Galen's Way: A Starquest 4th Age Adventure

by Richard Paolinelli

  “You didn’t notice the switch,” Galen asked in disbelief. “The Queen didn’t notice a different man had taken to her bed?”

  “That I didn’t notice immediately is to my shame,” Harmool conceded. “But in my defense, this wasn’t some surgically altered imposter we are dealing with. As for the Queen, I came to discover, to my horror, that not only was she aware of the switch but she had engineered it herself.”

  “Putting aside why she would want to do such a thing for now,” Galen shook his head at the thought, “how exactly did she arrange it and where did she find such a perfect replacement.”

  “She only had to look as far as the birth of Iodocus himself to find his replacement. Iodocus was the first born child of the previous King. His brother followed him into this world a few minutes later. The old King had himself risen to the throne by slaying his two elder brothers when he was a younger man, an act he’d come to regret in his later years.

  “So he decided to spare his sons the suffering of one brother’s desire for a crown he could never have without benefit of accident or murder,” Harmool continued. “He sent the second son, Arthureal, away hours after he’d been born, to be raised on a faraway world with no knowledge of who he really was. Iodocus was the rightful heir, and Arthureal would be kept alive in case something happened to Iodocus before he could produce an heir, so that the Royal Family’s line would remain on the throne.”

  “How did Arthureal find out the truth?” Galen asked.

  “He didn’t,” Harmool replied. “The Queen did. How I do not know, for not even Iodocus was aware he had a living brother. There must have been some record kept somewhere that fell into her possession. She sent for Arthureal, told him that in fact he had been the first born, but some imperfection his brother did not share had led to his banishment and Iodocus’ ascension.”

  “No offense, but your Queen sounds like a royal bitch.”

  “I find myself in agreement with you,” Harmool replied.

  “What did you do when you found out your true King had been replaced?”

  “I never got the chance to do anything. The handmaiden and I were discovered while she was telling the story. The unfortunate girl was slain. My family was taken hostage, and I was given the choice of keeping my silence and serving the imposter and my Queen in return for the lives of my family. What choice did I have, Galen, but to comply?”

  “You’ve had plenty of chances to get word out without it coming back to you.”

  “I could not risk it,” Harmool shook his head firmly. “I hoped their plans would fail, that I could get my family off world, and then confess everything to Napat. He could protect my family and I, and then bring the charges against them. The Alliance would rally behind him, especially with proof that he’d been framed. That can still happen, Galen. You can make that happen.”

  “I appear to be in no position to do anything from in here.”

  “Your present circumstance can be changed,” Harmool replied. “You can save the Princess. You may even be able to save my true King as well. I do not believe they have killed him. They would keep him alive, prisoner somewhere far away, in case he needed to be returned to take the fall for the failed plot against Napat and the Alliance.”

  “Do you have any idea where he’s being held?”

  “Not a clue. I can only imagine how he has suffered all of these cycles.”

  “I’m still not clear why the Queen would do this unless…”

  “She intends to use Arthureal to crush the Alliance,” Harmool finished. “Once they have established their malicious empire, she will have him assassinated, and she will rise to take her place as Empress.”

  “I may have been too kind when I called her a bitch.”

  “I have called her much worse in the safety of my own mind, I can assure you.”

  “It was hard enough to imagine a father slaying his only child,” Galen said. “But a mother to do such a thing? How does such evil form in the first place?”

  “I have asked myself those questions many times. I have no answers for them. All I can do is take advantage of the one chance I have to stop them, save my King, save my family, and my people. I can give you the chance to help me do that and save the Princess.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “When I leave this cell, I will leave the door unlocked and one torch burning,” Harmool began, lifting up a bag from behind his chair. “In here, you will find a guard’s uniform, your sabre, medicines to help you recover your strength and hasten the healing process for your wounds. I’m afraid your coat was the only article of your clothing that was salvageable. It is in here as well. Wait one hour after I depart, dress in this uniform, and take up that torch over there. You will find a door next to it that opens to a passage out of here.

  “At the other end of the passage is an entrance to our ship yard,” Harmool continued. “Look for a ship named Talon. It has been fueled and prepped and will respond to your commands. Fly that ship to where the Princess is and bring her to Taygeta,” he pulled out a pair of chips from his pocket. “Her testimony along with the evidence on this chip,” he dropped the chip into a side pouch of the bag, “will be enough to prove Napat innocent and prove Arthureal and Darieann guilty of sedition.”

  Harmool held out the second chip to Galen.

  “This chip contains the twenty million you were promised along with the eighty million we were going to pay Vedastus,” he explained. “Consider it compensation for the…inconvenience.”

  Harmool smiled at the reference to their first meeting back on Cukier. Galen took the chip.

  “What about you and your family?”

  “As soon as you leave, I’ll take my family into hiding. There’s a place I know that will serve long enough for you to complete your mission. By then, they will have more important matters to deal with than finding my family and I.”

  Harmool stood up then, straightened his jacket and walked to the cell door.

  “Can you reach her hiding place and return before the Senate meets?”

  “I can,” Galen assured. “It’s not too far. A nice little hole in the galaxy that no one else has discovered. It looks like an old abandoned base from the forgotten cycles. It’s likely tens of thousands of cycles have passed since a living being walked its deck before I came along. It’s parked next to a dying star with no habitable planets anywhere in the system. Better still, it would take a huge fleet to overwhelm the place.

  “I’ll get her and make it back in time, Harmool,” he promised. “You keep yourself and your family alive. We might need your testimony to support your evidence.”

  “I will, Galen,” Harmool replied, stepping out of the cell. “Thank you for believing me.”

  Harmool closed the door, leaving it unlocked. He extinguished and collected all but the one torch, opened the large main door to the pit and stepped out.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “We can’t just sit here and do nothing!” Rhiannon cried out.

  Lir suppressed a sigh. They’d only arrived one week ago at Sanctuary, a frozen world literally out in the middle of nowhere with a useful feature. The core was hollow, with an intricate tunnel system leading to several exits on the surface. With the Tempest parked in the core, every ship in the galaxy could sit on top of the surface and scan away and never find them.

  Rhiannon had made the same statement every day. Lir couldn’t say that he didn’t agree with her. But Galen had wanted them to remain here until contacted them or until four weeks had past, not just one week.

  The repair drones finally wrapped up their repair work, they’d found even more damage after they’d begun. They now signaled a request for further instructions or to be returned to their base.

  “Tell them to go into shut down mode until they are reactivated,” Lir ordered when Cassandra relayed their request.

  “Should I jettison them afterward?” she asked.

  “No, we should probably hang onto them,” he said a
fter considering the question. “You never know when they might come in handy down the line.”

  Cassandra chuckled.

  “What’s so funny,” he demanded.

  “Galen says the same thing all the time,” she replied. “We’ll make a smuggler out of you yet, Professor.”

  Lir smiled at the compliment. He wished he could think more like Galen right about now. He was certain Galen had been up to something more than just looking for a new ship and more information when he’d left Dimor for Arkon. He just couldn’t piece together what it had been. Galen could be frustratingly tight-lipped, especially when he was about to do something he knew…

  …others would object to!

  It hit him then. Why he’d been so secretive that last day, why he’d insisted on landing the Tempest on Dimor instead of going directly to Arkon. How he’d been spotted so quickly, a man who made his living on avoiding detection and capture, and had to send the bug out signal less than an hour after landing on Arkon.

  He let himself get caught!

  “Dammit, boy!” he said aloud, drawing a look from Rhiannon.

  “Cassandra,” he ignored the girl for now, he’d have time to explain it to her later. “That last command from Galen, would you describe it as more of a suggestion as opposed to an outright order from your commanding officer?”

  “This isn’t a military ship, Professor,” she replied. “Well, it used to be one true, but it hasn’t been since I came aboard, so…”

  “So it was a suggestion then?” he prompted.

  “It would depend.”

  “On what?”

  “On what your intentions are, Professor, if I say it was a suggestion and not an order.”

  “My intentions, my dear,” he said with a smile, “is to decide not to sit here for a lune and then head for Caletos. My intention is to head there right now. Once there, I intend to find a suitable object with which to brain the leader of said world into getting off his derriere and help Galen out in stopping Iodocus. What do you say to that?”

  The ship’s engines rumbled to life, and the Tempest lifted up, heading for the tunnel exit to the surface. Rhiannon threw her arms around Lir and kissed him chastely on the cheek.

  “A simple yes, sir, would have sufficed, ladies,” he grumbled half-heartedly. Maybe there was something to this mercenary life Galen was always extolling after all.

  The thought of his old pupil sobered him. Rhiannon noticed the change.

  “Why did you agree to leave here and go to Caletos before the lune was up?” she asked as the Tempest exited out of the tunnel and leapt into space. He hesitated to answer, but there was no way to soften the blow.

  “Because it occurs to me that our headstrong Captain has decided to take his original plan,” Lir began, “mix in a little of that speech I gave him about being a Knight, and has gone off on his own to slay a particularly nasty dragon.”

  “But how?” she asked, her face suddenly pale.

  “He’s going after your father by himself,” Lir replied. “That has to be it. He got us off to safety so he didn’t have to worry about us and then went and allowed himself to be caught.”

  “I was wondering why he sent the signal so soon,” Cassandra chimed in. “I thought he’d just gotten unlucky and had been spotted before he could get to where he wanted to go.”

  “He got exactly where he wanted to get to,” Lir replied. “He must of decided it would be easier to get to Salacia if he let himself be caught and taken there, as opposed to trying to sneak in.”

  “They’d kill him,” she cried.

  “Not outright,” Lir corrected. “They’d want him alive so they could work him over until he gave up where you were hiding.”

  “Torture?” Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought. Lir’s own heart sank a little at the thought.

  “He’d never tell them, of course,” Lir replied. “He’d know that the instant he broke, they’d kill him. So there’s only so much they’ll be able to do to him. His training in the Bata’van will help him endure it.”

  “Then what?”

  “At some point, he must be certain that your father will want to question him in person,” Lir continued. “He only needs the right moment to present itself and then he’ll strike. Your father will be dead, and you will be safe and free to travel wherever you want without fear.”

  “They’ll kill him for that,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Lir said, “they probably will. And he would make that trade without hesitation a hundred times out of a hundred, my dear. Which is precisely why we’re going to Caletos for help. Maybe we can stop your father before Galen gets the chance to kill him first.”

  * * * * *

  “Dwyn has been captured by the Salacians,” Eldereef reported.

  “And the Princess?” Napat asked, feeling his chances to survive this madness sinking toward zero.

  “Dwyn was picked up on Arkon, and he was all alone,” Eldereef replied. “The Salacians scoured the planet and found neither the Princess nor Dwyn’s ship. There is also the manner in which Dwyn was captured. It was… curious.”

  “How so?”

  “According to my source, it was almost as if he wanted them to pick him up.”

  “Wouldn’t the Salacians also come to that conclusion?”

  “Doubtful,” Eldereef replied. “He made sure to put up quite a fight before they grabbed him. The fact is he all but announced his presence in a local bar known to be populated by smugglers and spies and owned by a man who traffics in information across multiple systems. I tell you he wanted to be caught and handed over to the Salacians.”

  “For what purpose? If he wanted to hand over the Princess he’d just have to arrange a meeting.”

  “I don’t think he intends to let them ever get their hands on her. He collected his old mentor shortly before turning up at Arkon without either his ship, his mentor, or the Princess and deliberately gets caught.

  “I think he sent her off with his mentor and his ship to make a run for the unexplored systems while he allows himself to be taken to Salacia, where he will be tortured of course and eventually will tell them she is hiding on some planet in the opposite direction of where she actually has gone. By the time they figure out they’ve been lied to, she’ll be far beyond their reach.”

  “They’ll tear him to pieces,” Napat replied in shock. “Why wouldn’t he just make a run for it with his ship?”

  “Perhaps he felt he needed to buy her time to get away. Or…”

  “Or what? Out with it,” Napat demanded.

  “He is ex-Bata’van…,” Eldereef replied.

  “You think he’s going to try for Iodocus?”

  “It makes a certain amount of sense.”

  “But, why? He’s a mercenary, a smuggler. There’s no profit in this for a man like him.”

  “Whatever his reasons, I am convinced he’s deliberately put himself on Salacia to go after Iodocus.”

  Napat shook his head, pondering this turn of events. He had four days left until the Senate met. He doubted another two days would pass after that before the no confidence vote was taken. As things stood now, he couldn’t count on a single vote in his favor.

  “Summon Admiral Vegeas,” Napat said. “I want an invasion force ready to set off for Salacia.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “I want you to backdate orders, restoring Galen Dwyn to active duty in the Bata’van, several months before all of this began,” Napat ordered. “Put him at the rank of Major. Then draw up a formal complaint against the Salacian government for the kidnapping of an officer of the Bata’van. The Admiral is to present the complaint in person and demand the immediate release of Major Dwyn, alive, to the Admiral’s custody.”

  “That might not set too well in the Senate.”

  “At this point,” Napat said fatalistically. “How much worse can my prospects over there be than they already are?”

  TWENTY

  Galen slowly levered himself
to his feet. Iodocus’ doctor inquisitor had been thorough and professional in his task. He’d inflicted maximum pain without permanently crippling the subject. Fortunately, Galen had been worked over by a series of equally professional inquisitors at the Academy. If you survived them, so the claim went, you would survive anything else you encountered. He had to admit they had a point.

  Still, he had to take care not to move a certain way or even too quickly, otherwise he got a reminder of the doctor’s recent work. He moved over to the door, checking to make sure it was really unlocked. It swung open when he pushed on it.

  He opened his fist and considered the chip lying in his palm. One hundred million aurox bars. He never considered himself morally superior to other people. He heard the little whisper in his head that anyone would in this situation.

  Take the money and give them her location. Or better still, just take the money and run. Sure you’d be a fugitive. But a fugitive with a hundred million in the bank had the means to disappear for good.

  The only problem was when he looked at the chip all he saw were two green eyes. Those eyes that flashed with fire when he’d laughed at her on the flight deck, that had burned with fire in the water off his island on Belisama, that had smoldered with a mixture of love and sadness when he said goodbye on Dimor.

  Not even a hundred million of these chips, each loaded with its own hundred million aurox bars, could ever be of equal value to him as having those two green eyes gazing at him.

  He snapped the chip in half, rendering it forever useless and dumped the remains into the main pouch of the bag. He retrieved the meds and food pouches and consumed them. He would need all the strength and energy he could muster to steal the waiting ship outside. He could rest after departure for a day or two before he reached his destination.