by Rick Partlow
“I don’t have a few days,” Logan insisted, packing as he spoke, jamming clothes into the duffle bag he’d pulled out of a closet. “The message from the Jeuta commander, Alvar, said I had to be on Tarpeia in a month, which isn’t giving me much of a fudge factor. I have to leave now.”
There was a time lapse between Logan’s words and Terrin’s reaction on the screen, just the few seconds it took the electromagnetic signals to pass the distance between them. Terrin shook his head in obvious frustration when he did hear them.
“Damn it,” he hissed. “The project could be finished soon.”
“I know, but we’ll make do with what we have. No other choice.”
“It could just be a trap, you know,” Terrin warned, as if Logan hadn’t thought of it already. “They could kill her whether you show up or not.”
“It’s definitely a trap. Alvar didn’t even try to deny the whole purpose of this was to kill me. Which is why I need you and Franny to stay here and keep working.”
“I should be with you.” Terrin’s jaw set, mulish. “I should be there for you and Katy.”
“Keep working on what you’re doing. It’s the best thing you can do for us.”
Logan shoved a spare pair of boots into the bag before zipping it up and turning back to the video pick-up.
“I don’t know, Terry,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe this Shupert guy is right. Maybe I’m just not cut out to be the Guardian. I know in my head that I should be able to put the needs of Sparta ahead of my family, that I’m being selfish, but I just don’t give a shit. I’m not going to let Katy die when there’s even a slight chance we can save her.”
“Fuck the Council,” Terrin said, surprising Logan with both the sentiment and the language. “And fuck Anders and anyone else who’s trying to tell you that you’re being selfish. This is Katy we’re talking about. You do what you have to do, brother. Just try to live through it.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised, then frowned as he checked the time in the corner of the screen. “I have to get to the port. Got a shuttle waiting on me. Give my best to Franny.”
He touched a control and the screen went dark. He hadn’t, he realized, told his brother he loved him.
I should have. Yeah, he knows, maybe more now than ever before, but it might have been the last chance I have.
He was about to give in to the nagging worry and call his brother back when the screen came to life again, on its own without his consent. Only this time, the face stretched across his wall in all its imperfect glory was that of Donnell Anders.
Damn, that man has a big chin. It took up nearly half a meter of the screen, stubble and all.
“What is it, Donnell?” he asked, trying not to sound overly impatient. He knew he’d put the man in a hard place, and while he felt no remorse about the trials and tribulations of the Council, he did feel bad for Anders.
“Logan, you need to get the hell out of here.” The man’s face was a roadmap of desperation, drawn on a canvas the size of a wall, from the tight clench of his jaw to the tension lines in his forehead.
Logan felt the tension seeping into him and he shouldered the duffle bag, glancing around him with sudden paranoia.
“What’s going on?”
“The Council has made its decision,” Anders told him, voice grim. “They’ve appointed a new Guardian.”
“That was fast.” Logan tried to sound casual, unconcerned despite the gone feeling in his gut. “What poor bastard did they sucker into replacing me?”
“Me.”
The declaration was made without any joy, without any satisfaction. Anders seemed miserable about it, in fact.
“That makes sense,” Logan admitted, forcing himself to think the situation through calmly, not to give into the disappointment and anger. He’d known this could happen the minute he’d announced his intent to go to Tarpeia. “You’re probably the best one for the job.”
“I haven’t said yes, yet. I was trying to delay them, but they’ve already contacted the Home Guard. They aren’t going to let you take the Shakak. It’s their position that the ship is Spartan military property and it shouldn’t be risked in a suicide mission into Jeuta territory.” He shifted in obvious discomfort. “I have to think they want to reserve it for use against Starkad.”
“Stupid bastards,” Logan murmured. He looked up sharply. “How much time do I have?”
“Minutes. I’ve taken the liberty of having the Guardian’s private shuttle prepped for takeoff. You can reach it through the emergency escape tunnel in your office.”
“You mean your office,” Logan pointed out.
“I didn’t want this, Logan, you have to believe me…”
If he were being completely honest, he would have admitted he did still have conflicted feelings about Anders and his action, but this could very well be the last time he spoke to the man. He grinned tightly.
“I know, Donnell. Thanks for the warning. And good luck.”
Logan shut the screen down, leaving it and the chambers of the Guardian behind him. Everything he wanted from this place fit into the duffle bag on his shoulder.
22
Going to visit the human again?”
Alvar hadn’t seen Praefectus Magnus lurking in the shadows of the corridor junction, wouldn’t have noticed her at all if she hadn’t spoken. For such a muscular and sturdy female, she was surprisingly stealthy.
He paused in the middle of the passage, considering whether he could get away with lying to her. But Kathren Margolis’ cell was the only thing down this way he would have any legitimate reason to visit.
“Would you believe I have an assignation with another female for copulation?” he ventured.
Magnus snorted a laugh.
“With some males, I might believe that. But not you, Alvar. You are too intelligent to allow your base impulses to rule you.” She moved out of the shadow and placed her hand flat on his chest. He responded with the same gesture and their foreheads touched briefly. “Why, though? Why do you spend so much time with the prisoner?”
“All knowledge of the enemy is useful,” he insisted. “I must be able to gauge how the Spartans will react once they discover their leader has been killed. Will they lash out recklessly, extending their lines into our territory, or will they withdraw into a shell and expose their outer systems to our strikes?”
“You think she will tell you these things willingly?” Magnus seemed skeptical, understandably so. Most Jeuta only saw live humans while in the process of killing them.
“When a human is alone, isolated,” he explained, “they long for someone to talk to, even if that person is the enemy. It’s part of their nature. She already sees me as something of an ally because I saved her from immediate death at Jouko’s hands.” He flexed his left arm demonstratively. The shoulder was still healing, but at least he could move it now. “I have also not lied to her in any obvious way. She knows exactly what I’m planning and why. This further encourages her to be honest with me, despite any inclination she might have to conceal the truth.”
“And this is a weakness of humans only?” she wondered. “You do not believe a Jeuta would behave so?”
“I do not believe he would ever have the opportunity,” he corrected her. “Humans both fear and loathe us too greatly to ever risk taking one of us prisoner.” He sniffed, a dismissive sound. “Besides, no Jeuta would ever let themselves be captured alive.”
“Be careful, my mate,” Magnus insisted. “What you consider wise precaution might be thought of by others in our number as a weakness.”
“Any who feel that way,” he told her, perhaps a bit cocksure after his victory, “can challenge me to a battle in the Pit.”
Magnus reacted with amusement, as he’d intended.
“Do not be long with your human toy,” she warned him. “I will not await you forever this night.”
She moved back into the shadows with the same lithe grace with which she’d exited them. Alvar watch
ed her fade from view before he proceeded along his original journey to the end of the corridor and the last of a line of sturdy, windowless, steel doors.
Kathren Margolis was standing against the wall by the time he’d pushed the door inward, the way she always reacted at the sound of the bolt being thrown. He supposed it was a prudent action on her part, though to him it still smacked of timidity and cowardice. What must it be like, he wondered, to be so much smaller and weaker than the enemy, so helpless and vulnerable?
“We have received a reply to our message,” he said, pushing the door shut behind him.
The precaution wasn’t so much against the possibility of her running, for there was nowhere for her to run to. Instead, it was to guard against loose lips among those Magnus had warned him about, the ones who would think speaking to the human a sign of weakness.
“Logan Brannigan is on his way and has agreed to our terms. He will come in one starship, in one shuttle, and exchange himself for you.”
The woman was trying hard not to show her emotions, trying to conceal her reaction from him, and she was getting better at it. He couldn’t tell if she was excited or scared, or perhaps both. She stepped away from the wall, approaching a few steps toward him, as if determined to prove she wasn’t too scared to face him.
“What do you think will happen if you succeed?” she asked. “Do you think just because you kill one man, that all of Sparta will just give up and roll over for you? Do you really think we’re that weak?”
“My plan doesn’t require you to be weak,” he said, “simply disorganized. Without a clear successor in play who can unite the people and the military behind them, the Spartan Dominion will not be able to muster a coherent reply to our actions. By the time your people are reacting to our first strike, we will be on to our third, and you’ll never catch up.”
The human was silent for a long moment, but when she spoke again, her tone was different, though Alvar couldn’t have explained how. Firmer, perhaps, more resolved.
“And what if you’re wrong about Logan? What if he doesn’t come alone? What if he decides he can’t trust your word, figures you’ll kill me no matter what? What if he brings a fleet with him to destroy you?”
“If he brings more ships than we can take on with a chance of success,” Alvar answered her honestly, not seeing any reason to lie, “then we’ll evacuate this base. We have enough ships here to take everyone, and enough time. The closest jump-point is several hours away at maximum boost, not even counting the time it would take for your ships to penetrate our static defenses.” He moved his arms and head in the Jeuta equivalent of a shrug. “Losing this base would be a blow, but not a fatal one. I would likely be challenged for leadership, perhaps multiple times, which would probably mean my death.” Another shrug, more philosophical. “But that’s the nature of the game, Kathren Margolis. Once you begin to play, you either keep winning or you die. At this level, there’s no way out.”
Gregor Mironov reminded Aaron Starkad of his father, and not in a good way. The looks were different, of course. Mironov had a broad, ruddy face with a wide nose and thick lips, while Victor Starkad had shared his son’s classic features. But the look, that was the same. The look down his nose at Aaron, as if even the Lord Prime of the Starkad Supremacy was beneath him, as if a man who could order worlds destroyed wouldn’t dare touch him.
And the worst part is, he’s right.
Mironov’s family was older than the Supremacy, older than the Empire. Republic Transport and Shipping, LLC, that was where they’d begun. No one called them RTS anymore, not since the Republic had gone the way of all flesh. Since the first emperors had sat on the purple throne, on through the Fall, and the Reconstruction Wars and four hundred years into a new age of humankind, they were simply Mironov. If you said “Mironov” in a conversation with the movers and shakers of any of the five Dominions, no one had to ask which Mironov you meant.
He wished he could have arranged for Mironov to meet the same end as had Victor Starkad, but there were a few inviolable rules even for the rulers of Dominions. One was, thou shalt not use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons against habitable worlds and an even more sacred one was, thou shalt not fuck with the First Families.
The Mironovs, the Watertons, the Lees, the Bolivars, the Chandras and a handful of others heeded no Dominion boundaries, paid no taxes, obeyed no regulations, because if any one of them decided not to do business with a Dominion government, it would suddenly find itself without BiPhase Carbide, or without laser focusing crystals or without the miniature fusion reactors or byomer cables needed to construct new mecha. Because no government owned those factories and no government controlled them.
There had been a few men and women in the last thousand years who had attempted to nationalize the production facilities within their domains, and they’d abruptly found themselves at war with others who didn’t want to allow those facilities to fall into the hands of a rival.
So, Aaron Starkad sat there and took it, just as he had when he’d been a teenager and his father had rebuked him for his fast living and propensity to steal away from the royal retinue to go bed some local girl or get drunk with his entourage of hangers-on.
“…and those are the feelings of my family on this matter, Lord Starkad,” Mironov finished up. The lecture had been mercifully brief, because Gregor Mironov, unlike Victor Starkad, wasn’t a vindictive man and had only come to Stavanger to deliver a message, not to rub Aaron’s nose in his own shit. “I thank you for your time.”
Starkad rose before Mironov could do it first, an instinctive move to save what little face he had left, and offered the older man a hand.
“It’s always a pleasure, Gregor,” he said with as much sincerity as he could gin up on short notice, shaking the meaty, leather glove of a hand. “Thank you for sharing your position with me, and I promise you, I will indeed take it into consideration in the days to come.”
It was a noncommittal answer, and one he could get away with for the moment as long as he did the right thing when the time came. Or, more accurately, what the First Families consider to be the right thing. For them.
He stood until Mironov had left the room and his guards had shut the door behind him, then he sank back into his chair and let the breath he’d been holding out in a whoosh. He let his head sink into the supporting framework of his fingers and closed his eyes.
And people wonder why I drink.
A knock on the door brought his head up and he frowned. He knew who it was immediately. If it had been anyone else, his aides would have buzzed him to let him know. Only one person had unfettered access to his office.
“Come in,” he said, running a hand through his hair and trying not to look as if he’d just had his metaphorical ass kicked.
Ruth Laurent looked somber, but then, it was hard to remember a time when she didn’t.
“You really need a vacation, Ruth,” he told her. “You’re going to be old before your time if you don’t let yourself have some fun, eventually.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be today, sir,” she said, pulling the door shut and taking a seat across from him.
He cocked an eyebrow. She was usually a stickler for decorum and wouldn’t sit down until he’d invited her.
“All right, out with it.”
“We’re receiving some troubling intelligence from Sparta.”
Starkad sighed and tapped his fingers against his desk.
“It had better not be more of this business with the Jeuta,” he warned her, “because I told you last time, I am not ready to commit our military to a joint operation with Sparta to invade the Jeuta homeworld, even if we can find it. I might send some troops to Revelation if you think it would assuage Logan, but…”
“Logan Brannigan isn’t the Guardian anymore,” she blurted, interrupting him, which was also something she never did.
“What?” He leaned forward into the desk, weight on his palms, the balls of his feet pressing down as if he were
about to pounce at the woman. He realized how he looked and tried to settle back. “Explain.”
“The Jeuta have his wife as a hostage on one of their regional bases at a place called Tarpeia.” She didn’t bother to take the time to activate his office projectors, just turned her tablet around to show him the star map. “They want him in exchange for her and he’s agreed. The Spartan Council decided they weren’t on board with the idea and they replaced him as Guardian before he’d even left the planet…they gave the job to General Donnell Anders.”
“Anders!” Aaron Starkad almost spat the name. “The man’s always been a fanatic, especially where we’re concerned.”
“I don’t trust him to keep the agreement we made with Brannigan,” she agreed. “I particularly don’t trust the faction of the Council who put him in power.”
“The last time we discussed this, I recall you mentioned two options in dealing with the problem. Are we back at option one, ignore the Jeuta threat to Sparta and use it to our advantage when the time comes?”
“You don’t sound as if it appeals to you anymore,” Laurent observed. “I’m somewhat surprised.”
Starkad snorted a humorless laugh.
“War is good for stories,” he allowed, “good for bragging and drinking and showing off scars, but peace is good for business. I have been…” He trailed off, not wanting to say he’d been pressured. Not that he was afraid to say it in front of Laurent, but more he was afraid to admit it to himself. “It has been strongly suggested to me by some business interests which shall remain unnamed that the wisest course of action for the Supremacy would be to capitalize on the new territories we seized from Clan Modi and hold back on any more military adventurism until things have a chance to stabilize.”
Laurent said nothing for a moment, still simply staring at him.
“Despite what you or anyone else might think,” Starkad assured her, “I am very aware that the Supremacy runs on money and resources, just like every other Dominion. And you can’t collect taxes from dead people.” He waved a hand in encouragement. “So, my Intelligence Chief, give me some intelligence. What should we do?”
