There Before the Chaos

by K. B. Wagers

  “We’ll deal with it, Majesty. I know …” He hesitated for a moment before looking at me. “I know you have been worried about making the right choices. For what it’s worth, I think you have.”

  A warmth bloomed in my chest at his praise. “Thanks,” I said, not looking away from the viewscreen where the planet glowed green in the black. I braced myself on the railing and leaned into Emmory as we started our descent through the atmosphere. My Ekam’s solid presence eased my nerves somewhat and I watched the rippling shift of the shields as the crew of the Hailimi brought us in with cool precision.

  “Nicely done, Ensign,” Captain Isabelle Saito said as Ensign Kohli landed the Vajrayana with an ease she hadn’t displayed when first helming the ship. It appeared I wasn’t the only one settling into a new job.

  Captain Saito had been part of the skeleton crews scraped together from Admiral Hassan’s fleet to pilot the Vajrayanas after we’d captured the system of Canafey.

  “Commander Nejem, you have the conn.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  Shaking out my pale lavender sari, I let Emmory lead me off the bridge, Isabelle following behind. The rest of my BodyGuards were waiting in the cargo bay, resplendent in their black uniforms with the twisted crimson star of Indrana above the left breast.

  “Majesty?”

  I let Stasia do one final check as Emmory issued orders over the com link and shared a half smile with Fasé. The doors were already open, Zin and his team running a sweep with the Marines from the Hailimi’s detachment and the advance team who’d landed a few days before us.

  Then a nod from my Ekam indicated we were ready to go and I headed for the ramp, Alba falling into step beside me, Emmory just in front.

  I regretted my earlier comment about someone taking a shot at me. After all this time it still slipped by me some days that the man in front of me would die for me, without question or hesitation.

  Bugger me, Hail, now is not the time to be thinking about this. I hissed the thought at myself, straightened my shoulders, and walked out into the sunshine.

  “We thought you would prefer something with a more intimate feel, Your Majesty.” Anju gestured at the room, a smile on their darkly handsome face. “But if you dislike this we can move elsewhere.”

  “No, this is fine, Anju, thank you.” Even had I disliked the venue, I wouldn’t have requested a move. Emmory and the advance team had already cased out the place and knew all the exits, all the blind spots, anything that would potentially be an issue.

  And the venue itself was stunning anyway; we’d taken a short aircar ride to the local university and were now in a brightly lit community room dedicated to agricultural education. The high ceilings should have given an uncomfortable echo to the place, but the wooden tables and comfortable chairs set on either side of the aisle Anju’s people had laid out muffled the sound enough that the acoustics were actually gorgeous.

  Anju relaxed, their thin shoulders loosening under the carefully pressed white salwar kameez. They folded their hands and bowed. “I am going to go check and see how close we are to being ready, Your Majesty.”

  I murmured a reply and waved a hand, studying the mural painted on the wall behind the chair they’d set up for me. Men were dropping their swords into a river of fire that flowed over a cliff, a waterfall of fury dumping itself into a cauldron. From there the scene shifted: more men bathed in sweat, slaving against the fire as they worked the molten metal into curious shapes.

  “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

  I glanced at Hao. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, a long-sleeved black shirt covering him from wrist to neck.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I finished early,” he replied.

  “Plowshares?”

  “Farming,” he replied, pointing at the next scene further along the wall. “It’s from the Christian Bible. An admonition against war Christians never seem to listen to.”

  “Do any of us?”

  Hao shrugged. “War is inevitable. The strong prey on the weak. Those with power only covet more. All you have to do is crack open a history file to see the truth of it.”

  As depressing as it was, I couldn’t disagree with him. Everywhere we’d been in the galaxy, more often than not, that was what we ran into. Naraka, I’d encouraged it because it had been good for business.

  “I didn’t expect you,” I said, turning from the mural to face the room. A room that would soon be filled with numerous citizens of Kurma anxious for a look at the infamous gunrunner empress.

  “Like I said, I finished early,” he replied. “And I decided it was more fun to explore than stay on the stuffy ship.”

  “Watch what you say about my ship.”

  Golden eyes that didn’t give away a hint of his emotions fixed themselves on me. “It’s stuffy and too small.”

  “Maybe you should let me buy you a new one like I said I would.” Hao’s ship had been destroyed by the Saxons, and I’d been so relieved he wasn’t dead that I’d promised to buy him a new ship. An offer he kept turning down, though I couldn’t quite figure out if it was because of Indrana’s financial problems or something else. A single light craft wasn’t going to put my government into chaos and he knew it.

  That earned me a flicker of emotion, but it was gone so fast I couldn’t identify it.

  “It would just gather dust at this point.” Hao lifted a slender shoulder in a shrug that almost fooled me with its calculated nonchalance.

  “Are you ready to tell me what’s wrong, honored brother?” I asked in Cheng.

  Hao looked back at the mural; a sigh that was little more than an exhalation passed his lips. “This is the wrong place for it, little sister. A discussion of Yuánfèn should be—”

  “Majesty, we’re almost ready.” Gita interrupted us and I bit back a curse, watching as Hao retreated, the carefully created mask of Cheng Hao, gunrunner, falling into place.

  “BodyGuard Desai,” he said with a nod.

  My Dve was less practiced at hiding her emotions, and the flicker of hurt that appeared on her face with Hao’s sneered greeting made me want to reach out and smack my brother so bad that my hand twitched in that direction before I stopped myself.

  “Ready,” I said, and instead smiled at Gita.

  The crowd filed into the room, vibrating with barely contained excitement. I kept the pleasant smile on my face and touched palms with those Jagana led forward. The line continued for more than an hour, with smiles and curious eyes, presents and blessings.

  “Your Majesty, this is Askansha and her father, Rahul Bhinder.” I took the box from Jagana as the old man dropped into a low bow, the woman at his side awkwardly curtsying.

  “Askansha and Rahul, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Flipping the catch of the box over with a smile, I lifted the lid and froze.

  Gita’s curse when she looked into the box sliced through the air, and the BodyGuards on either side of us reacted to it as though it were an order, whipping their guns up and training them on the pair in front of me. Screams echoed in the hall, quickly stifled as people dropped out of the line of fire.

  “I scanned it.” Jagana’s whisper carried through the stunned silence. She reached for the box.

  “Don’t touch it!” Hao ordered. “It could be trapped.”

  “Father, what have you done?” Askansha looked from her father to me and back again, panicked eyes wide.

  “What was necessary,” he replied, standing calmly amid the chaos. “You killed my son, Your Majesty. I felt it right to bring you a token to remember him by. I would have come alone, but my daughter insisted. I would ask you not to hold her responsible for my actions. She had no knowledge of my plans.”

  The ruined gun lying in the box was no danger to anyone, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised Gita had interpreted it as a possible threat.
The Grendel UT47 had taken considerable damage in an explosion of some kind and was little more than a twisted hunk of polymer resin. It was an older model of a now-defunct company, something I would have come across early in my years as a gunrunner. There was no way of knowing what shipment this was from, who I’d sold it to, or even when the transaction took place.

  “It’s clean,” Hao said as he finished his scan.

  “There’s no explosive,” Gita murmured almost at the same time, reaching out to me. “Majesty, may I take it?”

  I shook my head and shifted away from her before she could grab the box. “No, I’ll keep it. This is a conversation better had in private, though. Anju, is there a room nearby that would suit?”

  Anju shook themselves out of their shock. “Yes, Majesty. Just this way.” They headed for a door to the left side of the room as my BodyGuards herded people toward the exits.

  Hao nipped the box out of my hand as I stood, closing a hand around my upper arm before I could take it back. “I want to look at it closer.”

  “I suspect Emmory will want to as well,” I said as my Ekam made his way up the aisle. His expression was that stone mask he wore when he was well and truly angry. “I am all right.”

  Emmory barely spared me a glance. “Jagana, move your ass.”

  She jerked and followed him toward the doorway Anju was waiting by. I headed in the same direction, exchanging a look with Gita on my way past. Indula and Iza stood on either side of the old man and his daughter. “Stay here with them. We’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

  “You’re going to talk to them?” Hao kept his voice low.

  “Of course I am.”

  “You didn’t kill his son, Hail.”

  “I sold a gun that may have killed him. Is there a difference?” I held up a hand before Hao could reply. “Not out here, wait until we’re inside.”

  “You didn’t look in the box.” Emmory was quiet, calm, but in Jagana’s face when I came through the doorway. It didn’t bode well for the BodyGuard.

  “No, sir. He had it in his hands. I assumed you and Zin had checked it at the front. I scanned it before I handed it to the empress. It was clean.” Jagana’s back was straight, her eyes locked on the wall behind Emmory’s head.

  Emmory’s hand flashed out and I winced. The slap to the side of Jagana’s head wasn’t designed to do more than ring her bell, but I knew it wasn’t the physical discomfort that hurt.

  “You’ve got two working eyes. You should have used them. And assuming things gets people killed.” Emmory shifted as though he were going to slap her again, thought better of it, and dropped his hand, fisting it against his thigh. “You were lucky. You only put the empress in an extremely embarrassing situation. You could have just as easily gotten her killed. Either way, I have zero patience for that kind of failure.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m discharging you from your duties. We’ll see about putting you on the first ship headed back to Pashati.”

  “No, please.” Tears filled Jagana’s hazel eyes as her composure broke. “It won’t happen again, sir, I promise. I’m sorry.”

  I kept my face blank when Emmory looked in my direction. No matter how much I wanted to argue to give her a second chance, I’d promised my Ekam I’d never interfere with his job, and it was a promise I wanted to keep.

  I especially wasn’t going to interfere with something so serious. We were a long way from Pashati, and even though he could likely task a Marine replacement like Gunny Runji, who knew my BodyGuards from her time with us on Ashva and knew how the Guards ran, it was risky. Jagana had been training with Kisah and Ikeki for six months. Sending her home would put a hole in my Guards, and I knew as well as Emmory did that that could prove more dangerous than this current incident.

  “Get out,” Emmory said finally, jerking his head toward the door. “Tell the rest of your team you are all off-duty, and I’ll see you at oh two hundred hours in front of the empress’s quarters.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jagana scrambled for the door. Emmory watched her go, a sigh hovering on his lips.

  “Why didn’t you look in the box?” I was the only one who could ask the question of my Ekam without getting shot.

  Emmory jerked, closed his eyes, and muttered a low curse. “He was hiding it in his coat when he came through the doors. None of us saw it, and these damn guns never did set off any weapon detectors. I’m sorry, Majesty. We should have been patting everyone down, but I don’t have enough people for that kind of security sweep.”

  I hummed in sympathy and patted my Ekam on the arm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it—and don’t try to fire yourself, I won’t stand for it.”

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t interfere in my BodyGuard decisions.”

  “I believe I said I’d try my best not to.” I glanced at the door Jagana had closed carefully behind herself on her way out. “She made a mistake, Emmory; she’s a good Guard.”

  “He could have killed you.”

  “Maybe. Had it been an explosive or a live gun, you would have caught it. Had it been something else—” I tried not to smile but failed. “If I lose a fight against a hundred-and-thirty-three-year-old man, I probably deserve whatever happens.”

  Emmory’s muttered curse was extremely uncomplimentary and I laughed as I crossed the room to Hao. He’d set the box on the table and opened the lid. Reaching past him, I pulled out the ruined Grendel and turned it over in my hands. “Explosion, you think?”

  Hao took it and made a face. “Almost had to have been. If it had taken a hit from a grenade launcher or something bigger, it would be in pieces.” He passed it back to me and shook his head. “They weren’t very well made, probably why they didn’t stick around all that long once the UT90s came on the market.”

  “And then Grendel went under two years later. Do you remember when we sold them?”

  “Are you serious?” He muttered an ugly curse in Cheng when I stared implacably at him. “This is a load of shit. You can’t possibly plan to be responsible for the decisions of every person who bought a weapon from us?”

  “I just got done executing no fewer than two dozen people who weren’t directly responsible for my family’s deaths. They only helped Wilson. How is that any different from what happened here?” I set the gun back in the box and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “They were plotting against your empire, against you.” Hao stared at me, his golden eyes narrowed. “What is going on? Are you suddenly ashamed of being a gunrunner?”

  Emmory stiffened at Hao’s tone.

  “I am not,” I replied, shooting Hao a warning look. “I am, however, capable of taking responsibility for the choices I’ve made. When did we sell them?”

  “When did I sell them, you mean?” he countered.

  “You know what I mean, Hao. When did we sell these?”

  Hao hissed at me in frustration and shoved a hand into his hair as he started searching through the files on his smati. I knew he kept records of every sale he’d ever made and that even if he hadn’t, he’d be able to recall it just on memory alone given enough time. However, I let him stall, as he obviously needed the time to wrestle with whatever it was that bothered him about this.

  “Three sales,” Hao said finally. “Two were on the outer edge; there’s no way it would impact a citizen of Indrana unless they were a very long way from home. The third deal was with the Losties in the Solarian Conglomerate, do you remember?”

  I did. The Losties were a bunch of mercenaries, little more than a gang of unhappy young people who collected other unhappy young people and did stupid things like knock over transport ships. I’d disliked them immediately; their arrogance and entitlement were eclipsed by only their reckless disregard for the lives of anyone they encountered.

  I’d gotten into a fight with one of them on our first meeting, breaking the asshole’s nose for a muttered comment about my chest, and Hao had restricted me to the ship for the rest of our stay in port.


  “Maybe I should have ignored your order about staying on the ship?”

  Hao rolled his eyes. “I would have kicked your ass off right then and we wouldn’t be here now.” He reached across me and picked up the gun again. “There is no way to prove this came from that shipment, and even if it did, if this dead kid made the choice to run with the Losties? That was his doing. Why is any of that our responsibility?”

  “I don’t know, Hao.” I sighed. “Maybe I won’t take responsibility for every single person I ever sold a gun to, but this man is a citizen of my empire, and his son was a citizen of my empire. I owe them an explanation at the very least.”

  “It wasn’t your empire when this happened.” Hao tossed the gun on the table with a look of disgust. “We made that SC run less than a year after you officially joined my crew. It was your mother’s empire then.”

  “Bugger me.” I shoved a hand into my hair. “I don’t know how you can untangle these two things so easily. I may not have been the Empress of Indrana then, Hao, but I am now. Why are you pushing so hard on this? I’m not asking you to take responsibility for it.”

  Hao cleared his throat but didn’t respond, and my temper slipped free.

  “I am the Empress of Indrana, Cheng Hao, and I will not flinch from my responsibilities.” It wasn’t meant to be a stab at him, but Hao jerked as if my words hurt, and I sighed. “I think we’re talking in circles at this point. I at least owe it to his father to hear him out, to give him peace.” Holding up a hand before Hao could say anything else, I continued. “That’s enough. We put the gun in his hand, Hao.”

  “If we hadn’t done it, someone else would have. He made the choice to use it.”

  “I said enough.” I don’t know if it was my tone or the look that finally shocked Hao into silence, but one of the two things did the trick. “Emmory, is Zin finished searching them?”

  Emmory nodded and opened the door at my gesture.

  26

  Zin and Gita escorted the Indranans into the room as Hao moved away from me and stood on the far side, his arms crossed over his chest.