Captive Embers (The Wardens' Game Book 1)

by Brian Mansur

  Henry dutifully took the cue. He stepped over to a nearby desk and lifted a pad. It was the same one Lilith had used to launch the attack on Zeus.

  “We can’t go to Phase Three without enough colonies surrendering to you,” he said. “We should escalate the pressure.”

  Lilith gave Henry a feral smile as she took the pad from him. “I love it when you talk dirty, Henry.”

  “I would suggest,” he added, “that you ask Dalip and his staff at this next meeting if anyone they care about is living on Ganesha. No sense in antagonizing the people running your empire.”

  Lilith said, “At least not until it won’t matter.” She blew an errant hair strand off her forehead. “Phase Three can’t come fast enough.”

  As they walked back to the conference room, Henry hid a grimace over what lay ahead for the poor Belians.

  It has to be done, he repeated to himself. If Celes is to eventually rule Cervantes, it all has to be done.

  Location: Sickbay, MSV Tsunami_

  A faint, cherry glow displaced Sarah’s anxiety the instant she saw Sean floating into the room. He had the purplish tint of a bad night’s sleep under his eyes, but they twinkled on seeing her.

  “Hi,” he said with an undercurrent of schoolboy shyness.

  “Hi,” she replied, her timbre matching his.

  Sean quickly scanned the compartment for anyone else. The doctor’s office door was shut. Along a wall, Watson slept in drug-induced oblivion. Sean’s gaze lingered for a beat on the blanket Sarah had tucked around the man to hide his stumps.

  “Plans are coming along, so we’re taking a break,” he said, “I thought I’d come by to see how you’re doing.” He turned to regard her.

  In response, Sarah removed her visor and beamed at him. Something about his being there made her feel safer—more at ease—and she relished it. For a few breaths, her searching gaze swam in his silver eyes. He returned it with a gentle look that set off a delicious tingle below her neck.

  When Sarah didn’t answer, he asked, “Where are Martinez and Yontz? Are they better?”

  “Yes,” she said, appreciative of his concern. “they’re on quarters.” Pointing to Watson, she added, “He’s improving too. How about you?”

  He tilted his head in a hesitant pause. “You know, after getting to relax with you yesterday, I realized you make me better. I just wanted to say ‘thank you’ for that.”

  Sarah blushed and pushed a pink wisp over and around one ear.

  “I feel the same,” she said.

  And then their perfect moment dissolved as the dread that had been haunting Sarah all day returned.

  They’d be in combat soon, she thought with a pang of terror. For all she knew, this might be the last time they saw each other alive. The cruel notion took hold of her happiness and dragged it away. As Sarah’s smile collapsed, Sean’s expression pitched into one of concern. He cupped the side of her face in his hand, waiting for her to explain.

  “Just a moment,” she whispered. “I only need a moment.” She closed her eyes and rolled the side of her face into his palm.

  It took almost a minute before the crinkle between her eyebrows finally relaxed. All the while, Sean waited, silently holding her by the cheek. Eventually, tranquility returned to her. She opened her eyes and parted her lips to thank him for simply being there for her. She wanted to apologize for worrying him. Most importantly, she wanted to smile for him.

  From every speaker, Claire’s voice rang out. “Attention all hands. Warden broadcast commencing.”

  Light burst along a nearby wall. They snapped their attention to a display with Lilith’s scowling visage.

  “Belians, Mykonians, I warned you,” she said. “I warned you, but some of you have refused to listen. I will defend my own, and I will punish those who stand against me.”

  Onscreen, several life pods from Zeus appeared in a corner. Sarah felt Sean’s arms circle around her in a feeble attempt to protect her from the horrors that Lilith surely had in store.

  The self-styled empress continued. “My Warden patrons revealed to me that several Belian citizens have left Zeus in these lifeboats. What must they have felt to have finally escaped their prison? For this reason, I used my influence to bring as many as I could to Lakshmi.”

  She shifted to a pretentiously compassionate smile. “They who were mistreated and enslaved need our warmth and comfort. They deserve freedom and safety.”

  The smile waned. “I asked the Mykonians not to interfere. And yet they send warships at both my fleeing brethren as well as at Lakshmi herself. Why would they do this? Have I not promised to return their citizens?”

  Lilith raised her voice to a near shriek. “This act of war will not be tolerated! I have shown restraint, but if the Mykonians do not turn back I will destroy their warships!”

  Her threat delivered, the madwoman paused. Sarah, however, saw the hate boiling in Lilith’s eyes and sensed that the real show was about to begin.

  “Now,” Lilith said, “such defiance I would have expected from the Mykonians. Enemies attack enemies. But Ganesha. Oh, Ganesha. You were Lakshmi’s friend. And yet you have rejected our protection and love.”

  Lilith’s face contorted with rage and sorrow. “Even this I could have forgiven. But why have you sided with the Mykonians? Your own president has shouted your scorn. You’ve heaped on me your disgust and invited our enemies to your home and bed.”

  “Why!?” she screamed, making Sarah jump in Sean’s arms. “You’ve forced me to do what I had hoped never to do. I must punish you. I must make an example of you.” She raised the back of a control pad into view of the camera. “I must burn you, Ganesha.” She touched the hidden side of the pad and let her shoulders slump. “I beg you all: learn from this.”

  The screen winked to a panoramic image of a cylindrical colony’s cavernous interior. Its caption in the lower right corner read, “Ganesha, Segment 5.”

  Sarah’s eyes poured over the new image. The frame’s upper half showed an inwardly curving landscape: a ten-kilometer-wide partition of habitat. Checkerboard fields, snaking canals, grids of roads and clusters of squat buildings filled the vista. She made out a group of ornate high-rises jutting out at the five o’clock position: the colony’s capital district, she guessed.

  The camera panned down to fill the screen’s lower half with a bustling bazaar.

  People, she thought, blood-curdling in her veins. She’s going to kill all those people!

  Sarah noted most of the figures had stopped to listen to the broadcast. Groups gathered around monitors tucked within vendor stalls. Only a few individuals moved at speed along the avenue.

  Run! Please, run!

  An audio-feed cut in and Sarah picked out alarmed voices from the street. Her breath caught as she heard a small child asking its mama why she was pulling so hard. Women screamed, and more people scrambled to get out of the open.

  “They know,” Sarah’s mezzo-soprano voice cracked.

  Her searching gaze picked out four smoke trails extending across the frame. Her every muscle seized with fear. Lilith had somehow snuck a missile package past every checkpoint.

  The flotilla “descended” from the ten o’clock position along the cylindrical colony’s surface relative to the camera. As the habitat turned, their rockets appeared to curve across the screen, even though they were actually flying straight. It took scant seconds for them to accelerate past the colony’s hub toward the surface “below.” Less than a kilometer from the ground, the warheads burst into a constellation of miniature suns.

  Sarah’s hand flew up to her mouth. An evil brilliance bleached the bazaar tents, shanties, and people. The light burned for a half-second before waning.

  Sarah’s gaze shifted to the street-side view. Some of the figures had thrown up hands to shield themselves. Parents crouched low, gathering children beneath protective arms. Still, others fell to the ground mid-stride.

  One heartbeat after the initial pulses, the closest shock
wave struck. Sarah stared in stunned horror as the overpressure front slammed into the cityscape at more than thirteen-hundred-kilometers an hour. The supersonic blast roared over the microphone, its wrath drowning out everything else like a deafening thunderclap.

  Sarah wanted to look away from the nuclear murder but found that the sinews in her neck wouldn’t move. Through the shaking camera view, she saw bodies blowing about like reeds in a gale. All around the perishing souls, debris swirled and tumbled. The gusts swept first one way, then reversed to howl from the other. The fury collapsed most of the structures in the foreground, crushing people beneath support poles, furniture, and shelves full of goods.

  It took several racing heartbeats before the maelstrom began to settle. Sarah choked on grief as she beheld the scene of dust-filled devastation. Across the bazaar, dozens of small electrical fires blazed. Here and there, water pipes spread inky pools of muck. People lay strewn up and down the street like discarded dolls.

  The utter lack of human noises echoed in Sarah’s heart. Only a few distant sirens blared amidst a diminishing rumble. Almost no one moved amongst the mass of littered humanity. They didn’t scream or cry. Only a few twitched.

  She wished Doctor Apple hadn’t made her study up on the effects of neutron weapons. She knew that enhanced radiation bombs released a larger percentage of their energy as deadly neutrons than conventional nukes. She also knew anyone close enough to be knocked over by the blast wave had already received a lethal radiation dose. Depending on their range from the explosion, the cells of some victims could be sufficiently disrupted to put them into a merciful coma.

  At this thought, her eyes fell on the still forms of a mother and child, possibly the pair she’d heard earlier over the microphone. They seemed about the size of her sister and nieces. The sight sent Sarah into silent, racking sobs.

  She tried not to think about the people who’d been hit with lesser doses of radiation. Wide awake, many of their bodies would waste away for anywhere from hours to weeks. Legions would suffer from excruciating nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, along with second and third-degree burns, plus blunt-force trauma from flying debris. The ones still further out, physically maimed or otherwise, would endure the nuclear aftermath’s horrors for years to come.

  The Wardens’ feed at last cut out. With its passing, Sarah felt the string holding her heavy heart snap. Her insides turned over and around with sorrow and anger. She recovered enough control to strain out, “Sean, those people.”

  Sean kept silent but cinched his hold on her slender waist. Sarah turned her head to peer into his darkened face. Her expression begged him to tell her that what she’d seen had all been a lie: a computer-generated fiction designed to frighten everyone. He placed a hand to the back of her head and pressed her cheek to his chest.

  Paulson’s voice called over the speakers. “This is the captain.” A respectful silence elapsed. “Let there be no doubt in your minds, we will stop this madwoman. We will form up with our fleet elements in four hours. We will blast through Lakshmi’s defenses tonight, and we will not stop until we have hunted that monster down. Department heads report to the Wardroom in ten minutes. Paulson out.”

  No sooner had the line dropped than fury seized Sarah’s body. Her small hands contracted into rocks. Her teeth became grates to a burning furnace of hate.

  Her voice burst out, saying, “How does anyone become so evil that they’d murder so many people?”

  Sean remained quiet, but his face mirrored her pain.

  “Oh, Sean,” she said, suddenly fearful. “If she could sneak bombs into a colony like that, what’s to stop her from doing the same to home? She could kill my family!”

  “Yes,” Sean said.

  “Ever since I got here I’ve been dealing with that witch’s horrors. I haven’t felt this ugly inside since…” She trailed off. “How do I stop being so angry?”

  Sean drew in a lung-full of oxygen and swallowed before answering. “I’m not so sure you should. Not until we’ve won.”

  Sarah pulled back from Sean. “I didn’t expect you to say that.”

  He touched her cheek with a finger and said, “Pray for Lilith’s soul, because immunity or not, it’s our job to kill her. And we have a shot at doing it without violating the Warden Code.”

  The bitter resolve in his voice both chilled and invigorated Sarah. It scared her that she liked that idea so much. Lilith was still a person, but Sarah wondered how anyone could not feel happy over the thought of the witch dying after everything.

  Sean squeezed her hand.

  Sarah squeezed his back. She wanted him to stay, to make her feel protected and safe and unafraid.

  Be grateful that you had this time, her heart told her. As Sarah watched Sean leave, she could only hope they would make it through the next day alive.

  22

  Location: Zeus Lifeboat 19_

  “You’re Karen and Anna, right?”

  Karen’s attention jerked up to find a forty-something man in uniform. She recognized Master Chief Torrens, the enlisted person assisting Commander Hagherty, who’d taken charge of the shuttle.

  Karen nodded.

  Torrens flashed the hint of a grimace, then said, “The Commander wants the kids up front where she can see them. Get your stuff.”

  During the brief trip forward, Karen had her first real look at the other passengers. She noticed several families huddling together. They were surrounded by an even larger contingent of young to middle-aged men. She saw few service members.

  Torrens showed them their new seats in the wide aisle beside the lifeboat’s forward airlock. Karen realized that the only other children nearby looked to have been there since the escape from Zeus. She had only begun to puzzle over this when Commander Hagherty floated alongside.

  The middle-aged woman asked, “Is this them?”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  The woman turned to the girls. “Come on into the cockpit, ladies.”

  Despite the reassuring words, Karen felt a spurt of apprehension. She glanced at her sibling who looked back with the same troubled expression.

  The woman said, “It’s okay. We need to update some records.”

  The inside of the dimly lit cockpit chilled Karen with its glossy black screens set inside matted, gray aluminum trim. The windows to the velvet firmament arrested her attention with their untwinkling pinpricks of stars. Then she noticed a brilliant nub of light ahead.

  She shivered. Is that Lakshmi?

  Hagherty shut the tiny room’s hatch with a loud thunk, making the children jump. Karen turned around to find the Commander facing them. With a tired, no-nonsense glare, she said, “Have you young ladies been following the news?”

  Karen said, “Just that horrible Lilith lady blowing up Ganesha.”

  “Okay,” the woman said, “What was your father’s name.”

  Both Karen and Anna glanced at each other, confused. Karen thought the computer automatically knew who they were and had their parents’ information. Since they’d slept so much, they didn’t know how famous their father had become, much less how dangerous it might be if the others aboard knew who they were.

  After a second, Karen stuttered out, “Rafe. Rafe Hastings, ma’am.”

  Hagherty’s jaw set and her gaze drifted for an instant. The reaction sent a line of spider legs marching up Karen’s spine.

  “What is it?” she demanded, fearing the answer. “Is he dead too?”

  “Your father is okay,” Hagherty said.

  The two daughters gasped audibly. Karen’s hands and arms started to jitter. At the same time, she felt Anna grab hold of her torso.

  An image of her father’s kind, smiling face appeared in Karen’s mind. For the first time since leaving Zeus, she felt something like real hope flower within her. She twisted around in her sister’s embrace. Words came out of Karen’s mouth in a whisper, as though saying them any louder would break the fragile miracle they represented.

  “Daddy’s ali
ve!”

  Karen swept at the moisture forming in her eyes, then saw that Hagherty’s expression remained detached. The girl’s joy melted. She said, “Something’s still wrong.”

  “Your father has been all over the news. He’s a hero; the man who defied Lilith. He’s the reason why we had any warning that she was up to something. Your father gave us a fighting chance, and now he is flying to Lakshmi aboard the fleet’s flagship to cause her even more trouble.”

  Karen listened to Hagherty with a rising tide of daughterly pride.

  Commander Hagherty continued. “As you can imagine, Lilith hates your father. Unfortunately, your pictures have been in some of the news feeds. And this lifeboat is headed straight for Lilith on Lakshmi. She would very much like to meet you, I’m sure.”

  Absorbing these words, Anna’s hold on Karen cinched tighter. Karen felt her heart pounding in her throat. She had a fleeting mental image of some enormous, Lilith-shaped monster circling the ship, looking for a way in.

  Seeing the eyes on the girls broadening, Hagherty hastened to add, “The destroyer Capable is coming. Alastair should have radioed the names of everyone aboard before Zeus was destroyed. If and when help comes, I want you right up by the airlock hatch. You leave here first.”

  Karen swallowed against a dry pallet as Hagherty put her hands to a shoulder on each of the Hastings girls.

  “One more thing. It doesn’t seem that anyone else onboard has figured out who you are, so keep this to yourselves. Not everyone will appreciate what your father has done for us. So keep your heads down, yes?”

  Location: CIC, MSV Tsunami_

  “Lakshmian frigate Godavari is still accelerating at point oh one gravities,” an enlisted astronaut at the plotting station announced.

  Rafe noticed the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Merrick, turn to the captain. Lieutenant Merrick growled out what they could all see. “Unless the enemy flips over now and burns like hell, they’ll be inside the ten-kay firing range before the Capable can finish offloading any lifeboats.”