The Scarlet Empress

by Susan Grant

  The engine, with its futuristic supercharge, sounded otherwise normal to her experienced ears as she taxied toward the open hangar door. Kyber stood with Nikolai just outside, his face lifting to see her. Cam raised the shield on her helmet, extending her hand as if she could somehow touch him. “My exasperating, egotistical, handsome, generous, compassionate, and very sexy Prince Charming,” she said tenderly. “Remember that piece of my heart I told you about, the part I said was yours? I wanted to say, before I left, that I love you, Kyber. I love you with my whole heart.”

  In perfect synchronization, Kyber and Nikolai lifted their hands to their ear comms. She saw each man smile—smiles that were totally different. Nikolai’s was one of teasing pleasure directed at his boss. Kyber’s was one she’d remember for the rest of her life. Everything she needed to know was there for all to see in his face. She knew it reflected what he carried in his heart. Their relationship was new, but for one so young it had forever written all over it. It was said that wartime romances proceeded at an accelerated rate. She believed it.

  Cam snapped her sun visor back in place. Her oxygen mask went over her face next, making it impossible to tell whether she was a man or a woman. Fitting, she thought. A good soldier was a good soldier, regardless of body parts.

  By now she knew the men were jogging up to the tower. From there Kyber would keep in contact with her throughout the five-hour flight—five hours at an amazing supersonic speed, possible only with structural reinforcement and gas tanks filled with synthetic fuel. Up over the pole she’d fly, down through Canada and the Great Lakes before soaring toward the Eastern seaboard, where Washington, DC, waited—the real Washington, DC, not the futuristic fake designed by the UCE. And then she’d do her part in all this, and hope to heaven it worked.

  As she lined up on the center of the runway, miles of black pavement stretched before her. This was it. Hang on, Bree. Here I come. She took the throttle in her hand and pushed it forward. The engine wasn’t rumbling anymore; it was roaring. The instant she released the brakes, she was riding a rocket.

  Passing one hundred knots . . . one-fifty . . . rotation . . . lift off. She aimed the nose at the sky, and all she saw was blue. Throwing back her head with the joy of being in the air again, she whipped the throttle to the right and spun in a vertical roll, a victory roll, before turning on a dime and heading northeast.

  Seconds later, a horrible and sudden pain filled her skull, stealing her breath and almost her sight. She cried out softly. Her hand hit her helmet visor in her haste to hold her head.

  “Oh, God,” she panted. The pain spread, duller now, not as sharp, flowing down her neck and lodging in her jaw. It was like having someone pulling on all her molars while hammering nails into her brain.

  She raised her visor, sweat forming on her face.

  “Cam . . .” In her headset, Kyber was calling her. “You’ve veered off course.”

  She jumped, startled. She had changed heading and hadn’t realized it. Pay attention. She made a correction back to course, and hoped she had the wherewithal to keep it there.

  “Cam! What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Her tongue felt thick. Maybe it was because her mouth was so dry. “I feel . . . sick. Head hurts.” She blinked, trying to clear her blurry vision. “I’m dizzy, too.”

  Pain lanced through her skull and lodged behind her eyes. She wasn’t breathing ambient air but oxygen. Was the system contaminated? “What do you show for lifesupport status?”

  The radio was silent. It was quiet for so long she worried that it had malfunctioned. But when Kyber answered, she knew by the tone of his voice that something was wrong. Very wrong. “It’s not the oxygen, Cam.”

  “What then?”

  “The prox-beacon. You’re wearing one.”

  “Shit!” Her shock, anger, and fear imploded. “The beacon,” she gasped out. “I forgot all about it.” Dr. Park had implanted the thing when she arrived, but since she’d never left the city walls there had been no reason to remember the otherwise harmless microscopic computers.

  “Cam!”

  She realized Kyber had been shouting at her. “Can it kill me if I ignore it?” she gasped out.

  There was silence again. Sweating profusely, she lifted her visor and mopped her brow. “Can it?” she snapped.

  “Dr. Park says she doesn’t believe so.”

  Now that was a definitive answer.

  “But you need to come back around and land immediately.”

  “We’re out of time!”

  “You can’t fly like that for five hours.”

  Can’t I? she thought, gritting her teeth. If Bree had done time in Fort Powell, then sure as sugar Cam could fly a mission with a supersized hangover. She had to.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Armstrong’s army covered the horizon in three directions—everywhere but east, toward the sea. If the UCE Navy was out there, Bree had the feeling they were about to find out. Communication with rebel forces around Central confirmed that other, smaller armies were taking up positions in other Colony cities. Yet she knew the truth: when the slaughter came, it would happen here.

  Bree swallowed and stood straighter.

  “Look. There.” Ty grabbed her arm and pointed her in the direction of the rising sun. Driving along the beach toward the Capitol was a hulking, futuristic tank. A huge painted-on UCE flag, a white globe on a blue square in the upper left corner of a solid red field, left no doubts as to who owned it. Sand spewed out in its wake as the vehicle raced directly toward the Capitol.

  Bree heard the commands all around her: almost everyone with a gun or a missile was aiming it at the tank. Those who weren’t were keeping watch for any surprise attacks from the other directions.

  “That thing has the power to wipe out this entire building,” Ty explained.

  “The hatch is opening. Someone’s poking his head out—no . . . I can see him now from the waist up,” she observed, peering at the incongruous sight through her binoculars. “He’s not wearing any protective gear. And he’s waving a white flag.”

  Ty’s gaze spun back to the tank, his eyes narrowing in surprise.

  “Stand down, stand down,” went the calls all over the building as others saw the tank approach.

  “Is it a trick, I wonder?” Bree said, passing the binoculars to Ty.

  “Possibly.” His mouth thinned. “But in all previous engagements, combat and otherwise, my father has never used subterfuge as a shortcut to victory.”

  His father? Sure enough, now that the tank drove closer, she could see quite clearly that the man standing waist-high in the hatchway was Supreme Commander Aaron Armstrong. “What technique did he use to achieve victory?” She was almost afraid to ask.

  “Frontal assault with superior firepower.” He thought for a moment and said. “But who says we’re the ones he’s trying to kill?”

  Cam fought against blacking out by keeping her eyes on her instruments and her mind on the mission. She was coming over the North Pole. The most dangerous part of the trip loomed ahead as she crossed from Tri-Canadian airspace into the UCE’s.

  Her flight suit was soaked with sweat. She was hesitant to drink her water because she didn’t trust her stomach. There was something singularly unpleasant about barfing in the cockpit and then having an airsick bag ride shotgun with you for the next five hours.

  Kyber was obviously watching her vital signs. “Cam,” he said. Whenever she didn’t check in every five minutes, he’d call her. By the sound of his voice, he was devastated about forgetting he’d ordered the prox-beacon implanted.

  “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “Give me a status report.”

  “Same story: it hasn’t gotten worse, the pain. Tell Dr. Park it reaches one level and stays there.” And what a level. She felt horrible. “I think all the months of recovering in Mongolia with no drugs helped prepare me for this.”

  “It’s said that everything difficult that happens in life prepares
you for something else.”

  She winced at a particularly deep twinge at the base of her neck. “I wonder what this is preparing me for.”

  “Why, marriage to me, of course.”

  She laughed. “Ow!”

  “What is it?”

  “I laughed and it hurt like hell. No more jokes.”

  “Who said I was joking?”

  “Kyber!”

  “Sorry.”

  She knew he was only half-sorry. His relief at being able to engage her in conversation took precedence.

  The F-16’s threat warning system light illuminated. “What the hell?” Cam stiffened in her seat, her heart lurching. A swell of adrenaline drove her concentration into absolute focus.

  “What is it?” Kyber demanded.

  Her voice was calmer than she felt. “I’ve got an RAW—a radar alert warning. I thought y’all said traditional radar wasn’t used anymore.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Over Canada.”

  “That’s why—because of the plagues, some of the technology they use is backward.”

  “If they come after me, I’m in trouble.” Radar alone didn’t pose a threat. It was, though, a way of opponents’ taking aim. When she got close enough, they could lob stuff at her—bad stuff, like missiles.

  She mopped her brow. Her neck felt fused to her spine. If she craned her neck, she would likely knock herself out. “Missiles,” she muttered. “I don’t know how I’d fare flying evasive maneuvers.”

  “Outrun them.”

  “Of course,” she whispered. This was no ordinary F-16. “I’m going faster than any twenty-first-century weapon.” She was flying at Mach 3, in fact, nearly triple the speed of sound. If a twenty-second-century jet came after her, she couldn’t engage, though: a normal dogfight would rip her wings off, even with the structure shored up for this faster speed.

  To be safe, she picked up her speed even more.

  “Careful,” warned one of the royal engineers sitting with Kyber. “Don’t push it beyond where we know you can hold together structurally.”

  “Will do.” She tried to keep calm as she rode out of the range of the Tri-Canadian radar. Once clear, she realized that she was about to arrive in UCE airspace. And as soon as she did, she’d have a lot more than radar to worry about; she was sure of it.

  “Time to go down.” She pushed forward on the stick and headed for a lower altitude. By the time she reached the Atlantic seaboard, she was screaming over the water low enough to leave water spouts in her wake—and her head hurt so bad she could barely see. “I’ve got to try to make it,” she whispered to herself. “Bree needs me.”

  She doesn’t know you’re on the way.

  Cam managed a smile. She will soon.

  No air defenses stopped her as she entered enemy airspace. It made sense: the Viper was old and slow. Yet she couldn’t shake the strange feeling that someone had left the door wide open for her. Now all she had to hope was that it didn’t get slammed in her face as she reached her target.

  Ty couldn’t name the feelings gripping him as he watched his father approach. None of them, however, were good.

  He’d told Bree that he wasn’t sure what his father’s intentions were today. This could be the beginning of a grab for power. He’d always sensed that his father didn’t care for Beauchamp. Maybe the man had decided, now that the rebellion was begun in earnest, to embrace it. He’d offer to use this army, in fact the entire and far more efficient and deadly UCE forces, to aid the rebellion, hoping to gain favor and in the end power. Many had claimed over the years that “Ax” was ruled by personal ambition, waiting for the right moment to oust President Beauchamp and turn the UCE into a military dictatorship. Was this that moment?

  The tank rolled to a halt. The general disembarked.

  Bree grabbed a voice amplifier: “An assault on one of us is an assault on us all. . . .”

  Armstrong halted, looking up slowly. It was dead silent on the roof of the Capitol. No one spoke. He appeared to square his shoulders, as if he were frightened himself. In his other hand was a small device. A weapon? Ty lifted his binoculars to his eyes to better figure out what his old man was attempting to do.

  Along the scaffolding, the ex-SEALs and Special Forces soldiers aimed their weapons at the general. Any of them could take him out—and would have a good excuse to do so. Yet calm reigned. An almost eerie air of presentiment hung over the entire Capitol and the acres of marshland surrounding it, and especially in Ty’s hear.

  The general found Bree in the crowd. Holding her steely gaze, he brought his hand to his mouth and spoke, the device amplifying yet distorting his voice: “I am well aware of the toil and blood it will cost you to come to me, Banzai Maguire, but come to me you must. Hear my words; heed my call. I am waiting for you.”

  “Holy Mother of God,” Bree coughed out. “The Voice of Freedom is your father.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “I told you he was a he,” Ty muttered as they waited for the general to be escorted to the rooftop.

  “As far as I’m concerned, the Shadow Voice could have turned out to be the Easter bunny and I wouldn’t care at this point.”

  In truth, Ty shared Bree’s sentiments. The war was far from over. The UCE army still loomed on the horizon, and Beauchamp still held office. But no one could argue that they’d acquired a miraculous ally in General Armstrong.

  In his cold, efficient way, typical of the man when he was nervous, Ty knew, Ax marched to where Bree stood with Ty.

  Bree stepped forward to meet him. “What happened in Fort Powell? What did I say to the guard?

  “ ‘Don’t be afraid of death,’ ” he replied carefully. “ ‘Be afraid of the unlived life.’ A quotation of your greatgrandmother’s.”

  “Correct.” Bree let out a shaky breath. “Answer me this, sir: about my torture—did you authorize that?”

  “Never. Beauchamp’s people had control of you at first. I’d gotten you out of the Raft Cities, so he felt he wanted a piece of you. It was a bit of a power play between us, but I finally convinced him to let me take over your care. Remember your hot meal the night you spoke to the guard? That was when I took charge of your treatment. Though I am fully guilty of taking advantage of your condition once I learned of it. I made sure your trial was televised so all of Central could see the poor shape you were in.”

  “As the Voice of Freedom, how did you transmit . . . everywhere?”

  The man shrugged. “Simply by using the technology available to me in my position as top military leader. And no,” he said, looking at Ty. “Your mother didn’t know.”

  “What about the assassin?” Ty asked.

  His father’s eyes darkened. “Beauchamp sent him—I knew nothing of it!”

  “I worked with that soldier. Lopez was his name.” Even after all this time, Ty could hear the anguish the incident caused in his own heart.

  “The lure of power and money can change men.”

  “Not you, Father?”

  “I am only human. I want what’s best for this country. I’ve done many things, kept many secrets, and it’s all been in the name of freedom. I am tired, Ty. I would not mind walking away from this when all is done. If that’s what the people want of me.”

  Ty ran his hands through his hair as a thousand mental pictures flipped through his brain, and he took incidents that had happened with his father and saw them in this new light.

  “You had nothing to do with the prison security system failure?” Bree asked.

  Armstrong shook his head. His forehead creased. “That remains a mystery. Even the president blamed me.”

  “And Chico? Did you put me in touch with him intentionally?”

  “Yes. Glad you picked up on that. You were always a bright boy.” His father’s eyes twinkled with subtle humor.

  Chuckling, Ty let a sudden rush of emotion take hold of him. He moved forward and offered his hand to his father. Their grip was powerful, hinting at the love be
tween them. They weren’t quite ready for more than a handshake yet, however.

  “Now what, General?” Someone whom Ty recognized as a militia leader shouted. “Are your troops in on this, too?”

  To Ty’s dismay, his father’s face fell. “Now’s the time for us to see. I couldn’t reveal anything of myself until I knew I could do so here. As far as they know, I’m their general, loyal to the death to the UCE.”

  Ty saw Bree cast a wary glance to the army surrounding them on three sides.

  “I can also say with confidence that a majority would defect if given reason to do so. The only reason the soldiers have stayed with me is out of personal loyalty.”

  “Do you mean if you say the word, they’ll change sides?” Bree asked.

  The general exhaled. “There are no guarantees. As peacefully as we pray this situation ends, this is, in fact, war. While, yes, I believe many of the troops will fight for us and not Beauchamp’s UCE, there’s no guarantee any of them will in fact do so.”

  “But what do you think, father?” Ty asked. “What does your gut say?”

  “My gut says most are ours. And those on the fence, as soon as Beauchamp takes the reins, they will come over to our side.”

  Our side. Coming from his father, Ty thought the words had a nice ring.

  The general extended his hand to Bree. “Banzai Maguire,” he said with a blend of affection and admiration, “you should stand with me, so that when the images reach the far corners of this colony, this soon-to-be new nation, they will see us together as equals.”

  “I would be honored.”

  Bree stepped toward him, grasped his hand, and walked with the general to the edge of the roof. A soldier in the general’s path aimed a camera at them. Touching a small handheld screen and communicating directly with his army, Armstrong said, “My brave soldiers, I order you to stand down. Stand down. A peace treaty has been negotiated here today. A peace treaty, fate willing, for all time. There are two kinds of men in the UCE: those who yearn to be free, and those who are slaves. I offer today the chance at freedom for all who desire it. For those who don’t, know this: a new nation will soon be born, retaken from our past. It will be a glorious new future, but you will not be part of it.”