by Kal Spriggs
“They won't...” I trailed off. “You don't think they'd do that do you?”
The Admiral let out a tight breath and then straightened, turning to face me. Her features were under control, now, and the despair was gone from her voice, if not entirely from her eyes. “No. I don't think they'd hit Century with nukes. They might gas it, though.” Her lips pressed in a flat line. “Which they've done more times and to more human worlds than I want to think about... just as Guard Fleet ships have done the same to hundreds of culmor colonies.” She shook her head, “But there's another option. You haven't heard yet, but Leo Champion has called in his proxy votes and taken a seat at the Charter Council again He's a man for making deals, whatever our personal disagreements. I know he's given you a means to reach him, a private number or a message service. I need you to tell him this for me. For his ears only.”
“Ma'am?” I straightened.
“If the culmor look to take Century, if we have no chance of fighting them... then make a deal.”
I stared at her in shock as I realized what she meant. “Surrender?” I gasped in surprise.
“Better than our entire people dying choking on poison gas, Jiden,” The Admiral told me. “If they're alive, then we can fight through to rescue them. We'll have the Centurions, and Mel's Fenris, and other allies besides and if we can put together enough of a relief force, then we can retake our world. If they're alive, if they surrender... well, then there's hope, hope we can save them.”
I looked away, too troubled to answer that. Surrender, to the aliens? The Guard would call our people traitors. Even if we rescued our planet, they might well order it bombarded, like they had the human worlds that had surrendered during the War of Persecution.
“Carry that message for me, Jiden,” The Admiral told me. “And brief Admiral Drien and Admiral Quann on all the rest of this, as well. But only tell Champion what I told you. I'll have other messages encrypted for Directorate Thirteen. I only hope that they've made more progress...” She shook her head. “But we're out of time. You need to deliver my messages. That courier needs to leave in the next few hours. The longer we delay, the more of a risk that the Culmor Empire could hit Century without warning.”
She gave me a nod, “Dismissed, Cadet Armstrong.”
***
Chapter 20: I Step Through A Dark Mirror
The courier docked to Century Station and Ashiri and I shouldered our duffel bags and hurried off. We were the only passengers to disembark. The orders from Guard Fleet had prohibited any mercenary forces from leaving the system, they hadn't even been able to rotate out individual crew, no one besides two cadets who fell under the weird area of being Planetary Militia first and mercenaries second.
Commander Leath was there waiting, the courier ship's commander had sent warning as soon as we emerged from strategic warp. He got us to a secure room and then interrogated the pair of us for what felt like hours. It was mind-numbing, but it was less accusatory and more full of disbelief. No one had really expected the culmor to go to war again. It was the kind of disaster that happened every few generations. It was like a volcanic eruption or earthquake, it was something that shouldn't happen, couldn't happen.
Finally, after he seemed to have run out of questions, Commander Leath told us to report into our company at the Academy. “Semester leadership assignments have been allocated. You can find them in the Academy database.” He cleared his throat, seeming to be unable to even be properly unpleasant to the pair of us. “I suppose, given the circumstances, if your correspondence work isn't done, you can be given an extension.”
“Mine is done,” I told him.
“Mine too,” Ashiri said.
We'd had nothing else to distract us on our trip back, wondering if we'd find our homeworld devastated by war, our friends choking to death on poison gas. So yeah, neither of us had really slept and we'd piled through our work in record time.
Terror and worry were great motivators, apparently.
“Ah, good,” Commander Leath seemed a bit disappointed. “Report to your companies. I, uh, have to brief Admiral Drien.”
“And Admiral Quann, right?” I asked.
Commander Leath blinked. “What?” He shook his head, “Ah, you must not have heard. Admiral Quann's health began to decline over the past couple of months. We've heard that it has all the signs of a bad batch of life extension drugs from one of the first treatments. Systematic organ failure. He's not expected to survive the year.”
I stared at him as I processed that, “But who's in overall command of Century's Militia?”
“Admiral Drien has taken command, he's also managing the Academy and the Active Militia. I don't know how he manages, it's quite the work load, but don't worry, cadets, our defenses are in the best, most capable hands.”
That hardly left me feeling reassured.
***
Walking the corridors of the Academy after ten months of being away, everything felt... smaller, flatter, simpler. We had landed at Duncan City and Ashiri and I had taken the train in. She'd hurried upstairs, but I walked the lower corridors, pausing as I passed places that held some memory for me. There was the laundry room where I'd picked up the clothing that Sashi Drien had ordered dumped out of the washers and onto the floor.
Just down the hall was the spot where Bolander had cornered me and started to beat on me.
And there, not fifty meters away, was the mural of the Comet, my grandfather's ship. The ship that he had died on, defending Century. The mural that my mother had painted. The ship looked so lifelike, so real, the emotions of the moment captured as it fell into Century's atmosphere, continuing to fire on the cruiser that had crippled it, even as it began to burn up in the atmosphere of the planet that it died defending... the planet that killed it and it's crew as surely as any enemy.
I had sent Leo Champion my grandmother's message. I had no idea what he would make of it. I had to assume would follow through, if it became necessary.
Now, I thought to myself, now it's my duty to make sure it isn't necessary.
***
I found Kyle outside my room, a frown on his face.
He looked confused and a bit worried and I found my pace quicken as I saw him. Before I knew it, I was running at him.
He heard me and turned. Before he had time to say anything more than “Jiden!” I slammed into him, my arms going around him in a hug.
I buried my face in his chest. “Yes.” I told him.
“What the...” He hugged me back, “Jiden, what in God's name... what do you mean 'yes?'”
“I mean, yes, you idiot, I'll marry you,” I told him. “If you'll still have me. If I haven't scared you off with... everything.”
Kyle's voice turned gentle, “You... you mean it?”
I looked up at him, “Yes, Kyle. I will marry you.”
“Oh,” He held me close for a long moment. “Okay, then.” We stood there, hugging for a long moment. It was a violation of regulation. We were both in uniform, in a public place. I sort of dared anyone to comment on it. No one did.
“I didn't know what to think, you know?” He said softly after a long minute. “I mean, you just sort of ran off and left me.”
“I had to make my ship,” I told him.
“And then no messages for four months...”
“I was kind of busy,” I answered the not-question, feeling a flush climb my cheeks.
“And then that really, weird message that ended in alarm klaxons going off...” He shook his head, “I mean, like fifteen different recordings, with long, drawn out apologies...”
“Oh, God,” I buried my face in his chest. “I meant to delete all those attempts.” I must have just sent the entire recording. I hadn't stopped and deleted any of them and I'd been practicing trying to apologize for almost an hour. How embarrassing.
“I was pretty confused. And then I heard you got back, and there's these rumors that the culmor may be attacking...”
“Rumors?” I asked.
“Yeah, no one puts any weight on them, you know? But Dawson's older brother served on the courier ship, and he said that his brother told him...” Kyle trailed off as I went still. He pushed me out at arm's length. “It's not rumors, is it?”
I shook my head. I hadn't been told to stay quiet about it. I was shocked that Admiral Drien hadn't made some kind of announcement, yet. Did I have the right to tell everyone?
I became acutely aware that we were standing in the hallway. I moved to my room and opened the door. It was “mine” in the sense that it had been assigned to me, but there was nothing of mine in it. Just a set of folded linens on the bunk, a large desk befitting a senior cadet, and a wardrobe and set of drawers for my uniforms and clothing.
I dropped my duffel bag on the floor and closed the door behind Kyle. “It's true,” I told him. “The culmor have attacked all across the Sepaso Military Sector. No full assault, not yet, but the Admiral thinks it could fall anywhere. And she's worried that we're exposed.”
“Hock,” Kyle sat back on my bunk. “It couldn't happen at a worse time.”
“You're telling me,” I told him. “The Centurions are stuck at the Harmony Protectorate, until their contract ends. And the Admiral obviously can't abandon her post to come back here, even if the Guard wouldn't call that a violation of their contract and...” I trailed off as I saw Kyle's expression. “You aren't talking about that.”
“I didn't know about that, but yeah, that wasn't what I meant,” he trailed off, “you might want to...” He jerked a thumb at the ceiling. I caught his meaning and interrupted the monitors on the room, splitting off some mental focus to create a false conversation where I filled him in on details about what had happened at Harmony.
“What's going on?”
He looked down, “This... you can't spread this around, okay? We don't know who to trust.”
“We?” I asked. We had a very dangerous sound to it, sort of like conspiracy.
“Look, things were different here at the Academy under Admiral Drien. At first it wasn't much, just some strange things. A lot of officers rotating through. A lot of senior ones. But they weren't teaching any classes. They were spending a lot of time in meetings with Admiral Drien.”
“He was running a lot of the Militia,” I told him.
“Yeah, but not the Reserve Militia, but then Rear Admiral Laney made some kind of announcement to some of the reserve units, telling them to prepare their gear, that they may need to move against someone. Two days later he his health declined to the point that he was hospitalized, right before you came back from Erewhon. He passed away about a week after you left. The President appointed Captain Berhak as the acting Reserve Militia Commander.”
I frowned at that, I thought I remembered Berhak. “She was on Admiral Drien's staff, right?”
He gave me a nod. “She was, she's an active officer, which is pretty darned out of place to have her managing the reserves. And then Sashi and the other cadets got back from Harlequin Station, where they'd been training at the Guard Fleet Military Academy.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot she got assigned there...” I trailed off as I saw his expression. “What?”
“She was gushing about how great the Guard are, and how they do things so good, and how her grandfather patterns so much of his command and teaching style off of them. She's been talking about how she wishes we were more like them at every chance she gets. And she's been really close to Admiral Drien. It's like that whole thing between her family and her vanished.”
“I guess that's good, right?” I said the words, but they lacked sincerity. The last time that Sashi had tried to get in her family's good graces, she'd shot me in the face. It had been a training round, but I had little doubt that she would have hesitated to shoot me with a real bullet at the time. There was some part of Sashi that was totally desperate for her family's approval. I had thought she'd gotten past that. Maybe she's just playing them.
I'd have to talk to her, maybe even talk some sense into her. “Okay, what else?”
“A lot of officer resignations over the past few months. Some of them got sick, one after the other, most of them older officers, and we'd hear stuff about bad life extension treatments from back in the day. You know, like what my grandfather's gone through.”
I nodded, “There's always been a couple cases like that every year.”
“There were twelve of them in five months. And dozens of senior officers who aren't sick have stepped down. Most of them have retired, a few have moved off-world.”
I stared at him, my stomach tying into knots as I realized what was coming next. “And then Admiral Quann got sick,” he went on, confirming my fears. “At first, he didn't step down and he was really fighting it, you know, making a lot of public appearances, showing he was still in good shape despite it. And my dad got a message from one of Quann's aides, saying that he thought he'd been poisoned. That he had evidence that it wasn't an error in the life extension drugs.”
“Hock,” I said, staring at him.
“Then a day later, that aide died in a skimmer crash and Admiral Quann was on the news, a big, public resignation. He looked too frail to walk, Jiden. Like his health had turned around overnight. He almost looked like a different person.” Kyle shook his head. “My dad thinks they got to him, maybe they upped the dosage of whatever poison, maybe they threatened his family, he doesn't know.”
“By 'they,' you mean Admiral Drien,” I didn't have to ask.
“He's in charge of everything. And you probably haven't heard, but the President appointed the Planetary Militia authority over the Enforcers. So he's got them, now, too, and he put a whole lot of his former staff officers in positions of authority over the new Enforcers.”
“Hock,” I growled.
“So maybe it's a good thing your grandmother is out there at Harmony, if there is some conspiracy, he can't get to her out there, I'd wager,” Kyle growled.
“Except he's buddy-buddy with Guard Fleet, right?” I asked the question that had bugged me ever since Kyle had begun. “He sent Sashi out there, a few other cadets too, but his granddaughter... maybe with a message. And Admiral Montaigne got out to Harmony pretty quickly and he knew a lot about what was going on out there, almost like he'd been briefed on the Admiral and Commodore Creed.”
“You think he's got some deal with the Guard?” Kyle leaned back, almost like I'd hit him.
“It's possible,” I shook my head, feeling unsteady. “This has all spiraled out of control. I need to talk to Ashiri and Alexander and---”
I broke off as I saw Kyle's expression change. “What?”
“One of the things that happened is they started cracking down on the Enclave's autonomy status. And they started restricting any kind of communications to the Enclave. Alexander Karmazin got picked up by Militia Intelligence two weeks ago. They haven't charged him with anything, but everyone assumes he was discussing something military with them. He's been in custody ever since.”
The news just gets better and better. “Alright, I need to talk to Ashiri, and we need to be really careful about who we talk to about this, and where we talk.” I could probably get to Alexander through our private network, but if Admiral Drien thought to watch that, he'd at least know that someone with a Quicksilver implant had talked to him.
That was assuming that no convenient accident had happened to Alexander already.
Stop that, I told myself. Admiral Drien might be a bad guy, he might even be conspiring to remove anyone from his path, but I didn't think he'd kill Alexander Karmazin. If nothing else, he was Leo Champion's youngest child, so there had to be some leverage that a man like Admiral Drien saw there, right?
First thing's first, Jiden, I told myself, figure out who you can trust. Then figure out what's going on. I walked over and wrapped my arms around Kyle. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” he said. He cleared his throat. “It was really hard without you around, you know. Even without all this shadow s
tuff going on.”
“Likewise,” I tilted my head back. “You haven't kissed me yet, you know.”
Kyle solved that problem for me right away.
***
As happy as my reunion with Kyle had begun, the unpleasant realities of the situation couldn't be ignored. By all appearances, Admiral Drien was taking over the Militia and the Enforcers. Whether he was doing it with the support of the Charter Council and the President, or against them, I didn't know. It felt a lot like what had happened on Harmony, only I wasn't sure who was playing who.
I don't want any of that to happen here. Harmony was a mess, even with the defeat of Mizra. Their economy and industry were in shambles, it would be years, maybe even decades, before things were fixed. Thousands of civilians had died in terrorist attacks and riots, hundreds of thousands had lost their jobs, lost their possessions, and had to rebuild their lives.
I didn't want that happening here. I had already lost my family. My parents were dead, my brother was God only knew where... And now Alexander Karmazin had been arrested.
Who was next? Kyle? Ashiri? Maybe even Sashi... But she seems to have picked her family, after all...
I was thinking that, wondering who I could trust, when my implant pinged. Someone had created a private network, one only accessible from our quicksilver implants. But there wasn't a caller or creator of the network listed.
I connected. I found myself standing in the green grassy field that had been our loading screen at the beginning. We'd evolved this place in the time since, everyone had their own tweaks. Ashiri had a perfectly green garden, with beautiful trees and flowers. Alexander had a fortress of stone.
“Hey Jiden,” Sashi greeted me.
I turned, more than a little surprised to see her. “Hey,” I said, “what's with meeting like this?”