Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2) Page 3

  “Our people may not understand the choice we’ve made for a while,” she warned them. “The next few months will be hard for us all. But remember this: you have my back—and I have yours. If people give you flak, the Duchy government will be behind you.”

  “Good luck, Duchess,” Kurzman told her, stepping out of the way to allow his husband to usher her aboard the shuttle. “Tornado will be here when you need us.”

  #

  Chapter 3

  “Lieutenant McPhail, what’s our ETA?” Annette asked as she settled into her seat, the looming armored forms of her personal bodyguard around her.

  “We are clear with both space control and Hong Kong air control,” the pilot reported. “Estimated travel time is twenty-one minutes, with us arriving at sixteen hundred local.”

  “Thank you,” Annette told her. “Keep me advised if there are any problems, Mary.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the young woman replied cheerfully.

  Turning her attention back to Wellesley, Annette noticed his wary expression.

  “She isn’t going to put us inside the ground this time,” she pointed out. “This should be a far smoother ride.”

  “I’m not sure Mary understands the concept of ‘smooth’ as opposed to, well, ‘safe,’” the Major pointed out. “There’s a reason she’s been my pilot of choice all along, but she doesn’t do comfortable.”

  “Right now, safe is at the top of my list after effective,” the new Duchess pointed out. “Do we have our meetings set up?”

  While she was going to have to acquire a political staff once she was on the ground, for the moment her chief bodyguard was also doubling as her aide since he needed to know her schedule either way.

  “Medit! has confirmed that she’ll meet us at the landing pad in Hong Kong,” he said calmly. Medit! had been the A!Tol governor of Earth. Her exact role once Annette had been declared Duchess was vaguer, but she doubted the alien was going anywhere.

  “What about Zhao?” she asked.

  “He has agreed to meet with us in private but declined an invitation to meet you at the landing pad,” Wellesley told her. “His secretary didn’t say anything specific, but I think he wants to meet you before deciding which way he’s going to jump.”

  Li Chin Zhao had been Chairman of the Republic of China before the invasion. While the references to Communism and the People had faded over time, the structure of China’s government hadn’t changed much in the last two centuries. The Republic had been a constant, if controversial, source of stability through the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries.

  The Chinese government had been dissolved by the A!Tol along with every other political entity above the municipality level. While it no longer wielded official power, the Party remained, if not intact, at least in existence. And while Li Chin Zhao didn’t officially run China, Annette doubted that any of the municipal governments in the peninsula would ignore his opinions.

  He’d make a powerful supporter for the new Ducal government—or a deadly enemy.

  “At least he’s willing to meet with me,” she pointed out. “Did Hardesty even respond to our request?”

  The former President of the United States was not on her list of favorite people, but she’d rather have him on board than opposing her.

  “He did, actually,” her bodyguard told her. “His response was long, flowery, written by his secretary and utterly noncommittal. Even more than Zhao, he’s waiting to see which way to jump.

  “Interestingly: Hope Mandela reached out to us before we could reach out to her,” he continued. “She’s in Cape Town at the moment and won’t be able to reach Hong Kong soon but has expressed interest in meeting with us.” Hope Mandela had been the South African member of the UESF’s Governing Council.

  “What about her boss, the President?”

  “Died of a heart attack four months ago,” Wellesley admitted. “Mandela probably isn’t the most senior surviving members of the South African government, but she’s certainly the most recognizable.”

  “She’ll have to do,” Annette admitted. “What about…”

  “Ma’am, we have a problem,” McPhail’s voice cut into their conversation. “We just breached atmo and I’m picking up six suborbital planes headed our way.” She paused. “They’re not running IDs or IFFs, but they’re UESF Mongooses.”

  “Can they intercept us?”

  “Not a chance—if we break for orbit. Inside an atmosphere? Interface drive has its advantages, but they were built for this. They’ll have missiles on us at least two minutes before we land. Again, the missiles can’t catch us if we break for orbit, but…”

  In vacuum, the shuttle could go from zero to forty percent of lightspeed in under ten seconds. In an atmosphere, the spacecraft’s ability to absorb heat was the limitation, meaning that specialist aircraft without an interface drive could catch her.

  “Update Tornado and loop me in,” Annette ordered after a moment’s thought.

  “I see them,” Kurzman responded a few seconds later. “I can nail them with proton beams without hitting the surface with more rads than a summer day.”

  “Any way you can take them down intact?”

  Her Captain paused, then sighed.

  “No,” he admitted. “They’re almost certainly Weber Network and they want to kill you, ma’am. How kid-glove do you really want to be?”

  “You can take down their missiles before they reach us, right?”

  She could hear the chorus of sighs from her people.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Kurzman replied. “I don’t suppose I have a higher authority I can file a protest with?”

  “That higher authority is on A!To,” she told him. “Protect this shuttle, Captain. Then track them home. I want assault shuttles on their launch base five minutes after they get home.”

  “Now, that I can agree with,” he said. “Try not to die on me, ma’am?”

  “I have a busy agenda today. Dying isn’t on it.”

  #

  Annette was out of practice with the controls in the shuttle’s passenger compartment, but she managed to get a mirror of the shuttle’s sensors playing on the available screens, allowing her to watch the aircraft screaming toward her at over ten times the speed of sound.

  McPhail had accelerated their descent to the maximum safe rate, and the shuttle vibrated around them as the blocky spacecraft smashed its way through the atmosphere.

  “Here they come,” Wellesley observed grimly as the Mongooses opened fire, every hardpoint on the superfast interceptors firing off in a carefully timed sequence. Six aircraft fired thirty-six hyperjet attack missiles that flashed toward them at fifteen kilometers a second.

  The missiles closed less than half of the distance before they disappeared, Tornado’s beams wiping them away a dozen at a time as Kurzman worked his guns across the attack. The missiles were too fast for any kind of stealth or maneuverability, which left them entirely vulnerable to anyone above them with lightspeed weapons.

  “Targets neutralized,” Kurzman informed her. “I have two shuttles standing by to follow them home once they break off.”

  “Good work, Captain,” Annette told him. “Thank you.”

  “All part of the service, Your Grace.”

  “Ma’am…they’re not breaking off,” McPhail interrupted. “The Mongoose has guns, but I don’t think anyone would expect to use them…”

  “Seventy-millimeter high-velocity cannons,” Wellesley added. “They probably can’t hit us, given this shuttle’s maneuverability—”

  “The fighters themselves can hit you,” Kurzman interrupted his husband. “They’re on a ramming course. Sorry, ma’am.”

  The proton beams flared again before anyone could say a word, vaporizing all six interceptors in the blink of an eye.

  Annette sighed. She was stubborn, not stupid. She wouldn’t have objected even if he’d given her the chance, but she’d been hoping to try and take someone from the Weber Network alive.

&n
bsp; Instead, her former comrades-in-arms had apparently launched a knowing suicide strike to try and kill her.

  “Get us on the ground, Lieutenant,” she said harshly.

  #

  The shuttle cut down into the man-made canyons of downtown Hong Kong, surrounded on all sides by skyscraping offices, apartments and outright arcologies. The course Hong Kong air control had given them took them through those canyons to the spaceport on the island’s highest point.

  The streets underneath them were packed, thousands of people flowing around barricades and blue-white-and-green police vehicles to try and catch a glimpse of the spacecraft. The crowds grew even denser as they reached the airport, before giving away to emptiness as they passed over the final cordon of uniformed Hong Kong Police Department officers backed by a small contingent of men and women in power armor painted the same colors as the police cars.

  A much smaller crowd was waiting next to the pad where McPhail finally brought the shuttle to a safe landing.

  “Wait here while we check it out,” Wellesley told her.

  “That’s Medit! out there,” Annette pointed out. “If the senior Imperial official on the planet is here…”

  “Someone just tried to shoot you down. Allow me to do my job, ma’am.”

  She conceded with a nod, waiting with ill grace as the power-armored ex–Special Space Service troopers swept out of the shuttle. They scanned across the pad, checking the immediate area with scanners, then Wellesley gestured for her to join them.

  Annette left the shuttle into the light and sweltering heat of a late Hong Kong fall day. After years of living aboard climate-controlled spaceships, the humidity hit her like a wall and she took a careful moment to adjust before continuing on to greet Medit!.

  The A!Tol was a massive squid-like creature, with four main locomotive tentacles and sixteen manipulator tentacles extending from a bullet-shaped torso with dark black eyes. The species literally wore their hearts on their sleeves, with only the most experienced of them able to even mute the colors of emotion that washed over their skin.

  Medit! was currently a mix of orange (anger), red (pleasure) and black (fear). The alien was about as stressed and frustrated as Annette was feeling, but she approached Earth’s new Duchess gamely enough, lowering herself on her main tentacles in a gesture that could only be called a curtsy.

  “Welcome home, Dan!Annette Bond,” she said softly, her translator clearly having had enough experience with humans to pick up and translate her intent as well as her words. “It seems your people were waiting for you—to both the good and the bad.”

  “So it seems, Governor Medit!,” Annette agreed.

  “I am no longer Governor,” the A!Tol replied. “Uplift Supervisor now. A Duchy has no Governor.”

  This was said far more loudly, clearly angled as much to the reporters gathered nearby as for Annette herself.

  “We will need to speak later,” Annette promised Medit!.

  “Indeed,” the A!Tol agreed. “For now, your people await.”

  Stepping aside, Medit! revealed the tall and pale form of Jean Villeneuve, former Admiral and Chief of Operations for the United Earth Space Force.

  He’d grown his hair out since she’d last seen him, Annette noted approvingly, though decades of habit meant it was still short enough to fit under a vac helmet. After a moment’s hesitation, she gave in to her impulse and wrapped the older man in a tight hug.

  Proprieties be damned. Earth would know her as a person as well as a Duchess.

  Villeneuve returned the embrace stiffly for a moment, then stepped back and held her at arm’s length to study her—her eye specifically.

  “Still a scar, I see,” he murmured. “But you’re looking better.”

  When they’d last met, Annette had been missing an eye after an encounter with an Indiri pirate.

  “We left it unrepaired too long to avoid a scar,” she admitted. “I didn’t need it to see clearly in the end, Admiral.”

  “I’m not an Admiral anymore,” he reminded her.

  “Jean, Jean, Jean,” she teased gently. “Did you think you were going to meet me at the landing pad and turn down my job offer? We will talk, but the new Duchy’s militia will need an Admiral.

  “Unless you’d rather, oh, Fleet Lord?” she suggested.

  He shivered dramatically.

  “Fine,” he admitted. “I’ll take Admiral if I must, though God knows what you need with a broken-down old warhorse.”

  His sad smile told her that he knew what she needed him for—to help convince the rest of the UESF to join up.

  “Old warhorses are the wise warhorses,” Annette told him. Villeneuve would be a symbol, yes, but she also needed his brain.

  “We’ll see if you still think so after having me work for you instead of the other way around, ma chérie,” he told her. He glanced past her, and his smile widened into something warmer. “Wait, is that Wellesley’s father?”

  Annette turned to see that her chief bodyguard had removed his helmet and was exchanging quiet words with another man of his own height and sharp features. The elder Wellesley had put on weight and was a rounder shape than his sparsely built son, but the family resemblance was unmistakable.

  She crossed to join them.

  “Your Grace,” she greeted the Duke of Wellington. “I didn’t expect to see any representatives from the UK here.”

  “The former United Kingdom, you mean,” Wellesley pointed out precisely. “Your Grace,” he noted after a moment.

  “I am led to understand that you performed the ceremony for my son’s wedding?” he continued.

  “I did,” she said levelly.

  “While I understand why an invitation would have been difficult, you must understand that I am not pleased to have been excluded.”

  From Major Wellesley’s expression, he’d been getting an earful.

  “I am here as a father, not a representative of a no-longer-functioning government,” the Duke continued. “I was due to retire from the House of Lords in my eldest son’s favor this year anyway.”

  “You know the presence of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer will be taken as a statement regardless of intent,” she warned him quietly.

  “Will it?” he asked with a momentary wicked grin that reminded her very much of his youngest son. “Chief Executive Ha”—the official leader of Hong Kong’s municipal government—“is hosting a reception tonight for you, if no one has warned you yet. I’m sure I’m not the only one in need of your time, but you may find it…illuminating to give me a few minutes.”

  “I owe your son my life a few times over,” Annette told him. “I’ll make those minutes, one way or another.”

  “Then I believe, Duchess Dan!Annette Bond, that a crowd awaits you,” he replied, nailing the full mix of English and A!Tol that was now her formal title as he waved her past the small group she’d already met toward the reporters beyond.

  #

  Chapter 4

  Every eye in the world was on humanity’s new Duchess. Flying drone cameras followed her down the street, and the crush of reporters trying to ask questions pressed into the hotel after her when they arrived.

  Arranging a private meeting would have been impossible if the hotel hadn’t decided to be supremely cooperative and happily barred all of the journalists from the building. The hotel was large enough that they couldn’t justify taking it over entirely with Annette’s relatively small party—which easily excused the other figures who “just happened” to be there at the same time.

  Including Li Chin Zhao, who, among his many other qualities, was a ten-percent shareholder in the company that owned the International Lucky Dragon Hotel chain.

  Annette arrived in her room to find a carefully calligraphied invitation asking her to meet Zhao in a private dining room on the thirty-ninth floor of the hotel. Paging Wellesley to join her, she went to meet the man who had, until recently, run the world’s largest country.

  Exiting the elevator
on the indicated floor, they were met by two attractive young men in perfectly tailored black suits. They bowed in unison at the sight of Annette and her bodyguard, and one gestured for them to follow him.

  The dining room they were led to was a small space that clearly did double duty as a Buddhist shrine. Incense burned around the space, and a red jade Buddha statue stood against one wall. The table in the middle had been set with five places.

  Standing at the far end of the room, facing the statue in silent contemplation, was a shaven-headed man in a dark red suit tailored to help hide the man’s obesity.

  No tailoring could conceal Li Chin Zhao’s weight, though the tailor had tried. He turned slowly and delicately, studying Annette for a long moment before gesturing for her to sit.

  “My men are absolutely trusted,” he said. “I assume the same of Major Wellesley?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I will have the hotel bring food and we can begin,” Zhao told her.

  “I have eaten,” Annette said politely.

  “I haven’t,” the Chinese official replied, his voice calm. “Besides, I have heard about the…Universal Protein, I think it was called? Trust me, the Lucky Dragon’s food is much better.”

  With a sigh, she gestured her acceptance and took a seat opposite him. Zhao tapped a band on his wrist, clearly activating a concealed phone, then spoke to thin air.

  “Miss Wa? Yes. My guest has arrived. Please bring out the food.” He paused, listening. “Thank you.”

  Annette waited patiently while a uniformed waitress delivered a steaming pot of meat and vegetables in broth and laid out bowls. The woman served each of them from the large hotpot, then replaced the lid and disappeared.

  Zhao took a sip of the soup and sighed.

  “You requested this meeting, Miss Bond,” he told her. “I was torn on whether or not to accept it, until one of my fellows in the Party chose to remind me of how the Middle Kingdom has dealt with invaders in the past. My land has been conquered before and adapted.