Read Online The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) by Erik Wecks - Free Book Online

lovers. Really, the Unity forced us together. There wasn’t any other choice I could make. I’ve felt trapped ever since.”
    Anna shrugged her shoulders before continuing. “Don’t misunderstand, Jack and I have had some happy times. In fact, things were pretty stable until he got promoted. That kind of upset the apple cart again.”
    The Secretary let the silence linger for a minute. She didn’t try to answer her complaint or say that it wasn’t real, and when Anna glanced at her, she was looking down at her hands. Anna had the impression she was thinking something over. When she spoke again, her voice lost all of its business tone. This was a mother talking to her child. “You have a death sentence put on your head by the CEO of the Unity. You can’t go back to a simple life. It isn’t really an option. You need to accept that. Your best bet to live and save the lives of those you love is to embrace the people around you. The four of you are a team—not of your own choosing—but a team, nonetheless. You’re a makeshift family, and to be honest, unless something drastic changes in the Unity, all of you will probably always be looking over your shoulders. It’s easier to do that with someone at your side, even if that someone is flawed and broken.”
    Anna heard the words but the wound reared its ugly head, and she couldn’t really consider them, let alone accept them. The chance to speak her mind with simple honesty to someone who understood had done more for Anna than two years of medications, implants, and therapy. She needed to make some changes. “I’m not so sure I can go on with him.”
    “Of course, you have to make your own decisions.” Secretary Ohlson held her compassionate mask for just a second longer, and then the moment closed, and her speech took on its usual clipped quick pace. “Perhaps this might help. I have some information I would like you to pass on to the King and his ministers, and I have a business proposal for you.”

A little more than two hours after Dora finished scolding him, Jonas found himself dressed in the uniform of the Royal Marine Guards and standing beside his brother in a receiving line on the front steps. Below him, a procession of antique hovercraft climbed from the city in the valley at a measured pace.
    When the vehicles arrived, Aunt Dora stepped out, followed by Bruno Malek and his party. Malek’s girth made him impossible to miss. He wore a black hat, trimmed with white fur and a plume. His face was so rounded by his excess weight, it flowed directly into his shoulders. His dark hair lay in ringlets that just touched his collar. Jonas noted that Malek wore the bright green dress uniform of the Sadarian Guard.
    The Sadarians held out for nearly fifty years on Malek’s home world against the occupying Athenian military during the war of consolidation. Ironically, Malek’s own family had been given power by the House of Athena for its final conquest of the Sadarian holdouts. By wearing the Sardarian uniform to the palace, Malek put an unsubtle finger in the eye of the monarchy.
    In fact, the whole meeting was intended to be a finger in the eye of the House of Athena. It was no secret that Malek had ambitions for the throne, as delusional as that sounded to any rational person. As someone who had made his reputation as a soldier in his younger, less obese days, Malek had a strong following in his conservative dukedom Galatia, as well as a small but vocal fan base in the wider kingdom.
    Over a decade ago now, the feud between Jonas’ father and Duke Malek boiled over when the duke had been caught funneling weapons and funds to guerrillas fighting the House of Athena in the New Amsterdam archipelago. It was a testament to his popularity that he had survived that incident with his head intact. Rather than making a martyr of him, Jonas’ father decided to try to starve him into submission.
    Interstellar gate taxes were the main source of wealth for nobles in the