Empire Reborn (Taran Empire Saga Book 1): A Cadicle Space Opera A.K. DuBoff (guided reading books TXT) 📖

“I feel like I should, but…”

“Raena, this doesn’t have to be your fight. There’s no sense revisiting those unpleasant events from the past. This, up here, is our home. Everything down there can stay locked away, far from sight and mind.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll sit this one out.”

“It’s not sitting out. It’s being supportive from a distance.”

“Nice spin. You really are getting the hang of this politicking thing.”

“I try.” He kissed her, and her worries melted away.

—     —     —

“The demonstration went perfectly,” Oren announced with a broad grin.

The whole thing was odd to Lexi. They’d been gathering materials for years, apparently, and the ‘big event’ was putting up some posters and gathering a thousand people to chant about freedom? She didn’t buy it. There had to be more going on behind the scenes, but Oren still wouldn’t tell her anything more.

Her ‘promotion’ had been a joke so far. Granted, it had only been a couple of days, but Lexi had been hoping for a revealing sit-down with Oren or other leaders of the Alliance. She wanted answers and to finally get a glimpse of the organization’s structure she’d been trying to figure out. Instead, the short tour of the underground storeroom had been the extent of it, along with the declaration that she would handle pickups on her own moving forward. Even the latter part of that had proved anti-climactic when Oren had informed her that there wouldn’t be a pickup for another week, due to the demonstration activities. So, Lexi had spent the last two days sitting in the warehouse, watching and waiting for direction, with no clear sense of what she was supposed to do.

Meanwhile, Oren was ecstatic for whatever reason. The tall, thin man was awkward on his best days, but now there was something downright unnerving about seeing him prance around like he’d just scored the greatest victory in civilization’s history.

What’s the big deal? We didn’t do anything! Lexi couldn’t help fuming with frustration about being kept in the dark. She’d pledged her commitment to the movement, but she wanted to know where the whole thing was headed. That didn’t seem like too much to ask. It was beside the point that she didn’t care about knowing the goals themselves; all she wanted was to work her way toward the inner circle so she could get answers, and this was just another step in that long, convoluted, and perilous path.

“Oren, could we talk?” she asked. The words came out before she’d made a conscious decision.

When he cast her a disapproving glare, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. “About what?”

Lexi glanced at people gathered in the nearby rec room and those working on projects in the warehouse. “Alone.”

He sighed and waved his arm. “If you insist.”

Oren led the way down to his office, not bothering to hide his annoyance. She followed him wordlessly. Upon reaching their destination, he leaned against his desk, sticking his feet out at an angle toward the door. It barely left her room to enter and close the door without tripping over him in the compact space.

“I don’t understand,” she stated.

“What?”

“The rally today. How it connects to anything. What made it such a success?”

Oren crossed his arms and stared at her. The annoyance was gone, replaced with an intensity beyond anything Lexi had seen from the man before. He was in his late-forties, and though she didn’t typically think of him as being much older than her, the expression made every crease stand out on his face under the single, stark light centered on the ceiling.

“What do you know of the Taran government’s operations?”

The question caught Lexi by surprise. She gave a noncommittal shrug and shook her head. “In what sense? The High Council runs things.”

“More specifically than that.”

Lexi bit down a snide response. She wanted to talk about the plan for effecting change in the Outer Colonies, not get a civics lesson about the very government they hoped to break free from. “Each High Dynasty is responsible for a corporation, which oversees a major infrastructure element of the Empire. Navigation, communications, food, power, mining, home goods, shipping. The Lower Dynasties have their own corporate arms, many of which roll up to one of the seven major umbrellas. Business and politics are one in the same. Only medical care and banking are independent.”

“Precisely. You have answered your own question.”

But I haven’t. What am I missing? She tended to think of herself as a smart, perceptive person, but Oren’s line of reasoning was escaping her. Worse, he clearly expected her to arrive at the answer on her own. If she didn’t, that might end any aspirations of advancing within the Alliance on the spot.

There was one option. The risk hadn’t been worth considering before, but the conditions were as perfect as they might ever be. He’s thinking about it right now. We’re alone, no distractions… She could glean the answers from his mind without needing to dig around. He’d never know.

Still, it was dangerous. She could see something else she wasn’t supposed to know about, and then she’d need to pretend she was in the dark. It was why she was always so reluctant to use her Gifts; she’d been burned before by glimpsing secrets that had made her life unravel. Not to mention what might happen to her if she was found out.

The moment stretched on. She needed to respond to him.

Shite, it’s now or never. As gently as she could, she reached out to glean the thoughts floating on the surface of Oren’s mind.

She was met with a strong, clear narrative. Oren had formed the answer he was hoping to hear from Lexi: High Dynasties controlled the flow of information and resources to all Tarans. Their role was so integral to the fabric of