The Scarlet Empress

by Susan Grant

  The guards were new. She hadn’t seen them before. Nor had she seen anything like the hot meal they brought her on a tray. Salisbury steak—or something that resembled it—with mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas.

  The guards used a code to unlock the cell door. It slid aside, and they walked in. Bree stared at the tray of food, salivating. The other guard dropped a stack of clothing on her mattress: a prison-orange jumpsuit, slippers, and underwear. A change of clothes! As hungry as she was, she almost craved the feel of clean clothing even more.

  She narrowed her eyes at the guards. “What’s the catch, guys?”

  “It came to the supreme commander’s attention that there were inconsistencies in your care.”

  The supreme commander? As in “Ax”? Ty’s father?

  Was it an act of kindness, or were shifting politics to blame? Or, in this case, thank. “Inconsistencies, huh?” She rubbed a hand down one of her sore arms. “Is that what they call it?” They’d fixed her latest bruises, like they did her dislocated shoulders—twice. They kept breaking her and patching her up. How much more her body could endure, she wasn’t sure, and hoped they were.

  Incredibly, the guards turned to go without exacting any kind of payment. She went to the bars and called after them, “Tell the general thanks.”

  They kept walking. She couldn’t believe it. They were really going to leave her in peace to eat this glorious meal, her first real food in who knew how long?

  Immediately she stripped and changed into her new clothes. Swathed in crisp, clean-smelling fabric, she returned to her meal. At first, sitting on her bed to eat, she stared at the food. The simple fare was the treat of a lifetime. Deprivation had a way of making a person appreciate the smallest things. Anticipating what she knew would be the greatest culinary experience of her life so far, she buried the tines of her fork in the mashed potatoes.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Bree jumped back. The plastic fork flew out of her hands and clattered across the floor. She stared at her potatoes. “Did you say something?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. “No. It’s the drugs talking.”

  She retrieved her fork and took aim at the peas this time. “Just shut up and be eaten.”

  “I know you can hear me. I can hear you, Banzai Maguire.”

  Bree froze, her heart thumping. The transmission came from somewhere in the vicinity of her collar. It wasn’t a vegetable trying to get her attention. It was the Voice of Freedom.

  Chapter Seventeen

  General Armstrong strode up the front path to his residence. It was late, after midnight. Behind him a heli-jet lifted off from the expansive sweep of front lawn, scattering fall leaves that the groundskeeper had missed. Roosevelt, the family’s border collie, raced to the general, barking excitedly and letting the slumbering household know he had arrived home.

  Oddly without emotion, Ty watched his father approach. He was the only one in the household awake. How could he sleep? He’d spent the past week in a private hospital, while Bree was God knew where and in what condition. He couldn’t imagine crashing into anything but a fatigue-induced coma until he had her back safe and in his arms.

  General Armstrong bent over to ruffle the dog’s ears, amusedly accepting Roosevelt’s slobbering kisses. So much about the man was crisp, efficient. Cold. And then there were these touches of humanity—petting the family dog, kissing his wife, playing touch football with the young boy that Ty once was. Armstrong was like a puzzle where none of the pieces fit. They had once, perhaps, but something changed over time. Lately Ty had seen less of what made the general a man, and more of what made him a monster.

  His father threw open the front door and caught sight of Ty standing in the foyer. There the general halted, his gloved hand tightening on the doorknob. “Tyler.”

  “Father.”

  “You’re home, then.”

  “They released me this afternoon. I guess there are only so many scars you can heal with a derma-strip.”

  “I would have come to see you, Tyler, but—”

  “Visitors would have been too stressful, they told me. Your orders—or theirs, Father?”

  The general compressed his lips. “I’ve had a lot on my plate this past week. I’m certain you’re aware of why.”

  “Quite.”

  “You were on my mind, Ty. I called you—”

  “I didn’t take calls.”

  “So I gathered.”

  The men regarded each other in tense silence, both quick to hide any weakness, any vulnerability. Every muscle in Ty’s body was as taut as a stretched spring. If his father had tried to kill him, could the man actually stand there as if it hadn’t happened?

  Discomfort flickered in his father’s eyes. Belatedly becoming aware of the changed dynamic, Ty stepped aside to allow the older man past. He was taller than his father now, more muscular. He got the uncomfortable feeling that his father had just perceived him as a physical threat. A trace of embarrassment filtered through him with the realization. Yeah, he was angry as hell, and a hundred other variations on outrage and anguish, but beating the shit out of his old man was not, as yet, high up on his list of priorities. He wanted answers first.

  Ty watched his father put away his hat and coat, stripping off his gloves last of all. One of the most powerful—and hated—men on Earth taking off his outerwear just like any other parent who’d returned home after working late at the office. It added to the unfolding incongruity of the scene.

  Lean, chiseled, and without a single trace of softness, the general turned to Ty, hesitating. Strangely, he appeared weary, besieged; maybe a bit lost.

  Did he want to embrace his son? If he made the move to do so, would Ty reject him? That was what Ty guessed his father was thinking, and it was exactly the kind of discomfort and doubt he’d anticipated while waiting for his father to arrive home, waiting mysteriously without any guards to watch him, waiting as a free citizen and not under house arrest. He’d never expected to be welcomed home in this way, as if he’d done nothing wrong, as if he’d caused no major international incidents, had not chosen to protect a woman known as Banzai Maguire knowing full well her very existence could bring about the downfall of the nation he’d sworn to defend at all cost. At the very least, he’d expected the general would react with powerful disappointment at his actions—anger and shame. Instead, Ty saw only sorrow and determination battling for dominance in the man’s expression. The discrepancy put the fear of God in his bones. Fear for Bree, and what had happened to her.

  “Now that you’re here, we must talk,” his father said.

  “No shit.”

  The general’s cheek gave a small twitch. He’d never cared for swearing. Incredible that he was so proper, sticking firmly to a code of manners and good etiquette at home and in social situations. Considering what he’d accomplished over the course of a forty-five-year military career, it was a miracle that he’d maintained such standards, but there it was.

  Before Ty realized what was happening, the general had crossed the foyer and entered his library. Ty followed him and stopped in the doorway. The absurdity of the situation continued to soar. His father was acting almost normally. Ty was only one week back from the Indian Ocean. There should have been more shock, more emotion, but after showering and shaving, and a battery of medical tests, all Ty had to show for it was a suntan and the hole in his heart where Bree had been.

  It left him feeling disoriented, to say the least.

  Ty swallowed twice and walked into the library. As if it were any other evening, the general poured two glasses of scotch over ice. He lifted one to his mouth without offering Ty the other. That, it seemed, he’d have to retrieve for himself.

  Fine. He needed the drink, so he took it, taking a hefty swallow.

  “I must say, you have made things difficult for me, Tyler.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say? That I’ve made things difficult for you?” He couldn’t take another moment o
f this careful dancing around the issues. “You leave me to rot in Kyber’s dungeon, which I escape, and I nearly die evading an assassin who I can’t help but wonder whether he was sent there on your orders. And all you tell me when I get home is that we have to talk?”

  His father’s eyes were glacial. “Do you really think I would try to kill you? My own son?”

  Ty reached for his collar and tore through the buttons, one-handed. The shirt fell open, exposing the ugly scar below his collarbone. “What would you call this? A bad shot?”

  The general blanched. In all the years of living with the man, Ty didn’t remember ever once seeing him turn pale. “Ax” Armstrong had earned his nickname for his decisive, incisive, and often bloody strategies of fighting terrorism and keeping order in the UCE’s colonies. Some said he was a dove clothed in hawk’s armor, using the largest military in the world to further his personal vision of peace. Others claimed he was ruled by personal ambition, waiting for the right moment to oust President Beauchamp, in office since before Ty was born, and turn the UCE into a military dictatorship. Ty had long since decided that the less he knew about his sire the better. Now that had changed. He had to know more. He had to know everything.

  “It’s an exit wound.” Ty seethed. “Your assassin shot me in the back.” He took a mighty breath, trying to hold on to some semblance of calm. “At night,” he continued in a quiet, distinctly deadly tone, “as I lay in bed, holding the woman I love. The woman you wanted dead.”

  His father regarded him stiffly, lips pressed together. His pale eyes were as cold as ice.

  “And now you ‘want to talk.’ ” Ty emptied the leaded crystal glass of scotch and threw it into the fireplace, where it shattered explosively. He stormed to the library door, fully intending to leave. Yet he stopped, his breath ragged as he leaned an elbow against the doorjamb, his hand buried in his hair. “Did you or did you not order my assassination, Father, or designate me an unavoidable casualty? I have to know.”

  “I am guilty of many things, Tyler. Some that I regret. But I would never stoop so low as to send an assassin to hurt my own child.”

  Ty didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He doubted he had the wherewithal to speak. His insides felt shredded. It made it difficult to converse like a normal human being. He’d come home in emotional disrepair from many a long military mission, often with the horrors of war fresh in his mind, but never had it been like this. It was because of Bree, he knew. Without her, it was as if half of him were missing.

  And his father thought all they needed to do was talk. Christ. He dropped his hand and started to leave.

  “Tyler.”

  He halted, teeth clenched. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve placed you on administrative leave from your duties with your unit.”

  “So I hear. Why not go a step further and put me under house arrest?”

  “Because I trust you’ll have the wisdom to make the right choice in the days ahead.”

  “And what choice is that, sir?”

  “Your country, above all else.”

  “Country? For all I know, it’s not there anymore. You’ve kept me completely in the dark all week, blocked incoming calls, blocked me from accessing the Interweb.”

  “The Interweb has been pulled down.”

  “Pulled down. How?” He got over his shock at something he couldn’t fathom happening and narrowed his eyes. “When?”

  “Today. Too many images have come across the wires lately. Disturbing images. It’s not good for the country, Ty. And then there’s the matter of the Shadow Voice. Drastic measures were needed to silence it.”

  Drastic measures was an understatement. Ty couldn’t imagine the country without use of the Interweb. Everything would be thrown into crisis. Everything was in crisis. “You also blocked my use of the phone. You took away any means for me to communicate while I was in the hospital. I was in an information vacuum.”

  “It was for your own protection, Ty.”

  “Bullshit. What don’t you want me to know?”

  Ty recoiled at the it’s-going-to-hurt-but-the-UCE-has-no-choice expression on his father’s face. “Good God. You’re going to execute her. . . .”

  “Banzai Maguire committed a number of very serious crimes. She must be punished accordingly.”

  “She’s an innocent in all this. Essentially a pawn.”

  “I don’t believe she is,” the general said quietly. “She had ample opportunity to back away. That she did not is telling. She understands the choice she made, Tyler. In fact, today she declared her guilt publicly—”

  “Publicly?” Ty tried to imagine the circumstances but couldn’t.

  “Yes. At her sentencing.”

  “Don’t you think the public knows what a forced confession looks like?”

  “She gave it quite freely.”

  Had she? Had Bree capitulated? Ty knew what torture could do to a man. He prayed that wasn’t what forced Bree’s change of heart.

  “And now she must face the consequences of that decision,” his father finished.

  A chunk of ice lodged in Ty’s chest. “I won’t let it happen,” he said, looking up slowly. “I won’t let you kill her.”

  “Not me, son. Your country. The high court. The people’s will.”

  “The people’s will is for her to stay alive!”

  His father sipped his drink. “We shall see.”

  “Yes, Father. We shall see.”

  They regarded each other with an intensity that imparted upon the cozy library the atmosphere of a gorestrewn combat zone.

  When Ty spoke again, it was in a voice far more controlled. “I will do everything in my power to thwart you.”

  The general’s expression was just as cold. “And I will do everything in my power, which is considerably more than yours, Commander, to make sure that you do not.”

  And so the gauntlets were thrown.

  “Forget about the administrative leave.” Ty buttoned his shirt. “I’m resigning my commission. Effective now. I’ll let you handle the paperwork.”

  “Only fools let a fit of pique change the course of their lives.” Ty spun around at the sound of his mother’s voice. She stood in the foyer, clutching her robe around her. Her eyelids weren’t swollen from sleep but from tears. Never one to hide her emotions, she fairly thrummed with anger. Ty braced himself, having inherited her infamous temper. “You loved serving your country, Tyler. I never saw you happier than the day you joined up to fight in the war. Nor,” she added quietly, “your father.”

  She and the general exchanged a long look fraught with a thousand undercurrents, a thousand varied meanings, things to which only they, a long-married couple, were privy.

  Then his mother shifted her attention back to Ty. “You left medical school to become an officer. You had many a chance to return to school in the years since, and yet you didn’t. It means that you love being in the service. Don’t be so quick to give it all up because of a misunderstanding.”

  “A misunderstanding?” Ty choked out a laugh. “I think it’s gone a little beyond that.”

  “A woman’s love, then?”

  She was perceptive. He fought the urge to assure her that the seeds of what he’d become had been planted long before he’d met Bree face-to-face, long before he knew the woman of his fantasies would become the cornerstone of his existence, bringing true meaning to his life. “I am giving up my commission because my belief in our system of government no longer exists. Without utter faith in the UCE, I can’t call myself an officer of its military without putting those who serve with me at risk. I won’t do that to my men.”

  “You are still a citizen of the United Colonies of Earth,” his father reminded him.

  “No, sir. Not anymore. I, sir, am a New American.”

  I am not a Virginian but an American! The famous prerevolutionary statesman Patrick Henry’s impassioned declaration had never seemed more apropos.

  “Chico’s in town,” his father said.
“Perhaps it would do you some good to talk to him.”

  Ty couldn’t believe what he was hearing. As boys, he and Chico had grown up on a variety of military bases, their fathers both high-ranking officers. They’d joined up at the same time; both had had fast-track careers. He considered Chico, Juan Granados, a friend, but the man lived and breathed UCE policy, as Ty once had, and was by-the-book enough to be named commander of Fort Powell.

  Where Bree was likely being held prisoner.

  A startling sense of divine intervention burst in Ty’s mind. He made damn sure his father didn’t see his reaction. He’d pay a visit to Chico, no question. But it’d be with more than career counseling on his mind.

  Ty started to walk away, leaving his parents to stare after him, but thought better of it. Slowly he turned to face them, the couple who had given him life. “I don’t know what will happen,” he said quietly. “None of us do. But know that I love you,” he said, keeping his eyes pointedly on his mother’s to avoid the general’s hooded gaze. Yes, even you, Father.

  Only then did Ty stride away. He’d lost much in a week: his innocence, his faith in his country, and perhaps any chance at a future. But not his woman. No, not Bree. Ideologies aside and risk be damned, he was going to find her and free her. Something told him there wasn’t a minute to waste.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bree hunched over her cooling dinner, by all appearances whispering to her vegetables. “When are you going to get me out of here?”

  “I’m working on it,” the Voice replied.

  Bree bit off a sound of dismay. She’d begun to think of the Voice as all-powerful. Invincible. Now she couldn’t help picturing The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy discovered the wizard was really a little old man hiding behind scary props. “You’d better do something fast. Things aren’t looking so good.”