Seize What's Held Dear

  Seize What’s Held Dear

  Book 3 of The Fall of the Censor

  Karl K. Gallagher

  © 2021 Karl K. Gallagher.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Kelt Haven Press, Saginaw, TX.

  Cover art and design by Stephanie G. Folse of Augusta Scarlet, LLC: www.scarlettebooks.com.

  Editing by Laura Gallagher.

  3D spaceship model and interior art by Stephanie Folse.

  To the Texas State Guard,

  The Cajun Navy,

  And all the militias who protected their homes and neighbors.

  Corwynti Naval Militia Fighter

  Seize What’s Held Dear

  Begin by seizing something which your opponent

  holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will.

  - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,” enunciated Captain Hernandez. The other prisoners in the van glanced at him without comprehension.

  “Very good, sir,” said Lieutenant Marcus Landry.

  The captain was one of the few Censorate prisoners who’d managed to learn the dialect on Fiera.

  “Where is Spain?” asked Hernandez.

  Marcus said grimly , “On Earth.”

  Hernandez laughed. “So no rain at all then.”

  The Censorate had bombarded humanity’s homeworld down to bare rock to crush a rebellion. That was the only bit of history they allowed their subjects to know.

  Marcus lurched in his seat as the van screeched to a halt. He’d pivoted the chair to watch the prisoners. Now he turned back to see two family cars blocking the road ahead of them. The passengers, all adults, were exiting.

  Spacer Ping, the driver, complained, “They just turned and stopped there, sir. I nearly hit them!”

  “Right. Let’s just U-turn and get out—shit.” Through the rear door window Marcus saw a flatbed truck and a taxi slew across the road behind them, blocking their escape.

  “Sir, there’s people coming out from the buildings. Some have crowbars.” The driver was a ten-year Navy man, but his usual calm was fraying.

  “Call in for a security team. I’ll buy us some time.”

  The prisoners pulled in their legs as Marcus moved crouching between the two facing rows of seats. He opened the back door, hopping down to the pavement.

  The crowd was approaching slowly. They were a mix of ages. Many wore black hats with ‘REVENGE’ in white on them. Some carried signs with the same word or a mushroom cloud flanked by the words ‘DO IT.’

  Asking “What’s this about?” or “Who are you people?” would be a waste of time.

  Marcus chose empathy. “I know you’re angry. I’m angry too. What happened was horrible. We need to do something. We’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  He was projecting loud enough for the whole crowd—fifty or a hundred people—to hear him. “The men in this van did not do that horror.”

  ‘Horror’ was a weak word for eleven cities nuked and over ten million dead from the Censorate fleet’s parting missile salvo. But there was no single word for that level of . . . horror.

  “They’re the enemy,” shouted someone in the crowd.

  “They’re prisoners,” answered Marcus. “In every war on Fiera, we’ve obeyed the rules for handling prisoners. Rules that go back thousands of years to Earth.”

  “Rules say you don’t bomb children!” A different member of the mob.

  “We’ll punish the Censor for that. Not the prisoners.”

  “What is the problem, Lieutenant?” Captain Hernandez’s words were clear, despite an accent as distinctive as his Censorate uniform.

  The Censorate Navy had no memory of being defeated. Their spacers were not trained to resist capture. In Fieran hands they were so docile and obedient there was no need for restraints.

  For the first time, Marcus wished he’d chained the prisoners to their seats.

  All eyes focused on Hernandez as he stood beside Marcus.

  He kept pitching his voice to the crowd. “Captain, these people are angry that the Censorate killed innocent people in cities.”

  A rumble of agreement went through the crowd.

  Hernandez nodded and stepped forward. “We were trying to be educational.”

  The crowd’s reaction averaged out to, “Did he really say that?” as people checked with their neighbors that they heard correctly.

  “The key to a happy life is obedience to the Censor. Disobeying the Censor leads to suffering. Your fleet was given it in actions. When they refused the lesson, we taught it to your cities. We will repeat the less—”

  “You killed my Mandy!” “My son!” “My parents!” “Lian!” The mob cried the names of their dead, drowning out the Censorial officer.

  When the volume lowered a moment, a middle-aged woman demanded, “Did you fire the missile?”

  Captain Hernandez lifted his chin. “My ship, Badger, was not asked to perform the mission. I would have been proud to carry it out.”

  The front rank sprang forward. Hernandez yelped as he was pulled into the mob. He vanished from Marcus’ sight as they swarmed around him. Then he screamed.

  Marcus flung himself into the open back door of the van, twisting to land on hands and knees. “Ping! Floor it!”

  The driver protested, “Sir, they’re still block—”

  “Smash them out of the way!”

  Ping accelerated just as Marcus stood. He overbalanced, feeling the wind on his hair as he started to fall out the door.

  A prisoner grabbed his arm, keeping him in the van.

  Marcus said, “Baigz”—‘Thanks’ in the Censorate dialect.

  He fell forward as the van rammed the two cars in the way. The impact knocked both aside, clearing the road.

  The van moved slowly forward.

  Marcus stood and saw why. Ping’s face was covered by the crash airbag.

  “Right, right!” he ordered.

  The van caromed off a parked car. “Now left. Steady.”

  He pulled his knife out of his pocket, unfolded it, and slashed the airbag to clear the deflating folds away.

  “Thanks, sir.” Ping floored it again.

  The knife bounced off the windshield as Marcus grabbed the back of his seat to keep from falling. He looked back to check if they had all of the remaining prisoners.

  They did. The prisoners were all, as ordered, wearing their seat belts.

  Through the open door he could see the mob milling about their victim. An object flew into the air. It might have been a leg. He was too far away to be sure.

  Ping held out his comm. “Security on the line for you, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Landry here.”

  The voice on the far end demanded a status report. Marcus summarized the situation, ending with, “We’ve broken contact and are continuing—run the light, dammit, no one’s coming—continuing westbound. We’ll take an alternate route to the Concord base.”

  “Do you have proof there were Revenge Party members involved? That’s a serious accusation.”

  Marcus rejected the first response which came to his mind. “Sir, they had revenge hats and signs, they knew our route and schedule, and they executed a well-organized ambush. But, no, I have no proof the Revenge Party was involved.”

  “Then choose your words more carefully. Serving officers must stay clear of politics.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which route are you ta
king?”

  Marcus thought about how to answer that. For all he knew, the officer he was talking to was the one who leaked the information to the mob.

  “Sir, this is not a secure connection. I’ll report in when I’ve delivered the prisoners.”

  He switched off and looked ahead. “Turn left at the boulevard. We’ll take the long way around.”

  ***

  “After we completed essential repairs and rested a bit, we returned to hyperspace.” Niko Landry clicked the remote.

  On the presentation screen the image of the roiling hyperspace storm was replaced by a clear expanse of the Phoenix Rift. Glowing shoals were blurred by distance.

  “There was no sign of our pursuers,” he continued. “We went home. That was the boring part of the trip . . . until we told people where we’d been.”

  Usually some of the audience chuckled at that. In a thousand seat auditorium, his usual venue, a tenth of the crowd laughing sounded like it was a successful joke.

  There were eight men in this room, seated around a heavy oak table. None laughed. Or smiled.

  The tiny audience wasn’t the most unusual thing about this gig. They’d also offered five times his usual fee.

  Landry said, “Are there any questions?”

  The men at the table traded looks. They seemed to be checking if they all still wanted to stick to a plan.

  He didn’t know any of their names. The faces were vaguely familiar. He’d probably flipped past articles about them when looking for the latest on tariff updates and fuel prices.

  “Captain Landry. You are the best explorer in the Fieran Bubble,” said the spokesman.

  “Yes, sir.” Other than his crew he was the only explorer in nearly a thousand years. That was solely by virtue of finding the bubble had reopened.

  And that he’d explored instead of running back to report. There was extensive debate over whether he’d been brave or stupid.

  “We’d like to sponsor your further exploration.”

  “Locating Censorate worlds is more properly called reconnaissance,” said Landry. “I believe the Concord Navy is working on that.”

  “They are. We have no desire to duplicate their efforts. There needs to be exploration of the rest of the galaxy.”

  “A broad survey would take more than one ship. I’d need to refit Azure Tarn to take her into deep space, anyway. She still has damage from her service as an auxiliary.”

  A wave indicated a stocky man on the other side of the table. “Lenny would be happy to do your refit. Or you could take your pick of ships coming off the assembly line.”

  The first name was enough to spark Landry’s memory. Leonard Diatakanis owned the biggest shipyards on Fiera. If these men were his peers—and they acted that way—they routinely lost things more expensive than Azure Tarn in their sofa cushions.

  “Just sweeping out unknown space would be tedious work,” said Landry.

  The spokesman lifted a tablet displaying a book cover. “We have a copy of Greason’s Atlas, the hyperspace reference that brought our ancestors to the bubble.”

  The large sum he’d been paid to be here kept Landry’s tone polite. “Every major library has a copy of Greason. My astrogation textbook quoted it scores of times.”

  “Did they include the chapter with promising stars seen in normal space and the likely routes to reach them in hyperspace?”

  “I’m sure the next edition of the textbook will include that. It wasn’t a concern when I was a midshipman.”

  “The Francis University astronomy department has confirmed those stars have planets. Likely habitable ones.”

  Landry didn’t see where this was going. “To an astronomer ‘habitable’ just means it can be terraformed. We’re not done terraforming Svalbard and Iolite. Why start a new colony when we have land opening up on ones in the Bubble?”

  A man at the far end said, “The Censorate knows about every world in the Bubble. We need one they don’t know about.”

  “We would evacuate millions of people to it to keep them safe from the Censorate,” added the spokesman.

  After a lifetime of hauling cargo, Landry’s first reaction was to estimate the tonnage of a million people and the material to give them a pioneer-level existence on a raw world. Yes, the combined cargo ships of the Fieran Bubble could do that if the destination was a month or two away.

  They might evacuate several million before the next Censorate attack.

  That was less than one percent of the Bubble’s population.

  Landry said, “I see.”

  The rich men waited for him to make a decision. They knew when to stop pushing and let their target close the deal himself.

  They’d been polite. They hadn’t even mentioned the biggest bribe in the package. As lead explorer, he could guarantee Lane and Marcus and any other relative he wanted to bring along a place in the new colony. (God, he hadn’t talked to his brother in months, where had the time gone?)

  Marcus wouldn’t go.

  Landry realized he didn’t want to go there either.

  He squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. I’m too busy carrying cargos for the war effort to take on your project.”

  Landry tensed. Men at that level could coerce him in many ways, if they wanted to pressure him or those he cared about.

  Everyone looked at the man at the far end. “Thank you for your very interesting presentation, Captain Landry. We have no further questions.”

  ***

  The body collection teams hadn’t reached this part of the city yet. This opening in the rubble—it was a park before the nuke went off—was covered with burned corpses. Most were almost skeletons, skulls and ribs black. A few bodies were solid, if charred. Small bodies, with tall skeletons lying over them.

  “Perfect,” said Alys. “I’ll stand on this block. Frame me with the bodies on my left.”

  She stepped up on the piece of broken concrete to wait as the camera crew set up. As they worked, she stripped off her anti-radiation coveralls. First the hood with its air filters, then the lead-lined jacket. The pants unzipped up the sides so she could take them off over the boots.

  Leaving the boots on was her concession to the crew. She wouldn’t track radioactive dirt into their truck.

  The new guy started at the sight of her wearing ordinary clothes in a hazard zone. The crew was all in lead-lined coveralls. The director put the guy back to work before he said anything.

  That was a relief. She had enough complaints from her doctor. Even he had to admit this much more dosage wouldn’t have a significant long-term effect. She was already taking anti-cancer pills by the handful.

  There was no way of guessing what her total dosage was. By the time she’d received a dosimeter she was already over the official maximum allowed. But they were so short on volunteers to search for survivors no one made her leave.

  She’d done a couple of vids in full gear. They weren’t as watched as much as ones where her face and figure showed. The monkey brain just didn’t respond to a vaguely human shape the way it did to a person. So, she would dress as the girl next door until everyone listened.

  Lights came on from four directions. The cameraman ran forward, placed the low-angle pickup a few feet from the block, then retreated out of the field of view of the other cameras.

  “We are rolling,” said the director.

  “Hi, I’m Alys Vissen. I’m in Xian City to show you what was done here. Behind me is Tueh Park. When the attack came it was full of families enjoying a peaceful picnic. Now . . . this.”

  Alys half-turned to wave at the bodies.

  “This is what the enemy did. This is what you could have been if the enemy had picked your town. It’s what you will be if they come back.”

  She locked her eyes on the center camera.

  “We need to punish the enemy for what they did. We need to hurt them enough to make them afraid of us. We need to make their cities look like this. Vote for justice. Vote for the Revenge Par
ty.”

  Eyes kept their lock on the camera for a few silent moments. Then they closed. She slumped.

  “Wonderful!” said the director. “Pack it up, boys, we’re done.”

  Alys asked, “You don’t want another take?”

  “No. That was flawless. Didn’t even stutter. Let’s wrap you.” He held out an emergency coverall, a poncho-like garment made with the same lead lining as the coveralls.

  “Hold on.” Alys bent over and coughed until she’d spat out the grit in her throat. “Okay.”

  The director made sure to align the poncho’s clear faceplate and air filter over her head. Then he knelt down to fasten the split hem around her legs.

  “Into the truck now,” he said.

  The poncho didn’t let Alys stick her hands out. The director steered her through the debris by holding her shoulders. She didn’t need the help, even with the poncho’s limited visibility. She put up with it. This director was good for the important things. Being a mother hen she could live with.

  ***

  The lecture hall held all the commanders of Governor Yeager and Admiral Pinoy’s fleet. The commodores and admirals filled the front row. Behind them sat the commanding officers of every surviving Censorate ship. Most wore three or four stripes on their cuffs. Some had two. A lieutenant junior grade in the back row, sole remaining officer of his destroyer, had only one.

  Officially the meeting was to approve the after-action report Admiral Pinoy would carry back to the Monitor. The COs would add or refuse their signatures along with any comments they wanted to append.

  When the Navy talk was finished Pinoy glanced to the corner where Governor Bridge Yeager sat. At the admiral’s nod he strode to the center stage. Pinoy stepped back.

  The watching officers tensed.

  Yeager straightened his shoulders into a more military posture. “We—no, I. I led you into a battle you were not prepared for. I asked more of you than you’d ever been trained for. You did not flinch. You fought magnificently. You hurt the barbarians. You saved each other. You taught the barbarians a fraction of the Censorate’s strength can threaten their whole world.”