FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter five

The Two Sides of

Kieran O'Rourke

Kieran O'Rourke awoke to the sound of her comm-station's alert signal. Drowsily, she got out of bed, wrapping her bed robe around her, and stumbling over to her desk. Unfortunately, such occurrences were not uncommon, but a good night's sleep was a small price to pay in exchange for the power and prestige that came with being a Hegemonic System Governor. She put on her sternest 'why the hell did you wake me up?' face, but it instantly dissolved into a huge smile when she hit the answer button and the face of her caller materialized on the screen.

"David!" she exclaimed, "What are you doing calling at this time of night?"

Her husband smiled back at her, "It's mid-afternoon by me, babe. We've gotta get you out of that cushy governor's palace and back onto the bridge of a ship. The galaxy moves on Olympian time."

"So what's up?" she asked as she hugged herself against the night's chill and leaned in closer to the screen.

"I've got some bad news, sweetheart. The Rovellans have launched a new offensive in the Killrahbi sector. The colony on Tanaeus Four was wiped out. The Burnside's battle group is heading out for extended HK duty."

"So what does that mean, David?" she asked with a suspicious look, and a decidedly icier tone in her voice.

David O'Rourke sighed, "It means that effective immediately all leaves are canceled," he finally answered, looking away from the screen. He knew his wife's reaction would not be pleasant.

"What?!! Oh, David! You haven't been home in almost a year! Davey was so looking forward to you being here for his birthday!"

"I know, sweetheart, but I can't very well take a leave myself, and deny it to my troops. Especially when we're about to head into combat. We're in a war, and my place is on the bridge of my battleship."

"Well when do you think the next time you'll be able to make it back will be?"

"I don't know, sweetheart. We're due in for refits in six months, I can probably leave that to my XO, and visit then."

"SIX MONTHS?!!" she screamed, "David that's ridiculous! No one goes a year and a half without leave! No one! Not even admirals! I'm going to call the Councilor of Defense in the morning, they can find another battle group to go deal with the Rovellans!"

"Damn it, Kieran! I don't want you pulling any strings for me! We talked about that! Now I don't like this any better than you do, but I need to be here!"

There was an awkward silence for a few moments, neither of them looked directly at one another.

"I know," she finally relinquished in a hollow voice. She turned her head away from the screen, fighting back tears, "I know..."

"Sweetheart," he said to her gently, "I don't want the last time I talk to you for six months to be an argument."

"Alright, I'm sorry," she said softly, "I just miss you."

"I miss you too, sweetheart. Look, we'll probably have to put in for repairs before our tour is up. If we do, I can probably sneak away for a few days."

"Repairs? Are you expecting trouble?"

"With those lizards... who knows," he shrugged, "The Krethanex are pressing them from their end, so we're trying to move on Olm Naefti. The rebels there have agreed to join the Hegemony if we get to them before the Krethanex do."

"I don't blame them," Kieran shivered. The Krethanex were notorious for their xenophobia regarding other insectoid races. Truthfully the Naefti were better off with the Rovellans than being absorbed into the Royal Dominion of the Krethanex.

"I'm pretty sure High Command wants to remove the Rovellans from the playing field once and for all. We've lost too many colonies along the border to just leave them bottled up in their own little region."

"Well, be careful."

"No, sweetie, I thought I'd order the Burnside to run headlong into a Rovellan fleet formation," he quipped.

His comment got the desired reaction when she smiled and wiped away some of her tears. She was about to reply when a secondary comm beeped on his side.

"Hold on," he said, and Kieran's screen went blank for a few moments as David switched channels. His image rematerialized a few seconds later and he looked decidedly disappointed, "Sweetheart, I'm gonna have to go, we're about to make our jump. Tell Davey and Jessica I love them."

"I will. I love you, David."

"I love you too, hon..." his last words were cut short as his ship entered the jump hole created by his fleet's carrier.

Kieran sat for a moment looking at the frozen image of her husband on the screen. Finally she turned it off and returned to bed. She wrapped her covers around herself and hugged a large pillow close to her, wishing it were her husband.

Kandria could tell that the Governor was in a bad mood without any use of her psychic abilities. The Governor was not wearing any make-up, which made the bags under her eyes more apparent, and her long red hair had been thrown into a hasty pony tail, instead of the intricate braids that the governor favored. Her uniform was crisp and neatly pressed as usual, she would never have disgraced it even on her worst day, but the scowl she wore on her face crowned the foul aura she projected.

{This is going to be a fun day,} Kandria thought in her native Lakian.

Governor O'Rourke stopped next to Kandria, but said nothing. She simply stood there and watched her children playing across the courtyard with Ruulraar. She noticed that his mane had been shaven... again.

"What did he do this time?" she asked flatly, still watching the kids.

"We had a little... dispute last night, while making the deposit. He needed to be reeducated as to the hierarchy of our relationship," Kandria explained.

The Governor frowned, "If it wasn't for the fact that he's so good with the children, I would have made David sell him long ago."

"He is very loyal to you and the General, just very disobedient," Kandria agreed.

"Leosians tend to have that defect, and unfortunately David encouraged it during the years he had Ruulraar before we were married. It's given him the idea that he should be treated as an equal. He doesn't accept his role in the galaxy."

"As I attempted to explain to him last night, Governor. Though I don't believe that the beast has the cognitive abilities to understand," Kandria said arrogantly.

Governor O'Rourke grunted a laugh in agreement. She turned and walked back into the palace. Kandria followed a step behind, toting her computer pad.

"So what's on the agenda for today?" the Governor asked her assistant in a tone that suggested any answer would be displeasing.

"Well there was another demonstration in the mining colony on Dunar Five by Eechena activists..."

"Arrggghh!" the governor growled, "Those assholes again! Have a battalion of infantry deployed to the colony. If GalPol can't keep order there, then we'll show the Eechena some real Hegemonic citizens doing their duty."

"With all due respect, Governor, that may be inappropriate, they are second class citizens... they do have some rights," Kandria cautiously suggested.

"Nonsense! They're disrupting vital operations. When they can behave like true citizens, then they'll be treated as such," she said angrily as she flopped into the chair behind her desk. "Besides, it will show High Command how I would handle these 'activists' all over the sector if they promote me to Sector Governor. Then we can get off of this forsaken dust bowl."

"That would be nice," Kandria agreed as she adjusted the temperature on her environmental suit. Alakáns were from a frozen, icy world, and started to suffer from exposure at about sixty degrees Fahrenheit. At a balmy average temperature of one hundred degrees, even Ruulraar found Dunar uncomfortable.

"Speaking of which," the Governor made the knife-across-the-throat motion, indicating to Kandria to turn off the recording device on her pad, "how goes our operations against Soto?" she asked, referring to the Martian governor of the neighboring Zai-Obri system. "I take it well if we made another deposit last night."

"Yes and no, Governor..." Kandria answered cautiously. The uneasiness in her voice was obvious.

Governor O'Rourke raised an eyebrow at her, then sighed and spun her chair around to look into the portion of her aquarium that faced her office. Having the gigantic structure built into her palace, with the tens of billions of gallons of valuable water used to fill it, was as much a display of her might on this desert world, as it was to remind her of her childhood home on the Europa colony. "Let's hear it..."

"Well our privateers were successful in their last mission, but when they dropped off our take to me last night, I easily sensed their captain's deceptive intents. Sure enough, after our transaction he intimated that he might want favors in return for keeping silent once you became Sector Governor."

"Blackmail?"

"Indeed. I had the forethought to place a kill switch on the transponder-scrambler we gave them. Once they left orbit, I deactivated it and they were detected by our regular patrols. The list of offenses associated with their ship's true transponder code was so long, that... well... our loyal pilots had no choice but to fire on sight. I'm sorry to say that there were no survivors," she added sarcastically.

"What a pity," Governor O'Rourke agreed as she spun back around to face Kandria. "But we will need to find some manageable lowlifes to replace them."

"I suppose the best place to begin recruiting would be in one of the major cities on Eechen. There are enough dives and hang outs for the types we need around the starports there to find some suitable scum. Smart enough to get the job done, but not too smart."

"Sounds good. So getting back to legitimate business," Governor O'Rourke nodded and Kandria began recording their meeting again.

They continued for another hour, going over all of the annoyances Governor O'Rourke had to deal with as the single-handed head of an entire star system and its inhabitants. When their briefing was over, the Governor began her day. Kandria found Ruulraar, and took the Leosian with her in a shuttle to Eechen, the most populated planet in the sector.