A Choice of Treasons (12 page)

“Captain,” Soe said urgently. “I’ve got a transition wake at about one light-year. Imperial patrol, I’d guess. Probably spotted some of our transmitter splash.”

“Shit!” Jewel swore. “Are you sure they’re coming this way?”

“No,” Soe snapped angrily. “I’m not sure of anything.”

“How much time have we got?”

“No more than half an hour.”

She looked at Terman. “Looks like the game’s up anyway. We’d better not be here when that patrol shows up.”

Terman shrugged. “Sorry, Jewel. It was really out of my hands from the beginning.”

“I know, Ill. I know. It’s just a shame; a whole month of setting up this shot, wasted.”

He smiled. “Good hunting, Jewel.”

She smiled back. “Thanks, Ill.
Pride of Altalane
out.”

CHAPTER 6: DREAMS

“Lieutenant Colonel Juessik.”

Torrin Juessik looked at the young yeoman. She smiled pleasantly at him and said, “His Grace will see you now.”

Juessik smiled back at her, stood, said, “Thank you,” then crossed the small room and stepped into the office of Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Bargan Abraxa.

The old man sat behind his desk, so Juessik crossed the room smartly and came to attention in front of it. He saluted and Abraxa returned the salute casually, “At ease, Mister Juessik.”

Abraxa looked him over carefully, then tapped the folder sitting on the desk in front of him. “So. Rochefort personally intervened in the standing orders of a ship-of-the-line. He’s done that before and he’ll do it again. And he did it for a good reason: a member of the royal family. So why does a young lieutenant colonel of Admiralty Intelligence consider it a matter of such urgency that he’d bring it to my personal attention?”

Juessik spoke carefully. “When
Invaradin
was deflected to Trinivan, Your Grace, Directorate agents there broke cover almost simultaneously and began agitating openly for a riot, their purpose, apparently, to delay Her Royal Highness’ exit until heavier forces could arrive. In so doing they revealed their entire Trinivanian organization. The capture or death alone of the princess would not have warranted such costly action.”

Abraxa looked at him narrowly, and after a few seconds nodded. “Go on.”

“
Invaradin
successfully rescued Her Royal Highness and her entourage, as well as our embassy staff on Trinivan. Rochefort again intervened in Fleet Operations to order
Invaradin
to Dumark.”

It took a moment, but comprehension slowly appeared in Abraxa’s eyes. “The Empress Cassandra is on Dumark, is she not?”

“Yes she is,” Juessik said. “Traveling incognito. And so is the queen mother. Rochefort sent them a message after he left Fleet-Op.”

“Very curious!” Abraxa said. “But why Trinivan? And why Aeya? She’s nothing but a stupid, young girl, with obvious, but naïve,
peacer
sympathies. Not even Edvard is foolish enough to entrust her with something important.”

“No,” Juessik agreed. “But among Aeya’s entourage is Sylissa d’Hart, and Edvard and Cassandra trust her implicitly.”

Abraxa considered that for a long moment, then slowly began nodding his head. “Yes! They’re up to something, aren’t they? Do you have anyone in Aeya’s entourage?”

“Yes,” Juessik said. “But he’s been rather ineffectual. Not his fault, actually. Whatever Edvard is up to, he’s been exceedingly careful about leaks.”

“We must have information,” Abraxa demanded. “What’s your next move?”

Juessik spoke carefully, for this was the key moment. “I had not intended to make a next move, Your Grace. My superior will not allow me to act on the matter.”

Abraxa’s face remained expressionless. “And your superior chose not to inform me at all of the matter.”

Juessik shrugged. “Perhaps he feels it’s unimportant.”

“Or perhaps . . .” Abraxa added, “. . . he’s withholding the information for his own purposes.”

Juessik knew he had to speak carefully now. “I wouldn’t know, Your Grace.”

“Then why did you circumvent him? Why come directly to me? Are you not doing so for your own purposes?”

Juessik shrugged. “I would hope to be of some service, Your Grace.”

“Of course,” Abraxa said. He leaned back in his chair and smiled in a way that told Torrin Juessik his future was brightening. “Let us assume, Lieutenant Colonel Juessik, that I allowed you a free hand in this. What then would be your next move?”

“We need to let them play their hand, so I would go personally to Dumark, under cover as an AI major, observe events and be ready to move at the right moment. And I have an extremely reliable agent in Cassandra’s entourage who’ll be forewarned and on hand when it does happen.”

“And if that fails?” Abraxa asked.

Juessik wanted to keep Abraxa as uninformed as possible, but he had to impress the fat old fart with something. “I have an option I would prefer not to exercise unless it’s absolutely necessary, a certain leverage with the d’Hart woman, though she’s not yet aware of that. If necessary I can induce her to aid us, albeit reluctantly.”

Abraxa considered the matter carefully for some seconds, then nodded slowly. “Very well. I’ll take care of your superior, and you may proceed without his interference.”

Abraxa sat for a moment without moving. There was something he should remember about
Invaradin
, but nothing would come to mind.

He turned to a small console built into the ornate desk, activated it, pulled up a description of
Invaradin
: an ordinary heavy cruiser. The ship and her captain had a distinguished record. Abraxa had even met him a few times: the youngest son of the Earl of Seegat. Perhaps that was it. But no, there was something he should remember, and it bothered him that he couldn’t. But he was a patient man, and he was confident it would come to mind eventually.

York slammed awake, sat up in bed, ignored the sideways tug of the gravity field of his cabin deck as it interfered with that of his grav bunk. He hesitated for an instant, wondering how he’d gotten back to his cabin, wondering why everything seemed so normal. Then he tore frantically at his shirt, exposing his bare chest. The skin there was pink and healthy.

He threw back the covers, found to his great relief that his right leg was still whole, with no indication it had ever been missing. He wiggled his toes and they felt fine.

It had all been a dream, an insane dream. Trinivan . . . the embassy . . . the chaos on Hangar Deck. It had all been just a dream.

He reached for the controls next to his bunk, cut the gravity field back to a few inches, and with years of practiced ease pivoted and landed on his feet as he dropped to the deck of his cabin. The field of the grav bunk held the covers pressed tightly against the wall.

He pressed a senor on the opposite wall and a sink folded down out of the bulkhead. That was one of his few perks, a small fresher in his cabin—not much to show for twenty odd years of service. No toilet—he had to make command rank for that—but it was more than a typical junior officer’s quarters. As a
lifer
he was more than a junior officer, less than a senior officer, and never to be promoted.

The sink settled into place with a soft click. York touched a sensor over the tap, and as the water flowed he touched another sensor to adjust the temperature to near scalding. He started to bend toward the sink, but before he got there he caught a momentary glimpse of his face in the mirror, and he froze half bent over the sink.

His left eye was a chrome-plated metal ball that reflected his own image back to the mirror, with a featureless black spot in the center that served as a pupil. On the skin surrounding the eye socket a starburst of bright, pink scars radiated outward in jagged lines; up his forehead, back along his temple, down his cheek.

He straightened up and looked again at his chest, still could find no trace of any scars there. He folded a chair down out of the wall, sat down and reexamined his right leg, discovered that if he looked closely he could just detect the last residues of scar tissue around his knee where his own skin joined that of the prosthetic. He wiggled his toes again; they felt like real toes.

It all came back to him now, though it seemed hidden behind a mist of confusion and drugs and fear. He had awakened in sickbay the day before, brought slowly out of electro-sedation by the technicians there. He had to struggle to remember what Alsa Yan had told him. “. . . accelerated-healing . . . rapid regrowth . . .”

York closed his eyes, leaned back in the chair, listened to the water running in the sink. “You almost bought it, York. Your leg’s gone just below the knee. Your knee was a mess too but I managed to reconstruct most of it and regrow what I couldn’t. Below that, however, the leg’s a cyber-prosthetic, and I don’t have the facilities to clone you another so you’ll have wear it until we get to Dumark. But don’t forget, the skin on that thing is as real as your own; it’ll bleed if you cut it and it’ll hurt, and it’ll get infected.”

“Dumark,” York said aloud into the emptiness of his cabin. That would please the crew; they could get in some good R’n’R.

What else had Alsa said? “. . . That rotary shattered your chest plate and your visor, filled your head and chest with splinters and fragments of the rotary shells. I pulled your lungs and heart, stuck ‘em in regrowth for a couple of days. They’re pretty well healed now so I stuffed them back into you yesterday. I pulled the eye too and put it in regrowth, but it’s scarring up on me. I think I’ll be able to repair it, but it’s going to take some time, so you’ll have to be happy with the cyb I installed.”

York looked in the mirror above the sink: the scars, the chrome-plated eye. “. . . I didn’t have time for the cosmetic work. We can color match the eye and clear up the scars in a couple of hours. But I can’t do it today, or tomorrow either. Talk to my floor nurse, see when she can schedule you in. And in any case, for the next few days you take it easy. It’ll be at least that long before you’re fully healed. Incidentally, Sergeant Notay scheduled you for therapy with the rest of the marines.”

York remembered shaking his head, saying, “I don’t want anything to do with those damn marines.”

Yan had shrugged. “It’s not up to you. The marine medics know their stuff as well as my own people, and Notay cleared it with me and the captain.”

There was one last thing she’d told him. “I had to pull some gray matter out of your head. Not a lot, not enough to affect your abilities, but you may notice . . . gaps in your memory. And if you do, let me know right away.”

York looked in the mirror again, at the chrome-plated eye and the mess they’d made of his face.

As Edvard entered the room the attendant at the door barked, “His Majesty, the King.” Edvard smiled at the guests assembled there, and of course they all stopped whatever they were doing or saying and turned his way. Depending on station, or rank, some dropped to one knee, some bowed deeply, and a few, like Abraxa, and old Archcanon Bortha, merely bent at the waist slightly and lowered their eyes. Abraxa’s bow had been getting shallower of late.

To dine with the emperor was an important privilege; a great honor, some thought. For Edvard these evenings were hard work, sometimes the only opportunity he had to meet informally with certain people under circumstances that weren’t carefully orchestrated.

“Excuse me, Your Majesty,” a rather nondescript man said, stepping casually in front of him. The man, while dressed rather simply, was actually a senior officer in Edvard’s personal guard. He bowed carefully, then stepped in close, a small instrument in one hand. “We have a minor problem, sire,” he whispered. He held the instrument out toward Edvard, paused at an appropriate distance, “May I, Your Majesty?”

Edvard nodded. “Certainly, Captain.”

The man held the instrument, no larger than the palm of his hand, close to one of the buttons on the front of Edvard’s coat. He looked at the instrument for a moment, nodded, touched something on the face of the instrument and pressed it against the button, nodded again, then discretely put the instrument away in his own coat. “It’s deactivated, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Edvard said. “The press?”

The officer shook his head. “Not likely, Your Majesty. They’re usually not that clumsy. Probably some branch of the military, or someone employed by one of the minor Houses. With your permission, we’ll remove the button at the end of the evening and conduct a full investigation. At the least, someone on your staff has accepted a bribe.”

The man disappeared into the small crowd. Edvard spoke for a time with the daughter of a minor Earl, a young girl bubbling over with excitement. But she’d been well trained and kept her enthusiasm appropriately damped, so Edvard enjoyed himself a bit. Next there were her parents. Her father’s holdings had become somewhat strategic in an alliance between Houses de Vena and de Plutarr. All parties concerned were close to agreement on the terms of marriage between the young woman and the son of Andralla Schessa, the Duchess de Vena. The boy was a fool, careless and irresponsible, but by law he must inherit the properties of House de Vena. The girl was smart, though quite young, but given time and training and tutelage under Schessa herself, they could be sure the properties would be administered properly.