Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  “That’s helpful,” Gina allowed, “but not enough. We already knew who was behind it. That doesn’t get us any closer to finding them. I’m certain you know more than you imagine. Some detail that will get us where we’d all like to be. Me reunited with my girlfriend and you not wondering where all your parts are, or whether the doctors can reattach everything.”

  She held the razor back up. “So, do we have any takers? Every bit of information gets you off the hook for a bit. Surely you want me aiming my sharp tongue at someone else, right?”

  Sean’s admiration for her acting ability rose. At least he hoped she was bluffing. If not, he’d have to stop her, and in his condition, he wasn’t certain he could. And, if what she’d said wasn’t a clever ruse, she’d be inclined to slice and dice.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Olivia and the rest of her people arrived at the building they were using to regroup just in time to hear about the bombings.

  Holy God. Someone had nuked four major cities. The death toll was going to be in the millions. Maybe the tens of millions. The number of injured people was going to crash the medical system.

  Every channel was going on non-stop about the blasts. Even Jackson Zapata was in front of the camera, recording something. She made sure that one of her people went over to verify that wasn’t going out live. They couldn’t afford for the security forces to trace his transmission.

  Abigail had already issued a statement blaming the “terrorist attack” on Olivia. She looked suitably horrified at the “brutal destruction and death” that she claimed Olivia was responsible for.

  “We’ve got to get out in front of this,” she told William as soon as he arrived. “If people believe we did this, it won’t matter what the truth is. We’re done. The resistance is done.”

  He nodded and took a seat beside her in the rather spartan office she’d appropriated. “We need to find Abigail. And, I’m worried about Princess Kelsey. She wasn’t very far away from one of the blast sites and the com system is down. Obviously. You’ll also need to get someone in the military on your side. Might I suggest General Thompson?”

  Thompson was the logical choice. While not the most senior officer on the planet, he wasn’t political like General Abernathy. She could rely on the latter being in the conservative alliance’s pocket.

  “Where are our political allies?” she asked.

  “Those that escaped are in hiding. Those that didn’t are in ‘protective custody’ at the council building. You can be sure there are more than enough guards to keep them secure. I’m also relatively certain that’s where Abigail is hiding, based on the movements of her staff. If we can get in, we might be able to kill two birds at once. So to speak.”

  She could field a larger force than Abigail expected, that was for sure. The research facility didn’t have marines, but they did have people trained to use heavy weapons. They also had powered armor.

  That was overkill, honestly. Of course she could breach the defenses, but could she keep her allies alive? That was more difficult to control. She needed eyes in place in the most heavily guarded building on the planet.

  “That’s the right thing to do,” she said at last. “But we have too many crises going on at once. Let’s see if I can take one of them out of play.”

  Her tech team had a command center set up for her use. It had plenty of high-tech gear capable of communicating with whomever she wished.

  She pulled the lead tech aside. “I need to speak to General Thomson. How long is that safe to do? I don’t care to bring an armed assault down on us.”

  “Me, either,” the woman said. “I can bounce your call around the planet any number of times, but I wouldn’t chance more than a couple of minutes. We won’t know if they’ve traced us, but I can’t see how anyone could do it in that short amount of time.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to talk fast. Set it up.”

  That took a comically short period of time. The woman walked over to her console, tapped a few buttons, and nodded to Olivia. “Use the built in screen right here.”

  Olivia initiated a connection from a number in her contact list and waited. A man in a green uniform appeared. It wasn’t General Thompson, but she recognized his chief of staff. “Colonel Wells, I need to speak with the general right away.”

  The man looked somewhat surprised to see her. “He’s busy, but I’m sure he’ll make time for you, Coordinator. Hold one moment.”

  The screen blanked and came back to life a few seconds later. General Thompson stared out at her. “Coordinator. I’ve got my hands full at the moment, and I’m not even certain I should be speaking with you. Deputy Coordinator King claims to have proof that you’re behind the mass murder of millions of our citizens.”

  “I think we both know who’s lying, but allow me a minute to walk you through this. For the record, I had nothing to do with this atrocity. I’m horrified and so angry that I could kill her and the bastard she works for.”

  He nodded. “And she swore something very similar to that only a few minutes ago. You’ll need to do better than that.”

  “Are you incompetent, Dwight?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Can you tie your own shoes?”

  “If that’s all you have to say, I’ll go back to the tasks demanding my attention.”

  “You’re supposed to say ‘of course not,’ to which I’d cleverly ask where the pinnace came from.”

  He frowned. “The pinnace?”

  “Yes, the one that tried to kill me. Did you detect an extra one coming down from orbit? Did it come from the island? Surely, someone tasked with keeping us safe from the ‘Fleet menace’ would notice a little thing like that.”

  “No. It came from nowhere and went back when it was done.”

  “Isn’t that a little convenient? Particularly since I’m supposedly in league with those very same Fleet officers. The basic story just doesn’t hold together. I had no reason to fake my own death, much less blame Fleet. They had nothing to do with this, but Abigail King did.”

  He sighed. “I want to believe you, I truly do. Nothing I’ve seen about you screams ‘mass murderer’ and I’d like to think my judgement isn’t that flawed. But I can’t just come out and support you without proof.”

  “So don’t,” she said. “Just don’t allow Abigail to steal our world away from us. The Fleet personnel on that island aren’t a threat to us. If they wanted to blow up a city from orbit, they could do it without a problem. We know that all too well. Just leave them be and focus on saving as many people as you can.”

  He shook his head. “You’re behind the times, Coordinator. The situation in orbit has changed. Those nuclear blasts weren’t just terrorist attacks. They somehow generated powerful bursts of energy that wiped the orbital bombardment platforms away like they were paper.”

  “What!? Are you sure?”

  His smile was grim. “That response, more than anything, convinces me that you’re telling the truth. Yes, I’m quite certain.

  “The fourth blast crippled the Fleet superdreadnought. It’s tumbling into a decaying orbit as we speak. If it doesn’t come crashing down into the atmosphere like a massive shooting star, it’ll be the next best thing to a miracle.”

  * * * * *

  Kelsey came groggily back to consciousness. At first, she didn’t know where she was. Then she recognized the armor she was wearing. Finally, she remembered the explosion.

  That brought her the rest of the way awake in a hurry.

  She was standing somewhere, but it was dark. Pitch black.

  It’s good to see you awake again, Kelsey.

  “Ned. Where am I? The bottom of the ocean?”

  I’m certain not even this armor could take that. We’re about a kilometer offshore. The water pressure isn’t tremendous, so we’re probably only deep enough to prevent light from filtering down.

  “And this thing doesn’t have a grav unit. Great. That means I get to walk back to shore.”r />
  I’m sure the driver would happily trade places with us.

  That’s when she remembered the poor man. He wouldn’t have survived a shock wave like that. Of course, there were probably plenty of people in that city that wished they’d died so cleanly.

  “We have to get out of here. Which way is shore?”

  Turn right. More. Stop. It’s directly ahead.

  Kelsey started walking. It would take a while to get to shore. Hopefully, the Fleet personnel on those lifts had been far enough away from the blast.

  “Who the hell would do something like this? It’s crazy!”

  You’ll get no argument from me. Did you notice the energy shooting upward?

  “That beam? Yes. What was it?”

  I suspect the weapon was a bomb-pumped laser. A special core focuses the blast into a coherent beam of energy. It only survives for a moment, but that’s long enough. One that size could have certainly made it out of the atmosphere and struck something in orbit.

  “Like our ship? God. We’ve got to hurry.”

  She sped up until she was almost racing through the muck. She fell repeatedly, but struggled to her feet and slogged on.

  Getting to the surface faster won’t change anything. I hope that your brother made it, I really do, but falling into a hole you can’t climb out of won’t be doing him any favors.

  “And that’s the difference between being a human being and a copy of one. I don’t know if you’re really an AI or not, but you don’t remember what it’s like to be this desperate.”

  Perhaps you’re right. Or it might just be that I don’t know them as well as I know you. I don’t want you to die when a few minutes will make no difference at all.

  What will you do when you get to shore? You can’t call them. With the nearby blast, you might not be able to call anyone else on the planet, either. You need a plan, Kelsey. Stop rushing around mindlessly and figure out what you need to do.

  Dammit. Dammit. What to do? What would Jared do?

  “The people on the lifts. The Fleet coms are hardened. They’ll still be working. We have to find a vehicle and circle around until we find them.”

  There you are. Now, make it happen. Without killing us.

  * * * * *

  Jared struggled back to his feet. “Status?”

  Zia stood beside the helm with blood streaming down her face. “Our drives are down and so are all the fusion plants. We have a hull breach in engineering.”

  He blanched. “What’s our course? Invincible, are you online?”

  The AI failed to respond.

  “We’re tumbling,” Zia said, “but I think that blast of power to the drives may have kicked us into a higher orbit. Stand by… Yes, we’re going to curve up and then pass close to the atmosphere. Maybe too close, but we’ve got about an hour to fix that.”

  “What the hell happened?” He staggered over to where Roger lay sprawled on the deck. The man had a nasty gash on his forehead, but he was breathing. The rest of the bridge crew were getting up, most with minor injuries.

  Talbot was helping Elise to her feet. Neither of them seemed seriously injured.

  “I’m checking the scanner records on this console now,” Zia said. “It looks like there was another nuclear explosion on the planet below our position in orbit. It went off about twenty seconds after the rest. There was some kind of beam that shot out of the atmosphere and hit us.”

  She tapped the console to go to a different display. “Invincible brought up the battle screens and accelerated right before it went off. The beam only struck us a glancing blow. It almost missed us entirely.”

  “If that was winging us, I don’t want to know what a direct hit was like.”

  “No, sir, you don’t. The two orbital bombardment stations we had in scanning range are gone. The first blasts took them out. There’s nothing but debris left. I’d be willing to bet the third station was destroyed in a similar fashion.”

  The bridge lights flickered and came on. He checked the ship’s status through his implants. One of the fusion plants was back online. Someone in engineering was still making things happen. He pinged Baxter’s implants.

  You still there?

  Barely. The decompression didn’t happen all at once. We got our masks on in time. Some kind of electromagnetic pulse took down the drives and fusion plants. You know, the ones that are hardened to prevent that sort of thing. What the hell was that?

  Ask me after you get the drives online. We have about an hour before we find out what an uncontrolled atmospheric entry feels like from the inside.

  Shit.

  “Invincible is back online,” Zia said.

  “Indeed I am. I apologize for my unscheduled nap. An exceptionally powerful electromagnetic pulse caused me to reboot.”

  Jared glanced at the lift doors as they opened and a medical team rushed in. “I’m just happy to have you back with us. And that you saved our hides. What happened down there?”

  “I hypothesize the explosions were bomb-pumped lasers. I realized that the blasts destroyed the orbital bombardment stations and that we were almost directly over a city like the others. I felt it was prudent to change locations in an expeditious manner.”

  “You did the right thing,” Jared said with feeling. “Someone without any scruples for human life planned for this long and hard. Those didn’t happen in a day or a week. This has been in the works for a long time. The question is, what’s their next step?”

  “Perhaps we’ll be able to figure that out once we restore our scanners to full capability.”

  Jared checked them. Almost all the scanner units were inoperative and they only had a view of their immediate surroundings. They couldn’t detect another vessel if they had to.

  They also couldn’t dodge another of those bomb-pumped lasers until Baxter brought the drives back online. If there was one more down there waiting for them to travel to the right part of the sky, they were dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Abigail felt trapped. Yes, previous administrations had built the council building to withstand a riot and she had security units all around it, but she was sitting here waiting for Olivia to strike. Her now-discredited ex-boss had to take action against her—and soon—if she expected to have any chance of winning this fight.

  She thought many bad things about Olivia West, but stupidity was not one of the woman’s failings. She would strike back, probably with more force than Abigail’s advisers thought possible. Someone would defect and support the woman. Bastards.

  The problem was that Olivia could be anywhere in the city. Hell, anywhere on the planet. And Olivia could find Abigail any time she chose.

  That needed to change.

  “Have the guards gather our guests,” she told her assistant. “We’re moving them to a safer location.”

  The man raised an eyebrow. “It’s hard to imagine any place on the planet more secure than this building.”

  “I’m sure the citizens blown up by the nuclear bombs felt quite similarly.”

  “A point, I grant you. Where will we be going?”

  “The farm. I already have guards on site and no one knows about it. They can’t find us there. If they’re stupid enough to attack this building while we’re gone, so much the better. That could work out in our favor, too.”

  Her com signaled. It was Master Calder. She gestured for her assistant to go. “Get everyone moving. I’ll join you at the vehicles as soon as I make arrangements.”

  Master Calder’s image appeared on her screen when she keyed the accept button. He seemed pleased. Almost jovial. “Yes, Master?” she asked.

  “I wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on turning this situation around, Abigail. I’m very impressed. Moving Operation Damocles up was a risk, but it seems to have paid off. The stations are gone and we’ve critically damaged the Fleet superdreadnought. It will enter our atmosphere and burn up in a very short period of time. Well done.”

  She preened inside a
t his words, but only allowed herself a small smile. “Thank you, Master. I’m very pleased to have made that operation a success. Once I find Olivia West and kill her, we’ll have undisputed control of the planet. Do we know where the other Fleet ship is?”

  “Our scanner readings are limited from the surface, but I believe it’s at Boxer Station or one of the flip points. Now that they don’t control the bombardment platforms, we can initiate phase two of Operation Damocles. That’s the reason I called. I won’t be available while it’s in progress, so you’re going to have to lead the conservative alliance until I put an end to these rebel interlopers.”

  Abigail had no idea what phase two entailed, but if it was capable of taking out the remaining warship, she was all for it. Victory was within their grasp.

  “I’ll take care of everything, Master Calder. You might want to have anything you don’t want damaged out of the capital. I’ve come up with a plan to deal with Olivia once and for all.”

  He listened to her explanation, nodding his head as she wrapped up. “An excellent ploy. I’ll notify everyone. Give us an hour before you act.”

  “That may not be possible,” she said. “I won’t be the one initiating the events.”

  “True. Do what you can and give everyone a warning once things kick off. I’ll talk with you shortly. By this time tomorrow, the last decade will be only a bad memory. We’ll claim our future and restore the Lord to power. Until then, good luck.”

  “To you as well, Master.”

  Once he ended the call, she went out in search of her assistant. She found him discussing the new plans with the chief of Council Security. That worthy had been secretly in her pay for quite a while, though the blackmail material she had on him was more than enough to assure his cooperation. If anyone else knew his dirty little sex secrets, he’d never see the outside of a cell.

  The man bowed as she joined them. “Coordinator.”

  She’d arranged a farce of a council meeting an hour ago to impeach Olivia and install herself as their newest head of state. Finally.