Sector 6 - Jaril
Maven Ophidian
Maven groaned as the beeping receiver woke her up. She rolled to her side and threw her pillow at the far wall of the officers’ quarters at the sound. It did no good. The beeping continued.
A glance at her clock told her that eleven hours had passed since she went to sleep. Eleven hours and no one woke me up or killed me in my sleep? I suppose the crew will be loyal yet.
But even if her mutinous crew aboard Evelyn’s Grace wasn’t suffocating her in her sleep, someone was trying to wake her up.
She staggered off the plush bed and over to the view screen, rubbing bleariness out of her eyes. She brought the image into focus. It was her sister, Alyssa.
Maven groaned. If there was anyone she didn’t want to talk to right now, it was her pompous and arrogant sibling.
She stumbled to the restroom, letting her sister wait. Eventually, Alyssa would give up and record a message. Voice, of course. Not text.
But that was neither here nor there. Right now, Maven was more concerned with dressing and getting out to visit her crew—had she really slept eleven hours? —and see how much damage they had caused.
None of them liked her. Until a few months ago, they all served the First Citizen. When Captain Finch rebelled, he took them with him. Many were loyal to Finch rather than the Republic, and most of their families lived out on Tellus anyway. For them, not a lot changed in their Chain of Command.
But it was still a large change. They went from having cozy military jobs in a peaceful era to being enemy number one; couple that with being ordered around by a sixteen-year-old girl who wasn’t even in the military six years ago and they became quite disgruntled.
But that’s why Darius sent me, she thought with only a touch of bitterness. No man out here would respect Alyssa. She’s too pretty. But they see my oxygen mask and listen to me struggle to breathe; they imagine the terrible scars that lie beneath my hood. They envisage the horrible misshapen creature that I am, the exact antithesis of my sister’s ravishing beauty, and they fear me.
Right now, she needed that fear. It was what kept her in charge, if nothing else. And she needed to be in charge. Oh yes, she needed it badly.
Horrible misshapen creature that she was, she had big dreams.
2
When she was finished preparing and putting her breathing mask on, she finally clicked on the communicator. “Alyssa? What do you need?”
“Is that how you greet your sister?”
“No, but I thought I’d be polite today.”
“Darius wants to know how it’s going.”
“And you as well?”
“I don’t particularly care.”
“You can tell him it’s going fine. We arrived at Jaril this morning. They won’t let us land yet.”
“Then attack them,” Alyssa said. “Enough barrages and they will be loyal.”
“Enough barrages and no one will be left to be loyal,” she said. “Kind of defeats the purpose.”
“Just take the damn planet. We gave you a warship.”
“You mean he gave me a warship,” Maven corrected.
“Just take the planet, Maven,” Alyssa said. “We need more soldiers.”
“How did the meeting with Captain Queston go?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh?”
“Self-inflicted. I might have had something to do with it.”
Maven laughed. “Well then, I suppose things are going well.”
“What happens if next time they shoot instead of talk? What are we going to do then? We need more ships.”
“I’ll get us more ships,” Maven replied. “But I’m going to do it my way.”
Then she hung up, smiling to herself. She could imagine Alyssa on the other end, scowling.
“My way,” she reiterated with a sigh. “The right way.”
