Authors: Gun Brooke
As fashion dictated, the women’s blouses and caftans were transparent, with just enough opacity to maintain a modicum of modesty. Casta M’Isitor pushed the limits by wearing a white see-through dress that deceptively covered her front all the way up to her neck, only to plunge down to her buttocks in the back, revealing an abundance of olive-tinted skin. Once Roshan would have considered such a display sexy, but now, especially taking into consideration
whose
back was revealed, it left her indifferent.
Am I too old, or just too picky?
Just then, as Andreia was drinking from a crystal glass someone bumped into her from behind, making her spill a few drops on her chin. She licked them away quickly, and Roshan stopped breathing momentarily at the sight of Andreia’s pink tongue running several times across full, deep red lips.
Damn! Perhaps not too old, after all.
Andreia glanced up, half smiling. “Making a mess again. Sorry about that.” She brushed a drop of wine off her chin with her fingertips.
“She bumped into you. Not your fault.” Roshan heard how short she sounded and forced a smile again. It certainly wasn’t Andreia’s fault that she looked so beautiful when she smiled. Unless Roshan was imagining things, Andreia smiled very differently at her in private than the way she beamed during video transmissions, intent on enticing an entire nation.
The smile faded from Andreia’s lips, and her face hardened as she paled. “We have to go, Roshan. Trouble.”
Roshan didn’t question anything at this point. “Okay, let’s say good-bye. What’s our excuse?”
“You’re sick.”
“What?” Roshan felt her eyebrows rise.
“You have a bad headache.” Andreia waved her hand impatiently. “So look sick.”
Grinding her teeth again, Roshan wondered why Andreia couldn’t be the one who played sick. After another look from Andreia, she complied as they reached the head table where Chairman M’Ocresta sat with the M’Isitors.
“Chairman M’Ocresta, Dixmon, Mrs. M’Isitor, we need to leave early. We’re sorry and don’t want to insult the chairman.” Andreia spoke softly, with a worried look on her face as she glanced in Roshan’s direction.
Playing her part, Roshan sighed and made her breath tremble. “I apologize, ma’am,” she whispered and steadied herself against the table. “I know this is rude.”
“So this is why you two were clinging to each other?” Casta M’Isitor huffed. She was obviously displeased with their conduct.
“I thought she was going to faint, ma’am,” Andreia said, completely ignoring the sarcasm and acting as if Casta had merely stated a fact.
“Really.”
Roshan thought this was a perfect opportunity to end the discussion, so she bit her lip and made a gross sound, as if on the verge of throwing up. Casta looked at her with disgust written over her sharp features. “Sorry,” Roshan muttered and burped. “Something I ate earlier, I’m sure.” She reached out and leaned heavily against Andreia.
“Get her home,” Dixmon said hastily. “You’re obviously not feeling well, Ms. O’Landha. We’ll visit another time.”
“Thank you.” Roshan kept up the pretence until they were outside, away from the eyes and ears of the Onotharian leadership.
*
Andreia looked at Roshan with reluctant appreciation. “You’re quite an actress. I guess leading a double life for so long makes fooling others second nature.” She squeezed a sensor on a device in her pocket as she spoke, to call her driver.
“You sounded so subservient in there, talking to M’Ocresta and the M’Isitors. I almost forgot you were acting. Now,” she glanced sharply at Andreia, “what’s going on?”
“I’m wearing an earpiece. I always do.” Andreia motioned for Roshan to follow her down the wide palace steps to the courtyard. “I had a Code Omega.” It was the second most severe of the resistance alerts.
“It must be bad.”
“Not a lot of details yet, but it’s about our captured rebels. They’re moving them out, starting tonight.”
“What? That’s insane. The prisons can’t be ready yet—” Roshan interrupted herself, “unless they completed them before they attacked us. Damn! And that doesn’t give us much time. I’m still waiting for Kellen O’Dal’s response. I don’t know if the SC will help us.” Roshan’s eyes turned to ice blue slits, as they’d always done when she focused hard. “And if they do, and act immediately, it’ll take them a few weeks to arrive, at least.”
Andreia’s chauffeur pulled up. “We need to get out of here. You should contact what’s left of your cell. We don’t have time for another Boyoda transmission, so we’ll have to play the cards we have left.”
Roshan followed her to the hovercraft door as it hissed open. “I’ll head for the mountains within an hour. Contact me when you know more. I’ll be wearing my earpiece.”
“Okay.”
Roshan hesitated as if she meant to say something more.
“Yes?” Andreia prodded.
“Be careful.” The words came out slightly strangled, and the look on Roshan’s face did nothing to soften them.
“I will,” Andreia said. “And you too. I ca—we can’t afford to lose you.”
With a brisk nod, Roshan retreated. Andreia closed the door and leaned back in her seat. “The Government Building. I’m in a hurry.” The hovercraft rose and the driver eased into the emergency air corridor, above the allotted lanes. She had to get there quickly and think of a reason to examine official documents at this hour.
Her excuses grew thinner with every situation. Andreia closed her eyes tightly, feeling like she was living on borrowed time. Any action could be her last, if she was found out.
Kellen O’Dal stood at attention as her wife and commanding officer, Rae, strode along the lines of provisional officers. More than forty new officers in the Supreme Constellations Fleet had taken the last, and most advanced, course in protocols and regulations, and had also been successfully trained in combat. Now they were about to receive their additional insignias, as well as their assignments.
The levels of the training had been high from a civilian point of view, but for Kellen, they’d been easy. Her trainer in combat skills had claimed that she should’ve trained him, instead, and she’d struggled only when it came to protocol and regulations. Some of the rules made no sense to her, and she felt they would only hamper a mission. Still, she had to get her clearance and the go-ahead from the Fleet, or she wouldn’t be able to participate in her homeworld’s liberation.
Rae now stopped in front of her, her blue-gray eyes shining with obvious pride. “Ensign Kellen O’Dal, you are hereby commissioned to lieutenant commander, and your assignment will be under the direct command of…Admiral Ewan Jacelon.”
Kellen opened her mouth, stunned, having expected to remain under Rae’s command as she had since she accepted the rank of ensign. “Ma’am,” she merely said and nodded, her hands strictly by her sides. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Rae pinned the insignia on her lapels. “Admiral Jacelon has generously agreed to loan you to my unit, so you will remain on Corma for now, awaiting your first mission.”
Relieved, but still mystified, Kellen smiled faintly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Congratulations, Lieutenant Commander O’Dal.” Rae moved on to the woman next to Kellen.
Kellen wondered if Ewan had agreed to assign her to his unit instead of Rae’s, even if it was only on paper, to forestall any whispers of nepotism. She knew both the Jacelons were very by-the-book, and that they very rarely bent the rules. Rae had once told her that if you stuck to every little rule and protocol, and always kept your wits when it came to the minor things, you could occasionally get away with bending the big ones. Put that way, it made sense, though Kellen preferred the direct, timesaving approach.
Once the last soldiers had their insignias fastened to their lapels, Rae stepped back. “I am proud to see you all so eager to do your duty as we face war with the Onotharian Empire. They are formidable opponents, but the Supreme Constellations will prevail. We have something the Onotharians haven’t possessed in decades, if ever. They are a rigid and controlling race, and we in the SC, as a unification of planets, have learned to be more diverse, more humane. This, I’m certain, will be our strength and their downfall.”
Kellen hoped Rae was right. Her wife had an unbending faith in her homeworld and the SC Fleet specifically. Kellen wasn’t easily impressed, but what she’d seen so far showed her she’d been right to bring Armeo to the SC. As much as she wanted everything to move along faster, the SC war machinery and the way the SC Fleet operated, was impressive. She had watched her wife coordinate with the marine unit generals, negotiate with diplomats from the less-advanced planets, and press the diplomatic corps until Rae’s mother, one of the top diplomats within the SC, had everything she needed, including a fleet of six ships in which she journeyed safely back and forth between planets.
“Dismissed.”
Rae’s crisp voice interrupted Kellen’s thoughts, and she relaxed marginally as her peers scattered over the quay area and returned to their temporary quarters. Kellen was about to join them when Rae hurried toward her. “Kellen. Come with me.” Rae rushed past her, her facial expression entirely different from only moments ago.
“What have you heard?” Kellen asked.
“We have a conference with Councilman Thorosac. Things are happening fast. I sent him a subspace message through mother and asked for advice, but had no idea it would attract so much attention.”
“You’re talking about the Gantharat resistance.”
“Yes. Apparently, Thorosac feels strongly about this sort of thing.”
“You mean resistance movements?”
“Yes. He was once a renegade commander on Colonial 6, before they broke free from the Imidestrian government.” Rae pushed her wrist against a sensor, and they entered a long, bedrock-encased tunnel that led to an underground compound where Kellen had previously been allowed access to only the first two subterranean floors.
“And now he wants to help?”
“Let’s just say, I pray he’s going to help pave the way for a full-scale mission to intercept the prison transports. We have to prevent the Onotharians from killing all these people. The last report I received entailed…perfectly horrific details regarding the asteroid prisons. They’re so overpopulated that the current prison transports may be the last straw.”
At the end of the tunnel was an elevator, which they hurriedly entered. “Level minus fourteen. Jacelon. Voice mark. Code alpha, alpha, one, six, one.”
“Do I have a higher security clearance now?” Kellen stood calmly at Rae’s side as the elevator doors opened and they boarded. It didn’t even tremble as it took them deep into the bedrock recesses.
“Yes. Father took care of that. He and Thorosac made it possible for us to give you this commission, and also for us to keep working together and still not be directly in the same chain of command. Officially you serve directly under Admiral Ewan Jacelon, and you’ll act as his liaison while carrying out your duties.”
“So, I report only to him.” Kellen stopped talking as the elevator reached the fourteenth level. The doors opened to a metal-plated corridor that seemed to reach endlessly into the bedrock. Immediately outside the elevator, a black elliptical alloy gate hummed.
“Just step through it.” Rae smiled. “It’ll be all right.”
Kellen made a wry face and walked through the gate, which, she surmised, was a detector of sorts, and as she moved, the frequency of the humming changed. Rae followed her and pointed at the fourth door down the corridor. “Over here.” It opened and a man poked his head out.
“Admiral,” he said, and beamed. “We’re ready for you and the… lieutenant commander.” He obviously remembered Kellen’s brand-new rank just in time.
“Thank you, Ensign.” Rae nodded toward the young Cormanian and motioned for Kellen to enter.
Kellen was surprised by the vast array of technological equipment and ongoing security surveillance that hid behind the simple door. Lit up only by the instruments and view screens, the room was at least five times as large as the mission room onboard the Gamma VI space station. She estimated the current crew consisted of a hundred individuals.
The ensign guided them to a small transparent cube hosting a large view screen and two computer consoles. “There you go, ma’am. Councilman Thorosac is ready for you. Just boot the view screen.” He closed the door behind them, and crystals within the aluminum changed their polarity, rendering the walls completely opaque.
After they sat down Rae touched a sensor, turning on the view screen. A SC emblem twirled for a few seconds, and the image of two men came into view.
“Councilman Thorosac. Admiral Jacelon, this is a surprise.” If Rae was taken aback by her father’s unexpected presence, her voice didn’t give anything away. She laced her fingers, out of view of the video transmitter, tightly together. Kellen wanted to place her hand over the familiar gesture that indicated Rae’s edginess, but knew better. Rae and her father had begun to get along better after Rae had nearly lost her life on Gantharat shortly after marrying Kellen, but there was still tension between them, especially when it came to professional issues. Kellen knew her wife well enough to suspect that Rae thought her father was present to check up on her.
“Admiral Jacelon. Lieutenant Commander O’Dal. Congratulations on your recent promotions. It’s good to see you again.” Thorosac nodded briefly. Distinguished, and a handsome man of Imidestrian/Cormanian descent, he watched them calmly with silvery gray eyes.