Wraithkin (The Kin Wars Saga Book 1)

by Jason Cordova

  “Of course not, you leftover reject from a bad sperm donation! How big do you think your suits are?” Griffon barked. “Those suits are like skins, and once you’re inside will provide the shock prevention needed to live if – and when – you are hit in battle. This is called a training pod, fucktard. But enough about that. Let’s do a simulated drop. Just one, that’s all. One. Measly. Little. Drop. I think you maggots can handle it. What do you think?”

  “Yes sir!” Gabriel barked in the comm, echoing the rest of the training cadre. He heard Griffon sniff derisively.

  “Drop sequence commencing in ten seconds,” a computerized voice told Gabriel inside the pod. He relaxed and tried to focus on his breathing as the mechanical voice dully counted down.

  “Seven...six...”

  “Hey Omelet?” Esau interrupted. Gabriel opened one eye and glanced at the screen, which showed a closed hangar bay door. Exactly what a Wraith would see if prepping for a drop onto a planet, he thought as he yawned.

  “Yeah?” Gabriel grunted, keeping his breathing as steady as possible.

  “Four...three...”

  “You got any idea what this is going to be like?” Esau asked quietly.

  “No idea at all,” Gabriel answered.

  “One...commence drop sequence.”

  Gabriel began to scream, along with dozens of other men, as the drop began. Intermingled with their cries of terror was a laughing, gleeful training commander mocking their every shriek.

  Chapter Seven

  “I’m telling you there are checks and balances for a reason,” Laird Christophe McCarroll of-the-High argued as he stormed angrily down the spacious hall, his voice echoing off the marbled walls. He was new to Parliament, though he was not new to politics; he had been prepping for it since he was a young boy. He looked over his shoulder at his new aide, who was following behind at a respectable distance, one he had inherited from his father. He shifted his gaze to the man struggling to keep up with him on his left. His dark eyes narrowed in annoyance as he looked at the obese man. “The Emperor is set on destroying the checks protecting the Dominion from absolute tyranny!”

  “Come now, Christophe,” the larger man wheezed as he struggled to keep up, his heavy robes making progress difficult. “I’m sure the Emperor has his reasons for expanding the Wraiths.”

  “To subvert the will of the Upper House to that of his Lower House cronies through force and threats, even stooping to violence,” Christophe ground out through clenched teeth, furious. “He’s proving he doesn’t need us to create laws, that the Dominion will be run by his hand alone. He needs his thugs, those damned Wraiths–” Christophe spat onto the tiled flooring of the hall at the name of the Emperor’s protectors “–to run around, unchecked, fighting wars with whomever he feels like without Parliamentary approval.”

  “The War Powers Act allows as such,” his companion interjected mildly, small beads of sweat beginning to form upon his bald brow. He unfolded his arms from the thick, red robes. “Be mindful of this hallway, Laird. Many ears can be listening.”

  “Blast them all!” Christophe exploded vehemently, throwing his arms out wide. “If we cannot speak about the Emperor in anything but loving tones, then who will be the voice of dissent when he dissolves the Houses? Who will speak in defiance when he desires to rule the Dominion from under his thumb? Tell me, Senator, who will dare oppose him?”

  “It is not about who opposes him, Laird,” the ancient senator from Corus argued with his deceased friend’s eldest son. “It is about who can actively thwart his totalitarian schemes while staying loyal to the Dominion. Your father was excellent at this, young Christophe. His love was for the Dominion first, his planet second and the Emperor last. He remembered his duties up to the very end.”

  “I know that, Duncan,” Christophe sighed wearily, his anger evaporating at the mention of his late father. “Dad always swore the power resided in the Upper House, no matter what. It is we who write the Law. I’m just glad my brother Philippe didn’t get his hands on the seat; he worships every breath the Emperor makes. Who knows what damage would have been done if that addle-brained fool took up my chair?”

  “Indeed,” Duncan Samuels, Senior Senator of Corus, chuckled softly as he slowed down from the frantic pace the younger man had set. He wiped the sweat off his brow with one of his long sleeves, his face red from the exertion of keeping pace with the much healthier man. “It is fortunate your father had his affairs in order before he passed. I shall miss him terribly.”

  “Well, what do we do?” Christophe asked, the exhaustion and weariness heavy in his tone. “I’m the junior senator here, now, and that hurts what my father was trying to do. Been here a week, and I find it absolutely disgusting. Laird Hunt is quite content with the way things are. Bastard won’t even argue against the increased royalty tax the Lower House is supporting. And don’t get me started on Higgins or Boothe.”

  “The filthy rich usually are content with the status quo,” Duncan quipped, conveniently ignoring the fact both he and the man before him were in the upper five percent of wealth in the entire Dominion.

  “Hunt’s love of Imperfects also disgusts me,” Christophe muttered darkly.

  “That is something that disgusts everyone,” Duncan observed. “I’ve talked with his daughter, Lady Meredith, about this and she is in total agreement. She thinks her father’s poor health has taken a toll on his mental facilities and believes he may be forced to retire his seat soon. Lady Meredith is a firm believer the recent push for more rights for the cursed Imperfects is exactly what the Dominion doesn’t need to be distracted with at this time.”

  “I must reacquaint myself with her,” Christophe said, his mood brightening. “I haven’t seen her since we were both children at primary school. Back then, all she did was pick her nose and punch boys in the gut. A tempestuous bitch, if I recall. Sounds as though little has changed.”

  “She has matured in other areas, Laird,” Duncan smirked. Christophe looked at the older man and grinned.

  “You lecherous old man,” Christophe laughed and patted Duncan’s shoulder. “I wonder just how poor her father’s health really is.”

  “With her around and the desire for power fueling her?” Duncan thought for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. “I’d say his health is in imminent decline.”

  “So what do we do about the Emperor, and more importantly, about his massive power grab?” Christophe asked after a few moments reflection.

  “Well,” Duncan began, holding out his open palm. “We control the funding of the war machine. If the Wraiths don’t have funding, they can’t train replacements. Usually the Lower House tries to tack Wraith funding onto a bill we’ve already written and passed, but this year, with all the turnovers that have happened during this election cycle, that funding slipped through the cracks. So, no new Wraiths for a year, minimum, after the last batch that’s about to go through. That is a small blessing.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Then there is the simple matter that Wraiths are expensive,” Duncan continued, closing his hand into a tight fist. “If we can convince a few of the Lower House members to agree with us, we can stall their funding again for another year. Meanwhile, with the loss of Ptolemy and Catal Huyuk, the Navy’s going to be screaming for new ships and personnel to expand their picket lines. We go to bat for the Navy, they’ll return the favor by choosing our planets to construct the new Eleventh Fleet. More jobs for our constituents, more power in our camps.”

  “It’s an idea...” Christophe murmured, thoughtful. “Though we can build stronger allies by paying off some of the favors my father owed.”

  “True. And then, Laird, when the Wraiths begin to retake the lost planets, they begin to lose bodies,” Duncan smiled savagely. “Bodies they can’t immediately replace. Rather, suits they can’t replace. We make a good enough case to the Lower House, again, and we can convince them to send in the Marines. They are far more reliable than those maniacs in the Wra
ith Corps, and they answer to the citizens of the Dominion. Wraiths go back to their job of being Praetorian guards, and the Emperor’s power is temporarily checked. Meanwhile, the Marines go about securing the border planets and reapplying to the Houses. We gain more favorable votes with newer Lower House members once they gain admittance, which helps us a great deal.”

  “There are a lot of ifs to your plan, Senator,” Christophe observed after a quiet pause. “How do you propose we work past those ifs?”

  “Oh, I already have an eye on five incoming parliamentarians who would easily agree with us,” Duncan’s eyes were wide with amusement. “All of them are young, idealistic and impressionable. The best part? I think I have that young Espinoza bastard in my pocket.”

  “Espinoza?” Christophe’s face filled with shock. He knew, as did the other senators, the powerful family from Belleza Sutil was not one to generally work with the ruling elite from the Core worlds. To have one on their side before he was even officially sworn in was more than a small achievement. “How did you get through to him?”

  “Believe it or not, his wife,” Duncan pursed his lips and tapped his ring. The platinum ring, capped with a single large ruby, was a reminder of the powerful status the Samuels family held on his home world of Corus. “She is related to me, distantly, and I simply suggested through family that an incoming member of the Lower House might need a friend in the Upper. Word was passed, and she contacted me five months ago, after he won the election. She was disgusted there is now an Imperfect in the family.”

  “Wait,” Christophe interrupted, his expression curious; his day was improving dramatically by the moment. “There’s an Imperfect Espinoza now?”

  “Joel’s youngest boy, I forget his name,” Duncan waved his hand dismissively. “Some anomaly in his genetic pattern. Doesn’t matter. Parliament-elect Espinoza is going to face some ridicule from his fellow members in the Lower. As I mentioned before, he’ll need a friend or two. He – and in extension, us – are fortunate the results of the gene test weren’t leaked until after the election. It could have tanked him. And us.”

  “You think he believes the Emperor is overstepping his bounds?” Christophe queried. Duncan shrugged again.

  “The Espinoza’s are loyal to the Dominion, Christophe,” Duncan reminded his young protégé. “I doubt the boy...Kevin, I believe, is going to stray from his father’s beliefs much. And Joel Espinoza, despite his faults and arrogance, believes in a strong and stable Dominion. A power-hungry Emperor does not make a stable Dominion. Espinoza is – rather, was – one of the Acolytes. Even one of them would agree.”

  “So we...” Christophe’s voice trailed off.

  “We wait, cut the budget so the Emperor bows to the will of the people, and move forward with the proposed Boxley Act,” Duncan stated. He looked over his shoulder as Christophe’s aide coughed slightly. His eyes narrowed as he focused on the aide, who had been silently staring at the floor. “You trust him?”

  “Darius,” Christophe called out to his new aide, who had been his father’s senior aide in the months before his untimely death. “What did you think of the conversation? Or of the plans we spoke of?”

  “Conversation, Laird? Plans?” Darius asked quietly, his hazel eyes confused as he looked up from the floor. “I heard no conversation, nor any plans. I wasn’t aware any took place, in fact. I was about to remind you, though, you have a meeting in ten minutes with Senator Stephens of Juno about the new trade tariffs on goods from the Domai Republic. Then you have a meeting an hour after with the esteemed Justice of the Lord regarding...items of interest.”

  “Totally trusted,” Christophe answered Duncan’s question with a quick nod. “And efficient, too. It’s no wonder my father promoted him after finding out Rogar was on Hunt’s payroll.”

  “As you say, Laird,” Duncan nodded. He cocked his head to the side and looked back to the young Senator. “The Justice of the Lord? What are you doing with that old relic? He barely comes out of his crypt anymore.”

  “Paying my respects, Senator,” Christophe said as patted Duncan’s shoulder. “One can never have too many allies. Something my father taught me.” The two men turned and continued down the hall, followed closely by the silent aide.

  He’s not insane, he’s entirely reasonable and persuasive, Darius thought as he followed, mentally writing his latest intelligence brief as he trailed behind his current employer. The younger is going to be worse than his father was. His father was selfish and a traitor, but this Christophe is a zealot, a true believer. I wonder how I should handle this...The Dominion intelligence agent kept his head down and his ears open as he kept a respectable distance between him and his new boss.

  And my father taught me something as well, young Laird, Darius recalled with inner delight. Something that you would never understand. Sobre todo, la familia permanece.

  #

  “Damned shame about the old Laird dying,” Gan said hours later into the screen. Darius nodded.

  “The old bastard was a selfish man, but he was more or less harmless,” he supplied. “I don’t know about you, but I think the rot in the McCarroll Clan just took over.”

  “The Laird is already making alliances?” Gan asked.

  “Making or using some his father forged and never capitalized upon,” Darius corrected his boss. He shifted his back against the wall in his tiny closet and grimaced. “He even met with the Justice of the Lord.”

  “That old coot?” Gan asked, unknowingly repeating the powerful senator from Corus. “What’s he up to these days anyway?”

  “No idea,” Darius/Andrew admitted as he struggled to shed the identity of a young aide. “It was a closed-door meeting, which left me out in the cold. I wasn’t expecting that, so I didn’t get a bug put on the Laird’s person. My mistake.”

  Gan grunted. “I’m not concerned. The Justice doesn’t do much these days except for pine for the old ways.”

  “So, how is he?” Gan asked after a minute of dead air.

  “The Justice?”

  “No, the Laird. I have a dossier on him but...what’s he like?”

  “He’s a true believer the Emperor is overstepping His bounds,” Andrew said as he collected his thoughts, the vidscreen transmitting everything with crystal clarity. He squirmed again and tried to get more comfortable. “He’s going to be worse than his father ever was. He’s arrogant, and he’s driven. He’s also got something else up his sleeve, something called the Boxley Act, but I need more data before I can formulate any sort of idea as to what it might be.”

  “You want to take it slow?” Gan cocked an eyebrow. Andrew nodded.

  “Until I know more about what he’s doing, I have to. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions and then be proven wrong.”

  “Do you have a complete impression of the new Laird already?”

  “He’s a narcissist. He’s very vain and has an immense desire to impress those around him, whether it be by having a very demure aide or having friends and allies others do not. He has a burning need to be liked, though he abuses the power that can make him loved. He sabotages himself at times, and I think he realizes it, but he’s powerless to stop. Also a bit of an obsessive, and he hates Imperfects.”

  “‘Hate’ is a strong word,” Gan said.

  “‘Hate’ is barely accurate enough to describe it,” Andrew countered. “On my father’s farm back home, we’d hire seasonal workers for harvests. Yes, we had a lot of machines doing most of the work, but even then we had to have workers around. My father would hire Imperfects to do it – cheap labor, really, but he made a point to hire them because, well, they needed it more. They were usually pretty good, and my father tried to make it a habit to hire the same ones every harvest. Laird McCarroll would die of embarrassment if someone caught him hiring an Imperfect. Not that he would ever entertain the idea, granted.”

  Gan shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  Andrew kept his face impassive, though his guts we
re in turmoil. “No, but it does mean the Laird is cognizant of other people’s perception of himself. That’s a weakness we can potentially exploit.”

  “Good, good. Any thoughts on your brother?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one who was elected to the Lower House?”

  “Ah. Well, I probably won’t be able to stay in cover if he runs across me, though that doesn’t appear to be too much of a danger at the moment,” Andrew said. “My guess is a year, perhaps two, and Darius is going to be moving on with his career.”

  “Is he a Loyalist?”

  “Kevin? He ran as one but...I don’t know,” Andrew scratched his chin. “He’s a Modernist in terms of how the Dominion should be run, but he’s extremely loyal to the Dominion and the royal family. Probably closer to a Reformist than a Modernist, actually. His wife, on the other hand, is a pure Modernist. Hell, she’s related to the Samuels family for crying out loud.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Gan blinked, surprised. “Did he tell you that?”

  Andrew shook his head. “No. Senator Samuels himself actually bragged about it. He believes he has an in with him. Kevin’s stubborn, though, and has his own ideals that cannot be subverted by anyone. Of course, I also thought he’d never have kids...”

  “Keep at it.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Tell me...if you had to retake a world from one of the Abassi, which would you recommend?” Gan asked, changing the conversation subject abruptly.

  “Ptolemy,” Andrew answered after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Really? Why?”

  “It’s further north, galactic-wise, than any planet the Abassi have hit before,” Andrew said. “We let them think they can hit those outer systems, the next thing you know they’re hitting Belleza Sutil, which cuts the Dominion in half. If they ever figure out jump gate tech, they’re at Belleza Sutil in two months, tops, with a one-stop hop to the Core. Can a fleet be mobilized fast enough? I don’t think so, even with the Fourth fleet on standby and the Seventh stationed at Belleza Sutil. That’s assuming the Rift isn’t playing around with the gate path between Avalon and Belleza Sutil. No, Ptolemy needs to be retaken, and then we go for Catal Huyuk, to shore up our southern flank. Then we can focus on mopping up the fringe worlds and try to locate their home world.”