by Rick Partlow
“Damn,” Colonel Stone murmured, staring at the face of the Jeuta in the transmission projected on the conference room screen. “He looks like he just went ten rounds with a bull moose.”
Or a challenger in the Pit. Logan noted the cuts on the Jeuta male’s cheek and brow, the swelling of his jaw and the splint on his left arm. Looks like someone had a disagreement over policy. I wonder if he was the deputy or the commander.
“Have you two already watched this?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Stone told him. “We thought you’d want to be here.”
Donnell Anders looked to Logan for permission and he nodded. The general touched a button on the table and the Jeuta’s frozen image came to life.
“Logan Brannigan,” the Jeuta said, speaking in Basic without the aid of a translator, “my name is Alvar and I am the Primus….” He stopped himself, baring his teeth in what was the Jeuta equivalent of a smile. “I am the Legatus, what you would call the regional commander of the legions stationed at a place called Tarpeia. You may not know of this name, but it was once a human world, a moon of a gas giant used for mining by your Empire, seized by the Confederation in accordance with the Purpose, after we freed ourselves from servitude to our human slave-masters. I will send you the coordinates enclosed with this message.”
Logan leaned over the center table in the small conference room and hit the button to pause the message, looking over at Stone. The Intelligence officer nodded.
“The coordinates, along with the nearest jump-points, were attached to the message as a data file,” he confirmed.
Logan’s heart was thundering in his chest, his breath shortening. He knew what this could mean, and yet he was afraid to hit the control to play the rest of the message. His hand shook when he tried to touch the button. Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fingers into a fist and slammed it against the console.
“We have not met,” Alvar continued, “and yet I feel I know you. Your people on Revelation were willing to die in agony, willing to kill themselves and their comrades to avoid betraying you.”
Logan grabbed at the edge of the table, clutching it so hard the wood creaked, his knuckles white with rage he could barely contain. He wanted to run back to the containment cell and beat Kosti to death with his bare hands, as irrational and stupid as the idea was.
“I have heard about your defeat of the chieftain Hardrada and his band, and of your exploits fighting your own kind, and you have my respect as a warrior. That is something few humans can say. I also understand you, which is something few Jeuta could say. I have studied your kind for years, auditing the records we’ve recovered from your colonies, your ship, interrogating prisoners and reading transcripts of intercepts from your civilian communications relay ships.”
He moved and unadorned, nondescript grey walls moved behind him.
“Most of my people wouldn’t understand the concept of valuing the life of a mate or a child above their own. But I do. Which is why, out of respect for you, I am going to give you the chance to save the life of yours.”
The camera zoomed out and only Logan’s grip on the table kept him from keeling over backwards. It was Katy.
“Mithra’s mercy,” Anders gasped.
Logan couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Katy was disheveled, her hair longer than he remembered, tangled in knots, but otherwise she looked healthy and unharmed, and much more pregnant than the last time he’d seen her. His mind rebelled at the sight of her, convinced it was some kind of trick, some sort of twisted psychological warfare the Jeuta were waging against him.
“I’m all right, Logan,” she said and her voice ripped the scar tissue off his heart and left him bleeding and trembling with shock. “They haven’t hurt me.”
“It’s been difficult keeping her safe from my people,” Alvar told him, moving away from her. “They aren’t used to the concept of taking hostages, or of swapping them alive for someone more valuable. I learned both these things by studying humans and their political strategies. Which is why I am prepared to offer you the opportunity to exchange yourself for your wife and the child she carries. You will be allowed to enter the Tarpeia system with one starship. A set course is included with the data file I attached, and if the ship deviates from this course even a degree, it will be destroyed. If more than one human ship comes through the jump-point, your wife will be executed immediately, no excuses accepted.”
The Jeuta paced restlessly across the room, flashes of external light, ruddy and dim, coming through glimpses of windows behind him. The video pickup followed him, still zoomed in on his face and upper torso.
“Once the ship reaches high orbit, you will be allowed to launch one lander and one only. It will land where we indicate and if it strays from this flight plan, it will be destroyed and your wife, Kathren, will be executed. Your pilot will stay with the shuttle and you will come out alone. Assuming you’ve followed our instructions, your wife will be allowed to leave in your shuttle immediately.”
Alvar raised a hand expressively.
“I respect you too much to deceive you. My intention is that you will be executed. I will make it quick, that is all I can promise. But your wife will be safe, your child will be born and they will be allowed to leave our system. You may wonder why I place such importance in killing you, why I would go to all this trouble. The truth is, you are a symbol, and humans place such an inordinate psychological value on symbols. I mean to take away the symbol you’ve become, to destabilize your Dominion and then attack while it’s weak. Again, I attempt no deception. You are intelligent enough to decipher my motives on your own. And as I have come to know your reputation, and come to know Kathren, I don’t believe there is any way you will not come for her.”
He made a gesture Logan had come to recognize from Kosti, one of farewell.
“There is a timestamp on this message,” Alvar said. “You have one month from that date to present yourself on Tarpeia, or your wife will die. I shall see you in a month, Logan Brannigan.”
The message ended, freezing as it had started, on the image of the Jeuta legatus. Logan leaned against the table for support, not sure his legs would hold him. She was alive. Katy was alive.
“Sir…,” Colonel Stone began.
“Logan…,” Anders voice stepped over the other man’s, both of them tentative, almost pleading.
Logan ignored them, knowing what he had to do.
“Stone,” he snapped, legs firming up along with his spine, “send a copy of that message to my ‘link.”
He pushed away from the table and headed out of the room, back the way he’d come.
“Where are you going, Logan?” Anders asked, half in the conference room, half out in the hallway.
“Where the fuck do you think?” Logan snapped back at him over his shoulder. “I’m going to Tarpeia to get Katy back. And this time, no one’s going to talk me out of it.”
21
Sure, boss,” Kammy said, his broad, open face filling the holographic projection above Logan’s desk. “I can have the ship ready to go in maybe four hours if I kick things into high gear.”
He’d looked better with his dreadlocks. Without them, he seemed more ordinary, but he’d insisted when he took over from Donner Osceola that if he was going to be a captain, he had to look like one.
The sacrifices we make when we become leaders. Too many damned sacrifices.
“I have Val and his ready company loading up a drop-ship right now,” Logan told him. “They’ll be up there in a couple hours and I’ll be right behind them.” He paused, hesitant to ask. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing, Kammy?”
“It’s Katy, boss,” the big man said, shaking his head. “She’s been with us since before there was a Wholesale Slaughter. If you weren’t asking us to take you, I’d take the damn ship and go on my own.”
“Thanks.” A weight seemed to lift off his shoulders. Leave it to the big man to put things into perspective. “Get to work. I’ll se
e you soon.”
“He left orders not to be disturbed!” The shouted words travelled through even the noise-resistant lining of the heavy office door, the voice of his Ranger guard carrying loud and clear. “Sir…”
“We’re going in,” Donnell Anders replied, just as loud and insistent, and even more stubborn. “And if you don’t like it, you can damned well shoot me!”
Logan rose from the office chair, taking a moment to reflect on how comfortable it was, how the faint squeak of its movement reminded him of his father. He wondered if this would be his last time sitting in it.
“Goddammit, Logan,” Anders thundered, pounding through the door, his face as red as the background of the Spartan flag draped on the wall, “you can’t do this! You’re playing right into their hands and you know it!”
“That may be, Donnell,” he admitted, “but it’s what I have to do.”
“You told me you were going to wipe out the Jeuta,” Anders reminded him. “And this is the perfect time to do it! They’ll be waiting for you, gathered in one place, where a single nuke could take most of them out. If you feel you have to go personally, then take the fleet with you and make the bastards pay.”
“They’ll kill Katy if they detect more than one ship,” Logan reminded him, leaning against the front edge of the desk. It felt sturdy and solid, like it would outlast him the way it had outlived the last three Guardians. “I’m not sacrificing her just to get revenge on the Jeuta.”
“She’s dead anyway,” Anders insisted, anger robbing him of any sort of tact. Logan expected anger at the casual brutality of the comment, but instead he felt nothing. “They’re never going to let her go. It’s not the way the Jeuta operate and you know it! They’re inhuman and they think of us as nothing but cattle for the slaughter!”
“She’s my wife, Donnell. She’s carrying our child. If I didn’t do everything I could to save her, I wouldn’t be worthy of this office.” Logan was surprised at how calm he felt. He’d never been a phlegmatic person, given more to passion and anger, but he felt incredibly at peace with this decision.
“You are the Guardian of all of Sparta, not just your family.” The words were savage, berating. “Your father had to leave you, your brother, and mother to fight for Sparta, even though it meant losing his wife and nearly losing the two of you.”
And just like that, the peace was shattered. All it had taken was Anders shoving his mother’s death in his face, as if it was a cudgel he could use to brow-beat the younger man into submission.
“And look how well that turned out,” Logan snapped, finally losing patience with the general. “How many people died in the coup? How many died in the fight to depose Hale? My mother died, my father died, my best friend died fighting the Jeuta, Lyta died freeing General Constantine and now he’s dead along with most of the civilians and mercenaries I left on Revelation. How many people have to die before their lives become as important as the nebulous ‘state’ I’m supposed to be serving?”
“Begging your pardon, my lord.” The voice from the doorway surprised him, though he supposed it shouldn’t have. The Council was bound to hear about his plans, from Anders or Stone, or someone. Derek Shupert slipped through the partially open door in a motion reminiscent of a snake slithering between rocks.
“Yes, Councilor?” Logan tried to regain his composure, taking a deep breath before he continued. “What can I do for you?”
“Lord Guardian.” Shupert’s words were delivered with exaggerated care, as if he were afraid of setting Logan off again, “I came to speak to you about your plans to deal with the Jeuta and I couldn’t help but hear your conversation with General Anders. I know this is deeply personal for you and I can’t even begin to fathom how you feel right now, but I feel as a Councilor and as a longtime friend of your father’s, it’s my duty to be straight with you. If you do this, if you leave Sparta to go on a personal mission to rescue your wife…” He winced as if he was in physical pain. “Even if, by some miracle, you succeed and return with your life, the odds are great that the throne of the Guardian will not be waiting for you when you return. Can you live with that?”
Good question. Can I live with giving up everything I worked and fought for, everything my father wanted for me?
The answer to the question was a picture in his memory from the message Alvar had sent, a picture of his wife, carrying their child, waiting for him to come for her. He knew Katy, knew she’d be praying he wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t put himself at risk for her. And that was why he had to do it.
“I don’t see how I could live with myself if I didn’t,” Logan said. “I appreciate your honesty, but the Council will have to do what they see fit, just as I will.”
“Please, Logan.” Anders was pleading now, practically wringing his hands. “This is a mistake. This isn’t what your father would have wanted for you.”
“You’re probably right. But if you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to go speak to my brother before I leave.” He headed for the door, brushing past Shupert. The man used too much cologne. He didn’t trust anyone who tried that hard to conceal their real selves. “Close the door behind you when you leave, will you, Donnell?”
Donnell Anders leaned against what had once been Jaimie Brannigan’s desk and wondered where it had all gone wrong. There must have been a moment when things had begun falling apart, some key action or inaction that could have set everything right if only they’d known.
Was it his own decision to back Rhianna Hale’s plan to use Logan to assassinate Lord Starkad? Was it Jaimie Brannigan giving the approval to Logan’s scheme to disguise himself as a mercenary to go find Terminus? Or had it been even earlier, twenty years ago when Jaimie had decided to allow the relatives of Duncan Lambert who hadn’t been directly tied to the coup attempt to go free? Nicolai Constantine had been against it, had wanted Jaimie to have them all put to death, or exiled at the least. Jaimie had said no because it wasn’t what Margaret, his late wife, would have wanted.
Now, his son was throwing everything away in what was probably a suicide mission, and Anders wondered if it could all be traced back to that day.
“You know what we have to do, Donnell.”
Anders looked up sharply. So absorbed had he been with his thoughts, he hadn’t realized Shupert was still in the room, still standing beside the open door. The Councilor pushed it shut, and the gentle creak of the ancient, wooden door took on an ominous tone in Anders’ imagination.
“I am just an old soldier, Councilor,” he told the man. “I was never much of a general-staff politician before and I’m still not one now, so if you have something in mind, you’d best be clear and specific.”
“The Council wants you to be the Guardian, General Anders.” Shupert cocked his head at the officer. “Is that clear and specific enough for you?”
“Why me?” Anders wanted to know.
He realized with a twisting of his gut that he was temporizing rather than saying no and he wondered when he’d actually guessed what was going to happen. He’d been only half lying to Shupert. He wasn’t particularly good at playing politics, but he was an expert in knowing when he was being played.
“It was a tricky situation,” Shupert explained. “There’s been much discussion of it in private, ever since this business with the Jeuta popped up. Logan Brannigan’s emotional reaction, while quite understandable, was still concerning to us. A Guardian must be a stabilizing figure, not prone to such youthful passions.”
Anders barked a laugh.
“You surely aren’t describing Jaimie Brannigan then. Yet he was the Guardian for twenty years.”
“Until he wasn’t anymore. Some would argue part of the reason he’s not is his very open intention to make his son the Guardian after him. You asked why it should be you, and to that, I respond with another question. Who else could it be? Who else could unite the military, both the factions who supported Jaimie Brannigan and those who fought for Rhianna Hale, if not the man who saw past individual lo
yalties to the good of the Dominion of Sparta? Who else could the Council trust but such a man who was willing to work with a woman he despised on a personal level to protect our home from external threats?”
“I have already betrayed Logan’s trust once,” Anders said, not meeting the Councilor’s eyes. “I would not do such a thing twice, not when I have a choice.”
“You aren’t betraying him, General Anders,” Shupert insisted. “He will be replaced if he embarks on this foolish mission. The only question will be who replaces him. If it’s not you, it will be someone less suitable, someone whose appointment will cause division, perhaps even another civil war.”
“Why not just wait?” Anders snapped, spearing the man with a glare. “Why not give him the time he needs, see if he can bring back his wife alive before you write him off?”
“It doesn’t matter if he lives or dies,” the councilor said flatly. “What matters is his priorities. And, to a lesser extent, I have to admit….” The man shrugged. “It’s worse if he succeeds, for Sparta, for the future. He was ready enough to give up on the idea of passing the Guardianship on to his child when he didn’t believe he had one. If he has a legacy to hand down and a son or daughter to hand it to, then his mind may change.” He held up a hand to forestall Anders’ instinctive protest. “And it may not, of course, but should we take that chance now, at the beginning? Or should we act while we can?”
Shupert paced across the office, staring at the portrait of Jaimie Brannigan and his wife.
“And beside all that, his chances of returning are slim without the Shakak.” He met Anders’ eyes with a cold, grim expression. “And we are not going to let him take it.”
“I’m telling you, brother, you should wait. Give it just another few days.”
Terrin’s face was huge in the wall-sized screen in the Guardian’s personal quarters, every pore and stray hair and tiny scar revealed in its stunning definition. A frown dragged his delicate features downward and Logan was struck again by how much his brother looked like their mother.
