“Auntie Annette!” Morgan shrieked. “He said you were coming, but it’s been so long…”
“We didn’t know where you were,” Annette told her. “I’ve been away, and then when I came back, we couldn’t find you.”
The girl nodded seriously.
“The other man said you were broken,” she whispered. “That you’d become a bad one.”
“Never,” the Duchess of Earth promised. She held out her arms, surprised at just how glad and relieved she was to see the little girl, and caught Morgan as she jumped down from Wellesley’s shoulder. “I promised your father I would always come for you,” she murmured into the child’s ear. “You know I keep my promises.”
“Did Daddy send you?” Morgan asked. “He said I’d see him soon, but then the other man came and Bob and Willie and the others all went away…”
“The other man?” Annette questioned.
“He said to call him Uncle Joe, but…he wasn’t my uncle. Didn’t like him. Do I have to see him again?” she asked with the innocence of childhood.
Annette smiled.
“No, my dear,” she promised. “I don’t know where your father is, I’m sorry,” she admitted. “But we’ll find him together. I promise you.”
“And you always keep your promises!”
#
While a surprisingly large part of Annette found herself wanting to take Morgan back to Hong Kong and tuck her in safely, she allowed the girl’s nanny—who, from her shell-shocked expression, was due for both a long debriefing and a massive amount of therapy—to take her onto the shuttle and settle her down.
A second SSS officer had joined Wellesley in standing back to give her space, an officer she recognized immediately, and she nodded cheerfully as the swarthy man met her gaze and grinned.
“Your Grace, this is Alpha Commander of the Network,” Wellesley introduced him.
“Also, Adrian Salvatore of the Special Space Service,” she replied, offering her hand to Salvatore. “Promoted you from Troop Captain finally, I presume?”
Salvatore’s grin widened, showing shockingly white teeth.
“The UESF may have booted you from the service over that mess, ma’am, but the SSS promoted me for it,” he told her.
When a much-younger Commander Annette Bond had finally talked one of her junior officers into admitting the Captain of their battleship had raped her, it had been Troop Captain Adrian Salvatore who’d gone with Bond to arrest Captain Bowman.
“I warned Alpha Cell you’d recognize me,” the SSS Major told her. “But it’s not like we had multiple backup companies of soldiers tucked away in case everything went wrong.”
Extremely carefully, he unbelted his sidearm and offered it to her.
“We may have fought beside each other today, but technically I’m still at war with the Imperium,” he said quietly. “I offer the unconditional surrender of Alpha Company of the Weber Network.”
“I think we can come up with something better for your people than a prison cell,” Annette told him. “At a minimum, you’re all welcome to retire with Imperial Pensions. Crushing the Network wouldn’t help anyone.”
“Some of them might volunteer,” Salvatore said. “If you’ll have me, I’m in.”
“That’s Wellesley’s call,” she replied. “Need another Major, Major?”
The power-armored Guard commander winced.
“I’m not getting out of that promotion for much longer, am I?”
“No. Now report,” she ordered.
“We’ve identified eighty-seven engineers and scientists who were sequestered under the Weber Protocols for having critical information on UESF technology and research,” Wellesley said. “We’ve also confirmed two hundred and ninety-one family members of those engineers and other key Network personnel.”
“What about prisoners?”
“Six hundred and twelve so far,” he reported. “About two hundred surrendered, the rest were stunned and haven’t woken up yet. We believe that’s everyone in the base, but we’re still running active patrols.
“This remains a combat zone, Your Grace,” he concluded pointedly.
“Which is why I’m hanging out outside with a bevy of guards in power armor,” she replied. “Did we get Anderson?”
“No,” Wellesley admitted. “So far as we can tell, he wasn’t here. There’s also a concealed hangar for an interface-drive shuttle that’s empty.”
“We missed him,” she said. “And I doubt he didn’t have other resources.”
“Each of the Bravo Cells had a group responsible for setting up stockpiles and resources, not just on Earth but across the Solar System,” Salvatore warned her. “Given his role in Logistics, I would presume that Commodore Anderson ran that group for his cell. If anyone has secret stockpiles or resources no one else would know about, it would be him.”
“Any good news other than the hostages?”
“We’re still waiting on a proper software team, but my electronics warfare guys say the Archive appears intact,” Wellesley told her. “I don’t have the background to judge how valuable that will be, but…”
“If nothing else, it has the damned specifications for making compressed-matter armor,” Annette said quietly. “If it doesn’t, we’re going to have a bad year.”
She looked at Salvatore.
“Did your Alpha Cell give you follow-up orders for once this was done?” she asked.
“Everyone knew I was going to have to surrender,” he pointed out. “I expect that one of them will be in contact shortly, but I’m officially out of the loop.”
“Make sure your people are taken care of,” she ordered him. “Wellesley knows the drill of their legal status; we’ve discussed it. You fought by our side; I won’t forget that. Anyone who wants to sign on is more than welcome; anyone who wants to just go home gets their Imperial Pension with no more questions asked.”
“I’ll let them know,” Salvatore promised. “And we’ll rack our brains, see if any of us know anything about where Anderson might have tucked himself away. Can’t promise anything, though.”
“I want answers from your bosses at this point, not you,” Annette replied. “Right now, I have a four-year-old girl who has no idea what’s going on or why she’s been a pawn in someone else’s political bullshit. I’m going to fly her back to Hong Kong and make damn sure she knows she’s safe.
“Let me know if we find the matter-compressor plans,” she ordered. “I’m sure about five million other important things will come up as well, but we’ll deal with them as they arise.”
At some point, she’d get to sleep through the night again, but right now, the Duchy of Terra remained as cranky as any month-old baby.
#
Chapter 17
“Duchess, we have a security breach in the hotel,” Tellaki reported over Annette’s communicator as she stepped out of the room she’d claimed for Morgan.
She wasn’t particularly surprised.
“Where and how?” she asked.
“A clever Trojan program inserted into the hotel’s security cameras,” the Rekiki told her. “If we weren’t running Imperial software in parallel, we might have missed it.
“It appears to be covering the presence of one individual who has headed straight to your quarters. I have a team moving in as we speak.”
“Hold off on that,” Annette ordered with a sigh. “I’ve been expecting him. Have your team on standby for an alert, but I’ll speak with him myself”
“You’ve been…expecting an intruder with expert hacking software?” her guard asked.
“Since about a day after we landed,” she confirmed. “I might be wrong as to who it is, but I doubt it.”
#
Stepping into her office, Annette hit the light switch before the man standing by her desk could do anything, and regarded the familiar face of Elon Casimir with scant favor.
Casimir had lost weight, and much of the chubbiness in his face had gone with it. His shoulder-length
brown hair was gone, replaced with the closely cropped hair common to those who spent a lot of time in spacesuits.
His face and body were leaner, but his eyes remained the same warm blue as always and he was recognizably her old boss.
She even recognized the childish disappointment in his posture that his surprise had been averted.
“You may be one of the best programmers on Earth, but my people have A!Tol software,” she pointed out. “You don’t even know what’s in the toy box anymore.”
“Damn,” Casimir said mildly. “I hadn’t considered that; that little Trojan hasn’t failed me yet.”
“With Imperial tech in play, a lot of the old rules have changed,” Annette told him, looking him over as she approached her desk. She was torn between yelling at the man for letting her think he was dead, for hiding when she needed him…and sitting him down and ordering room service.
“So, that’s why you thought endangering Morgan for tonight’s damn fool stunt was okay?” he demanded.
Annette didn’t recall consciously deciding to go past yelling to punching. She didn’t feel particularly guilty about it, though, as Casimir collapsed backward onto her desk, wheezing as he folded up around his stomach.
“I didn’t do it for Morgan,” she told him flatly. “I’ll hate myself a bit for that later, but I didn’t. I sure as hell didn’t do it for you or need your approval, Elon.
“I did it for four hundred hostages being held against the Network, the Duchy and me. Someone wants to take up arms and fight me, fine, but I will not see innocents caught in the cross-fire—regardless of who they are!”
Casimir coughed, breathing hard as he held up a hand.
“I’m sorry,” he finally wheezed out. “It’s hard to deal with sometimes as a friend, but I of all people should know Bloody Annie does the right thing, regardless of the cost.”
“That’s a low blow, Elon,” she told him.
“Wasn’t meant as one,” he said, exhaling as he straightened and met her gaze. “Just a statement.”
“I at least haven’t spent the last damn year hiding,” she spat. “Where have you been?”
“Following the plan we laid out for this circumstance,” he reminded her. “Right up until the moment that son of a bitch Anderson kidnapped my daughter.”
Annette sighed, then crossed to the chair behind her desk, studying Casimir the whole way.
“You haven’t been sleeping or eating right,” she judged. “Have you? Sit down, Elon.”
He chuckled but obeyed.
“Once I knew you were coming back—and coming back as the ruler of Vichy Earth, at that!—I decided to move Morgan off-world to safety with me. My people were ambushed. Presumably, some were taken prisoner and were with Morgan, but most were killed.
“Then I got a lovely note informing me that any attempt to, and I quote, ‘join Bond in her treason’ would result in consequences for Morgan,” he finished flatly. “I chose my side right there, Annette, but if Anderson knew enough to contact me without my knowing how, then he’d know if I contacted you.
“My little girl is my world, Annette. What the hell was I to do?”
“You could have found a way to let me know,” she pointed out.
“Someone close to me had to have enabled Anderson to get the note to me,” Casimir replied. “The same person probably betrayed Morgan’s route off-world to him. Everyone I’d use to reach out to you is on the list of suspects. I was working on a way, but you seem to have rendered it unnecessary.”
“Anderson escaped,” she warned him. “I expect the rest of the Network to concede shortly, but a significant chunk will gather around him and continue to fight.”
“You rescued Morgan,” Casimir said. “And, well, you’re you. I’d have given you the benefit of the doubt regardless, but now I owe you my daughter’s life. I’m with you—and so is everything I buried.”
“BugWorks Station,” Annette said calmly. “The compressed-matter manufactory. I know you mounted a hyperdrive on it. Where did you take it?”
Elon Casimir laughed.
“We mounted hyper portal generators on BugWorks Station, yes,” he confirmed. “We didn’t mount any engines on it. It’s exactly where it always was. We just moved it into hyperspace.”
“Get back in touch with your Board, Elon,” Annette told him. “I’m going to have work for you.”
#
She was still staring at the door, trying to sort out her emotions, when Li Chin Zhao stepped into the room. The Chinese bureaucrat met her irritated gaze with a questioning eyebrow, then chuckled.
“We had a meeting scheduled,” he reminded her. “Though given that I just saw Elon Casimir walking the other way, I’m guessing that you don’t want to hear Lebrand and Miyamoto’s synthesis of the list of complaints about the sliding-scale currency-conversion rate?”
“The rich can complain all they want; I don’t control the currency conversion,” Annette pointed out crossly. “That one still sits with Medit! and Uplift—and if they’re rich enough for it to impact them, they’re either smart enough to figure out the purpose or can afford people on staff to explain it to them in small words.”
Zhao laughed aloud.
“I am not passing that argument back,” he replied. “I understand the logic of forcing investment myself, but the rates still look punitive at the higher levels.”
Pre-conquest currency could still be exchanged into Imperial marks. Imperial marks were currently the only currency that was allowed to be accepted for imported goods and would, within two years, become the only acceptable currency.
The rate was on a sliding scale. Someone converting a thousand bucks got an extremely generous rate. Someone converting a billion got a rate that was significantly worse.
The goal, as it had been explained to Annette, was to make sure that as much wealth as possible was put in stocks, infrastructure, and staff as possible. It encouraged Earth’s existing wealthy to partner with Imperial businesses, investing their pre-conquest currency in businesses that would create returns in marks.
Given how much of Earth’s wealth was already in stocks and other investments, the impact was being surprisingly minor so far, but that didn’t stop it pissing people off.
She sighed.
“But no, I’m not exactly in the mindset for economic arguments. Let me ping Villeneuve,” she told him. “Between the pair of you, we can go over most of the impacts of Casimir’s non-death.”
She sent a quick note to the Admiral’s communicator and sighed again.
“How does his return impact his assets?” she asked Zhao. He’d become her unofficial Treasurer, a title she intended to make official whenever she got around to assigning any portfolios to the Council.
“Everything went into a trust for his daughter,” he responded instantly. “The trust can be rolled up and returned to his personal possession without excessive difficulty—it’s not easy or straightforward, but it’s certainly doable—and then Elon Casimir goes back to being one of the richest men on Earth and his daughter ceases to be the richest four-year-old ever.
“Of course, he is no longer CEO or Chairman of the Board of Nova Industries, but as majority shareholder, he can change both of those as soon as he wants to,” Zhao concluded. “I presume there was some level of Weber Protocol assets that we aren’t aware of, as well?”
“I’ll drag a full accounting out of him at some point,” she responded as Villeneuve stepped through the door, the Admiral impeccably turned out as always.
“Most immediately relevant to all of us, especially Jean, is that BugWorks Station still exists.”
The Admiral stopped in mid-step, paused, then slowly and carefully took his seat.
“Explain,” he requested politely.
“Casimir isn’t dead,” Annette summarized. “His daughter was being held hostage to keep him from joining the Duchy. Now we’ve rescued her, he’s come out of hiding and should be fully on board.
“BugWorks Sta
tion was never intended to be destroyed,” she continued. “I knew Nova Industries had mounted hyper-portal emitters on it. I’d assumed they’d moved it into deep space or somewhere else inaccessible, but as it turns out, they apparently just moved it into hyperspace in the same spot.”
“Oh merde,” Villeneuve whispered. “And since it didn’t have an interface drive, we couldn’t detect it.”
“Exactly. We’ll want to coordinate with Casimir, send a ship out to touch base with them.”
“Lougheed’s Washington commissions tomorrow,” Villeneuve pointed out. “We can send them. The BugWorks crew will know Lougheed as well, right?”
“They will. That’s perfect,” Annette agreed.
There was a moment of awkward silence, then Zhao coughed delicately.
“You realize you need Casimir on the Council,” he pointed out.
“Potentially,” Annette agreed. “But right now, if I’m in the same room as him, I’m not sure if I’m going to hit him or kiss him.”
Zhao coughed somewhat less delicately, nearly choking on his water.
“That conflict generally only gets resolved one way in the long run,” he pointed out gently.
“You do not know me well enough to give relationship advice,” Annette snapped with a warning finger.
“But he is probably correct,” Villeneuve said carefully.
The warning finger moved to the Admiral, who’d known her, to one degree or another, for over ten years.
“You…you…just shut up,” she finally ordered.
#
Chapter 18
Andrew Lougheed stepped onto Washington’s bridge with a sense of accomplishment.
It wasn’t the first time he’d entered the circular room at the heart of the A!Tol-built destroyer, with its massive hologram tank and tiered consoles that resembled a Terran-designed CIC more than a Terran bridge, but now he was finally, officially taking command.
Two weeks of training and recruiting had brought Washington’s crew complement up to a little over two thirds of her designed strength, pulling the twenty crewmen and women from Of Course We’re Coming Back, borrowing another forty from Tornado, including a Frole engineer, and then adding forty “new” recruits from the ex-UESF personnel signing up.
Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2) Page 12
