Sterling nodded. “We were planning to attack them whenever the battlefield moved to the other end of the pathway. Luckily the Storm Center happened to be close … Anyway, my crew and I were housed by Phillip after the meeting. Her Majesty promised she would keep it a secret. She told us to send back our ship with autopilot to pretend that we had left. We thought you’d figure it out when you saw the empty ship. But I didn’t know it would … I uh, maybe Owen told the enemy we were …” He couldn’t continue. He wished he could simply leave the table and be alone for a while.
He had been feeling good about himself after Hayleigh agreed on his plan. The destruction of his ship only added credibility to the scheme. It hadn’t occurred to him what kind of effect it would have on those who cared about him until he saw the news conference on TV.
“Wait, how did you regain the control of the fortress?” Wilson sounded like a little kid with provoked curiosity. “There must’ve been a tough fight?”
Sterling shook his head. They were all supposed to live in a modern age, a civilized society. It was simply inhuman to have her take the bad news in front of the whole nation, to have her stand there and pretend to be strong, when everyone else was allowed to flinch.
“No?” Wilson held up a hand. “Don’t tell me! Let me guess … Food poisoning?”
Sterling shook again. After the news conference he wanted to call her or send an email, but neither approach was safe nowadays. If the plan leaked out, those soldiers inside the fortress would be endangered.
“Hmm …” Wilson nodded. “They probably brought along their own food. Ah, I see! They were killed during sleep! … No? Alright, you can tell me now … Captain Presley, are you listening?”
“We turned off the artificial gravity,” said Phillip, who was invited to the dinner as an honored guest. “Because the fortress has five limbs, its gravity field isn’t uniform. Sometimes different limbs interact with each other and make things unstable, especially during folding and rotating. So our soldiers residing in the fortress wear special shoes. When the gravity is off, we turn on the magnetic field.”
“Gotcha! So you let those bastards float in the air like balloons and you guys ran around doing whatever you wanted. Who had this idea?”
Phillip looked at Sterling.
“The idea itself deserves a medal. Won’t you agree, Your Majesty?” Wilson turned to face the other end of the table. “Your Majesty, are you listening?”
* * *
After dinner, Geneva and Sterling sneaked out of the banquet and boarded her ship. He had suggested going to his place, but when she mentioned there’d be fans and journalists waiting on the driveway, he changed his mind. Fireworks thundered on top of the city, and thousands of people paraded around the palace. If they wanted quiet, they’d have to resort to space.
Having their appetites back, they ate some food as the ship ascended to outer space. Then she sank in a couch and grabbed the remote control. “I bet you’re on the news.”
Indeed, as soon as she turned on the TV, she heard the news anchor talking about the parades. Since the details of the battle weren’t available to the public yet, people were making all kinds of conjectures about how they drove away the invaders. The most popular theory was that Queen Geneva was invited to Pompey’s ship and forced him to stop the fight by showing him the bomb tied to her waist. Then all of a sudden they went on discussing the queen’s wedding with the national hero. Embarrassed, she switched the channel. A woman and two men were sitting at a small table and having a political conversation. They were formally dressed and spoke remarkably fast.
“I agree,” said the woman, who was apparently the host of the program. “The whole thing’s like a drama. We can’t tell who the director was, but there’s no question that Queen Hayleigh never intended to betray us in the first place.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this were all arranged,” the younger man said, his eyebrows high on the forehead. “Prior to the battle there was no way for them to be together. She might end up losing her throne if she pursued the relationship. Now the whole nation is crazy about the hero. If William still stood in the way, he would be the one to lose his government.”
“And people need heroes,” the older man said with a hoarse voice. “We need heroes especially during wartime. Heroism holds our spirits up and distracts us from the nasty part of a war. It’s our government’s job to satisfy this need.”
“Two birds with one stone,” the woman concluded.
The euphoric atmosphere that had been surrounding Geneva quickly disappeared. “All … arranged?”
Sterling took over the remote control and turned off the TV. “Just ignore them. People say such things to draw audience.”
But she couldn’t let it go, and knowing her night had been ruined made her even angrier. “Do they have any idea what we’ve been through? If war could be arranged like this, I’d be happy to do it regularly! … Sometimes it makes you wonder whether this is all worth it.”
“It is,” he said calmly. “When I met my fans at the spaceport, I could tell their sincerity.”
His hands reached behind her head, and she felt some weight on the neck. She looked down and saw a medal on her chest.
“You should be the receiver,” he said, like a parent soothing a kid. “Nobody acted braver than you did.”
She smiled and felt her mood coming back. Honestly, why would she care about anything else? Her man came back, when she thought she had forever lost him. Not every woman in this country had her luck.
“That’s the bad part of being the Commander-in-Chief,” he said. “You don’t get promoted any more.”
“I’m fine with six stars,” she squinted at him.
“Six stars … I remember seeing your uniform when I caught the net. Thought I caught a whole galaxy inside.”
They smiled again, both feeling drowsy as they finally relaxed. She had only napped for a few hours in the past two days. So they left the couch, and each headed to a bathroom. When she came back in her nightgown, she found him standing in front of a window, motionless.
“What’s so interesting out there?” She stopped at his side and tried to tease him. “A mermaid in space?”
He made no response as if he didn’t hear her question.
She leaned forward to the window. At first she saw nothing but the innumerous star clusters here and there. Then gradually she could make out a line of moving objects in the distance. She had heard of the Space Reclaimers, but hadn’t seen one yet. After a battle, most of the ship and plane wreckages were forever lost, but some might be collected within a short period of time. The Reclaimers looked like garbage trucks with no wheels. Small pieces were stored inside the carriages, and large ones were towed behind. There was an extraordinarily large silhouette at the end of the line. It must have been part of a large ship. A carrier, probably.
Then it occurred to her that it must be the Caparise. As the thing was dragged closer, she could see dents, cracks, and holes all over the hull. The deformations at its two open ends were probably results of explosions. They took away our cheese platters … Was one of those mashed inner compartments the dining hall where she spoke to the crew?
Too exhausted to stay awake with him, she dimmed the light and climbed into bed. As she dozed off, there was a moment when she could no longer feel the presence of the ship. She was floating away into the deep space with the four hundred soldiers who died along with the Caparise. Floating, free of erosion in the ultimate vacuum and coldness.
Chapter 15
“… The election would be right after the New Year,” Geneva said to his officers at her defense council meeting. “Shall I go for it?”
It had been three months since the Battle of the New Pathway—naming the recent battle was probably King Matthew’s last exertion of his right as Head of the RA’s Alliance. The official explanation for his resignation was that Sparkland had encountered heavy losses, and thus could no longer provide general safeguards for the
system. But everybody knew the true reason: his performance as a leader and a decision maker was far from laudable.
“Of course, ma’am!” Wilson said. “Nobody could disregard the fact that our fleets fought the best in the recent battle, and you risked your life to bring it to an end.”
She smiled. “It wouldn’t have ended this way without everyone’s effort.”
Acting humbly, she did feel confident for the election. Yesterday Jonathan messaged her that Rainprus would be happy to support her; Hayleigh wouldn’t stand a chance because of Treagium’s turnabout, even though they eventually showed up and played an critical role; nobody would even consider the Republic of Ribbon Islands, for they had to figure out who would be their own head in the coming years.
But Geneva wasn’t interested in the title. She had got enough publicity, enough decisions to make, enough meetings and parties. What tempted her was the profit this title could bring to her country. One of the major responsibilities of this position was to ensure the safety of every ship that went through the Silk Road, the pathway that connected her system to Artorna. The Renaisun-C system was a lot further from the A and B systems. Unlike the Trawtle, the Silk Road ended a long way before it reached the Stony Band. Prior to the breakout of the war, there were pirates and other armed forces haunting in that area. Artorna had once sent their troops over to clean up the area after they lost several merchandise ships. Later they signed the Neutral Agreement with Thyphol and the responsibility fell to RA’s countries. Now every merchant or passenger ship had armed escorts when they traveled between the terminal of the Silk Road and Planet RA-4’s orbit, inside which it was generally considered safe. The escorting service was, of course, not free.
“Admiral Howard, now that your squadrons do not need to reside in the fortress for a while, would you like to …” She closed her eyes for a few seconds. What was wrong with her? Since a week ago she had been feeling lousy, and occasionally having mild fevers. Maybe she should call her doctor in after the meeting.
When she reopened her eyes, the woman admiral had already stood up. “Yes, ma’am, but to perform as escorts, our ships have to be equipped with the identity-checking system and its network. We’ll also need the stability-test device.”
Although stable for most of the time, a pathway could occasionally be dangerous. Transportations would be momentarily stopped whenever the pathway was considered unstable.
“Of course, we’ll have all of them ready.” And cash registers, she thought with suppressed exhilaration. She nodded at Howard and typed in the Message Window of her laptop. Make sure this is taken care of before Christmas.
A few seconds later, she got a reply. Okay, but I’ll be gone for two weeks around Christmas.
Gone? She tried her best to stay calm. Was he going home? He didn’t tell her he’d be away for Christmas. Alone! And yesterday when she mentioned a nice vacation place he acquiesced, or at least she thought he did. Even if she weren’t his girlfriend, she was still his boss! Did he know how many things needed to be done before the election?
And did he know whom he was dealing with?
“All right.” She straightened up in her chair. “Everything sounds great. But I suspect Sparkland might need some time to wrap things up. So it might be a good idea for them to … shut the pathway down for a few weeks before they leave?”
Then it would take you a year to finish a round trip, honey. She skewed at him, laughing quietly in her head. Her officers shifted in their seats with bewilderment, but he acted as if he had heard nothing.
“What else?” she muttered as she checked her list. The last issue she was supposed to discuss was related to Rafael Tait’s future. He did an excellent job in commanding the Second Fleet during the early part of the battle, and he would’ve been awarded a medal if he hadn’t collapsed after the destruction of the Caparise. Normally a dereliction of duty at a similar scale required a court-martial, but with Geneva and Oakley’s efforts he received non-judicial punishments instead. She felt she could understand his feelings, and without his contribution, even the unexpected attack by the fortress wouldn’t have been enough to wreck the enemy’s Storm Center. She only wished they had more talented officers like him.
But what to do with him next? A tough decision! She pressed a hand on her notes. She didn’t feel like talking about it now. “That’s it. I’ll see you in two weeks, then.”
* * *
A week before Christmas, Phillip came over in his Nebufleet to pick up Sterling for home. Sterling had been worried that Geneva would give him a hard time, but she turned out to be sweetly supportive. She prepared meals and snacks for him and Phillip to eat on the trip, although, strictly speaking, she wasn’t the one who prepared them. She let them borrow her fancy Game Center. She also got a nicely wrapped gift for his mother, Crystal.
“Your father would also receive a gift, a big one! But he’ll get it later.” She blinked at him.
That didn’t quite make sense, but Sterling ignored it. “Thanks for everything, Geneva. Take care!” He hugged her and left for the ship in a happy mood. Well, he only had one girlfriend before, and she wasn’t Geneva’s type. Had he known a little more about women he would’ve been alerted.
* * *
Phillip was only three years older than Sterling, but since they grew up together, in Sterling’s memory he was always the big, big brother. Indeed, Phillip had a more mature look than most men his age with his thick glasses and steady demeanor. He wasn’t stout yet, but the bulgy belly was showing the trend. When they were boys, Phillip was always the trusted “judge” who easily settled any quarrel among the kids in their neighborhood.
Time passed quickly as they exchanged army anecdotes from their own fleets and commented on the performance of their allies in the recent battle. They consumed most of the drinks prepared by Geneva but decided to save the dessert for Phillip’s sister, Larissa, who loved sweet and delicate food.
The next day they arrived at Owlhidden, a country no larger than a Sunpherean province. The weather was as warm and humid as usual. There was barely any seasonal change on Planet RC-3. Having not been home for two years, Sterling felt as if his house had shrunk among those exuberant plants. In his childhood memory, the house was like a mansion.
Harold was home alone with the housekeeper. He told Sterling his mother would be back on Christmas’s Eve. Sterling wasn’t surprised. Crystal had a part-time job as the vice president of a children’s charity in Artorna. She was home a lot, but usually busy around holiday seasons.
On the following evening, Harold took him to a fine restaurant in the town. Dressed in the best shirt he had at home, Sterling felt a little displaced. Although both having handsome incomes, Harold and Crystal were provident people and seldom went to restaurants. Now thinking about it, he realized he must’ve been influenced by them. He had never taken Geneva out either.
“So who’s this donor?” he asked Harold after they sat down at the reserved table. “An alumni? Why do I have to be here?” Phillip’s family had invited Sterling over for dinner. He’d rather be with them.
“I was told to keep it a secret.” Harold’s smile was quite abstruse. To Sterling’s delight, his father hadn’t aged much over the past few years. People always said that Harold looked like his biological father, for both of them had that kind of scholarly appearance, but Sterling believed Harold must’ve been more handsome when he was young, with those unusually bright eyes, while his own eyes were a little—using Geneva’s word—misty.
“I was reading about your story in the news lately, son. You did great! Awesome! Though, your faked death scared the hell out of your mom. I had to keep assuring her: he’s not going to die that easily!”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t want it to happen that way.”
“And we heard about you and Geneva.” Harold leaned over and lowered his voice. “Should your mom and I start getting ready for a wedding?”
Sterling shook his glass of water absentmindedly. The ice
cubes tinkled and glittered under his gaze. “It’s too early to think about that.”
Harold raised his eyebrows. “Maybe not as early as you think.”
“But I’ve promised Mom to come back …”
Several waiters and waitresses fussed at the restaurant’s entrance. Sterling looked over and saw a small group of guests filing in. The black-suited bodyguards must be accompanying someone important, he reckoned. Better not be the donor! He didn’t like eating with people who constantly worried about their safety. Then he saw the circle breaking up and a woman in a scarlet cocktail dress coming over toward his table. Her brown hair was loosely bounded by a beaded headband. The necklace was almost too dazzling to stare at, but more glaring than the jewelry were her eyes, which reminded Sterling of Chai-Rhee’s words: wealth alone couldn’t have produced the intimidation; it has to be power.
“I’m glad to see you, Your Majesty.” Harold was already standing aside to greet her.
“Call me Geneva, please.” She smiled and sat down at the table.
His face darkening, Sterling left his chair and headed to the exit.
“Hey!” Harold caught him up from behind. “If you leave, the money’s gone!”
Sterling stopped but didn’t turn around. “She could’ve asked if she wanted to come. I don’t like women being so manipulative.”
“How many times have I told you?” Harold’s tone was half-teasing, half-serious. “A successful strategist should be able to manipulate many situations. If life is a battle, win it!”
Sterling followed Harold back and sat in his chair. He picked up the menu and studied it carefully, avoiding eye contact with Geneva, but he could tell his reaction had only made her more satisfactory.
“It’s not a coincidence, Geneva,” he heard his father saying. “Your father was actually one of the sponsors when I founded the school.”
“How much did he give you?” she sounded surprised.
The Starlight Fortress Page 13
