The Terran Privateer (46 page)

“Emergence in twenty seconds.”

Amandine’s words echoed in the deathly quiet of
Tornado
’s bridge. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. Annette hadn’t told
anyone
what she planned to do at Kimar, but her crew all had their guesses.

The simple fact that they were here with the starkiller missiles reduced the options dramatically, though Annette
still
hadn’t made up her mind.

“Metharom,” she said quietly into her communicator. “Did you make the upgrades I asked for?”

“Yes, ma’am,” her chief engineer replied. “Exactly as requested.”

“Thank you. Carry on.”

Annette closed the channel and surveyed the screens and plots around her. Her crew kept their gazes focused on their screens, none of them prepared to meet her single eye. Perhaps they were afraid that eye contact would contaminate them.

The portal opened as she tried not to snarl,
Tornado
slipping through the tear in space into the Kimar system. A few moments of lag, and then the sensors started to propagate the details of the star the A!Tol had launched their conquest of Earth from.

Tornado
had emerged well above the ecliptic plane, well out of the line of interception of any of the Imperial warships. Annette knew she’d be detected quickly, but that was part of the point. They were here to be
seen
.

“What have we got?” she asked aloud.

“Seven planets, one habitable, one gas giant,” Rolfson announced. “Gas giant is home to the fleet base. I’m reading…thirty-two capital ships, eight of them what I’m guessing are
super
-battleships because they are monstrous, and about a hundred and fifty lighter warships.”

“Are any of them in range to intercept us or the starkillers?”

In the silence of the bridge, she
heard
her tactical officer swallow.

“No, ma’am.”

“Amandine, set your course for the star,” she ordered. “Rolfson, open the shuttle bay.

“Ma’am…”

“That was an order, Lieutenant Commander,” Annette snapped.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said quickly.

Seconds ticked away and millions of kilometers disappeared with them.

“Hold us at six light-minutes from the star,” she ordered. “Any response from our squid friends?”

“No…wait,” Rolfson replied. “Yes. I have two squadrons of destroyers leaving orbit of the planet and heading our way. I wouldn’t see any reaction from the fleet base, but…”

“Interesting,” Annette murmured. “So, every warship in the system is going to head right for us. I guess they know what we’re carrying.”

#

Jean Villeneuve was woken by a harsh, blaring alarm. The quarters he’d been assigned on Tan!Shallegh’s flagship were surprisingly comfortable, even if all of the furniture had clearly been designed for bipeds who were only
close
to humans in proportion.

The door to his quarters slid open and the light flashed on before he could do more than sit up. A large A!Tol loomed ominously over him and he blinked up at the squid-like alien.

“The Fleet Lord wants you in the command center now,” his unexpected guest told him, “Hurry.”

“What’s going on?” Jean demanded, pulling a jacket on over the emergency jumpsuit he’d been sleeping in.

“Your
Tornado
is here.”

#

“That’s confirmed—all of the battleships are heading our way, but all of the escorts are moving to try and position themselves to stop a missile,” Rolfson told Annette.

“Are any of them in position to do so?”

“No.”

“How long until they are?” she asked. She kept her face still, focusing on the pain from the scar so as not to let her crew see her turmoil. She knew she
should
have decided before they got there, but how could anyone make a fixed decision over whether to murder millions upon millions of innocents?

“Two, maybe three minutes,” her tactical officer reported.

She sighed. She’d run out of time. She studied the screens, the warships desperately charging across the system.

They could have run. If they knew what she was carrying, those ships could have run—all of them had the speed and the hyperdrive generators to make it out of the system before she could destroy the star. Now they were going to die if she fired the starkiller.

That was
their
choice. To die rather than abandon those they’d sworn to defend. The population on Kimar’s habitable planet was roughly sixty percent A!Tol, the rest over a dozen other species. The fleet guarding her was only about forty-five percent A!Tol.

There were entire
ships
in that fleet crewed by people who didn’t even have members of their species on the planet at risk, and they still charged in—prepared to sacrifice themselves for even the tiniest chance that they could stop her.

They couldn’t.

This system would live or die by
her
choice.

Of course, she didn’t need to make it
easy
.

“Mister Rolfson,” she said calmly. “Launch Starkiller One.”

Silence.

“Mister Rolfson,” she repeated.

“Yes, ma’am,” he finally replied. “Activating Starkiller One.”

#

Jean entered Tan!Shallegh’s command center at a run and found himself readily guided to a spot at the Fleet Lord’s right hand.

“She has fired,” the Fleet Lord told him quietly. “Our destroyers confirm it
is
a starkiller. A tiny one and fast.” Tan!Shallegh’s tentacles shivered. “We can’t intercept it. It is…theoretically possible that
Tornado
could.”

Jean felt his heart collapse and his breath shorten. Annette Bond had
fired
. She’d actually deployed a weapon that would kill millions of innocents. It…wasn’t like her.

What had he done to the woman he’d known when he sent her out to fight a war on her own?

“I am sorry,” he told Tan!Shallegh. However it had come to this, whatever Bond had seen, had done that made her willing to go this far, it was all his fault.

“Talk to her, Admiral,” the Fleet Lord begged. “You…may be our only hope.”

“We could run,” Jean pointed out, sick to even say it.

“No. We are the Imperial Navy. We do not abandon our people.”

No more than the UESF had been prepared to surrender when they faced that Navy. Jean Villeneuve met the gaze of the being who’d defeated him and conquered his system and saw, at last, what Tan!Shallegh had tried to tell him several times.

They had different limbs and eyes and skin. They wore different uniforms and spoke different languages, but at heart, they were the same. Warriors. Guardians of their people.

And so was Annette Bond.

“Get me a transmitter.”

#

“Ma’am, we’re receiving a transmission,” Chan reported. “It’s…Admiral Villeneuve?”

“Send it to my chair,” Annette ordered. What was Jean doing
here
? He should be at Earth, dead or retired, not…not clearly aboard an A!Tol warship, as the image that appeared on her screen showed him to be.

“Captain Bond,” he greeted her, then paused. “Annette. I am aboard the flagship of Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh. We are maneuvering to intercept the starkiller you have launched.

“We know what the weapon is,” he continued. “We know…how it was funded. How it was built. How it was
meant
to be deployed.

“The people responsible for kidnapping innocents from our home have been caught. They will be punished. That you’re here with these weapons means you’ve stopped a grand tragedy. The A!Tol owe you thanks.

“I can’t be certain what you plan or what you’re thinking,” Villeneuve continued. “But I can tell you this: destroying this system won’t buy Earth’s freedom. All it will do is bring the wrath of the entire A!Tol Imperium down on you.

“They will hunt you to the ends of the galaxy to bring you to justice. They will find you and kill you like the mad dog you will have become if you allow that missile to hit.”

His eyes softened.

“Tan!Shallegh will not retreat,” he said quietly. “Neither will I. We will die defending this system. Only you can change that.”

Annette closed her eye for a long moment. If even
she
wasn’t sure what she meant to do, could she blame Jean Villeneuve for thinking she was about to murder a hundred million sentients? She touched her eyepatch and remembered her conversation with Ki!Tana—and the conversation she’d had later that night with Kulap Metharom.

“Let’s finish the demonstration, people,” the one-eyed Captain said aloud, her tone suddenly much more relaxed as she realized she’d made up her mind days before.

“Commander Rolfson, launch the rest of the starkillers,” she ordered. He looked at her in shock but obeyed.

Seven more icons flashed onto the screens, blazing toward the sun at point six cee. All of them would be intercepted, but it would be irrelevant. The first starkiller, the one the A!Tol couldn’t catch, would blow the entire system to hell, along with the follow-up missiles.

Except that Annette now knew she’d made up her mind when she’d ordered Kulap Metharom to buy her more time—by installing a self-destruct on all of the missiles.

“Harold,” she addressed her tactical officer gently. “I appreciate, more than I can say, that you’ve trusted me this far.

“Please send command phrase ‘Omega’ to the starkillers,” she ordered. “Then stand down all weapons and shields.”

“Oceans of shadow, and they call
me
a trickster demon!” Ki!Tana exclaimed as she finally understood. Annette could
feel
the tension go out of the room as the rest of her crew caught on as well.

“Cole.” She turned her eye on her navigator as the missiles on her screen started to detonate in bright white flashes as chemical explosives blew the only surviving examples of the miniaturized weapons of mass destruction to dust. “Cut our engines to zero.”

She swallowed, looking around her bridge and meeting her crews’ relieved gazes—relieved that she hadn’t made them mass murderers, even when
none
of them had challenged her. They’d followed her to the literal edge of Hell and looked over the abyss with her.

She could never repay them.

She couldn’t even
try
.

“Yahui.” She turned to her comms officer, then coughed. She swallowed, then coughed again to clear her throat before continuing. “Lieutenant Commander Chan, please hail Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh’s flagship.

“Inform him that we surrender.”

The two A!Tol soldiers who escorted Annette through the corridors of the A!Tol battleship didn’t even bother restraining her. Something in how she moved, in how she looked at them, told them she had no intention of resisting.

Her resistance was over. The price that continuing it had demanded had simply been too high.

The soldiers finally led her to a plain door, no different from any other door they’d passed on their journey through the ship so far, and stopped.

“The Fleet Lord is waiting for you,” one of them told her. “Go in.”

Annette wasn’t entirely certain of her status at this point, but she was
very
certain that not going in wasn’t an option. With a hard inhalation, she approached the door. It slid aside and she stepped through into a room that promptly took her breath away.

Either the room was on the edge of the hull and they’d taken advantage of their lack of armor to build a true observation bubble, or the curving wall was one of the highest-resolution screens she’d ever seen. “Above” them floated the world of Kimarel, home to one hundred million souls.

Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh stood in the middle of the observation deck, his tentacles fluttering softly about his dark blue skin as he looked up at the world that
hadn’t
died today.

Annette wondered at him as she stopped just inside the door. She’d almost killed him—almost killed the hundred million people on the world the tentacled alien was looking at—but that skin tone was questioning, curious, not angry or afraid.

“You are a very strange being, Captain Annette Bond,” Tan!Shallegh finally said. “And one, it seems, with a flair for drama. I must know, did you ever truly intend to destroy Kimar?”

“No,” Annette admitted after a moment’s thought. “I
thought
I was unsure. But…I spent too much time giving myself the chance to back out to truly mean it.”

“I suspected as much,” the A!Tol told her. “Indeed, up to the very moment the starkiller launched, I believed it with every fiber of my being. Even then…I could not accept that the woman who had turned on her pirate companions to save
my
people at Orsav, who fought her battles at horrific odds to save the humans her allies had kidnapped, would stoop that low.”

“You perhaps had more faith in me than I did,” Annette admitted. Studying the orbitals around them, she picked out
Tornado
in the distance—and saw a white light drop away from her ship toward one of the space stations. “What’s that?”

“The Ki!,” Tan!Shallegh said calmly. “We did not know she was aboard, or we would have been more careful in what troops we sent over. Her kind are respected among our people, but their weaknesses are known. She will leave,” he continued. “Without saying goodbye or farewell. It is their way. She guided you this far and now she will go back to the shadows.”

That…hurt more than Annette would have expected, but it made sense. Ki!Tana had told Annette herself that she couldn’t be around males of her species—males like Tan!Shallegh.

“So, what happens now?” she finally asked.

“We fix your eye,” the Fleet Lord told her, his skin flashing red in the A!Tol equivalent of a grin.

“After that…depends, Annette Bond,” the Fleet Lord told her. “Despite your little…demonstration, you have done the Imperium a great service. The destruction of the weapons is in its own way just as great a service, though one many will be less pleased with.”

“Such weapons are dangerous,” she said simply, rubbing her scar again.

“I agree. Others will not,” the A!Tol said. “But for all that you were our enemy, you fought a battle we should have and served us better than many who wear our uniform. You have the gratitude of the A!Tol Imperium, Annette Bond. What would you ask of us?”

She stared at him in shock. That was
not
where she expected this meeting to go. She was a prisoner, a pirate and privateer who’d surrendered her vessel. She wasn’t…a hero, to be offered rewards and honors!

“Who do you speak for when you ask?” Annette asked, trying to buy herself time to think.

“The Imperium,” Tan!Shallegh told her. “And in so doing, my…brood-mother’s sister. The Empress.”

Annette blinked in shock again, momentarily blinded as she closed her eye. She’d forgotten that the Fleet Lord in front of her was the Empress’s
nephew
as humans measured such things. He was not merely the commander of the local military force but a direct representative of the Imperial Family.

“I want pardons for all my people,” she finally told him. “I want them to be able to go home. No questions. No pursuits of where their money came from. Just…let them go.”

“There are members of your crew with long records,” he noted. “Crimes that date long before their service with you.”

“
Full
pardons,” she said firmly. “All of them, human and otherwise, fought your battle for you, Fleet Lord. If you would honor, honor
them
.”

The blue of his skin was now suffused with streaks of red. Had she
impressed
the alien?

“So be it,” he replied. “But that is no reward for you.”

“I don’t
want
a reward from you,” she spat at him. “What I
want
you can’t give me.”

“No,” he agreed. “Were we to release Terra to independence now, the Kanzi would descend on you within five-cycles. Your people would be enslaved by the billions.
This will not happen
.”

The fierceness of his tone shivered through Annette’s core, and it sank in that this being, this alien who had conquered her world, would defend her people against any other threat to the death. That by conquering Earth, Tan!Shallegh had made her people’s safety not merely the Imperium’s business but a matter of his own personal honor.

“But there are compromises that can be found,” he noted. “I have spoken with the Empress and she has commanded me in this matter. You may deny her, if you wish, but it is unwise.”

“What do you mean?” Annette demanded.

“We cannot give Terra her freedom. But we
can
give Terra to
you
. Declare a new Duchy of Terra under the Imperial banner—and
your
banner, Dan!Annette Bond, Duchess of Terra.”

There was a lot more red in the alien’s skin now as she stared at him.

“It is already done,” he finished. “If you will kneel to the Imperium, Dan!Annette Bond, then Terra is yours.”

It wasn’t freedom. But freedom would leave Earth defenseless in the face of a hostile galaxy.

Annette Bond, Duchess of Terra, knelt.

###

If you enjoyed the novel, please leave a review!

To be notified of future releases,
join my mailing list
or visit my website at
http://www.faolanspen.com