Pirate Throne

by Carysa Locke

  Fareena smiled. “Oh, yes. I’m quite sure.”

  “Excellent. We’ll be sending you to the conflict on Bennet. We’ll call this a test run.” The woman gestured to the man they couldn’t see clearly. “This is Captain Mazur. He will accompany you as our representative. You’ll answer to him, you’ll be on his ship, and you will follow his orders.”

  “That seems unnecessary,” Fareena complained, frowning.

  The older man chuckled. “Ms. Dabiri. Whatever else you might be, you are a member of the Ashir military. You effectively signed yourself over to a period of service with us when you agreed to the experiments. And, while those experiments have proven successful, you are something of a wild card. Three doctors are dead.”

  A glimpse of the girl they’d seen in the beginning shone through as Fareena’s head dropped, her shoulders hunching with guilt.

  “You will accompany Captain Mazur, and you will follow his directive. He will report to us.”

  Captain Mazur hadn’t moved. Mercy peered at him, trying to discern characteristics. They could only see his profile. He looked young, with a chiseled jaw and short fair hair. He wasn’t wearing a military uniform, but some kind of armor. She narrowed her eyes. There was something odd about it, about him.

  “Vera, slow play to half speed.”

  Playback slowed. Everyone else made small movements. The two soldiers, Kallio, Fareena. Only Captain Mazur remained perfectly still. Odd.

  Wait. “Vera, replay from the beginning at half speed.”

  “What is it?” Reaper asked.

  “Watch. I’m almost certain he never blinks. Or breathes.”

  Not once did his eyelashes flutter, and his chest never rose and fell that Mercy could see.

  “Who is he?” she asked the room at large, even though no one here could answer. “What is he?”

  “He stands like a soldier,” Reaper said.

  Vera’s voice spoke into the silence, so unexpected Mercy gave a start. “Casimir Aleksandr Mazur is the prototype subject bio-unit, designation “Arcadian”, the first successful full body prosthesis, developed as a counter to Talented units.”

  “Arcadian?”

  “Any successful subject of the bio-unit program would forfeit their previous genetics and histories. Therefore, they were given a new designation, Arcadian, as scientists found that dissociation had a negative impact on their ability to perform.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Mercy said, frowning. She thought back to the books in Lilith’s library. None of them had mentioned bio-units. There had been plenty of experimentation with bio-enhancements, but this seemed like something well beyond that.

  “Vera, please explain what you mean when you say a full body prosthesis.”

  “The unit’s physical form is entirely manufactured from a combination of both organic and inorganic material, created by the Zajak Biotech Corporation. A human consciousness is transplanted to the prosthesis. The original intention was for medical use, as replacement bodies for those limited by extreme physical disability which could not be treated by genetic or existing biotech solutions. However, the cost of such an endeavor was calculated as prohibitive, and the project was reassigned as a military application to offset this. Successful transplants were expected to serve in the Ashir military, and the bodies were made with this service in mind.”

  “What does that mean?” Mercy asked.

  “The Arcadians were enhanced beyond human capabilities.”

  “In what specific ways?”

  “That information is unavailable.”

  “As in it doesn’t exist in the archives, or as in we don’t have clearance to see it?”

  “I cannot answer that inquiry.”

  Of course not, Mercy thought. “How many successful transplants were there?”

  “There is only one record of a completely successful transplant.”

  “Let me guess,” Declan said. “This guy?”

  “That is correct.”

  “You said completely successful,” Cannon said. “What happened to the partially successful subjects?”

  “There was only one partially successful test subject. Vera Yelena Vasiliev.”

  “Vera. That’s your name as well.”

  “It is.”

  Mercy stared at the projection of the AI, and her very human seeming features. A chill went through her. Was Vera something more than just an AI?

  What she wouldn’t give for Sebastian to be here right now.

  Feria tapped a finger to her lips in thought. “There are records of the use of full body prosthesis in the past, but it was found the psychological effects were often severe, and it required transplanting the actual human brain fully into the prosthesis. It was rarely successful, and scientists abandoned it when genetic manipulation and cloning could offer the replacement, repair, or enhancement of almost any part of the human body at a much lower cost and risk.”

  “Apparently not everyone abandoned that research,” Cannon said. “Vera, how much more is there to this holo?”

  “There are no more holo scenes. However, there are is a timeline related to Fareena Dabiri.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  The holo faded and a new one took its place, this time a list of redacted notes. As they read through them, the room felt colder.

  Fareena was moved to the front lines of the Ascension Wars. She took command of multiple units, eventually being connected with some two hundred and fifty thousand Talented. Success after success followed them. The tide of the war turned.

  Until a trap saw the loss of three capital ships and fifty thousand of Fareena’s soldiers.

  The notes here were sparse and often redacted, but contained words like unstable, contained, and the ominous phrase retire from service.

  “I mean, she went crazy right?” Feria said. “That’s what we’re all thinking.”

  “What did they expect?” Mercy asked. “Fifty thousand lost at once.” She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain of such a terrible experience. Even now, when a Talented person connected to her died, Mercy felt it. When the battle with Veritas and the Alpha Queen had taken place, the pain of those losses had been unbearable.

  She could not imagine losing so many.

  The entries continued like a ledger of this woman’s life. Mercy sucked in a breath. “She recovered enough to rejoin the war. But then the notes just stop.”

  “So it would seem,” Cannon said. He arched a brow, casting his gaze up as though looking for Vera. “Is there any more of this?”

  “Further information on Fareena Dabiri is located in the sections I have already highlighted for you.”

  “Were there others?” Mercy asked. “Other Queens?”

  “Yes.” More areas of the archive lit up.

  “This is impossible,” Mercy said. “We just don’t have time to go through it all. It could take weeks. So much is either buried in data crystals or in hard copy.” These scientists had loved their hard copy. So tedious and difficult to scan through.

  “We’ve come this far,” Cannon said. “We already know more than we did before. We have a face and a name. We even know a bit of who she was before she became…” He trailed off.

  “Crazy?” Feria repeated.

  Mercy rubbed her forehead. “All right,” she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded weary. “Let’s—”

  A mental scream ripped across her thoughts. Mercy staggered, nearly falling to her knees. Reaper caught her, his hands on her arms. He was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him, could hear nothing over the voice screaming through her head. It seemed to stretch on forever, the pain of it a raw wound on her nerves, blocking out everything else. She tried bolstering her shields, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes squeezed shut, she curled against Reaper with her hands pressed to her ears, even knowing they could do nothing.

  At last, the scream faded.

  “Mercy?” Reaper spoke her name aloud, his voice cautious. He was being careful, u
nsure of the state of her mind.

  “S—Sebastian.” She stumbled over the name. “He’s in so much pain, Reaper.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ve never felt anything like it, not even when Willem tortured Atrea. I think it’s my bond as his Queen. I don’t know how. I can’t feel anyone else. Not Treon, not Max. I guess for some reason, even this place can’t block my claim to him.”

  His hands tightened on her arms. He focused on the important piece. “That was Sebastian?”

  “He’s here. I can feel my bond with him again. And…” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I think he’s dying.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Casimir stared at the holoview, his mood dark. This time when they’d come out of otherspace, the wreckage from the Navy base was scattered far and wide, leaving the entry point clear.

  "Stasis shield off," he said, but his eyes were already moving to the crown, to the gem in its crest. The jewel's glow didn't brighten. If anything, it dimmed slightly.

  Frustration ate at him. Damn it, they'd tried every major jump point from here and each time, the jewel's glow faded. Now it was even fading here, at their last solid point of trajectory.

  Weary and fighting impatience, Cas took a moment, working through all of the possibilities.

  "Sir?" Gideon asked after a few minutes.

  "What?" Couldn't he have a few blessed moments of silence?

  "Do you think it means our target has moved?"

  “That's exactly what it means. And until they stop moving, I fear we're not going to get a solid lock on their trail again." And they’d have no way of knowing when the target stopped. They could still be moving now, or they could be settled in on some planet for a good long stay. It put Cas in the position of having to blindly keep jumping until they caught up with them. Which wouldn’t happen if the target moved again.

  Casimir had known this was a long shot, that he could theoretically spend years searching the galaxy this way and never find the missing heir.

  Helpfully, Yelena chose that moment to add her opinion. "The odds of successfully tracking someone via this strategy are approximately three hundred and forty-two million to one. Rounded down, as per your previous orders, Captain."

  "Yes, thank you, Yelena. Very helpful."

  "I detect stress in your vocal patterns, Captain. Those odds would be significantly worse in a different ship with a standard jump drive."

  "And you're telling me this why?" Cas asked, rubbing at his temples. He was getting a damn headache, something that should have been impossible given his body’s capabilities. Maybe it was the memory of a headache? His brain's expectation of a physical response to stress giving him that feedback. Wonderful.

  "To cheer you up."

  “Thank you, Yelena."

  "You're welcome, Captain."

  Gideon said nothing, clearly processing the astronomical odds against them.

  “You're thinking there has to be a better way," Cas said. "There isn't. We have no leads. There was nothing in palace records to indicate a lost branch of the Ashir line. We have nothing to follow but that." He pointed to the bane of his existence, the royal crown.

  "I understand, sir," Gideon said. His second in command's expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes reflected something like sadness as he looked at Casimir.

  Ah. Gideon thought he was pursuing this ghost of a chance out of misplaced guilt. Trying to right the wrong of allowing the royal family to be murdered on his watch.

  That wasn't it at all.

  There was exactly one way, and only one way, to stop the Commonwealth from crumbling around them. Left alone, it would fall back into a hundred little wars squabbling over territory and resources. He had to keep the royal line intact. Put anyone else on the throne, and someone would protest the injustice of it all. Put an Ashir back on the throne, and if that person was strong enough, they could hold the galaxy together. Reestablish the Council of Sovereign Planets, and enough star systems would fall in line to preserve the peace. Order could be restored.

  But first, he had to find that person.

  "Orders, sir?" Gideon asked once the silence had stretched for an interminably long time.

  I have no idea, Cas thought. It was rare that he didn't know what to do next.

  In this case, it wasn’t so much that he didn’t know, but that he wasn’t sure what to do in the meantime. Waiting was the best course of action. Wait until there was a good chance their target was stationary again, hope they stayed there until Casimir could track them, hope they could jump to them fast enough, find them fast enough to identify the Ashir heir before they moved again.

  And if that didn't work, he didn't know what he would do. Every day that passed saw the galaxy fall deeper into chaos. He felt nothing but urgency, and sitting back and waiting was going to drive him mad.

  Captain, Yelena pinged his imp internally. I have a priority alert from a live newscast based on one of your established search parameters.

  Cas bit back an oath. Of course she did. Because why not, with the universe falling apart?

  Which one? He'd asked Yelena to track specific keywords from the various ansible newscasts across the galaxy. He wanted to be prepared if any old terrors reared their heads.

  Arcadius V.

  The blood in his veins turned to ice.

  "What about Arcadius V?" he asked aloud. Gideon and the rest of the crew turned to look at him, clearly surprised by the sudden change in subject.

  A newscast started playing through the ship's audio system.

  “After nearly a century of silence, a sudden hot spot in the galaxy is Arcadius V. Despite an active quarantine of the highest rating — the only level six on record — no less than four ships have been reported in orbit over the planet. It's not a question of if anyone has attempted planetfall, but how many brave souls might be down on the surface as we speak tonight.

  “A reminder to our listeners, the last time someone ventured onto the surface of Arcadius V, the entire party of more than fifteen scientists and ship's crew were killed, and the rescue team sent to retrieve them lost twenty-one people, with only three escaping the planet's surface to live to tell the tale.

  “So what are these intrepid souls thinking? I suppose they believe — as do others breaking laws and ignoring the covenants we have all lived by — that the Commonwealth has become a lawless place. Why not turn pirate? Why not attack your neighboring planet? Or, why not break that level six quarantine, and hope it’s not as bad as it was reported to be.

  “Of course, the real story tonight, is how many of these treasure hunters will make it off the surface alive?”

  The room was silent as the newscast ended. Gideon, who perhaps knew more than any of the others what Casimir's precise history was, waited with an air of expectation.

  Cas stared at the crown, and the faint glow of the jewel. What did it matter the direction they took for now? Maybe a distraction, however brief, was just what they needed.

  "Plot a course for Arcadius V," he told Gideon.

  "Captain…” Gideon seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. He shook his head and continued “…will we be going down to the surface?"

  "Let's start with finding out who's taken an interest. We'll go from there."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Captain," Yelena said, "I feel I should remind you and the crew that Arcadius V is a level six quarantined world. Threat tier: lethal."

  "Yes, Yelena, I remember."

  "Going down to the surface would not be advisable."

  No, it would not.

  "Course charted, sir," Gideon said. "The drive is spooled and ready."

  "Jump."

  Treon was bored. Why bring him on a dangerous mission like this and then leave him behind?

  He blamed his brother. It was always easiest to blame Reaper. In this case, it was even deserved. Reaper had chosen the teams to search the city. He'd deliberately left Treon off the roster.

  Instead, he was to stay behind wit
h the pilot, and a teenager who spent his time brooding around the ship because he, too, had been left behind.

  Reaper had lumped Treon in with the moody teenager. If that wasn't an insult, he didn't know what was. Oh, Reaper had couched it in polite terms. "We need to keep the ship safe."

  This was not a falsification. Heresy was their ride off this planet, and they absolutely needed to keep her safe.

  But Ghost could have performed the same function. Or Declan, who wanted to make certain at every opportunity that they all knew this was his ship. He would have been the logical choice.

  But no, Reaper had left Treon behind, and it rankled.

  Treon tolerated boredom about as well as he did moody teenagers. The fifth time Max complained that he could have helped, if only Mercy had let him, Treon had set him to checking and cleaning the power relays.

  "Go make sure everything's still functioning properly after that landing."

  Max had balked. "If it wasn’t, we wouldn't have power."

  Treon leveled a look at him. “It was not a suggestion.”

  Max slouched off to do the work, not even daring to mutter under his breath where Treon might hear him.

  Titus kept to himself, keeping an eye on the proximity scanners and generally making sure nothing approached the ship without their knowledge. He split his time between the command deck and regular checks of the perimeter outside the ship.

  With both of the others busy, Treon's boredom only increased. Reaper had also warned him against using his telepathic abilities casually.

  "We don't know what the wildlife here is capable of," his brother had said. "It could sense your Talent and home in on it. Try not to be a beacon for anything dangerous."

  Really, it was all so unnecessary. Treon wasn't a hammer, wildly using his Talent with no thought for what attention he might draw. He was a scalpel: precise, subtle, and skilled.

  He sat on the command deck and watched the holoview of the city. He'd seen little movement to indicate there was life on this rock. And if anything was going to draw attention, wouldn't it be the mother damned ship landing? It wasn't like they'd been particularly stealthy.