interrupted me,” Flyn continued, “the newly elected Chancellor of Earth pulled rank on the ex-emperor. It seems that Ettac tried to kill his daughter, a captain in the Terran branch of the Stellar Corps. ‘That,’ he told him, ‘gives Earth jurisdiction in the matter.’
“The Supreme Court of Earth has already denied Ettac’s claim, and it is going to try him and his brother on charges of Murder in the case of Captain Grifn, and the kidnaping and attempted murder of the captain of the LSS Pegasus; and that was only for starters.
Between official debriefings and the preparation for the Hmlar brothers’ trial, Sarah barely had any time to spend with Peter, but she made sure that she was at his bedside when he awoke from the surgery to attach his new limbs. As Peter opened his eyes, Sarah was the first person he saw.
“Nice to see that you didn’t forget your uniform pants this time,” he quipped sleepily.
Sarah smiled at his joke. “I decided that you don’t get to peek any more, until after our wedding,” she told him.
“Our wedding, huh? When was this decided?”
“I think when I saw you in that cell on Galor Prime. I knew then that I never want to lose you, Peter.” Sarah leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you too much!”
“Funny, when I saw the guards lead you away the next day I felt the same thing, I guess we’re meant to be together. How long before the refit of Pegasus? Will we have some time before you have to deploy again?”
“Pegasus has been decommissioned,” Sarah answered. “Mandy is being given a new ship; the new Jump-four version of the LSS Kennedy. It’s apparently only one of five ships in its class.
“Testing the Jump-fours gave rise to the discovery that led to the development of the Jump-fives. The jump-fours never went into full production. As for me, the brass have given me the new Victory.” She chuckled. “Thom Grissom said that he was just keeping the captain’s chair warm for me. The thing is that she wasn’t finished when Vice-Admiral Grissom took her to Galor Prime, and she did sustain a some damage during the battle. The Galorans didn’t give up easily. Victory will be at Mars Base another three months before she’s ready to go, which means that I’ll be staying here to oversee her completion. We have the time…”
Sarah paused for effect. “…for a proper wedding,” she said. “I nearly lost you this time, and I never want to lose you, Peter! I love you.”
“I love you, too, Sassy!” Peter said emphatically. Sarah leaned over and kissed him, passionately. “Hey,” he cautioned, “you’re not supposed to overexcite me. Do you want to kill your husband before we’re even married?”
Sarah smiled. “Live dangerously; besides if that overexcites you, you may never survive the wedding night.” She kissed him again.
Epilogue
After leaving Peter in the hospital Sarah went to see Vice-Admiral Thom Grissom. Hawthan’s body was still in a stasis chamber aboard Victory. With Grissom’s blessing, Sarah exercised her authority as Victory’s new captain and took the ship out for a short run to the planet Zara. The Victory did not, however, enter orbit around the planet. Instead she made a conical approach to the Zaran primary.
Once she reached minimal safe distance, Sarah ordered Hawthan’s body loaded into a forward launch tube in preparation for a burial in space. The ceremony was short, but Sarah expressed the respect that she felt for an honourable warrior.
Three weeks later Sarah and Peter were married in the rebuilt Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in New Brooklyn. Francis Maloney had felt that the daughter of the World Chancellor should be married in a more auspicious location, like Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, in New York, or maybe even St. Peter’s in Vatican City, but Sarah insisted. The Basilica was large enough to hold all the invited guests, and many of the New Brooklynites as well.
“They are our people, dad, Peter’s and mine,” Sarah explained. “For seven years many of them were my extended family. I really want them there…and Peter was born in that church,” she added. So, her father relented and the wedding was scheduled.
Sarah and Peter did give in on one not so minor detail; the presiding minister for the wedding was the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, with the Bishop of New Brooklyn and the Rector of the Basilica as co-presiders.
The number of dignitaries from World Gov, the League of Systems and the Stellar Corps, including the Commander-in-Chief of the Terran Command, filled half of the church. New Brooklynites filled the rest of the Basilica, and there were screens in the streets outside for those who didn’t manage to get in.
The first reception began in the newly refurbished Sunset Park. It was part formal reception, part pot-luck bash. It rocked all night, even though the happy couple and the many dignitaries left around 8:00 PM to attend a more traditional reception in uptown Manhattan.
After a sumptuous dinner, the second that evening for most of the guests, Sarah and Peter had a quiet moment together while orchestra reset for the dancing.
“Well, husband,” Sarah said, “we finally got it all together – with a month’s liberty for our honeymoon for good measure!”
Peter seemed a little reserved at her remark. “Then we will have to go our separate ways again. I haven’t even received my new orders. Vice-Admiral Grissom simply told me that I would hear after the wedding. That could be quite an anti-climax, don’t you think.”
Sarah looked at him with devilish smile on her face. “That was my idea. I figured that it might make a nice wedding present; at least I hope it will.” She nodded at Mandy, who was hovering close. Mandy signalled to Thom Grissom, who leaned over and said something to the Commander-in-Chief of Terran Command.
She stood up and cleared her throat. She was handed a microphone into which she said, “Lieutenant-Commander Preston, front and centre!” The room fell silent.
Surprised, Peter reported as ordered, with Sarah close behind. The C-in-C cleared her throat again. “Lieutenant-Commander Preston, several reports were received by my office concerning your behaviour following the death of Captain Grifn; beginning with the removal of the female crewmembers that included the executive officer, Commander Miranda Carr, and ending with your incarceration in Gethal prison.
“All of these reports detail your actions, which they credit with sustaining your crew and inspiring behaviour that was nothing short of the highest ideals of the Stellar Corps. Further, as you were being marched off to the kitchens your deportment showed courage, even defiance in the face of what was to be certain death. Your courage strengthened the resolve of every member of your crew.
“As you may know, the Intrepid was severely damaged by the Galoran’s attempt to reverse engineer her. She will be in refit for several months to a year. The Corps cannot afford to have an officer of your calibre out of the field for that long…”
Peter suddenly saw his liberty being withdrawn. It looked like he and Sarah might not even hav
e a honeymoon.
“…Accordingly, Lieutenant-Commander, for your meritorious conduct in the best traditions of the Corps, you are hereby promoted to the rank of full Commander, with all the duties and privileges of that rank. In consequence of which you are hereby reassigned to the LSS Victory as her executive officer. You will report to Captain Maloney as soon as your current liberty is over;” she extended her hand to him, “congratulations, Commander!”
Peter was flabbergasted. He shook the C-in-C’s hand, and then turned to Sarah who was grinning like a Cheshire cat. Instead of the usual three cheers the whole room began to clink their water glasses in the time-honoured wedding tradition. In response, Peter swooped Sarah up in his arms and kissed her passionately. A cheer erupted throughout the hall.
In the midst of the revelry Mandy Running Deer and Séamus O’Gill slipped out of the ballroom together…But that is another story.
Chronicles of the Stellar Corps: Sassy Page 23