The Days of the Golden Moons (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 5) (3 page)

Chapter 5

Taner

“I
need someone who can answer my vid and direct the calls,” I said in English.  It
had been quite a while since I had spoken any English.  The woman laughed at me
as if my accent was funny.  “Did I mispronounce something?”

“No,”
she drawled and I considered how strange her own accent was.  “Your accent is
lovely.”

“Thank
you.  Lovely,” I mused.  “My secretary is having a baby and perhaps will return
in a few months’ time.  Hopefully by then Madame will have returned as well,
and you may then attend to her instead of my vid.”

“Sure,”
the woman said and smiled at me as if I had just given her some great reward. 
“Though, I don't speak much Mishnese yet.”

“I
realize that.  Deka,” I pointed at my other secretary, "will speak to
those who do.  I need someone who speaks English because there are those who
call me from Cascadia and Lumineria who speak only English.  Occasionally, I
will get a call from the Alliance as well.”

“Ok. 
I'd love to.  I'm just enjoying every single minute of being here.  I absolutely
love Rehnor, and especially this beautiful Palace which my very best girlfriend
seems to think is like some kind of jail.”

“Well,
I am very happy for you,” I replied.  “At least someone loves it here.  The
rest of us tend to agree with your very best girlfriend.  Tomorrow you may
start?”

“Sure,
Lord Taner.  I'll be here bright and early.”

“Thank
you, Miss Caroline.”  I turned to head into my own private office when she
called me back.

“Lord
Taner,” she said.  “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,
why do ask?”

“Well,
I'm a nurse you know, for a long time already.  Your color is kind of grey-looking. 
You ever have heart problems?”

“Yes,”
I replied and my chest squeezed as I said this.  Perhaps I was having heart
issues again.  “A dozen years ago I had a bypass aboard Madame's Starship.”

“The
Discovery?  You had a bypass aboard the Discovery?  Oh Lordy, fancy that.  Did
Jerry do it?”

“Yes,
indeed he did.”

“My
goodness sakes,” she laughed.  “What a tiny small galaxy this is that we live
in.  Now don't you worry one bit, Lord Taner.  Jerry does good work.  I'm sure
he did an awesome job retying up your arteries, but if you're feeling some pain
these days and maybe a little shortness of breath, maybe you ought to just go
pop into that nice SdK hospital I saw as we flew in here yesterday.”

“We
have a hospital here in the Palace and an infirmary.  Perhaps I'll go by there
tomorrow.”

“Now
you do that,” she said.  “You take as much time as you need.  I'll be right
here handling all your calls and directing your business.”

I
didn't know if that made me relieved or more worried.  I sat down at my own
desk and proceeded to flip through my messages.  My vid buzzed.

“Lord
Berkan for you, sir,” Deka said. 

“He’s
going to attack Rozari,” Berkan started without any preamble.  My chest
clenched again.  I grasped at my desk and took long deep breaths.  “Fuck him,
Taner!  I mean it.  He’s going to start a bloody war with the Alliance, and
there is no fucking reason!  What does he want with Rozari anyway?  He hated
Rozari.  For the last twenty fucking years, all we’ve heard from him was how
hot and dry and miserable Rozari was and now he’s going to blow up some bloody
planet.”

“Rozari?”
I gasped, willing the pain to subside and my ribs to relax.  “He’s going to
blow up Rozari?”

“No,
no!” Berkan roared.  “He’s blowing up some bitty old planet or moon in the star
system.  It’s a show of force, Taner.  He just wants everyone to see what he
can do so they’ll all be frightened out of their wits and let him come back to
Rozari to do whatever in the hell he thinks he needs to do there.”

I
took slow steady breaths and counted to ten.  The pain was going away.  My
heart was pumping loud and strong.  I wasn’t having another heart attack.  It
was angina or stress or perhaps even indigestion.  I would change my diet.  I
would stop with the chocolate tortes and puddings.  I would eat only low fat
meats.

“Are
you listening, Taner?” Berkan shrieked.  “I just told you, he’s going to blow
up a bloody planet, and you aren’t even responding.”

“With
his finger?” I whispered.  I had too much caffeine.  I drank far too much
coffee.  And alcohol too.  I would change my entire diet and exercise more. 

“No,
he’s not blowing up the planet with his finger.  He’s ordered the ISS Queen of
Altaris to do it.  As far as I know, it might even be done by now.  He’s been
in conference with his Admirals all night.”

“Alright,
Berk,” I nodded.  “I’ll check into it.”  I rose from my desk and left the room.

“Check
into it, Taner?” Berkan screamed behind me.  “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.” 
I headed to the infirmary to check myself in there instead.

Chapter 6

Jerry

I
was sitting in a coffee shop with a venti mocha with extra chocolate, nonfat milk
and whip.  I also had three whoopie pies, but I was eating them slowly,
savoring them. 

For
a moment or two there, I craved a bacon cheeseburger, remembering how I savored
one of those even when they were synthetic meats.  I figured this craving must
be due to low protein, so I decided to head to the market after my coffee and
pick up some tofu and vegetables for a stir-fry for dinner.  I had been
experimenting with grilling my tofu on the barbeque, but it tended to crumble
before it even got close to the bun. 

It
was another incredibly beautiful day outside.  The locals said the rainy season
would come around in another couple of months, and I was actually looking
forward to it because to tell you the truth, all this endless paradise type
weather was a little bit boring. 

I
thought of Janet for a minute back on Rozari, probably going to work as usual
and cussing me out to every nurse in the hospital.  If I was still there, I’d
be married by now and probably still eating cheeseburgers.  I’d be spending my
day running from patient to patient and training the interns or lecturing the
residents.  I might even be saving a life or two.  I didn’t need to do that
anymore, and I guess I was glad I wasn’t married.  Janet would never have let
me grow a beard or become a vegan.  I thought about Katie and wondered if I had
married her instead, would she have let me become a vegan?

I
picked up my tablet and thumbed through a book about finding one’s inner Chakra
and spiritual peace.  I studied the Lotus Position and the Downward Facing Dog. 
I imagined myself doing the Hero’s Pose.  It relieved constipation.  That was
good information.  This vegan diet was really tough on my digestion.  I decided
to learn about all the poses and then I could counsel my patients on yoga as
well as prescribe tinctures. 

My
coffee was about half gone and I had eaten two whoopie pies when I figured I
had studied enough for the morning and flipped on the Galaxy News Service. 
First up on the headlines was Ron’s latest escapades. 

“Hmmph,”
I said aloud, reading all about the eighth planet in the Rozarian system being
blown to smithereens by one of Ron’s ships.  The Alliance was shouting about
this clear act of aggression although as far as I could tell nobody was
killed.  The planet was just an ice ball, way out there millions of miles from
the star.  “They ought to just shut up and accept the fact that he wants
Rozari.  He always gets what he wants.”

“He
does indeed,” the guy sitting next to me remarked.  I glanced over at him.  He
looked familiar, long black hair streaked with grey, dark reddish skin, deep
black eyes. 

“You’re
the fish guy.”

“I
am,” the guy nodded and held out his hand.  “Tuman.”

“Jerry.”

“Dr.
Moonbeam of the Holistic Health Clinic around the corner?”

“Yep. 
Jerry Moonbeam, child of Earth.  Tuman no last name?”

“Tuman
no last name,” he replied.  “May I see what you are reading there on your
tablet?”

I
handed it to him, and he read through the article switching the language
translation from English to Mishnese.  I didn’t speak Mishnese, but I could
recognize it as it was starting to appear on public buildings and signs.  He
finished the article and handed the tablet back to me and then drained his own
coffee cup.

“Rozari
will belong to the Empire whether she wants to be or not,” he said.  “Do you think
the Alliance will fight because of this?”

“I
think they’ll make a lot of noise but then probably hightail it out of there.” 
I picked up my last whoopie pie.  I opened it up and licked the frosting from
the middle, eating the cake part last.

“I
think there may be animal fats used in that frosting,” Tuman said. 

I
dropped the whoopie pie.  “I didn’t know that.”

Tuman
shrugged.  He rose to his feet.  “When you are no longer a vegan, I will treat
you to some swordfish steaks.  They are very nice right now and plentiful.”

“Thank
you,” I nodded and watched him leave.  Swordfish on the grill basted with
butter and lemon didn’t sound too bad at all.  Except, I was a vegan.  I tossed
my whoopie pie in the trash and headed to the market to look for tofu.

Chapter 7

Shika

“Dude,
your cell is ringing,” my cousin Tuman said.  He tossed it to me from where it
sat on the fence post. 

“Thanks
a lot,” I replied as it landed in the dirt smashing a corn seedling.  I took
off my gloves and picked up the cell, noting the number was from the Palace,
and it had already gone to voicemail.  Shoving it in my pocket, I straightened
up the corn sprout.  “Do you think this will grow still?”

“Dude,
who cares?” Tuman replied.  “We’ve got a whole fucking field of this shit.”  He
waved his hand at the valley where millions of sprouts just like mine were
erupting from the dark, rich soil.

“Yeah,
but this one is mine.”

He
laughed and took out a cig.  “Let’s go find some girls.  I want to go riding.”

“Dude,
you are crude,” I said and stood up, wiping the dirt off my leggings and
inspecting the rest of my garden.  I saw a tomato plant that needed staking. 
“You go ahead.  I’ll catch up in a few minutes.”

“Ah
come on!”  He tossed his cig in my garden.  He needed me.  He always scored better
when I was around.  I didn’t kid myself.  It wasn’t my coolness or my
entertaining personality although I wasn’t too bad in either of those areas.  I
was Prince Shika, son of the great but mad Emperor and Tuman was just a lesser
de Kudisha prince.  “Let’s take your speeder and head over to Turko.  I want to
go out with some hot college babes.”

“Well,
fix up my tomato plant for me,” I said and reached back in my pocket for the
cell that was ringing again.  It was Lord Berkan.

“Hello,
son,” he said.  “I trust you are well?”

“Yes,
sir.  I’m fine, thanks.  What’s going on?” 

Tuman
tied my plant up to a stake and then spat on it as if this was a total waste of
his time.  Getting drunk in a college bar at the University of Turko and taking
home a couple girls was about the only thing he didn’t consider a waste of
time.

“I’ve
got some news for you and something you might be interested in doing.  I’m
sending a limo for you.  It should be there shortly.”

“Okay.” 
I hung up my cell.  “Sorry dude.  I gotta go.”

“Why?” 
He followed me into my granddad’s house and sat down on the couch putting his
feet upon the table.

“Get
your dirty feet off my table,” Gramps yelled from the kitchen.

“How
do you know my feet are even on your table?” Tuman yelled back.

“Because
they always are!”  Gramps came out carrying a plate of sandwiches and a pitcher
of ice tea.  We had plenty of women here in our village that gladly would have
worked in Gramp’s house and done all this for him.  He didn’t want any of them
here though.  He liked to do stuff like this all by himself and to make me
help.  Uncle Rekah had a whole bunch of servants and Tuman never lifted a
finger at his house.  I had to wash dishes, sweep floors and even clean the
toilets.

“I
gotta go to Mishnah,” I announced, heading to my room to pack up my bag.  “I
got summoned to the Palace.”

“Cool!”
Tuman cried with his feet still on Gramp’s table.

Gramps
followed me into my room and stood in the doorway looking very worried.  “Who
summoned you?”

“Lord
Berkan.”  I tossed my game system and my toothbrush into my bag.  Then I took
my
Palace
clothes out of the closet and started to change.  “He didn’t
say why though.”

Gramps
nodded.  He stared out my window at the corn field.

“Do
you know why?” I asked.  “What’s going on?  Did my dad do something weird
again?”

“It’s
your mom,” he mumbled and looked straight at me.  “She’s been found.”

I
dropped my bag on the floor, and my game system fell out.  “You’re kidding,
right?”

He
shook his head.  “I don't jest with you, grandson.  Your mother is on Derius
II, and she seems to be fine, but she’s not coming home just yet.”

I
reached down to pick up my game system but for some strange reason, just
decided to sit down there on the floor with it.  I picked it up and flipped it
over and over in my hand.  She wasn’t coming back, not even to see me.

“It’s
not you, Shika,” Gramps said and then lowered himself to the floor next to me. 
His knees creaked, and he said, “Ooph” as he sat down.  “She’s been in a mental
hospital these last few years.  The Alliance was giving her all sorts of drugs
to keep her asleep.  She’s very confused now, and your dad thinks it’s best if
she just does what she wants for a while.”

“If
he made her come back, she’d probably try to run away again?”

Gramps
nodded.  “He’s not going to make her come back.  She’ll come back when she’s
ready.”

“Can
I go there?”

“No.”

“Not
even for one day to see her?”

“No. 
Your father says no.”

I
threw my game system across the room.  It hit the wall and made a small dent in
it.  The system bounced on the floor, and the battery cover fell off.

“I’m
sorry, Shika,” Gramps said and rose to his feet.  “Hopefully, one or the other
of them will come to their senses soon.  In the meantime, have a good time in
Mishnah.”

“Kari-fa!”
I swore when he had left and then I picked up my bag and headed to the landing
strip.

All
the way back to Mishnah, I kept thinking it was my fault that my mom was
staying in Derius.  She probably heard how messed up I got in boarding school. 
Someone had to have told her how I ran away when I was seven and stayed with
Grandma Moira for more than a year.  My mom never liked Grandma Moira.  She
probably thought Grandma Moira poisoned my mind against her, and I would hate
her now too.  Or maybe she thought I had turned out just like my dad.  In my
head, I went over all of the reasons why she didn’t want to see me.  Somehow,
all of those reasons ended up being my fault.

Lord
Berkan and Lord Taner tried to talk me out of it.  They kept insisting nothing
was my fault.  I finally just agreed with them because I was sick of hearing
about it and I wanted them to shut up. 

“She’ll
be home soon,” Berkan insisted.  “She’s not going to stay out there in the
forest running around for very long.  Wait until the rainy season starts.”  He
thought that was pretty funny.  I didn’t.

Anyway,
that wasn’t the only thing they wanted to tell me.  The real reason they
summoned me back to Mishnah was because my dad wanted me to go on a starship. 
Apparently, he had woken up from whatever coma he had been in and remembered
that I not only existed but was still very much alive.  I didn’t rate high
enough to actually get a few minutes of his precious attention, but I did merit
enough to receive an official command to board the ISS Queen of Altaris before
it left on its next mission.

“What
am I supposed to do there?” I asked Taner and Berkan.

“We
are not entirely sure,” Lord Taner said, and Lord Berkan shrugged.  “But you’re
supposed to go there.”

The
next day, I took a spaceplane to the Imperial SpaceNavy’s orbiting spacedock
and from there I boarded the ship.  This was the first time I had ever been on
one of our starships and the first time I had been in space since I was a
little kid.  I had to get all dressed up in the Dress Blue uniforms of the
Imperial SpaceNavy, but I didn’t have any stripes, so I looked like a cadet. 

Standing
next to the Captain on the bridge of the ship, I watched as we left the Capital
Planet behind us.  We headed over to the Rozarian star system, the whole galaxy
unfolding right in front of my eyes.

“Would
you like to sit at the Com, Your Royal Highness?” the Captain asked. 

I
felt a little ridiculous, but I did want to sit there.  He stood up, and I sat
down in the big chair.  I remembered standing on the bridge of the Discovery as
my mom sat just like this.  My heart began to race.  My palms got sweaty, but
something was happening to me.  I forgot how lonely I was.  I forgot how weird
my parents were and how I hadn’t seen either of them for more years than I
could count.  I forgot how neither of them loved me enough to want to see me. 
I began to remember how much I loved staring out of the windows at the stars,
feeling the hum of the engines reverberate through my whole body and that amazing
sensation of force as the ship shifted in to Light + Speed and we headed out to
the great unknown.  I was happy sitting here, truly happy, and I never wanted
to go back down.

“Tell
them Light plus five,” the Captain whispered in my ear and so I repeated it in
my best commanding voice. 

The
ship engaged propulsion and the stars became blurs, and we were flying.  It was
nothing like anything I had ever felt before.  This ship soared with such grace
and such speed, it made the Discovery seem like something from the stone ages. 
We passed out of the system, past the moons and the stars, through Altaris and
then right past the Rozarian sun.  We soared past every planet in the system,
all the way to the furthest darkest reaches of the system, where the Rozarian
star was just a distant pinprick in the sky. 

We
slowed and then began to orbit Rozari-8.  The officers on the bridge were busy
at their stations.  The Captain was on the vid conversing with an Admiral.  I
sat in his chair and stared at the giant ice ball planet and wondered what we
were doing here.  

Finally,
the Captain came back over to me and whispered in my ear again.  “Tell them to
engage,” he said and so again in my commanding voice, a voice not unlike my
father’s, I ordered the bridge officers to engage.  I didn’t know what they
were engaging.  I didn’t care either.

“Now
deploy,” the Captain said.

“Deploy,”
I commanded.  On the screen in front of us, a flash of light shot across our
bow.  It lit up the screen like a comet, heading toward the ice planet. 

“Reverse
thrust, Light-3,” the Captain ordered and the ship moved quickly backward.  A
moment later the whole screen lit up.  The ice planet had exploded!

“Dude!”
I screamed, and even the other officers on the bridge cried out.

“Spot
on!” the Captain yelled, and a cheer went up.  We switched vectors and the ship
veered away from the chunks of rock and ice debris, heading out of the system
and back towards the Capital Planet.  “Well done, Prince Shika,” the Captain
said as if I was responsible for all this myself.

“What
did we do?” I asked, getting up from the chair.  I had just ordered the
destruction of a planet.  I had sat at the helm, I had given the command.  I
had done something that no one anywhere had ever done before, and I wasn’t sure
whether I was thrilled or horrified by it.

“We
have just captured the planet Rozari and the Rozarian star system for your
father,” the Captain replied.  “For the first time in a thousand years, the
mother planet will belong to our people again.”

I
gave him back his chair and went and sat next to the windows to think for a
while.  I know I didn’t really do it.  I didn’t capture Rozari.  I just gave
the command because somebody, my dad maybe, wanted me to do it.  I didn’t know
why and I didn’t really care. 

Capturing
Rozari by destroying an ice ball might be a good thing.  It was better than
nuking them and killing a bunch of people.  Being part of the Empire would
probably be good for them too.  In any case, I wasn’t about politics and
acquiring planets.  I was about flying.  I was about being up here in space
among all the stars, soaring across the galaxy faster than even light could go.

By
the time we pulled back into the spacedock above the Capital Planet, my whole
life was laid out before me.  I knew now what I wanted to do.  I knew where I
belonged.  I was born in space.  This was my home.  I was never going to be a
king, and that was okay because being king was frankly a lousy job.  I wanted
to join the Imperial SpaceNavy and wear this uniform for real.  I wanted
stripes to cascade up my sleeves as my mom’s uniform used to have.  I would
work hard.  I would study, and I would become a starship captain because I
would deserve it.  I would be the best damn captain this Imperial SpaceNavy
ever had.

When
I returned to Mishnah, I rang Petya and told him about my ride on the Starship and
how we blew up the ice planet.  The two of us started texting and talking like
old times.  A few months later, both of us were admitted into University of New
Mishnah.  I didn’t have the grades of course, but I took a bunch of equivalency
exams and being who I was, they let me in any way.  We made plans to start
there in the fall, and we even got a dorm room to share.  I planned to get my
Bachelors of Science degree in Astrophysics and after graduation, go to Officer’s
Candidate School. 

For
the first time in years, I knew where I was going and where I would end up.  I
knew also with certainty that my mom, when she came back, would approve.  I
also knew with certainty, that even though I never really knew my dad, even
though I never spoke to him, he heard my prayers after all.