Homebound Sector, Haven System, Ariea, Valkar, Lion’s Den
Amelia Kleinfelter-Gives spent most of her time all too aware of the men that followed her everywhere. The fact they were out of uniform did not disguise the fact that they were Reeter’s men.
Afraid to leave her suburban home, she had now missed several days of work. Her coworkers were concerned, and dropped by every now and then, but Amelia sent them away as quickly as possible. It was better they not get caught up in this mess. Speaking to anyone too long was sure to get them in trouble, no matter who they were. It rendered her paranoid and lonely.
Watching Harrison step off the bus and cross the lawn, coming home from school, grated her nerves the worst of all. It would be too easy for Reeter’s men to grab him before he reached the door, but the black sedan and its occupants did not stir.
Amelia breathed out a sigh of relief when her son let himself in, and then did her best to greet him happily. He was too young to truly understand their situation, and his oblivious joy was the only reason she had to keep going.
Harrison knew nothing of Reeter’s treachery, or how the Singularity was likely drifting lifelessly in the Kalahari Sector. All he did was toss his bag down and run into the other room to play with his toys, not even questioning the nasty pile of dishes in the sink.
Amelia was too sick to wash them. She could not bring herself to waste time on something so trivial in times like these. Exhaustedly, she returned to her spot at the wooden table, where she continued to read the subtitles on the muted news station.
She waited for news on the Singularity, hoping to have that guilt lifted from her shoulders, but there was nothing. Lifeboats had failed to make their presence known, and the ship herself had not returned, damaged or otherwise. It would be awhile until another vessel was dispatched to search. The Singularity was currently not marked as missing and there were other, more immediate concerns for the allied fleet.
After President Raizenor’s assassination, word had not even reached Vice President Whitman before she was killed as well. Another four planets had joined Sagittarion in open rebellion, along with several large outposts and trading stations on the Frontier. All contact had been lost with the three ships originally assigned to Sagittarion, and another trio had been dispatched to the discontented planet. Command’s massive fleet was quick to respond to the rising chaos, but it seemed like another civil war was looming.
However, all the fighting and bloodshed was occurring on the other side of known space. The secluded mountain ranges of Valkar were still just as calm and safe as ever. School was still held, and most people continued their day to day lives.
Ariea was a middle-class world, the very heart of the Republic. The violence would not spread here. No, as far as most people here were concerned, this was just another uprising, a handful of anarchist worlds against the might of hundreds. It would be over quickly.
Sagittarion was the only major planet to fall to violence, and only its massive population rendered it of any concern. Sagittarion had no national guard fleet, and no standing army. All it had were poor manufacturing workers who would asphyxiate in their poisoned atmosphere if parts for the megacities’ air purification plants were not shipped in.
Accordingly, Amelia was focused on her and her son’s wellbeing, and word of the rebellious worlds was not something she cared about. She cared to know that Reeter and his precious flagship had been deployed elsewhere, far, far away from them. But there was no word of that either.
A silhouette approached the front door and turned the lock with a key. He stepped quietly inside as if he owned the house. Amelia was on her feet in an instant, the action was so similar to her late husband, that for a moment Amelia mistook the visitor for him in remembrance. But as the door creaked shut and the afternoon sun’s bright glare disappeared, Amelia could see all to clearly who had just entered her home. In her husband’s place stood his murderer.
How did he get a house key? She had thought locking the doors would keep them safe. She was a fool.
Most likely, he had looted that key off her father’s corpse. Harrison had mentioned it before. Dammit, she should have changed the locks.
Reeter crossed the hardwood floors to join her at the table, smiling. Amelia moved to stand directly between him and Harrison, even as the child recognized his presence and stilled. “Why are you here?” There was cold intention in his eyes.
Reeter rubbed his throat, “I am thirsty. Get me some lemonade, please, my dear.”
Amelia considered telling him she was all out, but he would know better. His men had watched her buy lemons at the store. She retrieved a glass and poured the drink over ice, contemplating whether or not she should grab the sedatives from the medicine cabinet. No, he would never be fooled by something as simple as that.
Placing the drink down, she tried to step back, but Reeter deftly caught her thin wrist and pulled her closer. The scent of his cologne was stifling, even as she tried to keep her poise. “Harry, could you please go upstairs?” The words proved unnecessary, as her son was already halfway across the living room.
Amelia made sure he climbed up the stairs before she turned to Reeter, who was adoringly stroking her slender hand. “Don’t touch me,” she begged, trying harder to pull away.
Reeter let go, his easy smile untarnished. “There’s no need to act like that, Amelia.” He took a calm sip of his lemonade. “I came here with a simple proposition. Your disgusted glare is rather hurtful.”
He leaned back his chair, “I am sure you are aware that General Clarke’s health is failing. He is due to retire within the next few months, and he, along with a select group of Council members, shall name his successor.” It was a well-known fact between political and military families. “There are surprisingly few viable candidates for the position: myself, Admiral Hauser, Commander Houston and Commander Memphis.”
She noticed with anguish that he left Admiral Gives off the list, despite the fact he would have been the obvious choice. “What do you want from me? With Admiral Gives out of the way, you are the top choice.” It disgusted her, but it was true.
“Not necessarily,” he replied, stirring his drink with his straw. “The Council members fear that my promotion so soon after the Ariea’s accident will be controversial. Apparently, a lot of people still blame me for what was clearly a navigational error.” Giving Amelia a smirk, he knew that she was one of the aforementioned people. “They cannot afford to make a controversial appointment at this point in time.” Politicians were always worried about such things.
“Luckily, there is a way to get rid of all the bad blood surrounding the Ariea and the demise of the Singularity, since some individuals will likely hold me accountable for that tragic accident as well.” Reeter had the perfect plan. “I need someone connected to both incidents to publicly forgive me, so that I will be redeemed in the eyes of the people.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was typical Reeter. The worlds were falling apart and all he was concerned about was his next promotion. Amelia absolutely despised this man.
Admiral Reeter stood, but then went down on one knee in front of her, “So, without further ado, Amelia Kleinfelter-Gives, will you marry me?”
Amelia didn’t even have it in her to scream in horror. She felt so violently ill.
“With your support, I could get the Generalship without debate, and in return, I could get Harrison into any school you desired. You could move anywhere on the planet.” His sly smile spread even further across his perfectly handsome face. “Perhaps I could even get the remains of your uncle’s ship hauled back to the Homebound Sector for a proper dismissal from service.”
Drowning in emotions, Amelia’s words were lost to her, and she fell weakly into her chair.
“Take some time to think it over.” He downed another big gulp of lemonade and stood to leave. “Choose your response carefully,” he directed, his tone indicating that a refusal would not leave the tattered remains of her family intact.
Once she heard the door lock, Amelia’s emotional barriers entirely broke down. She sobbed uncontrollably into her hands, entirely too overwhelmed to function.
She was a poor school teacher, a widowed mother with no one to turn to. Reeter knew just when and where to strike. She was a tuna caught in the gaping maw of a shark.
She cried until she heard the stairs creak, Harrison peering cautiously around the corner to see if Reeter was gone. Immediately, she did her best to wipe off her face and waved him into the kitchen. They could not stay here. They had to run. They had no choice. She would not leave their fates entirely in Reeter’s hands.
“Harrison, I was thinking we’d take a trip,” to the only place Reeter might not be able to find them. “Would you be okay if we went to stay at the old family cabin for a while?”
“I get to skip school?” her son asked, confused. Usually they only went there on breaks.
“Yes, this time it’s a special trip.” It was a massive twenty-hour drive that she usually split into two days, but she would have to do it all in one segment this time. She couldn’t risk Reeter catching up before they got there.
“Awesome!”
He is so easily excited, Amelia mused. “I’ll pack dinner for the road. Go grab your toys and a few blankets.” They had to get moving as soon as possible. The faster they got out of Valkar, the better. Crossing the national borders into Kansa would be easy. They were open, little more than signs on the freeway.
The family cabin was officially owned by the Admiral, but he’d given them permission them to use it whenever they liked, provided they kept it stocked, since he was never there. The small establishment sat on two hundred acres of land that butted up to the now-abandoned Kansa shipyards.
And best of all, the cabin was secluded. It would be hard for Reeter to find them there.
Harrison was near jumping up and down, “Will you take me on a walk to the shipyards?”
“Of course,” she chuckled, almost forgetting their troubles. Harrison loved it there, where the towering cranes were entangled in greenery.
He ran upstairs, no doubt to come back with too many toys and not enough blankets. She threw dinner together and started packing the bare necessities. The cabin was stocked, but they’d take fresh food and need their clothes as well as some water bottles in case the well there ran dry.
The nearest store would be thirty miles from the cabin, and that was a trip she did not want to make under Reeter’s threat. She packed quickly, not precisely, and threw the bags in the back seat of her car.
Harrison came down with a bag of toys and two blankets a minute later. Good enough. “Buckle in.” She told him. They were leaving now, before Reeter could catch on to her plans. This might be their only chance to escape.
The moment she turned onto the street, the black sedan that had been lingering for days began to follow at a safe, but not inconspicuous distance. She would have to lose them in traffic.
Her four-door car was not fast, but it was in good shape. It would get them there. On richer worlds, hover cars, self-driving vehicles or even flying personal shuttles were the normal methods of travel, but Ariea was only middle-class. The people here got by driving their own cars with rubber tires on roads that seasonally filled with pot holes. Most of Ariea’s infrastructure was decades behind the central worlds. Only its history rendered the planet important in this day and age.
Amelia headed for downtown. It would be the only busy part of the city this late in the evening, and it was in the complete opposite direction of Kansa. It would throw them off.
She shifted highway lanes unpredictably, looking for a chance to escape. The motion of the vehicle quickly put Harrison to sleep, but she was wide awake, her hands nervously sweating on the leather steering wheel. This is it. They were making a run for it, away from Reeter, away from the past.
In downtown Lion’s Den, among the flashing lights of the entertainment district, she drove normally for a while, lulling her followers into believing she wasn’t trying to lose them. She had to move when they didn’t expect it, once an appropriate number of other cars built up around them.
Then she saw it, her chance. Two cars of similar build and similar color to her own were nearby at the stoplight. They would be easily confused for hers in the dark. She cut off another car to join the other lane, and was promptly out of her followers’ view.
Amelia turned off her car’s lights, and ignored the traffic signal. She cut across the intersection to take a sharp left that went unnoticed by her pursuers. They continued straight, in pursuit of one of the other cars. She watched them go with a painful tension in her neck.
Now, she had to ensure they could not find her once they realized they had the wrong car. She sped out of downtown Lion’s Den in record time, and was on the freeway, heading eastbound, in mere minutes.
Driving towards the center of the continent, it only took a few miles for her car to become the only one on the road. It would be a long night, but if she kept her pace, they would arrive at the cabin mid-afternoon tomorrow.
She stopped five hours later at a fuel station in the neighboring country of Arcade, to fill up her car and drink some dark, gritty coffee. She paid in only cash, certain that Reeter would have a trace on her bank cards. She was not going to make it easy for him to follow them.
The road carved across the landscape, skirting cliffs and rock formations, and without the city lights, the darkness was near tangible. Ariea’s larger moon was the smallest of waxing crescents while the smaller was glowing a ghostly blue, waning, but still half full. Neither one illuminated the surrounding foothills much at all.
The sky was clear, and if she looked in just the right spot, the bright light of Base Oceana could be seen, along with the rest of the orbiting fleet. She pushed on, rejecting the feeling that they could instantly spot her from orbit.
The terrain grew flatter and flatter, beginning to transform into the wide-open expanses similar to the sparsely populated agricultural ranges of Kansa. But even in the last hours of the night, they were nowhere near their destination.
She stopped again for coffee, eyes bleary from the road. No one in these remote fueling stations questioned a lone woman travelling in the pre-dawn hours.
Amelia was barely managing to fight sleep off when the first fingers of sunlight began clawing at the horizon. By then they were speeding along on a straight highway. The steep drop off beyond the road’s shoulder plummeted straight into the Corvian inland sea. They were just over halfway there.
The drive got easier when Harrison woke. He was excited for the trip, and it helped keep her awake. He didn’t know that this was no normal trip. He did not know that she was planning to hide there until Reeter got either what he wanted or what he deserved.
It was mid-afternoon when they finally pulled into the cabin’s long drive. She was physically exhausted, having forgone sleep, and she’d emotionally had it: first, her father’s death, and then the Singularity, and next had come Reeter. …She just couldn’t even think about him at the moment. The mere thought made her want to vomit.
She parked in the old barn to hide her car from satellite imaging, and grabbed their bags from the trunk. The path to the porch was pitted and uneven. The windows of the cabin were fogged and dusty, and the wood siding of the small building showed its age, but as she opened the door with the key her father had given her, she had never been more excited to see the place.
The mere opening of the door churned up some dust, and tore down a few cobwebs. It was obvious no one had been here in quite some time. While the Admiral owned the cabin, he visited it the least. He never took leave from his post on the Singularity. Despite growing up here, he seemed to have no real attachment to the cabin or the land it sat on. The last people to come here had been Amelia and Harrison, just over a year ago, but that was totally irrelevant now.
Amelia tossed down their bags, and collapsed onto the striped couch, falling asleep within minutes. They had made it.