The betrayal Chapter 17 snippet

Sitting back against her couch with a heavy thud, Kate stared off into space. The man was utterly insane; she thought to herself, there’s just no any other word to describe him! She looked down at the data player in disgust as she digested what Reynolds had found in her systems. While she had thought things were bad; the reality of what Reynolds had found made her realize just how bad things were.

A shut down code, she thought with disgust, a non-removable, non-changeable god****** shut down code! That sorry b******, I can’t believe he did that!

A short, chopped sigh of disgust escaped her lips before she could stop it. As if a memory block wasn’t bad enough, she mused, he had to have a shut down code and receptor built into her processor. There was no way to remove it, Reynolds had said on the data chip, not without having to replace the whole chip-and Intelligence wasn’t going to give up a fresh chip.

Not if they knew why I wanted, no make that needed it, changed, she thought sourly.

So, she thought as she leaned back with her hands folded behind her head, he had managed to get one over on her again! This really threw a wrench in the works for her desire to see him. Gritting her teeth so hard her jaw hurt, Kate took a deep breath and tried to calm down. She really should have seen this one coming; she mused, it was so in character for him to have placed it there. It was her who had been foolish enough to think that she actually had freedom from the man!


If there ever was a reason to kill someone, this was it, she thought as she ran her hair through her damp, freshly washed hair. Which makes me doubly determined to see him!

With a sigh, she stood up and walked over to stand beside a large window. Rubbing her upper lip with a finger, she stared down at the streets below. Look at the world moving down, she thought, and none of them have a damned clue what their government is doing! Would they wake up in time to prevent what was starting to look like an unstoppable tidal wave?

What would Carver want biological weaponry for, she wondered as she looked at the massive two mile high Fleet Headquarters building across the city. Furthermore, what would that prototype be used for?

Shaking her head at her inability to put the pieces together, Kate walked over and hit the button on her holovid. The image popped into existence in the far corner, and she adjusted its feed to reach the Alliance News Network. She didn’t pay the anchor much attention as she poured herself a tall glass of bourbon.

Another one of Matthews’ nanite wonders, she thought with a snort. A complete inability to get drunk no matter how much I drink…

“And in the news today…” the anchor said. “Protestors on the frontier world continued to march in protest of the recent move by President Carver to install Marines on the colony of Monticello last week.”

Kate felt her head snap up with a shot, her attention drawn to the news broadcast. Marines placed on a colony, she thought, there was nothing in the Fleet bulletins about that! It was customary, since they both answered to the same leadership, that Marine and Fleet movements were included in all bulletins received by commanders in the field. Yet, there had been no mention of Marines being installed on a colony, why?

“Marines were sent to Monticello to quell the protests and riots over the election of George Carver to the Presidency,” the anchor said.

Really? Kate asked herself with raised eyebrows. I wonder why they’d do that!


“Martial law has been declared throughout the colony and other frontier worlds are protesting this move,” he said. “Calling it unconstitutional, they’re calling for the impeachment of the President and they’re taking to the street to have their voices heard.”