Shades of Empire (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  Benjamin Napier slouched over the table, his broad shoulders hunched, masking his powerful build. Even with his hair completely gray and a patch over the empty socket where his left eye had been, he cut an imposing figure.

  Alexander’s mother was as tall his father, but considerably more slender. She had a fine-boned prettiness marred only by an ugly ragged scar that ran across her forehead. She always brushed her black bangs over the scar.

  Benjamin ate stolidly, his one eye staring fixedly at his plate. Alexander watched his father with apprehension, recognizing that he was in distress about something. His mother must know it, too, but she seemed convinced that it would be best to ignore it. She bustled around the room talking over all the things she needed to do that day.

  Alexander would have to leave soon to get to school on time. He had another two and a half years to go, and then he would spend his time helping his father instead of reading and doing sums, just as Junia now helped their mother.

  “Junia,” his mother was saying, “have you fed the chickens?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Junia said.

  “Marcella,” Benjamin said, his tone heavy with distress. “It has to be done today. She’s too old to take any chances. They could come any time.”

  Alexander’s mother dropped her spatula and turned her back to Alexander’s father. “They may not come for years and years.”

  “And they may come tomorrow,” Benjamin said, getting to his feet. “You know it as well as I do. It could happen.”

  Alexander was surprised to see that his mother looked near tears. He had seldom seen her cry.

  Marcella put her hands over her face and nodded once. “As soon as Alex leaves.”

  “He should know about this,” Benjamin said. “He might have to do it one day.”

  “No!” Marcella said. “Wait until he leaves.”

  His father glanced at Alexander, and then apparently, he decided to yield. “Very well.” He nodded at Alexander. “Get your things, Alex. It’s time to go to school.”

  Alexander looked from his mother’s rigid back to his father’s stern expression.

  “Yes, Father,” he said, reluctant to invite punishment by asking questions. He shot a glance at his sister and was surprised to see that she had turned pale. She looked almost ill, which was strange because she had seemed fine when he came into the room.

  Alexander pondered the problem as he trudged the five kilometers to school. His family’s farm was located a short distance from a small farming town in the middle of the Aquitaine, the heartland of Gaulle’s agricultural district.

  The fields around Alexander were planted mostly with garwheat, a hybrid of Terran wheat crossed with a local grain. Alexander strode along, only dimly aware of the beauty of the Aquitaine around him—the blue-violet arc of the sky, the waving fields of amber garwheat, the trilling call of the small rodents that lived in the hedges between the fields. Not even the rich smell of gray-green taira trees, their foliage laden with clusters of succulent seeds, tempted him to pay attention to his surroundings.

  A sudden thought sprang to mind, and Alexander slowed his steps. He and his friends were well aware of the ever present threat of press gangs. He was too young at present to worry about it, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before he would be old enough to be rated as fair game, should the Emperor’s soldiers come looking for recruits. He remembered something else, something no one liked to talk about. It made him wince when he thought about it.

  He stopped in his tracks and considered what to do. He was more than halfway to school; there was no way he could run home and then run back and still be on time. But he had to know.

  Resolutely, Alexander turned and headed for home. He ran as fast as he could go without getting quickly winded. He had to know.

  When he came in sight of his house, he slowed his pace and veered from following the road, to cut through the fields of garwheat, so that he approached from the rear of the house. He went up the back porch steps carefully, trying not to make any noise, and peered into the kitchen window.

  His father stood at the sink; it looked as if he were washing his hands. His mother and sister sat at the table, huddled close together side by side. Junia had her head down, almost as if she were cradling her face in her hands. Marcella held her, stroking Junia’s back and patting her shoulder as if she were hurt. Even from outside, Alexander could hear Junia sobbing pitifully.

  He opened the door, and his father turned abruptly. Alexander realized he was on his father’s blind side. Benjamin was always wary when anyone seemed to be sneaking up on him.

  When Alexander saw the pocket knife in his father’s hand, dread grew in his heart. “What’s happened?” he said without preamble.

  Benjamin Napier frowned angrily. “You’re supposed to be in school.”

  “I wanted to know what’s going on,” Alexander said.

  Junia lifted her head and turned her tear-stained face toward him. Alexander saw that although his mother had already closed the wound with a chemical bandage, a long ugly red cut ran across one side of his sister’s face; from the bridge of her nose diagonally across her cheek, something had cut a deep, ragged gash.

  Alexander felt a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. “You did it!” he accused his father. “You cut Junia!”

  “Yes.” Benjamin slid the reaming tool back into the knife and put the thing away in his pocket. “I cut her to make her safe. Pretty girls aren’t safe around here—not when they’re Junia’s age.”

  The truth of it didn’t make Alexander any less angry. The press gangs that came through every five or six years not only took healthy young boys for the Emperor’s army, they also took pretty girls to service the army—or possibly, rumor had it, for the Imperial harem. A few families, in an attempt to make their daughters unattractive to the press gangs, deliberately scarred the girls’ faces.

  Alexander swallowed hard and stared at his father.

  “Your grandfather did the same for your mother,” Benjamin said. “Pray God you don’t have to do it one day.”

  Junia jumped up from her chair and ran from her room, still weeping. Marcella went after her, and Alexander was left alone with his father.

  As soon as his wife and daughter were gone, Benjamin Napier seemed to sag, as if his body were suddenly too much of a burden for him to bear. His arms hung limply at his sides, and his shoulders drooped as if he were weighed down by some great weight. “Pray God it’ll be over some day.” And then he put his head in his hands and wept from his one eye, just as bitterly as Junia had wept from both of hers.

  • • •

  Alexander tossed back and forth on his bunk as the memories stirred in him. He hovered between sleep and wakefulness, not wanting to be awake and aware, but not able to stop the tide of memories that flooded his mind. It was all so long ago, and yet it was all so clear. Everything was there, every moment of his life, no matter how grim or how sad.

  He remembered the day he had found his father dead in the barn, already cold and stiff as he lay slumped over the sower. Alexander had called for his mother and sister to help him, but the moment he touched his father’s arm, he knew it was too late.

  Alexander could still see his mother’s face at the funeral. She had stood by the gravesite, dry-eyed but stone-faced beneath a cloudless violet sky, as if she were a statue in a garden instead of a living woman grieving for her husband. Only when Junia had wept had Marcella slackened her rigid posture enough to embrace her daughter.

  And then there was the late summer afternoon when Junia had come running into the barn, a look of sheer terror on her face.

  “Alex! Alex!”

  Alexander looked up from repairing the axle on the reaper.

  “What is it?”

  “Soldiers!” Junia blurted out. “There are soldiers coming. They’re landing in the south field behind the house!”

  His first thought was that the soldiers would ruin the crop. His second was that he and Junia must
get away quickly. “Does Mother know?”

  Junia nodded. “She sent me to find you. She’s hiding our things in the house, and she said we should run as fast as we can.”

  Alexander debated for less than a second. He grabbed Junia’s hand. “Let’s go for the trapdoor. Quickly!”

  They ran to the far corner of the barn and began to frantically sweep the straw away to reach the door of the hidden cellar.

  Alexander struggled to pull the heavy door open. His father had spent half a year’s income on the black market in Shugart to buy the off-world shielding that lined the hidey-hole and blocked its contents from scanning instruments. Finally, Alexander succeeding in lifting the door. With a grunt he directed Junia to climb down the ladder.

  “Hurry!” he added. He glanced around at the clear area around the trapdoor and realized they had a problem.

  Junia climbed rapidly down, jumped the last few steps, and then looked up at him. “Come on!”

  Alexander shook his head. “They’ll find this place quickly enough unless I put the straw back.”

  She started for the ladder again, and Alexander lowered the door most of the way closed.

  “No!” he said through the crack. “You stay there. I’ll find another place.”

  “But you can’t! You don’t have time.”

  “I’ll try, anyway,” Alexander said. “You have to stay there, Junia. Mother needs someone. If they take us both, she’ll be all alone.”

  “They won’t take me,” Junia protested, standing in the sliver of light that the narrow opening let in. “Not with this!” She touched the scar on her cheek.

  “You can’t be sure of that. Hush! I have to go.”

  He dropped the trapdoor into place and quickly heaped the straw back over it. Then he ran to the ladder that led to the loft, and climbed it as fast as he could.

  He could hear noises from outside—shouts and running footsteps—but he didn’t let himself listen to them. Instead, he made his way up to the loft window and climbed through it, feet first. He hung in the air for a moment, holding on to the window ledge with both hands, and then dropped to the ground.

  It was a good four meter drop on this side. Alexander bent his knees to absorb the shock, but still the fall dazed him momentarily. A few seconds later, he took off running.

  He thought at first that he was going to get away, and then a shout behind him warned him to stop.

  Alexander ran full tilt, as fast as he could go through the ripening garwheat, hoping to reach the woods near the creek. After only three strides, something hit the small of his back, and then strange sticky tendrils caught his arms and legs and bound him tightly.

  Alexander cried out as he fell to the ground, helpless and unable to move. He lay there, face down on the trampled garwheat stalks, their feathery tips tickling his face as he struggled against his bonds. The almost-ripe grain gave off a fragrance that filled his nose and reminded him of bread baking.

  He heard the pounding footsteps of several people running, and then a voice spoke over him.

  “Got him, Sarge! He’s a big one, too. Big enough to keep.”

  Hands lifted him and Alexander saw that his captors all wore the red and black uniform of the Imperial Army. The two who held him upright had plain sleeves, but the man who approached him wore three strips of braid on his sleeves.

  He stopped now, and looked Alexander up and down. “He’ll do. At least it was worth a stop.”

  “Thanks, Sarge,” the man on Alexander’s right said.

  “Don’t take too much credit,” the sergeant said. “You only caught him because he was too dumb to hide. Put him on the flyter with the others, and let’s get out of here.”

  “Isn’t there anyone else around?” the man on the left said.

  “There’s a woman in the house,” the sergeant said, “probably this one’s mother. According to the databank, there’s supposed to be a girl, but she must have got away.”

  Alexander kept his face impassive. The sergeant looked at him keenly but didn’t ask him any questions.

  Marcella had come out of the house and stood on the back porch. Another soldier stood beside her. When she would have come down the steps to where Alexander was being dragged across the yard, the soldier stopped her, pushing her back with a long-barreled weapon. Alexander knew it must be a tangler, a gun that shot the web-like filaments that had brought him down and still held him captive.

  “I want to say goodbye,” Marcella said.

  “Too bad,” the soldier said. “You shouldn’t have told him to run.”

  Marcella drew herself up to her full height. “My husband was sixteen years in the Emperor’s service,” she said, her voice cold with scorn. “They discharged him when he lost an eye quelling a riot. Surely that counts for something?”

  The soldier started to argue, but the sergeant waved a hand.

  “Let her say goodbye. It won’t cost us anything but a few seconds.”

  The soldier nodded and stepped aside. Alexander’s captors pulled him upright.

  Marcella walked up to Alexander and looked at him steadily. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Goodbye, Alexander. I hope I see you again some day.”

  “Goodbye, Mother.” The lump that rose in Alexander’s throat made it impossible for him to say more.

  Marcella hugged him tightly, then kissed him on his cheek, her breath warm on his skin. She turned to the sergeant. “He’s only fourteen. He’s too young for you to take away.”

  The sergeant shrugged unconcernedly. “He’s big for his age.”

  “He’s still only a boy,” she said. “You’re not supposed to take them until they’re fifteen.”

  “What’s a few months? If we leave him, he might be too old next time we come. Anyway, he’ll be old enough really quick.”

  Marcella tried to argue further, but the sergeant had lost patience, and waved his men to drag Alexander to the flyter.

  Alexander had one brief glimpse of his mother following behind the sergeant, and then they lifted him and tossed him into the cabin of an enormous flyter that still stood in the south field. He landed with a thud on the hard floor of the cabin, and when he looked around he could see more than a dozen other boys, all bound by filaments, all of them older than he was. Most of them he knew by sight, if not by name. None of them spoke to him. They looked either too frightened or to bitter to make conversation.

  In one corner two girls lay side by side, heads together, whispering. When they looked at Alexander, he recognized them as two of Junia’s friends.

  Alexander leaned his head back against the floor of the flyter cabin and closed his eyes. Somehow the surface no longer felt cold and hard. He turned his head and realized he was lying on his back on a bed—no, a bunk? Whichever it was, a soft pillow cushioned his head. He had been dreaming. But—but, where was the life pod?

  He opened his eyes. A stranger in a blue coverall stared down at him anxiously.

  Alexander tried to sit up, but the stranger pushed him gently back onto the bunk, and spoke with a strong Shugart accent. “Whoa, take it easy. You’re not in great shape yet.”

  Alexander glanced around, noting the tiny space, the curved walls, the built-in cupboards. “Where am I?”

  The man grinned. “Welcome aboard the Queen Bee.”

  • • •

  “Sick bay to Captain Palestrino.”

  Madeline punched the button. Hopefully, Doc had good news. If the rescued soldier had died, they might never have an answer to the mystery of his bizarre incarceration. “Palestrino here. What’s up?”

  “Our passenger is awake and asking questions, skipper. You told me to let you know.”

  She flicked off her monitor. “I’ll be right there.”

  The stranger was sitting up in his bunk by the time she got there. He sipped a container of juice as she came into the room.

  She looked him over. He was a big man, almost certainly taller than anyone else on the ship. Doc had dressed him in loose-fitti
ng olive-green ship fatigues. His golden brown hair must have been close cropped in a standard military cut, because it was still quite short. He looked more rested than he had on the life pod, and showed no obvious signs of ill health. The fatigues hid the bruises Madeline had seen.

  The soldier was returning her inspection, and she let him look. She resisted the temptation to pat her short, dark hair into place, but she did stand a little straighter. She seldom worried about her looks, but she knew the blue ship coverall that passed as a uniform aboard the Queen Bee failed to flatter her compact build. Madeline had never wished for blue eyes instead of brown, or a prettier face, but she would have liked to be a few centimeters taller. She stared at Alexander not only with curiosity, but a certain amount of authority. She wanted it clear who was in charge here.

  “Welcome aboard,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Madeline Palestrino, captain and owner of the Queen Bee.”

  He hesitated a moment before he took her hand, then shook it firmly. “Alexander Napier, formerly of the Emperor’s Own Corps of Guards.”

  She burned with an intense inquisitiveness at this confirmation of her identification, but he forestalled her with a question she was often asked.

  “Who was Queen Bee?”

  She grinned, but shook her head. “Bee isn’t a name; it’s a kind of Terran insect that lives in groups. There’s only one female who can reproduce. She’s the center of attention so she’s called the queen.”

  He looked supremely uninterested in Terran insects so Madeline plunged ahead with her own question. “Mind telling me what you were doing in that life pod?”

  “It’s a long story,” Alexander said, glancing at Doc.

  Madeline took the hint. “Clear out, Doc. But stay on com in case I need you.”