The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (13 page)

Jonas followed his brother into the room. His father sat behind his modern carbon fiber desk with a screen built into the top. In the working office, the walls were kept relatively clear, with a few 3Ds of family here and there. A large one of their mother sat on a small table near the desk. Jonas liked seeing it there. It gave him a perverse comfort to know that his father had never really recovered from her death. It reassured him that she had meant something to him.

Dora and Dmitri sat in chairs in front of the desk. It was clear that he and Stephen had entered in the middle of a discussion. With Dmitri in the room, Jonas surmised that it must have been about them. Instinctively, he measured the stress level. No one seemed overtly angry, and they hadn’t heard voices before they entered, but the body posture was interesting. Dmitri, and particularly Dora, looked tense. On the other hand, their father looked as relaxed as ever. Yet Jonas could detect signs of stress on their father’s face. His smile was a little too tight.

As they walked forward, he got up from behind the desk, and coming around, gripped them both in a tight embrace. Dora also stood and gave the brothers a quick hug. The king turned to return to his seat. “Please sit, boys,” he said over his shoulder. Jonas and Stephen took the two chairs which Mark had brought silently forward. The four visitors now formed a semicircle in front of the King, the princes in the middle, with Dora and Dmitri on either side.

Their father stared blankly at the desk in front of him as the boys sat down. His smile faded. When the brothers had been seated, the king rubbed his hands through his wavy, graying hair and looked up. “Sometimes others choose the path in front of us. So it is today for both of you and the Kingdom of Athena.” The king paused. He looked down at the desk before he looked back at them and continued. “It is time both of you begin to understand how the galaxy works. In light of what could come, it is necessary. In fact, if Dora and others had been given their way, that training would have begun some time ago, but I wanted to give you a childhood instead.”

His eyes wandered back to the desk in front of him. “You see, after your mother died…” here the King paused to gather himself. “After your mother died, I couldn't let that happen to you. The House of Athena consumed her. The press hounded her, and eventually, she just gave up. So I gave you a childhood. I did my best to protect you. Now, events are going to rip away that protection before I am ready. My hand is forced. So be it.”

After a moment he continued with strength, “Dmitri and Dora, it is time that I consent to your wishes as far as their education. This weekend has shown me that you are right. They must be prepared to lead. I thank you for all that you have done already. It is time that both you and I do more. It begins now, right now. Dora, I consent to your plan. You will become personal counselor to the crown prince. Dmitri, you will become the private secretary to Jonas and take on the teaching duties for the two new children who have come to reside in our care.”

Jonas watched Dmitri's hands, which had gripped the arms of the chair, visibly relax.

Stephen opened his mouth to ask one of the thousand or so questions on his mind. Their father merely held up his hand palm outward in a gesture of silence. Stephen shut his mouth in mid-thought. “Stephen, I know you and Jonas must have questions, and hopefully I will have a little time to answer them, but I want you to see something first.”

Jonas’ father gestured to the tablet lying on the desk. The wall behind him brought up a 3D image of a ship. He continued. “This is Freedom’s Price. She launched just over two years ago. This was her first mission.”

Jonas and Stephen watched the same holi which just days before had stunned their father.

As the holi stopped, Jonas asked the question on his mind. “How many people?”

Dora answered, “Our best estimates are somewhere around ninety-thousand.”

Stephen asked the next question. “Dad, are we going to war?”

The King smiled grimly at his son. “I hope not, Stephen. I think we can still prevent it, but things are going to definitely trend that direction for a while. I will be addressing the nation in just under two hours. Although you won’t say anything, you will be standing by my side. I have no doubt that we can out-build the Unity, but they have a head start on us. We are going to have to put the Kingdom on an all-out war-footing. That won’t be easy for people used to peace. They won’t like it. Hopefully, we can build up our defenses in such a way that the Unity won’t dare carry through with their plans.”

Dora silently nodded with the King. Dmitri quietly took it all in.

The king continued. “If we are going to ask the nation to take on the burden of preparing for war, then we are going to have to shoulder the burden, as well. That will fall mainly to you, Jonas.” The king looked at his son with his piercing blue eyes.

Jonas shifted in his chair. “How so?”

“We will be sending you to a military academy to finish your education. Do you know which branch of the service you would like to join?”

While the thought of going to a military academy shocked and frightened him—he had spent little time outside the sheltering wings of the Palace—the idea of joining a branch of the military wasn’t unknown to Jonas. It had been impressed upon him over the years that, as a second son, he would be expected to make good on one of the uniforms he often wore. Jonas cleared his throat. “Well, I always thought I would join the Marines, like Dora.”

The King smiled, but Dmitri blanched. “Oh, damn! Jonas, you have let your tutor down.” As a former naval officer, he clearly didn’t approve of Jonas’ choice.

Dora just held her wrist wallet up in the air, while one side of her mouth turned up in a grin. “One hundred bits, if you please.”

Maintaining his ever-present sense of dignity, Dmitri serenely lifted his wallet to send her a transfer.

The King started to laugh.

The last four years at the Naval Acadamy of St. Almo had opened twenty-year-old Jonas’ eyes to many things. For instance, things he previously would have taken for granted now seemed absurd, decadent, and inane. Case in point: at this moment in time, he carried in his pocket a lined, black, felt bag with a gold-colored drawstring. It was his royal sick bag, and he was determined not to use it at all costs. However, the virus in his stomach seemed equally determined to force the matter.

It was at moments like these in which he hated his birth more than any other. A sane person would have simply stated that he needed to get indoors, away from the vertigo-inducing spin of the small Dyson’s sphere on which he stood. Jonas, on the other hand, couldn’t say anything. Instead, the Prince forced himself to continue listening to a perky, short man enthusiastically intone on the process for rendering synthetic meat from the organic materials of asteroids and the industrial lubricants created as byproducts. The buzz of the little man’s voice was difficult enough, but it became almost intolerable while forcing himself to smile as nausea from the virus and vertigo from the Dyson’s sphere turned his vision into a tunnel. Jonas was irritated. Normally, he didn’t struggle with vertigo, no matter what position he found his body in. He was, after all, a candidate for Marine pilot school with zero-g training.

He stood behind and slightly to the right of his brother. Next to him stood the renderer’s wife. All four of them were surrounded by reporters and floating cameras. Both of the boys wore their customary military dress. Stephen wore a uniform fit for the future leader of all the Athenian military. A dark blue coat, cream pants, a large red sash with gold cording on the edges, and a potpourri of medals pinned to his chest.

On the other hand, Jonas wore the uniform of an academy Lieutenant. A simple blue jacket with the single bar, gold trim at the cuffs, and cream pants creased so tight you could have sliced bread with them. His only hardware—a simple star on the breast of his coat to mark him as member of the first class at St. Almo’s. To Jonas' mind, this single star outranked all of Stephen's tin and brass. Over the course of the last three years, he had earned it with his own sweat, blood and, Jonas hated to admit, a few tears.

He did his best to look interested as the head of Spartan Rendering spoke. It was their third stop on the “Princes' great Walkabout,” as the Daily Court Reporter had labeled their latest morale-boosting tour of the Kingdom. This particular tour intentionally avoided major cities and urbanized planets, along with the fancy dinners and charity auctions which went with them. Instead, the palace focused on backwater villages, marginal planets, asteroids, and small space stations, like this one. As he and Stephen had been telling the media in every interview, forty-percent of the population of the Kingdom of Athena lived in places like these. The tour was meant to build wartime morale in the provinces. That was particularly difficult when no war had actually started.

Jonas’ stomach took a turn for the worse, and his hand wandered instinctively toward his pocket. The spherical station in which they stood had been created to surround a reasonably sized asteroid, several miles across. This was Jonas' first experience on a station of this type. When he looked up, where there should have been sky, there was hard rock, anywhere from a half-mile to just a few hundred meters away. Ahead of him, the “ground” upon which he stood noticeably curved upward and toward him. Then there was his particular location, standing on a large viewing window, looking out on the empty vacuum of space. The rotation of the asteroid and sphere had led to at least three sunrises and sunsets below Jonas’ feet. The effect was to make him feel like he was hanging upside down.

Within a few seconds of his hand straying to his pocket, Dmitri came up beside him and leaned in to whisper in his ear. As he did so, he put his hand on Jonas' shoulder and neck. Jonas felt a small prick on his skin, just above the corner of his uniform, as Dmitri whispered, “You should feel better in a couple of minutes.”

Dmitri was right, and Jonas' nausea diminished. He still felt like he was being flung upside down away from the ground into the emptiness of space, but he wondered if an unexpected trip in the void might have been preferable to the woman who was standing with him. Jonas tried to be fair to those whom he visited. He tried to see it from their point of view, but this woman was too much.

The renderer's wife, whose name was Rena, had done her very best to be presentable for the prince. Jonas was used to the often-wasted effort, but this woman was something else. At one time she might have been beautiful, but this was no longer her day. The breasts of this middle-aged woman looked like swollen balloons. The vast bulk of these no longer fit in her dress, which was a couple of sizes too small and reminded Jonas of something his mother would have worn around the time of her wedding.

Worse, she was a bit of a nervous talker.

“Your grace, do you have a good view of the matter converter there on the surface just above us? My husband always says that it’s the most important part of the operation.”

“He does? Tell me why?” Jonas was deep into his reservoir of banal conversation. He gave a quick glance up at the surface above them, but to tell the truth, he really wasn't that interested in seeing the matter converter because looking up at the surface only increased his vertigo—not that looking down into the blackness of the void was any better.

“Oh, I have no idea. I never pay attention to things like that. He just says that it is.”

Perhaps it was the anti-nausea drugs, or perhaps it was his nervousness caused by his disorientation, but Jonas found this answer to be funny, and a momentary laugh escaped his lips before he could control it. The renderer's wife blushed with embarrassment.

Jonas quickly stifled his laugh, and the tour continued forward.

After a meal of stringy synthetic steak and badly made veg on the asteroid, as well as a sleep aboard the royal transport, Jonas stood near the hatch on the bridge, watching the local transit gate prepare to take them to their next system. Instinctively, he stood at parade rest, his hands clasped behind him. The Academy had reshaped his body and mind in many ways, one of which was his new military posture.

To his right, Teddy Lutnear leaned against the bulkhead. In the last four years, Jonas had come to know the quiet boy some. For his part, Jonas enjoyed his company. Teddy seemed an affable young man, if a little dour at times. Sometimes he gave in to a sadness he couldn’t shake. Jonas especially appreciated that Teddy knew when to keep quiet. This was Teddy’s first trip with Jonas and Stephen on one of their morale-building tours.

As they watched, one of their three security escort destroyers transited the gate.

Jonas spoke in a low voice without looking at Teddy. “Now it will go through a series of security scans before it sends word back to the
Persephone
to proceed with transit.”

Even as a young boy, Jonas had been fascinated by space travel and liked to watch the helmsman and the command crew work. He hadn’t decided what he wanted to do after command school. Dora and his father were rooting for fighter pilot training, but Dmitri seemed to think that he might be better suited to something on the bridge of a larger vessel. That was a more direct path to command.