The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (7 page)

“I’m sorry? Did you say my death?”

Here the Secretary grinned despite herself. “Government can be painfully inefficient—even hurtful to people—but then every once in a while…. I happened to be working late when the call came in from the defense grid that your vehicle had been hit. I knew about it within a few seconds of the event. It was obvious from the beginning what had likely taken place, so I locked everyone out, sent the emergency calls to the palace—keeping the callers unaware of course—and then sent the medics from the royal guards to scrape you off the sidewalk. They brought you here. It was a tidy piece of work. Only ten people know that you’re still alive, every one of them among the Empress’s most loyal subjects. We filed death certificates and put a cover story in the media about yakuza violence and let the press take over. Tomorrow, we’ll even cremate a couple of bodies and then send them up for a traditional reentry burial. Anna, for all intents and purposes, you’re dead. ”

Anna wasn’t sure she liked these decisions being made without her consent, but she had to agree that, in the end, it seemed to be a good thing for her to have died. She thought carefully before she asked her next question. “What if I don’t want to serve the Empire? What I really want is to quietly live my life. Can’t you just let Jack and me go? Everyone thinks we’re dead, so let us be dead.”

The secretary frowned a little and sadness crept into her calculating eyes. “I think there are many of us who would like that, Anna. I’m sure every one of us who serve in high profile positions feels the same way at times. The truth is, right now, there may be only ten of us who know that you’re alive and what happened to you, but that won’t last long. The Unity will be on your scent as soon as they see through our ruse, which is why we must put you somewhere safe.”

The Secretary paused, and Anna noticed her eyes seemed to soften. “I understand your desire to simply blend in and feel like you are an average citizen. I understand it more than you know. My dad was a civil servant before me. I’m an only child and my mother was a huge socialite. For all intents and purposes, I raised myself. I attended the right schools and took the chosen path. When I was younger, I wanted out, but for you and me, I don’t believe it is possible any longer to live an ordinary life.”

As kind as she was trying to be, it irritated Anna that this woman kept talking as if she were government property. “But I don’t work for the government! I’m not Jack. You keep talking like I have some obligation to you! I don’t.”

The Secretary took a moment before responding. When she did, she looked Anna hard in the eye. “Anna, your existence is proof that the Unity tortures people. You’re living proof that against all standards of international law—not to mention human decency—they mind-jack their own. The rewired circuits and residual false memories in your brain are a testimony to their cruelty. Don’t think those missiles were only aimed at Jack. They want you dead just as much as they want Jack dead. You don’t have any obligation to any government, but we both have the same goal. We want to keep you alive.”

Anna let the words sink in. Her heart sank and her throat tightened. The terror she had worked so hard to overcome in the last couple of years prowled the edge of her consciousness. “When I arrived on Apollos, I thought like that. I used to look over my shoulder all the time. In the last two years I have worked hard to put aside my fears and not think that way. Now you’re telling me that I have to be paranoid for the rest of my life.”

Secretary Ohlson shook her head. “Hopefully not, Anna. That’s why I want to send you and Jack to the Kingdom of Athena. The Imperial Trade Minister is headed there on
Beta
shortly to help negotiate a dispute about tariffs. If there is any place in this galaxy where you’ll be safe, it’s there. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to have had your life ripped away without having a say in the matter. Adjusting to the reality that you’re important might be harder for you than it was for me.”

Anna found herself wondering just how much the Secretary knew about her situation. She wondered if the Ministry of Information had been spying on her. That thought made her feel even more vulnerable than the thin gown.

On the other hand, finding people she could talk to had been incredibly hard since her arrival on Apollos, and even then, she hadn’t ever been able to tell anyone the truth about why she was there. Anna suddenly realized her soul desperately longed for honesty. Ohlson appeared to have been straightforward and truthful with her so far, more truthful than Jack. She decided to take a chance. She snorted in irritation and said, “Jack made all the choices for me. I was just the damsel in distress—the princess to be rescued.”

“True.” Ohlson pondered this for a minute, staring opaquely at the claw on the ceiling. “And you’ve really had nothing to do since you arrived here, except work a petty job and take care of two children who are not your own.”

“Yes, but it isn’t really about the kids or the job—although that’s part of it. It’s got more to do with Jack. To be honest, I’m not sure he really cares for me. I never have been. You know, the night before I was taken and tortured by the Unity, he promised to run away with me. He promised to choose me, but until that point, I was just one on a neverending list of lovers. Really, the Unity forced us together. There wasn’t any other choice I could make. I’ve felt trapped ever since.”

Anna shrugged her shoulders before continuing. “Don’t misunderstand, Jack and I have had some happy times. In fact, things were pretty stable until he got promoted. That kind of upset the apple cart again.”

The Secretary let the silence linger for a minute. She didn’t try to answer her complaint or say that it wasn’t real, and when Anna glanced at her, she was looking down at her hands. Anna had the impression she was thinking something over. When she spoke again, her voice lost all of its business tone. This was a mother talking to her child. “You have a death sentence put on your head by the CEO of the Unity. You can’t go back to a simple life. It isn’t really an option. You need to accept that. Your best bet to live and save the lives of those you love is to embrace the people around you. The four of you are a team—not of your own choosing—but a team, nonetheless. You’re a makeshift family, and to be honest, unless something drastic changes in the Unity, all of you will probably always be looking over your shoulders. It’s easier to do that with someone at your side, even if that someone is flawed and broken.”

Anna heard the words but the wound reared its ugly head, and she couldn’t really consider them, let alone accept them. The chance to speak her mind with simple honesty to someone who understood had done more for Anna than two years of medications, implants, and therapy. She needed to make some changes. “I’m not so sure I can go on with him.”

“Of course, you have to make your own decisions.” Secretary Ohlson held her compassionate mask for just a second longer, and then the moment closed, and her speech took on its usual clipped quick pace. “Perhaps this might help. I have some information I would like you to pass on to the King and his ministers, and I have a business proposal for you.”

A little more than two hours after Dora finished scolding him, Jonas found himself dressed in the uniform of the Royal Marine Guards and standing beside his brother in a receiving line on the front steps. Below him, a procession of antique hovercraft climbed from the city in the valley at a measured pace.

When the vehicles arrived, Aunt Dora stepped out, followed by Bruno Malek and his party. Malek’s girth made him impossible to miss. He wore a black hat, trimmed with white fur and a plume. His face was so rounded by his excess weight, it flowed directly into his shoulders. His dark hair lay in ringlets that just touched his collar. Jonas noted that Malek wore the bright green dress uniform of the Sadarian Guard.

The Sadarians held out for nearly fifty years on Malek’s home world against the occupying Athenian military during the war of consolidation. Ironically, Malek’s own family had been given power by the House of Athena for its final conquest of the Sadarian holdouts. By wearing the Sardarian uniform to the palace, Malek put an unsubtle finger in the eye of the monarchy.

In fact, the whole meeting was intended to be a finger in the eye of the House of Athena. It was no secret that Malek had ambitions for the throne, as delusional as that sounded to any rational person. As someone who had made his reputation as a soldier in his younger, less obese days, Malek had a strong following in his conservative dukedom Galatia, as well as a small but vocal fan base in the wider kingdom.

Over a decade ago now, the feud between Jonas’ father and Duke Malek boiled over when the duke had been caught funneling weapons and funds to guerrillas fighting the House of Athena in the New Amsterdam archipelago. It was a testament to his popularity that he had survived that incident with his head intact. Rather than making a martyr of him, Jonas’ father decided to try to starve him into submission.

Interstellar gate taxes were the main source of wealth for nobles in the empire. Each noble owned their gates personally and collected taxes on them. Much of Malek’s power came from his proximity to the more densely populated regions of the galaxy. He made money on trade, and while a direct embargo wasn’t possible from his liege lord, tariffs on Athenian goods suddenly popped up among almost all of Malek’s direct neighbors. Trade moved elsewhere, which had proven effective.

Needless to say, it was a known secret that the House of Athena was behind the decade-old tariffs. Even Jonas knew his father made secret payments to Duke Malek’s neighbors in order to compensate them for their lost business. Malek had fumed and protested for ten years, but the tariffs hadn’t moved. Now, his complaint to the Imperial Trade Tribunal had finally come up for a preliminary hearing.

Tonight, Malek arrived. Everyone would play nice and pretend like they were all on the same team. Tomorrow, the Imperial Trade Minister came in from the galactic capital, and the knives would come out.

The King, of course, couldn’t declare that he supported tariffs on his own vassal by foreign powers. However, it was all in the wording. He could either take a strong stand against them, threatening military action, or he could temper his comments and so hint that he wanted the tariffs left in place. There was little reason to suspect that the Empire would do anything other than support the House of Athena. Three hundred years prior, at the end of a genocidal war, Athena founded the Pax Imperium as a means to check the power of every state in the galaxy. Athena might not lead the Pax, but it was still its chief patron.

This was Jonas’ first exposure to the Malek clan. Needless to say, he was eager to see the Duke in person but also a little nervous. There was a lot riding on this meeting.

Lady Malek exited the limousine and stood next to her husband. They made quite a pair. Thin, willowy, and blond, she wore a perpetual smile. Even from this distance, Jonas recognized her nearly flawless beauty. He guessed she was what they called at the court a mannequin—artificial in all the areas that mattered for external beauty. She made a perfect trophy wife for a man like Malek.

The two children weren’t visible until they came out from behind the vehicle. While the family talked with a couple of minor figures before climbing the stairs, Jonas ran over what he knew of them. Duke Malek had three acknowledged offspring. Two boys born to his second wife, now dead, and a daughter, Sophia, born to his third.

The oldest boy was not among the visitors because he was away at the Imperial University in Leto.

The middle boy, Mark, was supposed to be a big archer. He was training for the Athenian national team.

As Dora guided her charges toward the steps, the idly drifting press cameras buzzed to life.
They really do resemble a swarm of flies
, thought Jonas. While the cameras held vigil overhead, he instinctively adopted his most serious pose.

The daughter was to be Jonas' special concern this evening. There really wasn’t much on Sophia Malek in the diplomatic dossiers other than her age, fourteen years old. Her age meant this was her first trip to the palace of her father’s liege lord. Traditionally, the trip at age fourteen was a preview before a young woman officially entered the world of the court at eighteen.

More than a few eyes would be on her tonight. Jonas noticed that both the Court Reporter and Daily Star had assigned cameras to her exclusively.
The tabloid gossip nodes will be full of her image tomorrow
, he thought. Jonas didn't even bother to consider that he would be featured heavily in tomorrow's gossips, as well.

The one instruction he and Stephen had been given directly from their father regarding this visit was on the subject of Malek’s children. He wanted Jonas and Stephen to try to get on friendly terms with them as much as possible. Jonas’ dad believed that friendship among the next generations of Maleks and Athenas could be the key to healing the unhealthy rivalry. He had been grateful for his father’s instruction. It meant this weekend would be several notches less stressful than if he had been instructed to keep his distance and watch his words.

Still, he didn’t have much hope until he saw the girl as she climbed the stairs toward him. Somewhat surprised, he first noticed she hadn’t been aged up to look older than she was. The families of most fourteen year olds who came to the palace for their first visit insisted on trying to make their daughters look twenty—accentuated bust lines, plunging dresses, and hair pulled up. This was not a good way to make a first impression on Jonas’ dad, and Jonas recognized the acumen of the Malek family in avoiding this mistake.

This wasn’t to say that young Lady Malek lacked appeal or that she had been made to look like a little girl. Rather, the light blue dress she wore acknowledged her modest breasts and the curve at her hips without trying to make them the center of attention. Jonas found the grounded self-confidence exhibited in such a choice refreshing.

Of average height, with curly blond hair and pale skin, Jonas thought she looked somewhat like her mother, but it was hard to say since her mother had been strongly modified. He did notice that Sophia carried her father’s broad, strong shoulders. She was no bird—although she didn’t seem to share his apparent overindulgence of food.