Year of the Child
Page 29
When Alexandria turned to look at her, Strindberg's eyes were wide. "Lieutenant Governor Jung has been shot ..." She licked her lips. "... he's dead."
"What?" Alexandria asked, incredulous.
Strindberg listened a moment longer in her headset, then replied, "The UNSEC observer shot the Lieutenant Governor ... she's on the Flight deck now."
Alexandria's own eyes widened. When she realized her mouth was open she snapped it shut, and nodded at Strindberg. "Alright."
Her palms suddenly felt sweaty and she stood from her seat, rubbing them together and feeling a growing knot inside her chest. Modi was serious about taking the wreck and technology for himself ... that's why he sent that marshal. This is not a game, Alexandria, she heard inside her head. It would be better if Greg were there. She wiped sweat from her forehead and crossed her arms when she realized her hand had a slight tremor. Licking her lips she watched the screen. Everything relied on Plan B now.
Her handcomm beeped and she took a breath before she looked at it. It was from Efron, a courtesy message advising that command of all Orion security personnel and assets was being transferred to Marshal Brooks. His orders were to lock down the crater and assist with traffic control.
She blinked, her heart thudding inside her ribcage. Well, he had warned her. She took a slow breath and turned her attention back to the screen, then took a step closer, her eyes widening.
"What are they doing?" She asked, loud. The red dots, the mining ships carrying the ore containers with her artifacts, were on a course back to Ganymede.
Strindberg changed the view, zooming in on the plot. "They're on a course back here ..."
Alexandria cursed. "I can see that!" She meant, why were they headed back here, a question with an obvious answer ... Brooks. She had either overestimated their greed, or underestimated the amount of fear the Marshal's announcement had inspired in them.
"Except one, ma'am," Strindberg said, stress had crept into her voice. She switched the view to a red dot floating over the outline of Jupiter. "Looks like they are lining up for a burn ... out of the system."
Alexandria felt the corners of her mouth rise ... she almost shouted, in fact. One would escape, Modi would not get it all ... he wouldn’t take everything from her. Her heart began to slow and she felt dizzy for a moment.
Strindberg shifted the plot again and just as she predicted the transponders and dots representing Brooks' fleet begun making a wide curve around Ganymede. The lead ship was dropping velocity, braking from 15,000 kpm to 13,000 kpm in mere seconds, the others were braking much harder and the whole fleet spread out like pearls on invisible strings encircling Alexandria's little moon.
But, on the other side of the screen, her little ship was a tiny point of light cresting Jupiter's horizon ... leaving the system. No one could reach it, not Brooks, and not the Orion ships she had commandeered.
As Alexandria watched the pieces of the stellar chessboard fall into place her handcomm beeped again. She glanced at it ... a message from Edgar. She let her hand fall to her side again and looked back to the screen. Business on Earth was far away— millions upon millions of kilometers away, light-years in her mind— and Brooks was about to be at her front door, here, and she needed to think about that. But, as the dots of mining ships began to congeal around the base and the screen refreshed with tracking updates for the UN fleet, the minutes seemed to drag out, and huffing she looked at the handcomm again and tapped Edgar's message.
"Alexandria! UNSEC is sending investigators to Autolycus. Shenhau's North American branch is pulling out of the consortium and we've got three other partners about to do the same, they don't want to be anywhere near us ... I've been in and out of meetings all day! You've got to ..."
Alexandria screamed and threw the handcomm down as hard as she could.
Modi, she thought, gasping for breath. Modi is going to pay for this. He was herding her, blocking her from Autolycus, and he would move on other drop-off points as well. It was just a matter of time.
She stood, eyes wide like a hunted animal. Her chest felt tight. Then ... then ... a way of escape opened up and she smiled. When she turned to look at Strindberg the woman was staring at her like she had gone mad.
"The ship with the last canister," she started. "What's its name?"
Strindberg's mouth worked but no words came out. Alexandria's eyes narrowed and the other woman snapped into focus, turning to her terminal quickly. "It's ... the Sadie."
"Send the transponder code and probable course data to the secure terminal in the office," Alexandria told her, then stalked to the office in the back of the Control Center. Once inside she shut the door and sat down at the terminal and began a message.
"Governor, it is unfortunate but the UNSEC marshal has commandeered the courier. I think we will have a use for your privateers after all."
Epilogue
If New York was the brains of the world then surely Vatican City was its heart ... and what a beautiful heart it was.
Giuseppina Ricci paused on the steps of the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery and looked beyond the bright gardens and over the carefully manicured trees that lined Via del Governatorato to the mighty Basilica of Saint Peter. A testimony of faith, and no small account of human engineering, the Basilica had stood for over six hundred years. With its baroque dome of righteous white soaring into a blue sky it had become a sort of grounding wire— an anchor— for Pina. For she was no less a product of faith and human engineering. A sudden flash of movement caught her eye and the lens shifted, zooming in on a rare dove settling on a ledge of the Basilica. Taking that as a sign, closing her eyes and smiling she took deep breath of the morning air, sucking in the scents from the garden— her olfactory sensors breaking down the molecules and analyzing them.
Pina hopped down the steps two at a time, which gained her a disapproving look from a sister wearing the habit of Mater Ecclesiae who was coming up. She must seem odd to the sister, undignified. Pina herself liked to play characters and she was wearing the gray habit and burgundy vest of a Novus Clare. It was a path she had pursued as a child, being an orphan and given into the nuns care, until a higher calling had arrived in the night some twelve years ago and taken her from her bed. Now she fixed things for His Holiness. Important things.
Turning to the gardens she stopped at the gate to admire the colors and to watch old Martha about her work digging and planting. She liked to help Martha, but Mother Superior Sgorbati rarely let her out of the Monastery walls, where the labs and doctors and scientists were close to hand. They liked to poke and prod Pina for hours sometimes. Frustrating and painful, the great power she had been given came with its thorns and crosses.
From the gardens she took the stone path north, walking across green courtyards and down tiered steps to the Great Eagle Fountain. The marble eagle, its head held high and wings spanning over thirty meters to shelter the jade waters of the fountain, could be seen from the window of her room. It was still early and the tour shuttles had not yet made their way this far into the city, so again she stopped, stooping down to the water's edge and dipping her hand beneath its cool surface. The tactile sensation was invigorating ... like sparkles on her synthetic skin. The only thing that remained of Pina, was her brain. Her body was a marvel of fluoropolymers and super-light alloys, her muscles and nervous system replaced with silk from the Caerostris darwini. She had no blood, nor heart, only the dynamic fission-fusion reactor residing within her chest, and a Tesla coil attached to a titanium spine gave marionette life to her body.
Some would say this made her no longer human, but Pina gave an all too human sigh and stood, letting the water fall from her hand. Mother Superior Sgorbati could see the fountain just as easily from the window of her office as Pina could from her room. She had always been fair with Pina, treated her as a sort of surrogate daughter and called her special, but was not charitable when it came to her adolescence predilections. Dawdling was lowest of all on her list of things to tolerate.
Walking across the parking lot Pina took the sidewalk skirting Via del Martyres, where the Carmelites led an annual procession for martyred sisters. They would hold pictures or plaques and march from the Gallery of Tombstones to the fountain, and there they would light candles as ten thousand people pressed in on all sides. The rest of the year it was a delivery road.
The closer she got to the end of her short journey the more evident the pontiff's security detail became. A plain man sitting on a bench under a tree, ostensibly reading a tablet and holding a cup of coffee. A sniper on the roof of the gardener's lodge in front of Saint Joseph's Fountain. If Pina were a threat a hundred like them could not have stopped her. She continued on until she reached the crooked wall of outer offices of the Vatican itself. There she stood at the Fountain of Sacraments, letting the watchers have a good look at her, before moving on. When she approached the side entrance to a nameless and signless coffee shop at the base of the Borgia Tower, the young sentinel, in his red and orange livery and holding a voulge, didn't even blink.
His Holiness was a large man, well north of middle age but in good health. Today he was dressed in a simple white smock, and when Pina entered he was standing at the scarred wooden counter pouring himself coffee from a French press. The man behind the counter had an apron on, but he was security. The man in the suit sitting at one of the tables was security. And the waitress sweeping near the front door was security.
"Pina!" His Holiness said, when he saw her, and gave her a big smile. He could have been her grandfather, surprised by her visit, and not the king of a country among countries who saw everything— as though he were looking down from Heaven itself.
She measured her steps and started to go down on her knees. He moved quickly for his size, and physically stopped her by taking her shoulder.
"Pina, Pina, come sit down." He held out his hand to a table where a scattering of tablets lay.
Dejected, she slowly sat where he pointed, and watched as he finished pouring his coffee.
"Do you want some coffee?" He asked.
She shook her head no and looked down at the table.
When he came to the table and settled his bulk in the wooden chair like a man half his weight he took a sip of coffee from the delicate porcelain cup he held and then set it down among the tablets.
"Have you been keeping yourself busy?" He asked her.
She nodded without looking up.
"Pina," he said, the faintest trace of annoyance in his voice. "Look at me."
She lifted her head, feeling her lower lip tremble, and looked at him.
He tsked, and then held out his hand to her. A part of her said she was being too much, but she smiled, feeling relief, and taking his oversized hand in her small ones she gratefully kissed his ring.
"There," he said, still that annoyance in his voice, but softer he asked, "Now, can we talk?"
She nodded, still smiling as he pulled his hand back and took another sip of his coffee.
"Pina," he started. "When you were a girl you were interested in journalism, so I recall. And the prioress tells me that you write the monastery's newsletter. Is that so?"
Her eyes getting wide she nodded to His Holiness.
"How would you like to be a journalist?"
She inhaled, her eyes turning to saucers. "Ohhh, I can? Am I going somewhere?"
"Yes, my child, you're going to Ganymede," he said. "There's something there I want you to destroy."
Notes
The following items are in the public domain because of age or by permission of the author or artist.
In chapter two Tetsuya references the account of the serpent tempting Eve from Genesis 3:4 of the King James Version of the bible.
The dedication quotes from Psalm 127:3 of the King James Version of the bible.
In chapter 20 Misaki paraphrases Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
About the Author
As a native Texan in the early 90s R.L. Dean created door programs for bulletin board software. In 1998 R.L. became a Christian and taught expositional Sunday School at his local church for eight years. He currently resides in southeast Texas with his wife of twenty years, ten cats, and two stray dogs. He works in the IT industry as a technician for a large restaurant chain, but his dream is to work professionally creating novels, television shows, and films.
Acknowledgments
Something that all writers acknowledge is that it takes a lot of people to realize their work. This is never more apparent than when publishing your first works. There are so many people to thank; J. N. McLaughlin, editor extraordinaire. Dusty Crosley, who once again created an amazing cover for my ineloquent words. W. R. Prince for his spot-on political cartoon. My coworkers who support me (my first book signing was at work!) All of which give their time and talent over to me so that I can pursue my dream. None of this would be possible without good friends.
And, of course, my wife. She's put up with a starving artist for too long.
I thank God for all these.
Playlist
Alice Cooper - No More Mr. Nice Guy
Asia - Heat of the Moment
The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Big Country - Big Country
Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper
Journey - Wheel in the Sky
Modest Mouse - Float On
Nena - 99 Luftballons
Paul McCartney and Wings - Band on the Run
Peter Schilling - Major Tom (Coming Home)
Scandal, Patty Smyth - The Warrior
Smashmouth - Allstar
Starship - We Built this City
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)
The Police - King of Pain
Sixx A.M. - Stars
Other Books by R.L. Dean
Blood of the Prince
Greater Things than Thou
All Things Ruin
That Which Remains (forthcoming)
Harmony
The Rhine
Thomas Spaulding Mysteries
The Modronovich Incident (October 2019)
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
PART 1 Prologue
1 - Misaki
2 - Tetsuya
3 - Mat
4 - Alexandria
5 - Tetsuya
6 - Shultz
7 - Haydon
8 - Tetsuya
9 - Alexandria
10 - Tetsuya
11 - Compton
12 - Mat
13 - Tetsuya
14 - Yuri
15 - Shultz
16 - Tetsuya
17 - Yuri
18 - Misaki
19 - JJ
20 - Mat
21 - Tetsuya
22 - Alexandria
PART 2 23 - Ludwick
24 - Alexandria
25 - Mat
26 - Shultz
27 - Alexandria
28 - Compton
29 - Shultz
30 - Misaki
31 - Alexandria
32 - Jung
33 - Tetsuya
34 - Alexandria
35 - JJ
36 - Tetsuya
37 - Ludwick
38 - Alexandria
39 - Mat
40 - Tetsuya
41 - JJ
42 - Alexandria
Epilogue
Notes
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Other Books by R.L. Dean
Guide
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Colophon
Text
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