“You were the true beginning of a new life for us. If only we could have somehow singled out that strand of DNA which makes you so prone to recklessness. But DNA manipulation wasn’t a part of it.” He smiled. “Unfortunately.”
His father held him by his shoulders and gazed upon him.
“Farewell, son.”
“Farewell, father.”
Farewell, until we meet again…
PART II
An Empire Divided
Chapter 7-Heir to the Empire
“That will all be gone if we make peace with the United Systems” – Lord Praetor Brutus Bannon
Imperial Homeworld—Hosque
16 years earlier
Marcus Sotomerius ran through the hallways of the palace. He couldn’t wait to tell father he’d come first in the fights—he would be so proud! Training had been hard, but worth it. Lord Praetor Bannon was the best instructor ever. Marcus began advanced combat training when he was nine. Five years later, he’d just bested boys two years older than him in the final match of this year’s competition.
But father had missed it. His moment of triumph. Why? Why hadn’t he come?
In his excitement, Marcus nearly ran into the Great Hall’s doors before the Praetorians opened them. Father was there leaning over Cato—Marcus’ younger brother.
No one noticed Marcus. He might as well be invisible! His chest deflated. Marcus sauntered up to the dais.
Father was praising Cato for some silly thing as usual. “Excellent, Cato. Your high grade in this aptitude test shows you will make a great Lord Commander one day. Tactics and strategy, son, never forget. Anyone can be a good fighter. Whoever controls the space lanes . . . controls the sector. It won’t do you much good to be the best centurion on the ground if your ships can’t break through the enemy’s blockade and land your troops to the surface.”
Marcus’ father suddenly noticed him.
“What is it, Marcus?”
Marcus’ shoulders dropped, he lowered his head. “I won, father. I won my fight. I’m the champion in my age range.”
“Not bad, Marcus,” his father said. But his eyes betrayed his hollow words. “Everyone knows you’re a great fighter.” Father’s tone grew bitter. “When will you take your studies seriously like Cato and improve your scores on the aptitude tests? You’ll never command a Navy vessel with such low scores. And you know very well I am not like my predecessors. I don’t care that you’re my son. I’ll never give you command of a heavy cruiser to bring embarrassment upon this house.”
Marcus bit his lip. He wanted to roll over and die. “I’ve tried, father, you know I have! The tests are so hard. It comes naturally for Cato!”
Cato, the little miscreant, ever eager to please father spoke. Cato had tried to help before, but it did nothing to improve Marcus’ scores.
“I’ll help him, father. Marcus can do it. Can’t you Marcus?”
Marcus eyed the little runt, five years his junior. He’d like to squeeze his little neck until he turned purple. “I will keep trying, father,” Marcus said and bowed.
Marcus turned and scampered from the Great Hall. He wanted to be anywhere but in this place. When he reached the corridor, a hand grabbed his shoulder. He whirled, expecting to face an unknown attacker.
“Lor—”
Lord Praetor Brutus Bannon put a finger to his lips. He pulled Marcus into his private chambers beyond the Great Hall.
Bannon rested his hands on Marcus’ shoulders. “Don’t mind your father, Marcus. You will be a great leader someday. What your father doesn’t understand is strength must come from within. Cato can play with all the fancy strategies he wants, if he does not have the will to act, nothing his little equations do will help him. You on the other hand . . . you understand the importance of might. You will be Emperor someday, Marcus. You won’t need to go frolicking in the galaxy like some lost explorer. You were born to rule. You will command those around you to do your bidding. Your father leads us down a dangerous path with the United Star Systems.”
Marcus was confused. “But father said peace is in all our interests. All these years of isolation has done neither side any good. Just brought us closer to war!”
“You know all those people who wait hand and foot on you, Marcus?”
“Yes?” Marcus answered, curious about their importance.
“Do you recall the places you’ve been with your father? All the hard work those people do? Every day for long hours? Never getting to see their families and never having a life of their own?
“Yes, Lord.”
Bannon leaned closer to him.
“That will all be gone if we make peace with the United Systems,” he said.
The Lord Praetor frightened him. Marcus wanted to run away, but he wanted to know why the United Systems would take everything away. “I don’t understand . . . why would it be gone? Why would they do that?”
Bannon smiled. “Because the strong make demands of the weak. If we show we are weak, they will demand an end to Imperial slavery and make the Patricians do the most mundane and difficult tasks.”
Marcus didn’t like that. “What about the fights in the arena?”
“Everything, Marcus. Everything we do, which they don’t agree with, will end. We will be nothing more than puppets. Your father wants to turn you into a puppet. Perhaps to be controlled by your brother. Do you want to be a puppet, Marcus? Do you want to be your brother’s puppet?”
Never. “I am the eldest! Father would never choose Cato over me to rule the Empire!”
Bannon walked around Marcus and stood backing him. “And yet he spends most days and nights with Cato. It is clear he loves your younger brother more, Marcus.” The Lord Praetor sounded sad. “I am sorry.”
Tears formed in his eyes. Marcus clenched his fists ready to strike. “You’re lying!”
Bannon whirled on him. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you! I’ve taken you under my wing all these years since your father rejected you. Trained you. Instructed you. With my help, you will one day rule. The Empire will be strong. Or would you rather be subservient to a million Catos?”
Fire raged inside Marcus and burned his eyes. “I would rather die,” he spat. “I would rather burn Hosque to ashes than see us ruled by Cato, and any others like him who wish to undermine our great Empire. I have learned everything you’ve taught Lord. Why can’t father see that I will make a great leader for the Empire?”
Bannon smiled at him again. “He will see it, Marcus. He will see it, or he will go the way of the weak.”
Marcus felt relieved. The Lord Praetor was his true father. His own father had all but disowned him since Cato was born. The question would burn inside his chest for the rest of his life.
Why father? Why do you love Cato and not me?
Chapter 8-Into The Fire
“Frying pan? Is that some kind of code?” – Unknown fellow
Planetary System- Prycon
Three weeks after the rescue of Lt. Delaine
Present day
Lee chewed his inner gum. Just a quick mission Shepherd had said.
Easy, simple, and all the other synonyms which implied Lee wouldn’t be kidnapped and harnessed for body parts by organ-stealing pirates. Sure, scientists had discovered how to grow organs. But who has the money for that? Surely not everyone. Those detestable goons didn’t even kill you. They left you on life support with a machine hooked into you and even alerted the local authorities to your location long after they’d gone. How noble of the organ thieves.
Lee should have learned by now, no missions from Shepherd were easy. Hopefully, the Supreme Commander would never think to give him a difficult one. The Supreme Commander’s interpretation of difficult was awfully skewed. And it certainly didn’t inspire confidence in the process he used to make his assertions.
First, Lee had spent the last three days with Ensign Yuri ‘Flaps’ Miroslav aboard Star Runner traveling here to this hellhole planet at high warp. Trapped in a
small space with Flaps with nowhere to go threatened to drive Lee insane. Now more than ever, Lee was convinced the tale the ensign told about how he got his nickname was a lie. A brilliant lie to cover the truth. Flaps said he got it when he forgot to deploy his atmosphere jet’s flaps during flight training. Lee suspected the truth was the pilot got the damn name because his mouth never stopped flapping. Yuri’s nickname should really be flapper, or flappers. Not Flaps.
From the moment Lee boarded Star Runner, Yuri talked. And it was worse now that Lee had given the pilot the names of a few old history books and other material about twenty-first century Earth. Lee loved the little pilot to death, but that didn’t mean he wanted to endure prolonged confinement with him.
At length, they’d arrived at their destination and Lee had some reprieve from the confines of Star Runner. His claustrophobia almost got him and his other shipmate Commander Avery Alvarez, re-united with their creator during a mission to Rigel. They’d been waiting in their safe house on Rigel for what seemed like forever, for Commander Rayne to collect them before proceeding together to the Border Worlds, and Lee just needed some fresh air. That fresh air had turned into a prolonged firefight with Baridian Empire Agents, during which he’d lost an arm and since had it replaced with a bionic.
And recalling distant memories, Prycon reminded Lee of Luyten. Luyten, however, had one redeeming quality compared to here. They’d outlawed slave trading. Imagine, outlaws “outlawing” something. He laughed every time he thought about it. Lee could respect outlaws with some scruples. But slave-traders could go die in a fire, a fire he lit and pushed them into. Whenever Lee had come across a slave trader in the past, there was no due process for the scumbag. Unless an abnormally twisted neck, or a bullet between the eyes counted as due process. Prycon was another hub for the scum meandering throughout the United Star Systems.
All the nefarious activity on Prycon took place planet-side, unlike in Luyten where the outlaws had taken over an old, abandoned deuterium processing station. And here, the outlaws were even so organized they’d created a form of governance. Pretty soon they’d declare themselves an independent world and lobby for membership in the United Systems…
The deck and bulkheads rumbled and rattled him from his reverie. Lee shook his head. Easy, Shepherd had said.
Yet, here he stood blasting off into orbit on an illegal slave-trader ship. All he had to do was grab this fellow, Shepherd told him. The Supreme Commander claimed the target was pivotal to the security of the United Systems. Extract him and bring him back to Sol, the Supreme Commander said. Shepherd always said everything concerned the security and future of the United Systems.
And the Supreme Commander was very convincing.
Did Commander Rayne ever wonder how they got roped into this whole covert operations thing? Sure, the mission to the Border Worlds was a special case, and rescuing Vee from the ORA was obvious. But Shepherd always had another mission. He’d turned an ordinary starship crew into his personal spy-team. Like Vee said, life sure seemed simpler back on Trident.
***
Lee had tracked his extraction target for twelve hours. How this poor fellow got hooked by these slave traders Lee’d never know. Apparently, the fellow had been quite the troublemaker for his previous owners. He wasn’t cooperative at all.
A slave who resists his owners—isn’t a productive slave. This was a return to sender. The buyers wanted a refund. And not wanting to develop a reputation of peddling a bad product, the slaver returned and refunded the buyer and left with the product—the poor fellow Lee had eyes on right now.
And the slavers weren’t happy.
In a killing mood “unhappy”. Like a lady lion spotting someone around her little cubs. Furious. Even frothing came to mind.
The way they dragged the poor fellow aboard while on the planet after the argument with their customer, you knew he was in for it. That was when Lee should have grabbed him and made off like a slave-liberator in the night.
But like most plans, it hadn’t survived contact with the enemy. Why make plans in the first place? Tradition probably. Couldn’t beat the human desire to follow tradition. Even useless, ineffective, downright wasteful tradition.
Now the transport ship rocketed through the atmosphere. There was nowhere to go. He was locked away in a hellhole of a cargo bay. How many poor souls had passed through here? It had a sickening old, tired and battered look. Blood stains on the deck, small cages . . . large cages. Even old style torture devices he’d seen in history books. Lee shuddered.
They’d just hustled the fellow aboard and launched a few minutes ago. The cargo bay doors barely had time to close. When the ship stabilized after leaving the atmosphere, the goon squad decided it was time to teach their product to behave. He could cost them their reputation. And reputation for slavers was everything. How else would they make money if no one trusted them?
Did these outlaws even realize they relied on the good nature of people to do business? Didn’t it just smack them of a little conscience?
Lee went over his plan. His palm-sized hologram projector would create a distraction. Another handy tool in the possession of the covert services. He had his grappler, and the jump pack. And of course his projectile pistol. With his continued enhancements it must be version two-point-five by now.
The “product”, the poor fellow, was clothed in torn, dingy rags. He had perfect features and long dark, unkempt hair. The hair fell in front his face, blocking his features. He was tall, and lean—or starved. He might have been muscular once, but now his skin was tightly drawn and his bones easy to see.
Lee was surprised to see that although the fellow was blindfolded, the first man who took a swipe now regretted it. The fellow moved faster than a scorpion’s tale. Those perfect features . . . they reminded Lee of Imperial citizens.
A second slaver attacked. The fellow hit that slaver in the jaw with a sweeping roundhouse as the third slaver approached and stopped abruptly.
Finally, someone, the leader probably, decided he didn’t have the men to spare to a product-gone-wild. He drew a projectile pistol. Nice shiny one too.
“Continue and I’ll blow your brains across this cargo hold, Imperial.”
Lee raised his eyebrows. Imperial? Perhaps Shepherd hadn’t exaggerated.
This time.
Lee stepped from behind a cargo container in his own raggedy ripped dark outfit. His best impression of a pirate while he was on the planet. He held his deployable barricade in his left bionic arm, his other hand hovered by his projectile pistol on his right hip, and his jump pack was primed. The slavers might or might not know what the deployable barricade looked like folded.
“Now just a moment there, my fine slavers.”
Everyone whirled to face Lee. The Imperial now forgotten.
The leader’s head was shaved, and he had strange blood-red markings on his scalp. The leader raised his pistol. “Who the hell are you and how’d you get aboard my ship?”
Lee was buying time for Flaps. They hadn’t discussed this. But when things went sideways, he’d sent a comm to the nearby pilot in Star Runner, telling him exactly what he wanted him to do. Flaps no doubt was tracking him aboard the slaver ship.
“I’d come to buy this here slave off you,” Lee said. He tried to sound like them, but he probably just sounded like an idiot. “Then suddenly we be rocketing skyward and I’m thinking I got the wrong auction.”
“You got the wrong auction alright, boy. What’s that you got there?” the Leader asked, his men began to circle.
Come on, Flaps.
Lee gestured with his left hand, “This? This is nothing. If you’ll just let me off at—”
“Oh we’ll let you off alright, boy. Right at the next auction. Looks like we’ll fetch a decent number for you. And don’t be going taking after this one here. He’s about to learn a lesson. A lesson you both gonna get.”
Lee clenched his jaw. The slaver sickened him. Even being here and talking with the sc
um made his stomach churn. He never spoke with slavers, the only language he obliged them with in the past was fists and steel. But the safe return of “the fellow” was paramount. This slaver had bought his last slave. But maybe he could avoid plan w (worst plan ever) by playing a card no one expected he’d play.
“I’m Lieutenant Lee, United Star System Fleet Intelligence. I’ve come for this fellow here. If you let us go now that’ll be the end of it. I promise to give you a head start before I hunt you down and deliver you to one of the planets you’ve raided in the past.”
For a moment, the leader actually seemed thoughtful.
“United Star Systems my a—”
Lee drew and fired at the goon leader while dropping the barricade and it deployed. The shot ripped through the man’s shoulder. Lee meant what he said about coming back for the slaver someday. Death was too good for the leader of this vile goon squad.
Lee had said what he did mainly for the Imperial—whoever he is—to spur him to action. The man was a quick thinker. He was next to Lee and behind the barricade as it sparked from projectile rounds.
Lee ripped off the fellow’s blindfold and cut the physical restraints.
The fellow flicked his hair from his face revealing piercing green eyes. Definite Imperial citizen. “Any other bright ideas, Mr. United Systems Intelligence man?”
Lee contemplated leaving the snarky Imperial behind and telling Shepherd he’d lost him.
“Don’t get cheeky with me. I’m the one pulling your hide out the frying pan.”
“Frying pan? Is that a code?” The man drew closer as more rounds struck the barricade.
Lee gave him a sarcastic look. “You people really should learn to read more. But as for your question. One bright idea coming up.” Lee withdrew two emergency breathers from his belt. They’d cover the eyes, nose and mouth. The body would have to endure what was about to happen.
The leader yelled from across the bay. “There’s nowhere to go from here, boy. Two of ya’ll just quit this now. I promise not to hurt you . . . too bad!”
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