The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (10 page)

“Who asked you to do this?”

“Her Grace, Renatah Ohlson, Private Secretary to the Empress Christiana.”

The man across the table looked again at the passport and the papers, and nodded his head. Still holding her documents, he leaned back in his chair. “I’m Colonel Alexander Gomez, and as head of security here at the Villa, I want you to know, I think this stinks. You have a diplomatic passport, and a letter of introduction which checks out, so I can’t do anything about it, but I don’t trust anyone who comes into my palace unannounced, unnamed, and in disguise, even if she were the Empress herself.”

The colonel looked at Anna quietly for a moment.

Unsure of what was to come, she worried that it might be a long interrogation. Since she hadn’t been asked a question, she chose to remain silent.

Gomez inhaled and pushed his chair back from the desk. “Your body scans and your briefcase come back clean, so I need to get you to the office where you’ll meet the king.”

It took Anna a couple of seconds to realize what he had just said. When she did, she understood just how high up the food chain she had climbed from two years prior.

When she had entered Beauregard’s office, she had braced herself for a full interrogation, like when she arrived on Apollos. That had lasted six months. Instead, the colonel caved without even a fight.

Gomez stood.

As she took her papers back, they seemed heavier.

Stepping from behind his desk, he put on his jacket and gloves, then escorted Anna out of the office. At the end of the hall, they took an elevator up several floors and stepped out into a large hallway with deep plush blue carpet. The walls overflowed with huge, silver-framed portraits and decorations, each of which had a plaque designating its significance. The hallway itself was at least four times wider than the one she just exited, although that had been somewhat cramped.

Having entered near an end, Gomez led Anna just a few steps and then through two sets of double doors. He continued through a small anteroom into an office which was certainly larger than the colonel’s but not especially spacious, although the reminders of power were everywhere. Gold glinted from the frames of the massive paintings on the wall. The ceiling here was painted with frescoes, all of them showing various battles, some ancient, others modern. The frescoes all circled around the spot on the floor where a large, squarish, carved wooden desk sat.

Gomez closed the door behind them and then gestured for Anna to take a seat in the single chair in front of the desk.

Anna noticed a bird of some kind was carved in the front panel of the desk. The bird looked like it probably came from Old Earth, possibly an eagle. The creature’s wings were spread wide, and it carried arrows in one foot and branches in another.

The room itself was paneled in dark wood and the carpet was almost blood red.

Gomez came to stand behind the desk, watching Anna. He glanced into the heads-up display tucked down over his one eye. “The King is walking this way. He should be with you in about three minutes. You will have ten minutes of his time. It would be an appropriate time to remove your disguise. When the King arrives, it is polite to stand. You will call him ‘Your Majesty’ the first time you address him, and ‘Sir’ every time thereafter. His sister may also be present in the interview. You will address her as ‘Your Highness’.”

Anna nodded, and felt her face flush a little. She wasn’t sure she would remember all that, so partly to shake her nerves, and partly to project an aura of confidence, she looked at Gomez and said smartly, “Yes, Sir.”

Gomez didn’t grin. If anything, he scowled a little harder.

Refusing to be flustered, Anna took out her own heads-up and, using a thought, told it to remove her prosthetics. Her face melted, landing in her hand as a tube of cosmetics. This she put in her attache.

Gomez watched carefully where she placed the apparent cosmetics case. Nodding toward her heads-up, he said “It’s not polite to wear that in the presence of the King. I suggest you take it off and turn it off until after your interview.”

Anna quickly took off the heads-up and put it away, after turning it to silent mode.

Thirty seconds later, the King walked in the door. He wasn’t quite as tall as Jack, perhaps an inch or two shorter, but he was broad-shouldered, his skin a mild brown, his short, straight hair a dirty blond with brown mixed through. He had a steady but quick gait—the walk of someone used to leading while others followed. He wore a goatee and mustache of the same mixed colors. Anna wasn’t prepared for how strikingly handsome he would be. He had distinct eyebrows which drew out his ice blue eyes, a strong lean jawline, and a penetrating look.

She caught her breath, intimidated, and was instantly reminded of the Unity’s lack of diversity. There the flesh was mostly uniform and pale.

Anna stood.

Dressed in a dark blue jacket and a lighter blue shirt which shimmered slightly, the King lacked the panache and flamboyance of a politician from Leto, with nothing embroidered or brocaded. Three modest medals lay pinned to the left breast pocket. He walked directly to the desk without looking at Anna. He did not smile.

Much to her irritation, Anna felt her pulse start to race. For the last few days, she had imagined this scene over and over in her head, but in her own world, it all started quite differently, usually with a graying old man as King.

A tall woman followed the King into the room. She wore her hair in a loose ponytail of red curls. Her blue uniform looked similar to the King’s but the tone was different. Her jacket had gold epaulets and gold cords which tied them to the button in the center. Clearly military, thought Anna. Then she noticed the family resemblance. The hair color might not be the same, but she shared his same thick eyebrows and penetrating gaze. So this is the King’s sister.

The King approached the desk and sat. The woman stood to the right side of his chair. “Won’t you be seated, please.” Her voice carried a powerful sonorous alto but without a hint of eagerness, and perhaps a little disdain.

Anna wondered if they had already made up their minds about her before they walked in the room, but something about the woman’s posture suggested to Anna not all was lost. It took her a moment to spot it, but the woman’s right fist was clenched as she stood.

Anna sat down.

The king looked at her, his face an inscrutable mask—his skin tight across his cheekbones. There were no introductions. “Secretary Ohlson sent you to me directly and asked that I have my military council speak with you. I respect Secretary Ohlson, but I am the leader in this house, and I will keep my own counsel. You have ten minutes to help me understand why I gathered my team together when they had other important matters to attend to.”

Anna tried to calm her nerves for half a beat before she began. “Your Majesty, and Your Highness.”
I remembered their titles—so far so good
, she thought. “Thank you for agreeing to see me. I know the circumstances are unusual, to say the least. I am a new information broker, sent to you—as you already know—from Secretary Ohlson. Six days ago, the Unity attempted to assassinate a political refugee and the woman he loves in Leto, the capital of the Empire.”

The King folded his hands together and rested his elbows on the desk. “Why is this important to the House of Athena?”

“Because that refugee served as the special adviser to the Private Secretary for matters of the Unity, and the woman is the only woman ever to escape Unity space bearing the scars of mind-jacking and torture.”

Although the King didn’t move at first—in fact he sat exactly still—he didn’t dismiss what Anna had to say outright. There was a moment of silence, then the King’s right eyebrow rose slightly.

Anna decided to continue. “Would you be interested in seeing the holi from the Leto home defense system that night?”

Without saying a word, the King signaled for her to proceed.

Anna pulled the top secret data pad from inside her attache and put it face up on the table. She gestured to it with one hand, and the holi she wanted cued up.

Projecting itself in three dimensions above the surface of the device, the holi showed the attack on their car from above. Their vehicle sped through the streets, high over the pedestrian areas below. It barely started to adjust its course before missile impact. Anna looked away as their vehicle fell apart and a cocoon of safety foam plummeted a thousand feet to the ground below. She hadn’t yet been able to watch that part.

She looked grimly at the King.

He waited a moment after the holi ended before he asked his next question. “Why?”

“Because for two years, Jack has been telling Her Majesty’s government that the Unity is preparing to wage war against the Empire. Until a few months ago, no one listened. No one dared believe that the Unity would try to undermine the Empress. Once CEO Cowhill was murdered and CEO Randall took his place, someone started paying attention. Private Secretary Ohlson sent me here in hopes that you would pay attention, as well.”

The King looked skeptical. “I’m having a hard time believing that the Unity would lend credence to a man whose far-fetched ideas must be perceived as a lunacy by much of the government. I am much more inclined to believe this is some sort of false flag mission.”

Anna wasn’t sure she understood what a “false flag mission” was, but she had a hunch, so she went with it. “Jack isn’t the only one arguing this to be the case. The Empire has other evidence. Evidence which I can show you today, but for a price.”

The King’s sister spoke. “What other evidence?” This time her voice couldn’t hide all her eagerness, even as she tried to sound stern.

“There are two key pieces of evidence.” Anna started cuing a second holi without waiting for the King’s response. “It was widely reported in the Empire that the Unity moon Aetna suffered a catastrophic failure of its Near Object Intervention System when an asteroid impacted the surface near its one major settlement Utopia. This was not the case.”

The King pulled his heads-up out of his pocket and checked the time. “You have two minutes.”

Anna met his eyes and simply nodded slightly to acknowledge the statement.

“What you are about to see has been coded ‘highly classified’ by the Imperial Ministry of Information. While I have brought it to you with the blessing of Secretary Ohlson, we do not have permission from Her Majesty or the Ministry to share it with you.”

Anna started a holi which showed a construction and mining facility on the down orbit side of a dwarf moon. The moon looked like it rode in a rather dusty set of rings and small asteroids. A ship was just getting underway. “This was captured by a sensor package launched from HIMS Clarion, a deep cover listening post deployed in Unity space. The location in question is the proto-moon Bronte in the Catania system, an hour’s slow transit from Aetna, which is the innermost of Catania’s moons.” Anna waited.

As the vessel pulled out of its construction dock, it ran almost directly toward the camera, making it hard to see the size or significance of the ship. However, not long after it left the dock, it turned nose downward and used its large engine to sail out of the dangerous orbit in the rings of Catania. As it did so, the great mass and long keel of the ship came into view. The sensor package created a small scale below the ship which measured it at just over four kilometers in length. This made it the largest ship in the Pax. More importantly, the round loop it carried at the back became obvious along with its cargo hanging in the middle—an asteroid.

Anna kept her eyes on the screen, letting the implications of the ship sink in.

She took it as a good sign when she heard a sudden intake of breath from the sister.

The destruction of planets or cities using asteroids had been strictly outlawed in the charter which created the Pax. The war which preceded the Pax had cost billions of lives and left twenty-seven planets uninhabitable. Asteroids had been a major weapon of mass destruction in that war. For three hundred years, the Pax treaty had been honored by all sides. The vessel on the holi in front of them was indisputable proof that the Unity had broken the treaty.

The holi cut out and then came back online. The view looked up orbit at the curve of a cloud-covered moon circling a much larger gas giant. Just beyond the horizon, the sky lit up bright with a short burst of light which briefly blinded the camera. For a moment, the tape seemed to speed up as the moon orbited faster and then the aspect on the moon began to change as the camera on the ship or satellite began to move into a higher orbit. The camera stayed trained on the horizon. Within a couple of seconds, a small group of ships came into focus. The camera zoomed in on them and the image became wobbly and hard to keep steady.

“I was told that in this picture there are two Lincoln class destroyers and one Ticonderoga class cruiser, along with the ship we could see earlier.” One of the destroyers changed course and began to run toward the camera. The camera stayed focused on the fleet while the ship which carried it again turned in an attempt to outrun the oncoming destroyer. Soon the vessels in orbit around the moon were nearly blocked from view by the hull. Just before the ships disappeared, the view froze and zoomed in. The behemoth could be seen clearly. It no longer carried an asteroid in its payload.

Anna looked up from the holi.

The King appeared as if he had aged many years in the few seconds the holi had played. The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes sagged and his mouth drooped in a frown. His color had changed slightly as well, but Anna couldn’t have said how. He simply looked at her, contemplating something.

In the silence, Anna looked at his sister, wondering if something was expected of her. The Princess had covered her mouth with her hand sometime while watching the holi. She removed her hand and cleared her throat before speaking in a tone devoid of much of its hardness. “You said you had two pieces of proof. What’s the second?”

Anna stumbled under the grim weight of what she was about to say. There was a millisecond of internal rebellion. Then she made up her mind.
Ohlson had been right
, she thought.
It wasn’t so much that I was too damaged by the past, it was that I hadn’t been given anything to do about it
. “The second piece of proof is my body. Jack and I were on the surface of Aetna when the Unity launched an asteroid at sixty thousand of their own people in an effort to stomp out a workers’ revolt. I am the woman whose mind bears the indisputable scars of torture, and I offer my mind and body as evidence. In exchange for a full recording of the memories in question, along with the file on the ship at Aetna, I ask for asylum for myself, Jack Halloway, and the two children under his care who are also survivors of the massacre on Aetna.”