The Admiral and the Assistant

Herin Kasra, the policeman from Techterra, walked into the busy spaceport on Drilia. It had taken a little bit of guesswork on his part to get here, but he was confident in his assessment.

Sehren Senn would not have wanted to fly out of any spaceport in Techterra, and if he had tried, he'd already have been captured. He'd want to get off of Ceon 12, though, so he wouldn't travel too far to get to a spacecraft. That had left Duskwind and its tiny spaceport.

A quick review of the flights out of Duskwind, compared with when Senn could have gotten there, had left only a few options, and Drilia was the best one. It was a system whose primary claim to fame was a jumphole nexus-- a cluster of jumpholes that went to a variety of points in the galaxy. It was small enough not to have a heavy security presence, and busy enough to get lost in. It was the perfect destination for a fugitive.

Herin had already reached out to administration of the spaceport. They'd given him a little superficial help, providing him lists of flights that had gone out in the previous three days, but they were too harried and busy to spend a lot of time helping a policeman from another system.

Now, Herin was canvassing the spaceport itself. It was run-down and poorly maintained. Unlike the poor maintenance of the spaceport on Duskwind, which was due to a lack of customers, the deferred maintenance here was due to the too many travelers. A steady stream of people filled the spaceport to capacity, constantly flowing through its halls, never allowing time to shut down long enough to fix things up.

Herin stood in the middle of the spaceport, enjoying the feel of life flowing around him. A cold, pitiless smile surfaced on his face. Everyone who noticed it gave him a wide berth.

He forced his smile back down, adjusted his black suit, and strolled to another likely ticket station. His small, round-lensed glasses gleamed as he regarded the clerk behind the counter. She looked dumpy, tired, and apathetic.

He slid a photo of Sehren Senn across the countertop. Senn's sea-blue eyes stared up out of the photo.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said. "Have you seen this man board a flight in the last couple days?"

She looked at the photo and raised and eyebrow.

"Do I look like I talk to cops?" she asked.

"No, but you look like you'd talk to a rich man."

He dropped a hundred-credit bill on the counter next to the photo.

She made a small movement and the bill vanished.

"Look, I'm just trying to work here. I've gotta go through my passenger logs today." The clerk turned theatrically back to her console. She turned it slightly so Herin could see it better. She rolled down a list of names and highlighted one in particular. "Just trying to do my job," she said. "Nothing to do with cops."

Herin made a mental note of the flight, its destination, and the name that was highlighted on the console. He smiled thinly and dropped another bill on the counter. It vanished as fast as the first one had.

"I'm sorry to have troubled you, then, ma'am. In that case, could I get a seat on the next flight to--" he squinted at the screen-- "to Brolla?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"You sure you want to go there?" She eyed him up and down. "Cops don't go to Brolla."

He gave the clerk that pitiless smile that never reached his eyes. It made her skin crawl.

"I'm on vacation," he said. "Just going to take in the sights."

She turned away from him, focusing on her screen.

"Up to you. Four hundred credits for coach, five-fifty for first class."

He pushed more cash across the counter.

"Coach is fine," he said.

Grimthorn stayed standing after the captains had left. He was too full of nervous energy to sit. Captain Cohrmere kept his face carefully stable, standing straight, with his hands clasped behind his back.

"What do you have to tell me about Jorya?" he asked.

Grimthorn took a deep breath. There was no good way to start.

"She's dead."

Captain Rolim Cohrmere's entire body sagged. He began shaking and dropped into a chair.

"She can't be dead. I saw her just last week."

"I'm sorry, Rolim. I wish... I wish it were different."

"What happened?"

"She was murdered by conspirators against the Imperium, to keep their secrets."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Captain Cohrmere looked up at Grimthorn, his face blank with incomprehension.

"Who would want to murder her? What kind of conspiracy kills a child? She was only twelve!"

Grimthorn cleared his throat.

"She was an adult, Rolim. Remember, you've been trapped in jumpspace for twenty years. She grew up, she had a career..." Grimthorn trailed to a stop. He laid a hand on Captain Cohrmere's shoulder. "She was thirty-four when she passed last year."

"I saw her just last week," Captain Cohrmere said, tears filling his eyes. "She was telling me about this band she liked." He looked back up at Grimthorn. "She can't be dead. She's all I've got left."

"I'm so sorry."

Quiet sobbing filled the conference room.

"She went through Naval academy," Grimthorn said. "She made quartermaster on board the Swordheart."

"Was she good? Was she a good girl? Did she do a good job in the Navy?"

Grimthorn pinched his lips together.

"I'll make her service record available to you later. You can read up on everything."

Captain Cohrmere's teeth ground together.

"Have you caught the ones responsible? Have you made them pay?"

"I have. The one responsible was shot by my Assistant. The rest of the conspiracy is either dead or captured, save one. We're hunting him right now."

Captain Cohrmere's face took on an ugly cast.

"I want to get my hands on them."

"No." Grimthorn sat down next to Captain Cohrmere. "I won't let one of my best captains throw himself away on meaningless vengeance. There's been... enough of that lately."

Captain Cohrmere crumpled, buried his face in his hands, and let out his grief in the quiet conference room.

Senn Sehren grinned. He tweaked the settings on his transmitter.

Fools. They'd been fools to trust him, greater fools still to try and arrest him. They had no idea the power he'd tapped into.

He sat at the console that controlled the tight-beam laser transmitter. He carefully aligned it on their last known location.

Even with the very precise calculations he'd gotten from the Cryptographers, dialing in to talk his friends had proven to be nearly beyond his ability, but with the relentless determination of a zealot, he'd managed.

It was lonely, here on the edge of the galaxy. His hideaway was outside any city, on a quiet part of a rowdy planet, but it was as close as he could get to them. They were out there, beyond the known galaxy. Here, on the verge of the Imperium, Senn had set up his transmitter on the site of an abandoned lighthouse.

It seemed appropriate, somehow. A beacon to call them in.

The lighthouse itself was long gone, torn down as manual navigation gave way to global satellite positioning, which gave way to direct tracking from the orbital space station. The house he'd bought had been built near the site of the old lighthouse. It had been conceived as a luxury winter getaway, but time, disuse, and a weakening economy had sapped the house of its charm. Now it was a bare-but-functional dwelling.

Now it was housing Senn's transmitter, of course.

He powered it on. A rattling hum filled the house, and the lights dimmed. He smiled and keyed the microphone on his console.

"I have done what I can," he sent. "The Imperium is weak. Now I wait for you."

He ended the transmission and sat back, waiting for a response. It would take an hour or more.

Senn reflected on his path here. He'd heard through the grapevine that Koro was dead. A shame, really. His skills had set Senn on his life's course. He'd been a uniquely talented fellow.

Who would have imagined that the little Lutrin could ever have found a way to plant a wire on a Cryptographer's ship?

At the time, he'd imagined it would all lead to the scoop of the century. It had taken years for Senn to parse out their language, years more to understand their conversation, as roundabout and indirect as it was. Once he finally understood what they were talking about, however...

He'd been thinking so small back then. Once he'd understood the language of the Cryptographers, though, he'd understood his true destiny.

Why waste time gaining the adoration of men as a media mogul when he could rule the galaxy? After the next catastrophe, once every population was pre-industrial again, he could take the mantle of the Cryptographers, guide humanity back to the stars himself.

He could run his new Imperium properly. Finish the work the Cryptographers started.

The best part was that nobody knew. Not the Emperor, not Admiral Stonefist, not even the Cryptographers.

Everybody thought they were so clever because they'd caught him out. They thought he'd just been running some local conspiracy on Techterra. His plans were far grander than that.

He smiled.

The Feeders had changed course.

They were coming.

Kinnit giggled and sighed happily. She was lying on her back on the sofa and spinning through something on her scanner.

"I want the same ladies who did my ballgown on the Ophir to make my wedding dress," she said dreamily. "They did such a good job, don't you think?"

"Mmhmm." Grimthorn was reading his book with a fierce expression.

"Are you okay, Grimmy?" she asked.

His head came up suddenly.

"What did you call me?"

Kinnit giggled again.

"It's a Terran custom, isn't it? Giving each other pet names?"

"Not everybody does it," he said, burying his face back in his book.

She frowned and put her scanner aside.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing." Grimthorn kept his eyes fixed on his book, but they weren't moving.

Kinnit frowned and sat up.

"Hey. Come here."

He looked over her, his countenance carefully controlled.

"Lie down." She patted her lap. "Relax for a little bit."

He stared at her for a long moment. His face showed his struggle. Finally, he set his book aside and laid down. He rested his head on her lap and stared at the portal. A spray of stars shone in on them.

Kinnit held him and rocked him. She hummed quietly and played with a lock of his hair. As she held him, she could feel his body slowly relaxing, easing by degrees.

"You have a beautiful voice," he said.

She kept humming, but smiled.

Grimthorn closed his eyes.

As she hummed and rocked, his rigid muscles loosened. The minutes stretched out. Kinnit thought he might be falling asleep.

To her surprise, he spoke.

"I had to tell Captain Cohrmere about Jorya today," he said.

"Oh," Kinnit said, her voice soft. "Oh, no. That poor man." She gently stroked his hair. "My poor Grimthorn."

"Right after finding out about Dass. It's... been tough lately."

She held him tighter and kept rocking him.

"I keep wondering," he said quietly. "Why do I keep surviving when everyone around me keeps dying? Why do the good ones die and I live?"

"Shh, Grimthorn, don't think like that. You've saved so many people. You're wonderful and I love you."

"I love you," he said, his eyes closed.

She held him like that for a long time, helping to dissipate his grief.