Schism of Blood and Stone (The Starfield Theory Book 1)

by Brian Frederico

  Filipov's eyes flicked back to LK who hadn't budged an inch. The twisted man's look meant he was sizing up his options and he just realized that the LK option was probably not one of his preferred outcomes. He's not as sure of himself as he thinks. He has a weakness!

  “What was your mission?” She asked.

  Filipov was silent.

  “I think that's a pretty key question,” Anna said. “Does Salena always send thugs into people's homes to do her dirty work?”

  Filipov narrowed his brow or tried to as the wounds he suffered made such action difficult. “This whole city belongs to House Teton-Sten. Salena can do as she pleases with it.”

  “Salena is no Archduchess.”

  “I don't see any challengers. The Sørensens attempted to sully the head of House Sten and put a one of their own on the throne.”

  “Her days will be numbered. Now again, what was your mission?”

  Filipov looked away. “You're a damn fool. Salena would have left you alone if only you hadn't meddled with Damien.”

  “Damien's an old friend,” she said flatly.

  “And much more than that, I think!” Filipov laughed.

  She hit him with more energy than she thought possible. “Pervert!”

  “Very few share the bed of Commonwealth royals. Concubines are one thing, but rarely does a royal actually have,” he paused, offering a sly smile, “illegitimate offspring.”

  Anna felt an icy hand grab her heart. He knew!

  Filipov raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, did I let that slip. Salena knows all about Rebecca. In fact, I'm sure she's dying to meet her niece. Then she'll kill you and the child. And that stupid bastard, too!” He yelled glaring at LK.

  Anna lashed out, striking Filipov so hard that the chair he was sitting in keeled over backwards, spilling the assassin on the floor. “You monster!”

  Filipov groaned, but didn't move. The trap-bindings had detected the sudden movement, lost all elasticity and tightened ferociously around his wrists. His arms were now locked behind his back and his feet curled up until his heels met his wrists. Filipov wouldn't be going anywhere until LK eased the bindings with a control. Until then, his muscles would ache and tendons would strain.

  Although the bindings had restricted his movement, his mouth was still free. “You know it's true. Damien only accomplished getting you killed. Salena will send Magnus after you. They'll try you as a traitor, as one of Damien's co-conspirators and she'll execute you.”

  Anna felt Filipov's blood drip from her clenched fist. “You won't live long enough to see it. I'll make sure of that.”

  She turned to leave the room. “Gag him,” she said to LK.

  Once she was outside the room, she went to wash the assassin's blood off her hands then she hurried upstairs to one of the booths and collapsed next to her daughter. Rebecca smiled at her and resumed coloring in her book. She was trying to be brave, Anna knew. Whenever she was nervous or afraid, she would busy herself with some mentally intensive activity, trying to ease her mind and find comfort in the work. She was amazing.

  Certainly better than me. That rat bastard got to me. I wanted to pump him for information and all he did was get inside my head and crush me, she thought dejectedly and sighed.

  A few men and women were playing poker at a table on the other side of the room. They were Weathermen as well, but they were new, not the men and women she had recruited when she ran the group over a decade ago. Apparently LK had done some house cleaning. They could be trusted, he said. It would have to do.

  LK appeared at their booth, but declined to sit. He looked at mother and daughter. “How's the Weather?” He asked, referring to the greeting used amongst the Weathermen.

  “Glum.”

  “Our guest is not happy,” he added.

  “Good,” Anna whispered.

  Rebecca put down her crayon and looked across at Anna. “Are the bad men going to come here, too?”

  Anna shook her head. “No, mommy made the bad men go away. They won't hurt you, I promise.”

  Rebecca smiled at that and seemed satisfied with the answer for now. She returned to her work. Of course the coloring books were too young for her now, but it was all she had in the car, left there from years ago along with a box of partially used crayons; most were missing altogether. Half of the book was filled with the work of a six-year-old that she had once praised only as a mother could. The new ones were done with concentrated effort and dark marks, more bold, mature and confident. She'd run out of horses, fairies and houses to color soon.

  “That's very nice, sweetie,” Anna said vacantly at the green horse.

  Rebecca nodded her thanks and picked a new color.

  LK indicated with his eyes that they should step away for a moment. Anna followed him a few paces from the booth.

  “Can I get you two anything? I could microwave something downstairs, but the cook's not in so it wouldn't be anything gourmet exactly,” he said.

  “No, no, we're fine. We don't want to be a bother.”

  LK had slipped into his role as a bar owner pretty quickly. It was quite a step back from whatever sort of intelligence work he used to do, but he didn't seem to mind. He never did explain what he had been doing or what he did to earn House Mason's ire. She knew he was escaping something, he certainly fled to the bottom of many bottles to try to hide from it since then, but he never spoke of it, not even when completely inebriated. But he took his responsibilities here seriously, it was a legitimate business, but LK made it a network center for the Weathermen spies and kept it hidden well.

  “We need to get her somewhere safe,” he started. “As much as you won't like to hear it, Salena probably did know what Filipov was up to and she'll want to recover him dead or alive as quickly as possible,” LK said quietly. “He's a liability to her. And Rebecca, if she is indeed Damien's daughter and I have no doubt that you are telling the truth, then she needs to be protected. She's valuable to Damien, to Salena, and to the Theorists.”

  “Don't forget, she is my daughter, too. My needs for her come first. She is not an object to be valued because of her future titles or roles.”

  LK nodded and raise his hands in apology. “I know, I know. She needs to be safe, and this is not the place for a ten-year-old regardless of who her parents are.”

  Anna shrugged. “But I don't know where to go. There's no way we can get her off planet. After Damien blasted out of here both Commonwealth and Azuren patrols are stopping ships and searching them. The whole planet is on lock down.”

  “I'm surprised you were even still here. I thought-”

  She silenced him angrily with a wave of her hand. “It wasn't supposed to work out this way.”

  LK cleared his throat. “I'm sure it wasn't intentional...”

  When Anna didn't elaborate, he continued. “The resistance movement will likely increase after Damien's stunt. There are still Sørensens and members of the Sten House Guard on Magdeborg. Smuggling activity is also going to pick up in the next few weeks as well.”

  Anna narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?”

  “It always happens,” LK said. “Whenever a tyrant takes power he will tighten his grip on the control mechanisms because he's afraid of the backlash. The Azuren learned this the hard way during the human uprising six thousand years ago. Since then they've altered their approach, remember? This is the Cyclical Power Hypothesis that argues that all human governments will behave like the first Azuren Empire. They fear their populations, therefore, they will seek to control them absolutely. As absolute power grows, so does resistance to it. Resistance leads to revolution and the process starts over again.”

  Anna pursed her lips. “I wish you wouldn't pretend like I don't know anything about Starfield Theory,” Anna snapped. “I got out of the business, but I didn't lose my mind, too. Don't you have some sort of equation for calculating our best options. I'm sure someone here has done a study on Salena.”

  LK shrugged. “That's for th
ose psychotic math people to figure out. I'm Praxis, I don't deal with numbers. In any case, we have done studies on Salena and she's unstable. She can't fit into equations because her irrationality causes unpredictable variables that screw it up every time. They predicted she'd have Damien arrested the second he stepped on Magdeborg. They predicted she'd send Magnus to the border to control the war with the Dominion. No one predicted she'd launch a coup to overthrow the Sørensens.”

  “I thought you weren't one of those psychotic math people?”

  LK rolled his eyes. “I'll get in touch with my contacts. The attack on the funeral has the city in an uproar. The checkpoints have increased, the patrols are everywhere. People are being detained and executed. You won't be able to move until everything calms down anyway. In the mean time, I think you two ought to make yourselves at home for now. We're safe enough and there are a few other Weathermen Theorists who might be able to help us if we need it. Our best bet is to get you to the resistance who might be able to get you off world.”

  “Is it true then? What they're fighting for? Damien was right about Peter's children?”

  “Yes. Although that was also something the Pedants failed to predict,” he said with some disgust.

  “Then the last thing Salena needs is the identification of more illegitimate royal children. Get us to the resistance as quickly as you can,” Anna said.

  They both glanced over at Rebecca who was still coloring away in her book, oblivious to the dire situation around her.

  “You do know that Damien tried to go back for you, right?” LK said quietly.

  “I wasn't sure.”

  “I went back after I got you two settled here. There was an unmarked car, two guys who were probably Conrad's men, but they were dead. He hasn't forgotten you,” he said with uncharacteristic empathy. “If I know anything about Lord Damien, it's that he doesn't leave things unfinished. He will come back. It's just a matter of keeping you two alive in the mean time.”

  Sir Aaron Mercer-Sten

  Knight Scion of House Mercer

  16 March, 23,423

  Farland, Goteborg, Magdeborg Commonwealth

  ______________

  “Damn it, I want those reserves in place now!” Aaron shouted through his comm. “They're on the run and I want to push them all the way back to their ships if we can.”

  He shoved the joysticks forward, forcing his Axen to advance. He kept his weapons active, lasers and autocannons picking at the retreating Dominion troops. He used the destrier's ax to clear trees and wrecked vehicles and destriers out of the way. They'd hit them hard and inflicted critical damage to House Bish's forces. One of their knights was dead and the surviving nobles were desperately putting militia units between them and the oncoming Commonwealth sections to slow them down.

  The Mercer sections under Sir Daxon Pride and Sir Jeffery Aldridge fought furiously, crushing the Dominion troops they'd run into. Aaron was careful to reign them in when they went too far, narrowing avoiding one trap or another. They wanted vengeance, and Aaron would not deny them, but he needed them alive.

  The rolling foothills and forests of Goteborg's main continent offered a tricky game of cat and mouse as the Dominion sections continued to fall back, picking at Commonwealth units as they exposed themselves. The hills and trees were breaking radar contacts, making it difficult to track the movements of friend and foe. As the Mercer sections and their allies advanced, Aaron was using reserve sections to plug holes when the main lines became split. The reserves were having trouble keeping up.

  In his field of view a House Bish destrier was urging a collection of vehicles to stand and fight. Aaron pressed forward, his SESE tattoos alive now that he was back at the controls. He felt a connection with his machine he hadn't felt in months, almost a year. It'd been that long, but it all came back to him in a flash.

  He lined up his crosshairs on the destrier and unloaded a full clip of ammunition into its chest. It ruined the destrier's red and yellow patched color scheme and tore huge gashes in its armor. It returned fire with a halfhearted laser beam and scoured armor from Aaron's legs. It was too distracted with the vehicles to concentrate on Aaron.

  Aaron smiled and pushed ahead. His Thresher missile obtained a lock on one of the tanks whose treads spun hopelessly in the mud. He fired. The missile arced up then directly into the top of the tank's turret. A huge fireball consumed the machine and it detonated, blowing debris into its neighbors. The destrier took its main gun in the left leg and stumbled, then went down. He lined his laser up with another lighter tank which was starting its reverse, its main gun barking uselessly against Aaron's thick armor. He dispatched it with another long pull from the laser. It seared into the engine and destroyed it in one fiery burst of energy.

  He approached the downed destrier, which had just extricated itself from the barrel. He leveled his weapons at it and hesitated. Normally honor require he demand the knight's surrender. But this knight had participated in the slaughter on Haberton. It bore the world on its chest along with the others Lord Morlan's army had conquered. Aaron adjusted his aim for the head and pulled the trigger. The cockpit exploded outward and the destrier sagged then collapsed onto its back.

  Enjoy Ithix. I hope you can swim, Aaron thought.

  He checked his battle map after making sure no other Bish units were in the area. The Dominion's House Madet was still on the right flank being harassed by Evers militia. They were not committing to the fight and, for a moment, Aaron wondered if they and House Bish were not cooperating. They seemed content to watch the Mercers pick apart House Bish. Such miscommunications and battlefield spats were not uncommon and he planned to take advantage of the situation. Sometimes it seemed fine to let old feuds be settled on the field.

  What disturbed him the most was the missing Pershing command section. So far it was only Houses Bish and Madet over here. Not a single destrier or vehicle was wearing Pershing colors.

  Reyna was hanging back, keeping a watchful eye on the rest of the Mercer section putting them in place as an efficient sergeant would. She would push his troops into battle, encouraging them and directing their fire. Despite her managerial approach, she also did not hesitate to take her fair share of shots at the fleeing Dominion troops. He'd ordered her to watch for Pershing as well.

  Aaron saw a wheeled vehicle move into his line of sight, abandoning the relative protection of the treeline. He immediately lined his autocannons on the vehicle's left side and pulled the triggers. Streams of shells dented and ruined the armor, punching through in some places. His autocannon clips ran dry and ceased firing while a new clip was loaded. One of his rounds touched off the vehicle's ammunition bins and detonated, a bright white flash as the crew and vehicle died.

  These are still just militia. They're keeping their heavy units back, which is either poor planning or purposeful. Knowing Pershing, probably the latter of the two. Damn Kristoffer for his stupidity. Pershing was out of the war and without him the Dominion was leaderless.

  Aaron ordered a stop to the advance, wary now of the potential trickery. His sections were beginning to string out and separate from the formation. Any further and they'd start losing cohesion altogether. House Madet might seize that opportunity to attack. He ordered a general hold up of the entire advance.

  Slowly, his sections stopped their forward progress and reformed. The lines adjusted to bring those sections back into the overall formation like raindrops sliding down a window. The power dispersion on a battlefield ebbs and flows. Part of being a good general is only being able to recognize how and why power is moving and being able to point it in the correct direction.

  They'd pushed the Dominion back this far. Their flanking attack had turned into a withdrawal far more quickly than it should have. It was time to see if they kept running or turned and organized another assault. Either way, Aaron was beginning to sense something was not right. And that usually means something isn't.

  Reyna's Thunder-class destrier halted by his side.
“I don't like the look of this,” she cautioned on a private band.

  Aaron nodded, even though she couldn't see the gesture. “I know. They've been giving ground too easily.”

  “Some of the techs were reporting Houses Bish and Madet were exchanging fire. I think there might be an internal issue,” she said. “We haven't had any scouting information in the last ten minutes. It's all old data.”

  “Really?” Aaron asked, though he did not need to hear it again. It wasn't unusual for houses from the same state to fight each other. Old rivalries and distrust ran deep. To see it on the battlefield under Lord Morlan personal command however shouldn't happen. “Wait a minute.”

  He switched channels back to command frequency. “Command, are you seeing this?”

  There was static, a long pause, then: “We have a bit of a problem here.”

  “Who is this? What's going on?”

  “It's Kristoffer.” There was fear in his voice.

  Aaron's eyes went wide. “Amrah damn it all, what's going on? Why aren't I getting scouting information?”

  There was a long pause, them a fumbling sound as he came on the line. “There was a strong push on our left flank. It collapsed. There are explosions outside, I think they're inside the perimeter. A lot of people here are dead. I'm the only one left in the command bunker.”

  Aaron's stomach bottomed out as he realized his mistake. Morlan Pershing wasn't here at all. He sent a Pershing unit disguised as his command unit then personally led the main thrust of the attack elsewhere. Pershing knew it was Aaron, not Damien, leading the defense. He knew Aaron would come out himself to battle him and doing so would leave the overall battle in the hands of a woman mad with the death of her own son. He'd been tricked and made a fool of. His cheeks burned in embarrassment.

  “Hold the line!” Aaron roared and wheeled his destrier around. “Get out of there if you have to, plug any hole with militia and hold!”