The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (6 page)

Stephen’s face flushed a little as he muttered under his breath, “But I’m not a child any more.”

Dora answered the rhetorical complaint. “Then stop acting like one, Stephen! Take your responsibilities seriously. If you need to do something crazy, then ask, and we’ll get it on the schedule as soon as may be, but the type of stunt you pulled today can’t happen again. Understood?”

Stephen cleared his throat. He looked Dora in the eye, and said firmly, “Understood.”

Dora smiled and relaxed. “Good. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Stephen. It will all be OK. You’ll see. Tomorrow you’ll do something spectacular, and all of this will be forgotten.”

She reached out and patted Stephen on the back. Then she melted the tension in the room in a heartbeat. “Do you know how many times I wanted to do that when I was a kid? I just never dared. Was it fun?”

Jonas took a breath, deciding that his life would last another day.

The first things Anna remembered remained jumbled and confused—impressions of light and darkness, voices—some vaguely familiar. Occasionally, a voice would be so familiar as to drag her consciousness toward the surface of reality, but full awareness remained elusive. Later, she remembered dreaming she was drowning, naked, buried under layer upon layer of some type of suffocating gel.

When her head finally cleared, Teddy’s voice was the first thing she heard. “When will she wake?”

An unfamiliar male voice answered. “I can’t say exactly, Teddy. We’ve stopped giving her sedatives, so it could be any time, really. The doctor says that she might be confused.”

Anna searched backward in her mind. She could remember Jack on one knee and her answer. Everything afterward seemed hazy. She had the impression that something bad had happened, but couldn’t remember exactly what. For what felt like the hundredth time, she tried to open her eyes. This time it worked.

Jo’s voice sounded sweet, welcome, and surprisingly calm. “She’s awake.” Anna turned her head to the left. Jo smiled, gently. Anna realized that Jo was holding her hand. Her eyes looked puffy and red.

Anna’s throat felt dry as paper when she spoke. Her voice reflected it. “What’s the matter, Little Jo?”

The little girl smiled and gave Anna a knowing ‘there, there, dear’ look. “You’ve been sick, Auntie Anna.” Jo reached up and stroked Anna’s forehead.

“I have? Can you tell me what happened?”

“There was an accident.”

“Where am I?”

The male voice she had heard earlier answered from the other side of the bed. “You are in the personal care of the Empress. Our medical nanites are almost done with their work. That’s all I can tell you for now.” Anna turned to see a man dressed in white. He was short with thick muscles and thinning blond hair. He took a pen light out of his pocket and shone it in each of Anna’s eyes, in turn. Satisfied, he put the light away. “You should be feeling better in just a few hours. It’s time for you to rest again.”

“Where’s Jack?”

Anna heard Jo’s intake of breath, but a quick look from the nurse silenced the thought before it could escape. “Jo, please remember what we discussed.”

Turning back to Anna, he answered her question directly. “He’s next door, being treated by the Empress’ personal physician. Don’t worry about him. It’s time for you to sleep.”

Knowing that Jack was alive helped Anna relax a little. She nodded at the nurse, and closed her eyes.

This time, Anna’s reentry into consciousness felt much less like straining toward the surface and much more like the groggy feeling one has upon waking from a long sleep. Someone gently squeezed her shoulder.

“Anna, wake up.”

Anna opened her eyes.

To her left, a woman smiled at her. She looked to be in her mid-forties, with short, dark, curly hair and just a few hints of gray here and there. She wore a white coat. “How are you feeling?”

Anna stretched a little. “Better.”

As she tried to sit up, the covers slipped down a little, and Anna realized she was naked under the blankets. She held the blanket around her chest with one arm to protect her modesty. Idly, she wondered where her clothes were. That thought brought memories of an olive green dress, followed quickly by worried thoughts about Jack. She tried to sit up swiftly, but paid the price.

The doctor, who had been looking at something on the heads-up display, quickly shifted her focus to Anna. “Is something wrong?”

“Where’s Jack?”

“He’s alive and stable in a room nearby. I don’t want you worrying about him. He’s getting the best care in the galaxy right now, and the children are sitting with him. The best thing you can do for him is to rest, so you get better.” The doctor smiled and the crow’s feet deepened at the corners of her eyes, but Anna was undeterred.

She tried to move her legs to the side of the bed. “I want you to take me to him.”

The doctor’s smile disappeared, and she raised an eyebrow. “Anna, do you know where you are, and do you know who I am?”

“You’re a doctor, and I’m in a hospital somewhere, I suppose.”

“I am the personal physician to her Majesty the Empress. You’re on board the Royal Transport
HIMS Beta
at the Imperial Airfield in the capital Leto. When I say you don’t need to worry about Jack right now, I mean it. He’s in the next room, receiving the best care possible, and he’s stable.”

Realizing just how weak she felt, Anna relented. She closed her eyes. It took longer than she wanted to open them again.

“In a few hours, we will get you up and walking. We’ll take you round to see him at that time.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Anna melted back into the soft pillow. The doctor helped her stay covered and used a remote to sit the bed up. As she slowly rose, Anna finally took note of the room around her.

At first glance, it looked like any other hospital room. There wasn’t much room for anything other than her bed. Some kind of auto doctor hung from the ceiling, ready to descend and treat her when necessary. It looked like a retracted bird’s leg with a whole bunch of tools on the end, in place of talons. The upper half of the walls of the small room were made of plexi-screens. To her left, one section had been tuned to show her vital signs in oversized numbers. The rest of these glowed a soft white, providing light to the room. There was a single, straight-backed, carbon chair for a visitor.

However, on closer inspection, this was clearly no ordinary hospital or clinic. The real wood paneling on the lower half of the walls and the polished floor with inlaid copper gave that away. Anna also noticed that the sheets were far too comfortable, and the heavy blankets covering her bore an embroidered Imperial seal. If this room were to be believed, she literally lay under the protection of the Empress.

The physician helped her get comfortable. She smiled. “Do me a favor, try to move a little more slowly. We don’t need all my hard work undone. Your internal healing is all quite tentative. I would have let you sleep, but you have a visitor that can’t wait.”

Anna tucked the blankets more tightly around her. “I have a visitor?”

The doctor noticed Anna’s concern for her modesty and said, “Would you be more comfortable in a gown?”

“Yes, please.”

While the doctor rummaged in a cupboard inset behind the wood paneling, Anna tried to figure out who would be coming to visit her. She and Jack didn’t have any friends in their new building, and she doubted that the government had been talking to their old neighbors. Then there was where they were located. They weren’t in a hospital or even at one of the ministry buildings. They were on one of the Empress’s transports. Anna had seen enough news holis to know that
HIMS Beta
was used for high-ranking officials making state visits to other systems.

It took a bit longer for her to guess that their location meant the government intended to send her and Jack somewhere. Anna felt suddenly awake.

The doctor finished rummaging for a gown and helped her into it.

“Who wants to talk to me? And do you know where they’re taking us?” asked Anna.

The doctor seemed pleased to see Anna’s mind working at speed again. She smiled a little as she said, “The Empress’s Private Secretary will be able to answer that question.”

Anna had never been much of a court watcher. She might have been the only person in Leto who didn’t find herself fascinated by the machinations of the Imperial government. “Who?”

The doctor looked at her with disbelief. “The Private Secretary to the Empress.”

Anna shrugged her shoulders and gave the doctor a look which said she didn’t understand.

The doctor chuckled a little at Anna’s ignorance. She patted Anna on the arm and spoke with a mildly condescending tone. “Secretary Renatah Ohlson is only the most important adviser at court. It’s a big deal that she’s coming here.”

Anna’s cheeks flushed a little as she realized how important her visitor would be. “Oh. I see,” was all she managed to say. She felt stupid. Anna wasn’t sure what to make of it all, but it suddenly dawned on her that Jack must have been far more important at the Ministry of Information than he had led her to believe.

That thought shed light on other things which she had taken for granted. Like dropping a pebble which creates an avalanche, a series of mysterious pieces slid into place—the long hours, the driver, and the body guards.

Working uselessly to cover her back with the gown, Anna felt her world shift once again. The all-too-familiar sense of being left out and excluded crept in, and along with it, the hardened seed of bitterness which eternally plagued her soul made its presence felt.

Satisfied that she had impressed upon Anna the seriousness of the visit, the doctor left the room. As the door slid closed, she heard her say, “She’s ready for you now, Madame Secretary.”

Unsure of what to do, Anna patted the blankets flat in front of her as if she were straightening a dress. Then to push back against her nerves, she amused herself by making a fanfare of trumpets in her own head as the secretary entered.

Secretary Ohlson wasn’t exactly what Anna expected. She wore a highly decorated business suit with an Imperial emblem on the lapel. Jack could have told her the meaning of the patch, but Anna had never paid attention to such matters. Ohlson’s chestnut hair had been meticulously kept free of offending gray, although her face was creased with wrinkles. Anna had a hard time determining her age. She felt younger than she looked, and Anna wondered if it were the job which had aged her.

The two women sized each other up for a couple of beats.

Secretary Ohlson asked, “May I sit down?” as she pulled up a chair next to Anna’s bed.

“Of course.”

“How are you doing?” The smile looked warm—motherly. Only Ohlson’s eyes seemed to be withheld. Anna had the impression the Secretary was still trying to figure her out.

“Grateful to be feeling at all, I guess. I haven’t really had time to think about it.”

The Secretary nodded.

“Your fiancée is quite a good man.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Jack is a good man.”

Anna didn’t know what to say in response. There was too much to say all at once. Anna decided to start with her shock. “You know Jack?”

The Secretary furrowed her brow and looked at Anna sideways. “Of course I know him. He’s my special adviser on the Unity.”

“Really? Doesn’t he work for the Ministry of Information?”

The Secretary smiled kindly, understanding Anna’s confusion. “Well, technically, yes, but he’s my special adviser, so he comes to my office each day.”

Both women dropped into silent surprise for a moment. The Secretary was the first to pick it back up. “He hasn’t told you any of this?”

Chagrined, Anna shook her head. Then she chided herself internally for her embarrassment. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She sat up a little straighter.

“You have a lot to be proud of, Ms. Prindle. You’re marrying a fine man.”

“I said ‘no’. I’m not going to marry Jack.” Anna was surprised at how easily the words rolled out.

Now it was the Secretary’s turn to look a little embarrassed. “I see,” she said. “Do you mind telling me why?”

As kind as the Secretary seemed, Anna wasn’t ready to discuss the gnawing wound inside her. “I have my reasons.”

The Secretary looked at her for a minute, as if trying to read her thoughts. “Fair enough.”

“You know,” she said, “the attack on your vehicle was tantamount to a direct act of war on the Empress. It was well planned, an automated drone attack from a new building under construction along your route. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to put it all together and trace it back to the Unity. It’s even worse that we can’t really acknowledge that we had hired Jack in the first place, since the official policy is that we don’t take in political refugees from any member of the Pax. That kind of operation had to come from well up the food chain in the Unity—CEO Randall must have approved it.”

Feeling her heart begin to flutter, Anna forced herself to let go of the blanket and breathe slowly. She smiled sheepishly at Ohlson. “It’s been a difficult two years. I’ve had panic attacks.”

The Secretary surprised Anna when she reached across the bed and gently grabbed her forearm. “That’s understandable. Anyone might respond in the same way. I’m sorry to have stirred up such unpleasant memories. It was callous of me.”

Anna dismissed her apology with a wave of her hand. “It’s not your fault.”

The Secretary smiled. “It’s not yours, either. Make sure you remember that.”

The Secretary let a beat or two hang in the air before she went on. “Anna, as long as you stay here in Leto, you’re clearly in danger, and frankly, a problem for Her Majesty’s government. We need to get you and Jack to a place where you can serve the empire better.”

She paused before continuing. “I am convinced war is coming. I have been for some time, but there are those who, after three hundred years of peace, don’t want to see it. This has left me at an impasse. You see, the position of Emperor or Empress of the Pax Imperium is designed by the Pax charter to be too weak to do anything on their own. First, it is an elected position. Empress Christiana doesn’t even have her own standing army, except as the leader of the Russian Republic, and that doesn’t amount to much. She needs others to be her might for her. Also, as the titular leader of both The Unity and its allies on the one side, along with the House of Athena and its allies on the other, it’s imperative that she maintain an appearance of neutrality. So it’s a bit of an embarrassment for the Unity to so clearly point out that we’ve broken that neutrality by taking you in as a refugee and hiring Jack to work for our government. I really can’t afford to have that happen again. Besides, if we are going to avoid the coming disaster, we need our major patron, the House of Athena, to stand up for the Empire. They are the power balanced against the Unity in the galaxy. It was they who forced the Unity to accept the Pax Charter three hundred years ago. If they get caught flat-footed when war comes, it will truly threaten the existing order. Without sounding like I am making light of the cruelty of your situation, your apparent death has provided us with a good opportunity to do something to make sure King Nicholas of Athena pays attention.”