“I was told he’d be healed in a couple months,” Victor said.
“That’s the conservative estimate,” Chen said.
The door opened, and a nervous-looking male physician’s assistant came out and blinked with surprise at the sight of Victor.
Chen addressed him. “Lieutenant?”
The man looked to the doctor. “Dr. Chen. I, ah,…I changed the patient’s bandages just as ordered. The wounds are healing as expected.”
“Good, Lieutenant. Is he conscious?”
The PA nodded quickly. “Yes, Doctor.” He then scampered off like a frightened rabbit.
“What was that about?” Victor asked.
“Well, to tell the truth, the staff find Gaz to be a bit frightening,” Chen said.
“With the teeth and tattoos, I can understand,” Victor said.
“Yes. That and his personality,” Chen said.
“He isn’t that bad,” Victor said.
Chen grimaced. “Maybe not, but he still scares people who aren’t used to him.”
“And what about you, Doctor? Does he scare you?” Victor asked.
“Yes,” Dr. Chen said. “Though mostly because, if everyone could heal like him, I’d be out of a job.”
Victor chuckled. “I can certainly understand that.” He nodded at the door. “May I?”
“Of course, Captain, be my guest,” Dr. Chen said.
Victor pushed open the door into the small room.
Gaz sat up. “Hey, Cap!”
“Lay back down. You still have holes in your organs,” Dr. Chen said.
“Ruinin’ my fun, Doc,” Gaz said as he settled back down.
The amount of equipment in the room was surprisingly sparse, considering the severity of Gaz’s injuries—just a monitoring device reading Gaz’s vitals and an IV bag full of opaque white fluid which flowed through a narrow tube into Gaz’s arm.
“What’s in the bag?” Victor asked.
“It’s a concentrated nutrient solution I cooked up just for him,” Dr. Chen said. “We’re pretty much sitting back and letting Gaz heal himself.” She pointed at the bag. “This will just give him the building blocks he needs to regrow damaged tissue.”
“Food would work just as well, Doc,” Gaz said.
Chen shook her head. “You’d just rip the stitches in your stomach.”
“Listen to Dr. Chen, Gaz. I need you healed as soon as possible,” Victor said.
“You got it, Cap,” Gaz said. He looked to Chen. “Can we get some privacy, Doc? I’ve got some things to talk to the captain about.”
“Of course.” She looked to Victor and said, “Captain,” and then left.
Victor looked at Gaz. “You seem to have settled in well.”
“Tell the truth, I’m startin’ to go crazy,” Gaz said. “Kinda reminds me of my days as a fightin’ slave.”
“Not good memories, I take it,” Victor said.
Gaz grimaced and shook his head. “Nope. Fact is, this ain’t the most fucked up I’ve ever been. Though this is the first time I’ve needed a doc since I stopped being a slave.”
“That’s quite a claim, considering you’ve been a mercenary for thirty years,” Victor said.
“I get to wear armor as a merc. Wasn’t so as a fightin’ slave,” said Gaz. “They liked to see people bleed on Mohawk.”
“You had a lot of tough fights?” Victor asked.
Gaz nodded. “Yeah. I won all my fights, but, man, I got sliced ’n’ diced good in more than a few of ’em.” He pointed to Victor’s hand. “Gettin’ a hand severed was a common injury.”
Victor involuntarily rubbed the spot where the black composite of his prosthetic seamlessly attached to the flesh of his arm. “That must have sucked.”
Gaz shrugged. “They stopped being a big deal after the first one. I regrew a whole arm once.”
“No kidding?”
“No kiddin’,” Gaz said. “Took a few months though. All that downtime led me to thinkin’ I needed a new line of work. So I fled the planet as soon as I was back to full strength, before my owner could send me to the pits again.”
“Well, I’m sorry to force you down memory lane,” Victor said.
Gaz waved his hand dismissively. “Fuck that, Cap. I put myself in this bed. I was so excited to kill Marsh that I forgot to check my corners.”
“Was King Marsh your owner?” Victor asked.
Gaz shook his head. “Nah, I killed that fucker when I escaped. I wanted to kill Marsh because he was the king of the planet that made me a slave. Speaking of which, I heard how you cut off his head with your variblade. Nice.”
Victor half smiled. “I figured you’d like that.”
“You’re a tough fucker, you know that, Captain?” Gaz said.
“Not as tough as you though,” Victor said.
“Wrong. You’re tougher than me,” Gaz said.
“Last I checked, I don’t have superhuman healing,” Victor said.
“Which is why you’re tougher than me, Cap,” Gaz said. “I get hit, I get back up as strong as I was before. But you? You get stronger every time you take a hit.”
Victor cocked his head to the side. “That sounds like something Nietzsche would say.”
Gaz gave him a confused look. “Who’s Neet-chee?”
“A First Civilization philosopher who said something very similar to what you just said,” said Victor. “I think you’d like reading his stuff.”
“Hrmm, maybe I will. Got nothin’ else to do while my insides get unfucked,” Gaz said.
“Well, rest up fast. I want to have you back as soon as I return from my next mission,” Victor said.
“The high councilor’s got ’nother job for us already?”
Victor nodded. “He’s worried the Lysandrans are making a move on the Free Worlds, so he’s sending me with his son to keep an eye out.”
“Well, damn. I’d hate to miss out on the money,” Gaz said.
“There will be other jobs. And, besides, you’re already rich,” Victor said.
“Not rich enough,” Gaz said. “You be careful out there, Cap, you got it? I’m not likely to get another boss as good as you.”
“Noted. I’ll make sure to keep my head low,” Victor said.
“That’s all I ask, Cap. That’s all I ask.”
Chapter 17
Lysandra watched as the emperor, dressed in full military regalia, walked up the shuttle’s boarding ramp flanked by a pair of fully armored Imperial Marines.
Rather than the military uniform her father had insisted she wear, she wore a long-sleeve jacket over a finely cut black dress. It was a subtle protest at the war her father was about to start but the jacket also kept the autumn chill at bay.
Yet, as much as she tried to show defiance on the outside, worry ate at her from within.
Officially the emperor was leaving for a scheduled sightseeing tour of the empire. A convenient lie to cover his departure.
As soon as the boarding ramp retracted, the shuttle’s turbines came to life. The sleek craft lifted off the ground and shot off toward the east, disappearing into the sky of the planet which Lysandra was named for. She sighed and turned back toward the Imperial palace. As she did, she spied Uther Solari and his staff. She barely suppressed the sneer pulling at the corner of her mouth.
Uther Solari had been among the emperor’s advisors who were most supportive of invading the Free Worlds. Yet he had elected to stay on Lysander, ostensibly because, as the head of Imperial Intelligence, his place was in the capital. However, Lysandra couldn’t help but be suspicious of him. The egg-shaped little man was too clever by half and always wore a small smile whenever he thought no one was looking.
But Lysandra had long learned how to keep an eye on someone while pretending to ignore them, and she could see Solari was smiling now as he stared into the sky.
Suddenly the general locked eyes with Lysandra, his face seamlessly morphing from satisfaction to neutral deference.
“Prin
cess,” he said, bowing. “I’m glad you came to see your father off.”
Lysandra looked down her nose at Solari, which was easy as she was taller than him. “What makes you think I wouldn't?”
“Forgive me, Princess. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Solari said, bowing deeper.
“Then there is nothing to forgive, General,” Lysandra said, careful to keep the incredulity from her voice.
Solari tilted his head. “You are most gracious, Princess. May my people and I escort you back to the palace?”
“Of course, General. It would an honor,” she said, lying with practiced ease.
“You flatter me, Princess,” Solari said, deferential as ever.
She turned away to head to the palace but focused her attention on Solari in her peripheral vision. Yes. His smile was back.
He had plenty to be happy about, she supposed. Uther Solari started out as an enlisted marine and had worked his way up to becoming the emperor’s favorite advisor. He’d likely earn a title by the time he retired, as an earl or even a duke on one of the empire’s vassal worlds.
If the war went particularly well, perhaps he would even be given a fiefdom on the throneworld itself, a rare honor. And yet Lysandra couldn’t shake the feeling he wanted more than just that.
She shrugged. That would hardly make him unique. Unchecked ambition was practically the hallmark of the Lysandran Empire. Commoners wanted to become nobles; nobles wanted to become emperors, and emperors wanted to expand their dominion. Something that often left her feeling out of place in court.
She had little interest in the throne. Being the youngest of the emperor’s four children made her chances of becoming empress distant. Something she had been fine with. She had spent the first ten years of her life with her father as an almost constant presence. Her youngest brother, Landis, only two years her senior, was her closest companion.
She never knew her mother. All she knew was that she had been a concubine, a common woman who volunteered to join the Imperial harem. If a concubine bore a royal child, she would be rewarded with a fortune and an exile to one of the vassal worlds. Her brothers had similarly been born from other concubines. Each a different woman sent off-world with more money in their accounts than they could spend if they tried. It was a practice, Lysandra learned when she got older, to avoid intrigue by making sure the royal heirs were exclusively raised by the monarch.
Her older brothers, Cisar and Rinald, were already adults by the time she was born. They often visited during breaks in their duties to the Imperial Military. Cisar had been a starship captain and Rinald a fighter pilot. They were more like uncles than siblings to her, but she had adored them all the same. But then the long, terrible war with Savannah started, and, one by one, her brothers died.
She was ten when the war began, and Rinald got shot down in the first major battle, his fighter vaporized by a Savannan missile. He used to take her flying whenever he wasn’t occupied with his military responsibilities.
The day they placed his empty flag-draped coffin in the family tomb was the day her innocence ended.
Her father, once an omnipresent figure in her life, became distant, visiting rarely as he led the war against the Savannans, as did her eldest brother Cisar. Only her brother Landis remained with her.
Five years into the war, while Lysandra grappled with the tribulations of adolescence, Cisar died leading the disastrous first attack on the Savannan-held Arcadia system.
The death of her favorite brother, Landis, just over a year before the war ended, hit the hardest. Killed in one of the terror attacks launched by Savannan infiltrators.
Suddenly alone, the only thing keeping her from complete despair was comfort in the arms of other women. And there had been many women. Nobles, commoners, wives, daughters, and, in one case, twins. Some were petite, others voluptuous. Most pure human but some more exotic. All beautiful. All temporary.
She smiled at the memories of her past lovers.
“I’m glad to see the emperor’s departure hasn’t left you feeling distressed, Princess.”
Startled from her reverie, Lysandra turned her attention to Solari as they ascended the steps to the palace.
“I am…simply confident my father’s trip will be fruitful,” Lysandra said, choosing her words carefully. Not everyone within earshot was authorized to know about the invasion.
Solari gave her an understanding nod. “Indeed.” He smiled at her. “I think we all look forward to his return.”
Something about Solari’s demeanor set off an alarm bell in Lysandra’s mind. His smile hinted at an almost predatory eagerness.
She gazed at Solari for a heartbeat longer, wondering what machinations churned inside the man’s bald head. Then she said, “We’ll have to make sure he receives a proper welcome when he returns.”
Solari chuckled. “Yes, we will.”
Lysandra faced forward. She knew a tell when she saw one. The chuckle, the twinkle in the eye. He was up to something; her court-honed instincts practically screamed it.
At the palace entrance, Lysandra turned to Solari. “Thank you for walking with me, General Solari.”
Solari bowed. “The pleasure was all mine, Princess.”
Lysandra watched the general depart, noting the small smile at the side of his mouth return. She had some investigating to do.
***
Lysandra wasted no time when she returned to her apartment. She threw off her jacket and undid the straps of her dress, letting the garment fall to the carpet without breaking stride.
She went straight to the safe in her bedroom, placing her hand on the biometric scanner.
The thick metal door cracked open, and Lysandra reached inside. She first pulled out her variblade, the war prize her father had given her.
The black rubberized grip of the ancient yet advanced weapon felt good. The practical, austere beauty of the weapon was striking.
She set the weapon atop the safe, then pulled out another item, a tablet small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
Lysandra thumbed the Power button, and the blank screen came to life.
Seeing the device was fully charged, she nodded with satisfaction. Though the tablet looked just like any piece of electronics, it was more than that. It was a skeleton key that would let her into any room in the Imperial palace.
She set the tablet next to the variblade and pulled out one more item from the safe: a custom-made bracer.
She slipped her right hand through the bracer, which fit snugly to her forearm. She then picked up her variblade and slipped it into the sheath on the bottom of the bracer.
Once the variblade was secure, she held up her hand and concentrated. The sheath mounted on the bracer telescoped, bringing the variblade within easy reach of her hand. She nodded with satisfaction and retracted the sheath.
The bracer did more than simply allow her to conceal her variblade up her sleeve; it was fitted with a suite of tiny jammers that would make the weapon invisible to all but the most sophisticated of scanners.
She proceeded to dress, pulling a long-sleeve black shirt over her head and adjusting the right sleeve to make sure it covered the bracer and variblade.
She then selected a matching pair of trousers and pulled them on.
Finally she chose a bleached white leather jacket.
Removing the dangling earrings she wore for her father’s departure, she considered going without jewelry but decided against it. Being bereft of jewelry would arouse suspicion, and, besides, she felt naked without something decorating her ears.
She opted for a pair of matching sapphire studs, set in gold; the blue jewels matched her eyes.
Finally she picked up the tablet and placed it inside the inner pocket of her jacket. Time to do some snooping.
She exited her apartment, and both bodyguards flanking either side of the door glanced at her.
“Going to spend a night on the town, Princess?” asked Lana, the guard on her left and the leader of her s
ecurity detail for this shift.
She turned to Lana and smiled. “Have I become so predictable? Ah, well. Yes, but not immediately. You’ll have time to get dressed in something more appropriate. I suggest that lovely red jacket you wore the last time.”
Lana smiled and nodded. “As you wish, Princess. Shall I have a car prepared for you?”
“Why, yes, excellent thinking. I should be ready to go in about half an hour,” Lysandra said, walking off. Her bodyguards made no move to follow her. They didn't need to while she was inside the palace, as she was monitored by its automated security system. If anything happened to her, a squad of Imperial Marines would arrive within seconds. Otherwise they let her be. At least that was what she was counting on. She didn’t want to have to explain to them why she broke into the emperor's private study.
She strode through the halls of the palace, chin up, presenting the confident facade of someone who knew exactly where she was going.
Servants bowed and made way for her, while guards saluted as she passed.
She chatted to a few nobles along the way, brief pauses to make it look like she wasn’t in a hurry.
When she reached the hall that led to the emperor's study, she pulled out her special tablet and began tapping away.
She sent out messages to women known to be part of her entourage, making sure to give the appearance she was, in fact, preparing for a night on the town. But, after a while, she brought up the tablet’s main menu and tapped on an innocuous-looking icon.
A simple button appeared on the screen with Execute written across it. She tapped it.
Immediately the tablet engaged the royal override to the palace security system, activating the hidden code that would keep her from being tracked by the system. The system was meant to protect the Lacano family, but her ancestors who designed it knew full well it could be used by enemies to track their movements. Special programming that could only be accessed by the emperor and his heirs was added, which allowed them to escape the notice of the security system, should they feel the need to, constantly and inconspicuously running a loop of their past minute’s activities. As far as anyone monitoring would know, Lysandra was still slouched against a wall, messaging her friends.
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