Pax Imperia (The Redemption Trilogy) (53 page)

All knowing what was about to come next.

Falling to his knees, clutching at the end of his severed arm, Benson looked up at the shadow looming over him, the point of the blade now resting against his throat. Watching agape, while the dark figure pushed the hood from his head, to reveal the merciless eyes of Jon Radec, as he stared down at him. “It’s time to meet your maker. To stand before all your victims—and face justice.”

“No!” cried Benson. “My father. If you kill me then your family will also die. He will kill them. If you want them to live, spare me.”

Jon hesitated for a moment upon hearing these words, before leaning forward, closer to his ear, so Benson could hear his final words. “The difference between your family and mine? Yours care for nothing but themselves, and your own wealth and power. Mine? They would gladly sacrifice themselves, knowing that their deaths would save the lives of countless more. I will see you in hell.”

With that Jon slid the deadly blade forward. It slid effortlessly through Benson’s throat, appearing out the other side. With a negligent flick of Jon’s wrist, the sword cleaved head from body, the head rolling aside, coming to rest several feet from the body—the disbelief clearly still visible on its face.

Letting the body fall to the floor behind him, Jon approached the body of Alexeyev, where he had fallen. As he approached he was astonished to observe the Admiral’s eyes flicker open.

“Is Benson dead?” Alexeyev painfully asked.

Glancing at the body, still separated from the head by at least half a dozen feet, Jon nodded. “Yes, he’s definitely not going to recover.”

“Thank the Maker,” Alexeyev coughed. “I didn’t think that I was going to live long enough to see you kill the bastard.”

With a quick glance at the Admiral’s chest, Jon knew that he did not have much longer to live. The chest wound was severe, and the internal damage likely worse. There was nothing that anybody could do for him. “Alexeyev, where is Malthus?” he asked.

“Gone,” Alexeyev groaned. “He departed, yesterday, in a shuttle.”

“Do you know where he went?”

With surprising strength, Alexeyev caught Jon’s arm, pulling him closer. “He’s gone to
Terra Nova
; he is going to take your family. You must stop him. I’m so sorry, my fault. I should have realised earlier… lied to me. Told me you ordered Harrison to fire on the Senate, then murdered him to cover up your actions,” Alexeyev coughed raggedly. “So stupid, what I wanted to believe.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s all in the past now,” Jon reassured the dying man. For Malthus and Benson had spun the most insidious lies of all. Grounded in the truth, but intermixed with deceit, using the person’s own doubts to make it easier to believe—and swallow whole.

Reaching forward, Jon gently closed the Admiral’s eyes for the last time. Just one more victim of Malthus’s thirst for power, leaving nothing behind him but an ever-growing pile of corpses.

Staggering back to the Admiral’s chair, seating himself heavily in it, Jon looked around the command deck, his gaze stopping, judging every pair of eyes that he met. Finally, in a deep voice, he demanded of them, “Does anybody question
my
right to command this ship, this fleet?”

Silence was the only answer to the question.

“Very well then,” he declared. “Then these are my orders; signal the rest of the fleet we depart for
Terra Nova
immediately. It’s time to put an end to this, for once and for all. Malthus must answer for all the crimes that he has committed. He will pay for the lives that have been lost with his own.”

Wiping away the sweat from his pale brow, Jon eased the dark cloak away from his waist. Touching his side, his hand came away bloodied. Where the last pulse round had penetrated the armour that he wore beneath his uniform. Fortunately the dark cloak concealed the injury—and blood.

He was desperately running short of time to find Malthus, and stop him forever.

Chapter Seventeen

Terra Nova Station, Aquila System

The alarm from the Gravimetric sensors had David hurrying into the Command & Control centre of
Terra Nova
, cursing his painful fingers and toes, a reminder of the days that he had spent on Altair, wandering around the forest at night in sub-zero temperatures, only then to be half-cooked by the heat from the midday sun. That extreme environment had not stopped him doing his duty, and neither would a little pain from frostbite slow him down now.

“What’s the situation, Chris?” He addressed the late night shift commander.

“Gravimetric alarms, Lieutenant,” Chris Patterson reported, hurrying to his usual place at Operations. Deftly tapping a few controls on his console, he accessed the Gravimetric sensors, displaying the latest real-time results. “Major gravity-distortions detected, approximately three-hundred kilometres from the station.”

“Are there any scheduled arrivals?” David asked, bringing up the latest flight schedules.

“No sir, the
Kobayashi Maru
is still running behind schedule, and we are not expecting any other arrivals. Anyway, based on these distortions it is far more than a single ship. Looks like a fleet of them. Do you want me to alert the crew?”

“Not yet, let’s wait to identify them first. I don’t want to wake up the station for a false alarm,” he decided, considering the lateness of the hour.

“In-bound wormholes forming, sir,” Chris reported unnecessarily, as the station’s powerful sensors were already detecting the wormholes and were actively scanning the ships as they emerged. “By the Great Maker,” he uttered in awe. “Look at how many of them there are.”

“Have we identified any of the ships yet?”

“No sir, still scanning. However, we have an incoming transmission from the arriving ships.”

“Display it,” David ordered tersely, having a sudden premonition that events were going to quickly spiral out of control. A feeling that only went from bad to worse, at the image, which appeared on the view-screen.

“You are Lieutenant David McNeill, Head of Security for
Terra Nova
,” the silky smooth voice announced enticingly, a voice used to issuing orders and having them promptly obeyed.

“I am,” David responded formally, rising to his feet.

“Then you are just the man that I’m looking for. You will release into my immediate custody Ryan and Irene Radec, along with the boy Marcus.”

David blinked, staring into the steely grey eyes of the older man. “And if I refuse?” he inquired.

“Then I will take them anyway,” Senator James T. Malthus replied, lips curling into a cold smile. “In the process killing every man, woman and child on your station.”

*****

“What are you going to do, sir?” Chris asked in a worried tone of voice, soon after the transmission had ended. “We cannot fight all of them.”

“Well at least I have managed to buy us some time,” David announced grimly.

“Twenty minutes?” Chris replied incredulously.

“I need to talk to the Commander’s parents,” David said. “After all this affects them more than anyone. Them and the boy.”

“You know that he’s going to kill them, don’t you?” Chris continued on relentlessly. “You heard what the Commander said happened to Captain Harrison’s family.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” David snapped in frustration. “You have the C&C until I return,” he called out behind him.

“Whatever you need to think to sleep at night,” Chis muttered darkly, but by then the Lieutenant had already departed.

*****

“That's all I really know,” David concluded stiffly, having woken the family and swiftly explained the situation to them.

With a concerned glance at his wife, Ryan took a step forward. “Thank you for being so candid with us. My wife and I are sorry to put you in this difficult position. We don’t want to endanger any other lives. We will do what he says, and go with him.”

With a twinge of guilt, remembering Chris’s warnings about the likely outcome, David added. “I cannot guarantee your safety once you leave
Terra Nova
. The Commander, he reported that the last hostages taken by this group were—ill-treated.” He didn’t think it would help the situation to go into details. Instead he was quietly impressed, when on being presented with this news, the couple paled, silently taking each other’s hands. Then, after a wordless communication took place between them, they turned back to him, nodding.

“I will let the Senator know your decision,” David said reluctantly.

“Thank you Lieutenant,” Ryan replied kindly. “We are grateful for the kindness that everybody has shown us since our arrival.”

David simply blanched at this, before making a swift apology, saying he needed to return to the C&C immediately, but in truth he simply had to escape from their presence. They were
thanking him
for what he was about to do? Outside their quarters, in the deserted corridor, he rammed his fist into the first bulkhead that he came across. It wouldn’t make any difference in the end, but at least the pain made him feel better. It was the least that he deserved.

“Lieutenant, do you have a minute?” a softly spoken voice inquired, from his side.

David spun around, so lost in thought about the current situation he had not even heard the person approach. Blinking twice, he tried to clear his vision, but the woman standing in front of him did not morph into anybody else. He could count on one hand how many times this woman had spoken to him. Carol Harrington, matriarch of the Harrington clan, was rarely seen and even less frequently heard from, usually busy instead with her large family. “Not really, ma’am,” David replied respectfully, considering her husband was his direct superior. “We have a bit of a situation at the moment,” he added. “I need to get back to the C&C immediately.”

Nodding, unsurprised at his response, she simply commented. “I am aware of the situation. I’ll walk with you.”

“You’re aware of the situation?” David replied incredulously. “How can you be
aware of the situation
? I only found out about it,” he checked his chronometer, “eight minutes ago.”

“I like to be kept well informed about the goings-on in and around the station,” she replied simply.

Obviously the station rumour mill was far more effective than even he thought, David realised.

“I think you should be fully aware of all the facts before you can make an informed decision that's all,” she continued on regardless.

“What facts?” David replied, confused.

“Well who you are about to hand over to that simply dreadful person,” she replied unperturbed.

“Who I am about to hand over?” he echoed, now thoroughly confused.

“Yes, Jon’s parents, Ryan and Irene,” she explained patiently. “And his son, Marcus.”

David stumbled to a halt so suddenly Carol had already taken a few steps past him before she even realised he had stopped. “His son, Marcus?” David parroted, realising he was starting to sound like a stuck record. “Marcus is Jon’s son?”

“Yes,” she replied simply, perhaps realising that short words with few syllables might help the Lieutenant’s comprehension.

“He looks nothing like him,” he exploded. “The boy has blond hair and blue eyes.”

“Men,” Carol sighed rolling her eyes. “Always taking everything at face value, never looking deeper. Yes, Marcus has blond hair and blue eyes, just like Jon’s father. Paul also told me that Sofia’s mother had blue eyes, as did her father. Seems like it runs in the family. Furthermore I have spent the past few months with the family. It’s the little things, the way that he looks at you with his serious expression, the way his lips curl up when he finds something funny. The misery in his eyes when he thinks nobody else is looking. He is his father’s son.”

“And Jon’s parents know this, and didn’t say anything?” David asked incredulously.

“I’m sure that they must have their reasons,” she replied evasively.

David simply sighed, resting his head against the cool bulkhead. Perhaps if he hit it hard enough it would solve all his problems. “What can I do?” he asked despairingly. “I either hand the three of them over, or I condemn us all to certain death, including you and your family,” he reminded her.

“That is not my decision to make,” she insisted. “But consider this advice that I give my children. You never give into bullies. Why? Because if you give into them once, they will own you forever. If Malthus doesn’t get what he wants this time, what is to stop him coming back and demanding more? Who will it be next, my children? For it had better not be, as he will take them over my dead body.”

*****

“What did they say, sir?” Chris inquired as soon as David had slumped back into the command chair.

“They volunteered to go,” David replied miserably. “They even thanked us for our hospitality.”

“They are good people, sir,” Chris replied carefully. “I can see where the Commander gets his strong moral values from.”

“It’s worse than that,” David continued on. “Turns out the boy, Marcus, is actually the Commander’s son.”

“Does the Commander know?”

“I don’t think so, he never mentioned it.”

“What are you going to do, sir?” Chris added worriedly.

“Bloody hell, I don’t know. It’s times like this that I ask myself, what would the Commander do?”

“Uh, so what would the Commander do?”

“Probably demand their immediate surrender, before inventing some incredibly crazy plan that would never work, miraculously pull it off, and thereby snap victory from the jaws of defeat.”

“So we’re going to give that a try, sir?” Chris grinned manically. “As I must inform you I don’t have any plans, crazy or otherwise, that will work.”

“Me neither,” David sighed gloomily. “Guess that means we’ll have to go with the original plan.”

“Incoming transmission from the enemy fleet, sir. Looks like our twenty minutes are up.”

“Put the Senator on.”

“Lieutenant McNeill, I trust that you have had sufficient time to talk to the family?” Malthus smiled confidently. A cat that had trapped the mouse by the tail and was now just playing with it.