Dolus Magnus by Monalisa Foster

Author:Monalisa Foster [Foster, Monalisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polite Society Enterprises LLC

Excerpt from Promethea Invicta

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

— Hyman Rickover, Father of the Nuclear Navy

October 22, 2071

Midland, Sovereign Republic of Texas

Lunar gray they called it.

Theia had to admit, the manufacturer had done a marvelous job matching the name to the briefcase's color. Just like Mare Tranquillitatis, the attaché case's impervious carbon-fiber shell had a slight bluish tint, especially when it caught the sunlight just right.

She'd refused to let her bodyguard cum limo driver stow the briefcase in the back. Clancy had bristled at being denied the opportunity for chivalry, but acquiesced, nodding with reluctance.

Twelve years he'd been with her. The former Texas Ranger's plentiful rust hair was frosted with gray. Overtaken by lines and wrinkles, his once prominent freckles no longer stood out. He still moved with lethal grace, even if that bulge on his hip didn't blend in as well as it had thirty-or-so pounds ago.

Both limo and bodyguard were key to surviving the parade that her life had become.

One lesson she had learned, at great personal cost, was that outrunning a lynch mob wasn't about speed, strength, or the willingness to do the right thing at all costs. It was about the ability to make it look like you were a majorette leading a parade, rather than a victim desperately fleeing mob rule.

And she'd gotten good at it. Too good. Because she'd had no choice. Because making her father's legacy of unlimited energy a reality had become her life. It was not a life or legacy she'd wanted. It had cost her too much.

She'd taken it on willingly enough. Out of grief. Out of duty. Out of vengeance.

Time heals all wounds. She'd believed that once. Believed it with all her heart because she'd needed it to be true. But it wasn't. Every time she defeated one regulation, one bureaucrat's interference, one politician's well-intentioned but misguided need to get in her way, another—or several—sprouted in their place.

Waste of the worst kind, the endless lobbying and lawsuits, had chained her, drained her soul and eaten out her substance. They had left her feeling like an empty husk that somehow refused to die, condemned to wake each day and try anew.

Perhaps today was the day. The day she slipped those chains, off herself and everyone else encumbered by them.

Somewhere along what used to be called US-87, about halfway between the Chief Justice's office in Brady and the greater Midland metroplex, she'd slid the attaché case off her lap so it could rest atop the plush leather seat beside her.

But she'd not let go of it. A silly, useless gesture. It's not like it, or the treasures within, could disappear.

She released the attaché's smooth handle and reached across to the mini-bar to pour herself a glass of milk. Grade A raw, unhomogenized, and illegal everywhere but the SRT, it had a buttery hue. Smooth wholesomeness washed down her throat. It had a particularly soothing flavor, satisfying a long-held craving and bringing an unintended smile to her face.

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