Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Reprisal Read online

  His cabin wasn’t dark by design; in fact, no matter how foul his mood, he wasn’t the dramatic sort who would try and match the lighting to his emotions. The fact was, his cabin had been on the fringes of a large laser impact a while back. Luckily, he had been out flying, or he might very well have been killed in the brief fire and exposure to vacuum that had raced through the corridor. Even after Avenger had gone through her stay in the drydock, there was still plenty of secondary and cosmetic damage left to fix. Drydock was for major repairs, like the new bridge module the ship had received. So his stateroom still bore the carbon scorch marks by his door, the malfunctioning light ballasts, and hastily rewired conduits that were bolted to his ceiling like so many snakes crawling over each other. He had brought in a small desk table lamp, and that was enough for now.

  His monitor had locked onto a rebroadcast of Senator Dennix’s newsfeed earlier that day, and Loren ended up shaking his head at the trouble the man was trying to stir up.

  He was startled out of his reverie by the two-tone chime from his door that signaled someone was requesting entry. Without changing positions, he reached for the small panel on his desktop and keyed the appropriate switch. “Come in.”

  The door opened just long enough for someone to make a quick entry, then swished closed again.

  He didn’t bother looking to see who it was, and simply muttered for whoever was there, “Can you believe that hump and myself are from the same planet? Embarassing…”

  “Am I interrupting some important brooding or anything?”

  Loren smiled at Cory’s voice. Leave it to her to find a way to break the sort of tension he was experiencing.

  “Actually, yes, I had reached the elusive Fourth Level of Brooding. Now you’ve brought just enough levity to the situation to ruin it all.” He turned and looked at her, then saw she had a small bottle of amber liquid in her hand.

  “Uh oh, you brought booze. Either it’s a serious talk or you’ve decided to start drinking more. I wouldn’t waste my time with the extra drinking; I tried it, too, but it didn’t help.” Despite the light hearted tone, Loren meant the second part. Despite his worries about Cassie, he had quickly realized that trying to cover up his feelings with drink, more work, or anything else wouldn’t actually fix the problem. Everyone had their own reasons and motivations they called upon when preparing for battle, and his was crystal clear.

  “Actually, it’s the first reason. The dreaded serious talk.” She took a few steps to the kitchenette, opened a cupboard and grabbed two nice glasses. She noticed much of the matching dinnerware in the cabinets was chipped or even broken, but was still stacked in place.

  “You know, plates are pretty cheap.” She mentioned this as she poured out some alcohol into the glasses. “I even have some old ones you can have if you’re desperate.”

  “Cassie bought me that whole set,” Loren replied, still staring off into space. He turned to face Cory and continued. “She said that when I became CAG I shouldn’t have to live like a poor university student, so she bought me some dinnerware, linens, even came aboard and helped decorate a bit. Can’t quite bear to throw those plates out, even if they did get pounded into dust when my cabin was hit a few months back.”

  Cory dropped the topic, though she didn’t sense any bitterness directed at her. She took a breath and pressed on.

  “So, then, how are you doing with the situation?” She sat down near him at the other desk chair, handing him one of the glasses as she passed by.

  “You mean fighting a war while I wonder what’s happening to my wife on an occupied planet?” Loren took a small sip, then looked out the viewport again. Abruptly, he turned back in and spun his chair around to face her.

  “Well, it’s pretty horrible, to put it bluntly. I watch the tactical updates every day in the hopes the Primans have left the system or that we’ve gone on the offensive there. But it never changes. So I stay here, do my job in a trance half the time, and spend the rest of my day trying to get better at killing Primans.” He leaned forward and looked her in the eyes sincerely. “Look, Cory, I’m not one for melodramatics. I’m not going to play all stoic and calm and then make you drag some sort of revelation out of me. I can do my job, and I want to do it well. I don’t have a death wish because what good is rescuing Cassie if I’m dead? Now, if I had the chance to trade my life for her freedom, I’d do it. But until then, all I can do is go out there and show as many Primans the afterlife as possible. Because maybe if I kill enough of them, I can get my wife back.”

  Cory just nodded, not having anything she considered appropriate to offer in return.

  Loren leaned back again, then drained the rest of the liquid from his glass. “Good stuff,” he said, indicating the glass. “You weren’t holding out on me, were you?” He asked with a little bit of the wry grin that had been absent too much as of late.

  “No, that was some of the stash reserved for emergency use only, the war ending, or Merritt proposing.”

  Loren laughed. “Well, let’s hope you get to use the rest for the other two occasions. So, do I pass the test?” He gave her a serious look, and Cory realized he took it to heart that she was worried about him.

  “Yes, I don’t think you’re insane yet. But if you could turn down the intensity just a bit, I think your pilots would worry a little less, as well.”

  “Point taken. I’ll try to calm down a bit.”

  Cory nodded and got up, setting her own empty glass down gently on the countertop as she walked past the kitchenette, handling it a little more reverently knowing what the glassware meant to Loren. She touched the pad on the door to command it open, and started to step through into the hallway.

  “Cory.”

  She turned to look back at Loren, still in his chair but looking a little more focused now.

  “Thanks for stopping by. It means a lot.” She nodded and turned to leave again, and Loren continued. “Tell your pilots all those bad things I said about you weren’t true, ok?”

  He could hear her laugh as his door slid closed.

  It was a bright and sunny afternoon in Talar’s capital city of Miranna. The temperature was perfect for short sleeves, with a light wind carrying a few wispy clouds across the sky above the bustling city. The Talaran Collection was very similar culturally to the Confederation of Systems, which perhaps explained the level of cooperation and comfort between the two governments. Miranna itself was very much like any of the large developed cities in the quadrant- tall buildings, lots of steel and glass, hovercar lanes stacked up thousands of feet, and a population demographic ranging from dirt poor to those rich enough to own their own moons.

  Garrett Drayven didn’t own his own moon. In fact, his place of residence was simply an upscale condo located in the heart of the bustling city. It was part of his identity, both as a fixer and a real estate specialist. The image required that he be at the center of it all, and he could live with that.

  He did, however, own another property, an hours’ flight out of the downtown area. It was a private residence located on a largish parcel of land out in an area where the people wanted privacy and space. The houses were large and often garishly ornate, with manicured lawns and expensive hovercars parked outside. Garrett’s house was upscale without being obnoxious, and he was quite proud of it, even though for security reasons it wasn’t titled in his name. It was where he really lived, a place where he could drop the mantle of being Garrett Drayven while behind its walls. He even liked to work on his lawn, though he tended to avoid the neighbors as much as he could. He wasn’t concerned with going to any of the neighborhood parties or having someone set him up with their highly successful single niece or any of the usual social trappings; this was where he came to relax.

  He had arrived the night before, landing his ship right at the landing pad in his back yard. It was a fringe benefit of living out where the properties were large- if he had wanted to land downtown, he would have had to land at the local private spaceport and take his h
overcar to the condo. After a good night’s sleep and a filling breakfast in his own kitchen, he dressed casually, like someone who was out running errands downtown. He walked into his office, furniture and fixtures made from a dark, fine grained exotic wood that came from a planet whose name he couldn’t remember but charged steep prices for its’ rare products. He stood before his desk, hands in his pockets, staring at the small flashlight he was going to deliver. He had already stashed a complete change of clothes, a rented hovercar and some unidentifiable credit sticks near the city that he would use for the op. He hadn’t experienced this sort of thrill or apprehension in a while, and it was invigorating. Or absolutely terrifying, he couldn’t be sure. But he did know that something about Kira, or Halley, or whoever she was, was different, and he wanted to know what the real story was. And to do that, he’d have to go deliver the package.

  The gym was typical of the trendy upscale establishments in that part of town, with music, huge holovid monitors on every flat surface, and enough people going in and out to make it perfect place for someone to go unnoticed.

  Garrett walked in and went straight to the front desk. He had to wait for a woman who was already at the counter asking some sort of question about the facilities, but once the attendant was available he introduced himself.

  “Hello,” he began. “I was in here earlier and found this flashlight on the floor by the lockers in the zero G aerobics room.” He decided to act the part a bit, not knowing whether the attendant would know what was really going on or if the athletic young Drisk woman was just another cutout in this big scheme. “I’m not into aerobics or anything, I was on the multi-weight machines. I just thought it was a nice flashlight, somebody is probably missing it.”

  The woman smiled, one that Garrett thought seemed genuine. In another life, he might have stayed to talk and see if he could get her to agree to dinner, but not now. Having attachments like that were the short road to an untimely end. Oh well, someday he would have enough money and his fill of adventure and he would step back from the more clandestine portions of his income and become ‘respectable’ for real. Until then, being a fixer was still the way to go.

  After Garrett left, the woman grabbed the flashlight and ducked into the manager’s office behind the front desk. There was always a manger on duty, no matter what time of the day it was. Some policy about always having someone available for the customers, the woman had heard, but it must have cost management some serious coin to do it. Oh well, not her problem. She, like the others who worked here, was well paid. There were only a few hard and fast, don’t-break rules at Fit26, otherwise the employees were empowered to pretty much do whatever was needed to help the place run smoothly. You simply needed to show up on time, be friendly to the customers, and always immediately take anything found abandoned to a manager, lest a customer lose a valuable possession. She wasn’t the type to argue the point, so she knocked on the doorframe of the manager’s officer and got his attention. He was a solidly built human male at the tail end of middle age, but still in great shape. Most of the employees suspected he was ex military, though he was never forthcoming with many details.

  “What can I do for you, Deena?” he asked.

  “Somebody dropped off a flashlight at the front desk,” she said, holding it out in the palm of her hand for him to see.

  “Scatterbrained people, eh? Did they say where they found it?”

  “He said the zero G aerobics room. Didn’t seem the aerobics type, actually. Cute though, I wish he would have stayed longer.”

  The manager, Arian, chuckled. The girl had a one track mind, and the train was definitely derailed.

  “Alright, toss it here and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Deena obligingly tossed him the small flashlight, then smiled and went off to resume her post at the front desk.

  Arian knew immediately what the real story was with the flashlight. The gossip around the building wasn’t far off from the truth; he was in fact ex military, special forces in fact. Once upon a time, he was Special Assault Recon, detached duty, just like Halley was, though he of course didn’t know her by name. After retirement, he had been offered this job so that someone with espionage experience could watch over the steady volume of dead drops that went on in this gym. It was a nice deal, in fact, and came with a free gym membership. He also watched out for his employees, trying to mentor them as best he could. He’d have to keep an eye on Deena; he had a bad feeling some unscrupulous person would try to take advantage of her trusting nature someday. That would be a very bad decision for that person to make.

  He had asked where the flashlight came from because each of the operatives that dropped items here had their own area to leave them. Employees were tested on their response to lost and found situations, and those that didn’t take it seriously or ‘accidentally’ kept things were quickly fired. Items were dropped off on a fairly regular basis by people Arian knew, both to test the employees and to dull them to the process of dealing with it.

  The zero G aerobics room was for an agent working inside captured Priman space, and was therefore his top priority. He rapidly tidied up his office, then grabbed the flashlight and walked out into the lobby. As he passed by on the way to the front door, he told Deena he’d be back in a few minutes and the place was hers to run. That got a beaming smile, and he noticed that she stood a little taller behind the desk upon being put in charge. She might be good officer material, he thought. If she ever brought up the topic, he’d offer her a recommendation to the Academy if she was interested.

  He walked down the street a few blocks to the parking garage where his hovercar was parked. A quick trip to the other end of town brought him to a Confed military base. He had followed the usual tradecraft for detecting and shaking a tail, and also relied on the small surveillance detail that monitored him and at least one other courier he knew of. If he left the parking garage via a certain exit and followed a certain route through downtown, they knew he was going to head to the base to deliver a package. They followed him and cleared his path accordingly.

  He didn’t go far into the base or linger long. He entered a building that appeared to house the administrative staff but was really an intelligence unit, dropped off the flashlight and filled out a report, and was back on his way to the gym inside of fifteen minutes. Overall, he felt it was a pretty nice way to live out his golden years.

  Senator Zek Dennix paced through the corridors of the warehouse the served as his home, hideout, and video studio. He had no illusions that he was actually hidden from the Primans; he knew Ples Damar’s allegiance was to his fellows, and the part he played for the Senator was just another aspect of his job.

  Zek still held onto the belief, though, that his claim to the Presidency of the Confederation was real, and that if he could manage to assume control, he would be allowed to govern the Confederation as was his right. His motivations for being in this position were numerous. He truly felt that he was qualified and deserving to help steer the Confederation, and if he had to do it alone, he could abide by that. He didn’t want to be a prisoner on some nameless planet or Priman prison ship like the rest of his colleagues in the Senate. And really, the Primans were going to set up someone to be the face of the Confederation under their rule, so it might as well be him. He was already playing both sides- keeping the people of the Confederation convinced that he was risking his life to help guide his people through these hellish times, while at the same time working with the Priman conquerors to help keep the captured territories in line. As long as the people heard him, someone that they believed was working for them, ask that Confed citizens behave and walk the line, it was easier for the Primans to keep order. And soon enough, he wouldn’t have to answer to them anyway. By that time, the people of Confed would recognize him as their leader.

  “Senator,” he heard behind him. It could only be Ples. “I have some notes for tomorrow’s broadcast.” Of course he did.

  “What have you, Mr. Damar?”
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br />   “More of the same, really, but I’ve worked in another reference planting the idea of cooperation with the Primans. We should stress that every broadcast for a while before we introduce more that will further the cause.”

  Zek Dennix stopped short and spun around to face Ples Damar.

  “And what cause is that, exactly? I thought our plan was to run the Confederation under Priman control. I thought our plan was to pretend to maintain independence so the people wouldn’t be inclined to wage some sort of guerilla war. But it seems so far that your plan is for me to pledge obedience and submission to your people.”

  Damar was surprised at the outburst, but managed to cover it. The Senator had so far been easy enough to manipulate with promises of personal wealth and power, but questioning the intentions of Damar’s people was new. The balancing act Ples was playing involved letting the Senator think he had enough leeway to let his ambitions aid the Primans, while keeping a tight enough leash to make sure the real reason he was still at large on Delos was fulfilled. He couldn’t let the Senator’s ego grow too big or have him suddenly start believing he was really going to be their leader, or he could become a problem.

  “Now, Zek,” Ples began, “we agreed the idea was to call into question Confed Navy’s policies. That gets you in the political spotlight, and hopefully that helps you find yourself in power. Then you pledge to help work out a peaceful existence with us. We’ve gone over this before, what’s changed?”

  “I sometimes question your plans for me and the rest of my people; I assume you could understand my reluctance to hand over control of a centuries-old territory that happens to be my home.”