To the Victor

by R Coots

  “I figured out that if I kept from killing everyone in sight,” Syrus said, “I’d get three meals a day and a clean place to sleep. Better, Rissa and her sousi were teaching me how to tell what feelings were mine and what came from other people.” He met Jossa’s eyes. “And how to mimic what the bond felt like. More I learned . . .” He shrugged. “Less likely I was to kill someone to make it stop.”

  Her hands on the armrests clenched and she looked away. Ok. Whatever that meant. She’d locked her shields up tight again. Even the bravado was gone. Reflexively, he reached for it, like a drunk who’d just lost the wall keeping him up. Syrus gritted his teeth and glared at Rissa’s mental image as she laughed at him.

  But Jossa didn’t say anything or ask him to explain, so she probably knew what “make it stop” was all about.

  “Some point, Rissa’s sire decided I was old enough to be a threat. I wasn’t a pet anymore.” Syrus let his shields slip to show her what he’d thought of that. “Her sousi liked me fine. Probably wouldn’t have gotten in my way if I’d decided fucking her sousi was the thing to do. Leastwise, that’s what her sire thought. So he sold me to the military.”

  Jossa opened her mouth, got half a syllable out, and clamped her teeth together. Yeah, that's right. No questions. His sharing mood only went so far.

  Syrus waited to be sure she wasn’t going to try again, then leaned forward. “They stuck me in the Uvlaku.”

  Understanding mixed with awe, coloring the air around her, and her eyes went wide. “Ghost.”

  He nodded.

  She didn’t say anything for a minute or so. He looked at the chrono on the console and tried not to think of how his so-called career had ended. Tried not to remember how he’d come to be in the Fleet.

  A battered body, barely recognizable as human. He’d missed her by hours. If he hadn’t wasted time on stealth, she might have had a chance. He could still hear her screams. Remember her eyes. Brander avoided hitting her in the face. Bastard had known someone was coming for her.

  You tried, he told himself. You tried, fuck it all.

  Jossa watched him. She’d pulled her shields back up. All the way this time. No hints. No teasing. No guidance. He tried to stuff the emotions back down, but they churned and boiled under the surface. The pain was almost physical. He’d never told anyone this much about his life. Not all at once. And he’d never mentioned it once he’d boarded the Fleet.

  Rissa was quiet in his head. As quiet as if she’d never been there to start with. He couldn’t tell if she agreed with what he’d told Jossa or not. It wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t even most of the truth; but it was enough.

  “Well.” Jossa leaned forward so she could set her elbows on her knees. “That explains how you learned so much about the nobility.”

  Syrus decided she must have forgotten she was naked. He stared at her small breasts and nearly lost what she said next.

  “I suspect, though, that if the military had done a full DNA analysis when they took you on, they would have gotten rid of you completely.”

  Uh-huh. Like the military didn’t keep tabs on the political situation in the Empire. The fact that none of the vamalkuog had managed a successful coup so far didn’t mean they hadn’t tried. His Savage background was probably the only thing that had saved him from being shackled to a throne and made a figurehead. However he’d wound up with Imperial blood, nobody in their right mind wanted an uncontrollable lunatic on the throne.

  “Especially given the fact that one of the oldest secrets of the Empire is that blood is everything.” Jossa kept talking, oblivious to the thoughts going through his head.

  He glared at her. Apparently she’d forgotten how she’d wound up in this situation to start with.

  She glared back, but her shields didn’t slip.

  “Think you’re forgetting the order of things around here,” he told her. “Me Warlord. You Concubine.”

  “Exactly.” Her voice held a lifetime of regret and hurt. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t been so flip with his answer.

  Rissa was still silent. It was starting to make him nervous.

  He waited another second or so to see if Jossa planned to say anything else. When she didn’t speak again, he waved at the control console and its screens. The bluish light showed green here and there, where the data feeds spat information. “Not sure what you’re trying to do here. Especially since Delfi’s still in the box.”

  Her shields wavered, then firmed. He couldn’t make anything of the weakness. Hell, it could have been plain exhaustion. She pulled a synthcot cloth from an opening in the console and started wiping down the board. “There’s a thing concubines knew,” she said in a quiet voice. “And fuerrusog. I’m not sure who’s aware of it now, what with the state of things.

  “All government facilities were mandated to have back doors in the programming. Answerable only to the fuerrus and his bloodline.” She waved a hand at the receptor for the blood sample and the pattern of needles in the palmar area. “And in certain locations, the concubines.” Her teeth flashed. “Guards aren’t effective if they can’t work the locks.”

  He leaned back in his chair and took a breath. “So you’re telling me I’ve got access to . . .” Syrus trailed off, not sure if he wanted to finish that thought.

  “The Barbican keys were always yours for the taking. Still are.” She tipped her head and squinted at the console. “There will be a record. But since I assume this place is getting destroyed anyway . . .” She shrugged and looked back at him.

  He stared at the console. Then at his own hand. All the doors in the Galaxy. Well, the most important doors anyway. Open to him because of an accident of breeding.

  That didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

  Rissa still hadn’t given her opinion. He kept waiting for it, like a satellite about to fall out of orbit. If she’d been alive, he wouldn’t have had to wait at all. Fuck it anyway.

  He didn’t realize he’d bared his teeth until Jossa wrapped slim brown fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand into her lap. Now that she was touching him, he could feel her emotions again. No more bravado. Just a cold sort of determination, giving root to the wobbling rattle of her nerves as they buzzed their way over her skin.

  He let her open his hand, her broken nails tracing the lines of his palm. “The ancients claimed they could tell your fortune by these,” she murmured. “You know what I see?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. The corner of her mouth twisted. “The past. At some point, someone in the Imperial lineage sired a child on a nehkeh woman.”

  Some part of him, the part that remembered a childhood in the streets of an Ajiri planet, raged. His adult self knew better. It didn’t matter which ancestor gave him which set of fucked-up genes. He was what he was.

  “Or the daughter of a fuerrus wandered into the bad part of town.” He said it mainly to see what sort of reaction he’d get. She laughed.

  He growled and tried to take his hand back. Jossa pinned it between her knees. It actually sort of hurt. He hadn’t realized how bony she was until just now.

  “Oh stop,” she told him when he growled again. The humor was back, for real now, bubbling against his skin and popping in little ticklish bursts. “We’d all be dead on the floor of that room if you didn’t have some pride in where you came from.

  “The fact that you’re in line for the Imperial Throne.” She looked up at him and shrugged. “Well, you’ll get used to that eventually. Maybe, when the Fleet makes it to the Core, you can even use that to legitimize your rule. Who knows?”

  The look in Quinn’s eyes, sometimes. Iira and Oona’s reaction when Kizen mentioned the redacted parts of his personnel file.

  “I do suggest you get to work on it, though. Del and I won’t be there to help.”

  “What?”

  “Now who’s asking questions?” She half smiled at him. Smug satisfaction oozed up his hand to join the humor. “We’re not going back to the Fleet, and you can’t
make us.” She picked up the torn scrap of his shirt from the console where she’d laid it, waggling it gently in front of his face. “They took our clothes with the rag covered in your semen. So this will have to do. There’s a whole hangar of abandoned ships out there. We’ll take one and leave. You fit with the Fleet like you’re born to it. If you try to make us go back, we’ll fight until it kills us.”

  He stared at her. She grinned. If she wasn’t still in contact with him, he wouldn’t have picked up on the fear and uncertainty still lurking behind those huge brown eyes.

  He looked at his trapped hand and the knobby knees that pinned it. They were both of them bruised and bleeding. He’d heal soon. She’d look like this for days. Weeks, maybe. “Where will you go? Whole system’s crawling with Fleet. Both Barbs are guarded. You make it through the shadow Barbican, there’s a battlegroup sitting on the other side, waiting to come through and pound this place to bits. Or implode the Barb. Surprised they haven’t done it already.”

  She wavered. He saw it. Felt it too. Then she set her jaw and glared at him. “What part of kill ourselves trying didn’t you understand? Any chance is better than going back to that odapekek adifek of a ship and spreading our legs for you.”

  He pulled his hand free of her knees and took her by the wrist. The fear in her surged. “Doesn’t tell me why. Or how you plan to survive in the long run. You come back with me, I could keep you safe.” He could try, at least. Like he had with his last batch of women. “You could have standing in the Fleet. Quinn pulls his head out, even he’d agree. Wouldn’t need to be concubines.” So they’d be what? Wives? Like Iira and Oona for Quinn?

  At least they wouldn’t be running loose in a universe they didn’t belong to.

  She tried to take her hand back and failed. He held her, sucked in as much of his sai as he could, and waited to see what she’d do when she wasn’t being pushed. He could smell the sweat and dried blood. Could taste it, even. One heartbeat. Two deep breaths. She stared at the needles on the console, nails scraping his skin as she curled her fingers and breathed out uncertainty. Then fear. Then calm.

  “You told me to think of why Del and I ran the first time. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “We left to be free. To be ourselves and no one else’s. Not whores to a fuerrus. Not the mothers of his children. Not the guards for his tomb. To be us. To find out who we were.”

  He sat back and stared at her. She followed him. After a moment, he realized that the tugging on fingers came from her, trying to get free. Free. Of him.

  Oh go on, the voice in his head muttered. You know you’re going to. You’ve got the worst impulse control of anyone I’ve ever met. Besides, she said the magic word.

  And here I thought you were going to keep your big mouth shut, he snapped back.

  No answer. Good enough for him. Before he could ask himself why, he slapped his palm down on the needle array, hissing as the tiny needles sank down past skin and into muscle. “Well, get the data chips then,” he told Jossa. “We’ll make two copies.”

  >><<

  Iira was trying to pull the keypad off the wall when the door to the infirmary opened. She looked up, did a double take when she saw Jossa, and growled. Syrus pushed her back into the room before she could do anything violent. “Oona awake yet?”

  “No milord,” Iira replied. “The other one—”

  A rain of He’la interrupted her and a bundle of joy shaped like Delfi lurched past them both, nearly bowling Jossa over. Syrus shook his head and kept his hand on the small of Iira’s back. “Leave’m be.”

  “Milord.” He’d only known a few women who could pack so much meaning into just one word. Iira was a mistress of the art.

  “Here.” He slapped a data chip into her hand. “Keys to the kingdom. Empire. Whatever the fuck you want to call it. Exactly what I came to get. Tell your husband that. Tell him if he tries to follow me, or sends anyone after me, or goes rooting around in the databanks for anything about me, I’ll . . .” He stopped. “Well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll figure something out. I’ll sure as fuck kill anyone he has tailing me. Got that?”

  “Milord? I don’t understand.” She didn’t. For once, he had her completely off guard and confused. Too bad he wasn’t going to stick around to savor the moment. And good for him he’d had Jossa show him how to lock all his records. At least on this base. If Quinn ever snapped out of his Frenzy, he wouldn’t be able to get into any information related to his warlord. Former warlord.

  “I’ve had enough,” he growled. “I let you psychos put the Helm on me. Give me the Fleet. And the minute I stuck my neck out for you, the whole thing fell to shit. I’m done, you hear? Tell your husband; tell your people. Find another warlord. This one’s going back to what he likes best.”

  “And what’s that, milord?” She drew herself up and stuck out her chin. She could be as pissy as she wanted to be. The heat she generated couldn’t make a dent in his own emotions. He’d already put the call out to the Fleet, broadcasting the base’s security vid of how Kizen had died. Along with their new orders to hold fire until someone told them otherwise. He planned to be out of comms range before they realized they’d been played.

  “Running around the Galaxy making trouble.” He turned on his heel and started back for the door, catching Jossa and Delfi between the shoulder blades with each hand. “C’mon. Before those assholes out there decide a vid recording isn’t enough to prove Kizen’s dead.”

  With Jossa squawking in surprise on one side, Delfi shouting in He’la on the other, and something like relief in his soul, he shoved them out the door and towards the hangar.

  >Epilogue

  Jossa

  It’s a pity about the temperament of Savages. The old saying about dropping the baby out a window holds true through adulthood. They’re too hard to kill, and too hard to keep long term.

  -overheard in Officer’s Mess

  Jossa stood on the bridge in a scavenged shirt four sizes too big for her and. “You just had to take a damaged boat! Thirty other ships in that hangar and you had to pick the same crippled heap we used in the first place. What were you thinking?” She glared at Syrus where he sat in the pilot’s chair of the little ship, elbow deep in the guts of the control console.

  He had a strip of dark fabric, shiny with blood, wrapped around one arm. His other arm, bare to the shoulder since the sleeve had been sacrificed for bandage purposes, was covered in tiny scratches and burns.

  Another shower of sparks fell from the destroyed instrumentation in the ceiling. They landed in his hair and across his back in a glowing pattern of light. He didn’t flinch, although Jossa thought she might have heard a growl.

  Well, good. Let him hurt. This whole mess was his fault.

  Jossa waited as he shoved the mass of wires back into the console and snapped the control panel in place. In the back of her mind, Delfi turned listlessly. She’d fallen hard after her initial burst of energy leaving the infirmary. Getting her to stay in the spare bunk had almost been too easy, but Jossa was glad Del was able to move at all. For now, she was happy to lay the sudden docility at the feet of such extensive treatment in the medunit.

  Hidden motives would come in a day or so, if Del was still moving slow and staying quiet. Assuming they lived that long.

  Del turned again. Jossa clamped down on her worry and speculation, shoving them in some dark corner of her brain where it couldn’t escape. For now. She’d gotten sloppy while Del was in the coma. If she didn’t regain some measure of control, she might get them both hurt. Or worse.

  A trickle of wry humor mixed with just a touch of frustration brushed against her. Jossa looked up in surprise, just in time to see the tail end of a smile slip off Syrus’s face. The former warlord watched her, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against the console.

  “Yes?” she asked in the haughtiest voice she could manage. The fact that her words cracked in the middle didn’t help things at all.


  “So what now?” he asked once he’d gotten a second almost-smile under control.

  Jossa stared. He was asking her that? Now? When he’d invited himself along to escape and taken over the whole operation? Now he wanted to know what she wanted to do? They were stuck on a ship that could barely hold air. Shot half to bits by the Fleet and further abused by being hopped through three consecutive Barbicans without ever leaving the grav shields. It was a miracle they weren’t missing half their hull. And he wanted to know what she wanted to do next?

  “Stay alive,” she ground out. “Assuming life support keeps working.”

  One eyebrow crept up his forehead. “Well. Not very detailed, but I guess I can’t really call you on that. Assume we live. Since you’re not choosing death or freedom, there are options.”

  Jossa opened her mouth. Shut it. And glared at him.

  His lips twitched, but he had enough decency to keep from mocking her outright. For about a minute. Then he broke, and his amusement washed over her like a warm, slightly effervescent wave as he shook his head and laughed. “You know, I’ve never met anyone who’ll jump out an airlock without even looking for an eeva suit.”

  “Me!?” Jossa waved her arms at the bridge and the mess he’d made of it. “You said they wouldn’t shoot at us! And they did! And then you—you!” She sputtered. How could he be so complacent? How could he value life, even his own, so little? He kept laughing at her.

  “Only half of them were shooting at us. The other half were on our side.” His face was serious again, but he hadn’t shielded his emotions.

  Jossa crossed her arms and glared. “If they were on our side, you’d think they would have made sure we were out of the crossfire.”

  And just like that, he sucked it all in, slammed the barriers up, and dropped into the chair. “Look,” he said. “We can sit here and argue until we’re blue in the face. Doesn’t change facts. We got away. Three random Barbs I hopped us through. Without leaving the grav shields. Fleet can’t know where we are. Neither can the Imperial Military, assuming they were sitting outside the grav shield of that first Barbican. Life support’s working and we’ve got enough hull integrity to get us to a Customs base. Which, if the readouts on this system are right, should only be a couple days away. That gives us two problems. Food, and what to do next.”