The Shattered Empire (The Shadow Space Chronicles Book 2) (19 page)

Lucius shook his head, “I want a new design.  Take the Harasser and go from there.  Get with Matthew Nogita and, god help you, James Harbach.  I want to see what this new power plant can do in the Harasser's frame and how your defensive systems would fit in as well.  And before you tell me that won't work... I want to see what you can come up with.  It's called a fusion of ideas.  Make it work, understood?”

Doctor Gaspodschin gave him a sharp, angry nod.  Doctor Wade muttered something like an agreement.

Lucius took his seat.  “Now... next project.”

***

Reese slammed the door in frustration as he came back into the apartment.  He froze, though as he saw Alanis, staring at him with wide eyes. 
Great,
he thought,
I thought she was out.
  He saw her gaze go to the open bottle in his hand.  His hand slipped behind his back without him even realizing it at first.  When he caught her gaze and realized what he'd done, he felt his ears burn.

“A little early for drinking, isn't it Reese?” Alanis asked, her voice sharp.

He felt a spike of rage at her tone... she sounded just like her brother: calm, collected, and, worst of all, non-judgmental.  Before he could stop himself he snapped, “What do you care, aren't you supposed to be dropping off your paperwork today?”  In an anachronistic trend, the Academy required potential cadets to hand deliver their packets.

She looked away, “I already did.”

Reese growled and brought his bottle up for a drink.  The cheap liquor burned as it worked its way down his throat.  He nearly gagged at the flavor... but this was for the oblivion it would bring, not the taste.  If he drank enough he would sleep a deep, dreamless sleep.  He wouldn't think, he wouldn't worry, and he wouldn't be visited by phantoms.

“Talk to me, Reese,” Alanis said, her voice hoarse with worry.  Her tone twisted his heart and he felt tears well up in his eyes.  He was hurting her, he knew, and he hated that.  Yet what choice did he have? 
She is destroying me,
Reese thought.

Reese lowered the bottle and set it carefully on the dining room table.  He looked up and met her dark eyed gaze.  “You want to talk.  Fine, let us talk.”

“Why won't you accept my decision?” Alanis asked, her voice pleading.

“Because, my love,” Reese said, hoarsely, “We are married, this shouldn't be your decision or my decision... it should be
our
decision.”

He saw her pinch her lips at that.  She had, he knew, already compromised as much as she thought she could. 
She doesn't realize how little that really is,
Reese thought,
she's too caught up in the glory of service to realize the big lie.

“I tried to compromise, Reese,” Alanis said in an echo of his thoughts.  “Between you and Lucius, I decided to go to the new Academy here on Faraday, to become an officer.  What more can you ask?”

“That you not throw your life and our marriage away?” Reese growled.  He saw the look of hurt on her face and he sighed.  “I'm sorry.  It's just...”  He trailed off and suddenly he didn't see her at all, he saw his younger brother, Grady.  He remembered a similar argument, then, between his father and his brother.  His father had railed against Reese for encouraging Grady to join the service... and had never forgiven Reese when the news came of Grady's death at the First Battle of Danar.  His father had hung himself only a year later and left a scathing letter condemning the military.

“What?” Alanis asked, somewhat impatiently.  Her voice snapped him back out of the past.

Reese met her eyes again and spoke, “We have paid our debts, we have both risked our lives in fighting the Chxor.  You've told me about the hell it was getting out of Nova Roma, how many people died so close to freedom.  I fought the Chxor and Nova Roma's other enemies for three decades... I'm
done
.  I've paid my dues,
we've
paid our dues.  It's time for someone else to shoulder the burden.”

“Reese,” Alanis shook her head, “This isn't a union or a retirement or something like that, it's the end of  Humanity... unless we all stand against it and do our parts.  There are no dues, if we don't stand for ourselves, no one else will!”

“That's just the kind of crap that Lucius spouts,” Reese snapped.  “Yes, some of the fights are desperate... but extermination?  No.  There are other people who can hold that off.  I bought that line for too long and it's taken me years to realize that if we don't look out for
ourselves
, rather than everyone else, we'll end up with nothing.”

Her eyes narrowed at his words, “So, what, you want me to turn my back on this place?  You want me to set back and watch things collapse when I know that I can make a difference?”

“Yes,” Reese snapped.  “I want you to
live
.  I want us to have a family, to enjoy some time together, for the first time in ten years.  I want to get a civilian job and provide you the lifestyle you deserve!”

Alanis closed her eyes and shook her head, “No, Reese, you want me to bury my head in the sand.  You want us both to party and relax while everything I care about crumbles around me.”

Reese slammed his hand down on the table, “No, dammit, you aren't listening to me!”

“I am, Reese,” Alanis said calmly as she opened her eyes, “But you aren't hearing me and you aren't listening to yourself.  You are afraid, afraid of losing me, yet what would happen to me if the United Colonies fell?  What happened to me on Nova Roma where they wouldn't
let
me stand for myself?  You want me to be powerless in the hopes that I won't be in a position to be killed... yet if I had power, if I had rank and authority... then it would be
my
say.  It would be up to me as to whether I lived or died.”  Her dark eyes flashed with anger, “And worst of all, you judge me as being too weak, too inferior, to make the right decisions and to fight and survive in the military.”

Reese shook his head, “That's not it at all!”  Grady hadn't been incompetent or inferior, he just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  That kind of luck followed far too many of Reese's former friends and companions, many of them to include those who had served and died under Lucius's command.  He thought of Jessi Toria, recruited here on Faraday, and how she'd taken a corvette against two Colonial Republic destroyers and a cruiser, and the small memorial service held for her and her people only a month earlier.

“We're done,” Alanis snapped.  “Sober up, think about what
I
said, for a change.”  She swept out before Reese could think to stop her.  His gaze frantically swept the room.  He had to think of something to stop her, something to change her mind.  It locked on the bottle, half empty.  A hundred emotions and thoughts swept through him–anger, frustration, fear– and he nearly turned and went after her.  Yet, as if it had a will of its own, his hand went out to grasp the bottle.  He lifted it to his lips and drank deep, the harsh liquid scoured his throat just as it helped to scour his mind.  In its embrace, he didn't need to think, didn't need to feel.

Alanis would come around, he knew.  She had to... didn't she see what she was doing to him?

***

Faraday System

United Colonies

August 20, 2403

Ensign Alberto Tascon grimaced as the browsed the Faraday network for something to keep himself entertained.  He was supposed to be monitoring the United Colonies Fleet communications network in case of a need to react in an emergency... such as an attack. 
As if anyone would attack us again,
Alberto thought,
especially after that last pitiful showing.

Granted, there was always the risk of a large scale Chxor or even Balor attack, but the Fleet had handled those just fine, so far, and Alberto had set up a handy program to monitor the communications for a rise in chatter so he would only be a few seconds, at most, behind the communications officers of the other ships.  And it wasn't as if the
Belgrade
was crucial to the war effort.  The munitions ship carried additional ammunition for the fighters and capital ships.  It wouldn't be needed until after a battle.

In the meantime, he tried to find some morsel of interest in the Faraday global network.  On more developed worlds, there would be complete repositories of games, entertainment modules, even archives of old movies or music.  All available for a fee, of course.

The Chxor, however, had gutted what little was available since their first visit.  And while functionality and data transmission were up and many of those modules were live... they were available for sale only. 
As if I want to pay for what some backwater programmer could scrap together,
Alberto Tascon thought with disgust.  More civilized worlds had older networks, with hackers and code slicers who ran each module through their own systems and then broadcast the feed out to those who were willing to trade information for information.

Alberto hated to pay for those programs.  He'd managed to do a bit of trading with some of the programs he kept on file before, but now he was having issues even finding someone willing to trade.  The United Colonies seemed rather harsh on pirated software.  For that matter, the economy was exploding and there were many well-paying jobs for those who knew even the basic rudiments of coding.  Alberto had been tempted to set off and start up just such a business.

What had stopped him was the enforcement of patent law.  Granted, he could have written all his own code, but that was hard work.  He far more easily could have filed off the identifying marks on any number of programs or modules and sold it for his own... except they seemed to want to enforce the patent laws against that sort of thing.

For now, even though he was stuck in a dead-end job on one of the United Colonies military supply ships, he at least had a steady source of income... and the work wasn't particularly difficult.  Plus he could use most of the time to himself.  The
Belgrade'
s captain seemed oblivious to what most of his crew did... as long as they didn't draw outside attention to his own irregularities.  Most of the rest of the crew were caught up in their own methods to pass the time.  For that matter, the ship's navigation officer and the executive officer were off the bridge, 'updating charts,' in the executive officer's quarters.  From the tap he'd put into the XO's computer camera, the navigation officer was trying
very
hard to get that promotion she wanted.

Tascon snorted at that.  He had thought, after the Baron's big speeches about defending humanity and the great sacrifice of the crews of the Dreyfus Fleet, that every ship would be crewed with stalwart, upstanding people like the Baron seemed to collect.  The crew of the
Belgrade
proved that wrong, at least.  Granted, it seemed the ship was a sort of exile, but while the snub irritated Alberto Tascon's sense of self worth, the time to do what he wanted quelled that, to an extent.  For that matter, video from various crew indiscretions would be useful as either blackmail material or entertainment modules or both.  He had enough on the Captain and the Executive Officer to virtually guarantee a shining evaluation.

Alberto smirked at that, even as he perused through a private forum yet again.  The forum's official purpose was to help reunite families and friends who'd been separated by the Chxor occupation.  From what Alberto had seen, the primary purpose seemed to be underworld connections.  He snorted as he skimmed past what looked like a thinly veiled contract for murder and another that was probably a bounty.

He paused though, at an interesting entry.  It asked for information on personnel who had signed on with the Fleet.  On the surface it was just another plea for information on missing family.  What interested Alberto was the subtext... and the offer of 'commensurate payment.'

It looked like an offer for information.  Not just any information... military secrets.  Just the kind of military secrets that one communications officer might be able to access... if he were smart about it.

Ensign Alberto Tascon gave a tight, pleased smile.  Smart was what he did... and the thought of just how much money he could make made his smile grow broader.  He typed a terse message back, saying that he would be willing to put the poster in contact with the people he wanted to find and giving him an outside address for them to discuss things more discreetly.

Alberto licked his lips at the delicious irony of turning his exile against the officers who had snubbed him.  Here, he had limitless access to the Fleet's networks and days to work without interruption.  This kind of thing could easily get him the money to leave this wretched backwater behind for a more civilized world, perhaps even to live in comfort.  He didn't let the consequences worry him.  He would be long gone, with a fat bank account, before the information he leaked could be dangerous to him.  Besides, it wasn't as if he hadn't betrayed the Baron and his precious United Colonies before. 

***

Alanis Giovanni rapped on the door and waited a long, nervous moment.

Her stomach fluttered and she felt the uncertain desire to rush away.  She recognized the anxiety for what it was... and she hated the feeling.  It came, she knew, from her previous status as a social outcast amongst her 'peers' on Nova Roma.  It was a sensation that she had fought against and won, more often than not, by being outspoken and confident.