by Kal Spriggs
"Some of the artifacts he's bought are worth millions in any currency you want to name," Feliks said. "Which would suggest that he has a powerful backer."
Director Alicia Nix, head of the Federal Investigation Bureau, rose to her feet. "We've begun to suspect that Admiral Mannetti's financial and political backers have put their resources behind Reese Leone. While he's purchased several of these priceless artifacts... he's also had a number of military operations, ranging from simple robberies to a fleet interception of a convoy in the Epsilon Indi system."
"What's his end game?" Harris Penwaithe asked, his voice thoughtful.
"He's definitely motivated by a dislike of me," Lucius said, standing. "He's my sister's former husband," Alannis saw a number of people look at her, some with calculating expressions as they wondered what Reese had done and others with suspicion, as if she might somehow be backing him. "He's wanted by the FIB for a number of crimes. He seems to think that I'm behind most of it, that I engineered his fall."
Alicia Nix spoke, "I'll make the FIB general file available, but our profile suggests that he has a dangerous level of obsession along with an inability to recognize his own failures."
"Sounds like my ex-wife," one of the politicians in the front row said, to the chuckles of several others.
"If your ex-wife had access to weapons that could kill millions and a dangerous level of disconnection from the consequences of using those weapons, then maybe you’d be right Senator Tanori," Alicia Nix said.
Their chuckles died as they contemplated that.
"So, we know his motivation," Harris Penwaithe said, "but you haven't answered me about what his end game might be."
"We don't really know," Rory hedged. He held up hands as people began to mutter. "Okay, look, it's really complicated. But let me start with this," he activated the holoprojector and brought up an image of a floating station. "This is the Throne of Kopal Pesh," Rory said. As people nodded, "We all know it's the platform from which Empress Hycar manages her people. Some of the old Ghornath records we've looked into also call it an Enforcer Station. We know it was built by the Ghornath's Protectors."
He changed the projection to one of the Wastes of Argolim, with the debris of thousands of vessels. "Their Protectors used it for incredible destruction, destroying a massive fleet with no casualties of their own, projected across over ten light-years. The Ghornath sleepers have made claims that their Protectors could project such destruction across dozens of light years."
The room had gone quiet as they contemplated that. Particularly since the newest applicants to the United Colonies lay within the potential area of destruction.
"This," Rory said, switching the image, "is what humans have called the Temple of Light. It's one of the largest Illuari artifacts we've ever discovered."
It took Alannis a moment to understand what it was that she saw. Central to the display was a planet, with a thin atmosphere. A massive construct rose from its surface, bigger than any building could be, bigger than a mountain, hundreds of kilometers high and thousands of kilometers across. It rose off the planet's surface, a sharp, angular projection of stone, with millions of glowing lights and carved symbols the size of starships. From the very pinnacle there projected a column of light that extended above the planet, connecting it with a huge space platform. Her stomach sank as she recognized the shape of the platform. It might vary slightly in shape and overall design, but it looked as similar to the Throne of Kopal Pesh as to be unmistakable.
"You're saying," Harris Penwaithe asked, "that these Illuari, they were the Ghornath's Protectors?" His dark face seemed doubtful.
"I don't think we know enough yet to make that determination," Rory hedged. "But this platform? If it has the same capabilities as the Throne of Kopal Pesh..." he switched the image to a map of human space and then overlay a broad sphere, which contained all of the core colony worlds and substantial regions of Colonial Republic space and dozens of systems that had applied for or accepted membership within the United Colonies... to include Nova Roma.
"This," Rory said, "is what we would estimate the range of that station would be if someone could activate it."
The room had gone absolutely silent. "You asked me about pottery shards?" Rory said dismissively, "If someone could use this station freely against us, we'd be lucky if anyone could find so much as pottery shards left of the United Colonies."
***
"He's going to get me!" Crown Princess Kaylee Giovanni shouted in mock terror. She and her adopted sister, Patricia, jumped madly from chair to chair as Alannis's son, Anthony William, rushed after.
At four years old, she knew that he'd been upset that his two cousins had started school and he hadn't, but on their day off, he was making up for lost time. "You're it!" he shouted as he finally touched Patricia Stark. She blew a raspberry and jumped down on the ground, even as he raced away.
Alannis had given him his first datapad a few months earlier, so that he could practice his math and writing skills. It had limited functionality and was designed for education purposes, but her son had treasured it. Even now, she saw him take a break from playing to pull it out and tap at the screen. He's growing up so fast, she thought.
Alannis felt her heart melt a bit as she watched them play. It hardened as she contemplated her son's father. Reese Leone had tried to kidnap her less than a year earlier. His hired goons had murdered a fellow officer in front of her, so closely that she'd been spattered in blood and brain matter.
And now he's involved in... something, she thought, we don't even know the details, yet it could be dangerous enough to destroy everything we've worked so hard to build.
For her people's sakes, for her son's sake, she was going to stop him.
"Thinking deep thoughts?" Lucius asked from behind her. She looked up as he set a glass of wine in front of her, then took a seat next to her at the railing to watch the children at play.
"Yes, you could say that," Alannis replied. "Though to judge by the meeting, I'm not the only one with some thinking to do."
"Ah, Harris Penwaithe?" Lucius's smile was hard. "Yes, he's a problem that requires a great deal of thought." Lucius shook his head, "If the man were corrupt like Julian Newbauer, I could have taken care of him. Sooner or later, that type slips up and then we could exercise the judicial system and set a few more precedents on dealing with corrupt politicians. Unfortunately, for all of his ambition, Harris Penwaithe seems to be a man of principles." He took a sip of his wine. "He seems to think I'm a power-grasping authoritarian dictator, all evidence aside. Kate Bueller seems to treasure the man, as much of a pain in the ass as he is, because he 'keeps me honest.' I'd say the opposite, he tempts me to have some Marines kick in his door!"
Alannis snorted at that thought, though her amusement faded as she contemplated the sheer power that her brother did hold. In anyone else she'd met, it would have terrified her. He was the Emperor of the United Colonies, the leader of (at last count) thirty worlds, with the largest military in human space. Most of that military force was concentrated in the ships of the Dreyfus Fleet, particularly the Crusader and Paladin-class super-capital ships. Each of them mounted more firepower than ten dreadnoughts and could weather a volume of destruction that would eradicate an entire fleet.
To make matters worse, United Colonies Fleet personnel were loyal to him. They'd followed him into battle after hopeless battle and he'd led them to victory after victory. Her Academy instructors had forbade their students from doing battle analysis papers on her brother, since by most measures, defeat would have been nearly certain.
He might have taken a step back to play the statesman, but there was no question that Emperor Lucius Giovanni was a fighting man... or that he could easily step back into the role of commander if necessity required it.
It shouldn't surprise her that Lucius terrified a career politician like Harris Penwaithe. The old adage that power corrupted had proven more right than wrong throughout history.
B
eing both the Emperor of Nova Roma and the leader of the United Colonies made for some interesting changes for her brother. He couldn't show too much favoritism for one world over another. Nova Roma had been their home... but Faraday had been where he founded the United Colonies and they'd written it into the constitution that it would remain the capitol.
Even something as relatively simple as where he spent his time off had become a political event. Nova Roma had dozens of Imperial homes and hosted the Giovanni Estate, with the manor house in which they'd both grown up. I'm technically Baroness Giovanni now, Alannis reminded herself, as well as Princess Giovanni and Lieutenant Giovanni of the UCF... sooner or later I'll pick up too many titles myself.
Yet Faraday was the capitol. So while Lucius had plenty of residences to visit and stay at on Nova Roma... he didn't have a home on Faraday. Well, she thought, not until recently.
Technically he'd had an apartment in the officer's quarters complex here on Faraday. Since a group of would-be-terrorists had kidnapped his daughter from that complex, killing his nanny in the process, Lucius had taken security a bit more seriously.
That meant that he'd spent a lot of time at the Imperial Palace on Nova Roma. It had also been something of a political gesture she'd guess. Nova Roma was still recovering from their time under Chxor occupation. While the majority of the population had survived, millions of business leaders, politicians, members of the military, and virtually all of the nobility had been killed.
In some ways that had stirred things up and allowed for growth in areas that had been stagnant. In others, it had created instability and uncertainty which meant that most people wanted some visible sign of authority... and Lucius got to be that as their new, publicly-hailed Emperor.
Faraday, though, wanted their leader to have a place to stay near the capitol, so they'd commissioned architects and engineers to build their Imperial House. They'd also had an eye for defenses so the lovely grounds had good lines of fire and plenty of stand-off from any potential threats. The green grass lawns and flowering gardens in which Alannis's son and nieces played also hosted hidden guard posts and her eyes picked out the positions where retracted air defense turrets could rise to intercept inbound aircraft or missiles.
Those couldn't defend against a high speed kinetic round traveling at orbital velocities... but the numerous sensor platforms around the planet should pick up an attack like that with enough time to evacuate... or at least get them into one of the deep bunkers below the large house.
She liked the house itself. The architecture had been designed after the Giovanni Estate: tasteful gothic architecture with stone arches and a peaked roof. The entire Imperial House lay nestled against a weathered granite hill, with decorative turrets and broad windows that gave a plenty of pleasant views of the grounds and valley.
It looked pleasantly archaic, but the stone was just a facade for the armored structure underneath. The windows were made of crystoplast, an armored transparent material that was three times as tough as steel. Lucius had jokingly showed her the plans once, and she'd merely given him a grim nod. The tons of armor plating around the deep-buried bunkers below-ground wasn't just to protect her brother as Emperor. It was there to protect his daughter and adoptive daughter... and her own son. The deepest levels could protect against a three hundred megaton surface detonation and the layers of armor plating under the grounds were designed to deflect or defeat bunker-buster style attacks.
Combined with some of the... interesting technologies they'd recently developed and implemented in the Constellation and her sister ships, Alannis knew that the Imperial House was probably one of the best-defended facilities in human space.
"How are things going here at home?" Alannis asked.
"I haven't commissioned a secret police unit to start rounding up my opponents just yet, if that's what you're asking," Lucius said with a smirk. He sipped at his wine and sighed in contentment. "Long days, lots of wrangling, even more discussion. Backing private infrastructure improvements versus taxes to build up the Fleet, versus public improvements..." he shook his head, "You'd think that with how the Balor are still out there along with plenty of Chxor Empire loyalists who still want to eradicate humanity, people wouldn't forget that it was all falling apart only five years ago. Every bit of expenditure to the Fleet is a grinding battle over budgets."
Alannis sipped at her wine and nodded. There were threats aplenty out there. "What about our... mysterious attackers?" Alannis asked.
"We haven't learned much," Lucius replied, "but everyone is looking at their old records again. These people, whoever they are, have been taking advantage of how confused things have been since the fall of Amalgamated Worlds. Alicia Nix's pet theory is that they're somehow behind a lot of the factionalism."
"Have we learned anything more about what they might be?" Alannis asked. Unconsciously her gaze swept the grounds for threats. Seeing nothing within the secure grounds of the Imperial House, her eyes went out to the main road where she saw a delivery vehicle moving past one of the outer checkpoints.
"Well, they're opponents of the Ghornath and therefore us," Lucius replied. "We think we've connected two attacks against Nova Roma to them and a half-dozen other events that were attributed to random pirates or the Shadow Lords... and most of those tie directly back to Illuari artifacts."
"Shit," Alannis said as she contemplated it. "Do you think they're trying to prevent someone from using them?"
"Or else trying to keep them for themselves," Lucius said with a sigh. "Given that they tried to board the Enforcer Station with you and Empress Hycar aboard... who knows?"
"Yeah," Alannis said and she couldn't repress a shiver as she flashed back to the gunfire and death in the corridors of the ancient alien structure. She'd let a platoon of Marines to hold that corridor and not one of them had come out unscathed... and eight of her Marines had died there. And the only DNA they recovered from our attackers was human, she thought, remembering the slick-black alien armor their attackers had worn.
"Well, if we're going after Reese, they'll be involved for certain," Alannis said. The meeting had dissolved after Rory's revelations, so she hadn't had a chance to learn if they'd uncovered any more about Reese's location.
"No doubt," Lucius said. He nodded in the direction of the playing children, "you know, young Anthony's has asked about his father several times in the past few months."
Alannis's stomach sank. The wine suddenly tasted sour. She carefully set the glass down, even as her eyes sought out her son. She saw him, his little backpack on his shoulders as he ran over to sit under a tree away from the others. "What did you tell him?" Her son had pulled out his datapad and she saw him tap at the screen, playing one of the educational games she'd downloaded for him.
"That you need to talk to him about it," Lucius replied. "Honestly, I thought you had when you got back from the Ghornath's Sacred Stars."
"I meant to," Alannis said. She had spent more time with her son. In her leave time over the past few days, she'd taken him on walks, spent hours with him... But how do you tell your son that his father is a murderer... but that he wouldn't have existed without Reese illegally hacking my medical implant. It wasn't a situation that she could even begin to get a handle on... much less try to explain to a four year old.
"Perhaps you should do so before he learns from someone else," her brother said gently.
Alannis let out a tight breath, "I'll talk with him."
She drained the wine glass and set it down on the railing a bit more firmly than necessary. She saw her brother open his mouth to say something, but she turned and walked away before he could. She didn't like being nagged. It wasn't that she hadn't tried before... it was just that she hadn't managed to get the words out.
She remembered her own childhood, the whispers she'd heard and the rumors she'd dealt with. Her father had been a traitor who had attempted to usurp control of Nova Roma. Her peers had called him a monster... and she had lived in his shadow, all be
cause of things that had happened completely outside of her control.
She wanted to spare Anthony that. Her son would have to grow up soon enough, she didn't want to force him to do it too quickly.
He needs to know, she reminded herself.
She walked around the balcony and then down the broad stone steps. Anthony had just sat down under a tree and she saw him smile as he saw her. Her heart did a little flip-flop and she felt tears fill her eyes. He was impossibly cute. That smile struck her to her heart... right up until she recognized that smile as being so similar to Reese's. Damn me, she thought, I won't let him cast a shadow over this.
She blinked her eyes rapidly and looked away, even as she continued to walk towards her son. Her gaze settled on the delivery vehicle she'd seen earlier. Most such brought their deliveries at night, as both a security measure and as a way so as to be unobtrusive. They also used the side gate... but this one had somehow ended up at the front gate to the grounds.
As she watched, several Marines had converged on the suspicious truck.
Something was wrong, though. The driver should have been nervous, afraid to see so many armed figures converging on his position. From five hundred meters away, Alannis's eyes narrowed as she took the situation in, evaluating the truck's position, where it had been stopped, and how the Marine reaction team at the gate had already converged on the suspect vehicle.
The driver sat still, though, facing forward, hands visible on the wheel.
Too still, she realized, almost like he's a manikin or robot.
Her hand came up and she popped in her earbud even as she activated her comm, switching it to the security team's frequency, "Command, that truck is a trap, get your people--"
The explosives in the truck detonated.
***
It was a low yield device, Alannis realized. The shock wave rolled across the manicured landscaping even as she raced for her son. She dove the last few meters to cover him even as bits of rock and metal rained across the grounds.
