“I’m sorry, Mr. President,” Laskowski reported over the comm unit that Borge held in his hand. “The reports are true. Ships throughout the fleet are picking up gravity spikes: more Kreelan ships are inbound.” Her face was blackened and bloodstained. She happened to have been on her way back from the intel section to the flag bridge when the latter was blasted into wreckage. Had she passed through one more blast door on her short journey, she would have been dead. Like L’Houillier and the others. This was the worst moment in her life, the most difficult thing she had ever done. “I suggest we withdraw, sir. Immediately.”
Borge’s face flushed red on its way to purple. “We will do no such thing, admiral!” he snapped viciously. “We are winning! Your own estimates,” he shook a handful of flimsies at the comm unit, “say so! We will return to Confederation space victorious or not at all,” he went on softly against the background of firing and periodic hits absorbed by Warspite’s thousands of tons of armor. “And if you or anyone else suggests such a traitorous idea again, I will have you shot. Do you understand, admiral?”
Laskowski choked back her fear. The honeymoon, it seemed, was over. “Yes, sir,” she replied carefully. “In that case, I request permission to transfer my flag to Southampton. Sir. Warspite will be untenable soon, and the flag bridge is gone.”
Borge grunted. Furious as he was, he could hardly deny that request as he made his own way to another vessel to carry on his crusade, forging humanity’s future upon the ruins of the Empire. “Very well, admiral. Carry on.” With that, he snapped off the comm link. “Bloody incompetents,” he cursed to his aide, absently handing her the comm unit.
“Don’t be concerned, sir,” the woman said soothingly as she retrieved the device and stowed it carefully in the black case that also contained the control codes for the kryolon weapons that were stowed aboard another ship. Curiously, no one knew – except for the president himself – which ship that was. “We knew there would be some losses on our side. This is simply a minor inconvenience.”
The two of them followed a squad of ISS guards, and behind them was a trail of senators and council members – his trusted lieutenants – that made up the bulk of the Confederation’s government, corrupt though it now was.
“It is sloppy work, Elena,” Borge said as they followed the guards around yet another bend in the long march to the gangway, “and there is no excuse for sloppiness. Not in my–”
“Look out!” someone shouted as a hail of crimson bolts came blasting down the corridor, followed by several shadowy blurs that Borge did not realize were Kreelan shrekkas.
Without hesitation, he pushed his aid and latest lover into the line of fire, her body absorbing three energy bolts that would otherwise have found him. Rolling to the floor with the agility of one well accomplished at escaping from tight situations, he snatched the black case from her still-twitching hand and began to crawl through the sudden panic that now filled the corridor, heading for the airlock.
More and more weapons fired as two more squads of ISS guards who had pushed their way through the mewling politicians joined the fray. The deck filled with smoke and the smell of charred flesh and freshly spilled blood, the muzzle flashes surreal in the dim red glare of the emergency lighting.
“Where’s the president?” Borge could hear someone screaming hysterically. “Where’s the pres–” The voice was cut off in the crackle of a blaster firing from somewhere down the corridor that ran perpendicular to the main gangway.
On the floor, like a man caught in a burning building, Borge could see clearly, unhindered by the cloying smoke of burning flesh, cloth, and plastic that now blinded anyone standing upright. Smoke from the Warspite’s mortal wounds now filled the decks of the dying ship. The flashing red and yellow coaming lights around the main gangway airlock drew him like a moth to a flame, and he smiled grimly as he low-crawled his way toward it, dragging the all-important case along with him. He had no idea who had started the shooting, perhaps some disgruntled crewman who was jealous that they could leave this doomed hulk while he could not, but it did not matter: Borge would make it. He would reach the airlock where the Golden Pearl was even now docking. He would survive.
But Borge was not a patient man. As the airlock loomed closer, he rose from his crawl and into a crouch, using his legs to propel him faster than could his knees and elbows crabbing along the floor.
Again Warspite rocked from a hit, sending Borge sprawling to the deck, the precious case falling from his grip to bang and slide a few meters back the way he had come as the thunder of the great ship’s armor being penetrated crashed through her hull.
“Dammit!” he cursed as he regained his bearings in the smoke-clogged gangway, his right knee ringing with pain from where it had smashed against the bulkhead when he fell. He started back for the case, lost in the haze–
–and stumbled over something. Looking down, he saw the body of a child at his feet. A Kreelan child.
His blood suddenly ran cold. Reza’s son, a tiny voice in his mind informed him, quite unnecessarily. And where his son was, Reza was no doubt close by. Borge reacted quickly, doing what any politician of his caliber would have done. Seizing the dazed child by the hair with one hand, he drew his personal blaster with the other, pressing the muzzle against the boy’s head. Then Borge put his back up against the wall to prevent any surprises from behind.
It was only then that he noticed the unnatural stillness in the corridor. The fighting had stopped. Only the subaudible thrum of the ship’s engines and a periodic salvo of her guns now and then broke the silence.
“Gard!” he shouted into the swirling smoke. “I’ve got your boy, half-breed! Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.” Reza’s cool voice came from somewhere in the choking smoke roiling through the corridor. “Which is surprising, to hear the voice of a dead man.”
Borge’s brittle laugh cut through the air. “If I’m dead, so is your boy, Reza. Don’t believe I won’t kill him if you make me.”
“Just like you killed Markus Thorella?” Zhukovski’s voice accused from the fog. “Only this time, there will be no body to substitute, no fortune to collect for personal benefit.”
“But there is a fortune, you short-sighted fool, a fortune in victory, a fortune in power that you could not possibly comprehend.” Borge began to back cautiously toward the airlock, dragging Shera-Khan with him. Not quite so dazed now, the boy began to struggle, and Borge did not want to harm his insurance too soon. “Make him stop trying to break free, Reza, or I’ll kill him right now,” he warned.
A few words spoken in Kreelan from the darkness seemed to calm the boy. Perhaps too much.
“That’s better,” Borge said. “Now, there’s a case sitting in the corridor somewhere near you. I want it. Now.”
“What is in it?” Reza asked quietly. Borge could swear that his nemesis was speaking right into his ear, but there was no one to be seen.
“None of your business,” Borge snapped. “Just hand it over.”
The case suddenly skittered along the floor, coming to rest at Borge’s feet. “Pick it up,” he told Shera-Khan.
The boy did not move.
“Pick it up, damn you,” Borge hissed as he pushed the muzzle harder against Shera-Khan’s temple.