Priscilla put up a hand, shot him a quick glance and turned back to the pilot controls. “Yeah, no, I get it. Thanks.”
“If we had another batch of frozen soldiers, I’d say we could ditch him but…”
“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” she said, trying to deflect the empathy.
“Is this true?” Cason fumbled the question. “Are you a…”
“My grandfather was,” she said without a trace of embarrassment. “I got a few of his gifts.”
“I thought they were… sterile. Part of the price of immortality.”
“Grandpa wasn’t always big on following the rules,” she said.
This made Cason smile. “Then he would have been very proud of you.”
“He is,” Priscilla said with a wicked smile.
Cason laughed at the admission and then sat quietly for a moment as he processed everything. “I will say that it explains a lot. I thought cybernetics. The strength. The speed. I’d never seen anything like it. The way you threw that beast of a gangster through that wall. It’s no wonder I couldn’t catch you. Why no one could catch you.”
This made her smile, but she drifted off into silence again quickly.
“What is it?” Cason asked.
“He may be a relic, but he’s not wrong,” she said. “The Alliance rushed so fast into peace that they convinced themselves that as long as they disarmed, they didn’t deserve to be attacked. It was an arrogant way to think.”
“Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum?” Cason asked.
She nodded. “Now it may be too late.”
Cason wasn’t really much of an optimist, but he found pessimism to be even less helpful so he always tried to err on the upside of things. Unfortunately, the only silver lining was a hundred plus years old and his feet had gone to sleep. Still, he offered it up as hope. “We’ve got Commander Insensitive.”
That elicited a full laugh from the smuggler. “Then I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
The proximity chime began to sound, and Priscilla focused back on the controls so she could bring the Ratel into an approach on Shandor.
“We won’t even need the cavalry,” Cason said. “We’ll sneak in. Get our boy. And slip back out again. Simple.”
She pulled back the throttles and the Ratel dropped out of lightspeed into the middle of a blockade formed by the enemy navy. Approximately all of it.
Hundreds of warships filled the space around them. Many were larger than the Peacebringer had been. The largest was nearly the size of the Michael Bay Memorial Spaceport, which, to date, had been the largest man-made production in history—though, technically, most of it had been done by computer.
Cason felt his false sense of confidence retreat in the face of the enemy fleet. The Alliance had never had anything like it in its entire history. And they had absolutely nothing that could stand against it now.
“Your Alliance is screwed,” Priscilla said.
“We’ll be fine,” Cason said.
“Fine? Anything you throw against that will be like throwing rocks at a tank.”
“David did just fine with a rock.”
Priscilla laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just that I am a huge fan of misguided optimism.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Not right now. We’re not here to fight a war. We’re here to rescue a moron.”
“This is true.”
Cason stood. “I’ll tell Vides to be ready.”
A chime filled the cabin and Priscilla pointed at the flashing light associated with it. “Oh, it looks like they want to talk to us.”
Cason pointed to the indicator. “This is where you do your smuggler thing.”
“My smuggler thing?” she asked with a smile.
“Give me a break. I’m not used to being on this side of things.”
This made her laugh again. “Okay, you go get the old man ready and I’ll give them a story.”
“What will you tell them?”
She waved him off. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell them a story you won’t believe.”
Cason nodded and left her to her craft, which he begrudgingly found useful all of a sudden. He followed a faint trail of cussing and clanging back into the Ratel until he located Vides standing at a table filled with a thousand pieces of power armor spread across it.
“No no no,” Cason raced to the table. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” Vides struck a piece of armor with a hammer. “This thing has been sitting around for a hundred years. It was due for its service.”
“We’re here! Now! And you’re doing this?” Cason asked.
“Don’t sweat it, boy. I’ll be ready when there’s trouble.”
“There’s trouble,” Cason said. “A few hundred ships are blockading the planet.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it,” Vides said with a smile. “I’ve been itching for a good fight ever since you thawed me out. Literally itching.”
“That was only a couple of hours ago.”
“Admittedly, the itching could be related to the thawing process. Or it might be something I had before I went in. I’m not clear on the science behind the fridge. But, either way, I am ready to start a fight. Just let me know when the navy gets here.”
“I said it’s here.”
“Not their navy, son. Ours. I like to give those boys a hard time for being nothing but a ride, but they come in handy in tight spots like this. They’ll thin out your blockade for you.”
“We don’t have a navy. I told you this.”
“What do you mean we don’t have a navy?”
“The Alliance no longer has a navy. We have the fleet. And only a fraction of it is armed. It’s no match for what’s out there.”
Vides struck the armor again. This clang seemed to be more out of frustration than for any repairs. “What about the Urania and her fleet? Did that never happen?”
“The Urania?” Cason asked while dragging a hand across his face. “God you are so old.”
“I am old. And I’ve been busy.” Vides said. “So, fill me in.”
“The Urania is literally a history lesson,” Cason said. “Under the headline Mankind’s Greatest Blunder.”
“Blunder? Hell, it was the most advanced fleet in the galaxy. Top-of-the-line weapons. Breakthrough AI.”
“Breakthrough is right. The AI went nuts and almost destroyed the Alliance. The fleet was decommissioned within three years of its creation.”
Vides swung the hammer and struck the table. He wasn’t even aiming for the armor. “So they just stopped making warships?! What the hell is wrong with all of you?”
Cason didn’t disagree. He let out a long breath “The Alliance adopted a non-aggression stance soon after. They decided that the only threat to the Alliance was the Alliance itself. So why arm it?”
“Why? Oh, I don’t know why. Just in case maybe there’s an enemy that comes out of nowhere picking an interstellar fight.”
Cason nodded. “There is that.”
Vides dropped the hammer and began stroking a phantom beard on his chin. “There’s no navy. So what’s the plan?”
Cason waved his hand at the soldier.
“You want me to fight a war for you? Hell, I may be the best that ever was, but even I’m not that good.”
“We don’t need to fight a war. We just have to rescue Thurgood and get back to the Alliance. We can figure out everything else later.”
“A Thurgood?” There was some recognition in his voice. “Is that who we’re after?”
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“I know the family. Who do you think funded Project Svalbard? Now that guy was a visionary.”
“Well, their progeny is an idiot. That’s who we’re rescuing. We just have to get down there, pull him and his team out and get back to Earth. Hopefully, we can do it all quietly.”
A blast rocked the Ratel. Several more followed after and suddenly the ship was spinning
.
Cason tumbled sideways into the bulkhead and regained his footing only to find himself falling backwards as the ship nosed up.
“That woman is a maniac!” Vides shouted with a smile. “I think I’m in love.”
The Ratel tossed them around a couple more times before Cason was able to get to his feet and race for the cockpit. He shouted to Vides to be ready, but even he didn’t know what they were getting ready for.
The Ratel shook, spun and knocked him from his feet several more times as he made his way back to Priscilla in the cockpit. For every ten feet of progress he made, he lost five when the ship lurched after being hit or as the result of an evasive maneuver.
He finally made it to the cockpit and leapt into the copilot’s seat. He struggled to put the harness on as Priscilla rolled the ship once more.
“What the hell? What happened to the story I wouldn’t believe?”
“They didn’t believe it either,” she said.
“I thought you were good at this.”
“The fact that we’re not a cloud of vapor just yet means that I am great at this.” She pushed forward on the stick and the Ratel sped toward Shandor.
Cason finally secured the harness and spun to face the controls. The targeting screen was filled with a dozen fighters closing in from every direction.
Priscilla hit a series of switches from the captain’s seat and the panel in front of Cason transformed into the gunner’s seat. She pointed to the controls when she noticed him hesitating. “We can shoot these, right? They are the bad guys.”
Cason grabbed the gunner’s controls and began targeting enemy fighters.
The ships were about the size of AEF fighters and just as quick. Even with the computer’s help, he had difficulties leading the craft with the Ratel’s gun. He had no shortage of targets though, and through blind luck he struck the drivecore of a fighter as it flew past the viewport.
He wrestled with the turret controls as Priscilla fought the flight yoke, and between the two of them he found it impossible to hit anything.
“Are you going to help?” she yelled over another blast striking the ship.
“I would if you’d quit moving!”
“If I quit moving, they’ll hit us!”
“They’re hitting us anyway!” Cason pulled the trigger and caught another fighter on the wing. This sent the craft spinning into the path of a second fighter where they both exploded.
“There! I helped,” Cason turned to see Priscilla sitting in the captain’s seat with her arms crossed. “Why aren’t you flying?”
She grabbed the yoke and shook it around. The Ratel did not respond.
“That’s not good, I take it.”
The Ratel was now a pockmarked wreck still glowing from the heat of a dozen plasma blasts. Somehow, Priscilla had gotten them through the bulk of the blockade and turned toward the planet before the controls gave out. They were crashing. But at least they were crashing in the right direction.
They were already smoking when they hit Shandor’s atmosphere.
16
The Gloarn’Kahl was a thousand years old. The massive arena had been constructed with spoils from Kartoka’s first great expansion and had served as a center of Shandoran culture ever since. Thirty-seven white pillars surrounded the venue and stretched into the heavens. Originally formed of polished stone, the columns had been carved into tributes to the greatest champions the Gloarn’Kahl had ever known.
These hundred-foot granite pillars were now shaped in the likeness of some of Shandor’s favorite historical athletes. Hal’Blad the Mighty and Yuhgh the Broad flanked the main entrance while thirty-five others held up the rest of the buildings, including Hordgrist the Stout, Grindwist the Massive, and Ungirth the Round. In the 600 years since their creation, only Gordschot the Slight had collapsed under the burden of the stone structure’s weight.
Initially constructed for Shandoran sport, the Gloarn’Kahl had quickly become a center for the dispensation of justice. In the beginning it was only when the crime was execrable that its punishment demanded a larger audience. But it didn’t take long before a synergy of sport, law and concession sales was discovered. Since then, most justice was dispensed in the hallowed grounds of the Gloarn’Kahl.
Antarius once again found himself victim to the acrid stench of the dolgrath. He discovered that the beast used to bear guests for royal processions and served for royal feasts was also used to transport prisoners. But, while visiting dignitaries were treated to a ride atop the disgusting creatures in the relative comfort of a howdah, prisoners were bound and dropped in a sled and dragged unceremoniously behind the windsome dolgrath.
With his hands bound at his sides, all Thurgood could do was wrinkle his nose against the offending odor. “Is this the only animal on your whole stupid planet?”
“Silence!” The command was accompanied by a strike against the back of his knees with a wooden cudgel. The guard smiled at the discomfort the blow caused. “You will show the proper respect. The Gloarn’Kahl has a great history. It is a place of great honor, glory and brutal, brutal death.”
“It sounds very civilized,” Antarius grumbled while doing his best to hold his breath. Breathing through his mouth might defeat the smell, but he was worried what else might get in him so he took short shallow breaths and tried to think of anything else.
“It is at the very center of our culture. It is the birthplace of our civilization and many great ideas,” a second guard explained proudly, as Shandorans were apparently unfamiliar with Earth sarcasm.
“Would it kill you to use a little air freshener?” Thurgood asked as his dolgrath trod through another dolgrath’s droppings.
“Silence!” Again the command was accompanied with a thwack of the cudgel.
The guard continued, “It’s not just a place for justice. It is where many great Shandoran thinkers came to defend their ideas. If they were branded a heretic, as they often were, they were allowed to defend their ideas in the Gloarn’Khal. If they lost, their blasphemous ideas would die with them. But if their ideas proved to have merit before the gods of Shandor, they were accepted into canon and adhered to by all Shandorans from that day forward.”
“That could explain why I haven’t met a lot of thinkers on Shandor,” Thurgood muttered lowly enough to keep his legs safe from the cudgel.
“Many crazy ideas were laid to rest here,” the guard said with a laugh. “I myself had an uncle that suggested that diseases came from little bugs. So little that they could not be seen by the Shandoran eye.”
“Are you serious?”
“I know. It sounds ridiculous. The gods felt the same way, and my uncle’s foolishness was put to rest before an audience of the sick and wheezy.”
“I’ve got to get off this stupid planet.”
“The most defended idea is that Shandor revolves around our sun. Despite a great number of people suggesting it, it has never been proven to have merit. There have also been some close calls; one Shandoran almost won and we would have been forced to believe that something called gravity held us to Shandor instead of the Great Ohrize’s magnetic personality.”
“Has anyone ever won?” Thurgood asked.
“Of course. Shandorans are great thinkers and many ideas have proven true in the eyes of the gods. We would have never known we were the descendants of beets if not for Mild’gort’s victory in the Gloarn’Khal.”
“Beets?” Thurgood asked, and accidentally got a full whiff of dolgrath.
“It began the glorious Beet Renaissance,” the other guard confirmed. “The difference it made in our art alone was remarkable.”
Fifty-foot tall stone gates opened in front of them and allowed the roar of the crowd to escape the arena. The art history lesson ended as the cheers of ten thousand Shandorans washed over them.
Whipped and prodded, the dolgrath circled the arena where Antarius came face to face with his accusers: the entire population of Shandor. They came from all classes and all walks
of life. Men, women and children lined the stands and howled. The poor and rich alike stood shoulder to shoulder hurling insults and a plant that Antarius could only assume was a head-sized Brussel sprout. There wasn’t anything about this planet that wasn’t gross.
The dolgrath did a full circuit of the Gloarn’Khal so that every citizen had an opportunity to spit on the prisoner and hiss their disapproval. This ride took him past the king’s royal box, an opulent affair compared to the stone bleachers provided for the rest. It was full of jerks. The king and his royal guard. That gray bastard was with them. And that armored character that was never far from his side wasn’t far from his side. The king did not spit or throw anything. He merely locked eyes with Thurgood and smirked as the sled continued on its parade route.
When the lap was finally complete, the dolgrath was directed to the middle of the arena, where Antarius was unceremoniously dumped from the cart onto the dank and earthy floor of the Gloarn’Kahl.
The beast let go one more blast before the handler led it out of the arena and closed the gates behind them.
Antarius was left in the center of the arena to face the angry crowd alone.
The Rox Tolgath scanned the audience in the ancient arena. All of Kartoka had turned out for this sham trial. “This is quite the crowd,” Malbourne said.
The king was enjoying himself as he played with the crowd’s response to his motions. Raising his arms would elicit a roar. Lowering them drew a hush. He finally waved and reset the crowd to a general frenzy. “Of course, my dear Malbourne. It would be impossible to draw a bigger crowd than for that of the trial of an Earthman.”
“So, this would be the perfect opportunity to sign the treaty in front of your people.” Malbourne gestured to one of the men, who produced the elaborate document case.
The king waved at the case with a scowl. “Put that away. You insult me with your incessant nagging. There are other things a king must see to, and you should appreciate that. This is a trial. It is no place to celebrate our alliance.”
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