by M D Cooper
Pharis tried to push the pace, but Rosa could only manage a light jog.
While Pharis tended to still think of the older woman as being fit and strong, the way she remembered her from when she was a child, she was forced to see the reality there in the moment. Rosa was probably the oldest servant still in active service, and she might soon be too weak to fulfill her traditional role of caretaking.
It was all the more reason for Pharis to capitalize on her years of observation, and have her transition into an advisory role.
The two women were in the final stretch of corridor leading to the port when Pharis received a direct communication over the Link. Not surprisingly, it was from her mother.
Pharis considered ignoring her, but she recognized that this could conceivably be the last time the two of them ever communicated. Too much had gone unsaid for her to miss the opportunity.
Even though the words cut her, Pharis’s resolve didn’t waiver.
Her mother’s avatar scoffed.
Justina terminated the connection.
Pharis expected to feel angry and hollow about how the exchange had gone, but instead, she felt like shackles had been released.
Her entire life, she’d been trying to please a woman who’d never appreciated her as an individual with her own perspective and desires. She’d been shamed for wanting to put others before herself. There was no reason to feel bitter about parting ways with a person like that. Pharis was her own person, and she was now surrounded by people who embraced her for who she was and what she aspired to do.
“Are you okay, dear?” Rosa asked as she struggled to keep up with Pharis’s quick pace.
“I will be as soon as we are able to make Serenity into the home it should be for everyone.”
GET OUT
STELLAR DATE: 12.25.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Gallas, Serenity System
REGION: Orion Freedom Alliance, Perseus Arm
There was no stopping the madness, Cyrus decided. Alerts were popping up across the Link about security breaches, riots in the streets, and all manner of chaos around Gallas. If it hadn’t started already, the other moons would almost certainly face their own public disturbances before the day’s end.
The revolution had started. Now, they needed to weather the storm.
He’d been tracking her progress via the Link, and she was moving much slower than he’d like—no doubt because she had Rosa in tow.
Cyrus checked over the Star Ember’s systems one more time from his seat in the co-pilot’s chair, while Terry nervously watched a live vid of nearby riots on the display.
“We’ll find somewhere to hunker down,” he tried to assure her.
“I’d offer to host you on the Acadian Light, but I think that might cause more harm than good at this point,” Antaris stated.
“Just like you coming along with us might, but sticking together and trying to hide somewhere out of the spotlight seems like the best option.”
“I don’t know where that might be, with scions from two houses of the High Table going rogue in such a public, spectacular fashion.”
“One step at a time,” Cyrus muttered.
Terry crossed her arms. “I thought we’d have more control over it…or at least that people would see we were on their side. I guess I didn’t think it through.”
“None of us did, really,” he admitted. “But at the same time, there were any number of ways it could have gone. We could have planned everything down to the smallest detail, but maybe none of it would have ever come into play. Given the accelerated timeline, playing it by ear was the only option.”
“How very un-military of you,” Antaris commented.
Cyrus gave him a cool look. “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
Terry sighed. “Regardless, I should have known better, as an engineer.”
“Good engineers follow the process when possible, but the best know how to improvise on the fly,” Cyrus told her.
“Fair enough.” She continued to watch the crowds chanting on the holotank.
Cyrus checked his sister’s location on the Link again.
“Pharis is almost here,” he announced.
“Good. It looks like another wave of people are gearing up to storm the estate.” Antaris pointed to a mob making their way through the streets in the live vid.
“Then we won’t be leaving a moment too soon.”
Cyrus sent the flight plan to the Celestiana so they would be ready to receive the Star Ember.
“Thank you for being so calm about this,” Terry said after a pause.
“I don’t know if I’d call myself calm, exactly…”
“If you’re freaking out on the inside, you’re hiding it well.”
“Well, I think you’re handling yourself like a pro, for what it’s worth,” he told her.
“Ugh, save it for the pillow talk.” Antaris rolled his eyes.
Terry cracked a smile. “I suppose this isn’t the first time I’ve been in harm’s way.”
He was hoping to get a little more out of her, but he was interrupted by the sound of approaching footfalls.
“We came as quickly as we could!” Pharis called out.
“It’s okay. We wouldn’t leave without you,” Cyrus replied.
Terry took the Star Ember’s controls. As soon as the outer hatch was sealed, she lifted off from the docking cradle.
They sped away from the city, and had just passed over ten thousand meters when an alert flashed on the forward display.
“Shit! Open a comm link to the dock,” Terry said.
Terry swore under her breath. “They know this is a private ship!”
“Can’t we just keep going?” Pharis asked. “We’re already so far.”
Cyrus shook his head as Terry slowed the craft and began to bank in a wide arc. “We have surface-to-air batteries around here that could make for a very bad day.”
“Yeah, maybe we could weather it, maybe we’d end up finding out what flying without a ship is like.”
Antaris snorted a laugh. “Better than my shuttle, I took a cargo lander with barely enough shielding for atmospheric descent. Still, we can’t just touch down and let them have their way with us.”
Cyrus nodded emphatically, turning to Ter
ry. “Do you have any contacts you can reach out to? Someone to help get us by?”
“Let me try.” She got a distant look in her eyes as she initiated the communication.
Cyrus wondered if the people demanding they land were part of the rebellion or officials operating under Justina’s orders. It was understandable that the rebels would question why he and Terry would be trying to protect one of the ‘enemy’.
I have to hope they won’t see us as a threat.
He honestly believed that Pharis, if no one else in House Charlemis, deserved a chance to be a part of Serenity’s future. She had dared to stand up for the people when no one else would—when even he had run away from the system instead of fighting for his ideals.
“Dammit,” she muttered a moment later. “I just talked to Dylan. It’s not the rebels, it’s the dock commanders.”
Antaris shook his head. “Minor house flunkies, I assume?”
“Yeah,” Cyrus replied. “Who knows which side they’re on. Getting their hands on me and my sister could give them a lot of options, depending on which way things go, though.”
“Cyrus, what are we going to do?” Pharis asked. Her tone was measured and calm thanks to her political training, but he could sense her fear.
“I don’t—”
“Don’t get so worked up.” Terry winked at the others. “I just might have a solution.”
* * * * *
The ‘minor house flunkies’ Antaris had referenced were, to Terry, the faceless shift commanders who were never seen outside their posh offices. To the best of her knowledge, most of them were from well-to-do families at the fringes of the ruling elite. These families were innumerable and were clearly already scheming about how to come out on top of the current situation—a major complicating factor in the revolution.
People like Dylan could have every intention to disobey the orders from those faceless leaders, but the higher-ups had ways to exert their authority. In cases where there were override codes and automated weaponry, a leader could maintain control until they were physically removed from power.
Terry had no idea where such middle managers would hole up in the face of a crisis, and she doubted any of her former colleagues would have a better idea. So, when she’d messaged Dylan with a desperate plea to help them escape, she was surprised that after his initial response, he gave her a glimmer of hope.
he’d told her.
The plan seemed too convenient to be true, but the map he shared with her over the Link backed up his story.
“We need to take out the control center,” she revealed to the others. “I know where it is, but it will take some fancy flying to get close enough to get a clean shot.”
“Fortunately, fancy flying seems to be one of your specialties,” Cyrus said.
Antaris tightened his flight harness. “Never a dull moment with the lot of you.”
“Would you rather be stuck with Kristina?” Cyrus shot back.
“Just fly,” the other man replied under his breath.
Terry had completed her turn and was on a slow approach to the port. She decreased her altitude, still taking a circuitous route that kept them obscured by a low set of hills to the east of the city.
“The tricky thing is, we need to look like we’re landing,” she voiced aloud.
“What’s your plan?” Pharis asked from where she’d strapped in to one of the passenger seats across the aisle from Antaris.
“The rebels have seized the ports, but the defense systems aren’t controlled from within the facility,” Terry explained. “I’d heard that there were remote operations centers, but I never knew where they were. Truth be told, I didn’t give it a second thought, because our plan for this revolution was to ground all air traffic, anyway.”
“Except that little detail about us needing to get away,” Cyrus chimed in.
“Right. It’s not the first thing we didn’t take into account.”
She wanted to come up with a wittier quip, but all of her attention was on the challenging flight path ahead.
Dylan had identified that the command center was to the east of the Charlemis estate, in a semi-industrial area. It was well outside of standard landing approaches, which meant it would be clear that Terry was deviating from instructions.
However, unlike with the general planetary defenses, she knew where the surface-to-air emplacements were located around the port and estate, since their maintenance was included in her former scope of work. Though she never would have dreamed that evading those defenses would one day be a need of hers, she thanked the stars that she understood the behind-the-scenes workings.
The course she devised would keep her low enough to the ground that it would appear she was about to land, while giving her the quickest path to a vector where the ground emplacements would have difficulty targeting them. It was impossible to completely avoid being shot at, but anything she could do to lessen the strain on the shields would help them reach their destination.
She brought the ship in low over the terrain to the east of the port, with a few acknowledgments coming in from the dockmaster’s office. Then, when she was just three kilometers away, Terry changed course and increased thrust, rapidly ascended while executing jinks and rolls to evade targeting systems.
“Um, Terry…” Cyrus warned as the display lit up with a weapons lock on them.
“Well damn.” She considered dodging the shot, but any maneuver would take them off-course from their destination, and they’d need to circle around “Brace!”
The impact rocked the small ship. Terry checked for damage, and was relieved to see that the shields had held and the blast hadn’t knocked them off-course.
They were almost in range of their mark.
“What are you going to shoot?” Pharis asked.
This wasn’t the time for anyone to express doubts.
“I’m going to take out the power to the building. It’s the best option to avoid hurting people while still making sure we can get away.”
“We’ve only taken one hit, and your shields weathered it. Maybe—”
“My shields are fine for brief engagements, but we’d be in range of too many planetary weapons on ascent. We’d never survive.”
Another two shots rocked the pinnace in rapid succession, illustrating her point.
“Do it,” Cyrus said. “We gave everyone a chance to stand down.”
“Is there another—”
Terry took the shot before Pharis had a chance to finish.
It landed true, scorching the western wall and roof of the building. The lights inside the structure shut off, and the Star Ember’s display showed that the weapons lock on the craft had terminated.
“Great shot!” Cyrus exclaimed.
Terry smiled. “Yeah, that went better than…” She faded out as the building began to crumble.
Chunks of concrete fell away from the metal structure, and sections of the floor shuddered before toppling downward.
“Stars, no,” Pharis murmured, pressing a hand to her head.
Terry’s stomach turned over. She’d been trying to avoid hurting anyone in the blast, but the crumbling building would almost certainly mean severe injuries, if not death, for the occupants.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Just get us out of here.” Cyrus set his jaw.
She complied, knowing there was nothing she could do now. Protecting Pharis and Gallas’s future was the priority.
* * * * *
The remainder of the ride into orbit was uncomfortably quiet.
Pharis wanted to decry Terry’s actions for taking out the command building, but she recognized that it wasn’t a rash or malicious action. When the revolution began, it was understood that obstacles would need to be removed on the path to success. Loss of life was an inevitable cost.
She hated such cold thinking, but it was the reality.
Pharis tried not to think about what else might be happening on the surface—how many others would lose their lives or be injured in the riots around the world. Those events were out of her hands now. Her duty was to give the greatest number of her people the best future she could.
When the Star Ember had docked inside the Celestiana, Pharis and Antaris followed Cyrus and Terry toward the galley, while Rosa waited on the pinnace.
“Hang back just a minute,” Cyrus said when they approached the upper deck.
“Bringing you with us wasn’t planned,” Terry explained to Pharis and Antaris when Cyrus disappeared onto the bridge.
“Getting it cleared with the captain?” Pharis asked.
Mai’s shout carried from down the corridor. “You did what?!”
Terry shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s ‘clearing’ so much as telling her you’re already here.”
Pharis frowned. “I shouldn’t be here if I’m not wanted.”
“We’re practically outlaws now,” Antaris chimed in. “It’s pointless to pretend otherwise.”
“Don’t you have the Acadian flagship under your command?” Pharis asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know just as well as I do that I couldn’t possibly exert any kind of military influence right now without it making our situation worse.”
“You’re here now, and we’ll make it work,” Terry said. “Mai is contrary about absolutely everything. She’ll get used to the idea, just like she does everything else.”
Pharis wasn’t convinced, but she was in no position to argue. It wasn’t like she had anywhere else she could go, or any means of getting there.
After a few minutes, Cyrus exited the bridge. Pharis caught a brief glimpse of Mai’s red face before the hatch closed behind him.
“All right, let’s talk,” he said, beckoning them to proceed down the corridor and into the galley.
The well-equipped kitchen caught Pharis by surprise. Though it had nothing on the meal prep or common spaces on the Charlemis estate, she’s always pictured her brother living in a cramped, bare-bones ship while he traveled between systems. Now that she was seeing the heart of the vessel, it appeared her preconceptions were unfounded.
