Shades of Empire, a dark space opera/romance, is set in the far future and incorporates three separate love stories. It begins in the harem of Emperor Lothar du Plessis, absolute ruler of a planet known as Gaulle. In Chapter Two the action switches to the merchant starship Queen Bee, owned and captained by Madeline Palestrino. This book is free in Kindle Unlimited.
Her first mate had a stoic expression when she told him she was leading the expedition herself. “Be careful, Maddy.”
She grinned, knowing that he wanted to go. “Aren’t I always?”
He snorted as he checked the fastening of her helmet clamps. “Sure, sure. Just like the time we went after the Emperor Lothar.”
She frowned at this mention of past adventures. “Take care of my ship, Niels,” she said as she stepped into the shuttle.
“I will.” He swung the bay door shut.
Madeline heard a thunk as the lock engaged.
The four other members of the expedition, fully suited, waited for her on the shuttle. Madeline took a seat at the back and let the safety harness envelop her. A shuttle ride always made her feel claustrophobic. The confined space, defined by a center aisle with five seats on either side, seemed too small for the passengers, even now with only half the seats occupied.
Also, the loss of the ship’s artificial gravity when the door locked invariably disconcerted her. Her magnetic boots held her feet to the deck, but the deck no longer felt like the floor when her arms floated at her sides.
The trip took only a few minutes. She heard the soft whir of the docking port engaging and the abrupt whoosh as their harnesses retracted.
“Face plates closed,” Madeline said.
Madeline waited until she heard four distinct clicks, and then pressed her own helmet control to close her face plate. She locked it with her chin control, and then stood up.
Magnetic boots clanged on the steel deck as the five of them started walking.
The iris of the shuttle’s docking port opened smoothly, but instead of the inside of an airlock, Madeline saw the pitted surface of a docking hatch.
“What the hell?” she said under her breath. She had been last in line, but now she pushed her way forward. “What’s wrong? Why didn’t the pod hatch open?” Her voice sounded breathy on the com, as if she were out of shape. 
Mahler had been in the lead. He stepped back now and used one gloved finger to trace a thick metallic ridge, just visible where the lip of the docking port met the skin of the life pod. “Look at that, skipper!”
For a moment Madeline stared at the ridge without comprehension. It looked almost like scar tissue. Finally, she understood. “It’s welded shut!”
Mahler nodded. “It sure is.”
Clinking noises sounded behind her. Madeline realized her crew members were talking to each other by touching helmets to carry the sound, so that she couldn’t hear them. “Coms on full,” she ordered at once. “If you’ve got something to say, let’s hear it.”
After a brief silence her senior tech spoke up. “Why would anyone seal up a life pod like this, skipper? Unless there was something dangerous—”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but three helmeted heads nodded in agreement.
Madeline frowned.
Before she could speak, Mahler pointed again. “Hey, isn’t that—”
He stopped, and they all stared at the swirl of gold lines at the top of the hatch cover.
Madeline reached out her hand and traced the gold ridges that looped and whirled back upon themselves. “The Emperor’s personal seal.” She couldn’t feel any texture through her glove, except that the seal was solid, not holographic.
There was another silence. The crewman at the back of the line tried to shuffle his feet, and swayed back and forth as the magnets held his feet down. Lineaus was new to the crew of the Bee. He needed practice at this kind of exercise.
“So,” Madeline said, “Emperor Lothar doesn’t want us to open this life pod. Seems to me that that’s a damn good reason to cut it open right now.”
Someone sighed, and Madeline grinned. “No sense being stupid about it, though. Buchanan!”
Her senior tech started. “Yes, ma’am?”
Madeline patted the dull black surface of the hatch cover. “See if you can find out more about what’s behind this door before we cut it open.”
The line of men seemed to relax all at once. Madeline resisted the temptation to check the charge on the laser pistol attached to the leg of her suit. No sense making them more nervous.
Buchanan stepped up to the hatch and opened his tech kit. After a few minutes with a portable scanner pressed against the hatch, he shook his head inside his helmet. “I think there’s someone there. I get a life sign reading, but there’s no sound to speak of.”
“Just one person?”
He nodded, and then his eyes opened wide. “Wait!”
“What?” Madeline demanded. “What is it?”
“Voices! I hear voices. Someone screaming—a woman I think. And someone crying. No, wait, now it’s a man talking. Damn, I can’t hear well enough!”
Madeline made up her mind. “Okay, that’s enough. If Emperor Lothar has someone shut up in there, we need to get him—or her—out.”
She stepped back as her crew moved to obey her.
There was no further suggestion that the life pod was too dangerous to breach. Instead, Mahler and Buchanan operated the cutting tool that was part of the shuttle’s emergency equipment, while Doc checked his medkit, and Lineaus watched the thin crack on one side of the hatch grow steadily longer.
Finally, the tool moved back to the top of the long irregular oval, almost completing the cut.
Madeline stepped forward and punched the center of the oval. The piece of titanium alloy clattered noisily in the thin air of the shuttle as it bounced off the airlock walls. Beyond the opening, Madeline saw only darkness.
She stepped up to the ragged hole and shone her helmet lamps into the life pod’s airlock. Empty. The lamps made cones of light that cut through the blackness, but they illuminated nothing but an uncluttered airlock.
Mahler peered around her. “Looks damn near new.”
Madeline agreed. She climbed through the threshold they had made and took a few tentative steps. “Wait there,” she said, when she saw the controls for the interior hatch. “Let me check this out.”
This hatch looked perfectly normal. The dials appeared to be working.
“Check your helmets,” Madeline called out. “There’s not a whole lot of air in here.”
She heard clinking noises as they all checked each others’ helmet clamps one more time.
Madeline engaged the control for the hatch and whirled the pointer to the unlocked position. She took a deep breath and pulled open the hatch.
Darkness. Nothing but more darkness. Madeline leaned into the opening and let her helmet lamps flicker over either side of the corridor. The pod had been gutted, but not in any sort of emergency. The suspended animation bays were gone, but all the power leads and other connections had been neatly stubbed off. Whoever had refitted this pod had had time to do a thorough job.
“See anything, skipper?” Buchanan’s voice sounded in her ear. “Anyone there?”
“Nothing much yet.” She took a few steps, her magnetic boots clanging on the metal deck every time she put her foot down. The empty bays made for a spooky atmosphere. Madeline checked each one, half expecting someone to jump out at her. No one did.
Where had the voices come from then? The only sounds she heard were her own metallic footfalls reverberating noisily. “There’s enough air to carry sound, anyway. No gravity, though. It looks okay so far. Come on and we’ll check it out.”
More clanging echoed as the crewmen all climbed through the jagged opening and walked through the airlock to join her in the pod.
They advanced cautiously, Buchanan first.
Before he even reached Madeline, he stopped at the life support controls. “Hey, skipper, look at this.”
Madeline stepped over to the console. “What is it?”
“There’s plenty of oh two aboard.” The senior tech sounded indignant. “Someone’s set the air feed to little more than a slow leak.”
Madeline lifted her brows. It seemed an odd thing to do. No one could live on that amount of oxygen, and what good was a slow leak over no air at all? “Really? Can you get us more air, then?”
He nodded and muttered something. His hands moved over the controls and in a few seconds a loud hiss told Madeline he had been successful.
It occurred to her that the sound wouldn’t have carried without air.
“So what’s our status now?” she asked. “Do we still need our helmets?”
Behind the transparent polymer, Buchanan’s face twitched as he considered the question. “Give it a few more minutes. Let’s see what we find.”
Madeline nodded, and turned back to her exploration. Everyone had waited for her. She resumed the lead, and was only a few steps ahead when the corridor suddenly opened into the pod’s small bridge. A dark shape filled the space in the middle of the empty room where the navigation controls should have been.
Madeline advanced a few more steps and bent her head down so that her helmet lamps shone full on the shape.
It was an acceleration couch, fitted out with some sort of life support system that swaddled its half-reclined occupant in nutrient gel.
“Is he alive?” Doc’s voice, breathy on the com, almost squeaked with tension.
The other crewmen seemed just as interested. The four of them crowded into the room, but clustered together into a tight clump near the entrance to the corridor.
The life pod’s only passenger was obviously male. Except for the life support mask that covered most of his face, he was as naked as the day he had been born, and just as helpless. Every limb and his head, too, had been immobilized by restraints.
Madeline walked slowly around him so that she could see him better.
His eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell with regularity. The life support mask obscured the lines of his face, but through the transparent cover, Madeline could see that he looked exhausted. Deep shadows ringed his eyes, and the color had drained from his face. His skin was light enough that the mottled green and yellow bruises on his chest looked startling. A long, half-healed scrape ran up one side of his torso.
“Why would anyone leave someone like this?” she wondered out loud.
Doc stepped forward and bent over the stranger. “He looks drugged or something.” He glanced over his shoulder at Buchanan. “Can I open my helmet?”
The senior tech checked a control on his wrist and nodded. “Should be okay now.”
Doc unlocked his face plate and it flipped backwards over his head.
Madeline followed suit. She sniffed. The air in the pod felt dead, no matter what Buchanan said. It wasn’t so much the faint metallic odor, but rather the cold, dampness of it against her skin that repelled her.
None of the other three had followed Doc’s example. They all stood and watched from behind their face plates as their friend bent over the imprisoned stranger.
Just as Doc reached out a hand to touch the man, an abrupt click made the Bee’s medic jump in surprise.
A motorized arm slid smoothly along on a track, then stopped after a few centimeters. It held a hypospray directly over the imprisoned man’s head. Another click sounded and the hypo moved downward, pressed against the man’s neck, and discharged with a faint hiss.
Just as the stranger groaned and opened his eyes, the cabin lights came on, illuminating the scene abruptly. The man stared at the crew of the Bee, blinking as if their presence confused him. He didn’t look at them for long, however. After a few seconds, his eyes moved to stare directly at the space in front of Madeline.
Shades of Empire is available on Kindle and is free in Kindle Unlimited.
