by Susan Grant
“Report to my office for your briefing.”
“Yes, sir. Um, any word on when the Cloud Shadow will be released from the shipyard, sir?” She could feel him smile at her impatience, but, hells, she couldn’t wait to take command of her first ship.
“That is in fact one of the reasons I would like to see you.”
“It is? I mean, it is, sir?”
“One of the reasons, Captain Keyren.”
She blushed. Shut up, Hadley. “Yes, sir. Understand, sir. On my way, sir.” She ended the call and spun back to Bolivarr. “The prime-admiral wants to see me in his office. Little ol’ me.”
“Little ol’ Captain you,” he reminded her.
She grinned. “This is the Ring, Bolivarr. The central command headquarters of the largest military in the galaxy. As much as I’d love to get a big head over making rank, around here captains are as common as a queen’s penny-credit.”
She combed his hair off his forehead, but the glossy black locks flopped forward as they always did. He’d go back to his drawing the moment she left, she knew. Why had he dreamed of the circles? Or, rather, remembered them? Maybe it was the first crack before the wall inside his head crashed down. She loved him. She wanted him to be healed. Why then did a feeling of dread accompany his discovery?
She transformed her worry with a bright smile and pressed another quick kiss to his lips. “I’ll see you later.”
She scurried down the corridor, fixing her hair as she went. Two lift rides, several long, curving corridors, and a retina scan later, she was being escorted into Zaafran’s suite of offices. His lair was abuzz with military personnel of all ranks. It was the heart of the Ring. He waited for her in a quieter, more private section with a dizzying view of the outer ring and the ice planet below.
In the seconds before his aide called out her presence, she glimpsed a mature, fit man concentrating on a data-pad. The glow illuminated deeply etched worry lines between his brows. His usually immaculate uniform was ever so slightly wrinkled, as if he’d been in it for days. She imagined the days and long nights that he did indeed sleep in his uniform, if he did sleep at all, when it seemed the Hordish tide would sweep over their worlds.
“Prime-Admiral, Captain Keyren has arrived,” the aide announced, saluting and backing away.
Captain, she thought. It sounds wonderful.
The prime-admiral’s expression eased instantly. Worry lines became smile lines that bracketed his mouth. He strode toward her, his blue eyes shining. She snapped to attention and saluted.
His PCD began to beep at the same time several datapads on his desk demanded attention with a variety of chimes. He slapped his PCD with impatient fingers. “Joss, hold all calls.” Frustration roughened his voice. “Unless, Star-Major, it’s to tell me we’ve got him. I don’t care which one—either Mawndarr will do.”
She studied him as unobtrusively as she could, trying to figure out, without actually appearing baffled, the source of the normally unruffled officer’s distraction. Apparently it wasn’t her or something she had done—this time—thank the goddess. She’d stuck her neck out before. She was doubly determined to toe the line and stay within the lines. No one trusted rogue officers. It was a career-ending reputation, for sure. Hadley wanted her career more than anything.
He exhaled and turned back to her. “A convicted battlelord is on the run. You’ll hear who soon enough—Karbon Mawndarr.”
“I’m aware of the name, sir. Admiral Bandar mentioned him now and again.” Usually in between swearwords and vows to “see the monster strung up and castrated.”
“During transport to his war crimes trial, he escaped. Obviously he had help—from the inside. It’s a humiliating blow for us, and a boost in credibility for the loyalists.” He folded his arms over his chest to sit on the edge of his desk. “Now I’ve lost contact with the man who helped us capture him.” A pained look shadowed his eyes. “His son.”
“You think he betrayed you and helped the battlelord get free, sir?”
“He has the brains and the knowledge. Blast it all, I never thought he would betray me. I trusted him.”
“And if he didn’t, sir?”
“Then he’s a target. I’ve issued a galaxy-wide warrant for his arrest. I had to think long and hard about it and decided it was for the best. If the son wasn’t involved, arresting him will keep him alive. Mawndarr will know who sold him out. He’s too clever not to. Blast it, I don’t want him walking free. If anyone has the power and cunning to start up a resistance movement, it’s him.”
“Resistance to what, sir—peace? The Drakken aren’t being treated as a defeated nation. They’re sharing in the Triad.”
“The loyalists would see to the rebirth of the Drakken Empire. With the warlord’s daughter out there somewhere, and now this monster, possibly aided by his son, they very well could.”
And ignite a thousand more years of bloodshed and oppression? “There are billions of believers who won’t let that happen, sir.”
“Nor will I allow that to happen.” He made a fist, rotating it with restrained anger in his palm. Then he seemed to transform, his expression brightening once more. “But that is not why you’re here, Captain. The reason is one of new beginnings. Hope. Congratulations, Captain. Not only have you passed captain’s school with an outstanding ride, you’re about to head out on your new ship the very same week.”
“Yes, sir! I am honored, sir. And blasted excited,” she blurted out next, clamping her teeth together to keep from spewing any more inappropriate expressions of emotion.
The edges of her superior’s mouth twitched, his eyes twinkling. He hadn’t disapproved and seemed to somehow find her excitement amusing. “Now, I’d like you to keep that trademark enthusiasm of yours channeled into this mission, even if it’s not what you expected.”
That meant she wouldn’t like it. She’d been in the military since she was a teenage cadet. She knew all about making flarg smell sweet. “Yes, sir.”
“An ancient artifact has come into our possession. An urn. We found it behind enemy lines, lost to us for millennia. It dates back from before the Great Schism, perhaps touched by the hands of the goddesses themselves.”
His description raised bumps on her flesh. So little predating the war had survived. The few items left were preserved in temples or the palace, cared for by priestesses, and loaned to various museums for public viewings during special times of the year. Since the war ended, news had come of the Drakken rich and powerful hoarding many more such artifacts, plundered and otherwise, on display in personal residences and ships, and others used dismissively as decorative objects or stepping stones in gardens.
“I’m sending you off to explore its origin. We’ve run an exhaustive analysis of the relic. Priestesses translated the runes. They reveal coordinates to a planet previously uncharted, deep inside Hordish space. We anticipate that the site will be of enormous religious significance. At the very least, it promises to provide a wealth of information from the days preceding the Great Schism, the very birth of our society. A high-priestess will serve as your advisor and an archeologist as your first officer.”
She did her best not to blurt out her dismay. An archaeologist first officer? She’d have hoped her second in command would be a qualified bridge officer, not a scientist. This was an expedition, not a mission. Zaafran didn’t expect her ship to be anywhere near any kind of action, even with an infamous battlelord and the warlord’s daughter on the lam and threatening peace.
“It will be an ideal first interstellar experience for space cadets from the academy,” he went on, “as well as a first mission for a new captain.”
Her thrill at taking command fizzled a little more. Since when did captain duties include chaperoning a bunch of teenagers? This wasn’t even an expedition—it was a school field trip. She bit her tongue so as not to voice the thought. The really exciting, most thrilling missions were a thing of the past. She might as well get used to a peacetime military like Brit B
andar and the others had gotten used to.
Actually, Admiral Bandar had more or less retired into a position as commandant of the RGMA. For now at least, married, and pregnant and sitting at a desk was her escape from this fate, Hadley realized. She, on the other hand, was about to launch her career. Doing what? Patrolling for common space thugs and babysitting cadets? Not that she didn’t want the end of war—she’d fought for it and had seen friends die for it—but did peace have to be so blasted boring? How would she ever make admiral—an admiral worthy of respect—at this rate? It was her life’s dream and she wouldn’t let it go—not yet.
The prime-admiral’s silvery hair and piercing blue eyes glowed in the muted light as he laid a large datapad on the table. He activated the holovis feature. “Display map.” Five lights appeared in front of them, three-dimensional and glowing as they floated in midair. They formed the general shape of two sides coming to a point.
Goddess! She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. It was very nearly the same pattern Bolivarr had sketched: five dots arranged in a pointed shape. “And runes,” she murmured. Some that Bolivarr had scribbled, as well.
“It’s Sakkaran.”
“The ancient tongue of the goddesses. I’ve heard of it but haven’t ever seen it.”
“We have so little examples left. Only a few of our highest ranking priestesses know how to read and write it. There’s no more use for it, really, but they keep it alive for the sake of history. The Agran Sakkara was originally written entirely in runes, all four volumes. Many believe that the original volume, the fifth, wherein the origin of the goddesses is revealed, still exists, somewhere on one of the ancient worlds, behind what was once enemy lines.”
“Do you mean the lost scripture, sir?”
“Yes. The revelation of everything.”
Hadley lifted a brow at the longing and awe that crept into the admiral’s voice and eyes. “I didn’t expect you to be such a lover of fables, sir. Isn’t treasure part of the legend, too?”
He nodded. “I was an ancient history major at the academy. Not many know it. A fable the lost scripture may be, and the treasure that surrounds it, but to entertain the promise of such a discovery, to dream of it…it is what our weary, war-ravaged people need. To know the goddesses existed…that they were real. That true goodness exists, Hadley.” A faraway look softened his gaze. Then he blinked back to the briefing room. “Or that goodness once existed, at any rate. Gods know we could use some now. Now, Captain Keyren, no more sidetracking me with fables and legends of yore.”
Her? She grinned. “No, sir.”
He activated the holo. “Display image for Mission Origins.” A misty sphere glowed on the holo, mostly water and with several good-sized, life-sustaining continents. “Ara Ana,” he said. “Your destination.”
“Ara Ana? That’s the birthplace of the goddesses. It’s a myth. It doesn’t exist.”
“That’s what you’ve been told. We all have. But what if it’s real?”
Hadley clasped her shaking hands behind her back. On the heels of her surprise and wonder came the uneasy knowledge that Bolivarr knew of this, too—an ancient artifact from possibly pre-Schism days. Bolivarr was Drakken. A wraith. How would he come into possession of such knowledge—and why? Had he discovered the information accidentally, or on purpose? How many other people knew that the birthplace of the goddesses and possibly the lost scripture might actually exist—to be plundered or revered, depending on the discoverer?
“You are correct, however, Captain. We don’t know the name of the planet or even what’s there. But why not launch an expedition with great fanfare—keeping your actual destination secret, of course—and give the people a bit of hope? It will serve as a diversion from all the reports coming in from the Borderlands lately.”
Yes, the evidence of massacres and skullings, whole cities wiped out, starvation and sickness, poor little Drakken children who looked old at eight—they were old, after what they’d endured—and now of two, honest-to-goddess monsters on the loose who’d see to the continuation of those atrocities.
Mawndarr, she thought, and the warlord’s daughter.
“Yes, sir, we could use such news, sir.” Suddenly her mundane archaeological field trip took on meaning.
“Our presumptive Ara Ana lies at the fringes of the Uncharted Territories,” he continued.
Hadley stood straighter with interest. The Uncharted Territories—the UT—lay beyond the Borderlands. It was a region of space at the rim of the galaxy that was so remote that it remained virtually unexplored, mostly due to war and the inability to use enemy-controlled wormholes. It had been a lost region of space for thousands of years, a region now on the verge of discovery. It would take weeks of traversing through wormholes in space to get there.
And she’d be tasked with keeping teens out of trouble for the duration. Goddess help her. So much for “meaning.” She’d be lucky if she kept her captain stripes after this.
Zaafran read her expression. “Perhaps it’s not the mission you envisioned, Captain. I know you young captains, champing at the bit for action, pirates and the like—but I don’t have a single other ship to spare. But, by the gods, I’m damn curious about the site. I envy you. I’d go myself if I didn’t have the Triad to run.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better, sir.”
“Maybe I am.” He smiled. “Enjoy. When you return, we’ll see about something a little more challenging.”
“Yes, sir.” When she proved herself, he meant. Her focus returned to the five dots. Bolivarr’s dots.
“It’s something from my life before.”
“Something bad?”
“Something I’m supposed to know.”
Hadley squared her shoulders. “A request, sir. I’d like to add Battle-Lieutenant Bolivarr to my crew.”
His brow rose.
That brow lift said it all. Bolivarr was a model officer. Yet ever since Hadley had been promoted to captain, she had sensed that her relationship with Bolivarr was frowned upon. Subtly. Like Zaafran’s eyebrow lift. No one ever came out and told her not to see him, but she feared that any day now she’d be forced to end the relationship, especially if Bolivarr’s memory returned and revealed he’d committed war crimes. It was close-minded and unfair, but she’d have little choice if she were ordered to give up Bolivarr in order to keep her command.
“The amnesiac wraith?”
“The former wraith, sir,” she corrected as tactfully as she could. “He’s been seeing the same pattern in his dreams and thoughts. There’s a good chance if he comes along on this mission, it will open up his past. He’d be of great help, sir. He’s a history buff like yourself, sir. In fact, the Drakken people as a whole are known for being enthusiastic collectors of antiquities.”
“Particularly of antiquities that belonged to us,” Zaafran commented dryly, shifting his attention to a bank of tall, curved windows that looked out at the massive sweep of the Ring. Hadley remembered quite acutely how disorienting that view was the first time she ever glimpsed it. “So you think his memories may provide more information essential to this mission,” he said.
“Perhaps even the lost scripture.”
“In Drakken hands. Burn the thought.” He paced a few steps and stopped. “The world the goddesses left behind is behind the border—what once was the border. Bolivarr could very well know what we don’t.” He paced a few more steps, halting again. “It might make sense to add him to the crew roster.”
Hadley squeezed her hands hidden behind her back. Please.
“You will be far from civilization, Captain, as you know, and he suffers seizures. He may be a liability more than he is an aid to this mission.”
“Medication’s controlling the seizures, sir. It’s been weeks since he had any. We’ll have a physician onboard. I’ll ensure he’s thoroughly briefed by Bolivarr’s medical staff. I know the position of chief of security has not been filled as yet. Bolivarr is eminently qualified
for the position.” Probably overqualified. “He ran security on his last ship before the Unity.”
“That was a pirate ship.”
“Then who better to assist in avoiding pirates during our transit than a former pirate himself, sir? Bolivarr will be an asset to the operation. Certainly, with cadets onboard, I’ll want the safest ship possible—and so will their parents. And if we come upon treasure, having worked with pirates, Bolivarr understands the security measures needed for its safe collection.”
“It is obvious you’ve given this much thought.”
“Yes, sir.” Actually, it was all off the top of her head. Good thing she could think on her feet. Or in her boots, as Admiral Bandar used to say. “I think there’s more to be gained by having Bolivarr assigned to my crew than leaving him behind. I know my request is highly irregular, but I didn’t get this far by thinking inside the box.”
The prime-admiral’s eyes sparkled. “No, Captain, you did not.” He rubbed the length of his index finger across the bottom of his chin as he considered her proposal. Then he dropped his hand. Sighed. “If his doctors say he can go, I’ll add him to the crew.”
Goddess, yes. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” Hadley remembered her decorum and came to attention. “I hope you find the person who needs that information on Mawndarr’s escape.”
He nodded in weary thanks. “So do I, Captain.”
Even as she saluted again, he’d activated his PCD. She whirled on a heel and marched out of the office. Her darling Bo had long hoped for a way to unlock his past. Mission: Origins, aptly named, could very well be it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE MORNING, Wren had to leave the cool, shaded safety of the sleeping tent. No one was allowed to stay inside during daytime. The crowded tents were sanitized then. Soon after being roused from her cot, she was forced back outside into the heat and noise with the other stragglers. “Be back at dusk for curfew.”
Another day out in the open loomed. She had to get rid of her glasses. She was too obvious in her current appearance. A bad haircut, yes, and old clothes, but the glasses were a dead giveaway for anyone knowing what to look for. Now was the perfect time to get her eyes repaired. The medical tent would provide shelter and safety until curfew.
