Last of the Chosen (Spirit of Empire, Book One)

by Lawrence P White

  Jons was at a loss for words. He gave Reba a piercing stare; she responded with her dazzling smile.

  “And you’re a friend of the Queen?” he asked finally.

  “Leave Ellie out of this,” Reba demanded. “I stand on my own abilities.”

  “Who’s Ellie?”

  “Oh. Sorry. I mean leave the Queen out of this.”

  “I see . . .” Jons moved away to think. When he turned back, he spoke to Val. “We’re short-handed. Should we put her in Weapons?”

  “No, sir. She wants to be a starship pilot. I think she’s earned the right.”

  “We’re not running a school here, Lieutenant.”

  “But we are short-handed, and if you get your way with the Queen, if you convince her to change her mind about Centauri III, we’re months from help, sir, even if we survive returning to Gamma VI. There’s more to Reba that only the Queen can reveal, but sir, she’s definitely a player in all of this.”

  “Captain Jons,” Reba spoke up, “I have one further qualification. I must insist on your agreement that what I am about to tell you remain absolutely secret.”

  Jons sighed. “And what might that be? You have my agreement.”

  “The reason I can help if given a little training is that I’m immune to the Chessori mind weapon.” Jons stared at her in disbelief. So, too, did Val.

  “It’s true, sir. I think you can appreciate the value of that if you’re attacked by the Chessori when you return to Gamma VI.”

  “Are you certain of this, young lady?”

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “Very well.” He turned to Val. “Get her up to speed on the guns first. I’ve never seen it done before, but there’s probably some way to control all of them from the bridge. If she can get that figured out, give her full access, but don’t let her endanger the ship or the squadron.” He addressed Reba. “We’ll assign a rank of acting lieutenant since that was your previous rank on Earth. If you pass muster, we’ll make it permanent.”

  Reba’s grin was all the answer he needed. Val suddenly found himself pulled in too many directions again. He got Reba started on her training after instructing the AI how to proceed. He then spent quite a while reconfiguring the guns, only as a last ditch effort should it be needed. Reba would only need the basics. She could rely on the support of the AI to carry out her commands until she had time for more training.

  Then he brought the fighters aboard. Jons supervised that process from the landing bay while Val flew the cruiser. Jons was saddened to see the damage sustained by his fighters. It had been particularly bad for them, and clearly, several of them had fought external battles as well as the internal mutiny.

  Reba approached Val inside the net. “Captain, I don’t know how long it will take, but from what I know of these Chessori, I may be the only one functioning if they jump us on our return to Gamma VI. Is there any way you can tie the other ships to me so I can get us all out of there if necessary?”

  Val frowned. “We won’t be there long, and the odds are small that retreat becomes an issue, but I’d sure like to preserve what’s left of the squadron. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Setting up a control link to the other ships had never been done so far as Val knew, and the link itself was not his biggest problem. The captains of those ships resisted hard, and Val fully empathized with them – it was contrary to all their training to relinquish command to anyone else. Captain Jons had to get involved, and he threatened to get the Queen involved before he received the necessary agreements. Val ended up spending a lot of time with the Chief Engineer and a number of technical manuals, but the connections were made.

  Reba spent a week in training, a ridiculously short period of time, but she did not have to learn the ship, she only had to learn to fly it. If things broke, she would not be the one to fix them. Even if her new skills were called upon, her tasks would not be difficult. Val set things up so that all she had to do if the Chessori showed up was to continue ahead to a pre-programmed jump point and jump away.

  The Queen’s message started going out the moment they dropped from hyper, but two full squadrons of Empire ships and a dozen Chessori traders arrived moments later, and their positioning could not have been worse. They were right in front of the squadron, between Reba and the jump point chosen by Val. Jons cursed the luck of these Rebels and set Val to computing a new jump point immediately. The Chessori didn’t give him time.

  The moment the cicada sound started up, Reba and the Great Cats were the only crewmembers functioning within the whole squadron. She commanded all three AI’s, her own and the two aboard the frigates, to turn away from the pursuers and to bring all shields to maximum strength. The turn would not prevent the squadron from merging with the attackers, there was no way to do that, but it would give her a chance to compute a new jump point without barging straight into them. She set her AI to computing the jump while she went through the process of reconfiguring the guns of the cruiser to her command. The guns on the frigates were beyond her ability to control. Those two ships would be defenseless.

  She brought the two frigates in as close to her cruiser as she could without risking collision. The AI’s aboard those two ships would not have any difficulty keeping a tight formation. Her only focus was defense. She would reach the new jump point in thirteen minutes, but a lot could happen in thirteen minutes and she had to hit the jump point on the proper vector. There would be little opportunity for evasive action.

  The two Rebel cruisers and the dozen Chessori held well off to the side after her turn was complete, but the four frigates and twenty-four fighters did not. Soon, space around the three ships of her squadron swarmed with enemy ships.

  The attacking fighters were a problem, but not as serious a problem as the four frigates. It would take time for the smaller ships’ weapons to penetrate the heavy shielding of her squadron, but not so for the four frigates. She focused on them, letting the fighters swarm as they desired. Her squadron was soon engulfed.

  The Great Cats could not help her. The massive batteries on the cruiser could not be activated manually – it had to be done from within the net. Val’s program which allowed all guns on the cruiser to answer to Reba was put to the test. She couldn’t deviate from the assigned trajectory to the new jump point, but she could, perhaps, threaten the attacking frigates. She chose one at random and opened up with half her guns on that one ship, then chose another frigate for the remainder of her guns. Shields began glowing on the frigates, then failing, and they pulled back. She went after the other two with the same results. She would have liked to pursue and kill them, but her purpose was to save the squadron, not to kill the enemy.

  She was surprised at how quickly the frigates withdrew, but she soon found out why. Both cruisers were moving in on her, and the fighters were still swarming, still inflicting minor damage.

  The cruisers did not go for the frigates; they went for her. Within the first minute she lost two batteries, and one of the batteries blew a hole in the hull as it disintegrated. Her AI slammed doors shut in the affected area as Reba fought on. She brought half her guns to bear on the nearest cruiser, locked them in, then focused her remaining guns on the second cruiser. Both ships took hits, but she never found out if she’d done any significant damage. Her squadron had reached its jump point and she gave the command. They jumped.

  They had once again escaped a trap, but Reba was not done yet. She brought all ships to maximum speed as the enemy fleet appeared again. She didn’t give the Chessori time to use their mind weapon; she hit the jump command again, knowing they were in deep space and not likely to hit anything. As soon as her two frigates materialized beside her, she hit the jump command again. Val soon joined her on the net, though it was clearly a struggle for him. Her heart went out to him, sensing through the net the monumental effort needed by him to focus after suffering the effects of the mind weapon.

  “What’s the situation?” he demanded.

  “We’re free, but
they’re tracking us. I’m setting up a long jump that will give everyone a chance to recuperate, but they’ll be on us soon. You’re faster than me. Can you set it up?”

  Val set up the jump while Jons coordinated with the frigates. Minutes later, the Chessori showed up on their screens. Before the mind weapon appeared, Val ordered the jump executed. It was a long jump just as Reba had ordered.

  “They’ll be right behind us when we break out,” she said. “We had the same problem aboard Resolve. Mike and Jake found an emergency stop program that ended the jump early. If we can do that, we’ll lose them.”

  Val didn’t question, he just queried the AI, found the means, then had to confer with Jons. Communication between the two frigates was impossible during a jump. They would have to make one more jump after this one.

  “Give me coordinates where we can rendezvous,” Jons directed. “There’s no way we’re all going to come out of hyper together with this emergency stop mechanism. We’ll have to meet up later.”

  Val did his magic with the AI while Reba kept the guns ready. As soon as the jump ended, Jons issued orders to the two frigates, then they all jumped again. The emergency program was executed, and Beta IV dropped from hyper somewhere in deep space. They reached their rendezvous point two days later where they joined up with the two frigates. All three ships had sustained serious damage, but the plan set up by Val, Reba, and Jons had definitely saved them from annihilation.

  Jons had no further misgivings about her training. In fact, he relieved her of all other duties to concentrate on that training. She and Val spent hours together in the net, mind-linked the entire time, and Reba, for the first time in her life, found someone who was not intimidated by her in the slightest. By the time Mike was ready to come out of the tank, she had not yet had the opportunity to attempt a landing, but she had made a number of jumps with Val’s assistance and the ship’s version of George.

  Chapter Thirty-four: Struthers

  “You are joking,” Struthers said over the communicator as his skimmer carried him toward the Palace for an inspection.

  “No, Sire. We believe she escaped with the squadron, and we lost the signal from the tracker. We lost her,” Jirdn said.

  “Turn around!” he ordered his driver. “Back to my office.” Into the communicator he said, “Staff meeting in my office immediately, and get Juster back here, I don’t care how long it takes.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Struthers sat back in the seat fuming. This was bad, real bad. It had to be the cats. No one else had the willpower to overcome the scree. A sense of doom filled him. The last of the Chosen was free, she had a squadron, and he had no idea where she was.

  Would she go to Centauri III, he wondered? Or would she hole up somewhere and try to organize something? He needed Juster’s counsel, but he was months away. He’d have to resort to the hypercom again.

  Then his blood chilled. She had the hypercom, too, unless the communications chief on the cruiser had taken the time to destroy it. The sense of doom deepened.

  She probably needed repairs. He made a mental note to pass the names of the ships in her squadron to every ship repair facility in the Empire. It would take months, and it would be expensive, but it had to be done. He didn’t care about the ships, but the last of the Chosen had to be removed at whatever cost. All of his efforts would focus on finding her, no matter what it took.

  Who were her friends? She would have to seek help, and she would go to someone she knew. He had one name, Chandrajuski, but there were others. He would have to round them all up, and he would, regardless of the consequences. The Queen must be found.

  Something would have to be done about the cats as well. He paused, not sure what to do. The wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the Empire depended on the cats for protection. There would be repercussions if he tried to remove them. And if the cats started disappearing, their brothers would know and the rest would not be taken easily.

  Could he turn the gleasons onto them? Maybe. The cats and gleasons were ancient enemies. The gleasons had no concept of how to function within the Empire – they were only barely under control as it was – but if he turned them loose on Brodor, the home world of the cats, he could just forget about them and the cats for a while. And the gleasons would jump at the opportunity. Things had gotten so bad for them, locked up on their small world by the Empire, that they had taken to killing and eating their own kind. They were so desperate that the cost of bringing them on board had been a pittance, just the gift of an emerging world. They no longer had to feast on each other, and the rest of the Empire would quickly forget about that world.

  But it was time to put the gleasons to work. They might not function around others, but there were still things they could do. He would give some thought to Brodor. A gleam lit his eyes as he thought about the two ancient enemies locked together on the same planet. He toyed with the idea for a while but finally shook his head. His focus was the Queen, nothing else. The sectors would be on their own for a while as he concentrated his efforts on her. He would find her, and the line of Chosen would be no more. Brodor would be next in line. His hatred for the cats was only exceeded by his hatred for the Queen.

  Chapter Thirty-five: Mike’s Awakening

  Mike’s eyes flickered open to whiteness. He stared at the whiteness before him for a while before realizing it was a machine of some kind, and it encapsulated his body. Only his head was free. He couldn’t move.

  >Welcome back.<

  >Hi, Jake. What’s up?<

  >Not us, that’s for sure. Not much longer though. It’s been a long six weeks.<

  “Six weeks!” he grunted aloud. “Six weeks?” A cat’s head moved into view. “Otis?” he asked.

  “No,” came a gruff reply. “I’ll let him know you’re awake.”

  He and Jake conversed for a while, Jake complaining that it had been a long, boring time for him. He had enough control over Mike’s body to open his eyes, but speech was far too complicated for him without Mike’s help. He could hear, he could see, and he could feel, but he had not been able to interact with anyone. Jake was intimately familiar with Mike’s condition, having held him together until the medical staff took over, then taking the healing process far beyond that which Empire doctors could accomplish on their own.

  Mike was sickened when he remembered the Chessori and the blaster. >I guess I’ve lost the arm, huh?<

  >And part of your shoulder. Your new one is almost ready.<

  “What?” he yelled aloud.

  >Yup, brand new. It’ll be as good as the old one when I’m done with it. See, I told you there were benefits to having me around.<

  The cat momentarily reappeared in Mike’s view, then his head was smothered in Ellie’s embrace. When she stepped back and he could see again, it seemed she had aged. Had things changed between them, he wondered? Her smile was all the response he needed.

  “Hi, Princess,” he said.

  “Hi, yourself. You’ve been missed.”

  “That’s the best greeting you could give me.”

  Her eyes took on a mischievous twinkle. She simply mumbled, “Hmm.”

  They took him out of the tank two days later while he slept. When he awoke, he found Ellie sitting patiently in a chair beside his bed. “Hi, again. Don’t you have work to do?”

  “Always, but at the moment you’re my agenda. I have work for you. As your Queen, I command you to arise, Sir Michael.”

  “Ugh,” was his reply. “Besides, you’re my Princess.” That brought him a contented smile.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see Gamma VI. I know how much you were looking forward to setting foot on land,” she said.

  He turned inward for a time. When he looked back to her it was with a look of surprise. “You know what? It’s okay! I’m just glad to be alive. I feel like I’m starting a new life. We’ll find land one of these days. Until we do, I’m okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  He returned to duty, not that
there was much physical activity required of him. His life was awkward with only one useful arm. His new right arm, forced to grow through a combination of Empire medical technology and Jake’s personal interaction with his body, was wrapped across his chest and stomach, a useless dead weight. Jake promised him the arm would be identical to his old arm in a few more months. There was no pain or itching – Jake took care of that, too. The process of re-growth absorbed huge quantities of energy that could only be supplied by his body, so eating was essentially a continuous activity with lots of supplements added by the medical staff of the cruiser.

  Jake informed Mike that he had been busy in more ways than one. Reba was one of only two people in the Empire that was immune to the Chessori mind weapon, and the Empire needed to provide every safeguard it could to the two humans. In return, the Empire would, no doubt, place heavy demands on them. As a Knight, he had made a command decision. He had fissioned to create a new Rider for Reba. It had been a struggle to complete that task while helping Mike mend, but the new Rider was now assisting Jake to re-grow Mike’s arm and shoulder. It had been more than a fair trade-off. The shoulder was done, but the arm and hand needed more time. He had not been able to transfer the new Rider to Reba yet, but the Rider was agreeable and ready.

  Mike’s stomach felt queasy as he thought about what was going on inside the cast on his arm. He couldn’t feel a thing in there. There were no sensations from a hand or fingers, nor could he move anything. The vision he had of quivering flesh, tendons, and bones reminded him of something from a horror movie.

  >It’s not like that, Mike. Just let it be. We know what we’re doing.<

  >Can I meet the new Rider?<