Lost heir, p.22
Lost Heir, page 22
As the hatch closed, Ward sagged back into his chair, still apparently feeling the effects of his wound. “Should you have done that?” Ward asked.
“I should have handled it differently in the mess,” Hugh answered ruefully. “After all the guff I have taken from him, on Jeffco as well as here, I wanted to beat him senseless. I lost control, but just shooting him out the lock would have been my fault as well as his. He’s a good man in everything except where women are concerned. Hopefully, this won’t come back to bite me.”
Ward nodded. “Hopefully. Elite commandos are a funny bunch. You may have gained a friend for life, or he may decide you aren’t worthy of serving because you didn’t space him; too weak. We won’t know until later.”
Hugh shrugged. “I couldn’t think what else to do, but now I need to go.”
Ward smiled. “Not quite yet, Your Highness. Step forward.”
Hugh noticed the gem bag on the desk. As he focused on it, the sapphire rose up. Ward paused as if catching his breath. “Take the stone and touch it briefly to your lips.” As Hugh did so, Ward said, “The heir exercises fair and impartial judgment.”
The sapphire, or more precisely, the nanites impregnated in it, again swept through his mind, clearing it while creating a burning warmth that felt almost painful. Hugh suddenly understood that judgment would always be painful no matter how he decided. He must exercise it but never desire it.
“You have exercised judgment that has been stern, fair, and impartial, fearing no man’s censure, taking no man’s gift. In Nighthawk, you sought to balance competing goals, providing a way for those who have maintained their loyalty to the empire to protect their families while returning with honor when you could just as easily have ordered them to come with you for your safety and convenience. Often there are competing needs, you balanced those with Doctor Davison, which could have turned out badly, as well as with Ensign uch Robert. Judgment is also rarely simple nor is the final result always known, and you have demonstrated that you know you are not infallible. With Peterson, you have truly shown you can handle difficult decisions and understand the competing interests when you make your choice.”
Finishing, Ward suggested, “Continue to act wisely. Place the gem back on the cloth.”
Hugh reluctantly let the sapphire go. The desire to make good choices and his newfound knowledge of how badly things could go really concerned him. With a sigh, he forced his hand to release the gem onto the bag, watching as it appeared to be absorbed.
After leaving Ward’s cabin, Hugh hustled back to the mess but found it empty. Checking her cabin, no one answered, neither Maeve nor Sally. Scratching his head, he decided to follow the old soldier’s maxim learned as a very young man on Doña Carlota’s estate, Eat when you can. He went back to the mess for a snack.
There he goes. Maeve felt an odd emptiness as Hugh strode purposefully out to do whatever the sergeant major needed him for. Why did he interfere? I could have handled the situation! I’ve been taking care of myself since . . . The fact that Pete had completely ignored her attempt to do just that quietly undermined her bold assertion, but she firmly suppressed the niggling doubt.
I would have! The whole scene began to play itself back in her head. The mere memory of Peterson’s arm around her made her flesh crawl. She never again wanted to feel that trapped and scared, seeing his leering smile just inches from her face and feeling his hot breath on her cheek. Neither her ice-maiden act nor her anger had chased him away, leaving her only the option of physically fighting back, but would that have worked any better?
Priscilla Jenks and the team had taught her some moves, enough to defend herself physically against most of the spacers. Then, after Welks’s attack, she had really applied herself to learning how to defend herself physically against most men. Until now, until today, that had seemed enough to keep her safe. But against Peterson or any of these men? Elite commandos? She could have been in real trouble, she miserably acknowledged to herself. Depressed but honest with herself, she didn’t think she would have had any chance at all.
Staring at the wall, though not seeing it, she felt a warm arm go around her shoulder. Shocked, she jerked back and spun, only to see Sally’s concerned eyes. “Are you okay, honey?” Sally’s depth of caring broke a dam inside of Maeve. Her pent-up wave of despair, fear, and loss overwhelmed her defenses. The intensity of the release caught her off guard, sweeping her away in a flood of feelings she couldn’t control. Wrapping her arms around herself, she desperately tried to control the tears threatening to surface. Sally scooted closer, putting both arms around her. A long-forgotten feeling of safety swept over her as Sally held her tightly, patting her back softly. A flash of Priscilla holding her just this way when her father had died crossed her mind, something buried since the day Priscilla had died on Bring It. She missed her so! And all those others: Dad, Mom, Qi Mai Ling, so many more. Why couldn’t she control her feelings better? She didn’t want anyone to know how vulnerable she felt right now.
Evidently seeing her struggle to control her emotions, Sally whispered to her, “Let’s go talk in the observation dome. No one will disturb us there.” Maeve nodded, willing herself not to let go of the tight hold she kept on her emotions. Unobserved, they made their way to the deserted nose.
People didn’t like the observation dome. The universe looked decidedly odd seen directly from a ship flying relatively faster than light. Far ahead, the stars shone clear and cold, all the galaxies, nebulae, and the glories of the universe a riot of colors, with yellows and whites predominating, laid out on display against the black emptiness. But closer? The stars ahead blue-shifted as they drew near, fading into an odd purplish haze before becoming red to disappear behind. This violent dance of the stars could be deeply unsettling to someone watching it play out against the unmoving celestial backdrop. Maeve plopped down on a soft chair with Sally taking another. Maeve gave a quick look outside, catching a reflected glimpse of her green eyes in the dome before turning away. Both of them then ignored the outside. For a while, they just sat in silence. Maeve’s thoughts became tears, trickling softly down her cheeks.
Finally, Sally asked gently, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Shaking her head hesitantly, she said, “I’m not sure I can. Life is so hard sometimes.” The tears came harder and Maeve let out a quiet sob as this admission overwhelmed her defenses.
After a seeming eternity, Maeve broke the silence, “I’m so sorry for all the tears. I just don’t know what has come over me. I haven’t let myself go like this since Priscilla died. After that, I locked away my feelings deep where no one could touch them.” She breathed deeply, trying to get control over her emotions. “It simply wasn’t safe.” A surprising realization hit her, causing her to murmur softly, “Until now.”
Sally’s eyes teared up at that as she whispered softly in reply, “Honey, you truly are safe now. Talking can really help but can be tough, too. That’s why the floodgates opened, because inside you knew you could let them. You can talk about it with me if you want to.”
Maeve nodded. “I’d like to talk a bit about my dad and my mom.” Maeve sniffed. “And Priscilla and Mai Ling and the others.” With that, she put her head down on her arm, resting on the arm of the chair, and let the hurt, anger, and darkness wash over her. Her eyes burned, but no tears came as bleakness filled her.
Maeve thought a moment, terrified of the dark place she looked into, but she couldn’t ignore it any longer. If she tried to, it would eventually swallow her up like a black hole. Slowly, hesitantly, she began by explaining about her mom, “My mother’s name was Maude. She braided my hair and sang all the time. She loved me and my father very much. She might have been a princess, but when she left her home world, her mother, the queen, took away her title. She’d tell me how she gave up everything because she loved Dad so very much.
“One day, we were on the way to a conference of some kind at a naval building with Dad. Suddenly, a bunch of cars and a truck ambushed us. They killed one of Dad’s escorts right off. Mom, Dad, and the other escort started firing back. They bailed out of the car and pulled me out before it blew up. It must have been on fire, but I honestly don’t remember much. We could hear sirens and help coming, but the attackers kept getting closer. Mom shielded me with her body. Suddenly, she went limp, gone, just like that.” Blindly staring at her hands, she could again see her mother’s blood covering them.
Bit by bit, Maeve told the rest. How her dad taught her to shoot, how he had died, how she’d killed the last assassin. “If Morgain had been there when Dad died, I would have shot her without a second thought. When I thought back about it later, I knew I couldn’t do it, but I wish I didn’t feel that way. Now I just want to stop her for Dad and Mom’s sake. Vivian—everyone liked her—but she had always been so vain and self-centered; I don’t miss her. Nimue? How can I hate a sister enough to kill her? She’s just plain rotten and mean.” After a few more minutes talking about her sisters, she drew a deep breath and sighed. “You probably think I’m horrible, feeling about my own sisters this way?”
Sally simply shook her head. “We all have demons; yours are worse than most.”
The bleakness in her voice matched the void beyond the dome. Sally hugged her tightly and Maeve hugged her back. Discussing what had happened to Priscilla, Mai Ling, and the others opened the wounds even more.
Quickly, Maeve talked about how she had to personally take over keeping tabs on Pogue after she’d lost all of the others, how dirty she felt knowing what went on in his cabin. Finally, she descended to her darkest place, the weeks just before they’d arrived, when she had lost all hope.
“So, I decided to blow up the ship after the next TechMech attack, if those barbarians didn’t kill us all first. But you came.” Almost inaudibly, she whispered, “With Hugh, an actual heir. After all of the supposed fakes that came through, I still can’t believe it. And, he agreed to let me come with you . . .”
“What happened in the mess?” Sally asked gently.
Just as softly, almost emotionlessly, Maeve told her. Maeve barely noticed Sally’s expression of deep concern. Peterson’s story led to talking about Welks and Hamilton Pogue, although she kept the details sparse. As she wound down, she asked plaintively, “Why do I attract men like that?”
“Honey, it’s not your fault. There are men who are pigs, but not everyone is that way. The other men on the ship are real gentlemen. Even Peterson generally is okay, just sometimes stupid. But the others are the best.”
Maeve sat motionless, neither nodding nor shaking her head, as if she had not heard Sally. Then she spoke very softly, barely above a whisper, “I feel so alone, as though no one understands what I’ve been through or can relate to what it’s like to have your childhood ripped away and adulthood forced upon you.”
Sally nodded, then said, “I can think of one person who can understand all of that.” Maeve looked up and Sally went on, “Let me tell you about Hugh. At least, what I know.” Sally described the little boy who had been five or six when he lost his mother, a little boy whom a fleet and an army had tried to kill on Deft, where he had been taken to avoid exactly that just before the coup. Maeve’s heart began to ache for the loneliness and terror he must have surely felt then, and how it must have felt being raised by the military on Doña Carlota’s estate, because she had experienced the same feelings when first Mom, and then Dad, had been shot down right in front of her. How could Hugh stand it all? Then Sally explained, “Hugh had been hunting back on Jeffco when a nuclear strike hit the manor, trying to kill him. It almost did, too. After getting back safely, Admiral Hollister and Doña Carlota told him he could become emperor if he passed this test. Or die if he failed, and that the empire needed him—we truly needed him—to try.”
Sally ended by adding, “Since then, he has been trying. Trying to learn, trying to show he can do this, and most importantly, trying to meet the expectations of everyone around him. He’s your age, Maeve, and if what he’s been going through isn’t being forced into adulthood, I can’t imagine what is.”
Maeve sat for long moments as she absorbed the things Sally had told her. She and Hugh had a lot in common. Both damaged by the cruelty and greed of a few, scarred inside where no one could see. Both stood alone, without their families or much of anyone in the universe. Of all the people in the galaxy, Hugh might best understand how she truly felt because he had suffered just like her. The idea of what it might be like to have a friend who truly understood her, what she had been through, brought a gentle smile to Maeve’s lips. By the time they finished talking, midnight had long passed. Silence filled the ship as they headed back to their cabin to get some sleep.
CNS Pechnaya
1155 BBMT 3 November 3473
Ready to sit down and enjoy her steak Milanesa, something Morgain uch Robert had been looking forward to for several days, her com dinged. Irritation rose at the interruption.
Sighing, she laid down her fork and said to her dinner companion, “Will you excuse me? Apparently, the ship can’t function without my personal intervention.”
Her guest chuckled. “Of course. I look forward to trying this with you when you return.”
One of the things she liked about him was his superb manners. Giving him a genuine smile, she nodded and rose to take this call in her command cabin. Sitting comfortably, she opened the channel to see a com tech, Becky Cook by her name tag. A tech interrupted her? That would be the last mistake this tech ever made. “Yes?” she demanded.
“The planetary government is calling and demands to speak to the fleet commander. They call themselves the Enlightened.”
Simply nodding, Morgain recognized that she did, in fact, need to speak to these individuals. Her supply people wanted to refuel and access the out-system weapons cache Ninth Fleet had established over a century earlier.
Adopting an interested look, she opened the link. A trio of rather self-important people, two men and a woman, replaced the com tech’s face. The man in the middle didn’t even give Morgain a chance to greet them. “By what right do you enter our peaceful system with your warships? We don’t want you here; you’re not welcome. Get out right now, Admiral!”
Morgain sat back, letting a bit of silence descend. She’d give them one chance to act appropriately, and then she would find a way to make their lives difficult. “We are from Ninth Fleet, and we have a port and resupply agreement with your government.”
The man to the left nodded. “Fine. One day for resupply and then leave!”
Morgain sighed. She had tried to be reasonable and this is where it had gotten her. The system had a huge amount of mining and commerce and would have made a comfortable place to control the search from, but that didn’t look like a possibility now. “Although that appears to be a breach of our porting agreement, we will comply.”
The three smiled back smugly without even saying anything. They had expected her to do whatever they said? On top of interrupting her lunch, they clearly didn’t understand that she could destroy this system without even blinking. And apparently didn’t care.
Too bad. I gave them a chance. Some people are just too stupid to live. Smiling, Morgain asked, “Is there anything we can do for you while we’re here?”
The woman on the right leaned forward. “Now that you mention it.”
Morgain smiled even more broadly. They would now tell her exactly how to hurt them the worst. It almost made up for her steak cooling.
Zeta Tau Alpha Debris Field
0250 BBMT 5 November 3473
“Slow and steady, helm,” directed Captain Argus Steed as he stood glued to the holodisplay in the middle of the deck as Commander’s Belle pushed her way, at just a fraction of her potential speed, into the mass of deep space rocks. Former Marine lieutenant Austin Carhart watched silently from the command chair for this maneuver.
Since the area didn’t belong to any specific star system or quadrant, officially at least, in his persona as owner of the Belle Peer Drunnan, Carhart had ordered Steed to carefully take his very expensive and somewhat illegal private corvette into the zone near the intersection of sectors Prime, Two, Seven and Eight. Zeta Tau Alpha 773, the official designation of this mess, but better known to people who visited it as Pirate’s Shoal, lay ahead.
He hoped he could find what he was looking for because coming here had been a gamble. The information he needed had to be classified Top Secret, Imperial, perhaps higher, which made it very risky to even look for it, but he absolutely had to have it. His other sources remained dry after that single, lucky hit telling him about Hugh Cascade. No one knew where he had gone.
The rating in Tactical hit the alert button. “Cruiser near the shipfitter’s dock, Captain.”
Carhart sat up as Steed nodded with an unnatural calm.
“Are its guns and targeting systems hot, Petty Officer.”
The PO shook his head. “No, sir. Seems to be pretty badly shot up, actually. Air is escaping from at least three hull ruptures.” After a pause, he added, “The cruiser is Pontus from Task Group 8-2. Admiral Perdot commanded the task group at the time of the coup.”
Steed glanced tensely at him. “Sure you want to go in, sir? You remember what he said the last time you met.”
Carhart simply nodded before relaxing back into the chair once more.
