The Mechaneer

Chapter 25: Sides

"A second destroyer? Underwater?" Otto Algreil pounded his fist on the table. "The slick son of a bitch!"

Jack didn't say anything. He'd fought. He'd guided his battered Stingray to the meeting point Otto had told him to come to, a submarine mecha bay hidden beneath one of the northern arcologies. He'd informed his flight leader of what he knew.

His job was done.

What did he want, a medal?

No.

Just his wife, who the Feds had captured again, who they'd abused so terribly the first time he'd sworn off their war after dedicating his whole adult life to it.

Just his daughter, whose whereabouts he could only guess at and whose company might be even worse.

Was that so much to ask?

"I'll bet the nukes didn't get them, either," Otto continued, oblivious to Jack's ruminations. "One shield might have been overloaded, but two? Now that bastard Marcel can tell the Senate what happened, even present witnesses. Dammit!"

Jack looked up through red-rimmed eyes. "You really thought you'd wipe out a Federal destroyer and not get caught?"

"It should have worked, shouldn't it? Jam their longband communications, suck them in with a mecha duel, evac my people, overload their shields with the nukes? It was a good plan, Jack. You know that."

"No plan survives contact with the enemy, Commodore."

The Oligarch looked up, a snarl curling on his lips. Then, abruptly, he laughed. "Ain't that the truth, old buddy?"

Jack didn't give a damn about implicating Algreil Aerospace. Didn't give a damn about implicating himself, for that matter.

But Otto's plan would have gotten Ellie to safety – if it had worked.

He cared a whole hell of a lot about that.

"Sure," Jack spat. "Old buddy."

"What? You mean to tell me you didn't get a rush from being out there again?"

"Guess I don't get off on killing people and coming damn close to dying myself," Jack said.

"Really?" Otto leaned across the table. "Somehow, I'm not entirely sure I believe you, Jack."

"You always were a skeptic," Jack said.

"Look, I get what you're moping about. Your wife was with my people when they got picked up. Don't worry about her. Marcel fancies himself a knight in shining armor, more noble than the actual nobles. He won't harm the fur on her pretty little head."

Jack glared up at Otto. "What would you know about what I feel, you bastard?"

“I'm a married man, too, you know,” Otto said. “Admittedly, Alarie and I have a somewhat more… distant relationship, but then, we each got fifty percent stock in the other's company, so who's complaining?”

“This is your fault, Otto. You should have turned us over to Avalon.”

"Never," the Oligarch said. "The Feds stole everything the Oligarchy fought for. They treat us like subordinates after we won their damned war for them. No way in hell do they get the kind of power your daughter is packing."

"Just how much do you know about that power, anyway? Clo's never done anything but come up with some good hunches in thirteen years."

"She's the Empress, Jack."

"What!?"

"You've got to understand," Otto said, "I don't have proof, and I doubt the Feds do, either. They obviously believe it, though. It's the only thing that could justify the kind of firepower they sent and the way they're willing to use it."

Jack thought back to Chloe's real mother. That was an easy thing for him to do, even after so many years. He could picture the scene any time he closed his eyes. The surface of that silvery mecha sloughing away like water to reveal a luminous, raven-haired figure clutching a tiny child, the immense pressure of her powers, the shock of her beauty.

For years, he’d told himself she had to have been a noble, even though he’d fought nobles and none of them had that kind of presence. What else could he call her? A goddess, an angel?

Or one of the last scions of the Astroykos dynasty, cousin and betrothed to its last Emperor, whose transcendent psychic powers made her close enough to those legends to be mythic in their own right.

A legend wouldn’t have died a few minutes after passing Chloe off to Jack and Ellie. An Empress, on the other hand...

Had?

"How is that possible?" Jack whispered.

"You know how the Emperor got involved in the Civil War, right? And the Senate – then House of Commons?"

"Sure. The Emperor went crazy and tried to take all the power for himself. Disband the Commons and the Oligarchy, turn the House of Lords into his cabinet."

"Not that fairy tale," Otto snapped. "I mean the real reason."

Jack stared.

"So you really don't know. Guess it's story hour."

"Make it quick, Otto, 'cause right now I've gotta tell you, this is looking more like one of your bullshit sessions to get me onboard with some crazy scheme than like anything approaching the truth. I haven't forgotten what your last plan did to Ellie."

"Shut up for five seconds, already. The point is, Emperor Theophilos XIX didn't just 'go crazy.' He went mad, if at all, with grief over his murdered wife."

"Huh? I didn't think he was married yet."

"Yep. To Princess Karissa Demaratos," Otto said. "The old Grand Admiral's daughter. Meaning she had Imperial blood of her own, from a different branch. Officially, Karissa died before she could get hitched. Unofficially, they eloped two years before she died.”

“How come that was unofficial?”

“Because her father died without approving the match, and considering their politics a damn good chance he wouldn’t have. The Emperor might have been a hopeless romantic, but he so did not need a scandal just then. Especially not a scandal regarding the Demaratoses, who were the big Imperial proponents of keeping the war going.”

“What was so important about ‘just then?’”

“The end of the Civil War,” Otto said, “by way of an Imperial dictate.”

“And you didn't take the deal,” Jack muttered.

“The Emperor wanted to hand the nobs everything they asked for, a silver platter to go with their silver spoons. At the time, in case you've forgotten, we were winning. Or have you switched sides?”

Of course not. Jack didn't believe in the nobles' right to rule, any more than he did in hybrids being forced to serve.

Trouble was, those positions hadn't been compatible during the Civil War. Seemed like they still weren't.

All he said was, “No.”

“Good. I'd hate to think you'd fallen that far.” Otto waved a hand in dismissal. “Anyway, the point is, the Emperor was pissing on Grand Admiral Demaratos's grave and robbing his cradle at approximately the same time, and he wanted to keep at least one of those out of the public eye so he could pull off the other. But it never came to that, because the House of Commons – President Casimir – wouldn't pass the original ceasefire bill.”

“So the Emperor kicked them out?”

“So the Emperor knuckled under,” Otto said. “At least, that's what we thought until Karissa turned up dead.”

“It was a transport accident, right? Or is that another 'fairy tale?'”

“Actually, from what I can tell, nobody, including the Emperor and the Senate, knows what really happened to Karissa's transport. First off, it was no transport. It was the Emperor's flagship, the Apollo."

A battlecruiser, Jack thought. Just like the one where he’d found Chloe.

Oh, Principle.

“As such,” Otto said, “it sure as hell didn't just have an accident. Somebody decided to off the Empress to push the Emperor into acting.”

"How do you murder an Imperial?”

“Very carefully?” Otto shrugged. “Probably with a fleet's worth of nobs, or a knife in the back from somebody she trusted enough to not bother reading his mind. It took all our fleets and the entire Animus Hunters corps to finish off the Emperor, but I don’t know how Karissa stacked up.”

Jack swallowed.

“Whoever did it,” Otto said, “they blamed the attack on the Commons and made the Emperor believe it. He kicked them out of Etemenos, which was exactly what Casimir and his crew were waiting for. They formed the Senate, coopted our war, and forced the surviving nobs to work with the Emperor. The Emperor came out of Etemenos boiling mad, a million men died, and finally, he did, too.”

Jack shuddered at the thought of the Battle of Etemenos, and he hadn't even been there. Otto had.

Jack couldn't help but look at the oligarch with more respect. He hadn't been among the million dead, after all. A testament to his piloting, or his luck?

Either way, it didn't mean he was right. "Even if that's true,” Jack said, “there's another problem. To fit your timeline, Chloe would have to be almost as old as you, not your little brother. She's not, Otto, trust me. When Ellie and I first got her, she couldn't have been much more than five, maybe six."

“Tell that to the Feds,” Otto said. “They believe she's the Empress, and I can't take the risk they're right. Who knows what happened to Karissa? What she was capable of? I saw the Emperor fight, Jack. He was one step short of a god. Karissa had less Imperial blood and probably no combat training, but she was still more powerful than anything you've ever seen. Messing with the flow of time would be nothing to either of them. Hell, even we can do it by moving close enough to light speed without compressing space."

If you're right, Jack thought, I know what happened to Empress Karissa. She died in the Mother Goose's mecha bay after handing Chloe over to me and Ellie.

"If you get Chloe, Otto, what are you gonna do with her?"

"Frankly, Jack, I don't have a clue. Like I said, the Emperor was out of our league. Maybe, maybe with the whole Federal Navy focused just on taking out an Imperial, they could pull it off, but I wouldn't bet marks on it."

"You'd crown her," Jack said.

Otto shrugged. "I can think of worse fates."

"Not many. Not for Chloe. That kind of responsibility is the last thing she wants. Anyway, what about Oligarchical principles?"

"What about them? I didn't want to overthrow the Emperor, Jack. None of us did. We wanted the right to conduct business in his Empire without meddling from the local nobs, to make as much money and amass as much power as we had the balls to. It was the House of Commons that wanted to wipe out the imperial line and take their place 'for the peace and equality of the galaxy,' right?"

For the peace and equality of the galaxy – if Otto was telling the truth – the body that would become the Federal Senate had set out to kill the angel who'd died in the Mother Goose's hangar. Had killed her, even if indirectly.

For the peace and equality of the galaxy, the Senate wanted Chloe dead.

For the peace and equality of the galaxy.

Jack had fought for those principles, alongside the people who had killed Chloe's real mother and now meant to finish the job on the imperial family.

Dammit –!

"I'm all out of options here, Jack," Otto said. "You can see what the Feds are willing to do. How far they'll go. I've got a family of my own – a wife and brother, and a corporate family that depends on me, too. Now that Avalon can broadcast to the Senate, all those people have to fight or run."

"You'll fight," Jack said.

“Damn right. I'm not entirely unprepared, as you may have noticed. The Senate stole human space from the Oligarchy after we fought and died for ninety years to secure it, and now they're worse than the nobs for crimping our style.”

“You'll make Chloe fight.”

“I'll ask her to, Jack. 'Making' someone do something when she could turn your whole damn planet inside out with a thought is a little audacious even for me. At least with us she'd have a chance, though.”

Jack looked down at his big, deceptively nimble hands. Old callouses ached where he'd gripped military mecha controls again. A good ache, like an old friend.

Otto could bullshit like nobody he'd ever known. His facts did seem to add up, though. The dead battlecruiser, Chloe's angelic mother, the Feds' interest.

Images flashed through Jack's head: Ellie in a Valuable Confiscated Livestock camp, used, abused, sentenced to what would have been death if he hadn't stepped in. Chloe on the run, scared and alone, trying so hard to save her parents she forgot to save herself.

Jack imagined the Emperor seeing terribly similar images as some silver-tongued Senator explained how, to the regret of all, the Empress would not be arriving on Etemenos. Jack imagined going to war with the whole galaxy because of those images. Who could do less, and call himself a man?

Jack never thought he'd have something in common with Theophilos XIX.

He wasn't an emperor or even a mechaneer-aristocrat. He couldn't fight the whole galaxy to get his family back.

Didn't mean he couldn't try.

“There's gonna be a new Civil War, old buddy,” Otto said. “Sooner or later, you'll have to choose a side.”

“I've got only one side,” Jack said. “Me and Ellie and Chloe.

“But,” he added before Otto could argue, “if you're asking if I'll fly with the Devil Rays again... I don't think the Feds will leave me much choice.”