Title: Reformation: Chapter Twenty Four
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Chapter Twenty-Four
Once upon a time, Claudia had been a botanist. She had gone
to school for it, graduated with honors, and gotten a job with one of the premier
vintners of the Central System, on her home planet. She had planned to dedicate
her life to the finer things in life—rare vintages, new breeds of grape for
pressing, and testing flowers, herbs, and additives to see what would make the
most fragrant, harmonious combination on the palate. She had had it all worked
out.
That was before she met Miles Caractacus, at the time an
active-duty general in the Federation fleet. She hadn’t met him on duty,
though; Claudia had been hired as the sommelier for a party his mother was
hosting, and had been required to attend it as well. Required, in those very terms—not invited. That wasn’t something
the Lady of the house did. But despite the rudeness of her interactions with
her hostess, Claudia had agreed. It was an important event, full of important
people—the networking opportunities would be tremendous.
And then she met Miles.
He was older than she usually looked for in the people she
was interested in, but he had a way of moving, of speaking—a brilliant vitality
that drew her and every other person in the room into his orbit. But he’d been
drinking a Hoffman red while eating an octopus skewer, which was just an
offense to Claudia’s sensibilities. Before she could stop herself, she’d walked
up, held out a new glass of wine—a delicate pale pink Winnemaker from the
mountains of Delgado—and said, “I recommend you try this instead.”
Miles had looked at it doubtfully. “I generally prefer reds.”
“I understand, but a red like that is for drinking on its
own. It destroys the flavor of food, particularly seafood. This wine will
enhance it.”
Miles had smiled a little half-smile. “I’ll let you in on a
secret.” He’d leaned in close to her ear. “I despise seafood, but my mother has
it at every party. This wine is the only thing I’ve found that lets me get
through a plate of it without gagging.”
Claudia had blushed, but managed to keep from laughing out
loud. “I see. Well.” She’d drawn back and put the Winnemaker down on the
nearest table. “In that case, let me get you a refill.”
“How about I come with you instead, and you can tell me more
about what I could be drinking tonight?”
“Oh, please don’t let me take you away from your friends.”
“Nonsense.” He’d smiled politely at the people surrounding
him. “They’re all perfectly capable of amusing themselves for a while.” He’d
held out an arm to her. “Shall we?”
She’d gone with him to the bar, spent the rest of the
evening at his side in easy conversation, and ended up spending the night with
him. He’d left the next day and Claudia had figured that was it, a delightful
interlude in her very normal life, but then he’d commed her. Kept in touch,
despite the distance and the challenges, and after two years of mostly
long-distance courtship, when he’d asked her to marry him, she hadn’t had to
think twice.
It was wonderful. It was terrifying. It was more
responsibility than she’d thought she could handle at first—wife of the
governor? Wife of a senator? She came
from a planet with fewer than a million settlers, for crying out loud! What did
she know about organizing events or schmoozing with politicians or living a
life in the public eye? And it wasn’t easy, even beyond that. Miles was still
gone much of the time, and there were moments when Claudia missed him so badly
she wept, but she never let on. Thank god Garrett had been around for most of
her adjustment period, or she wasn’t sure how she would have come out of it
sane. Who would have guessed that Miles’s son by his first marriage would end
up as one of her best friends?
Then Claudia had Renee, and life became more beautiful.
Through Garrett moving away and starting his own family, through Miles almost
dying during an assassination attempt, through the birth of her second daughter
Yvaine, Claudia had found her center. She had settled into her abilities, come
to a reckoning with her life. She could do this. She could live and thrive and
be happy, no matter what happened.
Circumstances were testing her resolve right now, though.
“Nooooo!” How
could a six-year-old girl howl so loudly? “I don’t want to!”
“Well, you have to,” Claudia told her firmly. “You did it
yesterday, Yvaine, why won’t you do it tonight?”
“Because look!” She pouted and pointed at her knee. “I have
a scrape today. I can’t have a shower
when I have a scrape.”
“I told you I would fix it. Five times. You’re the one who said explorers don’t use Regen.”
“They don’t.” Yvaine folded her arms stubbornly across her
chest. “And they don’t take showers either.”
“Little explorers in this
family do, if they want a story before bed.”
Yvaine’s mouth dropped open. “I have to have a story. I have to!”
“Then you better get in the shower, my dear.” Claudia waited
while her daughter mulled that over in her mind, then finally—reluctantly—acquiesced.
“Fine. But when daddy gets back, no more showers. I’m having baths forever.” She flounced off in the direction of the bathroom, and
Claudia straightened up with a sigh and looked over at her friend and
bodyguard, Thérèse Tousaint.
“I’m sure you’re happy you got babysitting duty with me
instead of following Miles now, aren’t you?”
“Considering where he’s going? Yes, I rather am,” Thérèse
replied with a smile. “Besides, if you think your husband isn’t on babysitting
duty with hundreds of cadets under his direct command, then you’re dreaming. I’ll
go make sure she’s actually getting in the shower if you want to check on
Renee?”
“Thank you.” Claudia found her older daughter in the living
room of the bungalow they were currently living in, on the outskirts of a low-G
tubular colony that projected from the surface of Kyres, a Central System
planet—barely. It was a place billed as selling gentle, rehabilitative space to
those suffering from transition illness or gravity sickness, both conditions
that were more mental than physical, and untreatable by Regen. It was
comparatively rural, but also moderately defensible, and bustling enough that Thérèse
expected they’d be largely ignored.
Renee didn’t really seem to miss the crowds of Olympus, that
much was clear. She was self-directed enough that leaving school had been as
easy as anything, for her. Right now she was staring out the window and making
notes on the glass screen.
“What are you looking at?” Claudia asked as she joined her
daughter.
“See that ship right there?” Renee pointed at a decent-sized
shuttle on the other side of the Ring Twelve. “It’s violating the timing
clause.”
“How long has it been there?”
“Ten minutes! And the rules say that you can only leave your
ship attached for personal loading and unloading not to exceed five minutes,
because cargo is supposed to go through the ground docks.” Renee frowned. “It’s
going to mess up the incoming traffic.”
“Hmm. What makes you so interested in it?”
“I’m doing a traffic census for my statistics class. I
loaded my program into the visual computer system for our windows and set coded
it to count all the makes and models and times, but when it throws up an
outlier it alerts me. That ship—” she pointed again, “—is an outlier.”
Claudia was prepared to tell her daughter that sometimes
allowances were necessary in life, but when she glanced at the ship again, she
noticed that none of the dock’s light were flashing. Everything surrounding the
shuttle was inert, standard green, like the ship itself wasn’t even there. Like
it hadn’t even docked. Only there it was, and—
Claudia was moving before her thoughts could catch up with
her, pulling Renee away from the window and turning off all the lights inside
with a breathless command. The whole house went dark except for the emergency
lights.
“Mom, what—”
“It’s just a precaution,” Claudia said before calling out, “Thérèse!”
She came out of the bathroom a moment later, holding Yvaine
all wrapped in a robe on her hip. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a ghost ship out there.”
Thérèse’s expression went stony. “Where?”
“Straight across from us.”
“The Vacarra’s place. They’re away right now, but anything
docked there should still have to follow protocol.”
“No acknowledgement by the docking mechanism itself, even
though the lights are working. It’s been there over twice the usual allotted
time, too.”
Thérèse nodded once. “Get to the pod.”
Claudia’s blood chilled. “Are you sure?”
“We’re not taking any chances. Get to the pod now. Two
minutes, go, go.” She handed Yvaine,
who was thankfully quiet, to Claudia before darting for the front door. Claudia
took a deep breath, then turned toward her room, leading both her daughters
along with her. She pushed the bed back into the wall, then pressed her hand to
the center of the floor.
“Emergency protocol 99, initiate.”
When Claudia lifted her hand up again, the print remained,
glowing green. A moment later the floor retracted, opening up to the door of
the stealth pod beneath it. The escape pod was covered in a substance that made
it invisible to light, radar, and emitted no radiation of any kind to follow.
After launch, it would continue on the original course essentially dead in the
water, but Claudia had a protocol to follow for that too.
“Mom…”
“Mama, what—”
“We can’t—”
“We’re not taking any chances,” Claudia said. “If it’s a
false alarm, then we’ll—” The security system suddenly started to blare.
Claudia turned wide eyes toward the door, where Thérèse appeared a moment later.
“They’re using acid-laced micro-explosives, trying to melt
through the wall around the door rather than blow it up,” she said grimly. “They
want you alive. Get in the pod, now!” Renee clambered down into the little
black pod, then reached up for Yvaine. Claudia handed her youngest over, then
looked back to her friend.
“Come on, we can all leave together.”
Thérèse shook her head. “Someone has to cover the energy signature
of your escape.”
“They’re not looking for that right now, they’re trying to
break in! We have time, it’ll fit four!”
“If they’re good enough to get this far without being
noticed, then they’ve already seen more than we know.” She looked grim, but
determined. “Get in there and leave immediately. Remember, don’t send out the
signal until you’re at least twenty-four hours out.”
“No.” It didn’t make sense. Or rather, it did, but it didn’t
seem like it could be real. Even with the scent of the acid at the door, the
low thud of the micro-explosives digging deeper and deeper, Claudia couldn’t
quite believe it. She couldn’t lose Thérèse. They had been friends
almost as long as she and Miles had been married. “No, please—”
“Claudia, go!” Thérèse
turned and vanished into the hall, and a moment later the security alarm said, Warning: Structural Damage Detected.
Structural Damage Detected. Evacuation Required.
They had to go. There was no choice. Claudia lowered herself
into the pod, then shut the hatch. Vaguely, she was thankful her girls both
seemed too shocked to speak—she didn’t think she was capable of comforting them
right now. She repeated her instruction—emergency protocol 99—and the pod
obeyed. A moment later, they fell through the bottom of the bungalow and out
into space, heading away from the planet.
A moment after that, the bungalow exploded.
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