Homebound Sector, Haven System, Ariea, Valkar, Lion’s Den
They were following. They were following her everywhere. On the streets, it was a black sedan with tinted windows. At work, it was a strange custodian that didn’t clean. In the grocery store, it was a businessman in a plain suit who wore standard-issue shoes.
They were Reeter’s men, all of them. They stalked her footsteps, watched her wash her hands, and eyed her as she picked out the ripest lemons. They hadn’t left her alone since Reeter had left to go plot his little holy war. She suspected they never would.
When she got home, Harrison was seated at the big wooden table in the kitchen, working on his homework. Upon her arrival, all he did was offer up a paper: an ugly message written in beautiful calligraphy. “Reeter was here.”
She grabbed the note. He’d come by while her son was alone? Damn him. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” Harrison said, not looking up from his workbook. “He just sat here with me and drank the rest of the lemonade.” There was a pause. “Did you know that he hates kids?”
What kind of person tells a kid that? “Well…” Amelia struggled to explain.
Harrison scribbled down an answer, sulking. “Is he going to be my new dad?”
“No!” she gasped, “Of course not!” She could never replace her late husband with that self-righteous, conniving son of a bitch! Still, she calmed her expression for the sake of her son. “What made you think that, honey?”
“He has a house key. He comes by to see you alone. And, he leaves you love letters,” Harrison sniffed, finally looking up from his homework
Love letters? The paper in her hand was not a love letter. Far from it. “I promise I won’t let him become your new dad, Harry.” She tussled her son’s hair. “Go take a break from your homework for an hour. I’ll start on dinner.”
That perked Harrison up, and he darted from the kitchen and headed upstairs.
Only once he was gone, did Amelia bother to read the note. It was all she could do to spare him some truth about their miserable lives.
‘My dear Amelia, I’m sure you’ve noticed my men. They will follow wherever you go, a simple precaution. Please, bear in mind that they will stop you before you can utter a word about what you know. I’d rather not see your beautiful face marred or young son hurt, so be a good girl. I’ll visit soon. – Admiral Charleston Reeter.’
She crumpled up the paper and threw it into the nearest trashcan, nearing tears. Reeter hadn’t needed to rub it in.
She was helpless, completely helpless. There was absolutely nothing she could do to protect herself or her son. Her father had been careless. He had trusted people, and for it they had killed him. It left her at the mercy of Reeter. Reeter, who had never given a damn about anyone but himself. Only he was so talented at deception, that he had tricked even himself into believing he was a selfless hero.
But the man was toxic. He was poison.
There would be no stopping someone like him. He believed blindly that the New Era Movement was the only way to save humanity, that it was the only way to pull them out of technological stagnancy before they depleted their resources.
The New Era promised change for the better, but they hid their plans to achieve that change. The masses bought into the idea of a better future, convinced by Reeter’s example of success, but it was a lie. It was all a lie. Everything public about the movement was a deception. Reeter might believe in his destiny, but his allies only sought power. And yet, as she started making dinner and turned on the news, Amelia knew nowhere in the worlds was completely safe from the New Era’s influence.
Somehow, the movement had branded itself broad enough to engulf everyone who was unsatisfied with the ways of the worlds. Reeter’s public support of the movement had even made it popular amongst the wealthy and high-class citizens. There was no escaping it.
But that wasn’t Amelia’s problem. She didn’t care about the New Era. She just wanted to be left alone to live her life.
Every cut of her knife made a satisfactory whack against the wooden cutting board, the carrots falling into thin orange slivers. Cooking dinner was rhythmic, relaxing, even if the news in the background refused to let her forget her struggles. Some anchorwoman was reporting on the weapons misfire that had cut the Flagship Olympia’s patrol short. The crewman held accountable had been sentenced to five years imprisonment under military law. Reeter made no attempt to exonerate him. He only publicly condemned the man’s ineptitude.
No doubt, that misfire had been part of Reeter’s plan to deal with Admiral Gives. He had probably planned for those weapons to get loose, and he had plotted for someone else to take the fall. It seemed that not even those who loyally served Admiral Reeter were safe from his goals.
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Her cutting became louder as her frustrations rose. Like that crewman, Reeter was using her. She knew it. She was just a tool to him, a way to get at his enemy. But it was pointless. It wouldn’t make any difference.
They might share a family name, but they might as well be perfect strangers. She probably knew less about her uncle than Reeter did. Admiral Gives was a distant man. These days, the press went far enough to call him reclusive. He had been stationed aboard the Singularity has long as she could remember. The man was as notoriously quiet as he was notoriously feared. He made no real attempt to keep in touch with his family. To Amelia, he was a stranger enough for her to partially believe that his first name actually was ‘Admiral.’
And now, he was the only other surviving member of the family.
Or, perhaps not. If Reeter’s intentions had gone according to plan, the Singularity had sunk and Admiral Gives was dead. The two missiles ‘accidentally’ released on the Olympia’s patrol had been aimed directly at the Kalahari Sector. According to the news, that was fine. The sector was empty.
Except it wasn’t. Amelia knew it wasn’t, and it was her fault that Reeter had known it too.
The deployment records should have warned the fleet that one of their own was at risk from the misfire, but Admiral Gives had left his plans with General Clarke alone. The half of Command that would have cared would never know, and the other half had known was in on the plan.
If the plot was successful, it would earn Reeter a large amount new allies. Many people, including entire colonies, corporations and trading stations, wanted Admiral Gives dead for a host of crimes. But he was a soldier, and at that, a very talented one. Admiral Gives had been ordered to commit those crimes, and most of humanity remained too afraid to touch him.
Until Reeter had taken over, that had included the New Era, but its followers were beginning to believe more in Reeter’s charisma than the threat of an old soldier, and more and more people joined the movement every single day. Promised extreme change, they were willing to do anything to get it.
The military forces that resisted Reeter were either loyal to General Clarke or still too afraid of Admiral Gives to do anything without his approval, regardless of who they really supported. Political resistance had come mainly from those like Amelia’s father, who had believed radical change was unnecessary and that peace could prevail, but it was clear now that her father had underestimated the movement’s influence. It had gotten him killed. And with his assassination, the New Era had acquired a great deal of the power they had been seeking for decades. With Vince Ramseyer as the new Secretary of Defense, and Reeter in command of the flagship, they were inches from controlling the entire allied fleet.
Realistically, the only one left in their way was Admiral Gives. So, Reeter had arranged for the Singularity to meet her end in the Kalahari Sector.
It would have been impossible to do, if Amelia hadn’t told him where the Singularity had gone on patrol.
Did that make it partially her fault?
She tried not to think about that as the news anchor droned on. What was she supposed to do? Reeter had her and her son in a figurative chokehold. Their pain brought him pleasure. It was all she could do to appease the beast, to give him what he wanted.
But there was no escape. Everywhere she went, Reeter’s men would follow, just watching, waiting. She would never be able to speak the truth about the Singularity’s fate. That was it. This was life now. At least she was alive, and so was her son. These days, it was dangerous to let thoughts wander much further than that, so she forced herself to focus on making dinner and mindlessly listening to the news report.
“-one of the weapons misfired has been confirmed as a nuclear warhead.” The knife slipped from Amelia’s hand, nicking her finger. “General Quentin, speaking on behalf of the Olympia’s commander, Admiral Reeter, has assured the public that this occurrence will not be allowed to happen again. Additional restrictions on the discharge of nuclear weapons have been put into place, and a full investigation is underway.”
A nuclear warhead. Amelia’s hands began to tremble. She set the knife carefully down on the counter, feeling weak. Her cut finger had dripped blood all over the carrots, but she hardly even noticed. “What have I done?” It had never occurred to her that Reeter would do something that extreme.
Without a warning, the Singularity had almost surely been sunk or crippled. Stranded out in the void with no reinforcements, her crew would surely die if they weren’t already dead.
Cursed stars, she was responsible for this. She had just caused death on the scale of hundreds: the crew of an entire battleship. It was the Flagship Ariea all over again, but this time it was her fault.
If she had just refused to give Reeter the Singularity’s location, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. If she had just not been such a coward, maybe they wouldn’t all be dead.
It was sickening. The crew complement of a battleship – nearly one thousand souls, dead. Forget her uncle, she couldn’t help but think of his crew. How many of them left behind family? How many wives and husbands had just been widowed? How many children had just lost a parent?
Her stomach heaved, thinking of the mutilated corpses. They’d be burned, crushed, suffocated, sometimes all three, but the nuke made it worse. It made it so much worse. Radiation was a painful death. It was colorful. The dead coughed up the remains of their liquified lungs, in agony and misery for the duration. The more they would try to fight it, the more they attempted to save their ship, the stronger it would set in.
She couldn’t take the thought of the corpses just drifting out there, their lives and deaths meaningless to the void. She ran from the kitchen, through the living room, and into the bathroom of her home.
Her son found her on her knees, vomiting unceremoniously into the porcelain toilet. He pulled back her hair until she was finished.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Harrison asked, eyes big and wide. “Are you sick?” Her finger had painted red smears all over the toilet seat, and her face was wet with tears.
She struggled to answer, and then saw the secondhand toy her son had set down to grab her hair. It sat on the edge of the edge of the sink, scuffed enough to resemble the ship it was modeled after.
Her stomach churned at the sight, and the bile rose. She bowed her head into the bowl, emptying the contents of her stomach a second time.