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There was a chill in the air that had little to do with the weather or the ever-sinking sun setting on the brink of the horizon. The undeniable bitterness near the bottom of the world clawed at him, along with the pain in his heart, while the breeze tauntingly brushed against the lingering bump on his head. For the moment, he ignored it, content to stare up at the branches of the tree before him, as he ran fingers ran down its trunk.
The wind pushed harder into him, finally breaking him of his cool reserve. As his fingers curled into an angry fist, Exton Shepherd once more felt the temptation to give in to his vengeful desires.
“Aerie.” Defeat settled into him as he stared up at the Memory Tree.
Exton and his crew had finished replanting it only hours earlier. Afterward, the others slowly filtered away from the scene, leaving Exton behind.
He glanced behind him, where Petra’s campus lights began to shine as the end of the western Antarctic peninsula finally turned away from the sun.
Petra, while far from plenteous in its crops, would provide a steady stream of care and nutrients for the Memory Tree. It would grow to be a part of the land as much as it was already a part of Petra’s history.
Exton didn’t care about that. He missed Aerie.
How has she only been gone for just over a week?
She would’ve been pleased at his decision to plant the Memory Tree in his family’s new home.
If she had been with him, she likely would be buzzing all around the place, making sure that the tree could get the right amount of sunlight and that the soil had been dug deeply enough. Without her, it fell to Emery, his younger sister, to do just that. And Emery had reveled in it, giving them twice the amount of nagging needed.
But Exton knew it was not even close to being the same.
Maybe, he thought, on some level, the Memory Tree was having its own form of revenge on him. Wasn’t he the one to haul it out of its original home back in New Hope? Wasn’t he the one who ordered it ripped from the earth, only saving the slightest bit of it, before setting it down in the middle of the Perdition?
Now, as he studied its staggering, uneven branches, it was the tree’s turn to rip his heart out of his chest and replant it in an empty shell of his former life.
It was, he supposed, a possibility. But as he patted down the last of the earth around the roots, his heart ached with bitterness at the certainty of the truth.
This is all St. Cloud’s fault.
When his lumberjack crew accidentally captured Aerie at New Hope, he had only meant to steal the Memory Tree. He wanted to crush the heart of the URS, and stealing the tree that had survived through so much in its life, so much that it had become a symbol of their city, and by extension, the whole of the nation, seemed too easy a target to pass up.
He and his crew had attacked the city and stolen the tree, roots and all, burning the remaining seedlings, and retreated to the coldness of space.
Only to find Aerie curled up inside the tree.
He struggled to breathe normally as he thought about the moment he’d first seen her. His life had changed, even if he hadn’t known it.
But Aerie had not only changed his life—she’d brought his heart back to life. Her passion, her fire, her trust, her eagerness—all of it had called to him, crying out to him as he walked in the valley of shadow and death, beckoning him back into the sweet sunlight. Not even finding out she was the daughter of his father’s executioner caused his steps to falter as he came home to her.
It had been a miracle, an undeniable act of divine intervention.
Now, he was just a man with a crushed heart and a weakened tree for his trouble.
He smirked disdainfully. “Emery always warned me I loved irony too much,” he said, as the pain twisted deeply into his heart.
A beeping noise coming from his coat interrupted his thoughts. Seeing it was his comm device, he groaned, but he quickly freed it from his pocket, knowing it was the wiser course of action.
The voice on the other end greeted him in familiar, jovial tones. “Come in, Cap. Are you there?”
“Affirmative,” Exton answered. “How’s the weather up there, Jared?”
Exton could almost see the smile on Jared’s face. His copilot had always been eager to prove himself. He had embraced the opportunity to pilot the Perdition while Exton and his family remained in Petra.
“Definitely not as wet as Petra is looking. You’ve got a warm front moving in from the transantarctic mountains.”
“How long until it hits the settlement?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“I better head inside then,” he said. “Did you alert Aunt Patty?”
“You mean Director Ward?”
Exton ran a hand over his face in silent self-disgust. Just how tired am I? His aunt was a proud, stubborn lady, and she would bristle at his mistake. She was the one, he recalled, who insisted on keeping her title after fleeing the URS. Patricia Ward, his mother’s sister, did not believe in much, but for her, formality was a kind of comfort, one that was only put aside for family.
Since Exton tended to agree with her, he immediately rectified his lapse. “Yes, that’s who I meant,” he said. “Did you alert Director Ward?”
“I sent a message down to Director Caldwell, but I’ll forward it on to Director Ward as well.”
He had a feeling Tyler would have told Jared to inform Emery.
“Excellent.” Exton clicked off his device. Better get back before Emery gets worried.
Not that there was much to worry about. From where he stood, he could see Petra’s settlement clearly. Since they first established it, it had only grown. More defectors came to seek refuge from the URS and its oppressive government each year.
On some level, I suppose we should thank the URS, Exton thought. The United Revolutionary States, the former regions of UNA, the alliance between Canada and the United States, had prompted a lot of people to leave with their extreme censorship after MENACE, the Middle Eastern Nuclear Arms Coalition and Enterprise, had officially been destroyed. To maintain power, the ghost of the former enemy was resurrected; few knew the flesh and bones of the organization had permanently fallen.
The result was largely a war of the imagination, where the enemies had a façade and allies had a front. Exton knew this for certain, just as he knew that, as the ghost of Captain Chainsword, piloting the pirated starship Perdition, he filled a vital role in the reality of the URS’s imaginary war.
Exton walked down the path toward the settlement shields, picking up his pace. He knew that the rain was coming now, and not just from Jared’s warning.
“If you go in now, you’ll miss the storm entirely, Exton.”
Exton felt his feet stumble as he turned to face Merra St. Cloud.
She leaned against one of the many supply sheds outside the main campus, looking like a combat queen ready to face any battle that came her way. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her hair, a dark red streaked with muted shades of gray, was loose. “You enjoyed the rain when you were younger.”
Aerie’s mother is a lot different from what I expected.
When she showed up at Nova Scotia after Aerie had been lost to him, Exton was even more flabbergasted and flustered. Discovering Merra was alive had only been slightly less shocking than finding out she was the leader and coordinator of his rescue.
When he was younger, he barely paid any attention to General St. Cloud’s wife, often following the General’s own lead. She was a beauty, for sure, with her wild hair and glowing green eyes.
Seeing her now in her aviator’s uniform, with her goggles always either around her neck or up on her head as she waltzed around in full confidence, Exton had a feeling she had been purposeful in making herself known but easily forgotten.
Every day he spent in her company since the struggle with St. Cloud only made that instinct more pronounced.
“Being in space for so long has lessened my affection for the weather,” he told her.
“No wonder you fell for my daughter then,” Merra said with a smirk. “Predictability gets old.”
Exton said nothing as Merra came up to him. She was only a few inches taller than Aerie, he noticed. There were other, more subtle similarities between the two, but Merra’s presence only seemed to sharpen Aerie’s absence. Unlike Aerie’s open wonder and her curious energy, Merra’s gaze was full of shrewdness; her eyes were quick to spot weakness and her mind was always alert, working on a plan to exploit it.
“Why are you still here?” Exton asked, giving up on any pretense of patience. “Emery gave you and your ship clearance to leave once we arrived here. I already told you I’m not taking on additional passengers once I go back to the Perdition.”
“Why else would I be here?” Merra asked. “I’m here to help you, of course.”
He snorted. “Forgive me for my skepticism, but I know how much Aerie missed you when you supposedly ‘died.’ Why should I believe you are telling me the truth now?”
“Because now we can defeat the URS,” Merra said.
“So you need my help more than you want to help me?” he asked.
She frowned. “If we join forces, we can fight the URS and destroy them.”
“I doubt it,” Exton replied. “Grant Osgood is an evil man, to be sure, but he’s smart. We would need a lot more people to defeat him.”
“What about the Ecclesia?”
“You know as well as I do that many, while they do oppose the government, have no alternatives, or too many alternatives, to survive on their own. Not all of them will want to go to war, but all of them will hate us if we make them.”
“That does tend to be the drawback of supporting individualism,” Merra agreed. “But you can unite them, Exton. They know of what good you have done on the Perdition.”
“We’re pirates more than soldiers,” Exton told her.
“But you want to go to war, don’t you? You’ve always wanted this, ever since St. Cloud killed your father. That’s why you stole the Perdition in the first place.”
Discomfort settled into Exton. Is that what I was really after?
He thought back to his time onboard the Perdition. He knew it had been only a matter of time before the URS managed to find a way to reclaim or destroy the Perdition and its pirate crew. But he always assumed they would make the first step.
“The Ecclesia is smart to try to stay out of it as much as they can. Besides, religious dictatorships have a way of going bad, and fast, and they’ve known this. That’s part of the reason I’m the Captain of the Perdition, not one of their puppets or pastors or whatever.”
“I’m not talking about setting up a religious dictatorship. You can lead us back to what we once had—a free people, under a constitutional, democratic republic.”
Added into the seductive call of vengeance, the thought nearly consumed him.
But he shook his head. “No. I’ve already lost my father, and now I’ve lost Aerie. The cost is too high.”
Merra gave him a hollow laugh. “You think you’ve lost things?” She gestured around to the settlement and all the grounds surrounding it. “Some people have lost more. Some people have even less.”
“I can’t speak for them—”
“You could, though.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re scared to.”
“And rightfully so,” Exton snapped.
At his tone, she just arched a brow, acting as if he was a child throwing a tantrum. Exton glanced down to see that his hands were shaking. He tried to slow his breathing down and relax; he had to remain calm.
He had to remain calm or he would do something he would really regret.
“Look,” he said carefully, “I know the Perdition was meant to be a warship retreat of sorts. My father died protesting that. We keep it to protect people more than anything else. I won’t turn into what I despise to defeat my enemy.”
“That’s a shame,” Merra remarked.
“It’s a shame I know what power is, and that it has to be handled carefully?” he retorted.
“Carefully, yes. But you do have to use it where you can. Wasn’t the Memory Tree proof of that?”
Exton gritted his teeth. “Our retaliations were small,” he said. “We upset labs where illegal and immoral experiments go on. We’ve had to fight for supplies. We protect populations from needless violence when we can. We keep track of what they’re doing so we can put a stop to it quickly. It’s not the same as an open war.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Merra gestured toward Palmer Bay, where the water would lead to the open ocean. “Your attacks might have been small, but they succeeded. And you can’t discount Petra itself. Now the people have a nation that is a viable alternative. The URS is on the brink of being finished, but it only works if we are all in this fight together.”
“So you say,” Exton said as he rolled his eyes. “I know you’ve been in exile all these years.”
Merra frowned. “Just because I haven’t been there, doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on. I have my contacts, Exton, just as the Ecclesia and Victor have theirs. I knew enough to come and get you from Nova Scotia, didn’t I?”
It took Exton a moment to recall General St. Cloud’s given name, but less than a second to glare at her. “I’m not discussing this, Merra.”
“Pity,” she said. “Or maybe not, because this means I’ll get to talk to you about it, uninterrupted.”
“You know, you’re nothing like Aerie,” Exton told her.
Merra smiled. “And it’s to your advantage that I’m not. I’m actually comfortable with fighting for what I believe in, even if it costs me something.”
“I gave Aerie over to St. Cloud so he wouldn’t destroy Petra. You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t done that.”
“But he can destroy Petra anyway,” Merra pointed out. “You’re on the defensive, Exton. It’s only a matter of time before he tries to use the leverage you’ve given him to get the Perdition back in the hands of the URS, or worse.”
He hated that she had a point.
“You can’t win a defensive war,” she said. “At least, not effectively. You have less land, less access to resources, and less manpower. Petra doesn’t have the capabilities at this point to withstand one attack, let alone years of attacks. The only way you’ll win—the only way you can protect your friends and family, and get Aerie back—is to take the war to the rest of the world first.”
“Are you trying to frighten me now?” Exton asked. “Guilt didn’t work, so now you’re moving on to threats?”
“Logic isn’t a threat,” Merra insisted. “Besides, you know Osgood has been moving toward open war with you anyway. He has years of propaganda to use against you. And you know he has been planning something. His new communication system, his push for more recruits, and mobilization of his forces around different parts of the world—everything is in place for him to prop up a centralized government, one that would oppress people as much as it already does in New Hope.”
He really hated that she had a point. But war was still war. Lives would be lost, and forever changed. The cost was high—even if he wanted revenge against St. Cloud for all his cruelty.
He sighed. “Why do you want war so openly? What do you have to gain from it but trouble?”
“Because I want my family back!” Merra yelled. When he just stared at her, she continued. “I want my children and my husband, all of us, together, once more. That’s something worth fighting for.”
Exton could understand. His father had been killed by the URS. His mother died of grief. Their dreams had rotted away like the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, leaving a bad taste throughout the rest of the world.
Exton knew he had Emery, but she had Tyler, and now they had a baby on the way. Emery had a family now. He didn’t.
If only St. Cloud hadn’t destroyed Aerie’s memories of him when he used the Memory Serum, he might’ve had a family, too.
“Even if we went to war,” he said carefully, “the Aerie I knew is gone.”
“No she’s not,” Merra scoffed. “Just her memory of you is gone.”
“Her memory of me and everything the Perdition stood for.”
“If you don’t want to fight her for her,” Merra said, “I can see why you won’t fight for the rest of the world.”
He narrowed his gaze angrily.
She sneered back. “I suppose you think it would be best for her to continue her life in the URS? Maybe she’ll go back to that Rearden boy. He’s been very diligent about seeing to her care since she was returned.”
Exton felt a rush of unpleasantness pool inside of him.
“He has Victor’s approval, you know,” Merra continued. “He’ll be allowed to apply for cohabitation, see about getting them set up in a unit of their own.”
Exton struggled to push away the thought of some other boy kissing Aerie, holding her, keeping her for himself.
She’s mine.
Was it really such a risk to get her back? Even if it meant war? What if Merra was right, and they could win?
Merra’s just using you. She has her own agenda.
He finally managed to find some clarity at that thought. He couldn’t trust Merra St. Cloud any more than he was able to trust Aerie when he first met her. “Playing on my pride now?”
She smirked. “It’s working.”
The pounding in his head came as the rain started to fall. For a long moment, as the storm settled inside the Antarctic circle, Exton met Merra’s gaze coldly. “What makes you think we can really win?”
“First of all, you already have a large number of people who want to go to war on your side.” Merra gestured behind him, where Exton could see more men and women as they hurried into the shelter of Petra’s settlement.
“Not all of them do.”
“The URS has been vulnerable for some time now,” she continued, ignoring his small protest. “Like any good totalitarian regime, it’s sowing the seeds of its own destruction. They’ve been cracking down on dissenters and defectors precisely because they know there’s an alternative now. The Ecclesia has managed to spread the word around. More people are asking for Petra’s aid.”
Exton knew all too well of the power news and gossip had in the Ecclesia. He often relied on its accuracy, even though the leaders bemoaned its frequency. He sighed. “What else?”
“Osgood has largely finished consolidating his power,” she said. “Victor has been promoted to his Lieutenant Commander-in-Chief. Given his background in military leadership, his replacement would be easy to disregard, along with the rest of his inner circle.”
“Who replaced St. Cloud in the role of Chief Military Strategist?” Exton hadn’t thought about the general’s replacement.
Merra laughed. “It’s Gerard Dubois. He’s one of Osgood’s ‘yes men,’ all the way through. Victor hated teaching him while he was in school.”
Exton felt a warning shot burn through him. Before he could ask further questions about Gerard’s appointment, Merra once more continued on with her planning.
“It’ll be simple to take them down. We can use the ships you have in the Perdition, along with the forces I’ve accumulated from Chaya, and then ... ”
As Merra droned on, Exton made a mental note to tell Tyler about Gerard before allowing himself to focus once more on Merra. Given the option, he knew Merra would try to overrun him, and while he hated to admit it, she was already starting to make him reconsider his position.
He’d seen the end of the resistance, but he never thought it would be as volatile as it was shaping up to be. He knew the risks of going to war, and that had kept him from targeting larger camps or disrupting warfare with greater collateral risks.
But as Merra’s words washed over him, he recognized he had been far too quick to say Merra was nothing like Aerie.
Aerie had brought his heart back to life. Now, Merra was pushing for his hope.
He stood there, watching the Memory Tree as it weathered its first storm.
What could really go wrong if we went on the offensive? Exton wondered. The URS was already killing people. St. Cloud had Aerie tucked away, back under his watchful eye, and he knew about Petra.
What could they really do to him to make his life worse?
As if to answer his question, Exton felt pain rushing from the remnant of the bump on the back of his head, his souvenir from the battle with St. Cloud, as the rain began to fall.