by Reg Franklin
Chris checked his readouts. Indeed the remnants of Stragdoc's armada were retreating into the docking bays of the Red Talon. It did not take much to guess what came next.
“Engines are heating up, I think they're running!”
“Okay boys and girls, hit the engines hard. Stragdoc wiped a town off the map and killed a lot of our buddies, no way he returns to the moon!” Chris announced just before being winged.
There was one enemy vessel who was not in a hurry to return to the Red Talon, and Victor Karman intended to make this squadron pay.
---
Jennifer staggered back to her captured vessel, no one paying attention as they scattered through the corridors.
Had this been worth it? The cost in human and Alphite lives, the destruction, and now the injury to Morsalis and her...his…
Tears fell freely from her eyes. On the one hand, the fetus had been innocent...but on the other hand, its elimination seemed to have put Paul on his heels, and combined with the reports that the main gun of this monstrosity had been irreparably damaged...didn't that make it worth it?
Did it?
Jennifer knew she would be contemplating that question the rest of her life. But who knew how long that could be?
She felt the deck vibrate under her feet as the engines thrummed to life. She stopped, let her mind loose, trying to determine where the dreadnaught was headed next.
-arrently the Empress was pregnant
-never seen him so mad
-what she was thinking in her condition
That last gave Jennifer pause. What had Callixta been thinking? Did she think she was invincible with her powers? She cast her mind loose again, trying to find the other woman.
-TWENTY-ONE! ZERO-EIGHT! FORTY-SIX POINT EIGHT! NEGATIVE EIGHTY-EIGHT! FIFTY-SEVEN! TWENTY-THREE! TWENTY-ONE! ZERO-EIGHT! FORT-
That barrage of numbers hurt. Jennifer gritted her teeth and pushed harder, trying to crack the barrier.
-she humiliated me again and again all I wanted was to kill her for my love was that so much to ask I really don't think so he hates her as much as I do and she tried to kill him she’s trying to kill him now isn't she she can't he’s too strong should have just shot her and been done with it but I wanted to rip out her heart she humiliated me tried to kill him I want her dead so very badl-
-ENJOYING YOURSELF?
Jennifer’s head snapped back as Paul invaded her mind with a psychic snarl.
-I WILL KILL YOU AND IT WILL BE SLOW. YOU WILL BEG TO DIE. YOU KILLED MY CHILD, AND BY WHATEVER GODS THERE ARE, I WILL KILL YOU AN INCH AT A TIME. YOU WILL NOT LEAVE THIS SHIP ALIVE, I PROMISE YOU!
Jennifer wrested her mind free of his grasp, and ran again for the hanger. Suddenly that seemingly random series of numbers made horrifying sense.
---
Paul Stragdoc, CEO of Psi-Omega Industries, self-declared Emperor of what he had foreseen as a great interstellar Empire, stood over the comatose body of his wife as explosions rocked the medical bay. It was crumbling around him. His dream, his vision, his mighty vessel.
He gently stroked her face as he contemplated where things had gone wrong. Should he have struck faster? Annihilated the Alliance commanders first? Or ensured that Safyo posed no further risk to him first?
Yes. That last. She was somehow responsible for this fiasco. Below him, Callixta had begun mumbling numbers again. Then he felt her presence in his wife's mind. Grabbing her psychic probe with his own mind, he promised death to her before she freed herself. Grabbing a communications device, he snarled over the address system. “There is an intruder heading for the hanger bays, take her down alive! If she dies...I’ll get over it.” Intruder alarms sounded across the vessel. Dalth’s face appeared on a comm screen.
“Sir, enemy ships are targeting our main engines. They haven't cracked the shielding yet, but it's only a matter of time!”
“And what should I do, Admiral?” Stragdoc snorted derisively. “March out and swat them aside?” The thought that he possibly could swat them aside never occurred to him.
He looked back at Callixta, dear Callixta, so loyal, so fragile, reciting the same sequence over and over as if it mattered…
On the other hand, did it matter? He listened again. Memorizing the numbers, he punched them into the computer. And he began to grin again. “Admiral, give me helm control.”
The Empire would live. Bless Calixta and her precognitive gifts.
---
“Who the hell is this guy?” Chris barrel-rolled to avoid another volley.
Tazer Two responded hesitantly. “Commander, you're not going to like this, but that ship has the same markings as the one that took down Admiral Hasegawa.”
“Then help me put this guy down!”
---
The odds were against Karman. He was outnumbered, outgunned. Moreover, it did not matter, as he homed in on his target, limited precognitive abilities telling him where to expect shots from. The downside was he could not use those same abilities to determine where his target would be.
No matter. Intercepted transmissions had told him that this was the highest-ranking pilot here. And he would die for daring to strike at his Emperor.
---
“Okay, seriously, someone kill this guy!” Chris shouted into his headset. He was a good pilot, but he had never seen someone dodge incoming fire like this guy. Chris knew that he could only weave, barrel roll, name your maneuver, so much. His opponent was too damn good.
“Boys, if I don't make it back,” Chris began through gritted teeth when his readouts suddenly stopped showing incoming fire.
On board his vessel, Karman pounded fruitlessly on his control board.
And sitting on board her own vessel, sweat dripping from exertion, Jennifer tightened her grip on Karman's vessel.
Chris saw “Ashpool’s” ship hovering there, and her strained voice came over the comm.
“St. George. You need to run. He's. Going. To. Activate his FTL drive. He will drag. You along. In his wake. Can pick you off. At leisure.”
Chris had no idea what the woman was doing to the enemy ship, but he trusted her. Although he was not entirely sure why. “All ships get as far away from the enemy as you can! Pull back now!”
Aboard her own vessel, Jennifer’s teeth were clenched so tight she worried they would break. The comm blinked. “This is Karman. You hurt the Empress. You will pay.”
He was fighting back, allowing his ship to rotate towards her, cannons spitting death. Jennifer's mental grip was strong enough to hold him; maybe she could give him a little push…
Karman was so intent on blasting her, he never realized that his ship was being pushed into the Red Talon’s engine wash, cooking him instantly.
Jennifer kicked in her engines just in time as the Red Talon simply vanished, followed by a blinding flash of light.
The war was over.
34.
The town of Black Rock, population ten thousand, was gone. Annihilated utterly by the orbital bombardment. There was no smoking crater; for Stragdoc's atomic displacement cannon simply reduced the place to ash. A particularly poetic reporter referred to the place as “a blasted heath”, and the name stuck for a time.
Until the Global Alliance selected the site to serve as a war memorial. Layers of earth were shoveled over the ashes of families, buildings, gardens, markers being placed over the approximate locations of the victims’ homes. Every building had a marker placed at its former lot, a message to an uncaring cosmos that these offices, schools, hotels, had held people, people whose lives had mattered to someone, somewhere.
At the center of this vast graveyard, a cenotaph was erected, recording the names of every pilot who had died fighting to prevent another massacre. One of the most prominent names was that of Lieutenant John Alex, Tazer Five.
At the dedication ceremony, newly appointed Admiral Christopher St. George spoke at length of Alex’s bravery, along with every single person who had died in defense of planetary freedom. As he
spoke, he spotted a veiled woman kneeling at the location of one of the markers.
Following his speech, he made his way there. “Ashpool?”
She nodded. “Tell me it was worth it.”
He sighed. “I can't. We couldn’t have surrendered. But...all these people.”
He read the marker, for a high school. “Tell me you didn’t have children here.”
“In nineteen ninety-eight,” she began. “A disturbed young man named Paul Stragdoc led a handful of fanatical followers to take the people of this school hostage in an insane attempt to show the world that he was best suited to lead. A love struck young woman eventually realized the horror he planned, knocked him unconscious, and evacuated everyone before the explosives Paul planted went off.”
Chris was thunderstruck.
“So the school was rebuilt, supposedly over the vaporized corpse of the man who tried to use it to rule the world. A symbol for freedom or some nonsense like that. Until he came back.”
Chris did not know what to say.
Ashpool got to her feet. “Congratulations on your promotion, Admiral. You deserve it.”
“I could use an advisor. He’s coming back eventually. We both know it.”
The woman smiled at him. “Thanks, but no. I...need some time alone. Besides, I rather want to look around out there. Big universe and all.”
Chris understood. “Just so long as you come back to tell me about it.”
Ashpool saluted him. “Count on it, Admiral.”
As she turned to leave, Chris had to ask, “What's your name, anyway? Your real name?”
Jennifer did not answer. She was thinking about a series of coordinates. And a star named Sigma Octantis.
And what she might find there.
Epilogue
It glided through space at sublight speed; they had run out of fuel for the FTL engine at the edge of the star system, but that was all right. It gave him time to survey his new domain. Telemetry had shown that the fourth planet might be habitable, but there was no rush. And if it were already inhabited, well, there was no Jennifer Safyo to interfere this time. He was born to conquer. To rule.
The children were key, of course. He had already determined which were the strongest, the most capable of joining his envisioned new force: Neuromancers. Elite psionic warriors that would be his spearhead.
Behind him, he heard Callixta stirring. She was staring at the passing worlds with wonder. “They're beautiful…,” she breathed.
“Several moons of that gas giant,” he pointed at a world cloaked in shades of purple “are habitable. Oxygen content is a little higher than we are used to, but fully breathable.”
She nodded. “How long before we go back?”
“Not until I have a fleet of mighty vessels capable of taking Earth and holding it.” His eyes narrowed. “No more than two hundred years, I promise you that.”
The fourth planet began to appear on screen, familiar in its blues, greens, and browns; different in the shape of its landmasses.
“And if they come after us first?”
Paul Stragdoc, the first Psi-Omegan Emperor grinned.
A grin that spoke volumes.
January 2016-June 2017
