Eternal Vows

When Chris disembarked in Kreutzer, she was greeted by King Edmond himself. After a flash of surprise, she realized that as the new commander, she should have expected it. She had already spoken with Edmond several times about military matters since Mat had been named heir a year ago, but it hadn’t really sunk in that she would be in daily contact now that Mat had ceded the position to her in order to propose to Sabine. When she had visited Karena as a child, her father – the king’s brother – often brought her to meet the king. Edmond favored her as a result, which was no doubt her father’s intention, though he had wanted her to become a princess and not join the military. But even when she had abandoned Kreutzer to follow her boyfriend to Vega, Edmond had been friendly. After the breakup when Chris knew she needed to get back to her home nation, Edmond had welcomed her back warmly. And when she had told him about the talented young man she had met in Vega’s military, Edmond had given that man an interview and Mat had joined Kreutzer’s army. She had always been close with Edmond, but never like this.

She bowed formally and was a little relieved when Edmond smiled.

“Will Prince Mat and Queen Sabine be in touch with me soon?” he asked.

“In the next day or two,” Chris said. Sabine was still in the process of claiming Lohen’s territory in the Unclaimed Quadrant. She would also need to renegotiate with Adrian after her second-in-command had violated their treaty in an attempt to find and kill Treza. Formalizing the engagement was important, but not especially urgent.

Edmond gestured for her to follow and they went to a private room. She sat across from Edmond and tried to feel as comfortable as she had felt when she was only a captain. Somehow, being a commander changed everything. Mat and Damien believed in her, but she didn’t quite believe in herself yet.

“When I negotiate with the queen, she will likely take our holdings in the Unclaimed Quadrant. I have no political problems giving them up, but I need to know any military details that will affect the decision.”

Chris considered. They mostly held the Unclaimed Quadrant for territory, not for wealth or materials. Since they also held Calib, giving it up wouldn’t be a loss. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure how to arrange the new border to reflect the reactive stars. The discovery that Lohen now had four solar flares changed everything, and even though Damien had left all of the information on fighting them, she was still learning. They were all still learning. She would need Damien to plan the new border. Or Kyla, Damien’s former second-in-command. After all, Kyla was the expert at planning borders, not Damien. She wasn’t sure what position Kyla would take in the army, but borders would probably remain with her for quite a while until Chris and the other captains learned enough to do it without help.

“I can create the new border,” she said. “But there are some planets we may need to keep. I don’t know what they are until I finish planning the border, and to do that, I’ll need assistance.”

Edmond nodded and a grim look crossed his face. “The threat of solar flares?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I hear we’ve absorbed some soldiers from Lohen,” Edmond said, surprising her. The news hadn’t spread far, but then again, this was the king. Of course he would know. “Are they trustworthy?”

“Yes,” she said simply. Damien had looked over the names of the soldiers they had been holding as prisoners of war and vouched for all of them, even the young recruits. She trusted his assessment of them and she had interviewed each of them briefly. Their loyalty was now to Kreutzer, even though it wasn’t to Chris specifically. They had each assured her that they would have no hesitation following her commands. Even the recruits had the discipline that made Lohen’s troops so formidable. Now she understood why that discipline was so necessary. Not only had Lohen been protecting the solar flares in Elnor, their silence had protected the entire galaxy from panic. She remembered what Damien had said once about why he was in Lohen, and how if they knew why he was there, they would want him to stay there. She reluctantly agreed that Damien’s presence in Lohen had been absolutely vital – to a point. He should have taken action against Alexander faster, before Alexander had the chance to turn on him and set off the flare at Sola. But who would suspect a king capable of setting off a solar flare on his own people?

Edmond nodded. “Please keep me informed as you adjust ranks after your promotion. And congratulations, Chris.”

She smiled, a little shyly. “Thank you, sire.”

“You’ll need a new name,” Edmond added. “Something to give you anonymity and protect your friends and family. Do think on it.”

“I will,” she promised. It had never occurred to her that she would need a new name. Mat hadn’t been Bode when they were on Vega, but it had always been his name since he became commander. Treza and Eve had always had those names to her, and so had Ultia and Krosil. Even though she knew most of their real names now, she hadn’t realized that she would be joining their ranks. They seemed other, above her. She didn’t feel justified in taking a name and becoming like them.

“We have more to discuss, but it can wait,” Edmond said. “The solar flares and Lohen pose a problem, but I know you need to focus on the troops right now. When I’ve negotiated with Queen Sabine, I’ll have more information for you. You’re welcome to speak to me earlier, of course,” he added. “You have most of the information on the flares, but not all.”

“Of course, sire,” she said, thinking of the conversation between Damien and Alexander that had been recorded and that she would eventually need to listen to. She wasn’t quite ready to hear the acknowledgement that someone had destroyed his own people like that, but that was their enemy now. She needed to come to terms with it.

Edmond dismissed her and she headed towards the command center, letting Bryce, her new second-in-command, know that she wanted to speak to Kyla. Kyla didn’t really have a rank yet. She was a high-ranking captain. That was about it. Mat had given her fairly high console privileges and Chris was prepared to keep them, and Kyla also had access to the command center. But her exact position was undetermined. Chris still wasn’t sure where to put her.

As soon as she walked in, however, a lieutenant handed her a communication.

“The fleet at Harali, lady. The captain wishes to speak to you in private.”

Chris nodded and headed to a private room to accept the call. The fleet at Harali was part of the Kreutzer army but had always remained slightly removed. They had been recruited as a single unit, a single fleet, and remained that way. The captain, Jason, answered almost immediately; the message must have just come.

“Lady,” the captain began, “I noticed the troop changes along Lohen’s border. Is there a conflict?”

Chris frowned. There was no real reason for a fleet on the opposite side of Kreutzer to be interested in Lohen’s border. They were free to access the information, of course, but why? She considered her options. The solar flares hadn’t been announced yet. They would be announced when the large-scale troop movements began in about three days, though she would start letting the captains know in advance. She hadn’t planned on letting Jason know until the end of that process, but there was no real reason to delay that knowledge if he was asking. He would learn about it in less than a day no matter what.

“This information is not known to the wider army yet, but there is a threat of solar flares along our borders,” she said, and to her surprise, Jason didn’t look shocked but instead looked grim.

“Is Treza dead?”

“No,” Chris said slowly. She thought about the fleet. They had appeared right after the ceasefire with a glowing recommendation from Adrian, something few soldiers ever received, let alone an entire fleet. Their specialty was borders and fighting Wendigo.

“You were from Lohen,” she said as the pieces fit together. “Treza’s people. But why did you leave?”

The captain lowered his eyes.

“We knew this would happen, lady. We knew Alexander would turn against Treza. How did he survive?”

“He was here,” Chris said. “Sola – and all of his troops – were caught in a solar flare.”

Now Jason looked sickened, and furious. Clearly he wanted to say something, probably something negative about Damien if he had known Alexander would act against Damien at some point, but he bit his tongue and said nothing.

Chris tapped her lips.

“Treza left us in charge of defending against the solar flares and tracking them down. He shared his information with us. I assume your fleet knows all about them.”

“Of course, lady.”

“We’ve admitted the prisoners loyal to Treza into Kreutzer’s army. You’re already part of the army. Would you object to disbanding as a fleet and joining my other fleets in smaller numbers?”

The captain considered for a moment, then nodded slowly. “We understand the danger, lady, and our vow to protect against solar flares comes before all else. I will make sure everyone is willing to join a different fleet when it is time to do so.”

Chris thought back to Damien’s troop movements. There were plenty of troops in this area and Damien had mostly rearranged their patterns, not their positions. She would ask Kyla if disbanding the fleet would cause major problems because integrating over sixteen hundred troops with intimate knowledge of Elnor and the solar flares would be invaluable and give her other troops a boost in morale.

She thanked the captain and returned to the command center where Kyla and Bryce waited. Bryce was now in charge of Calib and the Unclaimed Quadrant as second-in-command. Chris hadn’t decided who would captain her personal warship, but she had been considering Kyla. The woman was capable, she knew how to handle Lohen, Elnor, and Wendigo, and probably Ultia’s army as well, she would bring a different perspective on battles, and it would allow Chris to keep a close eye on her. She was still injured, though healing quickly, and she and Bryce bowed lower than Chris expected. Then Chris remembered she was commander now. It would take some getting used to.

She went to the command console and zoomed in the maps on the Unclaimed Quadrant.

“Kyla, I have two questions for you. First, we may lose our holdings in the Unclaimed Quadrant and I need to know which planets we have to keep and which we can afford to lose along this border.”

She input the probable new border, already seeing how it conflicted with Damien’s troop movements. Kyla nodded and immediately pointed to a cluster of planets.

“We need to keep Citros and the surrounding planets here, lady,” she said, and Chris was pleased that she said ‘we’, not ‘you’. “And in exchange, we can give her these planets here. Troop movements won’t need many adjustments; Treza anticipated this but didn’t know the timing.”

Chris grinned. Of course he had.

“I also need your help here,” she said, pulling up the maps of the area where Jason’s fleet was stationed superimposed with the troop movements that would be starting soon.

“A fleet of Treza’s soldiers are stationed here, and I want to integrate them into the entire army.”

She would have continued but stopped. Kyla had drawn in a sharp breath.

“They came here, lady?” she said in a low, dangerous voice.

“I only just found out who they were,” Chris said. “Do you have a problem with them?”

“They defected, lady,” Kyla said. “Right when we needed them the most.”

Chris considered. If the fleet had joined just after the ceasefire, then that meant Damien had lost three fleets before the ceasefire, one of them voluntary. A fleet that would abandon its commander after he had just lost two fleets had questionable loyalty, but Adrian had recommended them with no reservations. Their reasons for leaving, then, must have been acceptable to Adrian and by extension Damien.

“Did Treza know?”

Kyla scowled. “Treza helped them, lady. None of us knew where they went.”

“They will be integrated into the rest of my army, captain,” Chris said firmly. “Will you or any of the soldiers who were with you have a problem with that?”

Kyla’s jaw clenched and she waited before answering, but Chris didn’t pressure her. She wasn’t pushing off her answer, she was coming to terms with the answer she had to give.

“I have no problems, lady, and the soldiers won’t either as long as they know in advance. I may need to talk privately to a couple of the officers.”

“Good,” Chris said. Kyla nodded as if to herself and the rage left her face. Instead, she was studying the map.

“Jason is a good captain, lady,” she said. “He was third-in-command.”

Chris managed not to gasp. Treza had lost his third-in-command? No wonder he had been in such terrible shape during the ceasefire. He had never even mentioned the loss of his captain or the fleet, and he had told them almost everything. She would need to scrutinize Jason and meet him in person. Adrian, Damien and even Kyla now vouched for him, but that kind of betrayal was not lightly overlooked.

Kyla gestured toward the map and Chris turned it towards her, allowing her to demonstrate where the troop movements would shift without the fleet. It was only minor shifts and they discussed the movements for a while before deciding that it could easily be done. They didn’t have a good plan for moving all of the soldiers to the other fleets, but Chris would ask Damien for help. With everything in place, she set the new movements into the plans and began preparing to speak to her captains. They respected her as commander, but she needed to be just as strong as Mat always was as she explained the solar flares and the upcoming troop movements. She settled back into the command chair, trying to get used to her new view.