Chain of Secrets

by Jaleta Clegg

  "Sir," a tinny voice spoke from the transmitter, "my orders are to destroy the entire building as soon as your signal is compromised."

  "Thank you, captain." Lowell pocketed the transmitter. "And just in case you were planning on keeping the transmitter and killing me, that isn't the signal he meant."

  Potokos and his armed contingent stayed frozen, weapons aimed at Lowell. Potokos' left eyelid twitched twice.

  "Citizen Prime. You didn't think I was naive enough to visit you all by myself with no backup, did you?" He waited, watching Potokos.

  Potokos finally jerked his head at the armed guards. "Leave us."

  Lowell waited, apparently at ease, while the guards backed out of the room. "Close the door," Lowell said as the last weapon moved beyond the doorway.

  Potokos nodded at one of the other men. He moved to shut the door while the Citizen Prime sat back down at the table.

  "Now that we're done posturing for each other," Lowell said, "perhaps we can accomplish something useful." He tapped the mem sheets in front of him. One blossomed with scrolling lists of statistics. Two others projected pictures that changed every few minutes to new shots, pictures of the unrest and police raids, pictures of the starving people of Tivor and the prison camps that passed for farms.

  "What is this?" Potokos spat.

  "Tivor is in trouble," Lowell said. "Food production is less than half of what is needed to sustain your population. More than a third of your people are either in the police force or leading uprisings. You have lost a good portion of your farmers to areas of the planet you have no way of reaching or controlling. In short, Citizen Prime, your government is driving Tivor to rebel. The tighter you clamp down on your people, the harder they are going to fight."

  "That is our affair, Admiral," Potokos spat at him.

  "It is now also the affair of the Patrol and the Empire," Lowell said flatly. "Either you control your people or the Patrol will do it for you."

  "Tivor is under control," Potokos said.

  "With your people starving and your outlying military posts rebelling?"

  Potokos pinched his mouth shut. One of his two sidekicks scrambled out of the room. Verifying Lowell's information, no doubt. So the rebellion of the military was a surprise to Potokos. Lowell wondered what else the man didn't know about his own planet.

  "Tivor must remain in the Empire," Lowell said, leaning forward through the projected pictures of the planet. "If you won't take action, the Patrol will. This is your last warning."

  Lowell stood and began gathering his papers, turning each sheet off as he picked it up.

  "What do you want us to do?" Potokos asked. He looked as if he were being forced to suck lemons.

  "Government reforms," Lowell said. "Enough freedom to repair your economy. The Empire will help with food shipments and equipment."

  "As they promised before?" Potokos shot at him. "Where was the food and help twenty years ago?"

  Lowell paused, a sheet of mem paper dangling from one hand. He raised one eyebrow. "The government of Tivor refused to accept the shipments. They denied the ships access to the port. Are you going to make the same stupid mistake, Citizen Prime?"

  "You lie!" Potokos shouted.

  "I authorized those shipments myself," Lowell said. "I was here with the ships when the government turned us away. Blame your own people for the food riots."

  "Get out," Potokos spat, his face twisted into a mask of rage. "Tivor does not want the Patrol here. We do not need your pity or your help."

  "Is that an official refusal?" Lowell asked.

  The other man came back in a hurry. He whispered something to Potokos. The Citizen Prime went white, his lips pinched so tight they disappeared.

  "Your presence is an affront," Potokos said to Lowell. "You have fifteen minutes to remove yourself from Tivoran soil. After that we will not hesitate to shoot on sight."

  "Last chance to change your mind, Citizen Prime," Lowell said as he picked up his last sheet.

  The two men behind Potokos exchanged worried looks. Dissension in the ranks, Lowell thought with sour satisfaction. Those closest to Potokos were not as committed as he was to succession from the Empire. A wedge, a possible opening, but it was too little, too late.

  "The Patrol is no longer welcome on Tivoran soil," Potokos said. "You have one week to evacuate your compound."

  "It's to be treason and war then?" Lowell asked, his voice ominously quiet.

  "Tivor will stand alone, as it always has," Potokos answered.

  "As you wish," Lowell said. He flicked a glance at the man behind Potokos. The man's eyes were wide, frightened by the implications of what Potokos had just done. Lowell wondered when and if the man would make contact. He took his papers and walked out of the room.

  He was trailed out of the building. He had an escort through the city, right to the gates of the Patrol compound. The armed guards following him took up positions at the gate. The message was clear.

  Commander Harouk waited just inside the doors. He eyed the guards with a worried frown. He glanced at Lowell. "What happened? Going alone was a mistake."

  "No," Lowell contradicted the other man. He was weary of it, all the plotting and counterplotting and secrets. At one time it had excited him, made him feel alive. Now it just made him tired. "Potokos would have found a different excuse. The only thing that will convince him otherwise is a full battle Fleet."

  Lowell ignored the guards out in the snow and wet and cold. He walked through the reception area, ignoring the worried looks Harouk's staff tried to hide from him. Harouk trailed him to the communications room.

  "What are you going to do now, Admiral?" Harouk asked.

  "Potokos gave me one week to evacuate the base," Lowell said as he sat at the console. He stared at the buttons in front of him. "How do I call the ship?" he finally asked.

  Harouk reached past him and pushed a series of buttons. The com beeped a standby message.

  "Evacuate?" Harouk asked. "Do you want to explain that?"

  Lowell glanced up at the Commander. He looked disheveled and very worried. "Tivor is in trouble."

  "I've known that for years," Harouk said. "Why did you ignore my messages and wait until now to act? You could have made a difference even just one year ago, but now—" He shrugged.

  "Because the Empire has bigger problems than Tivor."

  The captain of Lowell's ship, the Seeker, answered the com.

  "Send the message," Lowell ordered him.

  "Are you certain, sir?" the man asked.

  "You have your orders." Lowell flipped the com back off.

  "And what are my orders?" Harouk asked.

  "Start evacuating all nonessential personnel. We can send them to the Seeker and bring in ground troops. Although I'd rather do it very quietly."

  "You're going to abandon Tivor?"

  "Not yet," Lowell said. "They still have something I want." He stood up from the com unit. "Commander, Tivor is a lost cause. And has been for quite some time."

  "You're going to abandon them to anarchy?" Harouk sounded in pain.

  "I'm glad you care about them, but it isn't going to save them. I suspect they've already sold out to the Federation. Things won't be too bad here. At least after the initial blood purge happens."

  Harouk flinched.

  "There was nothing you could have done, Commander."

  "The Federation is nothing more than a group of pirates."

  "Not anymore. It's eating up the Empire. Half the Fringe is Federation territory now. And a good portion of the Frontier and even some of the Outer Worlds. Potokos was right."

  "Sir?" Harouk asked in confusion and surprise.

  "The Inner Worlds have alienated the rest of the Empire. And they're too blind to even notice."

  Harouk looked even more confused. Lowell patted his arm.

  "Never mind me, I've been doing this for too long. Just get your people organized and packed. I suspect things are going to get very ugly here very soon.
I don't want your people caught in the crossfire."

  Chapter 15

  I dreamed that Tayvis lay beside me. He put his arm around me, pulling me into his warmth. He whispered to me to hang on, to not give up. I woke up to find Jhon holding me. I shoved his arm away, shifting out where he couldn't reach me without moving. I didn't want him to comfort me. I wanted Tayvis. But Tayvis was dead. He'd never hold me again. I wanted to be cold, and alone. I huddled into the blanket, wiping tears from my face before they froze to ice.

  "Dace." Jhon crawled after me. The others watched, their faces betraying nothing. They were as cold and defeated as I was. The mountains held no hope. The promised freedom hadn't materialized.

  "Leave me alone," I said, hunching away from his reaching hand.

  "No. I care about you, Dace. I won't leave you."

  "Why?" I narrowed my eyes. He had no reason care about me. He didn't even know me.

  His outstretched hand hung between us. His eyes were so warm, so sincere, so concerned. But I remembered his coldness during the night, his ruthlessness at leaving others behind. Why not me?

  "Leave me alone," I repeated. I turned my back on him. After a moment I heard him shuffling back to the others.

  It was cold where I sat near the entrance to our shallow cave. Snowflakes drifted past, a sprinkling of white across my blanket. I stared at them, watching as their crystals melted slowly into beads of water.

  There were only two possibilities I could see. Either Jhon, for some reason of his own, really did care about me. Or someone had planted him with orders to stay close to me. The only people on the planet with that much power were the police and I didn't have to guess why they would want me. They still thought I was here to start a rebellion, that I had influence with the rebels. I didn't. I had nothing. No one trusted anyone, least of all me, the outsider. It didn't matter who my mother had been. Lowell was wrong. They didn't even want me for a figurehead. I was stranded on a world that would kill me. Fast or slow, it didn't matter. I was dead. Tivor had won.

  The gate wrenched open. I looked up, out of habit mostly. For once, I wasn't the least bit curious about what would happen. I just hoped I would die soon, a quick death. I was tired of pain.

  Ten of the ragged forest people, dressed in shades of grayish brown that blended into the rocks and bare trees, armed with bows and knives and blowguns, looked us over, like bad merchandise.

  "Get up," one of them said.

  I was tempted to stay sitting. It wouldn't have changed anything. I got tiredly to my feet with the others. We shuffled out of the cave.

  They took us up a steep trail. When we stumbled and fell, which was often, they just waited for us to find our feet again.

  We went over the ridge and climbed another. There was a trail at the bottom of that canyon. It was slightly easier walking. We stumbled less often.

  The sky overhead stayed gray and clouded, though the snow was intermittent. Tall trees surrounded the trail, their deep green needles whispered secretively when the breeze teased their branches. I clutched my blanket and kept walking, glad that I still had my boots. The cold wind tugged at my ragged skirt as I plodded up the trail.

  They stopped us in a flat meadow at the top of that canyon. Other canyons fed into this flat spot, a dozen or more. The mountains reared above us, tall and forbidding in their gray and white colors of winter. The breeze whipped through, a gust that tangled my hair and flattened my skirt against my legs.

  Our guides pulled out blindfolds. Jhon objected when they tried to tie one around his head. They merely shrugged and raised their weapons. The threat was obvious, submit to the blindfold or die. They didn't seem to really care which he chose. He gave in, letting them blind him with poor grace.

  I couldn't make myself care if I could see or not. The dream had woken memories of Tayvis. I didn't want them to just be dreams. I didn't want him gone. I closed my eyes on tears and let them tie the cloth over my eyes.

  Someone took my hand and led me away. The hand was warm and dry in mine, callused from hard labor. I trusted the hand to guide me, I had little other choice. I stumbled over something and the hand steadied me.

  There were whispered warnings as I walked. Turn here, step high, duck, words to guide me when the hands weren't enough. Other than that, it was silent. Not even birds called. I felt the brush of snow over my chin more than once. I didn't know if I was led away by myself or not. I heard nothing of the others.

  We stopped to rest several times. Hands helped me find a rock to sit on, hands offered me water to drink from a stale smelling bottle. I had no sense of time. I fully expected it to be evening, dark and cold, when I finally began to smell wood smoke and hear the sounds of people living.

  The hands guided me up a shallow stair and into a place that echoed. I heard wood under my feet, a floor. The hands stopped me, holding me still by touching my shoulders. I waited for a long moment. The blindfold was removed.

  I blinked at the sudden light. I was inside a crude log building lit by smoking lamps. A fire crackled in a fireplace at one end of the room. I shuddered with a momentary shiver of nerves. I blinked deliberately and turned away from the fire. It had no power to panic me anymore.

  The building held nine of us who had escaped the work farm, including Jhon. We stood in the middle of the plank floor. Other people watched us, their faces unreadable in the dim light as they perched on barrels and boxes around the edges of the room. The fire snapped. I jumped at the noise.

  As if it were a signal, a man stepped forward, clearing his throat. He paused in front of our ragged group, studying us one by one. He came to me last. His eyes were cold and hard as he looked down at me. I met his stare until he finally turned away, a slight frown on his face.

  "Welcome to Piedmont," he said, his voice anything but welcoming. "We have rules here. First of all, you will go where you are assigned. No argument, no questions. Prove yourselves and eventually you will be given the right to choose."

  I watched one of the men sag. He was the one who had talked the most feverishly about the promise of freedom in the mountains. His freedom was an illusion. I could almost feel disappointment rolling from him.

  "The other rules are simple," the man continued, ignoring the former prisoner's slow collapse to the floor. "You will not attempt to leave your assigned valley. You will not attempt to contact anyone. If you break these rules, you will die. Our lives depend on secrecy. You will do as you are told, or you will die. That is the law here. You earn the right to join us. The only way out is to die." He turned away from us, walking nonchalantly out the door. A gust of cold wind blew through the building.

  I was very tempted to join the man now sobbing on the floor in despair. Some stubborn bit of me wouldn't give in. I stayed on my feet.

  A man came out of the crowd, eyeing us as he sauntered around our pitiful group. He motioned to one of the men, a sturdy older man. He led the former prisoner away, out the door and into the late afternoon grayness.

  Others were chosen and led away, one by one. A couple chose Jhon. He started to protest being separated from me. The man cut him off with a sharp gesture. He turned to me.

  "You married to him?" he said, jerking his head at Jhon.

  I shook my head, denying any relationship. I deliberately didn't see the pleading look Jhon gave me. The couple led him away.

  The other woman was chosen, led away by a woman with flour on her chin and apron. I was almost jealous. I could learn to cook if it meant I would be warm.

  It was down to me and the sobbing man. A short woman hobbled out of the crowd, leaning heavily on a walking stick crudely carved from a knobbled branch. She eyed me up and down. She frowned, her face pinched in study. She lifted my chin in her hand, tilting my face to the light.

  "You remind me of someone," she said in a voice cracked with age and hard living. She dropped my chin, her manner changing. "You know how to work hard?" She lifted my hands. "You got calluses, but in the wrong places."

 
I sighed. I wasn't quite ready to die. As long as I breathed, I still had a chance of someday seeing Jasyn again. Thoughts of seeing her and Clark were about the only motivation I had to keep breathing.

  "I can work," I said.

  She looked sharply. "Your accent is different. Where do you come from?"

  I sensed the danger of answering honestly. There was danger in lying as well. I dodged as best I could. "Milaga, I grew up in the orphanage there."

  She nodded, turning away, dismissing my background. "No one will care. Your past won't matter much here, only what you can do now. Come on," she added, sniffing.

  She stumped her way out of the building. I followed.

  We were in a village tucked under the high branches of towering trees, hidden from sight. Smoke trailed from a dozen chimneys, a thin veil of bluish gray hung over the buildings. The roads were nothing more than dirt trails worn between the scattered buildings. A stream, mostly iced over, wandered through the middle.

  The old woman stumped her way along a track that led up a hill outside the village. I walked behind her along the narrow trail, too tired to talk. I could barely keep pace with her. She may have been old but she was as tough as old leather.

  Random thoughts wandered through my head, sometimes connecting, mostly not. I wondered what Lady Rina would have said about this old woman. Lady Rina was Jasyn's something great aunt, a rich eccentric old gypsy who had rescued us from trouble more than once. She'd died a while back, leaving us to inherit her widespread business interests. I'd respected her. I hadn't realized I'd actually learned to love her until after she was dead. Lady Rina couldn't help me now.

  The old woman waited for me at the top of a steep slope. I had stopped walking, lost in thought and weariness. She gestured impatiently. I scrambled up the slope.

  "What's your name?" she asked when I reached the top.

  "Dace," I answered before I could think differently.

  She cocked her head, her bushy eyebrows drawn down over suspicious eyes. "That isn't a Tivoran name."