The Scipio Alliance_A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic
Page 23
A shape flashed into place overhead, stopping so suddenly that the resulting thunderclap knocked them all to the ground. Tanis looked up to see the Aegeus. Above the vessel, she could see dozens of beamfire shots raining down, dissipated by the ship’s stasis shield.
Lights flared on the underside of the starship, and a moment later, a full platoon of Force Recon Orbital Drop Marines stood on the rooftop.
The enemy soldiers were still struggling to rise, but the Marines had come down right on top of them, covering the mercs with heavy weapons.
“Stay down if you don’t want to see what your brain looks like going through your eyeballs,” one of the Marines yelled.
Tanis rose to her feet and walked to the leader of the enemy soldiers. “Looks like your day just got a lot worse.”
Above, beamfire continued to pound the Aegeus, and Tanis could see heat pouring off the ship’s shield, melting the glass on nearby towers. She called up to Captain Sheeran.
“Glad to see you’re OK,” a voice said from behind them, and Tanis turned to see Flaherty climb over the edge of the roof.
“Where were you?” Sera said from Elena’s side.
“I was nearby in case things got out of control.”
Tanis snorted, and Sera laughed. “That wasn’t out of control enough?”
Flaherty shrugged. “Didn’t want you to get complacent.”
DAUGHTERS
STELLAR DATE: 08.12.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Intrepid Space Force Academy
REGION: The Palisades, Orbiting Troy, New Canaan System
Joe raced through the narrow confines of the tunnel, pushing past security teams and medics in his rush to reach his daughters.
He rounded the final corner and saw Cary and Saanvi standing together, arms around one another’s shoulders as a medic checked them over.
Warring emotions thundered through Joe; he pushed all but relief to the side as he strode toward them, his arms held out. The two young women who meant more to him than anything else in the universe stretched theirs out as well.
The medic stepped aside at the last moment to avoid being caught in the middle, and the three crashed together in a wordless embrace.
Joe felt Faleena in his mind and brought her into a mental embrace as well.
“You three,” he whispered. “You just can’t avoid trouble, can you?”
Cary pulled back to look him in the eyes. “Well, at least we come by it honestly, Dad.”
Her voice sounded strained, and Joe shook his head. “That you do.”
Cary took a step back and held out the hand that had been hidden behind Saanvi. “We need to do something about this thing.”
Joe peered at the glowing ball of light wrapped in black bands that rested on his daughter’s palm. It seemed sedate, pulsing and rotating slowly.
“Is that it? The thing you extracted from Nance? Where is she, anyway?”
Saanvi stepped aside and gestured at the far corner of the corridor’s dead end to where a cluster of medics was working over Nance. “We put her to sleep. She’s got some broken bones, but I think that’s the extent of her physical damage.”
Joe noticed that Saanvi’s voice had the same strange quality to it as Cary’s, and he suspected what it meant. “To think that this thing was inside her all this time and we never knew.”
Cary and Saanvi nodded physically, while Faleena did so in their minds.
Joe looked at the medics.
“OK, people, I want this scene scrubbed and everything categorized and packaged up. You two,” he pointed to the pair of medics closest to Nance, “We’re bringing her along.”
“Along where, sir?” One of the medics asked.
“To the Freedom’s Fire,” Joe replied. “We have a date with Earnest Redding.”
AEGEUS
STELLAR DATE: 08.13.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Aegeus, over the Imperial Palace
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
It took Diana getting in touch with the commander of the space defense directly to convince the Scipians to stop firing on the Aegeus.
The ship had run the CriEn module powering the shields down to the wire, it was dangerously close to a space-time distortion that would have caused destruction on a planetary scale. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the beams stopped raining down.
The Scipians were not convinced that their empress wasn’t under duress. Diana, however, was certain that at least one of the prelates—other than Fiona—had used the abduction as an opportunity to stage a coup. She claimed it was the only reason they would fire so heavily on the ship supposedly holding her hostage.
Once aboard, Diana refused to leave the Aegeus until the commander of Alexandria’s Space Defense revealed who had given her the orders to fire on the ship, even when it was suspected to be—and later was—holding the Empress.
By the time Diana was prepared to return to the Imperial Palace, Prelate Bella, two admirals, one general, and the commander of the planetary space defense were all under arrest.
Tanis escorted Diana to the Aegeus’s main shuttle bay in silence, wondering what the empress was thinking. She had spent so much time fighting with her own government, that little time had been given to discuss the abductors and their goals.
“So, that was Orion, was it?” she asked as they walked down a corridor leading to the bay. “Hard to believe that such a small team could thwart us so easily.”
“If it makes you feel any better, those were some of their top operatives.”
“Perhaps a little,” Diana replied.
“Or you, Angela?” Diana asked. “From what I understand, you can move across our networks with impunity.”
Angela laughed.
Diana shook her head. “I feel like I had just finally figured out my place in this world, what everything meant and how it fit together…only to find that I don’t know anything, and I’d mashed all the puzzle pieces into the wrong places and now nothing fits.”
“Well,” Tanis said, her voice soft. “You have a friend in myself, Angela, and Sera. And I think you have more than a friend in Petra, if you treat her right. She’ll be at your side to assist you in whatever way you need—no double entendre intended.”
Diana laughed—a real, deep, heartfelt laugh. Possibly the first one Tanis had heard from the empress. “I suppose I w
ill. I’ll have to modify my behavior…I don’t think she’ll accept the role of underling anymore.”
“She is the Transcend’s direct representative. I would expect no less,” Tanis said with a smile, but a stern note as well.
“Yes, the Transcend. Already the feeds are ablaze with talk of this ship from beyond the rim of explored space that has impenetrable shields. People aren’t stupid; many have already begun to draw connections between this vessel and the ships seen at Bollam’s World twenty years ago. It does not look so dissimilar, you know.”
“We don’t have to tell them everything at once,” Tanis said. “Though it’s up to you as to how much you reveal.”
“I think we should tell them everything—except we’ll omit your civil war, for now. Certainly we need to explain the Transcend and Orion, now that Orion has struck at the heart of our empire. That will galvanize the populace.”
“Some of them, at least,” Tanis replied as they reached the shuttle bay. The Scipian shuttle was sitting in the nearest cradle with a dozen of the empress’s guards standing at attention outside.
Petra stood before them, wearing a crisp suit with the Transcend Diplomatic Corps crest over her heart, speaking with one of the admirals from the night before. She remembered seeing him, but had to put the image of his first impression out of her mind so that she could look at him with a straight face.
The night before, the bizarre Scipian party with the ridiculous costumes, seemed like a drug-induced haze now that they were back on an ISF ship.
Petra smiled with a trace of uncertainty showing around her eyes as Tanis and Diana approached. The admiral she was with saluted Diana, and the empress nodded to him.
“Admiral Sula,” she greeted him amicably.
“Empress, it is so good to see you unharmed.”
“I agree whole-heartedly,” Diana replied. “I am not entirely unharmed, but it is not anything that will take long to heal.”
She turned to Petra, and the two stared at one another for a moment before Diana placed a hand on Petra’s shoulder. “I think some of those wounds are starting to heal now,” Diana said, her eyes squinting with genuine joy as a smile pulled at her lips.
“Admiral Richards. Please give my regards to President Sera, as with you, I owe her my life.”
Tanis nodded. “She sends her regards. She’s…with Elena.”
“The woman who abducted me,” Diana said flatly; her previously expression replaced by one far darker. Then it cleared. “I’ll trust you to mete out justice as necessary. Though I expect there to be justice.”
Tanis pulled at her ponytail where it rested on her shoulder. “I do too. However, from what Garza said, she may not have been acting of her own accord. We’ll need to get to the bottom of that.”
“It can be very difficult to delve into a mind that has been corrupted in such a way,” Diana said. “You run the risk of destroying her.”
“That is true,” Tanis agreed. “But she’ll talk to Bob, and he’ll determine the best way to proceed.”
“Bob?” Diana asked.
“When next we meet, Diana, let’s do it on the I2. You’ll get to see Bob in person, sort of.”
“I look forward to it.”
* * * * *
“Sera? Uh…Sera?”
The sound of Elena’s voice brought Sera out of her tired stupor in slow stages. She lifted her head off the back of the chair and met Elena’s eyes.
“Looks like you made it.”
Elena gave a slight nod and glanced at the regrow module that covered her right shoulder. She closed her eyes and gave a soft sigh. “But from the sound of your voice, I may wish I hadn’t.”
Sera felt anger surge in her and her throat tightened. “You’re a right fucking moron, you know that, Elena? Escaping, abducting Diana. Believing Garza’s lies. Tanis told me what happened. You have to see it, now.”
She saw a tear escape Elena’s eye as she nodded. “I do. I just wanted something better. Your father, his empire, it was so cold, and Garza had all the answers.”
Sera rose from her chair and strode to the window. It wasn’t a real window—rather a holodisplay depicting a field of flowers on a sunny afternoon. She stared at it for a minute, wishing it could give her the answers.
“I’m sorry, Sera,” Elena offered behind her.
Sera spun. “‘Sorry’? ‘Sorry’, Elena? You nearly ruined everything! I mean…you fucking killed my father, and if that wasn’t enough, you—”
“I saved you from that!” Elena yelled back, then began to cough. Sera just watched until Elena had control of herself again. “You were going to do it,” she rasped. “I saved you from the guilt of killing your own father, and you know it! So don’t you try to pin that on me.”
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Sera replied in a small voice. Even she knew she was lying.
“Bullshit. I know you, Sera. I know you better than you know yourself. You were going to do it.”
“You don’t know me that well, Elena,” Sera retorted. “You turned on me because you thought I’d be a despot like my father. You never even gave me a chance. I’m doing the best I can, and I’m a hell of a lot better than Kirkland and Garza. You know what he is, right?”
Elena pursed her lips but didn’t reply.
“He’s a clone,” Sera said, her tone flat. “They both are, as it turns out, the one on Alexandria, and the one on the I2. Both are clones of the real Garza.”
“What?” Elena asked, genuine surprise on her face.
“Yeah, we’re not sure how, but it may be the tech that the oligarchs in the Hegemony use. Your low-tech Orion utopia is a lie. Jessica saw it firsthand in Perseus, and now you’ve seen it here. When are you going to wake up? They’re not the good guys.”
“Don’t act like you are, either,” Elena replied softly. “The Hand has abducted and killed its fair share of leaders. You’re not the good guys either.”
Sera slumped against the window. “I don’t think there are any ‘good guys’. Look. I’m not the one waging a war here to take over everything. I want to keep New Canaan’s picotech secure. I want to defeat Airtha because she’s an evil bitch who needs to die. And I want Orion to stay in its borders and stop inciting wars in the Inner Stars. I don’t need to be queen bee; I just want everyone to stop trying to make everyone else be just like them.”
“How do I know that you’ll stop there?” Elena asked. “How do I know Tanis will?”
Sera walked to the foot of Elena’s bed. “You know, you could have been a voice at the table, helping us stay on the straight and narrow. But now, I guess you’ll just have to listen to the guards to see how things are going.”
“So I’m going back in my cage, am I?” Elena asked.
Sera snorted. “If I can keep the Scipian demands at bay. You know what will happen if they get you.”
“Execution.”
“Or worse.”
A look of genuine fear filled Elena’s face, and Sera realized that she couldn’t deal with it anymore. She simply could not.
Without a backward glance, she left the room and raced down the passageway. Once she was out of sight, she ducked into an alcove, buried her face in her hands, and began to cry—all the while, quivering with rage.
It’s over. I can’t pretend anymore. Now that Elena was finally seeing the error of her ways, this is when they’ve reached the point where there could never be a possibility of reuniting? All because Diana wouldn’t stand for Elena escaping punishment.
What bitter irony.
It was well and truly over between them.
A NEW ENEMY
STELLAR DATE: 08.15.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Command Deck Main Conference Room, ISS I2
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
“Fucking core devils!” Sera exclaimed as she slammed her fists against the conference room table. “Seriously? Nance?! They do this to Nance?”
Tanis placed a hand on Sera’s shoulder f
rom her seat next to the president. They were alone in the room, awaiting Diana’s arrival, when the message from Joe came through on the QuanComm. She took a deep breath to steady her own voice. “Nance is going to be OK.”
Tanis closed her eyes and slowly tilted her head left, then right, trying to ease the tension building in her neck. “Yeah, it means we’re all dupes.”
“It’s true, though,” Tanis said as she opened her eyes. “From what Nance told Joe and the girls—if it’s true—Myrrdan has been an agent of this ‘Caretaker’ from the very beginning. They manipulated everything to get us to Kapteyn’s Star so that we’d go through the Streamer. Then I suppose they took control of Nance to get her to take out Myrrdan because they were done with him?”
“I thought you could predict the future,” Sera asked coolly. “How come you didn’t see this?”
“What sort of discrepancies?” Tanis asked.
“There were no ‘Inner Stars’ in the thirty-fifth century,” Sera corrected.