Empire Uprising (Taran Empire Saga Book 2): A Cadicle Space Opera

by A. K. DuBoff

— — —

  Leon hadn’t been able to relax since his last meeting with the Alliance’s leadership. His instincts told him that he was venturing into dangerous territory, but his curiosity and commitment to find answers drove him forward.

  He would rather avoid spending any time in the dreary research lab, but given that he’d joined the Alliance under the pretense of serving as a technical specialist, he needed to make do with the limited resources. On this afternoon, he was once again reviewing a series of models for contact tracing between individuals within a large population. He’d explained on multiple occasions that he was a geneticist and knew next to nothing about the assigned work, but they insisted he do it anyway. Consequently, the task was both tedious and stressful, as he internally questioned his competence while wishing he was doing anything else.

  His work was interrupted by a knock on the doorframe. Leon swiveled around to see Oren.

  “There are some people from another team who’d like to meet with you at 15:00,” the lanky man stated.

  “What about?” Leon asked.

  “Room B-27, 15:00,” the man replied, pointedly ignoring the question.

  Leon’s heart leaped. “Should I bring anything?”

  The man walked off without saying anything further on the matter.

  The true precariousness of his situation snapped into focus. A last-minute meeting communicated out loud meant they didn’t want a paper trail—no calendar item to reference. Now he was getting somewhere… but it also meant he might be in trouble.

  He grabbed his handheld and typed out a message to Kira: >>I miss you. Any chance I can get a kiss on your way to the bathroom?<<

  They assumed everything in their personal handhelds was tracked by the Alliance, so he kept the message intentionally vague. She’d know from the signals they’d worked out that he had a potentially important piece of information to share as soon as possible.

  A response came a few seconds later: >>Yeah, I could use a quick break. See you soon.<<

  He excused himself from the lab. Kira was waiting for him outside the restroom. His heart lifted upon seeing her, alleviating some of his tension.

  She flashed a goofy grin and wrapped her arms around him. “Can’t even make it through the afternoon without seeing me, huh?”

  “Working in separate areas is a cruel form of torture.” A bit much, but he wanted to sell the cover story for the meeting in case anyone was watching.

  “I can’t stay long.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted a few minutes with you to get me through to dinner.” He slipped his hand behind her neck. “I never get tired of looking into your eyes.”

  She took the hint and activated a telepathic link.

  “What’s going on?” she asked in his mind.

  “I’ve been summoned to a meeting in the basement at 15:00. They wouldn’t say what it was about. Oren just came by to tell me to be there.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I have to show up. This might be the lead we’ve been waiting for.”

  Kira stroked the side of his face with the back of her finger, keeping up the appearance of a love-struck couple for the sake of the security cameras. “I should go with you—at least from a distance.”

  “They’ll see you and be suspicious.”

  “I’ll get Kacey to trade for the guard post at the top of the stairs, so I’ll be close by if there’s trouble.”

  “B-27 is in the back corner. You won’t be able to hear anything from up top.”

  “I won’t risk you.”

  “What are they going to do? Most likely, they just want me to go over some more genetic models.”

  Even if there hadn’t been a telepathic link, her expression would have spoken to him clearly. They both knew that wasn’t the case; the Alliance was dangerous, and there was a high probability that they either meant him harm or intended to make him a part of the new research initiative that was being planned.

  “Don’t go to that meeting, Leon.”

  “How else are we going to learn what’s going on? This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. I have to do this.”

  Kira seemed on the verge of protest, but then she nodded. “I’d want to do the same in your shoes, so it’s not right of me to argue. Just be careful.”

  “Always.” He pulled her in for a kiss.

  She gazed into his eyes again. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll find you. I promise.”

  “We really need a vacation after this undercover nonsense is over.”

  “Deal.”

  “See you again at dinner,” Leon said out loud.

  Kira grinned. “Counting the minutes!”

  After a quick parting kiss, Leon returned to the lab. What am I getting myself into?

  He had difficulty focusing for the rest of the afternoon in anticipation of the meeting. When the time finally came, he arrived at the specified meeting space a few minutes early, as was his custom. The door was open, and the four individuals inside motioned for him to enter. A man and a woman were seated, and two other men of large stature stood to either side of the door.

  The musty space was configured for meetings, with six chairs placed around a rectangular table. In typical Alliance fashion, the materials were well-worn, with scuff marks along the metal frames visible even from a distance. Being underground, there was no natural light, and the only illumination came from a low-grade bulb suspended from the center of the ceiling. The resulting ambiance made it feel more like an interrogation than a friendly conversation among peers.

  One of the men standing next to the door swung it closed, sealing the five of them inside.

  “Thank you for joining us,” a woman greeted. “Claire had wonderful things to say about you.”

  Leon smiled meekly. “I’m happy to assist the cause.”

  “We need more committed individuals like yourself who have the skills and training to make a real difference.”

  “I’m eager to do more.” Leon took a seat in the offered chair. It creaked under his weight, clearly having seen better days.

  The woman leaned forward. “Good, because we have a project for you.”

  “I’m interested, of course,” Leon replied. This is exactly what we wanted. I need to get them to trust me. He wasn’t sure what they were looking for in a candidate, so he hoped that being himself—aside from the truth about being undercover—would win them over.

  “That’s good to hear, but this isn’t an optional assignment. The Alliance needs you.”

  How would they force me to do anything I don’t want to? He tensed. “What’s the project?”

  “We’ll share the details once you’re in position,” the woman stated.

  The two men standing next to the door inside the room subtly stepped closer to the opening to better block the exit.

  Shite! What have I walked into? Leon’s hand-to-hand combat training gave him confidence in most situations, but he recognized that he was outnumbered and in an enclosed space with no clear escape path. “Where is the assignment located?” he asked.

  “Offworld.”

  Uh oh. Leon swallowed. “My fiancée is here. I’m happy to relocate if she comes, too, but otherwise—”

  “She is not needed for this task,” the woman interrupted.

  “Sorry, that doesn’t work for me.” Leon rose from his chair and started toward the door.

  The two guards closed the gap between them, fully blocking the exit.

  Across the table, the woman slowly rose, a weary smile on her lip. She took a slow breath and brought her gaze up to stare at Leon. “I think you’ll find that it’s in our best interests to work together.”

  Chapter 10

  After staring at his screen for most of the day, getting caught up on various administrative duties, Jason headed to the gym to work out his anxiety. He had yet to receive another update from Kira and was getting worried that something was wrong. I need a distraction.

  As Jason en
tered the gym, he spotted a familiar face jogging around the track.

  Could it be? The unexpected person was a distraction, all right—though not at all in the way he’d intended.

  Jason waited next to the track for the young man to loop around. By the time he was within shouting distance, Jason was certain it was whom he’d initially thought.

  “Darin!” Jason flagged him down.

  The young man did a double take and then smiled. “Oh, hey!”

  His eyes had a brightness to them that hadn’t been there when Jason had interviewed him at the Prisaris Station several months before, after the Andvari’s destruction. Apparently, Darin had taken his advice to pursue a career in the TSS.

  “Good to see you,” Jason said. “I didn’t expect you to end up here at Headquarters.” It was unusual for Militia members to train at TSS Headquarters unless they were in a specialist program, which meant Darin had either been selected for elite training or there was something else going on.

  “Yeah, me either. Suffice to say, the last few months have been weird.” Darin wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

  “I’m sure you’ve been through a lot. Believe it or not, I actually did wonder what happened to you after Prisaris. You can’t spend time inside someone’s head and not have a little connection there.”

  “Heh, I guess.” Darin shrugged.

  “So, what have you been up to?” Jason asked.

  Darin ran his hand through the hair on the back of his head, letting out a long breath. “Well, I put in my TSS application right after we spoke. I got in right away.”

  Jason smiled. “My recommendation may have had something to do with that.”

  “Thank you. The TSS has been great. It wasn’t long before I started my training at the Tauron base.”

  “Ah, yeah, that’s one of the newer outposts for Militia. I heard it’s pretty nice.”

  “Not as swanky as Headquarters here, but yeah, it was good. Everything seemed standard for about three months, but then things started getting… strange.”

  Jason tilted his head. “How so?”

  “I began to… sense things, I guess you could say. Little stuff at first, like picking up if someone was lying or anticipating an attack in hand-to-hand combat training. At first, I thought I was just a natural. I mean, I had been training to join the Guard, like my mom, for my entire life. I do have skills.” Darin flashed a proud grin.

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Anyway, it started happening more and more—and then with stuff that training alone wouldn’t explain. The thing that really tipped it over the edge was when I knew someone tripped and hurt their knee in a pair sparring near me, but when I turned to help them, I saw the injury happen.”

  “You had precognition of the event, you mean?” Jason asked.

  “Seemingly. There were other things like that. So, my commander started getting weirded out by it, and they referred me for a medical exam. The results of the scans were even more bizarre.”

  Even skilled Agents don’t have anything like precognition skills. I actually haven’t heard of that outside the Aesir with their ‘pattern-reading’. Jason crossed his arms, becoming increasingly more intrigued. “What did the scans show?”

  “I won’t pretend to understand the science—not that anyone attempted to explain it to me—but the gist of it, I think, is that I’ve gained some sort of telepathic connection to higher dimensions… or something like that.”

  “I’ve never heard of that kind of ability developing spontaneously, so I imagine the working hypothesis is that this is related to your experience with the Erebus?”

  Darin nodded. “That’s what I’m told. No one has a clue how it might have happened. But at any rate, Headquarters has the best medical and research facilities, so I eventually found my way over here.”

  “The research team must be all over you.”

  “It’s been a wild ride, man. Or should I call you ‘sir’ now that I’m in the TSS?”

  Jason waved off the question. “Not at all necessary when it’s just us. I can’t say I’m surprised there was a lasting impact from your experience with the Erebus. Direct contact with a higher-dimensional being like that does seem like it would change things.”

  “Oh, did it ever! I mean, fok, I was just a random salvage-hauler kid, and now I have this weird precog-telepathy thing? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”

  “That’s a pretty cool skill to have,” Jason said. “I hope you’re able to make the most of it.”

  “It was really random at first, but it’s been getting a little easier to focus and get impressions about specific things.” Darin let out a long breath between his teeth, shaking his head. “I wish it hadn’t come from those bomaxed Erebus, though. I just about pissed myself when I saw the announcements about those spatial rifts opening up around Tararia a few months back. I thought that would be it—that we were all done for.”

  Jason nodded. “It was intense, not gonna lie.”

  “Shite, were you there?” The young man’s eyes widened.

  “With a family like mine, I can’t seem to avoid being in the middle of any given crisis.”

  Darin chuckled. “I can see that. Stars, that must be tough being in the spotlight all the time.”

  “Could be worse,” Jason replied. “I guess the nice thing is I usually know what’s going on—even when I wish I didn’t.”

  “Knowing the truths you can’t share with anyone?”

  “Yep.”

  He nodded. “I haven’t told many people what happened to me, or that I was on the Andvari. The ship has become kinda famous within certain circles.”

  “Sometimes being anonymous is the best approach. No sense coloring relationships before someone has the chance to get to know you.”

  “You probably know that better than most,” Darin said.

  “I rarely get the pleasure of anonymity. Especially not in the TSS; the family resemblance is too strong. But it is what it is.”

  “I hate to say it, but I think a lot of people would kill to have your life.”

  Jason shrugged. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? People tend to think that others have it better. Except, once you get a look on the inside, you may find out that things aren’t always as great as they seemed.”

  Darin raised an eyebrow. “Being a Sietinen isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, eh?”

  “My family is great, don’t get me wrong,” Jason said. “The problem is that people make assumptions based on the name alone. I mean, my sister and I grew up on Earth, for stars’ sake! We’re about as far from typical nobles as you can get. I think what’s more important is how you live your life, not where you start out.”

  Darin nodded slowly. “I’m trying. It would have been a lot easier to give up after what happened to my family on the Andvari, but that’s not me.”

  “A person needs a little fight in them to get anywhere worth going.”

  “My mom used to say something like that—about the best rewards coming from hard work.” He looked down morosely. “I always took my family for granted. I wish I’d realized how good I had it back then.”

  Jason gave him a sympathetic nod. “Hindsight is difficult like that. I think back to my teenage years on Earth when I complained about stupid shite, like why my parents wouldn’t buy me a car, and can’t help but see how inconsequential it seems now. The best thing you can do is live in the moment and try to appreciate the little pleasures.”

  “Wait, your parents wouldn’t get you a car? Don’t they own, like, entire planets?”

  Jason laughed. “Not quite. But that wasn’t the point; it was a lesson in responsibility I couldn’t appreciate until much later on.”

  “I guess that’s one of the big things about growing up, isn’t it? Realizing those lessons that seemed so irritating were actually full of wisdom. My mom had a lot of those.”

  “Let me tell you, it’s doubly annoying to come to that realization when
you have parents in positions like mine. A huge portion of their careers has been spent turning arrogant teenagers into responsible adults to wield some of the most powerful weapons in the Taran Empire.”

  Darin laughed. “I guess it was inevitable that you’d turn out to be a model Agent.”

  Jason smiled. “Not that there weren’t times when I wanted to rebel. Some of the best things come from living on the edge.”

  “With you there.” Darin paused in quiet contemplation for a few moments. “I appreciate what you said about living in the present and trying to appreciate what you have. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

  “Life does tend to throw us twists when we least expect it.”

  The young man looked down the track and then back to Jason. “I’m glad I got to see you again. Last time I was… not at my best.”

  “You were doing a lot better than I probably would have been in the same situation. I’m glad to see things are looking up now, though.”

  “I hope so.” Darin crossed his arms. “This new ability still has me a little freaked out, though.”

  “Have you spoken about it with my parents directly?” Jason asked.

  Darin shook his head. “Just some researcher-medical types.”

  “I’ll follow up with them—let them know we chatted. I know firsthand that sometimes reports don’t do a good job of capturing the magnitude of a new development.”

  “Sure, if you think they’d care.”

  “Definitely. You may be able to tell us things no one else can.”

  — — —

  “What’s this meeting about, exactly?” Saera asked as she followed Wil toward one of the conference rooms near his office.

  “Remember the sole survivor of the Andvari attack?” Wil replied. “Apparently, he’s come to train here at Headquarters.”

  “How did we not hear about that?”

  “A sign that the organization has reached a scale where we can no longer personally keep track of everything.” Wil opened the conference room door and held it for Saera to enter.

  She frowned. “That seems like a significant person we would have heard about.”