Page 18 of Smuggler's Beauty

The prime minister was finishing his mid-morning coffee in his office when Sergeant Hills knocked on the open door. Hills felt stupid doing this, but he also would have felt equally stupid clearing his throat, so he went with what felt most polite. The office was neat, clean, and had no personal items on display. Dust motes would have to apply for special dispensation to enter the space. The only acknowledgment that the room was anything other than a normal executive suite was the flag of Bauder in the corner of the room and the seal of the prime minister’s office engraved in the front of the desk.

“Enter. You may close the door behind you, Sergeant Hills.”

Hills gulped and did as he was told. He stood at attention in front of the desk and tried to avoid direct eye contact with EmilBellica. Hills could feel the PM’s dark eyes boring holes into his chest.

“You wanted to see me, Minister.”

Sitting back in his chair, Emil Bellica laced his fingers together and rotated his thumbs in a circle. He was a tall man, gaunt, pale with dark hair just starting to gray at the temples, and cold brown eyes. Not a thread of his dark pinstripe suit or hair of his precisely trimmed goatee was out of place. The desk he sat behind was ruthlessly organized. Hills was convinced the In and Out trays were perfectly balanced, but he wasn’t willing to risk a second look at the desk.

“I have read the incident report you have filed, Sergeant. I require a verbal account. Leave out no detail. Nothing is inconsequential.”

Swallowing down his fear, Hills began recounting his experience on the medivessel. The prime minister stopped him occasionally for further questioning, but he got through his report without throwing up on his shoes.

“You seem to have followed procedure to the letter.”

“Yes, sir. We’re all aware of how important the Amplifier is.”

Hills thought he saw a brief smirk on the PM’s face, but it was gone before it really registered.

“The Amplifier is crucial. You must be thirsty after that report.” Bellica pressed a button on the communications panel on his desk. “Janice, bring the sergeant a water.”

Sergeant Hills took another steadying breath. He felt the tension in his shoulders ease a fraction now that the worst was behind him.

I don’t see what all the fuss is about. He’s cold, but not that bad. Professional.

The door behind him opened, and a short, plump woman in a severely cut gray pantsuit brought in a glass of water on a tray and offered it to him. When he plucked it off the tray, sheretreated backward out the door. Hills took a sip. The cool liquid did wonders for his dry throat. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was.

“Thank you, sir. This was just what I needed.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.” Bellica sat back in his chair again, eyes level over his clasped hands.

Jackson Hills swallowed the last sip of water, then held the glass loosely, unsure of what to do with it. There were no handy side tables cluttering up the PM’s office. Pins and needles began to tingle in his fingers and toes, spreading up his limbs. The perfect posture he’d maintained throughout the debriefing became impossible to maintain. The glass slid from his fingers and rolled across the ground, stopping at the base of the desk. Hills’ knees buckled and he fell, face forward on the floor at Emil Bellica’s feet as the paralytic agent took effect.

Okay, so the stories were true.

Bellica pressed the button on his communications panel again. “Janice, you may send in the cleanup crew. I need someone to contact the Witch. We need the Twins.”

Halfway through Sergeant Hills’debriefing, Emil Bellica knew he’d have to see the medivessel with his own eyes. While Hills’ report had been thorough, there was no telling what effect the sudden disappearance of the Amplifier would have on the success of his projects, not until he could see the energy tanks himself.

He spent the journey reviewing budgetary spreadsheets and bids for future construction projects, a new training base on a satellite of Tanalia’s moon. His efficiency was greater than he’d anticipated, and Emil ran out of paperwork before he arrived,and his mind drifted to thoughts concerning the medivessel his ship was hurtling towards.

Few people knew how truly valuable Evelyn’s contributions were to Bauder’s future. Most had only a nebulous understanding of what the Amplifier did; they assumed her function was strictly for the betterment of the enlisted psionic soldiers. Emil preferred it that way. His plans were layered, and operating on a need-to-know basis kept intelligence from leaking.

Besides, nearly a hundred years of propaganda and selective retellings of events could easily obscure one princess and her foolish, altruistic self-sacrifice from public memory.

Five years after the Tanalian princess had grudgingly accepted his deal to assist with their psionic military research, Emil knew that the next five would never be enough to get the results he needed to breed the next generation of super soldiers. People on Bauder kept manifesting useless talents, completely unsuited to field application. A handful proved promising for intelligence work, and he’d focused on their training heavily.

By the time he had secured the rest of the royal family in their own stasis pods and had acquired a variety of Amplification energy tanks to run simultaneous tests from, Emil had realized that he’d struck gold with the princess. He began diverting all her tanks, all her blood samples, to the successor project immediately. He found the best genetic scientists in the system. If their salaries weren’t sufficient motivation, holding their families at the working end of a blaster usually did the trick.

Those scientists were sequestered in secret labs throughout the galaxy, working on bringing about the future of their leadership.

Once it had chafed that the best of the best minds weren’t being bred on Bauder. No longer. You could take someone’sexpertise as easily as you could take their crops or their natural oil deposits if you had the right tools.

With their scientists and the Amplification energy the princess provided, the successor was developing with precision accuracy. Each benchmark was being met in a timely manner. The long swaths of time spent in stasis were not affecting development negatively, and Emil suspected that the months spent in the Amplified environment were only speeding the evolution of his psionic powers. The course of his life was one that Emil had planned down to the last detail, and all those plans took time. While they waited, his scientists continued their experimentations. Beautiful, efficient weapons had been created under his command, capable of stopping an enemy combatant in their tracks.

But now that precious, precious fuel that the Amplifier had provided for his project was gone. He would need to inventory the tanks on the ship, see how much was left. How vital her retrieval was to the successful completion of the successor project.

The ship docked at the medivessel without incident, jarring him from his thoughts. Emil fastened the helmet on his spacesuit and transferred ships. The re-pressurization was swift, and the doors slid open to display the destruction the kidnappers had left in their wake.