The Price of Paradise

by C. S. Johnson

  “We know that from the missile launch sites,” Emery said. “We’ve located what we believed to be the main holding, just southeast of the Canal, inside Old Columbian borders.”

  “So we attempted to rescue a captured ship?” Exton shook his head. This was a bad mission from the start.

  “It gets worse. The ship was carrying weapons. Chaya’s research specializes in weaponizing the environment. It looks like it took off with several ecobombs in its cargo hold.”

  “Great,” Exton muttered. “Emery, can you see if Henry has been able to pull up any data on the attack? We need to know if any of the bombs were activated.”

  “Roger that,” Emery said. “I’ll go see Aunt Patty. She should be in contact with the Perdition now.”

  “Thanks.” Exton glanced back at Kamalo. “That will give us something to look for, definitely.”

  “I heard something else,” Kamalo said. “I thought you should be aware of it.”

  “Well, you have my attention. Go on.”

  “There’s talk that the Redbird was behind the ship’s capture. It is said she orchestrated it and made sure that it was carried out. My sources are highly credible, especially now that the disruptive faction we had here is upset that their shipmates are lost at sea.”

  Exton felt his hands turn into fists. “You mean that Merra is the one who is behind this?”

  “I knew you did not trust her, boet.” He gave Exton a sympathetic smile. “It seems you were right about her. Some of the friends I’ve made here have a saying from back home: He who marries beauty marries trouble. And there is no denying you have a very beautiful bride.”

  Exton nodded. “I wouldn’t think the trouble would be proportional to her beauty,” he said, making Kamalo chuckle. “Or that it would be her parents causing the trouble.”

  “Every generation leaves trouble for the next one to take care of,” Kamalo said. “It cannot be avoided. Doing nothing would only make it worse.”

  “It can get worse if we do something, too,” Exton pointed out.

  “True, true enough,” Kamalo replied. “We often find enough trouble on our own, too. Even if you left the world in perfect peace, it wouldn’t take long for it to fall back into broken apart.”

  “Very optimistic of you to say, Kamalo. I can see why you left the URS.”

  Kamalo chuckled. “True. But don’t despair, boet. I’ve known of you for a long time. I know you are very careful about these things. No one is perfect. We must do the best with what we’ve been given.”

  Exton nodded, grateful for the encouragement even if he didn’t have time to fully appreciate it. “Thank you. Keep me posted on any updates.”

  “Roger that.”

  Exton cut off the signal and hurried to catch up with Emery. He would have to let them know to look for evidence that an environmental bomb of some sort went off near the Panama Canal, in addition to looking for survivors.

  He recalled his earlier suspicions about Merra’s involvement with the ship at Chaya. Kamalo’s information seemed to prove that he had been right.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she’s done something underhanded to get what she wanted, he thought, thinking of Aerie’s younger brother, Marcus, and how she had manipulated so many into believing she had died in order to save him.

  This time, however, he found nothing to admire about her maneuvering.

  He forced himself not to think about what he would yell at Merra the next time he saw her—if he saw her at all.

  He thought about Merra’s determination. If she knew the ship was being run by forces loyal to the States, why did she insist on going to rescue the ship? And why would she risk their fighters?

  “Merra likes to play a deep game,” Exton reminded himself. He thought about the time when he’d gone with her to attack the captured Chaya outpost. She knew there were weapons; he’d personally attacked one of the shuttles that carried an ecobomb. Merra had only admitted it, too, he recalled, because that was the reason Chaya had been attacked and captured in the first place. Their weapons research had accidentally poisoned their water resources—

  “Poison.” He heard himself say the word aloud and nearly stumbled.

  If she did organize the capture of the Freedom, along with the weapons onboard, she could have been going to make sure that the weapons went off near the States’ military station.

  The ecobombs would go off, and the URS would be in a very vulnerable position. With the last of their major forces depleted, it would be easy for the defectors’ forces to go in and call for their surrender.

  But what about the fighters? What had happened to them?

  Exton turned around and headed in the direction of the med ward. He didn’t want to further indebt himself to Brock, and he didn’t want to deal with Aerie’s belligerent brother, but he needed to know what had happened.

  As he passed through the hallways of Petra, a sense of angry urgency took a hold of him. The St. Cloud family seemed to be destined to give him trouble, no matter where he turned.

  It looked like General St. Cloud had been telling the truth about the Boötes system, if not about his father as well. Merra was tied to secret operations, and now she was missing, along with one of her sons. He was going to go and try to talk with another one. He would probably run into Aerie’s sister, too, while he was there.

  They are all a headache in and of themselves, he thought grimly. Thank God I don’t have to worry about Aerie causing me trouble right now.

  ♦13♦

  Aerie rubbed her eyes, exasperated as she sat up in her bed. She was tired, but she was also tired of trying to fall back asleep. It was the middle of the night shift, or probably past the middle of the night, and even though she had managed to get a few hours of sleep, she was unable to find real rest. She glanced at the cold, empty sheets next to her and sighed.

  Exton was still down at Petra, and it had been hours since she’d talked with him. She was tempted to go to the Command Bridge to see if there was any news.

  A wry smile crept onto her face. She was interested about what was happening, but she had a feeling there was more bad news than good news waiting for her. It was good to see her curiosity had some limits, she thought.

  Unlike my courage.

  Aerie felt her face flush over in shame as she recalled her reaction to the battle. From hearing Gerard’s voice again, taunting them, to listening as her mother’s voice died away with her comm line, and possibly the rest of her as well, Aerie knew she had a long way to go before she would be battle ready.

  “I’m already battle weary,” she muttered to herself. Disgusted by herself, she pushed the sheets away, reaching for a new uniform. She decided to force herself out of bed and head down.

  It was the same strategy she’d used when she was in school. If she was frightened of something, she would ignore it and force herself to confront the fear. Aerie had already lost her mother at that point, and the only hope she had for feeling like life was worth living at all was to earn her family’s esteem.

  “Ha,” Aerie muttered under her breath, laughing at her own naivety. Even with her family safe at Petra, they hardly considered her little more than a nuisance. She wouldn’t be surprised if she found out they had contingency plans, if the URS were to somehow invade the community and capture them; she could see them now, telling Dictator Osgood how everything had been her fault, and they were only collateral damage caught in her extensive treason.

  No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  She almost wondered if Brock would say the same, but decided against it. He would offer to work off his punishment, most likely, or he would find a way to get out of it altogether.

  He did that a few times in school, she remembered, thinking of when they were several years younger.

  She’d fallen behind on one her training courses. Even years later, she felt the shame of that moment, as her instructor—a faceless blob in her memory, with a name just as lost—yelled at her, degrading her in
front of the rest of the class.

  Aerie still recalled the recoil at the outburst. It had been close to the anniversary of her mother’s disappearance, and Phoebe, her new unit director, had recently moved into the unit. Her focus had been off since meeting the woman who was supposed to replace her mother. Aerie thought about how happy she was that Phoebe’s young appearance, along with her dark brown eyes and her black hair, contrasted sharply with Merra’s dark red hair and bright green eyes. Merra’s intelligence was unmistakable; Phoebe’s was subtle, and Aerie shuddered, wondering how much of a mistake she had made in largely ignoring her.

  Her mind never let her settle on Phoebe for too long. Aerie knew she hated the situation, and it was far from Phoebe’s fault she was in it. Since she’d met her, Aerie was certain she barely said more than ten words to her at a time. Phoebe, for her part, never seemed willing to push herself onto Aerie’s affections; she mostly gave Aerie her silent frowns of disappointment, her slow shakes of her head, and her long looks of resignation. Most everything that Aerie remembered about her was how she would stare off into space. From the expression on her face, it seemed as though Phoebe was taking in everything even as she removed herself from everything simultaneously.

  Maybe that’s what she really was doing, Aerie thought. Some of the short remarks Serena made about their stepmother, about how she would avoid interacting with Aerie because Aerie reminded her of Merra, suggested Phoebe was not as harmless nor as inobservant as Aerie had tried to believe.

  Either way, the instructor had no sympathy for her plight. Phoebe’s addition to their unit was routine, and therefore nothing worth failing over.

  Aerie blushed, thinking of how Brock had come up to stand beside her as she was reprimanded. When the instructor asked what he thought he was doing, Brock said he was protecting his team. Those are the rules, Brock had insisted. We can only be as strong together as we are weak individually.

  Aerie had been further angered by the implication she was weak to notice he was interpreting the rules differently than the instructor was.

  Now, she saw Brock’s kindness; it was just cruel enough he got away with it, and flexible enough she was never sure if he was on her side or not.

  He’d always been a stickler for rules, Aerie thought with a grimace. She slipped her feet into her boots as she turned to face the door.

  With a sigh, she forced herself forward, her feet noticeably dragging as she headed toward the Command Bridge. The moment she stepped out of the elevator next to the small forward room, she knew it was better that she had come.

  “Aerie?” Henry’s usually kind voice was sharpened with disconcerted concern as he greeted her.

  “Henry.” Aerie nodded to him cordially, but inwardly she knew something was going on. She knew that tone, whether it came from Exton or her father or someone else; something was going on, and they hadn’t wanted her to know about it just yet.

  She glanced around the room, watching as other familiar faces and some new ones hurried around, taking notes and studying the screens. Back at her station, Greer was pressing her hands against her headset. Aerie briefly saw, out of the corner of her eye, her knuckles were white. She turned back to Henry. “What is it?”

  “I was just coming to get you,” he said. “We’ve been hailed from Panama. The Lieutenant General wants to talk to you.”

  “Gerard?” Aerie felt his name brush past her lips involuntarily, as if the name itself was mocking her.

  “Yes.” Henry’s young face seemed to age a decade as he looked at her. “The night commander, Phil, told me the lieutenant general said he won’t talk to anyone else.”

  Aerie vacillated between disgust and fear as Henry added, “We are hoping he’ll tell you about the fate of our fighters, milady.”

  Disgust won out. “Put him on over the speakers,” Aerie ordered. “That way everyone can at least hear him.”

  “We don’t have to hear him to know how despicable he is,” Henry remarked, offering her a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Come this way.”

  Aerie steeled herself, bracing for the moment when she would hear Gerard’s sadistic drawl once more.

  “Aerie, my friend,” he said. “It’s nice to know your mother wasn’t lying when she said you were on the Perdition.”

  Aerie swallowed a gasp at the news. She breathed in quietly as she asked, “You’ve talked with my mother?”

  “Of course. We’ve had some lovely chats while I was deciding what to do with her. You can speak from personal experience how electrifying making my acquaintance can be.”

  “I want to talk to her,” Aerie demanded, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

  “There’s no need for that,” Gerard said. “She’s quite comfortable here down at the URS’s Panama base. We have every luxury onboard here, including the ones you were fortunate enough to experience at the Reeducation Center.”

  Aerie froze, shuddering at the thought of her mother, trapped and helpless, in a prison as she waited to be tortured.

  Gerard interrupted her thoughts as he continued to gloat. “There are even some here which you weren’t able to enjoy before your rather surprising exit,” he said.

  “I escaped,” Aerie said, reminding herself she was safe from Gerard as much as she was reminding him.

  “Ha! We let you go,” Gerard insisted. “We could have stopped you if we wanted.”

  “What do you want now?” Aerie asked. “You have my mother, or so you say.”

  “It’s not a matter of what I want,” Gerard replied. His voice was smooth, but from the gleeful tone, Aerie knew she had asked the right question. “It’s a matter of what’s right.”

  “What do you want?” Aerie asked again. “I don’t want to waste my time here talking to you.”

  Henry nudged her arm. “Keep him talking,” he whispered. “Greer’s locking onto his position as we speak. If we can track the Morgan Soromsky, we’ll have an advantage.”

  “Since you’re in a hurry,” Gerard said, “I’ll just tell you. If you want your mother back, you need to turn General St. Cloud and Exton Shepherd over to me.”

  “What? No.”

  “I have it on good authority that your mother is still the love of your father’s life, even more than the State. He will do anything for her, even give his life.”

  “Who told you that?” Aerie asked.

  “Your stepmother,” Gerard replied simply. “Director Phoebe has been placed in your mother’s care. She was very grateful for the chance to make your mother’s experience here even more ... exciting.”

  “I still don’t have a reason to believe that you have her,” Aerie said. “I would never agree to a deal with you, even if you think General St. Cloud would agree to it.”

  “He will agree with it,” Gerard said. “I know him well.”

  “Even if he does, Exton won’t,” Aerie pointed out. “I don’t know why you think he would.”

  “Then you’ll never see your mother again. Shame, too, since you just lost your brothers in that mess of an attack too, didn’t you?”

  Her blood ran cold at the thought of Dorian. A moment later, after the ache inside lessened its grip on her heart, Aerie straightened. Cal had returned to Petra, but Gerard didn’t seem to know that.

  “I’m sure you know as a former Comms Sec worker that rewiring the NETech for suicide missions was necessary,” Gerard said.

  So, it was the NETech. Aerie glanced over at Henry. He gave her a slight nod and a sympathetic look.

  “How did my mom survive then?” Aerie asked.

  “She managed to eject herself,” Gerard said. “I happened to be the one who picked her up.”

  “I doubt you did any of the heavy lifting.” Aerie felt herself starting to grasp for anything, anything that would give her a position of strength over Gerard. She glanced over at Henry again, hoping he would have something for her. He only gave her a thumbs up, and Aerie knew he had managed to get the location of the Craftcarrier.

 
That’s not going to help me now.

  “Well, I ordered it, so it’s technically the same thing,” Gerard said.

  “I want proof that you have her. I want to talk to her. I’m not going to do anything until I’m sure you have her and she’s unharmed,” Aerie said. She glanced at Henry again, but he had turned his attention toward the monitors.

  Silence clicked over the comm line for a long moment.

  “Hello?” Aerie frowned. “Hello? Are you there still?”

  “Aerie?” Merra’s voice came over the comm, and Aerie almost fainted from the shock.

  “Mom,” Aerie whispered back. Thank God, she’s alive.

  “I’m here,” Merra told her.

  “Are you alright?”

  Aerie could see the smile of self-assurance on her mother’s face. “Of course I am. I know how to take care of myself, Aerie.”

  “Did anyone else ... make it?” Aerie asked.

  Before Merra could reply, Gerard’s voice cut in once more.

  “I’ll give you three days to reconsider your decision,” Gerard said. “Until then, you have some thinking to do, I’d say.”

  The line went dead.

  ♦14♦

  Exton slammed the door behind him carelessly. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered.

  He had hoped—foolishly, he now knew­—that in seeking Tyler out, he could permanently delay a conversation with Cal and Brock. Finding Tyler had taken him longer than he’d liked, but in between updates on Meredith and the rest of Tyler’s family, Exton had not been able to find any useful information about what went wrong in the rest of the fighters, or if anyone else was thought to have survived.

  Grudgingly and gingerly, he made his way down to the med ward to have the conversation he’d hoped to avoid.

  Only to be turned out of the room by Petra’s own medical team as they finished checking up on Brock and Cal’s conditions. He was told he would have to wait while the techs were finished removing some of the steel-enforced glass that had managed to wriggle its way up Cal’s arm. It could take up to an hour, Tyra said.