Free The Terran Gambit (Episode #1: The Pax Humana Saga) by Endi Webb Page B

size of the Fury was beyond Captain Titus. He nodded in response to the Admiral’s monologue.
    The Admiral continued, the age lines on his face stretching as he smiled. “And what it tells me about the rebellion is that it is not dead. They will rise again, and will choose their moment soon, if I have a correct read on them.” He dropped his chin and glanced at Titus. “Which, I assure you, I do.”
    Titus protested. “The Earth rebellion? Rise again? But they are finished. They have no political organization, and their military ranks have been absorbed into the Imperial Fleet. What about the Truth and Reconciliation process?”
    “The Senate may have forced us into reconciliation with the rebels after the Dallas incident, but that doesn’t mean the rebels just went away. No, Captain. They are not finished. They are simmering below the surface. They know a watched pot never boils, and so they are lying low. Waiting until we are looking elsewhere. But they will choose their moment, and we will be ready.”
    Titus nodded. “Yes, sir. And so that is the nature of your mission? To wait for them to make their move, and then to crush them?” The Admiral had been on board three months, sending out a constant stream of communications through gravitic pods, and directing the Caligula ’s course from the privacy of the Captain’s ready room, which he had transformed into his command center in addition to his quarters.
    The chair swiveled back around to face the viewscreen, and Titus breathed a silent sigh of relief that he didn’t have to stare at the gaping hole in his face anymore. “You’re half right, Captain. We will not wait for them to make their move. We will, in fact, encourage them to take it. We will set it on a gold platter and decorate it and entice them to bite. And when they do, yes—we will crush them.” He keyed the display on the wall in front of him and it snapped to life. “Why I called you here,” he said, tapping the screen, indicating a stellar map of the galaxy within fifty light years of Earth.
    Titus looked at the readout and cocked his head. “Epsilon Eridani? But there are no major habitable planets there, just a—”
    “A mining settlement, yes, and a valuable member state of the Empire, however small its size. We need to go there. Have navigation plot a course.”
    “But sir,” Titus squirmed a bit. “Why do we need to go to a mining settlement? And especially one inhabited by the lowest forms of life in this sector of the galaxy? Smugglers, bounty hunters, pirates, slavers, you name it, Epsilon Eridani has it.”
    Admiral Trajan replied without looking up, for which Captain Titus was grateful. “You will know the reason eventually. Get us there within the day.” His tone indicated that the conversation had finished. Titus drew himself up to his full height and saluted before turning on his heel. “Oh, and Captain?”
    Titus paused at the door and turned to face the thin, black-haired man in the chair, who swiveled once more towards him, aiming the ghastly, empty eye-hole his direction again. “Convert one of the fighter bays into storage space. We are about to receive a large quantity of goods, and we will need a place to put them.”
    “But what about the fighters? If the bay is full of goods, we will lose fighter launch capability.”
    “Yes, I know that. Move them off to the side. Send them to the other bay. I don’t care. We will have to do without them for up to a week. Dismissed.”
    Titus had a dozen more questions for the Admiral—why in the hell they were relinquishing fighter support for a week chief among them, and what exactly was so important that it required one of the most advanced battleships in the Corsican Imperial Fleet to play the role of a common freighter—but he saluted again and closed the door firmly behind him, listening as the screeching music shifted to something even more ghastly than before, at a much higher volume.
    This was going to be an