Category: writing

For years, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a book based on Lawman’s Brut, an extensive prose history written during the medieval period.  I initially read sections of it while working on my master’s degree in history and actually own a copy.  The Histories of Starfall is a science fiction version of the Brut in some ways, though it’s sadly unfinished but is a project I’d like to get back to at some point.

This is the first chapter of the Histories.

  

One

“It’s worse than we feared,” he said as he strode into the king’s command center. “The fleet is at least a thousand ships with full fighter and bomber compliments. I shudder to think of how many marines they might have brought with them for ship to ship and ground assaults.”

Old King Servaas looked up from the screen that illuminated his weathered face. He had seen more than sixty years, fathered ten children, and now he was brought low by the folly of his youngest son.

Worse yet, his people would pay the price for that folly and there was nothing he could do about it. The men and women of Illycriam would pay the price for the crime of one man, the crime of Eder Alantir, son of Servaas, King of Illycriam, last of his line.

“Give us some ray of hope, Jacob,” the king said quietly. “Can some of our people be saved? Have we time enough for any evacuation?”

Jacob Kelley took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. He exchanged a look with Hector, the king’s eldest son and heir. Hector’s jaw tightened and he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“Whatever must be done must be done, brother. Anything to save even a fraction of the Illyrcians will be worth the cost.”

Jacob turned back to the king, his voice steady but heavy with remorse. “If the bulk of our naval forces head out face them, sire, there might be a chance of evacuating some of the population through the Postern Gate.”

Hector shuddered. “No one has flown through that gate in recorded history. It could go to nowhere. It may not even activate when you reach it.”

“I know that and so does the enemy. The other gates and waypoints are blockaded but the Postern Gate’s clear.”  Jacob said. “We have no choice, it’s the Postern Gate or nothing. It’s our only hope. You said yourself—anything to save even a fraction of Illycriam’s people.”

Servaas stared at the pair for a long moment, his son by blood and his son in spirit, before he turned away, pacing across his command center to study the holographic maps of the known galaxy. “Jacob, find some volunteers to accompany you through the Postern Gate with refugees. Take ten destroyers and a carrier. Hector, gather a force and refugees and make for the Evangeline Gate. Take twenty destroyers and two carriers. Perhaps you’ll be able to thin the forces enough to open the way. I will have Edwin Millardo prepare a group to follow whichever of you is successful. Armena Caradine will lead the rest of our fleet against the main body of the armada. Hopefully, that will give each of you enough time to escape.”

They don’t stand a chance going through the Evangeline Gate. Jacob held his tongue and pounded his right fist against his left breast in salute. “By your leave, then, my king?”

Servaas turned back toward him again, smiling sadly. “We will miss your counsel in these final hours of Illycriam, Jacob. Take the Ascanius and take my grandson to safety. May the gods smile on you all the rest of your days.”

“I pray that they see all of Illycriam’s people through this, my king,” Jacob said softly. “Gods save you.” Because I know I cannot.

The old king nodded and turned away again. Jacob stared at his father-in-law’s back for one last, long and aching moment before he strode out of the command center for the last time.

By morning, it and the whole of the capital Illyrium would be nothing but ash.

•••

“Father!”

Jacob turned toward the sound of his son’s voice and felt his heart give a painful squeeze. Julian had the look of his late mother, gone these past two years since Eder’s perfidy. Amanda had been the king’s chosen envoy, sent to the Syprian Expanse to broker peace.

They’d sent her body home in a cyrotube, her throat cut and her eyes gouged out, a message for her father and her people. It made him sick to think of it.

Julian had the same troubled look in his gray eyes that his mother had the day she’d told them she was going to the Expanse. Jacob’s stomach dropped even further toward his boots as he took the boy by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake.

“What’s wrong, Jules?”

“It’s Aunt Cass,” Julian said, his young voice breaking there in the corridor of Ecclesiastes Station. He was barely thirteen, far too young to know as much as he did of war and hardship. But he was the only grandson of King Servaas, and should the old king die and his sons pass from the world of the living without issue of their own, Julian Kelley would be the king of Illycriam.

Or would have been, if their world and way of life wasn’t about to be wiped from galactic memory.

Jacob’s heart fluttered into his throat. Cassiopeia was the very youngest of Servaas’s children and Julian’s favorite relative. “What about her?”

“They brought her in on the Tellurian. She—Father, she—” Julian swallowed hard, looking frustrated as he glanced away, then back to his father’s dark eyes. “The Syprians shot her down and captured her, Father, then they sent her back to us. They sent her with a message to us. Father they—they blinded her.”

He had to swallow bile before he could speak, thoughts flashing back to the ruin of his dead wife’s face in that cryotube. Cassiopeia was a fighter, a pilot of no small skill, much to the chagrin of her beloved father and king.

She was also reckless and perhaps not entirely sane. There were stories and rumors that she had a touch of second sight, a gift that had been lost to the Illycrian people long ago. Jacob hadn’t believed it until the day Cass had clutched his sleeve and told him that he’d never see Amanda alive again, the day they stood on the tarmac of Rydian Base and watched her transport lift into a starlit sky.

The only person Amanda had loved as much as her husband and son had been her baby sister.

All thoughts of getting his son to the Ascanius and evacuating evaporated. They couldn’t go without Cass—it was an impossibility. Jacob jerked his chin toward the corridor behind Julian. “Take me to her.”

Julian swallowed and nodded, then turned and dashed down the hallway, his father at his heels. The gunmetal gray corridors gave way to sterile white as they headed deeper, toward the heart of the station where the medical center was safely nestled.

“How long ago was it?” Jacob asked. It couldn’t have been that long ago. I was only here a few hours ago and I’m thinking they would have told me about something like this before I went down to the surface.

“Maybe fifteen minutes after you left the station.” Julian swallowed hard. “I—Father, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. She—I—Father, it’s—”

Jacob squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll sort it out,” he said softly. It was little comfort, he knew, but it was all he had to give.

Julian met his gaze and nodded slowly. “Right,” he said. “Sure. They—they took her this way.”

The teenager led him down a side corridor and a moment later, both of them could hear the sound of a woman shouting—Cassiopeia shouting, cursing the enemy, cursing the medics, cursing anyone and everyone in earshot.

At least she’s alive to curse them. Jacob slipped past his son. “Go find Tacitus and tell him to start the evacuations. You get to the Ascanius with our gear and tell Carlos that we’re leaving as soon as I’m aboard.”

“Leaving?” Julian stared at him, brows knitting. “Where are we going?”

“The Postern Gate and whatever lies beyond it.” Jacob pushed him gently. “Now go. I’ll collect your aunt and we’ll both be there shortly.”

Julian cast one last look at his father before he nodded and dashed off in the direction they’d come from.  Jacob took a deep breath and turned and continued on toward the sound of the curses that slowly turned to screams. His heart began to pound harder as he forged onward, heading toward the sound.

I never should have let Riley send her out there.

He shouldered open the door into a scene of chaos. Three medics struggled to hold Cassiopeia down as a third tried to inject her with something. Still dressed in the tattered remnants of her flightsuit, it was easy to imagine what had happened to her while the Syprians had her. Contrary to his fears, her eyes were still there, not gouged from their sockets like her sister’s had been. They were still there, huge and blue, the pupils shrunk to nothing and the irises filmed over with gray-white, angry red-purple marks radiating out toward her temples. Her mouth was open in a full-throated scream of rage and fear and she was fighting the medics with all her strength.

“Let go of her,” Jacob ordered, slamming the door. “And get the hell out of here.”

“General Kelley—”

“Go!” he roared, storming toward the bed. Cassiopeia had suddenly gone silent and still, her sightless eyes wide, chest heaving as she sucked in ragged breaths. One of the medics glanced at her strangely before all four skittered toward the door and out, not daring to look at Jacob as they passed. Cassiopeia sat up fully, swallowing and choking back a sob.

“Jacob?”

“I’m here, Cass.” He took one of her hands in both of his, wincing at the restraint marks on her wrist, her flesh raw and purple-red with angry bruises and welts. “I’m right here.”

“I tried to warn him, Jacob,” she said, clutching at his sleeve with her free hand. “I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. I tried to warn all of them. No one listened. Why wouldn’t they listen?”

“I don’t know,” Jacob whispered, fingers tightening around her hand. “I don’t know why they didn’t listen. Can you walk?”

“Walk? Walk to where?”

“The Ascanius. We’re getting out of here. Can you walk?”

“I—”

He took her hesitation for a no and swept her up into his arms. She gave a little yelp and threw an arm around his neck to steady herself. “The king has ordered evacuations,” he said as he strode toward the door. “Hector and I are taking the first two groups. Admiral Caradine will lead the defense—she’ll buy us time to evacuate as many as we can and get away. Hector’s taking a group through the Evangeline Gate.”

“He’ll never make it,” Cassiopeia whispered, her head against his shoulder, her face half buried in his chest. “Doesn’t Father realize that?”

“Who am I to gainsay my king?” Jacob asked softly. “He’s given me leave to take a group through the Postern Gate. That’s where we’re going with the Ascanius.”

“No one’s flown through that jumpgate in recorded history.”

“You said it would work.”

Her tears wet the shoulder of his uniform jacket. “You’re the only one who believed me. You’re the only one who’s ever believed me.”

“You haven’t been wrong yet, Cass.” As much as I wished you were that day on the tarmac, I’ve never known you to be wrong when the sight’s touched you. He held her a little more tightly. “Now be quiet and still. Doc Andrews will have a look once we’re aboard the Ascanius. Does it hurt much?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.” She rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, exhaling a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to sleep because I know that there will be nightmares.”

“He’ll give you something so you won’t dream,” Jacob promised, ignoring the strange looks he received as he forged onward down the corridor, toward the docking rings where the Ascanius waited for its commander. “All things heal with time.”

“Illycriam won’t.”

“No,” he agreed softly. “It won’t. But whatever handful of her people that can be saved—they will. I promise, Cass, they will.”

Her face pressed against his shoulder, the king’s youngest daughter nodded, her eyes squeezed shut. “I believe you,” she whispered. “Gods help us all, Jacob.  I believe you.”

This is a scene I wrote on a whim, one that has taken on a little more meaning in the months since I wrote it.  It’s a scene with Tim and AJ McConaway, both of UNSETIC, and takes place a few months before Ghosts and the Future.  This little piece is from Tim’s point of view.  Enjoy!

  

She found me perching on a concrete wall overlooking the lake, a glass of something amber cradled between my hands but long since watered down by the ice that had melted in the time between I’d started drinking it and the time she’d found me. My hand didn’t even twitch toward the sidearm I wasn’t wearing—tonight was khakis and a dress shirt, not even a sport coat.

Tonight had been for my sister and I’d tried to be good. I really, really had.

Something about something in that exhibit had really unsettled me, though, enough that I couldn’t stay, I had to go—had to walk away. The damnable part of it was that I couldn’t figure out—couldn’t remember—why it had upset me so much.

“They’re all wondering where you went,” AJ said softly as she sat down next to me. I thought she looked beautiful, smartly attired in her dress and heels. “That departure was a little sudden.”

I closed my eyes. “Go back inside,” I said quietly. “This is your party. It’s not every day that…that you get an exhibit at the Field, AJ. Go back there and enjoy it.”

“I can’t enjoy it without my brother with me,” she said. Her palm skated across my shoulders and spine. I shivered, biting down hard on my lip and squeezing my eyes even more tightly shut. “Talk to me, Tim. Just…talk to me. What set you off?”

“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I knew?” I rasped, then tossed back half of what was left in my glass. The whiskey was so far gone it didn’t even burn on the way down. “I don’t remember. I just…I had to get out of there, AJ. I couldn’t stay.”

Her arm slid around me. “I get that. I’m just—I’m more worried about the why. If there’s something in there that can set you off like this, Tim—”

“I probably overreacted,” I said quickly. “It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Too late.”

A sigh I couldn’t stop escaped me and her arm tightened.

“You’ve got more important things to worry about,” I murmured.

“There’s nothing more important than family,” she whispered. “We both know that, Tim—at least we should. You’re my brother and I love you—and I spent too much time without you to be willing to let something like this go. I know that some kind of ghost of your past swam up from the shadows back there. I want to figure out what it was so we can slay that bloody demon.”

“AJ—” I stopped, sighing again. This fight wasn’t one I was going to win.

Just let her help.

I felt like I let her help too much, but in reality, the opposite was true and there was a part of me that hated myself for both things.

“I don’t know which artifact it was,” I said, swallowing hard against the bile that started to creep upwards in my throat. “Must have been one, though. It just—whatever it was, it triggered a major flight response. I had to get out of there. Blank spot in my memory, though. Don’t know what it was, or quite where it was either.”

“Damn,” she breathed. “Damn and damn.”

I just shook my head, staring out at the water, at the slowly fading light against the horizon. “It happens like that,” I said.

“I know.”

“You never—I never told you.” My stomach sank. She hadn’t seen it happen before, had she? I couldn’t remember her ever being around for an episode and I sure as hell hadn’t told her.

Kate? B?

“You didn’t have you. You’ve got a partner that looks out for you when I can’t.”

Brigid. Brigid told her. It shouldn’t have surprised me at all. The woman was my fucking guardian angel.

I was grateful to her as often as I was angry at her—probably far too often on the latter count.

It was just as well.

“She’s got a big mouth,” I mumbled.

“She cares about you,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

Rebecca Ariel Reid spends a lot of time in the UNSETIC Files universe missing.  She is the close friend and business partner of Cassidy Beckett, who runs their New Age bookstore and supernatural supply shop in Hell’s Kitchen after Becca vanishes in Alberta, Canada, without a trace (this is an incident referenced in Truth Will Set You Free).  She reappears much later, alone, without the Central Park pack that she’d traveled with years before and a mystery to solve that will tie her to UNSETIC tighter than she and Beckett ever could have imagined.

The scene that follows is the good-bye shared between Becca Reid and her mate, Ioan Griffin, the pack’s alpha.

  

The tribe was singing a mourning song, beautiful and haunting. It sent shivers down Rebecca Reid’s spine, though not because of its beauty.

“Who died?” She whispered. No one had been out hunting today, she’d thought.

Ioan Griffin’s arms tightened around her waist, breath warm against her ear. She could feel his heartbeat as she leaned against his chest, heard him take a deep, almost ragged breath before he spoke softly. “No one yet,” he said. “But they’re playing it for us. For the pack.”

She stiffened, staring up at him. Ioan was staring back at the fire, at the circle of singers clustered in its flickering light. His jaw was set, but it quivered a little, betraying him. It was weakness he’d never show to anyone else.

But they belonged to each other, and she’d have seen it where no one else would have.

“Ioan, why would they do that?”

“I have to ask you something,” he whispered, ignoring the question. “To do something, but you’re not going to say no. Not this time.”

Her brows knit as she stared at him. “What is it?”

He hesitated, closing his eyes for a moment before he looked at her square. “You need to stay behind this time.”

“What?” Why would he– “I’m the best shot the pack has, Ioan, and you’ve said yourself that without my cover fire, half of what you’ve accomplished wouldn’t have been possible. I’m not letting you guys go into that place without me.”

“I’m not risking you,” he growled, letting go of her waist. He took her face in his hands instead, scarred, calloused thumbs stroking her jaw. “You’re staying behind. So I have a reason to make that music into a lie.” He nodded toward the fire, to the singers and their mourning song. “They don’t expect us to live through this. It’s a suicide mission.”

“And you volunteered for it anyway,” she said softly, eyes widening. “Ioan, why?”

His expression softened and he rested his forehead against hers. “Because someone taught me that there are things that need doing, no matter how dangerous, for the good of the whole.”

She slumped. “My father.”

He shook his head slightly. “No. You.”

Her chest convulsed as she swallowed a sob, wouldn’t let it tear its way free of her throat. She gripped his face, brought his lips to hers. The salt of their shared tears mixed against their lips in that hungry kiss.

He stroked her cheeks as they both came up for air, their foreheads pressed together. “We’ve been betrayed, Becca,” he whispered. “We’ve been betrayed and we don’t know who did it. The clan leaves as soon as the song is done. They’re going to evacuate the town. There are defenses set up to protect this place, defenses that Moonshadow’s grandfather set up fifty years ago.” Ioan swallowed, looking away for a moment, then continued in a thick whisper. “I’m not going to ask you to leave with them, but I will ask you to leave.

“Three days, Becca. If we’re not back in three days, go home. Go back to New York. I will find you. I promise.”

“Ioan—”

“No,” he whispered fiercely, traces of silver starting to overshadow the blue of his eyes. “No, listen to me. You are the light of my heart and I can’t stand to see you hurt, but you’re not staying just because I want you to be safe. You’re smarter than the rest of us by half and more. If we don’t make it back in three days, you have to figure out who betrayed us, who betrayed the pack, the clan, maybe everyone—maybe every single one of the nahuali left in the world, maybe every living thing left on this planet. I don’t think anyone else can. Do that for me.” He swallowed. “Promise you’ll do that for me.”

She kissed him again, a long, gentle kiss, then squeezed her eyes shut, nodding as she stepped back from the pack’s alpha, from her mate.

“I promise.”

 General Jackson “Longshot” Hunter has been in the intelligence game for decades.  The head of Alliance SpecOps, he’s done everything in his power to prevent his operatives from suffering the personal tragedies he has–sometimes successfully, sometimes not.  With war with the Imperium looming on the horizon, Hunter faces the greatest fight of his life: to protect a man he’s come to regard as the son he never had and to save humanity from itself–and a threat long dead.

The story in Longshot takes place largely during the events if Redeemer and was an experiment from several years ago in centering a story on Jack Hunter, the chief of Alliance SpecOps and the chief of military intelligence back on Epsilon.  It’s part character study, part background, part thought and timeline organization. In Chapter 3, we get to learn more about the politics going on at the heart of the Alliance.

  

Three

The crowds were thick at the officer’s club as Hunter walked in shortly before one in the afternoon for his meeting with Admiral Patricus Wheeling. Wheeling was Navy, the commander in charge of the near border fleet. They interacted often enough, given that special operations and intelligence concerns were most important in areas where they might face incursions, but Hunter had been dreading meetings with the admiral lately for an array of reasons.

If Flannery is his opening salvo, I’m leaving.

Wheeling nodded to him as Hunter located that day’s table, tucked quietly into one corner of the officer’s club. He slid into the seat across from his colleague and reached for his water glass. 

“Afternoon, Pat.”

“Jackson.” Wheeling actually smiled. Hunter smothered a grimace.

I’m not going to like how this meeting is going to go, am I?

No. Probably not at all.

“What are we going to go rounds on today?” Hunter asked, trying to keep any trace of weariness from his voice. “What do you need?”

“Well, I need softcopy of the updated patrol circles for the Imperium Eighth Fleet on the other side of the border,” Wheeling said. “Something I should be asking about?”

He shot Wheeling a glower and the other man winced.

“It’s the anniversary of something that I’m forgetting, isn’t it, General?”

“No,” Hunter said quietly, and that was a true enough statement. It wasn’t a day of any particular significance beyond the data he’d caught and the fact that he’d chosen this particular morning to go down to the cemetery, leaving his aide behind to make contact directly with his old friend Ross out beyond the borders–their first overt contact with a representative of the Resistance that hadn’t come through faceless cut-outs or been through an undercover agent on the ground.

No, I just took a major step toward what we should have been doing decades ago when the peace began to break almost as soon as the ink was dry on the Weber-Paxton Treaty.

“You’re defensive today,” Wheeling observed.

“Hardly. I was just expecting your opening to be another complaint about Casey Flannery and the orders I gave concerning her.”

Wheeling’s eyes slid shut for a moment and he leaned back in his chair. “She has filed a grievance.”

“Another one?”

The admiral nodded slightly. “She feels that she’s been unjustly punished for actions taken that she believed, at the time, were in the best interest of Alliance security. She thought your agent had gone rogue.”

“Did you watch the video?”

“I did.” Wheeling sighed. “I should be angrier than a wet hornet that you had the Vanguard’s security systems rigged with a secondary video capture array.”

“I didn’t do anything of the sort,” Hunter said, taking a deep swallow from his glass. “That was General Marr, before my time. He arranged for it after the sabotage of the Westerfall. Every new ship coming out of the shipyards at Amandine and Ryval is equipped with the secondary array and every ship that goes in for refit gets the same treatment. Don’t blame that failsafe on me, just be grateful that Captain York figured out what was happening before Casey Flannery murdered my officer.”

“He did provoke her,” Wheeling murmured.

“He was stalling in the only way he could in a situation like that,” Hunter said, feeling a faint pounding begin to rise behind his eyes. This was going to be another damned long lunch. “I probably would have used much the same tactics if it were me. What was she demanding in this complaint and how long are you going to let this continue? You’ve obviously watched the damned video. You know exactly what happened.”

Wheeling stared at a spot somewhere beyond Hunter’s shoulder. “They have history, don’t they?”

“The fact that she made it out of the Academy rather than being expelled for conduct unbecoming is owed completely to two things–Aaron Taylor’s mercy and mine.”

Wheeling’s gaze met his again abruptly and Hunter couldn’t help but give him a wolfish grin.

“No one assaults one of my cadets and I don’t hear about it, no matter how quiet everyone tries to keep the matter. You get one second chance and then you pray to whatever deity you believe in that you don’t need another one. I did nothing because Taylor elected not to report it, a decision I’m fairly certain he arrived at on his own, with no intervention of any of his classmates or friends.”

“Bloody hell, Jackson,” Wheeling breathed. “You are a fucking spider, aren’t you?”

One corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. “Only when it suits me. So what was she asking for this time?”

“She wants her rank and her posting back.”

Hunter shook his head. “She has to earn her rank back and she’s never getting posted back to any ship that will bring her that close to the border ever again. Leave her where she is where she can’t do any more damage to Taylor or his operational security.” Not to mention any potential damage she may to do her sister if she were to find out that Captain Flannery is alive and in the Borderworlds.

Memory was a tricky thing, especially when all evidence pointed to manipulation of it by Imperium psychics and scientists.

The more Hunter learned about the Imperium’s Project: Seket, the less he liked it.

He leaned back in his chair, giving Wheeling a stony look. “Put an end to it, Pat.”

“I don’t know that I can.”

“If you won’t, I’ll go to Diane and you know she will. The last thing you need is me going to the Admiral of the Navy about this, and if I do, Casey Flannery will be dealing with far, far worse than a rank reduction and a reassignment. I was merciful, Pat, merciful in a way that I didn’t have to be. She assaulted a fellow officer and could have killed him. I’m not so sure she didn’t intend to kill him. That the very least, she should be cooling her heels in the stockade for a year and facing dishonorable discharge. I didn’t do that to her out of respect for her late parents and the fact that when she’s not got it in her head that her sister’s lover is the enemy, she’s actually a decent officer.”

Wheeling averted his gaze. “I still don’t understand why your division is the only one that allows that kind of relationship to develop.”

“Allows? Hell, we practically encourage it. If you knew half of what I had to ask the men and women under my command to do, you’d never question why it’s allowed ever again.” Hunter shook his head. “My people are too few and too loyal to penalize them for something like falling in love with the person that they’ve been working with since Academy day one. If we had to reassign one of them every time that happened, I’d lose too many good people.”

“How many?”

Hunter snorted. This was a conversation he’d had once or twice before. The explanation never changed. “It depends on the graduating class. Some are more prone to it than others, it seems. In Flannery and Taylor’s class, it’s just them. The class before, there were three couples. The class after, none.” And in my class, there were two, and then there was Kath and Joe’s class and they were the only ones. It just depends on the makeup and the circumstances. “The numbers are typically small, but if one transfers out, the other is typically finished shortly thereafter. If they’re allowed to keep doing what they’re doing, we usually get another four or five years of service out of them rather than losing one to reassignment and the other two to three months later because they discover that solo operations aren’t their cup of tea. Everyone thinks they can handle it but it’s usually a lie they’re telling themselves.”

“So you’re saying that if you followed the regulations that bind every other division, you’d lose each pair that started a relationship?” Wheeling shook his head slowly. “Why not just…make them change partners?”

“That’s a more complicated question,” Hunter said. “Most people don’t realize exactly how much of the training these men and women get is based on honing their ability to work with one specific individual–the individual they were matched to in the Academy. Of course, some of the techniques will translate, but there’s something about working with the same person over and over again over the course of days and months and years that gives even non-psychics an almost supernatural awareness of their partners.” Hunter crossed his arms. “Greg O’Malley is still on your staff, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he translates your reports into Navy-speak for the rest of my staff and cuts out the parts that keep me awake at night.”

Hunter nodded slowly. “Ask him about when he was still with SpecOps. Ask him about working with Alicia Kelley.”

Wheeling stared at him. “You remember all of their names, too, don’t you? Even after they’ve left the service or passed or transferred or whatever.”

“I have fewer people to do a larger job,” Hunter said softly. “Of course I remember their names.” I remember most of their faces, too, and the faces of the families when they’ve been lost under my command and I’ve delivered the news.

He was the only division chief attached to the Epsilon Alliance Armed Forces that personally informed the families when their son or daughter, husband or wife, mother or father or sister or brother had been lost in the line of duty. Sometimes it was in person, sometimes it was holocomm.

Regardless, the bad news always came from their penultimate commander. The day he no longer believed it was important for the news to come from him was the day he would walk away from his post forever.

He’d promised Maida that, too, on his knees one spring afternoon back when the oak that marked her gave was still small enough that his hands would wrap all the way around its trunk. That had been the day Roger Marr retired and gave his post to a much younger but no less world-weary Jackson Hunter.

Some promises are too dear not to keep.

“I don’t envy you that,” Wheeling said softly.

“Nobody does,” Hunter said, his gaze meeting the other man’s. Wheeling’s expression had softened into something close to understanding. “It’s part of the price that I pay for being what I am.”

“There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” Hunter said quietly. “Yes, there is.”

A waitress came by and took their order, then vanished again, leaving the pair of men staring at each other across water glasses and salt shakers.

“I actually wanted this meeting because someone had to warn you,” Wheeling said after that silence.

“Warn me? About what?”

“They’re calling a vote on the condemnation. You need to stay away from it, Jackson.” 

“Why would I do that, Pat?” There must be a good reason or else he wouldn’t be voicing the warning.

As much as Patricus Wheeling tried to deny it, he knew exactly what could happen if the Resistance suddenly vanished, and what would come after that would be bad–bad for his fleet, bad for the Alliance and–if you asked Hunter–bad for humanity.

Wheeling took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “Because if you tread too close to this issue, they’re going to lose votes. The resolution’s made it out of committee this time. It’s hitting the floor, but we’ve got to stay out of it and let the politicos do something for once without interfering.”

Hunter shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, Pat. Shouldn’t they be grasping for any and all advice they can get on the matter? I’m sure half of them don’t much understand our tactical situation right about now.”

“And they don’t really have to,” Wheeling said. “All they really need to understand is that the Imperium violated the sovereignty of a free world and bombed a major city from orbit in an attempt to subjugate and pacify the population, a direct violation to the Weber-Paxton Treaty.”

“There will be three or four people–probably the same ones as last time, mind you–that will make the argument that none of the worlds in the Borderworlds were a party to Weber-Paxton and thus are not protected by its strictures.” The argument sounded bitter as he voiced it, slicked his tongue with foulness that felt so profoundly vile that he was more than half certain that the words were poison in and of themselves. “And there will be two dozen representatives that will believe it and their votes will swing from yay to nay and we’re right back to square one.” Hunter leaned forward, his eyes bright. “Pat, if we don’t start doing something about the Imperium attacks in the Borderworlds, all of those men and women sitting safe and pretty at the Capitol are going to find themselves looking down the torpedo tubes of an Imperium warship as they call for our goddamned surrender.”

Wheeling winced. “That’s why you have to stay away from this. You’re an alarmist and that terrifies the moderates.”

“They should be terrified,” Hunter snapped. “You know how precarious our position is right now. The Borderworlds–and the Resistance that’s out there fighting tooth and nail to defend those worlds that no one else gives enough of a damn about to protect–are the only things that are standing between us and the Imperium fleet on our doorstep.” He crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair and feeling about as petulant as he probably looked.

Wheeling shook his head. “It’s not that dire. You make it sound like they’d be on our doorstep tomorrow if the Resistance collapsed. We’d have two years or so to prepare before the Imperium made it anywhere close to Epsilon.”

“We’d have three weeks before they were hitting Varice,” Hunter said. “Another six weeks after that, they’d be here. No one would be standing in their way.” He leaned forward, smothering a grimace at the shocked look on Wheeling’s face. “Why do you think I’ve been sending my people out into fragging no-man’s land out there on the border? Why do you think I keep sending my people to watch the Resistance, to see how they’re fighting their war against the Imperium? Do you think I like risking their lives like that?”

“No,” Wheeling said, perhaps a touch too quickly. “No, of course not.”

Hunter snorted and glanced toward the ceiling for a moment, taking a few deep, steadying breaths. Wheeling cleared his throat softly.

“Who knows?”

Hunter looked at him again. “Who knows what?”

“What you just told me. About how quickly the Imperium would be here if the Resistance collapsed.”

“The president, his chief of staff, the vice president and her husband, the Admiral of the Navy, and the Secretaries of State and Defense. They’re trying to keep it quiet so a panic doesn’t erupt, but in some ways that’s counterproductive at this point. The people who need to have all of the facts sadly do not have them at their disposal.”

“Why haven’t you distributed this information more widely?” Wheeling asked quietly, leaning forward now, almost conspiratorially.

“What, within the fleet?” Hunter shook his head and swallowed a sigh. “Everyone with more than half a brain rattling around in his skull knows that we’ll eventually end up at war with Earth again. It’s inevitable–only a matter of when. It doesn’t do any good to terrify anyone at this point when we only have theories on when and how they’re going to hit and with what kind of force. If we play this all right, they’ll never get past the Borderworlds and everyone can sue for peace–one that will work this time, not turn into a ridiculous cold war that we’re deluding ourselves into believing is peace just because it’s the status quo and we’re not constantly shooting each other on our own turf.”

Once upon a time, Maida would have put her hand on his arm and squeezed it before she told him he was being perhaps a little too harsh, a little too hard on the Alliance’s government. That was before the Imperium killed her because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s been a long time.

“We can’t keep going on like this, Pat,” Hunter said softly. “There’s got to be an end in sight. If we give the Borderworlds the open support they need, then we ensure our own security. It’s that simple.”

“Nothing’s ever that simple,” Wheeling said, expression deadpan. “A particular bastard told me that once.”

“Really? Who was that?”

“Some jackass intelligence chief who knows too much.”

“Mm.” Hunter closed his eyes for a moment, smiling wryly. “Sounds like my kind of guy.” He sighed, then, opening his eyes and staring at Wheeling as the smile faded. “I mean it, Pat. We’re running out of time and options. If we fight this war on our terms, we can win it. If we let them call the tune we have to dance to, we’re done for.” His lips thinned. “I’ll stay away from this vote, but it’d damned well had better pass this time. It’s already too little and too late, but it’ll be a baby step in the right direction.” He stood from the table.

“Where are you going? You haven’t eaten yet.”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Hunter said. “Have a good afternoon, Pat.”

Wheeling shook his head slightly. “Stay away from it, Jackson.”

“Don’t worry,” Hunter murmured. “I heard you when you said to leave it alone. I’ll leave it be, you’ve got my word on it. I’ve got too much other crap to be worrying about right now anyhow.”

Like half a dozen operatives from the class of ‘57 undercover with the Resistance. I may have to dispatch more of them soon, but how soon that is remains to be seen.

He gave Wheeling one more wry smile before he turned and walked away.