by David Winnie
“That’s hardly fair, Admiral.”
“My dear niece,” he said, his very tone condescending, “in war, there is no room for fair. You either win or you die.”
He stood. “I will be conducting exercises in the quadrant with my fleet for the next six months,” he announced. “If you decide to heed my words, then Gavin will put you in contact with me on my flagship, the Azahnti. Do not dally with your decision, Crown Princess.”
“Yuri, Yuri, Yuri!” Annika came dancing into their room.
It was December, the house was readying for Roman Christmas. The girls had found a pootawood tree that resembled a Terran Christmas tree and had been busying themselves decorating it and the rest of the house.
Annika danced a circle around Yuri, then grabbed him and planted a sloppy kiss on his lips. “Ask me why I am so happy!” she exclaimed.
“O.K. Why are you so happy?”
“Sister Marcia, the choir director has selected me, your amazing wife, to sing a solo at midnight mass on Christmas Eve! Me!” Annika kissed him again and danced out of their room to spread her happy news.
Everyone in the house was excited for the holiday. Bright packages appeared beneath the scrawny tree. Yuri brought home a gift from his lab. He had synthesized mistletoe for the holiday; it hung in the entryway. It would be pointed out to all their guests as they arrived. The three girls spent hours in the kitchen baking for the holiday feast.
Christmas Eve arrived. Annika left for Saint Francis chapel early, explaining, “I have to warm my voice up.” Yuri teased her for being a diva. She sniffed, put her nose in the air and strode out the door.
Yuri had never been to a Roman Christmas mass. He found it was not much different than that to which he was accustomed. The chapel was adorned with expensive boughs of pine, imported for the occasion. Red ribbons and bows were evident everywhere. Banners hung on every wall and the sweet, rich smell of incense hung heavily in the air. The crèche was to the side of the main alter, the cradle empty.
The organ began to play and the mass began. Yuri was familiar enough with the ritual. The procession wound its way to the crèche. The organ stopped.
The light, airy music of a harp began. An angelic voice began to sing.
“Ave Maria. Gratia Plena…”
He had heard her voice a thousand times in the five years they had known each other. Never like this.
“Ave, ave dominus. Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulierbus. Et benedictus…”
Yuri felt a surge of emotion well up in him. His eyes moistened.
“Et benedictus. Et benedictus. Et benedictus fructus ventris. Ventris tui, Jesus. Ave Maria…”
The man next to him patted his shoulder and whispered, “The voice of an angel, that one.”
A tenor joined her then, but Yuri only heard the voice of his love.
They were a gay crowd romping down the street. Yuri had excused himself long enough to wash his face before greeting Annika. “Are you all right, my love?” she asked.
He could only smile and kiss her.
The couples had formed up as they left the church to have a late supper. Yuri and Annika led the way, followed by Marianne and her latest amour. Beck and Devin slowly strolled behind, arm in arm.
Annika heard a noise. She pushed Yuri away and spun around, pulling her knife.
There were four of them. Hulking men with devices replacing human flesh all over their bodies.
AUGMENTONS!
She didn’t hesitate, leaping at the first one. Her small frame struck it in the solar plexus squarely, driving it back. She stabbed downward with the knife, feeling the satisfying crunch as it tore open the thing’s knee. She dropped and rolled away from the falling, injured cyborg. Sweeping her leg, she tripped the next one, leapt and kicked it at the junction of its head and neck. Her knife punctured its skull; she wiggled it about, then rolled again.
Screams cut into the night and deep into Annika’s heart. She heard an audible crunch, one scream whimpered away. The augmenton behind her was struggling to stand, so she mule kicked and it went down again. Her landing set her in position to fling herself at the third one. It caught her and raised her above its head. Gunfire from her escorts erupted and the augmenton collapsed beneath her.
Annika landed on her feet. Four augmentons lay on the ground, quivering and bleeding. Her heart caught in her throat.
Beck and Devin were clearly dead. Her head was twisted around in an unnatural angle. Marianne’s date wasn’t moving. Blood poured from his scalp. Marianne herself was writhing and grasping at her stomach, screaming.
Annika had never seen Yuri move so fast. He plunged his hands into her wounded stomach. “Annika, come here, now!” he shouted. “Put your hands here. Hold that, squeeze it hard. You’ve got to hold that so she doesn’t bleed out.” He yelled at Campion and two medics appeared, one at the boy she didn’t know, the other helping Yuri.
The transport hovered overhead. Stretchers and more medics dropped all around. Marianne was loaded on a stretcher and lifted, her friend following swiftly. Yuri grabbed Annika’s arm and gave her a quick kiss. “I have to go, my love,” he told her. “She still has a fighting chance.” Then he was gone.
A soldier had covered Beck and Devin. Annika stood over their bodies.
The augmenton. The one whose leg she had ruined. She stomped over to him, grabbed his neck. Lifted him.
“Who?” she demanded.
It moved its mouth in its approximation of a grin. “We killed some, yes? That was the job. Missed you, so sad, so sorry.”
Her grip tightened. “Who sent you!” she screamed.
It gasped and creaked. It got out one word.
“Freak!”
Annika’s knife sunk deep into its neck. She sawed at the windpipe, severing it completely. It gurgled and gasped, streams of fluids jetting out. Then it went limp.
She dropped it on the ground, then went to work with her knife. When she had finished, she lifted its decapitated head from its body and tossed it to the nearest soldier.
“Processing unit,” Annika ordered. “Get it to Intelligence while it’s still viable.”
She joined Major Campion aboard the next shuttle.
Chapter 24
“I would see my Uncle. Immediately!”
Gavin Howland blinked. Bad news never arrived at a decent hour. The sight of the Crown Princess on his comm covered in blood, presumably not her own, qualified as official bad news.
“Yes, Highness,” he told her. He checked his chrono. Gods below, it was two A.M. Christmas morning. He made the call. When Admiral Thiessen appeared on the screen he said, “She wants to see you. Immediately.”
Admiral Thor Thiessen’s face remained impassive. “It will be so. I can assume something has happened.”
“Yes. She was covered with blood,” Howland said.
Theisen turned from the screen for a moment. “The planetary Governor has declared an emergency and sealed the planet. I am placing my fleet in an over watch position. What has happened, Gavin?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out and get back to you.”
The Governor’s call was seconds later. “Augmentons attacked the Crown Princess’s party. She is uninjured. All the augmentons are dead. She killed two of them herself. Two of her party are dead, a third is in surgery now. I have sealed the planet and recalled Admiral Thiessen,” the Governor reported. “I have also turned out the garrison and notified the local Intelligence office.”
“Well done. I believe you will find Intelligence Master Blount is on-world and will co-ordinate with your local office. I will be in your office in one hour.” Howland stabbed the comm unit with his finger. Gods below, the enemy had struck too close to home.
Annika sat, composed, in the same conference room where she had first met her uncle, the admiral, reviewing the events of the last three hours. Following the attack, she demanded Campion take her to her home. He argued, as she expected, but she was insistent. Arriving, they found a co
hort of troops filled the neighborhood.
She stripped and showered first, pleased to note, unlike the attack two years ago, she did not slide into a state of shock. Methodically, she cleaned herself, braided her hair and dressed in sensible clothing.
She paused at the living room. The tree, all the gifts. None of that had been touched by the night’s violence. It was as a dream to her, the perfect Christmas with her husband and their friends. Now, two of them were dead and one was fighting for her life. Annika offered a prayer for Marianne to the Gods above.
The Crown Princess and her escorts went to the command post. There she waited for the arrival of Admiral Thiessen and Howland.
Annika closed her eyes and replayed the attack. It had taken only seconds. She had reacted faster than any ordinary Terran could have. She had extracted the data processor from one of the augmentons before it could self-destruct.
Beck and Devin were dead, victims of augmentons. As fast as Annika reacted, there was no way even she could have saved them.
Marianne was still in surgery. Annika had tried calling Yuri, then called the hospital. Doctor Russolov was in emergency surgery with two other surgeons trying to save the life of a young girl viciously attacked, she was told by the operator. And on Christmas! The operator promised to have Yuri call her when he got out of surgery.
Admiral Thiessen and Gavin Howland entered. “Gentlemen, please.” Annika indicated two chairs.
“I have been reviewing the incident this morning,” Annika said. “I have examined what happened from my point of view, and offer you both a humble and sincere apology.”
“For what, Majesty?” asked Gavin.
“You warned me about the gathering of my enemies, both from without and within. I am convinced we will find tonight’s attack on me was from within, an enemy who has been stalking me for many years. It came at the cost of two, possibly three dear friends. My own husband is alive only because of my superior reactions and fighting skill. For that, I am grateful. Nevertheless, four people have suffered grievously because I have been selfishly seeking self-gratification instead of concerning myself with the needs of my Empire.”
Both men nodded. “Very well, Crown Princess,” stated the Defense Minister. “Have you decided on what service you will join?”
“I will be a pilot.”
Thiessen snorted. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Orbiting miles above the troops while they fight on the ground or die in a blaze of glory when your carrier is attacked by raiders. Not a choice I would make to prepare for your position, Niece.”
“I will be a bomber pilot, flying close air support for those troops, Uncle,” she answered.
“The Navy does not fly close air support.”
“I did not say I would join the Navy,” Annika said. “I will join the Army.”
Gavin Howland slapped the table and let out a yell. “You see, Thor! I knew that’s what she’d choose. I knew it!” He held out his hand, beckoning to Thiessen. “Come on, old buddy, pay up. Fifty credits.”
The admiral reached into his jacket and handed Gavin his winnings. “I don’t suppose she might be in shock? No? Damn.”
The Admiral became serious. “Annika, you will, of course, have to attend Officer Training School on Sanderstrom VII. Then it will be off to flight school for another nine months. It will not be easy, especially at Officer Training. The instructors there hate telepaths, considering them lazy and untrustworthy. They will use banshees to keep you and any other telepath in line.
“And if they discover you are a royal…” his voice trailed off.
“It would be best you don’t let slip your lineage until after you get to flight school,” suggested Howland. “As your sponsor, I can only protect you so much.”
“No,” Annika said, “I have to do this on my own. If I’m going to lead, I must be able to do it myself, without help.”
“Nonsense,” Howland answered sharply. “I was in the army for forty years. I saw the wrong officers promoted and I remember the men who died for it. I saw more capable officers who tried to do it on their own and ended up dead, or worse, because they had no one watching over them. I’m not doing you any favors. I’m making sure you’re getting a square deal and earn your way.”
“It’s too late for you to enroll this semester,” Admiral Thiessen stated. “Go back to your home. You and Yuri must announce your marriage. This way, should anything happen…Well, we would have legal heirs, even if we had to wait another twenty-five years.
“I will arrange for you to report in March to Sanderstrom VII. I would suggest you cut your hair by then. Perhaps color it and change your name.”
“One last question, Majesty,” asked Howland. “You could have requested any job, any service. Why bombers?”
“I’ve survived four attempts on my life in the last fifteen years,” Annika said in a low voice. She drew her knife and stabbed it in the table. “From this, to bombing, to poison, to the attack this evening.” She stood, took her knife and stalked to the door. “Nearly every time, they struck at me and killed those precious around me. I want to put them and their loved ones in my bombsight. And blow the glarpshite out of them.”
“Oh, Yuri!”
Marianne was covered with a sheet, elevated off her abdomen. Wires and tubes ran under the sheet and into her arms. A respirator hissed and clicked. One bare foot peeked out from under the sheet.
“Hey, Marianne, get moving,” Annika whispered, shaking the foot and pulling the sheet over it.
“It’s O.K., my love. We think she can hear you.”
Annika brushed her best friend’s hair from the pale forehead and gave her a kiss. “Hey, you need to wake up. We all miss you. I miss you. I need to know you’re all right.” Annika looked to Yuri. “She is going to be okay, isn’t she?”
Yuri shook his head.
Marianne’s parents, Fred and Leia, arrived. Annika had ordered a destroyer sent straight to their colony to fetch them and bring them straight to the hospital. Marianne’s mother, an attractive woman whom Marianne greatly resembled, clung to Annika. Both women sobbed. “She was supposed to be safe here,” Leia cried. “How could this have happened?”
Marianne’s father, a tall, balding man, stood woodenly, unsure. Yuri escorted the couple into a quiet room and explained her injuries. What he had been able to repair. What she would likely lose.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Fred managed to say. “I know you and your staff did the best you could. I’m a miner, so I understand there are limits. Believe me, I, we are grateful you’re giving us back our little girl. Can we go see her?”
Yuri took them, returned and led Annika to a coffee shop. “Her injuries are very serious,” he told her. “The weapon the augmentons used on her was designed to rip and shred, but not to kill. We had to rebuild her digestive tract and restore her blood supply as best we could to her lower extremities.
She’ll never walk again,” he sighed. “And she’ll never have children.”
“Oh, Yuri,” Annika cried. “She dreamed of having children. She was going into social work and planned on having a large family. She was so jealous to hear I had so many brothers and sisters. Now what will she do?”
“She’s alive.” Yuri voice was firm. “When she decides to wake up, the doctors will remind her of that. She will have a major lifestyle change, but if she works hard with her therapists and counselors, I see no reason why she can’t have a long and productive life.”
“But no children.”
“My Love, she’ll find children to love. It seems to me the universe seems to make sure there are always enough orphans who need love.”
The trip to Terra was quiet. The Azahnti was a warship, not a civilian transport. Their room was spartan. A small window revealed the universe beyond. A pair of comfortable lounges sat at either side of the window, facing a table between them. Annika spent the hours staring out the window at the stars. Yuri, sensing his wife needed time to process what had happened, read from a pad. It
was a welcome respite.
They would arrive at Terra Station the next morning. A shuttle with escorts would take them to the farm.
That night, Annika rolled over in the tiny bed and faced her husband. “Yuri, I joined the Army,” she told him.
“I know. I spoke with Gavin,” he replied. “He was at the hospital visiting Marianne. He agreed to contact the Minister of Health on my behalf.” He propped his head up with his elbow. “I’m joining the Medical Corps.”
Annika’s brow furrowed. “What about your clinic? I thought you were happy there?”
“I am. But I have been a little bored there, frankly,” Yuri replied. “I had someone to come home to when you were there. But after you went away for school, I got lonely. I joined Doctor Steven’s tour on Valarius for a change of pace. I found I really enjoyed going off-world and seeing how other cultures live and treat their sick. In Medical Corps, I will have that opportunity. And,” his eyes glinted, “being in space, I can keep a close eye on my beautiful wife.”
She giggled. His hand slipped under her gown. “Yuri, we need to announce our marriage. Our heir-children are ready to be born. All Tahn is waiting for is you and me to formally make the announcement. I leave for officer school in March and graduate in June.”
“We should announce it on Christmas then, at Mama and Papa’s,” Yuri suggested. “Mama will be thrilled.”
“How will they feel about being grandparents again so soon?” she asked. “And to eight new grandchildren?”
“They already have grandchildren. Eight more will make them eight times happier.” He pulled her closer and nuzzled her neck. “I should think I will enjoy being Papa.”
Annika moaned. “Yuri, are you paying attention?”
“Of course, I am, my dear,” he answered. “I always pay attention to my loving wife. Marriage, war, children. Sounds like a wonderful plan.”
