Enemy in the Dark

by Jay Allan

  Lucerne held the admiral’s gaze for a few seconds before turning and walking toward the hatch. “I will be in my quarters, Admiral. I have considerable work to do. Come and get me before we emerge.”

  “Yes, sir.” Desaix nodded. “I understand, Marshal,” he added, belatedly responding to the Lucerne’s previous comments.

  Lucerne walked to the door, waving off the guard who moved toward the opening mechanism. Only specially insulated circuits functioned in hyperspace, and powered doors didn’t make the cut as necessary systems. But Lucerne wasn’t above opening a door for himself, though he sometimes wondered if anyone else realized that.

  He pulled the manual latch and slid the hatch open, slipping through and closing it behind him. He walked slowly down the corridor. He didn’t have work, not really. He couldn’t begin planning the battle for Antilles until he had some scanning results from the system.

  He just needed to be alone for a while. He knew he couldn’t have more than a few moments. His people needed him now. They were shocked at the prospect of war against Antilles, so recently proclaimed their newest ally, and they needed to draw strength from Lucerne, from the image of the great man they themselves had created.

  Lucerne was disappointed, but not surprised, at least not significantly so. A lifetime of war had taught him to expect treachery above all things. But Danellan Lancaster’s betrayal would dwarf all the others in cost. Lucerne knew what he had to do, but now he wondered if he had the strength to carry through to the end—to give the orders that would kill millions. How much blood can one man’s soul bear, regardless of whether his quest be a just one or not?

  “Mr. Lancaster . . .” The assistant spoke into the comm unit. Her eyes were moving back and forth from her desk and the visitor standing in front of her.

  “Not now, Jasinda. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  The response over the comm unit was tinny, but Lucas knew the voice immediately. He wanted to heed the dismissal and turn and leave the building before he had to look once again into his father’s disapproving eyes. But this was too important. And he’d promised Ark.

  Lucas’s DNA had gotten him through every checkpoint in the high-security building except this one. No one was admitted to Danellan Lancaster’s office without his express permission, at least not by any assistant who wanted to continue working—at Lancaster Interests, or anywhere else on Antilles.

  Jasinda’s face was twisted into a strange expression. She’d been one of the executive assistants in his father’s office for years, and she had recognized Lucas Lancaster immediately. They’d all believed the young heir to be dead, the victim of his many vices.

  Lucas pushed aside his doubts and fears. “Don’t worry about it, Jasinda. I will handle this.” He reached around and pressed the button behind the desk that unlocked the door.

  “Mr. Lucas, you can’t just . . .”

  Lucas raised his hand. “Don’t worry about it, Jasinda.”

  “What the hell is going on out there? I said . . .” The voice from inside the office was angry, but there was something else there too. Something Lucas hadn’t expected. Fear. He didn’t know if anyone else recognized it, but he was sure. Something had his father in a near panic.

  “Me,” Lucas said calmly. “That is what is going on.” He walked through the door as he spoke. He stopped just inside, staring at the shocked face of Danellan Lancaster. “Hello, Father.”

  The elder Lancaster paused, his face a mask of pure shock. Finally, he stood up and said, “Lucas . . . Lucas, my boy, it is really you?” His voice was filled with emotion, although Lucas wasn’t quite sure which one. Danellan walked around the desk, moving toward his son.

  “Yes, it is me.” Unlike his father, there was no emotion in Lucas’s voice. He’d wondered for years what he would feel if he ever saw his father again—happiness, sadness, rage? Now he knew.

  Nothing. I feel nothing.

  His father was coming toward him, extending his arms to hug his son, but Lucas reached out his hand between them. A handshake was all he could offer.

  Danellan saw Lucas’s expression, and he stopped abruptly, gripping his son’s hand. “I didn’t dare let myself believe you were alive.”

  “Yes, I am alive. One might even say well, but that is a story for another day.” Lucas looked into his father’s eyes. He thought all the old urges would be running wild in him, but he was a different man now, no longer the scared, confused kid who’d almost destroyed himself because of his inability to endure the strain of being Danellan Lancaster’s son.

  That didn’t mean that standing in the room with his father wasn’t the most difficult thing he’d had to do in the years since Blackhawk had taken him in, but he suddenly realized he could do it. He was far stronger than he’d been, more confident. And he wasn’t alone, the way he’d always been among the throngs of Lancaster relatives and retainers. He was part of something in a way he’d never been in those days. He had left Antilles a scared and lost boy, but now he had returned a man.

  “We must go back to the estate,” his father was saying. “I will arrange a feast and call the family together. It will be a celebr—”

  “No.” Lucas’s tone was one people rarely used with Danellan Lancaster, and the patriarch stood and stared at his son. “I did not come back here to raise glasses and pretend I am part of this family.”

  “Son . . .”

  “Spare me your pretense at familial concern. You weren’t there for me when I needed you, when it was politically inexpedient to stand by me. You made your choice in this long ago, so let us leave it at that and not play at fictions of fathers and sons.”

  “Lucas, I will not have you address me in that tone of—”

  “You will,” Lucas said, his voice soft, yet seeming to roar across the palatial office. “I did not come for your approval nor your forgiveness, much less, by Chrono’s hide, for whatever passes for love in your twisted mind.”

  Danellan Lancaster stared back at his son, his expression one of utter shock. “Then why did you come?” he croaked.

  “I came to save your life. I came because no matter what I may think of you, you are still my father. And because I will not have millions die because of your greed and folly.”

  Danellan turned and walked back toward his desk. “I have no idea what you are talking about. You shirked your responsibilities then, and it is clear you haven’t changed.”

  “But you have changed.” Lucas’s voice was as cold as space itself. “You were always ruled by insatiable greed, but I never imagined you as a traitor to the Far Stars, as a man who would sell himself to the empire.”

  Danellan Lancaster stopped walking and froze in place. “I have no idea what you are talking about.” His voice was quavering. He turned slowly, facing back toward his son. “I have done no such . . .”

  “Stop.” There was no anger, only fatigue. “Don’t waste your breath on lies. There is little enough left between us without you poisoning that.”

  Danellan stepped back, leaning against the edge of his desk. He sighed loudly then looked up at Lucas. “You don’t understand. I had no choice.”

  Lucas stared at his father, trying but failing to disguise his contempt. “I have tried very hard to convince myself of that.” He took a deep breath. “But none of that matters. Your imperial cooperation ends. Now. If we are lucky, no one will know. Or at least there will be no proof. Have you ever thought about how the people would react to news that Lancaster Interests was in league with the empire? I know you don’t spend much time worrying about the masses, but that would change if they were storming the Tower screaming for your blood, wouldn’t it?”

  “Lucas, you don’t understand,” Danellan said again, strength returning to his words. “I didn’t have a choice. They control over 30 percent of our stock. They were threatening a takeover fight.”

  Lucas stared at his father with utter contempt. “You sold out your people to the empire for that? Because they threatened your contro
l of the company?” His body was tense with anger. “Because you didn’t have the guts to fight them? To struggle to maintain control of the company? Or even to lose it without turning traitor? This is the mighty Danellan Lancaster? This gutless thing standing here in front of me?”

  “That’s enough, Lucas!” His father was livid. “You never understood your duties to the family. You cast them aside, twenty generations of your blood, first for drugs and alcohol-fueled binges and later to play at swashbuckler, or whatever you’ve been doing while I was here protecting the family legacy.”

  Lucas paused. Some of his father’s assault struck a nerve. He couldn’t defend his younger self, and for all the difficulties he’d had with his father, he knew he himself had been to blame for what he’d become. He knew the day he started shifting responsibility to his father or anyone else was the first step on his road back to life as an addict and a lost soul. And he wasn’t about to take that step.

  “My problems were my fault,” he said, his voice a bit shaky but still determined. “I don’t lay that at your feet, however miserable a father you were. But where is your precious legacy now? In the hands of the empire.”

  Danellan stood staring wordlessly at his son.

  Lucas shook his head and continued, “I still don’t understand how you could even think of dealing with the empire. How could you even believe what they promised you?”

  Danellan opened his mouth, but Lucas cut him off with his hand. “Don’t even try to explain. I don’t want to hear it. But it ends now. Whatever you promised them, forget about it. We will fix this.”

  “I can’t back out. It’s too late.” His father’s voice was defeated, and Lucas was surprised how much it shook him, to see his father—an arrogant tyrant for as long as he could remember—so weakened. “They will take over the company,” Danellan said. “The Lancaster family will be destroyed.”

  Lucas pushed back any sympathy he might have felt, looking at his father with iron firmness. “It is not too late for you to find your resolve, to save the family. With strength, not with craven weakness. I have faced danger from the imperials, too—threats made at gunpoint and in battle, not in the confines of the boardroom. You are my father, and you will always be that. But you are a coward, too, and it is time for you show some courage.”

  Lucas walked forward, stopping less than a meter from his father and staring at the elder Lancaster with an unrelenting gaze. “And I will make it easier for you to do just that, for what is more effective at finding a gutless man’s missing bravery than an even worse threat. Because whatever you fear the imperials might do, you have a much greater problem, Father, and it is almost upon you.”

  Danellan looked at his son in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You gave your word to Augustin Lucerne. You accepted what he offered you and pledged your loyalty to his cause. Do you know so little of the man to think he would stand by while you reneged on every agreement you made?” Lucas’s voice was deep, foreboding. “He knows, Father. He knows you have betrayed him. And even now he is coming here to take his vengeance.”

  Danellan Lancaster stared back at his son, his face white as a sheet. “How . . . no, it is not possible.” His face was twisted in fear and despair. “He wouldn’t dare to invade Antillean space.”

  Lucas shook his head. “You met Marshal Lucerne. Does he seem like a man to be trifled with? To accept treachery? He knows you purchased Vestron Shipping, that you have been delivering arms to Castilla and Rykara. And Nordlingen. And he is coming for you, even now.”

  Danellan’s eyes widened. “Arms? We delivered no arms.” There was a wave of outrage in his tone.

  “He has the evidence. From a Vestron convoy captured at Nordlingen. It was all in the data banks. The previous shipments, your approval of all of it.”

  “But I had nothing to do with that!”

  Lucas paused. He knew he had no reason to trust his father, yet he found himself believing the older man’s protestations. Not that it matters now . . .

  “Be that as it may, he still knows you postponed the Senate meeting to ratify the Confederation Treaty. He is coming at the head of his fleet, and he will compel Antilles’s compliance with its previous commitments, at whatever cost.”

  “He is coming . . . he is coming to kill me.” Danellan reached out with his hand, steadying himself on the edge of the desk.

  “Yes, Father. He is.”

  CHAPTER 28

  “I THANK YOU FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY, SENATOR RAMES.” ASTRA Lucerne smiled sweetly as the Antillean politician leaned down and kissed her hand. Astra came no more naturally to politics than her father, but she was a Lucerne, and she did what was required by the situation. Her knowledge of Antillean politicians was extremely limited, but Rames’s reputation—both as a major power broker and a shameless womanizer—had reached all the way to Celtiboria.

  “It is my pleasure to receive such a charming ambassador.”

  If he stares at my breasts one more time, I’m going to show him just how charming I can be. “Indeed, Senator, you are far too kind.” She pulled her arms back, pushing her chest up and forward. A Lucerne used whatever weapons she had. Astra would have preferred the sawed-off shotgun with the worn pistol grip, but she hadn’t been able to come up with a good reason an ambassador would be so armed, so she’d—reluctantly—left it on the ship.

  She leaned in, bringing her lips closer to his ear. “I am afraid, Senator, that I am quite tired. I find space travel extremely exhausting.” She smiled again and ran her hand through her hair. “Perhaps we can meet again later . . . and get to know each other better.” Flirting with the oily politician was enough to turn a rodent sick, but she was here for a reason, and if letting the dim-witted fool think he had a chance was helpful, then so be it.

  “Of course, Lady Lucerne. I have taken the liberty of having quarters prepared for you at the Charonea Grande Hotel.” He glanced over at Lys, who was watching impassively from a few meters behind Astra. “And for your companion as well.” He paused and smiled at her with an expression that reminded her of the Celtiborian swamp viper. “And tonight, dinner perhaps? At my estate . . . just the two of us? Shall we say ten P.M.?”

  “I am most grateful, Senator, and I look forward to dinner.”

  Rames smiled and bowed. “Until tonight, Lady Lucerne.” He gestured to an aide standing behind him. “Cavendish will escort you to your quarters.”

  “Until tonight, then,” Astra said.

  She walked away, knowing his eyes were glued to her ass.

  Keep staring, idiot. It’s the last time you’re likely to see it.

  Blackhawk looked out through the floor-to-ceiling windows, barely noticing the panoramic vista laid out before him. Danellan Lancaster’s office had nearly 360-degree views from its perch atop Charonea’s tallest building. To the west lay the New City, the elegant and modern towers of its high-end waterfront quickly giving way to kilometer after kilometer of low-rise workplaces and apartment blocks. The far inland edge of the city was a massive industrial zone, and beyond, a lightly developed band of suburbs before the heavy inland pine forests of Antilles’s vast northern continent began.

  The view in the other direction was equally magnificent, the glistening Topaz Sea stretching to the horizon, the deep red of the late-day sun reflecting off its rippling waves. Antilles was a beautiful world, and a rich one too. Its development had been managed responsibly, a luxury afforded by the planet’s vast wealth and advanced technology. It was a planet of well-planned, prosperous cities, and pristine, untouched wilderness. Antilles was often called the jewel of the Far Stars, and it earned its title in many ways.

  That is all over, Blackhawk thought grimly, unless we can pull this off. If we don’t, Antilles is finished. It is strong enough to resist Lucerne for a time, but not powerful enough to defeat him. Its strength will turn a war from an easy conquest into a brutal massacre. The Antilleans will mount a strong defense, and they will bleed Lucerne’s forces, trigge
ring more brutality and destruction in response. Two worlds that should be allies will fight the most horrendous war the Far Stars has ever seen. One will be destroyed; the other will be so weakened, it will lack the strength to resist imperial encroachment. Somewhere, Blackhawk thought bitterly, the governor is laughing.

  War with Celtiboria would be a disaster for both worlds, but Blackhawk knew it would be the Antilleans who would see their cities burned to the ground, their planet’s vaunted industry reduced to rubble. Antilles’s wealth would be destroyed, and the survivors of war would know poverty and starvation. Famine and disease would sweep the land, killing millions who had survived the fighting.

  Perhaps worse, the effects will ripple across the Far Stars, and the confederation will be stillborn. And there will be nothing left to oppose the empire.

  Alone among those standing in Danellan Lancaster’s office—indeed of all those who dwelt in the Far Stars, save perhaps the imperial governor on Galvanus Prime—Arkarin Blackhawk had witnessed war waged on such a scale. He’d seen millions killed and whole cities reduced to ash. He’d watched the pitiful bands of refugees, those who’d survived the initial conflagration only to die slowly—of the cold, of hunger, of disease. Even Augustin Lucerne’s great struggles to unite Celtiboria fell vastly short of the nightmare his forces would unleash on Antilles.

  “You must repudiate the empire publicly and absolutely,” he said firmly. “You must declare openly that they attempted to subvert you, and state with no equivocation your determination to resist them at every turn. You must lie and declare that no duress, no threats, could compel you to treat with the empire.” Blackhawk turned from the window and stared at the hunched-over form of Danellan Lancaster. “And you must do it immediately.”

  “But, Captain Blackhawk, what of the imperial threats against my company?” Lancaster’s voice was shaky, his fear obvious to anyone listening. “And if I repudiate my agreement with the governor, how can I guarantee the safety of my family?”