The Scarlet Empress (25 page)

She and the general exchanged a long look fraught with a thousand undercurrents, a thousand varied meanings, things to which only they, a long-married couple, were privy.

Then his mother shifted her attention back to Ty. “You left medical school to become an officer. You had many a chance to return to school in the years since, and yet you didn’t. It means that you love being in the service. Don’t be so quick to give it all up because of a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?” Ty choked out a laugh. “I think it’s gone a little beyond that.”

“A woman’s love, then?”

She was perceptive. He fought the urge to assure her that the seeds of what he’d become had been planted long before he’d met Bree face-to-face, long before he knew the woman of his fantasies would become the cornerstone of his existence, bringing true meaning to his life. “I am giving up my commission because my belief in our system of government no longer exists. Without utter faith in the UCE, I can’t call myself an officer of its military without putting those who serve with me at risk. I won’t do that to my men.”

“You are still a citizen of the United Colonies of Earth,” his father reminded him.

“No, sir. Not anymore. I, sir, am a New American.”

I am not a Virginian but an American!
The famous prerevolutionary statesman Patrick Henry’s impassioned declaration had never seemed more apropos.

“Chico’s in town,” his father said. “Perhaps it would do you some good to talk to him.”

Ty couldn’t believe what he was hearing. As boys, he and Chico had grown up on a variety of military bases, their fathers both high-ranking officers. They’d joined up at the same time; both had had fast-track careers. He considered Chico, Juan Granados, a friend, but the man lived and breathed UCE policy, as Ty once had, and was by-the-book enough to be named commander of Fort Powell.

Where Bree was likely being held prisoner.

A startling sense of divine intervention burst in Ty’s mind. He made damn sure his father didn’t see his reaction. He’d pay a visit to Chico, no question. But it’d be with more than career counseling on his mind.

Ty started to walk away, leaving his parents to stare after him, but thought better of it. Slowly he turned to face them, the couple who had given him life. “I don’t know what will happen,” he said quietly. “None of us do. But know that I love you,” he said, keeping his eyes pointedly on his mother’s to avoid the general’s hooded gaze.
Yes, even you, Father.

Only then did Ty stride away. He’d lost much in a week: his innocence, his faith in his country, and perhaps any chance at a future. But not his woman. No, not Bree. Ideologies aside and risk be damned, he was going to find her and free her. Something told him there wasn’t a minute to waste.

Bree hunched over her cooling dinner, by all appearances whispering to her vegetables. “When are you going to get me out of here?”

“I’m working on it,” the Voice replied.

Bree bit off a sound of dismay. She’d begun to think of the Voice as all-powerful. Invincible. Now she couldn’t help picturing
The Wizard of Oz,
when Dorothy discovered the wizard was really a little old man hiding behind scary props. “You’d better do something fast. Things aren’t looking so good.”

The Voice made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Ye of little faith . . .”

Her voice attracted the attention of one of the military guards who had brought her dinner. “Shush!” she whispered.

The blond-haired guard stopped outside the bars to stare. How was she going to explain the talking? She threaded her fingers together so he’d miss how badly her hands were shaking.

The sergeant checked his six, looked right, looked left. Extreme wariness and curiosity rolled off him in waves. “So, here she is,” he said. “They say you can catch bullets with your teeth and can make yourself invisible.”

Had he been drinking? She turned her hands up. “I guess the invisibility potion didn’t work too well.”

“You’ve escaped capture so many times, it was the only way anyone could explain it.”

“Yeah. I’m a legend now, huh?” She glanced around the stark cell. Some legend. Yet that was her duty, her role in all this, wasn’t it? To be a force for change. To be the legend. To make them all
believe.

“And the legend’s growing.” The guard checked his six again before continuing, his voice hushed. “Your name alone is all they need to unite volunteers in every Central town. Sheep, we call them. Sheep easily scattered if we shoot the shepherd.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “You mean me.”

“Yeah.” The guard’s gaze was intense. Although he stayed on the other side of the bars, his surly attitude made her a little nervous; not only because she had the Shadow Voice on the line, but because as the days went on, she’d seen fewer guards. If this one wanted to try something unpleasant, he could very well get away with it. “They found you guilty. High treason.”

“For what? For loving my country? For wanting liberty?” She stood straighter. “For being willing to die for freedom?”

“It’s a capital offense. They’re going to execute you for your crimes.”

Heat consumed her face. She’d long assumed death
would be her sentence. Knowing it proved more difficult than suspecting it, though. “I’m not afraid.”

“You ought to be.”

“Don’t be afraid of death,” she said in a quiet voice. “Be afraid of the unlived life. My great-grandmother Michiko used to tell me that. She was four-foot-eleven, but she put the fear of God in every man in my family—all of them over six feet tall. She would have gone off to fight in World War Two if they’d let her. Instead she spent the war in a Japanese internment camp, even though she was born and raised in Omaha. It’s 2176—1776 was the year the thirteen colonies declared their independence. Now I’m here, a hundred and seventy years after I should have died in a missile attack. Coincidence? Maybe. I believe fate brought me here for a reason, and a lot of other people do also. I matter in a bigger way than anyone in the UCE chain of command ever wanted to admit, or they wouldn’t be trying so hard to kill me.”

Uncertainty flickered in the guard’s eyes then, a hairline crack in his armor that she hadn’t expected.

Her chin lifted. “I’m not afraid of dying for the country my great-grandmother loved, because its existence was synonymous with freedom. I want it back, that promise of freedom. And I think the people in the UCE do, too.”

The sergeant regarded her, his lips pressed together tightly. It surprised her that he didn’t argue. Was he not fully committed to doing the UCE’s dirty work? Had she given him cause for second thoughts? Bree wasn’t sure. If she wasn’t sure, then the guard might not be, either.

The guard turned away from the cell, took a few steps, and stopped. He turned once more to ponder her before
disappearing where the corridor cut a sharp corner.

A shuddering breath escaped her. Bree let her eyes close for a moment, her hands shaking. Even if it all ended badly, which it looked as if it might, she could then die knowing she’d made some impact on a single soldier, however small. Pebbles hit ponds and made ripples that spread out in ever-expanding circles. One changed man like this guard could change others. Now all she had to do was hold tight to that thought when things got really scary.

She returned to the center of the cell. “You still there?” she asked the Voice in a hoarse whisper.

“Well done, the way you used the situation to our advantage.”

She bristled. “I meant what I told him. It wasn’t propaganda.”

“And that is what separates you and me from those who would like to see our efforts fail.”

“You seem to know a lot about me, yet I know nothing about you. Are you a woman? A man? Are you inside the UCE, or out?” Silence. She sighed. “When this is over, can I at least meet you?”

She could almost feel the person behind the Voice smile. “You already have.”

Her eyes opened wide. A hundred faces riffled through her mind like cards in a shuffled deck. She’d met the person behind the Voice? When? Where?

“What do I do in the meantime?” she almost whispered. “It hasn’t exactly been a vacation in here.”

“Stay strong. Know that the colonists support you.”

“I need to do more than stay strong. I need to do something concrete.”

“Look above when things grow darkest. Get as high as you can. Look to the sky, and you’ll know. I can’t tell you more.”

“Look to the sky. Got it.” Then an idea hit her. “Are you able to transmit my voice to the public? If I can somehow motivate them from inside prison, then maybe I can shift the political climate in favor of sparing me.”

“The climate already favors you. The entire Interweb was taken down after and because of your address to the public the other morning. Opinion is running so heavily in your favor that the government fears spontaneous combustion. General Armstrong ordered the UCE guard into New Washington and all the metropolitan areas. Civil disobedience, you see, and all because of you.” The Shadow Voice chuckled. She’d never heard the person laugh before. “Ah, it was beautiful, just beautiful.”

“What are you talking about? What address?”

“At your sentencing. You don’t remember being there?”

They found you guilty. High treason.
So that was what the guard meant.

The flashback of a dream hit her: wall-sized monitors showing a turbulent crowd; Bree facing down General Armstrong by quoting Nathan Hale.

“I thought it was a dream. . . .” Part of it
was
a dream, thank God. “I hallucinated that I had a rope around my neck, that I was hanged.” She rubbed her throat and tried to work saliva into a suddenly dry mouth. “The guard just now said they gave me a death sentence. I assume an execution. Is there a timetable for the grand event?”

She wasn’t sure if what she heard coming from her collar was static or throat clearing. “Your execution is scheduled for nine tomorrow morning.”

Tomorrow? It felt as if the floor dropped away from under her feet. “What time is it now?”

“Nineteen hundred.”

Seven p.m. Fourteen hours to go—and counting.

Standing in shock next to her bed, she stared down at the tray of cold food. It looked like her surprise dinner had just turned into a last supper.

The minutes ticked relentlessly toward Bree’s execution. If only there were more time.

A somber drizzle fell as Ty Armstrong hurried through downtown New Washington on foot. The streets were filled with people. It seemed the entire civilian population was outside. If not for the national state of emergency and a brutally enforced curfew, the rest of Central would be here, too. Without an Interweb, news traveled the old way, via word of mouth. Ty had learned that UCE police had used chemical irritants to disperse the crowd from outside the Supreme Court Building, where they’d virtually camped out since Bree’s sentencing had taken place. Now they were flowing away from the capital—and Fort Powell, his destination. Time was of the essence, and he had to fight his way through a never-ending stream of anti-UCE protesters.

Avoid the UCE troopers at all cost,
he thought. If he was arrested, his chances at saving Bree fell to nil. Clad in allblack riot gear, the police were tasked to defend the capital. He hadn’t yet heard that they’d shot at the protesters, but the atmosphere grew tenser by the second. It was only a matter of time before one of the troopers cracked, regardless of orders received, and fired into the crowd.
When that happened, Ty hoped he was far from the action. Nothing must slow him down before he fulfilled his objective: getting to Bree before his father did.

She understands the choice she made, Tyler . . . and now she must face the consequences of that decision.

His father’s words haunted him. Something in the man’s eyes had left Ty cold. Now he knew why. Ty had watched a recording of the sentencing so many times that he’d all but memorized it. It was easy to understand why Bree’s appearance had roused such a furor. She’d looked worn out, drugged, though they’d been careful to erase any visible signs of torture. And the way she seemed to drift in and out of the proceedings, spent and dazed, hadn’t broken only Ty’s heart, but those of millions of colonists.

Murder would come easily to him, Ty decided, should he ever cross paths with those who’d made her suffer.

He wondered whose idea it was to televise the sentencing when they could have easily chosen to have closed proceedings. Perhaps it was a last-ditch effort on the part of the president to soothe the angry colonists.

How beautifully it had backfired.

Beauchamp, Ty had never cared for. Even as a boy he’d felt uncomfortable in the president’s company. The politician had a way of sucking all the air out of a room. Yet he’d commanded higher approval ratings than his father for all the years they’d worked together. Ty knew it was because his father made no excuses for what he was; he didn’t try to soften his edges or play politics. He simply did his job, brutal as it often was. Beauchamp, on the other hand, was as changeable as spring weather in Montana.
Ty was pleased to see the president make such a spectacular public-relations blunder. Only, why did it have to be with Bree?

Bree . . . hang tight. I’m coming.

Ty checked his wrist computer. In less than five hours Bree would be executed in front of a firing squad—unless he did something about it. Soon they’d be coming to get her, to prepare her for the event. Then the guests would arrive to watch the happening—guests that Ty was certain included his father. Ty needed to be out long before that.

Other than the blade he wore on the inside of his wrist and the laser-guided semiautomatic he hid inside his trench coat, he had his hands to do his work—and those of a childhood friend and few wartime buddies.

He’d saved his share of lives while serving in the navy. It wasn’t anything he’d set out to do; in the course of battle, things happened. “I owe you, man,” many a grateful soldier had told him. “If you ever need anything, anything at all, just say when and where.” What he’d started with Ahmed, he’d continued here on his home shore, calling on those debts one by one. No one had turned him down.