by PJ Strebor
“Indulge me, sir. Your name, your position and, most importantly, what you want.”
A tight smirk, perhaps hinting at respect, darted briefly onto his face. “Very well, Madam President.” If he was scared, as he should be, his voice did not betray him. “You may call me Saxon. I am an operative of the Imperial Pruessen Navy, Intelligence Division.” A low snarl filled the room. “What do I want? That’s simple. I want, within the hour, the unconditional surrender of Talgarno to the naval forces of the Pruessen Empire.”
The room erupted into pandemonium. Admiral Julien pulled his sidearm.
“Enough of this!” Sellassy screamed, causing the frantic noise to cease in an instant. “Admiral Julien, you will holster your weapon. Now!” She waited until everyone had regained their seats before continuing. “We will have order in this room or people will be sorry.”
The room fell silent.
“Now, Mister Saxon, what proof do you have that this device of yours will actually work?”
Saxon nodded slowly, then spoke into his comm mike. The president could not hear exactly what he said, but thought she heard the word spicer.
“Detonation on the surface,” the captain said, his face distorting with rage. “Half-kilotonne warhead, unusual radiation readings.” He consulted with the tech. “It’s a dirty bomb.”
Through the view-plate, a flash of light erupted from the eastern coast.
“Your prized archives are gone and the center of your largest city will be uninhabitable for the next thousand years.” With an inhuman calmness, he set his gaze on the president. “Do you want more proof?”
“No,” the president said, somehow maintaining eye contact with the Pruessen. “You have made your point, Saxon. Tell me, how did you manage to smuggle nuclear devices onto our world?”
“You are playing for time, madam,” Saxon said coldly. “You think, by delaying me, you will somehow discover a miraculous remedy to your current malady.” The swine smirked. “But no matter. As much as I respect the fighting qualities of your navy, your internal security is laughable. I was escorted to your planet aboard the destroyer Sledgehammer.” His smirk radiated an ugly confidence. “Now, back to business.”
Having moved closer to him, this time she heard him say, “Spicer, activate two.”
“Second device detected,” the captain said. The room fell silent in anticipation of dreadful news. “Blackmore on Henley.”
The birthplace of the prophet Emaonon. This creature had no shame. Sellassy fought back an overpowering urge to obliterate Saxon from existence.
“All right, Saxon, you’ve made your point. However, you must understand that, regardless of what you do to our world, we will never surrender.”
“Spicer, detonate two.”
“No,” she shouted, but too late.
“Second detonation. Half-kilotonne, same as before.” The captain’s voice had lost its hard edge.
“Give me what I want, madam.”
The beast could not properly be called human. A human would show some emotion.
“I can’t and I won’t.”
“Spicer, activate one.”
This time, a longer pause.
“Where?”
The blood had run from the captain’s face. “Holy Noranda.”
A collective gasp filled the room. Sellassy fell into her chair and held her face in her hands. The souls of seventy million Talgarnos rested on her next decision.
“Spicer—”
“No! No, don’t do it!” she shouted. Sellassy looked around the room for someone, anyone to wake her from this nightmare. “Someone, tell me what to do.”
Blank faces and lowered heads were her only reply. Her shoulders sagged. “Please, don’t destroy our futures.” She bit her lower lip, tasting blood. “Talgarno surrenders.”
The Pruessen swine had the good grace not to smile over his victory.
CHAPTER 14
Date: 20th January, 322 ASC.
Position: Beachport. Planet Corinth, in the Athenian core systems.
Status: Furlough.
Ellen Bernice Telford soared through the clear blue sky, an occasional puff of wind tossing her fine, brown hair. Her huge, grey eyes were alight with rapture and her mouth hung open as Nathan held her aloft, pitching and yawing the infant through the air. After a time, she made an assisted landing onto his waiting chest and remained there without a whimper, lulled by the sound of his beating heart. Reclining onto the blanket, he stroked her back, from the base of her spine to her tiny shoulder blades, rhythmically back and forth. The merest inkling of a contented sigh broke the silent communion between father and daughter.
Livy rested her head on his shoulder. Nathan and Ellen shared an understanding that transcended the norm. Yes, she was daddy’s girl, all right, but their connection went much deeper than that. Time would tell if Livy’s suspicions were well-founded.
Their first year as a married couple had been wonderful, despite the poor accommodations Monitor Corps meted out to its most junior officers. Ellen’s arrival had only increased their daily sense of wonderment. The one unshakable absolute in their lives would always be the depth of the emotional bond between them. It had struck them both with the force of a lightning bolt from their first meeting.
In two days’ time, this bliss would end and the family would report to his new posting. Then the lonely months awaiting his return while he went out on his boat to battle for Athens. He had certainly done a lot of battling during his final-year cruise aboard the monitor Truculent.
On his return from that danger-fraught mission, Nathan had said little about the incident. Most of the information she gleaned on the subject came from the news nets: “Athenian Naval midshipmen rescue kidnapped children from pirate warship”. What did her beloved have to say on the subject? “Nothing much happened. Pretty routine, really.”
Nathan had exercised such reticence with regard to the absolute truth since their first meeting on Kastoria six years ago. She had become accustomed to his reluctance to discuss certain matters, even with her. Considering how much life had taken from him, she could forgive his occasional circumspection.
Truculent had been another example of his protecting her from the truth. This time, he had returned from that “routine” patrol a changed man. Outwardly, to those who did not know him well, he remained the same quietly spoken, good-natured individual who had left the academy three months earlier. However, she could see the difference in him — and not only him. Moe and the other middies on that ill-fated voyage had been touched by the presence of death.
Livy had tried to draw Moe out about what had happened out on the frontier. She had been equally reticent and even more troubled by the experience than Nathan. They and the crew from Truculent had fought their way onto a fleeing pirate warship and rescued twenty-three kidnapped civilians who had been taken from the freighter Genevieve. Something had happened out in the coldness of space. Something so jarring, the two of them were forever marked by the experience.
Livy shook the unpleasant thought aside. Nathan had proven to be smart enough to take care of himself. As she knew from personal experience, he could kill without compunction if the circumstances warranted it. Besides, he had promised her to be careful. Yes, he’d be fine.
Livy glanced at Nathan and caught him staring at her in a way that melted her heart. A pleasing glow spread throughout her body as she cuddled into him. They needed no words between them after so long together. Livy knew in her heart that he loved her and would miss her when he went on patrol. Nathan could never bring himself to express such feelings, but Livy found contentment in the absolute certainty that he loved her.
“Don’t you two ever take a break?” Moe said.
“Envy is a terrible curse,” Nathan said.
Returning from the house with two bottles of wine tucked under her arm, Moe offered them to Nathan. “Swap you, Nate.”
No one called Nathan by that abbreviated name. No one but Moe Okuma. They had known each other si
nce they were kids, grown up together, joined the academy together and had gone on the Truculent’s eventful patrol together.
Nathan did not relinquish possession of his daughter lightly, but this was Moe, after all. Nathan carefully handed over their daughter. Moe could well qualify as the toughest woman Livy had ever met. She had mellowed over the years, but her upbringing on the colony world of Kastoria would always be part of her makeup. Even so, Moe took to the role of clucking nanny as if she had been born to it, fussing over their child with possessive adoration.
“Hello again, my beautiful girl,” Moe cooed to her.
Ellen seized Moe’s nose with her tiny hands on every possible occasion. In the universal language of babies, the gesture said she highly approved of her godmother.
The air split with the high whine of a landing boat on descent. Nathan sprang to his feet, his body tense, his eyes alert. Stepping from under the plocklar tree’s board canopy, he followed the small craft as it came to rest on the landing pad inside the walls of the Telford family home.
“Anyone expecting company?” Nathan’s tone sounded a warning that did not fit the tranquil scene. Neither of them knew. The Telford family home of Beachport rested on the high coastline well outside of the town of Praxis, and received few visitors. Still, they were on the Athenian core world of Corinth, not on a colony world that could be subject to attacks.
They stood in a tight group, watching as the landing boat hatch opened. A large, middle-aged man stepped from the craft. He had a spring in his step that would put many a younger man to shame. Livy, Moe and Nathan relaxed as soon as he turned around.
“Uncle Ben,” Livy yelled, waving her hands to attract his attention. He smiled and waved back while making his way up the incline to the picnic area.
Benjamin Thornby received approval from Nathan not shared by Livy’s father. Being from her mother’s side of her family helped matters. Nathan most certainly did not approve of her father, Magnus Marshal, the governor of Kastoria. Livy and her father had been estranged for years, and Uncle Ben had become closer to her than her own father’s cold emotions could ever allow.
“Olivia my dear,” he said, embracing her in a huge bear hug.
“What are you doing here, Uncle Ben?”
“Well, that’s a fine greeting, isn’t it?” He chuckled at his own implied witticism. “How are you, Nathan?” he said, shaking hands firmly.
“Never better, Ben.”
“Excellent. Are you keeping him out of mischief, Moe?”
“Never,” Moe said.
“And how is my beautiful grand-niece today?” he asked, poking his face into range of the infant. She grabbed his bulbous nose and gave it a tiny tweak. Moe had just gotten her hands on Ellen and would fight to the death before relinquishing possession.
“So what brings you to the Telford manor?” Livy asked.
“I was on my way out to Brandon on business and thought I would drop in and visit with my favorite niece and grand-niece.”
Nathan handed him a glass of freshly chilled riesling. “Thank you, my boy,” he said, taking a healthy sip and clucking his lips in approval. “Corinth Riesling, wonderful stuff. Not as good as the red I produce on my own vineyard, of course, but still quite refreshing.”
Livy often thought the words “larger than life” had been created for the sole purpose of describing her Uncle Ben. Back in the days when rebellion had not yet become fashionable, he broke with family tradition and went out to seek his own fortune rather than relying on the considerable influence of his family’s wealth to kick-start his career.
Nathan had known him since they first landed on Athens, five years ago. Ben doted on his niece but showed little regard for his brother-in-law, which put him in good stead with Nathan. The older brother of Livy’s mother, Finella, he had made a name for himself by the age of twenty-five. Now, at the ripe old age of forty-six, he had wealth to spare.
The group settled on the large rug under the broad canopy and continued to pick at the remains of the extensive picnic lunch. Ben, being a self-made man, did not stand on ceremony. He sampled food from everyone’s plate, making his usual judgment call on the quality of the product. Ben usually found it fine, but his dairy, ranch, or farm could not be matched.
“So, my boy, how is the restoration coming along?”
“Slowly.” Nathan took in the sprawling estate.
The residence of Beachport had been the home of the Telford clan since they had fled the north shortly after the end to second Franco-Pruessen war. Space traders by occupation, every member of the family had died during that terrible time when Nathan was a boy. He alone survived to continue the bloodline.
On his 21st birthday, Nathan was presented with his family’s legacy. The lawyers had held the estate documents until the prescribed date.
Two adults and a baby occupied a fraction of the estate which had been in steady decline for the last fifteen years, since Bellinda’s loss.
Now, Beachport was in the hands of the last of the Telford clan. While on leave, Nathan had done what he could to restore the crumbling façade, but lack of time and funds made the task an impossible mission. Besides, as he had said to Livy on one memorable occasion, “Unless you’re planning on having fifty kids, I don’t see the point of restoring the entire complex.” Still, Beachport remained as his only tangible link to a lost past, so Livy allowed him his more circumspect moments as he wandered the dusty corridors he had known as a small boy.
“We have a small part of the east wing that serves us nicely,” Nathan continued, “but I don’t know what to do about the rest.”
“I own a company that could have two hundred artisans on site by the end of the week,” Ben said. “This place could be brought back to new condition within a month. What do you say?”
Nathan’s sardonic smile said everything. They had discussed this topic before.
“You are family, Nathan,” Ben complained, “and if I can’t do something for family, then what kind of an uncle would I be?” Receiving the same lethargically stubborn smile gave him his answer. Benjamin Thornby had not achieved his high status by surrendering. “Don’t think of it as charity. Think of it as an investment in my family.”
“Spoken like the perpetual bachelor,” Moe said.
“Quite right. Quite right. I am a bachelor with no family of my own to care for. So I would feel a sense of familial fondness if I could help the only family I have.” Still Nathan said nothing. Ben sighed elaborately. “All right then, you can pay me back. A dollar a week for the rest of your life. What do you say? Hey?”
Finally Nathan broke into a quiet laugh and Moe joined in. “I accept…” —a grin came to Ben’s face— “…that you have the best interest of my family in mind. And for that I thank you. But we’re doing fine. So thanks, but no thanks.”
“Never in my life have I met a more stubborn negotiator than you, Nathan.” Ben took a sip of wine and chuckled. “I’ve never had so much trouble giving money away before, either. Must be getting old and losing my touch.”
“That’ll be the day,” Livy said.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you, my darling niece, to let me help you out? We could really have this place sparkling by the time Nathan gets back from patrol.”
Before Livy could decline, Nathan stiffened.
“How do you know I’m going on patrol?” Any trace of humor had disappeared from his tone.
Ben snorted, then did a double-take when he saw the hardness on Nathan’s face. “As I said, you are the only family I have. So I keep tabs on everything you do. And before you ask how I got a hold of classified naval information … don’t.” He tapped his nose and winked.
Nathan’s jaw hardened as he stared at Ben.
“The sun’s going down in an hour,” Livy said, breaking the spell, “so I think we should start heading inside now. Ben, give me a hand, would you?”
Nathan gave her a short smile, acknowledging how deftly she had defused a potentiall
y unpleasant situation. While she relieved an aggrieved Moe of Ellen and began tidying up, she thought again of the subdued change Nathan had exhibited when they returned to Beachport.
Nathan traversed a dichotomy of emotions regarding the old property. He had said he experienced a familial affection for the stone walls and never-ending hallways. Together with those warm memories of a more innocent time came the jolting reminder that this once-populous home would never again echo to the sound of scores of family members, engaged in those myriad activities that once engaged their time. Any memory of his lost family brought with it a pain he could never, would never, discuss with her. She had always suspected that somewhere in his past lurked a greater tragedy than even the loss of his family. Not surprisingly, he became markedly stiff-lipped whenever she broached the subject. There were times when he carried his pain on his sleeve, but instead of talking to her he held her close as if to draw on her strength and support. During her year on Kastoria, she had learned, firstly from Moe and then from personal experience, that his occasional reticence on certain subjects was part of his makeup.
Some memories were best left untouched. After all, the future beckoned.
CHAPTER 15
Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. Saint Francis of Assisi
Date: 4th February, 322 ASC.
Position: Sentinel Hector. Planet Thebes. Monitor Insolent, briefing room.
Status: In preparation for departure.
Captain Steven Bradman entered Insolent’s briefing room. His inspection of the boat had gone well, and everything looked to be on schedule for departure the following day. All was well with the world, his world, his boat. And yet the forthcoming meeting filled him with antipathy.
Bradman cast his mind back to the first time he had met Telford, nine years ago. A kid, just a lean, brown-skinned kid, with the innocent, grey eyes which masked an inner toughness. The lad had been through so much, suffered such inconceivable loss, and yet he had endured. More than endured, he had beaten the odds against his survival in such a way as to stagger the most conservative of statisticians.
