Shadow Heart by J. L. Lyon

now, but his friend .
    And as much as a part of him wanted to give in, he had to act for the greater good.
    “I accept your resignation, Christopher,” Sullivan nodded. “If you will please remove yourself from these proceedings and report for duty… Admiral .”
    Holt tore his gaze from the emperor and gazed down longingly at the flag still spread across the Table of Nine. His eyes glazed over as his fingers came to rest on the red and white stripes at its base, “I wonder if I might have this, Emperor—a parting gift, in return for all my years of service on this Council.”
    Sullivan bit back the automatic refusal that threatened to erupt. He had known Holt would not burn the flag; it had been a bluff from the start. He could not allow fire to consume something so valuable. Oh, he had been truthful about the sentiment: as the United States was dead, the symbolic power of its star-spangled banner was dead as well. But it was one of the few American flags left in existence, probably worth more than every Council member’s weight in gold.
    He had taken something valuable from Holt, and Holt responded in kind. Sullivan had no choice but to agree, if this meeting was to end amicably. “Take it,” he said grudgingly. “But see to it that she never flies again.”
    Holt bundled up the flag with care, “I will give her the retirement she deserves, I promise you that.” The former chief advisor and now deposed high councilor nodded his farewells to the other members, and spared Sullivan but one disappointed glance before departing from the Table of Nine for the last time.
    My list of allies grows thin indeed , Sullivan thought. And my list of friends stands empty.
    “Well then,” his voice cut through the silence. “We will follow the same procedure for the selection of Holt’s replacement that we did when Orion was raised. Make your nominations and we will cast our votes in the coming days.” And who would I like to fill the empty seat? Someone easy to control. Someone like that fool who now held the title of the Magistrate of Rome. Costa, was it? “But for now, on to other matters. There has been some disturbing news from the ships we sent after the Golden Queen . Orion?”
    Orion, who Sullivan knew must be shocked and angered by Holt’s removal, spoke with his normal cool authority nonetheless, “The vessels chased Aurora’s band of traitors deep into the Indian Ocean, where they engaged and destroyed it. The Golden Queen and her crew now lay at the bottom of the ocean.”
    “And how is that news disturbing?” the Citadel representative asked.
    “Because our ships soon joined them,” Orion replied. “Our last communication from the captains indicated they were under assault by seven Persian cruisers.”
    “Persian cruisers?” the representative asked. “But that’s impossible. Alexander laid Persia to waste, and those few who survive hide in their desert caves. They don’t have the technology to float a raft, much less launch seven cruisers. They must have been mistaken…or tricked, even.”
    “Could be,” Sullivan admitted. “a design to draw our eye away from the System and toward a phantom target within a dead empire.”
    “But how did they know the location of our ships?” Orion asked. “If not for the Golden Queen we would have no reason to sail that far south. More likely, they happened upon our ships while en route to another location. Their trajectory suggests they were headed for Domination Crisis Eleven.”
    The faces of the other councilors expressed concern while the Citadel’s representative was only confused, “Domination Crisis Eleven? Why would anyone want to go there? The population of those islands is dead, starved out by Napoleon Alexander’s barrier.”
    Sullivan grimaced. Yet another sign of the ineptitude of the Citadel, for one so high not to have learned of Alexander’s many deceptions. “That is a false rumor, begun by Alexander years ago to salvage his pride. In