In Her Name

to reconsider, Camden,” she said icily.

“Negative, commodore,” Eustus said firmly. “I cannot–” he hesitated, “– will not – help you in this. It’s illegal and it’s wrong.”

She looked down at the table in disappointment. “Very well,” she said quietly. Turning to the commander of the Marine contingent, she said, “Captain, please place Gunnery Sergeant Camden under arrest and throw him in the brig. Charges…” She paused, looking up at Eustus. “Charge him with high treason, as ordered by Confederation High Command.”

“Aye, aye, commodore,” the Marine officer said stiffly. With a signal from her console, two Marines appeared at the door to the conference room. This situation had been anticipated. “Marines,” the captain ordered, “escort Gunnery Sergeant Camden to the brig.” She glanced toward Marchand, who nodded. “Throw him in with the Kreelans.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the corporal in charge of the detail replied sharply.

Eustus stood up, saluted the commodore, and left with the guard detail.

Marchand turned her attention to the comms display facing her chair and hidden from everyone else’s view. “I don’t like this, General,” she said sternly. “Camden is a good Marine.”

“No one asked you to like it, commodore,” replied the newly frocked Brigadier General Markus Thorella, Special Assistant to the President. “Just carry out your orders and be as predictable as Camden was.” The smile disappeared behind a mask of vengeful conceit. “We have gone to great lengths to ensure that Reza Gard and his accomplice will head to Erlang and into your waiting arms, and you are to let nothing – I repeat, nothing – interfere with the execution,” he smiled at the word, “of that mission. After that, you only have to hold him until the fleet rendezvous at Erlang and then transfer him to the flagship for his execution. And Mackenzie’s.” He stared at her. “Have I made myself clear, commodore?”

“Perfectly,” she grunted, furious with this lackey’s arrogance toward someone whose date of rank and command experience vastly outweighed his own.

Thorella nodded. “You will receive further instructions as necessary,” he said tersely. “Thorella, out.”

END TRANSMISSION blazed across the screen beneath the Confederation insignia.

Infuriated, Marchand slammed her hand on the control console, shutting down her end of the link.

“Bastard,” she hissed.

* * *

Aboard the starliner Helena, Thorella leaned back in his ready room chair and smiled. Looking out the floor-to-ceiling viewport of his personal command ship, he saw over five hundred starships spread over thousands of cubic kilometers of space, all preparing for their final jump to Erlang where they would rendezvous with nearly three thousand more Confederation ships. It was the greatest armada in human history. And he was a key part of it. The thought exhilarated him and gave him a burning erection in his trousers.

But the part of the plan that he liked best was that he would finally get to see Reza Gard die. He had no doubt that Gard would try to escape; in fact, Thorella was counting on it. He knew Gard could do it on his own, but Thorella had decided to improve the odds, putting Camden on the inside and Carre on the outside, after convincing the president to order her put back on flight status. Between those two and Mackenzie, not to mention the two Kreelans, Thorella was perfectly confident that Gard would escape. And then he would joyfully hunt them down – Gard, Mackenzie, Camden, and Carre – and see them to the gallows. At last, after all these years, he would have them. He would have them all.

As he watched the ships of the armada wheel across space, his mind seduced by power, his right hand freed his throbbing member from the confines of its fabric keep. Alone in his ready room, his heart hammering in time with his hand, Thorella saluted the fleet that he knew would someday be his.

Forty-Eight

As the Golden Pearl slid through the whirling bands of light that were the only perceptible reality of hyperspace, Jodi contemplated the future, both for herself and for the few real friends she had in the Universe. For all of them, it looked unalterably bleak. Reza an accused murderer, with Jodi named as his accomplice; Nicole’s career irreparably damaged by her association with both of them; and poor Tony, who might have someday gained enough political clout to really do the Confederation some good, politically devastated by the whole trumped-up scandal. Things are looking pretty shitty for the home team, she thought.

Checking on the Pearl’s instruments to see how long they had before dropping back into reality, Jodi wondered if coming to Erlang was such a good idea. There was nothing, really, left on Erlang except the survivors who, like so many humans on so many worlds, were trying to pull themselves up from the rubble left in the wake of war. She thought they might have some friends there, but would they welcome the two fugitives with open arms or with the muzzles of pulse guns?

But those were better odds than they might face anywhere else. The news of Nathan’s death had been broadcast on every human communication channel, and it was unlikely that, with the possible exception of the Erlangers, anyone who had been exposed to the propaganda – and that would be nearly everyone in the Confederation – would be willing to help them.

Besides, she thought, now that Reza knows that his son might be on his way to Erlang, there was no stopping him. While he spoke little, his few words conveyed to her the overpowering love he felt for his wife, and for the son he had never known. That alone, she thought, was something to really make one believe in God or the Devil, depending on how you looked at it.

What was the boy like? she wondered. She, along with the rest of humanity, had never seen anything other than an adult Kreelan female. She had heard Eustus and Enya describe the mummified remains of the adult males they had seen in the burial chamber on Erlang before the Kreelan attack there, but it was not the same. This was a living child, the blood of the man who had become a part of her life years ago, and who had shared his body and his soul with an alien, an enemy of Jodi’s people. She remembered the woman’s face, reliving her agony. From what Reza had said, it now appeared that Esah-Zhurah, too, was in mortal danger, as was her entire race. She wondered at the magnitude of an entire civilization suddenly dying out, with no survivors or descendants, and felt a sudden tremor of empathy for them.

“Christ in a chariot-driven sidecar,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head in wonder. “What the hell am I thinking?” She glanced at one of the instruments on the copilot’s side, noticing that Reza had slipped into the chair beside her without a sound. Anyone else might have been startled or surprised; Jodi had long since become accustomed to it.

“Five minutes to normal space and Erlang,” she told him, noting that his face barely looked human, his features oddly contorted into a human mimicry of Kreelan expressions. He was reverting, she thought to herself, becoming a Kreelan again for what would probably be the last days – or hours – of his life. And of hers. “You feel okay?”

“Yes,” he answered, then was silent as he stared out the viewscreen at the glowing starfield. “Jodi,” he said after a moment, “I have decided to take a boat down to the surface, leaving you free to escape back into hyperspace. I can think of no way of getting a chance to see my son except by surrendering.” He looked at her, his alien eyes sad now. “I would spare you the fate that will surely befall me.”

“And where the hell am I supposed to go, Reza?” she asked, more hurt than angry. She needed him to need her right now. “I know Borge’s dirty little secrets, remember? I don’t think he’s going to just let me walk away once he has you. I know the Pearl’s a nice ship and all, but I really don’t want to spend the rest