True allegiance book 3 o.., p.1
True Allegiance: Book 3 of the Halberd Series, page 1
True Allegiance
(Book 3 of the Halberd Series)
John J. Spearman
Copyright © 2018 John J. Spearman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1792661600
DEDICATION
For Alicia, who has made my life so wonderful.
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
Halberd Series
Gallantry in Action
In Harm’s Way
Surrender Demand
Pike Series
Pike’s Potential
Pike’s Passage
FitzDuncan Series
FitzDuncan
FitzDuncan’s Alchemy
FitzDuncan’s Enlightenment
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to acknowledge my readers. They are the whole reason to do this. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a favorable comment on amazon of goodreads. If you are interested in learning more about my other books, please visit johnjspearmanauthor.com.
1
Jonah was oblivious to everything in the outside world. He lay in a stasis pod in a medically-induced coma while his body slowly healed. What thinking he did in this state was limited to recurring nightmares of a beautiful woman being killed before his eyes, a friend dying as he held his hand, and bodies being sucked into a vacuum from what seemed to be a starship’s bridge. It was neither pleasant nor restful. Outside of the stasis pod, a variety of events swirled.
Remington and Winchester, members of the King’s Own, had arrested the would-be assassin who had sabotaged the stasis pod he thought was Jonah’s. The assassin was a paid professional. Upon questioning, he involuntarily revealed who had hired him to do the job. Armed with this information, the Office of Naval Intelligence, working with the Commonwealth’s MI-5 agency, tracked his connection back to the Sanies Corporation.
The full weight of the government descended upon the company. Overnight HM Revenue & Customs invaded the company and seized control of all documents and operating systems before they could be altered or deleted. The investigators found carefully concealed ties to the Johanssen family. The Johanssens owned one hundred percent of Sanies, through a smokescreen of shell companies. The investigators also found links between Sanies and the intelligence services of both the Rodinan Federation and the Chinese.
Negotiations had begun between the Rodinan government and the Commonwealth on ending their seven-year war. Representatives of the Rodinan government had reoccupied their former embassy on Caerleon. King Edward had placed himself in charge of these talks. Jonah’s girlfriend, Amy Davidson, was a key member of the Commonwealth team. She had been surprised when one of the leaders of the Rodinan group, Admiral Belyaev, had asked if he could visit Jonah in the hospital. He was disappointed to learn that Jonah was still in a coma.
On the medical front, Jonah’s recovery was accelerated once King Edward demanded to know why the use of medical nanites had not been approved for Captain Halberd. When the king learned that the request to use nanites had been rejected by a minor functionary, he exploded in a white-hot fury that no one had ever seen from him before. The director of the Commonwealth Health Service, as well as the First Space Lord and director of the Naval Health Care Administration, were given a tongue-lashing so severe they thought their ears would blister.
In short order, the latest generation of medical nanites, which included upgrades incorporating Edoan nano-tech, were injected into Jonah’s bloodstream. Regrowth of Jonah’s missing forearm and leg had already begun. The nanites speedily repaired the other damage, commonly referred to as space hickeys, caused inside and outside of Jonah’s body due to his exposure to the vacuum of space.
Eight days after administering the nanites, the doctors felt it was safe to bring Jonah out of the coma state of medical stasis. Amy and others had requested to be present for this, but the doctors advised against it. Patients who had been placed in medical stasis for a long period, particularly those who had suffered severe trauma, often experienced temporary memory loss. This memory loss and accompanying disorientation typically cleared up within 72 hours.
The doctors felt Jonah would be under enough stress and that Amy’s presence would add to it unnecessarily, especially if Jonah did not immediately remember who she was. With the king now taking a very aggressive and personal interest in Jonah’s health, the doctors assured her that he would receive the best possible care. They promised to call her, day or night, as soon as Jonah asked for her.
Jonah returned to consciousness completely befuddled. He had no idea where he was or what had happened to put him there. The bright lights overhead hurt his eyes. His throat hurt, and his mouth was dry. His left arm and leg itched like crazy. He saw a woman in a white coat and guessed she was a doctor or nurse and that he was in some medical center.
Noticing he had awoken, the woman asked, “Captain Halberd?”
Jonah’s mind raced. Captain Halberd…sounded familiar…Halberd, yes, I think that’s me, but captain? She seems to think I am so... “Yes?” he croaked.
Golly, he thought, that made my throat hurt. Do I really sound like that? That didn’t sound like me, I think.
“Captain, you’re in the Royal Navy Medical Center on Caerleon. How are you feeling?”
Caerleon, Jonah thought, capital planet…how do I feel? “Throat hurts.”
“Not surprising. You’ve had a ventilator tube stuck down it for nearly three months.”
The woman pressed a button and the back of the bed raised. When Jonah’s torso had been brought up to a 45-degree angle, she held a glass of water with a straw up to his mouth. Jonah took a sip of water and swallowed. It hurt, but his mouth was less dry. He took some more.
“Still hurts,” he commented, his voice sounding more normal to him.
“It will take a couple of days,” the woman counseled. “I’m Dr. Starn, by the way. I’ve been assigned to you since you arrived.”
Jonah nodded. He noted he could not see out of his right eye. He then figured out that he couldn’t move and looked down to see why. He saw straps holding him to the bed. He noticed an odd-looking tube attached to his left forearm. His eyes darted rapidly as he tried to make sense of it.
“Prisoner?” he asked.
The doctor smiled and shook her head. “Goodness, no. You’re a hero.”
“Then why…straps?”
“To hold you still,” she explained. “You’ve been in a stasis pod in a medically-induced coma for over eleven weeks. We removed you from the stasis pod this morning to bring you back to consciousness, but as your coma lifted, you started to thrash around. Bad dreams?” she asked.
Jonah remembered the things he had seen. He nodded slightly. His mind struggled to wrap around what she had said. Stasis pod and coma felt to him as though they belonged together. His thoughts whirled. “Injury,” sprang to his lips.
“Yes, captain,” the doctor responded. “You were injured severely.”
Jonah pondered with a frown on his face. “Don’t remember.”
“That’s normal,” the doctor reassured him. “Patients who have been put into comas often experience a temporary memory loss. It usually clears up in two or three days. The feeling of disorientation you’re undoubtedly experiencing usually goes away within the first twenty-four hours.”
“Mhm,” he grunted. “How bad?”
Dr. Starn had prepared carefully for this moment. “How much do you remember of who you are?”
Jonah shook his head. “You called me captain,” he suggested, fishing for more information.
“So, you don’t remember,” she stated.
Jonah frowned and shook his head slightly.
“Then I suggest you just relax for now, and we’ll talk about it more later,” she said, pressing a button on a stand next to the bed, lowering him flat. She dimmed the lights as she left. Jonah drifted back to sleep quickly.
When Jonah woke again, he was less confused than the last time. He knew he was in a medical facility and that he’d been injured dramatically enough to have been put in a stasis pod. He had some understanding that stasis pods were used for people with severe injuries. His throat still hurt, and his left arm and leg still itched abominably.
The lights were still dimmed and there was no one else in the room. He took a moment to try to self-assess what he knew. The doctor had called him captain and he was in a Royal Navy hospital, so he understood he was an officer. That meshed with some of the nightmares he had been having. For some reason, he was sure his name was Jonah. He lay in bed, puzzling things out for a short time. He was coming up with more questions than answers. The itching was a damned distraction.
The door opened and Dr. Starn came in, accompanied by a man in a similar white coat. As they entered, the lights came up. Behind them came another white-coated woman, pushing a cart with a tabletop on it. “Good morning, captain,” Dr. Starn said.
“Good morning, doctor,” Jonah replied, his voice once again raspy and unpleasant sounding.
The doctor raised his bed again while the woman pushed the cart to the side of the bed. Jonah looked at it. There was a glass of water with a straw, and what looked like a bowl of…his mind spun, searching for the right description…oatmeal. He was pleased with himself for remembering.
After pushing the cart to his bedside, that woman left. Dr. Starn then introduced the other man as Dr. Doyle. She explained that Doyle was his cognitive therapist who would assist him in restoring his memory. She put into plain words the fact that his brain had been asleep for almost three months and it needed to be woken up.
She also told him that the oatmeal would be the first solid food to enter his digestive system in three months and apologized if it was somewhat bland. She asked if he would like to try to feed himself. Jonah nodded.
Dr. Starns raised the bed even more and Doyle pushed the tabletop of the cart almost to his chest. Jonah was a bit confused. The table was mostly on his left side, but his left arm had a strange tube on it, so he couldn’t use it. He reached with his right hand and was bothered that he couldn’t see out of that side, needing to turn his head.
Picking up the spoon felt familiar, though. He dipped it into the bowl of oatmeal and lifted it. It shook a little. When he brought it near his mouth, he smelled it. It didn’t have much of an odor. He wondered if it were hot, so brought it near his lips to judge. It seemed warm, not hot, so he put the spoonful in his mouth. The doctor hadn’t lied. It was bland. He rolled it over his tongue, tasting and feeling it. It was not unpleasant, but he decided it would have been better if it were hot and not just warm. It needed some flavor too. For some reason, the idea of maple sugar popped into mind. “Maple sugar,” he mumbled.
Dr. Doyle smiled. “I wish we could give you some, but your diet will be restricted for a few days until your digestive system has had a chance to wake up too. You’re right, though. Growing up on York, you would have put maple sugar on your oatmeal.”
Jonah worked his way through the oatmeal manfully. He understood it would be good for him, even though it didn’t taste that great. By the time he finished the bowl, his stomach felt full. His mind continued to gnaw away at things. His home was on York, or it had been at one time. He knew York was a planet.
When he finished, Doyle pulled the table over to the side. Dr. Starn asked, “Captain, do you remember any more about who you are?”
“Is my name Jonah?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“Good,” he grunted, then tried to explain. “My mind is racing. I can’t seem to settle on any one thing.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Dr. Doyle stated. “I’m a cognitive therapist and I’m going to help you work through that confusion.”
Jonah nodded. “I have questions, though,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“Why can’t I see out of my right eye?”
“You lost your right eye due to an injury nearly two years ago,” Dr. Starn shared.
Jonah absorbed this information. While he didn’t have the sense of ‘knowing’ that, it didn’t seem ‘wrong’ either. “Why are my left arm and leg in these tubes and why do they itch so terribly?”
“Your arm and leg were sheared off by a powerful laser blast when your ship was attacked. You were also exposed to the vacuum for a time. There was damage to your lungs as a result and other internal damage because of microscopic air bubbles in your bloodstream. You were put into a medically-induced coma so your body could repair that damage. Your healing was accelerated recently when we injected medical nanites into your system. Your arm and leg itch because your body is regenerating, or growing, a new arm and leg for you.”
Jonah processed this news. It explained some of the nightmares he had been having. Regenerating a body part puzzled his mind. On one level, he thought it should seem strange, but again there was no sense of ‘wrongness’ to it. “Why does it itch?”
The doctor smiled sympathetically. “It itches because your body is growing new nerves in your new arm and leg. It’s a false sensation—just random signals in the new nerves. I’m told it is the worst part of the regeneration process, even though it is a positive sign that your nervous system is growing back. The good news is that you are almost halfway through the process and only have a little more than three months left before your new arm and leg will be fully useable. The itching sensation will only last another four or five weeks.”
“Ugh, it’s driving me nuts,” Jonah groaned. “Or maybe I should say, ‘more nuts’ since I’m already out of my mind.”
The two doctors smiled. “A sense of humor is a definite sign of good mental health,” Doyle commented. “That you can find something funny about your state of confusion tells us that you’ll be back to normal quickly.”
With that, Dr. Starn said her goodbyes and Dr. Doyle pulled out a computer tablet that he placed in front of Jonah. He began with a series of random images, asking Jonah to identify what he was seeing. The process fascinated Jonah.
2
On her way into the meeting, Amy received a message from Doctor Starn telling her that Jonah had come out of the coma but was suffering memory loss and disorientation. His vital signs were strong, and the doctor expected him to recover his wits in the next couple of days. That was as good as Amy had hoped, so she entered the meeting in a good mood.
Negotiations with the Rodinan government had begun only two days before. The war had ended with a cease-fire ten weeks earlier when the Rodinan military arrested and replaced the Federation government. It had taken them some time to establish a new governmental structure and to send their representatives to their former embassy on Caerleon. None of the Rodinans had been involved with previous diplomatic efforts before the war.
The Rodinans were led by Admiral Belyaev of the Rodinan Navy and Colonel Krupnikov of the Rodinan Army. The rest of the Rodinans seemed to be merely staff officers reporting to Belyaev and Krupnikov. The previous two days were spent establishing the framework for discussions. The meeting the day before had ended after King Edward had delivered a powerful opening speech.
The king had stated that the Commonwealth would demand no reparations from the Rodinans and explained why. It was clear that the Rodinans had suffered greatly as a result of this war, and equally clear that the fault for the war could not be blamed on anyone in the room. The previous Federation regime had started the war and the team representing the Rodinan government now had removed that regime.
For much of the previous ten weeks, Amy was busy negotiating with the German government and the government of New Delhi regarding reparations. The Rodinan Federation had attacked both and had held the planet of New Bremen for three years. The king acknowledged his ‘no reparation’ policy did not apply to them and any peace treaty they developed with the Rodinans was outside the Commonwealth’s authority. He did ‘hope’ that the two non-aligned systems would be satisfied if the Rodinan government established favorable trade agreements instead of cash reparations.
Amy was placed as the lead representative for the Commonwealth Foreign Service in the talks with New Delhi and the Germans. This was a significant career step for her, and, at the beginning, both looked to be doomed to fail. It was some of the most complex bargaining Amy could ever imagine. Both the Germans and the planet of New Delhi suffered significant damage and financial hardship at the hands of the Federation. Initially, both were intent on demanding cash reparations.
After riding out the storm of their desired vengeance, she was able to redirect the conversation to desired outcomes for all parties. She demonstrated how favorable trade agreements would generate nearly equal financial rewards for the Germans and New Delhi while strengthening their core economies—something that cash reparations would not do to the same extent. The trade agreements would also benefit in rebuilding the economy of some of the Rodinan planets, which would promote the stability of the new government and help promote a longer-lasting peace.
She finished those talks only a few days before the conference with the Rodinans began. On top of that, she knew Jonah was due to be brought out of his coma and wanted to be there to support him during his convalescence. During the difficult beginning of the deliberations with the Germans and New Delhi, she had spent many nights pouring out her woes to an unresponsive Jonah as he lay in a coma. Though he had no idea she was even there, the ability to talk through her problems had kept her calm and helped her sort out her priorities.
