Chrysalis
Book One: Trial by Fire
By: Jessica "Allronix" Krucek

Chapter Three

  "Jessica Foxx, please report to the director's office immediately. Jessica Foxx, please report to the director's office immediately. Thank you." With another chime, the pa shut off and left Jessi and her friend staring at each other with confusion.

  "What'd you do to get summoned to the Dragonlady's domain?" Maureen asked dramatically after a moment.

  "Nothing that I know of..." Jessi's voice trailed off in confusion.

  "Oh, I know what it is, it must be some really impressive school back on Earth that is trying to recruit you to got here. They must be really impressive if the dragonlady wants to see you right away" Maureen teased. It was no big secret that a few schools were already "courting" her, trying to convince her to go there after her graduation from the Albert Einstein School, which was still three years off in the future.

  "One of these days she's going to here you call her that, Maureen...."Jessi glanced at her friend reprovingly. "But, do you really think that Mrs. Ingerson would summon me to her office for that? No... it has to be something different." Jessi answered.

  Maureen grinned unrepantantly. "I don't care if she hears me call her dragonlady.  She's *such* a stick in the mud."

  "Maureen!!" Jessi gasped in surprise.

  "Well, if it's not a school that's come to try and recruit you, then you must have won some sort of award." Maureen teased.

  "I'm not up for any awards right now, Maureen." Jessi tried to rule that possibility out too.

  "I bet one of your teachers nominated you for an award and didn't tell you about it because they wanted to keep it a surprise, and dragonlady just had to tell you herself."

  Jessi protested, "Maureen!"

  Maureen just grinned and paused as they reached the door to a chemistry lab. "Jess, you'd better get going to see what the dragonlady wants. You know how she doesn't like to be kept waiting."

  "I'm going, I'm going," Jessi answered, giving her friend a mildly annoyed stare. "Tell Mrs. Meyers I'll be back as soon as I can."

  Her friend nodded, going in to take a seat at one of the workstations.

  Jess headed for the director's office, her notebook held up in front of her chest like a protective shield. She really had no clue why she was being summoned. She arrived at the office, only to have the secretary usher her right in without saying a word.

  There was a man in a Ranger uniform standing next to the director's desk.

  Jessi had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "You wanted to see me, Mrs. Ingerson?"

  "Jessica, yes, yes, I did," the director seemed at a loss for words.

  The man in the Ranger uniform stepped forward and said, "Miss Foxx, I've been ordered to provide you an escort to BETA Mountain to see Commander Walsh."

  "Oh no, something's happened to my dad, hasn't it?!" Jess paled and clutched her notebook tighter.

  "I don't really know for certain, Miss Foxx. Commander Walsh will explain everything when you see him. If you're ready to go, Miss Foxx, we can leave right away."

   "Um, yeah, I guess..." she didn't know what to say.

  "I'll inform your teachers that you've been called away, and have them transmit your homework assignments to your home, Jessica." Mrs. Ingerson said, getting to her feet to show them to the door.

  "Homework? Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Ingerson..." the last thing on her mind was her homework.

********
  When she got to BETA Mountain, Zach was already waiting for her. He hugged his sister tightly, and broke away. Jessi noticed that his eyes were wet.

  "Zach..."

  "Jess," he said, his voice choking. "Dad's been captured. Walsh told me himself. I told him that...that the news might be easier coming from me."

  "Oh, Zach..." Jessi said weakly, hugging him again. "I don't want to be..."

  "Jessi," said Zach, "I'll...I'll try to take care of you, okay. We aren't going to be seaprated."

********
  The ride back to their home was silent. Jessi had burst into tears at one point, Zach handing her a tissue and staring out the window. They got in the house, GV unobtrusively locking the door behind them. Jessi sat on the couch, arms folded around herself. Zach just continued staring out the window, up into the sky, as if hoping that he'd see a Ranger cruiser land.

  Finally, Jessi turned to him, and said, her voice barely above a whisper. "What did the commander say happened?"

  "He said that Dad was out with his team, and that they got captured...didn't say by who, though. I walked outside, and heard from the technicians. They didn't think I could hear them but..." he stopped himself.

  "But what?" Jessi demanded, almost angrily.

  "Jessi, Dad was captured by..." he choked, then forced himself to say it. "The technicians said that he'd been captured by the Queen."

  "The Queen?!" Jessi sprung up, as if shocked. "Oh, no...Not...No..."

  Zach only nodded.

  "I can't believe it. Dad's..." Zach tried to find any words he could, but nothing came.

  "With Mom," finished a quiet whisper. Jessi got up off the couch, and hugged her brother. Right now, they were too shocked to cry or grieve.

  "Remember what Dad told us..." Zach choked out. "In case something happened?"

  Jessi nodded. "Yeah. The disks in the nightstand."

  They walked into their parents' bedroom. Zach went to work immediately, while Jessi sat on the bed. Zach opened the drawer on the nightstand, and found the disks listing the house's title, the bank register, and his father's will.

  He brushed away a tear as he worked. They were falling, despite his best efforts to remain in control. Like his father, Zachary Foxx Jr. tried to be stoic under upsetting circumstances, but didn't always succeed. Brushing away the wetness with his sleeve, he looked up and saw Jessi. She held a large picture in her hands. Zach sat next to her and looked at it with her.

  June 8, 2084...Zach had seen this picture many times, but never this way. His mother and father stared back from time. In the picture, they weren't much older than he was. This moment of their lives had been preserved under glass.

  And in a way, as far as anyone knew, they were together again, trapped under a different sort of glass.

  Zach felt the loss keenly, staring at the picture. *Mom and Dad...why?*

  And now they were gone. Pictures and memories were all that remained.

********
  "We need to strike now, before she has all her forces gathered." was Nagata's comment. "If we attack her when she is not expecting it, then it is BETA who has the advantage."

  "By sending our reserves on a suicide mission?" Wheiner countered with a sneer.

  "Do we just stand here, and let her wear our forces away by attrition, Senator?" asked Ambassador Waldo, the delegate from Andor. "Earth will still be captured."

  "Earth won't be captured," Wheiner said. "IF we don't put everything into a crackpot battle. Personally, I think this is a classic case of Commander Walsh exaggerating the threat."

  "It's easy for you to say that, living on Earth," argued Senator Cable, a freshman senator from Ozark. "But those of us on the border have put up with these skirmishes and grown worried."

  "Sacrifices have to be made, Senator," Wheiner told her with a sneer. "We can't afford to protect the entire League, not with the skirmishes reducing our troops! We need to set priorities."

  "You call it priorities, but I call it genocide!" Cable argued.

  "This is war, Cable," Senator Asami, Wheiner's toady-in-training, argued. "We can evacuate some of the border planets. Granna and Nebraska have already filed evacuation plans."

  "But the border is still vulnerable!" said Senator Lorel, the representative from Granna. "We can only evacuate a few thousand. There's over two million on Granna. Most of them are in remote areas and won't know until it's too late."

  "The Queen is not looking to invade in the immediate future," Wheiner said. "The last time she invaded, BETA decimated her forces."

  "She has tried before to invade Earth," Lorel corrected him, "And was stopped, just barely."

  "Does anyone still remember," said Ambassador Zozo, the Kiwi delegate, "That only two years ago, she was able to raid Kirwin and capture eighty human colonists?"

  "She doesn't have the manpower anymore," Wheiner said. "BETA's forces outnumber her."

  "That's why she's been doing these hit and run tactics," said Walsh. "Look at the pattern."

  He punched up a star map on the viewer. "Where she's been striking is sectors that aren't necessarily tactically important, but still need to be defended. These border strikes have already reduced our fleet by twenty percent."

  Asami said. "There is still the option of diplomacy."

  Cable spoke up, "I disagree *Senator* Wheiner," it was clear that she held him in contempt. "From the reports we've seen, the Queen of the Crown is a threat to *all* sentient life.

  No, I agree with Commander Walsh on this. We need to strike at the heart of the Queen's forces before they can strike at us."

  "By marching in there on a suicide run?" Wheiner countered. "On the recommendation of a commander who lost his best agents by trusting a Crown spy?"

  "We don't know for certain what happened to the Series Five team, Senator Wheiner, and until we do, let's not start by blaming someone else." The woman really had no respect for the sniveling little Senator. She wondered how the public couldn't see him for what he was, and not re-elect him to his senate seat.

  "And if they were captured, Senator," said the Andorian delegate, Ambassador Waldo. "Then it is all the more reason to strike immediately."

  Wheiner's eyes nailed Waldo to his seat. "I'm tired of you, Ambassador. I know how close you were with those...those reckless maniacs of Walsh's."

  "Reckless they may be, Senator Wheiner, but maniacs, no. I've seen more rabid people in this room than I have in my time with the Rangers." Waldo countered calmly, fixing Wheiner a stare of his own. "And I will bet, Senator, that if your plan succeeds, you will stay safely on Earth to look after your matters."

  "And by the time we put all our eggs into one basket," argued Walsh. "The Queen will have her forces gathered, and it will be even worse."

  "And then what if it doesn't work?" Senator Kastren said thoughtfully. The Senator was an pragmatic political independent from the Middle colonies. "BETA's forces have been hit hard by those border strikes. If we fail at this preemptive strike, the border will be even more vulnerable. We'd be an even worse sitting duck than before."

  "If we keep at our current plan, then the whole League is doomed. Not just the Border," Walsh was brutally honest. "But Andor, Kirwin, and Earth. The pre-emptive strike may sound rash, but if we sit and do nothing, our chances grow slimmer."

  That seemed to quiet the gaggle of hushed voices in the room.

  "The Queen won't be satisfied with just destroying the fleet, she wants bodies, live bodies, to fill her Psychocrypt." Walsh continued into the silence.

  "The humans will be conscripted," Ambassador Zozo said, the Kiwi uncharacteristically dour.

  "Her troops have raided Kirwin many times over the centuries."

  "Andorians and Kiwi can't be put in the Psychocrypt," Waldo said, backing up his colleague's statement. "Or else we wouldn't have lived long enough to form the League. If we fail to stop her before she makes that move, then none of us will have a chance of surviving her reign."

  The room was filled once more with murmuring... most of it in agreement with the attack plan.

  "The humans will all be enslaved," Waldo continued, the Andorian's voice level. "Andor and Kirwin will be turned to asteroids. And if the Senator still doubts this, he needs to talk to the millions of Andorians and Kiwi who lost loved ones to the Queen. She still doesn't acknowledge the League of Planets as anything but a rebellious fragment of her Empire."

  "The Gherkin refugees on Kirwin," Zozo said. "Lost their home world, their society, and their pride. Their families are enslaved in the Psychocrypt, and their culture has all but been destroyed."

  "You think we're exaggerating the threat?" barked Walsh. "You can tell that to the Foxx family."

  "And if we win, Sen. Weiner, we will have saved the lives of billions of registered voters," Cable added with an acid sweetness.

  Wheiner frowned, but sullenly sat in his seat. "Then, it is time to vote. All in here favoring Commander Walsh's attack plan?

  The board of leaders stood up and pressed the vote into their computers.

  "All in opposition?"

  Another group typed in an answer.

  "The final vote," said Wheiner, looking right at Walsh as he read the results. "Is Three hundred and two for, fifty-eight against. Congratulations, Commander."

  Walsh exhaled slowly.

  "This Emergency Session has been dismissed," Wheiner said, ringing the gong in back of him.

  The senators filed out, some glowering at Walsh, but most shaking his hand and wishing him luck.

********
  Zozo and Waldo stepped from the crowd, and came to Walsh's side.

  "We support you, Commander," said Zozo. "One-hundred percent."

  "I just wish I supported myself one hundred percent, Ambassador," Walsh admitted.

  "Your plan is sound. It is a bit rash, but it is based on the best intelligence we have," Waldo said sternly.

  "Which is nothing," Walsh said. "Wheiner is a pain in the ass on most things and a rat on most everything else, but he did have a point. If BETA loses this, it will probably be the end of the League itself. Putting most everything we can muster into a pre-emptive strike seems awfully damn foolhardy on some level."

  "But you've said yourself, Commander, that this plan is the best hope for the League," said Waldo. "It is not a wise plan to sit by and just let her keep attacking."

  "Is it the best hope for the League? Yes," said Walsh. "But, Waldo, if you want to know if the plan's wise, then the answer is no."

  "I see," said the aged Andorian. "Well, the decision is made. It is a sound plan. Go back to your home, and pray to whatever God you believe in."

  Walsh sighed. "I will, because only God knows how this will all turn out."

********

  The Queen had abandoned her formal gowns for a simple purple robe. She sat cross-legged on a satin pillow in the large room, surrounded by artifacts from many worlds. Books bound in leather, crystals, rich tapestries. Her study was her sanctuary. It was an elaboration of the home she once had.

  She repeated a simple chant and breathed deep of the incense smoke in the room.

  Her bones ached, and her muscles were knotted. Her head pounded. That little Ranger wench had taken more out of her than she'd thought. She had underestimated Niko. Of course, her attacks had been fueled by a lot of pain. It would cost that little minx dearly, too. Niko's shields were gone, and she was in a considerable amount of psychic pain. In addition to the torture, and the backlash-fever...if she died, she wouldn't be a threat.

  *Too bad she decided to resist and die rather than be sensible.* the Queen thought, opening her eyes and pulling herself from the soft satin cushion she had been sitting in. Niko wouldn't be able to survive more than a day or two with that much physical and psychic toll.

  Maybe she'd hold a funeral for Niko. Maybe cremate her in the tradition of the Home world, and send the ashes out an airlock. Oh, yes...or just send her corpse unceremoniously to BETA with a list of demands, but not before showing the mangled wreck to Captain Foxx.

  The Queen frowned. Captain Foxx would have to be dealt with. Such a strong will, and a powerful life-force...He wouldn't break easily, but he *would* break. She had justified it in a thousand ways. She didn't want him as a martyr, she didn't want him to die without telling her his secrets, he was an honorable enemy who deserved the opportunity to change his mind...but none of those were the real reason.

  She hated him. It would give her the greatest pleasure ever known to see his pride stripped from him. To see him cowering at her feet like a dog about to be whipped. It made her lip curl into a smile at the mere thought.

  She'd finally achieve victory, not only over him, but over *her* as well. The Queen opened her eyes and looked into the column before her. Inside the vault lay her most prized Psychocrystal.

  "Eliza," she hissed. "By the time I'm through, you'll no longer be a weakness to me. You and your mate will serve as an example to all of humanity."

  Oh, but she was still weak! Throwing a cape on over her robes, she called out to a Slaverlord outside the door. The door to her study opened and the wraith-like creature drifted in.

  The Queen limped towards it, and with unsteady hands, she gripped the crystal around its neck. Energy surged from it, through her fingers, bringing a pleasant warm rush, and eliminating the aches from her body. Soon, she felt strong again.

  The Slaverlord, however, was turned to ash. The crystal shattered, falling into useless shards on the floor.

  The Queen took a deep breath. She didn't like the fact that she was having to feed on her Slaverlords, but soon, she would have entire worlds of life-energy to drain. As soon as the League of Planets was defeated. After all, she had already taken care of those annoying Galaxy Rangers.

  There was a knock on her study door. The Queen stormed over to the great wooden door in annoyance and opened it. Captain Orthallan stood in the hallway.

  "How many times," she barked. "Must I tell you NEVER to approach my study, Captain?"

  Orthallan cleared his throat and straightened. "Highness. We have...unfortunate news."

  "Unfortunate?" the Queen asked. "Tell me, you fool."

  "There was a...jailbreak. Surely you know that one of your Slaverlords was lost in the attack..."

  The Queen knit her brows.

  "One of the Rangers has...escaped."

  The Queen smacked Orthallan with a brutal backhand. He fell to the floor, and she grappled him by the neck, fingers digging in like claws. Orthallan struggled for breath.

  "You idiot! Which one did you allow to escape?"

  She released Orthallan's throat, and he sucked in air. "Ranger...Ranger Niko, your majesty. She escaped with Ranger Gooseman's Psychocrystal."

  "WHAT?!" The Queen was turning dark with rage. "Orthallan, you will be murdered for your incompetence!" She turned to the guards. "Take this fool to Delon. See that he suffers."

  "But...but y..Your Highness," Orthallan said, slowly getting up from the floor. "We did capture the other Ranger."

********
  A group of guards dragged their prisoner roughly down the corridor. The Queen approached, and looked over the captive. The torturer had done well.

  "Ranger Hartford. How good of you to stay." She smiled when the unconscious Ranger didn't answer. She'd have to reward Delon for beating the sarcasm out of him.

  "Take him to the Psychocrypt," the Queen ordered. "Before he finds his tongue." The guards obeyed, and the Queen smiled at Orthallan. "I may let you live after all. Leave me."

  Orthallan nervously bowed and left as quickly as he could.

  The Queen walked silently over to a communications terminal and pressed a button. "Head Interrogator Delon."

  The Dathian man popped up on the screen. "Majesty."

  "I want to congratulate you on your handling of Ranger Hartford. I was tiring of his wit."

  "As was I, Majesty."

  "I would like to know whether you have a holographic recording of Ranger Niko's session."

  "Of, course, Majesty."

  "Wonderful. I would like to see you in my laboratory in two hours. I'd like to perform a few 'modifications' to it."

  "May I ask your reason?"

  "I'd like to stage a small 'demonstration' for Captain Foxx. I'll say no more until we meet again."

********

  It was nighttime on this side of Xanadau, and watching for danger on night-watch was more a matter of ritual, and teaching Novices discipline and endurance.

  But not tonight.

  Novice Kesty was manning her post on the Main tower, watching the stars, and charting them as part of an assignment from her teacher, Mentor Thella. Thella, like Kesty, was Andorian, but Kesty had been abandoned as a small girl by her smuggler parents, and Thella had found her on the streets.

  Hers was a common story here. Orphans, street children, foundlings. All of them Gifted in some aspect or another, whether in psychic gifts or extremely high intelligence. Xanadau was a sanctuary. Once you reached here, you would be healed, and protected. In return, you renounced your ties to much of the outside worlds. To Kesty, who had no ties, it was a good way of keeping this place sheltered. After all, once outsiders came here, paradise would be forever lost.

  She gazed up at the pattern of stars. the constellation of the Mothmoose had moved East a few degrees. She dutifully noted it on her paper tablet with her stylus.

  Now, where was the constellation of the Lovers?

  Once she had located the right cluster of stars, Kesty noticed something gleaming. *That's not right,* she thought. *It doesn't even look like a star.*

  But that gleam in the sky...it was getting brighter!

  She put down her tablet and picked up her telescope. The light was a shuttle, and it was landing!

  Kesty ran over to the warning bell, and pulled the string hard. The loud gong echoed through the village. She kept pulling and pulling.

  People started to flood out of the Collegum, and the Chambers, pointing and gasping at the light in the sky.

  It was in a nose-dive, and almost ready to crash unless something was done.

  On the ground, a group had already formed a large circle, and sent their energy to the shuttle, slowing its descent, and trying to guide it gently to the ground. It still landed roughly, but not crashing, as they had feared.

  Rushing over, several Novices were stunned to see a shuttlecraft this closely. Pushing the crowd aside, Master Adept Lannon rushed up to the shuttle, and using his telekinetic abilities, pulled the shuttle door open.

  They found the shuttle pilot slumped on the floor. At first Lannon thought she was dead, but when he rushed over, he saw that she was barely alive.

  And worse...he recognized her.

  "Get a healer!" he barked, "and get Master Adept Ariel! Tell her that it's her student!"

  Lannon looked down at the young woman's hand. Clutched in her palm as if her life was depending on it was a bright red crystal. With difficulty, he pried it from her hand, and looked at it, his eyes widening in shock.

  Pure psychic energy, with an incense evil aura that seeped into him the instant he touched it. Immediately, he shielded.

  "Novice Niko," he muttered. "By the Great Goddess of the Universe, how did you run across something like this?"

  Lannon took care to hide it in his vest as the healers came to take Niko away from the battered shuttle.

______________________________________________________

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