Terra and Imperium (Duchy of Terra Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  Given that Commander Bauer was a petite and gorgeous blonde woman, Annette suspected she had a lot of practice in appearing more intimidating and less intimidated than she was. Certainly, Annette wasn’t much taller than Bauer and had spent much of her military career cultivating a reputation as a harsh battleax to help maintain her authority.

  “All right, you can put your shirt back down,” Bauer told her, wiping the ultrasound gel off Annette’s stomach and then putting away the tools. “You’re doing extraordinarily well. Neither of them is showing any problems or difficulties—and neither are you.”

  “I suspect you’ll understand me, Doctor, when I say that discovering that pregnancy comes easily to me is not in line with my self-image,” Annette said dryly. “Anything I should be paying attention to?”

  “No morning sickness anymore?”

  “It’s mostly passed. No strange cravings or anything, either.”

  “You might be surprised by those as you hit the third trimester, but the description of it coming easily to you is about right,” Bauer agreed. “Given your age, you still want to be careful, though. I’m guessing, though, that telling you to try and avoid stress is a waste of my time?”

  The Duchess of Terra chuckled. She didn’t need to say anything. Around them, Empereur de France’s corridors hummed with activity as the Duchy of Terra Militia prepared to move. If Annette had had her way, they’d already be halfway to Alpha Centauri.

  None of her Militia ships carried the supplies for extended flights, though. The supplies were on hand, easily available for when the cruisers went out on their patrols, but none of the capital ships or escorts kept more than a week’s consumables on board.

  Now every ship in the Militia was being stocked. Shuttles swarmed the four super-battleships and two battleships, loading magazines, filling antimatter and hydrogen bunkers, and delivering crates of food and supplies.

  “The entire Militia will be in motion in fourteen hours,” Annette finally said aloud. “The situation remains political enough that I’m half-tempted to go with them.

  “Reduced stress is not an option just yet.” She sighed. “I know once the babies are born, I need to take some time, and I will, but this crisis needs to be resolved.”

  “You’re the Duchess of Terra,” Bauer said. “There is always going to be a crisis; you are going to need to make time.”

  “There are crises and crises, Doctor,” Annette replied. “And this is definitely the latter. I’ll do what I can.”

  As she was sliding off the table, there was a knock on the door.

  “We’re fine,” Bauer announced. “What is it?”

  Rianne Zhao Ha opened the door and stuck her head around the corner, Annette’s secretary looking as energized by all the activity as anything else.

  “Can we borrow your room, Doctor?” Ha asked. “The Duchess needs to have a meeting that nobody knows about.”

  “The room is secured but not that secured,” Bauer said. “You can use it, but…”

  Rianne stepped through the door with an Imperial privacy generator.

  “We thought of that,” she said cheerily.

  “Well, then, Your Grace, I think I shall simply disappear and note this appointment took longer than expected,” Empereur de France’s senior doctor said brightly. “Good luck.”

  #

  Annette hadn’t been expecting the sudden intrusion, but she was somehow unsurprised to see Ki!Tana edge her way into the private treatment room. The three-meter-tall alien filled much of the space, and the room would have been very claustrophobic if the Ki!Tol hadn’t long since become a comfortable presence.

  “You realize that we spend enough time together that any meeting between us would go unremarked,” she told the alien.

  “Perhaps,” Ki!Tana agreed levelly, “but I must speak today not merely of things that I am sworn to keep secret but of secrets that I am no longer supposed to know.”

  The alien’s skin was dark green—determined despite fear. Just what did Ki!Tana have to say?

  “You’re making me nervous,” Annette admitted. “What is so terrifying, Ki!Tana?”

  “You know how an A!Tol becomes Ki!Tol,” the old alien told her. “We are mad for a very long time. It takes tens of long-cycles for us to adapt to our body’s final attack on our sentience to force us to breed or die.”

  A!Tol did not have wombs or anything of the sort. Live birth involved the young eating their mother alive. For some strange reason, the A!Tol had some of the best artificial gestation technology in the known universe.

  Technology that damned “heir of the body” clause had prevented Annette from using.

  But their biology had had one last nasty trick for them once they’d established the ability to separate reproduction from death: a female A!Tol was a large, powerful sentient with a regenerative ability unmatched without technology, but all of that was designed to enable her to survive gestation.

  And her hormones demanded that she breed. And those hormones didn’t recognize it even if all of the eggs had been removed and the A!Tol in question couldn’t breed—that such a removal extended the life expectancy of an A!Tol was part of why it was traditional that the Empress had them removed and destroyed.

  Between medication and technology, the A!Tol had bought themselves time, but eventually, all A!Tol females succumbed to “the birthing madness.” At which point they usually suicided or died of starvation.

  A small—a tiny—minority managed to force themselves through it to the other side, a new level of sanity where they could endure for centuries. These were the A!Tol’s wise elders and trickster demons—the Ki!Tol.

  “We remember nothing of our lives before we are Ki!Tol,” Ki!Tana reminded her. “Or…or so we let everyone believe.”

  Annette sat up straighter, studying her oldest alien friend. That was news. That was…a deception that could cause serious trouble in Imperial culture.

  “We don’t remember much,” the alien told with a raised manipulator tentacle. “Just flashes. But if you have enough flashes, and they’re of events that are in the historical record, you can put the pieces together.”

  “You’re losing me,” Annette admitted.

  “I told you once that I had seen a starkiller fired,” Ki!Tana reminded her. “Did you ever wonder how? Who would have been there when the A!Tol fired the first of them they ever built, the only one they ever used?”

  “I honestly assumed there were a lot of people there,” Annette said. “Things were strange enough then that I barely remembered anything you’d said.”

  During Tornado’s exile, Annette had come into possession of a new generation of starkiller: a missile-sized weapon instead of a starship-sized one. They hadn’t been supposed to exist and had been in the hands of a conspiracy plotting to start a new war with the Kanzi.

  She’d earned her Duchy by destroying them.

  “No,” Ki!Tana said softly. “There were only a few. I wouldn’t permit the guilt to be shared.”

  “You,” Annette echoed, looking her advisor in her ink-black eyes and understanding what she was saying. “You ordered it fired.”

  “Piecing together the pieces of flashbacks and bits of memory I have, I was Empress A!Ana,” Ki!Tana said quietly. “And I know things that were meant to die with A!Ana.”

  “Like?”

  “We did not develop the starkiller ourselves,” the A!Tol said flatly. “Our program to develop one was no more successful than the Kanzi’s. We were given the answers to develop it, in exchange for a very specific favor.”

  And suddenly Annette began to understand why this was coming up now.

  “We were involved in a three-way war with two factions of Kanzi at the time,” Ki!Tana told her. Her voice was distracted, half-recalling memories and half-recalling history. “One faction wanted to enslave all non-Kanzi bipeds, those they call mockeries of their God.

  “The other wanted to exterminate them. They found a ship of Those Who Came Before. They wer
e reverse-engineering it, and something about those ships, that technology, terrifies the Mesharom.”

  “What did they do?” Annette asked, her voice very quiet.

  “They gave the Kanzi one chance to give it up. And then they gave us the starkillers on the condition that we use it to destroy the entire star system the ship was in.”

  Annette was silent, waiting for Ki!Tana to finish.

  “That turned the tide of the war. The slavers won the civil war; we beat them both back and secured the borders of the Imperium. All it cost was six billion sentient lives.”

  “My god. And now…”

  “And now you have found something similar to what those Kanzi found,” Ki!Tana told her. “You must speak to the Mesharom. I do not know what they want, what will happen, but you must speak to them.”

  “Is that possible?” Annette asked. “I am prepared to negotiate, but…”

  “I can arrange a meeting,” the old alien told her, admitting what Annette had always known—that Ki!Tana was still in contact with the big worms. “There is a Frontier Fleet detachment in the area. It is…sufficient to engage Harvester or the Wendira. If you can convince them to help.”

  “Set it up,” Annette ordered. “Let’s see what the galaxy’s elders want.”

  She wasn’t necessarily willing to give up the ship—but if the alternative was to see an entire star system destroyed, there were many things she’d consider that she wouldn’t normally!

  “You will need to meet them in person,” Ki!Tana warned. “And…while I know few of your Council will approve, I think that whatever happens, you need to be at Hope.

  “Too much rides on what will happen there for you to leave it to another.”

  #

  “I have to go with the fleet.”

  From the sudden silence in the room, Annette could just have easily dropped a time bomb in the middle of the room that everyone was staring at.

  It wasn’t a very full room. Elon and Zhao would end up running Terra while she was away, and Villeneuve would be personally commanding the Militia fleet going to Centauri—they were sending everything heavier than a destroyer, after all.

  “No,” Elon said immediately. “You can’t—you’re needed here!”

  “The situation remains both fluid and political,” Annette told her consort levelly. “I carry more of the Empress’s authority and trust than anyone else available—and I’m including the two Echelon Lords we have to hand!

  “There is no one better placed to speak for the Imperium in what is going to become a bitterly dangerous set of negotiations. Without an active starcom link to A!To, someone has to speak for our nation.

  “That someone has to be me.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” her husband objected. “Any of the ‘living-room cabinet’ can speak as well as you can. Hell, Jean is just as trusted, just as respected as you are. He can speak for the Empress as well as you can.”

  “I’m the only human who has met A!Shall,” Annette said. “I am the only available Duchess. There is no one else who can speak as well.”

  “But there are others who can speak almost as well who aren’t pregnant!”

  “I remain the Duchess of Terra, Elon,” she snapped. “You knew that when you married me. There are duties I cannot pass on—and there are lines even my Consort should not cross.”

  Elon recoiled as if she’d slapped him—which, for all that she hadn’t touched him, she might as well have. Once one of the richest and most powerful men on Earth, he’d traded much of his power—though not his wealth, which had been moved into several massive blind trusts—for the role of husband to the Duchess. He would have had an important role in the Duchy’s governance either way, but his current position looked, at least, dependent on who he’d married.

  “Jean, Li, help me out here,” Elon said to the other two men.

  “You are her husband, Elon,” Villeneuve replied with a smile. “You are welcome to argue with her if you wish to be stupid—but I am her Admiral, and I have learned when to shut up and obey.”

  Li Chin Zhao shrugged expressively.

  “She is the Duchess, Elon,” the immensely fat man said, leaning back in his chair. “And she is correct. For different reasons than you, I would rather see her and her children-to-be safe behind every barrier and army we could muster—but she is the Duchess.

  “And she is correct,” he repeated with a sigh. “No, Annette Bond must speak for both Terra and Imperium as this whole mess evolves—and it will evolve at Hope.”

  Zhao turned back to Annette and shook his head at her. For all that he was actually younger than his Duchess, his gaze was paternal—Zhao had no children, no interest in romance or family at all. He had dedicated his life first to China and then to the Duchy of Terra.

  Any legacy Li Chin Zhao would leave would be forged by service—and would be nurtured by Annette’s children.

  “I have to go,” she said softly, turning her gaze from Zhao to her husband. “And you and Li have to stay. Someone has to run Terra while I’m gone.”

  Elon exhaled and bowed his head.

  “Promise me you’ll stay on the super-battleships?” he asked. “I understand, but please…stay safe.”

  “You know me,” she said lightly, but his gaze swallowed her false cheer.

  “Yes,” Elon confirmed. “That’s why I say it. You will do what you must—that’s why I love you—but come back to me.”

  “I’ll stay on Tornado. Behind the super-battleships,” Annette promised, taking his hands. “I need to be there; I need to talk to people. I don’t need to be on the front lines getting my eye cut out again!”

  #

  Chapter 27

  “Hyper portal!”

  The shouted report echoed across Pat Kurzman’s bridge, and he shook his head somewhat repressively at the young officer who’d given it.

  “The timing is wrong for it to be the Laians,” he concluded gently. “They only left Sol fourteen hours ago, and hyperspace is hyperspace. No one’s worked out any way to travel faster in it that I know of!”

  In truth, given the quality of Imperial charts for the area around Sol now, Imperial or Militia forces should be significantly faster to move than the Core Powers. Hyperspace currents weren’t always of a predictable strength or course, but there were highest-probability zones.

  “Nonetheless,” Pat continued, glancing over at Commander Chan. “Heng? Please bring the task force to battle stations. Let’s see who our new visitors are.”

  The timing was, in fact, wrong for every single group he was expecting. Not, of course, that Imperial intelligence was sure where the Mesharom or Wendira forces in the region were. The timing, would, actually line up with…

  “Captain Fang is reporting Imperial IFFs,” Chan noted. “Sixteen ships, Stalwart-class heavy cruisers. IFFs mark them as one of the squadrons attached to Echelon Lord Tanaka.”

  “Ah,” Pat noted. “So, she decided not to leave us swinging when she was diverted to Sol. Nice to know we were remembered.”

  “We have a Division Lord Torandus reporting in, they are taking command of the Imperial forces in the system—they’re an Ivida neuter.”

  The Ivida were one of the Imperial Races, a dark red-skinned hairless biped with double-jointed limbs.

  “Any coms for us?”

  “Not yet,” Chan replied. “Wait.” He focused on his screen. “I have a transmission from Torandus directed to you, sir.”

  “Classification?”

  “Encrypted in standard codes. Clear for flag staff, sir.”

  “Put it on my screen, then,” Pat ordered.

  Despite their mostly-humanlike appearance, Ivida lacked anything humanity would call a nose or ears. Their head was a smooth, dark red broken only by bright white teeth and eyes.

  “Vice Admiral Kurzman, I am Division Lord Torandus, commanding the Hundred and Fifth Cruiser Squadron,” the Ivida greeted him. “My squadron was split off from Echelon Lord Tanaka’s task force to assis
t you in the defense of this system against further attacks.

  “I have taken command of all Imperial forces in this system, but I have no intentions of ordering around the sentient with the super-battleship division. If you can make yourself available, I would like to come aboard your flagship once we have arrived in orbit and speak with your intelligence team for an update on the situation.

  “We have been out of communication for eight cycles, and I worry what we may have missed.”

  Pat sighed. Enough had changed in the last week that Torandus’s commander was already on her way to back them up—Pat’s own superiors would be leaving Sol within a day.

  “Sensible sentient,” he said aloud. “Chan—start having our people put together a briefing package on the events of the last eight cycles. Can we feed an Ivida?”

  “UP and spices, but yes,” Commander Chan replied confidently. “Our chefs will consider it a challenge.”

  “All right. We’ll invite him and his senior captains for dinner, brief them on the clusterfuck that has been this last week.”

  Pat smiled grimly.

  “Misery loves company, after all.”

  #

  “The briefing files your staff sent over were illuminating, Admiral,” Torandus told Pat as the two flag officers and their staffs settled down to the meal Washington’s crew had put together.

  “This strange ship you have found is fascinating to me,” they continued. “The Imperium has no knowledge of races before the Mesharom. Not even legend or myth—though one is forced to wonder about the Kanzi idea of god when such a race who predates us all was bipedal like so many of us.”

  “Form follows function,” Pat replied. “Evolution on a thousand worlds seems to have settled on only so many designs for the body of a tool-using sentient.”

  “And yet,” Torandus said. “So many variations, but so few patterns. Half of all known sentients are bipedal, Admiral. That seems unlikely to be pure happenstance.”