The Mandate of Heaven (26 page)

“Sorry sir,” Murdoch replied without the slightest hint of remorse.  “I got lost twice on the way, this house is crazy, ya got, like what.  A hundred rooms?”

“Fortunately, no,” Alex replied unperturbed, long used to his exaggerations. “Only thirty-nine.”

“Quite a bachelor pad you’ve got here, Colonel,” Templeton nodded approvingly.  “Must have set you back quite a bit.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Alex agreed morosely.

“Will Lady Hadley be joining us tonight?” Templeton asked eagerly.  Ever since he’d discovered that she was an heiress, likely to inherit a vast fortune, he’d been frequently seeking out her company.  He was less a social climber, more a social mountaineer.

“Sadly no,” Alex shook his head.  “What with us discussing her kidnapping, ransom—”

“Finder’s fee,” Abercrombie automatically corrected.

“Anyway,” Alex continued on, ignoring him.  “She’s busy planning the Harvest Festival celebrations.”

“I thought that you said you totally forbid any sort of celebration?  That if you caught her even thinking about it, you would lock her up and mail her back to her family, a single DNA strand at a time,” Sanderson said confused.

“Exactly,” Alex agreed.  “Which is why she is currently taking a leading role in planning and organising everything, keeping her fully occupied and not pondering
what the hell we’re all conspiring about in my study.
”

“Good plan, Colonel,” Baracoa insisted.

“Stop sucking up Baracoa, we all got dismissed, remember?  Hence no further promotions will be forthcoming.  Now, if you gentleman, and I use the term loosely, don’t mind, I would like to get this meeting finished before Jessica starts wondering exactly where we’ve all disappeared to.”

“I have a question before we start, Colonel,” Sanderson interrupted, raising his hand.

“Yes,” Alex said, between clenched teeth.

“What’s the local sheriff doing here?”

“Representing the interests of Lady Hadley,” came the unruffled response from the back of the room.

“Well, that’s obvious,” Sanderson grumbled.  “But shouldn’t you be doing that by arresting us all, and then freeing Lady Hadley from her, um, odious planning duties?”

“Look at it this way,” Abercrombie said.  “We’re all here to plan the most fortuitous way for Lady Hadley to return her family, right?”

“Well, right after we get the ransom—finder’s fee,” Sanderson corrected after a glare from Abercrombie.

“In which case my intention nicely coincides with yours.  Namely the safe return of Lady Hadley to her family, collection of any finder’s fee and our safe return,” said Abercrombie.

“Great,” Alex rolled his eyes.  “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s continue with the planning.  For obvious reasons the actual exchange isn’t going to take place here.  Capella and Osiris are also out—”

“On account that you’re wanted dead or alive, but preferably dead, on both those planets,” Murdoch added helpfully.

“—which is why it will take place on
Elysium Fields
.”  At the blank looks from around the table, Alex sighed. “A Nova class space station, five miles long with a mass of two and a half million tons, located approximately two light years from the Deneb System.”

“Never heard of it,” Baracoa stated.

“Well, now you have,” Alex said, dropping his data pad onto the desk.  “As you can see from the schematics there are only a limited number of docking points.  The rest of the hull consists of between eight to twelve metres of armoured hull plating—”

“Sorry Colonel, but I can’t see.  Could you lean that way a bit,” Templeton motioned.

“Here, let me enlargen this,” Alex said, tapping on the device.

With a startled oath the occupants of the room stumbled back as a massive three-dimensional image of the station appeared, hovering several inches above the desk.  It was almost six feet long, half that in width and occupied most of the space in the room.

“Whoa,” Sanderson exclaimed waving his hand through the projection, observing it ripple from his touch, “my one doesn’t do that.”

“It’s the newest model, a prototype if you will,” Alex said dryly.  “Now, if everybody can see clearly?”

With an affirmative nod from all the men, Alex proceeded to detail the plan, frequently adjusting the controls on the pad to pan left and right, occasionally enlarging a specific section.

“At the moment there is only our team, what happens if Lord Hadley turns up with reinforcements?” Murdoch enquired.

“It’ll be a stipulation of the exchange that Lord Hadley comes alone, or at least with a small entourage, as High-Lords rarely travel alone.  From everything I’ve heard of Lord Hadley, he’s honest in his dealings and is unlikely to risk the life of his eldest daughter by ignoring the conditions of the exchange,” Alex stated.

“And what about High-Lord Stanton?” Sanderson asked.  “Surely by now he must know what has happened to his fiancée.  I doubt that he will stand idly by and watch, as soon as it’s confirmed that she’s safe, he’ll descend on the station with a battle fleet.  He won’t care who is innocent or guilty, but just slaughter everyone.”

“We’ll be giving as little advanced notice of the location of the exchange as possible, hence he will not have time to marshal his forces, and he will simply have to bring whatever ships he has available.”

“That’s a big if,” Sanderson said concerned.  “I wouldn’t put it past Stanton to turn up in person and break any promises Hadley might have made; he’s as slippery as an eel and I would trust a serpent over him, any day.”

“Indeed,” Alex agreed, “High-Lord Stanton is nothing if not predictable.  I would be most disappointed if he didn’t at least try and renege on any agreement.  After all, if he isn’t going to play by the rules, then neither do we.  If Lady Hadley, his fiancée, isn’t enough to draw him outside of his protective shell, then I’m sure the opportunity to do away with me most definitely will.”

“You expect High-Lord Stanton to be there, in person?” asked a shocked Templeton.

“Of course,” Alex shrugged.  “I held his predecessor in high regard, and while he lived I couldn’t inflict on him the agony of losing his only son.  However, he is long dead now and Stanton has been the cause of too much misery and suffering.  I plan on completing the job that I left unfinished, but this time I won’t hesitate—I’ll decapitate him.  I’ve been told it’s the only way to deal with a snake, you cut off its head.”

“And is Lady Hadley aware of this?” Abercrombie muttered.  “Your plans for her husband-to-be.”

“She’ll thank me one day.  After she is married to some sucker, having made his life a living hell, with a dozen kids running around underfoot causing bedlam.  Then she’ll thank me; for death is quick and forgiving, married to Stanton would be an eternity trapped in a living-hell.”

*****

It was hours later and the fire had died down to just glowing embers, when their impromptu planning meeting finally broke up.  Templeton, Baracoa and Murdoch had long since departed, for their beds he assumed, but Alex wouldn’t have been surprised if the nearest tavern was currently doing a roaring trade.

“Not on the rug!” he snapped at Sanderson, who’d just taken a large sip of wine and was now turning an alarming shade of puce from the tart taste.  “That carpet is priceless, being at least a hundred years old, made on Earth, transported a dozen light-years and it
doesn’t necessitate a wine stain.
”

“By the High-Lords,” Sanderson gagged, spitting the wine back into his glass.  “You’re living in some kind of museum.  What on Arcturus possessed you to buy this place?”

Alex just shrugged feebly, unable to understand himself what possessed him to commit such an act of utter madness, let alone explain it to these two.  For the mansion was Palladium in style, massive in grandeur, easily the equal of any palace owned by the High-Lords, with a maintenance budget to match.  For while they had an army of servants to clean, polish and repair every facet, he had Mary, a decrepit, part-time, gardener and himself.  It was utter folly and he would be the first to admit it.  However, since he’d first laid eyes on it, while on a temporary posting during some meaningless, random, troop rotation, he had been enthralled with the building, helpless to some seemingly invisible magnetic force.  It simply felt right, down to the very core of his being, as if it was encoded into his very DNA.

“It was going cheap,” he finally muttered, as way of an explanation.

“You’re assuming of course that Lady Hadley wants to leave,” Abercrombie commented, finally looking up from his wine glass.  He’d been twirling the stem of the glass between his thumb and forefinger for the past twenty minutes, admiring the play of colours from the ruby red wine in the glass, while consuming very little of it.

“You must be soused, old man,” Alex rebuked reclining on the chaise longue. He’d long since abandoned his boots and put his stocking covered feet up on the armrest.  He still hurt all over, the results of his earlier labour, or the tree that had subsequently fallen on him, he wasn’t totally sure.  “Of course she wants to leave.  It’s all she ever talks about.”

“Not recently,” Abercrombie disagreed.  “In the past month, she’s cleaned the house from top to bottom, renovated your cloak room to turn it into a reception room and is currently planning the Harvest Festival celebrations in a manner that would make any Field General proud.  I was married for over twenty years, trust me when I say—she’s nesting.”

Ignoring his earlier rebuke, Alex spat the contents of his wine glass across the antique Persian rug.  “She’s doing what?” he demanded, aghast.

“Nesting,” Abercrombie said.  “I expect that she’ll be choosing curtains next which, by the way, you sorely lack,” he gazed at the worn, threadbare, ones disparagingly.  “You could do far worse.”

“Far worse?” Alex replied uncomprehendingly.  “The blinds aren’t that bad.”

“For a wife,” Abercrombie corrected.  “She’s smart, beautiful, headstrong, comes from a good family, richer than Croesus, and don’t tell me you don’t need the money.”

“And you already quarrel, far more than most married couples.  That must be a good sign,” Sanderson added, as if dispensing marital advice was a regular occurrence.

“Comes from a good family…” Alex spluttered, seemingly at a loss for words.  “There must be something wrong with this bottle of burgundy, although it doesn’t seem to have affected me yet.  Unlike the two of you, who have taken complete leave of your senses.  I promise you, the thought has never once crossed her mind.”

“Which suggests that it has crossed
your
mind, probably more than once?” Abercrombie smirked.

Alex peered mournfully into the bottom of his empty glass, about to drain the last few drops, before reconsidering.  Perhaps this bottle had been off, as he seemed to have been following close behind these two, along the yellow brick road to Bedlam.  Putting his glass carefully down on the side table, he slowly got to his feet, his aching muscles protesting every step of the way, but he doubted that he would be doing them much of a favour, by falling asleep on the couch.

“I’m calling it a night,” he pronounced loudly to the room.  “I’ll let Jessica know in the morning that her presence here is no longer wanted and it’s time for her to return to her family.  I believe that a broken heart is a literary invention, and hence it doesn’t actually cause any long term health implications.  She has an important engagement with High-Lord Stanton and I’m not talking about the wedding.  Once he is dead I might finally be able to sleep at night, and not dread waking up the next morning wondering if I’m back in that six-by-four cell.” With those parting words, he shut the door behind himself.

Firmly.

The company of guests was best enjoyed in moderation, he decided wearily on the way to his bed.

*****

The Harvest Festival celebrations were in full swing by the time Alex finally arrived.  He had made certain of that, by arriving several hours late.  The thought of being early, having to engage in meaningless small talk, while waiting for the other guests, filled him with dread.  He had been hoping to avoid attending altogether. However, having searched fruitlessly for Jessica during most of the day, he had concluded that she was purposefully avoiding him.  Hence, as this was the only time and place he could be certain of finding her, he had come, albeit reluctantly.

He looked around the festively decorated hall with interest, as it had been adorned with many of the bounties from the harvest.  Some of the fruits, vegetables and crops were not native to the moon, but occasionally a selection of the local, edible produce, could be seen, easily recognisable via their riot of colours; cyan, magenta, yellow and black.  While it was an annual celebration, this was the first time that he had ever attended.  In the past always justifying his absence by important prior engagements but, in truth, he could never summon up the enthusiasm to participate.

Until recently he had very little in life to celebrate.

He tossed that last thought around his head several times, wondering what was different this time.   Meanwhile he nodded greetings to several of his tenants that he recognised, politely declined half a dozen requests to dance and several further offers of food or drink.  He observed Abercrombie, Sanderson, Templeton, Murdoch and Baracoa partaking in all that was on offer.  But still he continued to wander around, eyes glancing left and right, peering between the crush of bodies, not really sure what he was looking for, until he found it.