by Richard Fox
Vincent’s metal hand ceased twitching. The prince held his arm out and flexed his fingers.
“There we go,” he said. “So, how is your detail with Princess Cosima?”
Remi huffed. “Exciting to begin with, now a bit ordinary.”
“You’ll stay on her detail until after the wedding and the treaty is signed. Colonel Stolzoff and I are of the opinion that there’s still a credible threat against her,” Vincent said.
“I saw the official report. You think Hedelson had help?”
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it,” Vincent said. “He was on our radar and was a suitable fall guy. There are a number of very powerful corporations angry with our arrangement with the Chaebol Corporation. I don’t think they’d settle with one amateur attempt on her life.”
“Why is she so important? The king will sign the treaty, not the heir or his wife,” Remi said.
Vincent’s face fell.
“He’s dying. The life support bay can keep him alive for a few more weeks. Long enough for him to abdicate in favor of my brother once he and Cosima are married. The Chaebol Corporation had a number of demands to their treaty. My brother as king and her as queen were at the top of their list.”
Remi sat back and nibbled at the inside of his lip in worry.
“Why Prince Francis, why not you?”
“Francis led the delegation, he’s a known quantity. Besides, who’d want to marry this?” He pointed to his eye patch. “I’m a monster.”
“You’re not a monster, Vincent. You’re a hero. You were the one who—”
“No. Prince Quinn, who gave his life for Sidonia, is the hero of that day.”
“Sire, you and I both know what happened.”
Vincent stood up and pressed a metal finger against Remi’s chest.
“Yes, we do. And you’d best forget it.” Vincent walked out of the gym.
****
The vanity was a disaster zone; lipstick tubes lay scattered among eyeliner, foundation, and powders, as if an earthquake had sent the once-orderly rows into scattered chaos.
Cosima sat underneath the vanity’s lights, examining her face and the latest application of makeup. She wore shorts and a loose T-shirt, at odds with the gold wires woven into her neck-length hair and heavy makeup.
“What do you think?” Cosima asked Lana.
“I think you’re young, and you have nothing to cover up,” Lana said. The handmaid ran a wand over Cosima’s face, and most of the makeup pulled away and attached itself to the wand, like iron flakes to a magnet. “Let’s go with subtle, like you aren’t trying to look beautiful, it just happened naturally.”
“Fine, but hurry. I have to meet Prince Francis in half an hour.”
Lana scooted a stool next to Cosima and picked up an eyeliner case from the detritus. “My lady, you must learn to make men wait,” she said, focusing on Cosima’s eyelashes.
“Somehow…I thought I’d have a bit more time to date. I still don’t know why Theresa isn’t the one getting married off. She’s older, prettier, and if the tabloids are right, she’s definitely more into dating than I ever was,” Cosima said.
“Well, ask your father when he arrives with the trade fleet. Or ask Prince Francis. He was there with your father on New Chosun,” Lana said.
“Is that what people normally talk about on a first date? The circumstances of their arranged marriage?”
Lana rubbed rouge into Cosima’s cheeks.
“Need to get some sunlight on you. You look like a fish belly,” Lana mumbled.
She turned Cosima toward the vanity mirror. Her brief efforts had managed to highlight Cosima’s delicate features.
“Now the dress that Francis sent over,” Lana said. The handmaiden vanished into a closet.
“Lana, what am I supposed to talk about with Francis? Stahlium yields and oxygen-scrubber mean time between failure rates?” Cosima applied a deeper shade of red lipstick and pressed a napkin to her mouth. She examined herself in the vanity and smiled at the results.
Lana came out of the closet, holding a black dress by a hanger.
Cosima stared at the dress and would have gone visibly pale but for the makeup.
“Where’s the rest of it?” she asked. Most of the dress, what little there was, was a sheer black fabric. Cosima ran her hand behind the dress, which was so thin that she could still see the lines of her palm. Darker patches around the breasts and hips would give her little more modesty than a bikini. The sheer fabric had a high cut against the thigh, as if anything would have been hidden from view.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Cosima asked again.
“This is all of it, my lady,” Lana deadpanned.
“I can’t…I mean,” Cosima glanced down at her shorts and T-shirt, “I wouldn’t go out in this, and he wants me to wear that in public?”
“I cannot explain or fathom your future husband’s taste in evening wear,” Lana said.
“No, just no. Where’s my slate? I’ll cancel dinner, tell him I have hives or something,” Cosima said, pawing through the vanity top for her slate.
Lana thrust the dress into Cosima’s hands. Cosima held it away from her like it was infected with plague.
“Take it back to the closet,” Lana said.
“If you think—”
“Now!”
Cosima sprang to her feet and took a step toward the closet. The dress tugged in her hands, and a ripping sound came from behind her.
Cosima looked, and saw Lana’s foot on the train of the dress, which had ripped in half.
“Lana…you clumsy oaf,” Cosima said.
“Forgive me, my lady, I don’t know how I could commit such an egregious error.” Lana deadpanned. She bustled into the closet and retuned with three new dresses. She held up a red and gold sleeveless dress with a plunging neckline. Cosima shook her head.
“I hereby admonish you in the strongest terms.” Cosima shook her head again at the next offering, a sky-blue affair with a silver trim. Lana shook it slightly, and Cosima’s shake turned into a nod.
“I stand admonished.” Lana helped Cosima into the dress and ran her finger up the back to seal it.
Cosima stood in front of a bank of mirrors, listening to the swish of the dress as she twisted and turned. Her lips stayed firm as she picked up a clutch from her bed. “This isn’t how I thought my first date would play out.”
“Nor I, my lady. Let’s not keep your fiancé waiting too long.”
****
Prince Francis had a private room reserved at L’Auberge Chez Pierre, which billed itself as the finest French restaurant for several light-years. Major Volenz, her guard for the evening, escorted Cosima from a back entrance and into a small elevator.
The elevator let them out on a walkway overlooking the main dining room. Tables for two, all occupied by only those Sidonians who could afford the luxury of meals prepared by actual chefs, were spaced out to ensure some privacy for the diners. White-jacketed servers pushed noiseless hover carts laden with small plates of food between the tables and kitchen.
A massive chandelier flanked the walkway, and crystal glistened like Stahlium fragments in the planet’s rings.
Cosima ran her hand along the golden railing as the smell of braised duck wafted past her nose.
A Guardsman, the upper half of his face covered by his helmet but his perpetual scowl on full display, opened the door to the private dining room and stomped his foot in salute as Cosima walked past him.
The prince sat at a small table, his back to the door. A regal jacket hung from the chair. Francis, his shirt collar undone, stood up and opened his arms wide.
“Cosima, you look…lovely. That’s not the dress I sent you.” He placed his hands against her bare shoulders and examined her as if she were about to be served for dinner.
“There was a horrible accident. I will be most cross with my handmaid for its loss,” Cosima said.
“Maybe I can see you in it—or a little less
—later on.” Francis pulled out a seat for Cosima and flopped into his chair. He picked up a nearly empty wineglass and took a sip.
“Sorry, I got started a bit early.” He tapped on the table twice. A door behind her opened, and a tray hovered toward them, carrying a pair of wineglasses.
Francis finished his glass and swapped it out for a full one from the tray. He set the other glass down for Cosima.
“No waiters tonight. Colonel Stolzoff and that stack of bricks nursemaiding me want the staff kept well beyond arm’s length. Such silliness,” he said.
Cosima looked at her wine but didn’t touch it. Her hands stayed balled up in her lap. “Is there a reason for that?”
Francis rolled his eyes and swirled his wine before taking a sip. “Rampant paranoia. He’s even got a tester in the kitchen, and I’ll tell you that the chef’s hate having someone looking over their shoulders. Do try your wine, it’s actual champagne from France,” he said.
Cosima lifted the flute to her mouth. Tiny bubbles tickled her nose as she took a sip. She grimaced as the alcohol burned her throat on the way down.
“Oh, that’s different,” she said with a slight cough.
“You’ve never had champagne before?”
“I’ve never had alcohol before.”
Francis chuckled and leaned toward her. “The more you drink, the better it tastes, fascinating stuff. You’d best drink up. We won’t have many chances to go out and really enjoy ourselves after the wedding. We’ll have much to do, appeasing nobles, keeping the big corporations off the planet, managing the expansion.”
Cosima took a deeper sip and didn’t find the taste much improved.
“I don’t follow you. We’re a backwater planet, we’re far from any of the trade routes, and our system doesn’t even have an inflection point to support a jump gate. All we really have is Stahlium and a bunch of high-strung artists,” she said. “We don’t even have the population to colonize two continents, and you’re talking about an expansion?”
Francis finished his champagne and reached under the table.
“I’m going to do something very rude, forgive me,” he said. Cosima’s eyes widened as he fumbled around his pants and finally pulled out a small slate.
Francis put the slate on the table and tapped at it.
“A little over a hundred years ago, my grandmother, Queen Ibiza, sent survey probes toward the neighboring star systems. You’re right, we’re gate-locked from the major trade routes, and it takes months for FTL ships to get to and from the nearest gate. But maybe there was an inflection point connecting our system to another that tied in to the wider network. That’s what the probes were looking for.
“A year ago, we received the survey from the probe that went to star GY201, and this is what it sent back.” Francis moved his hand away, and a holo projection emanated from the slate. A solar system with several planets slowly churning in their gravity ballet appeared. Cosima had studied orbital mechanics since she could walk, and what she saw defied the laws of physics.
Within the system’s Goldilocks Zone, where it wasn’t too hot or too cold to disallow liquid water, there were four planets, all sharing the exact orbit and evenly spaced around the system’s star.
“That’s impossible.” She peered closer at the projection. One of the planets was actually two smaller planets in a tight orbit around each other.
“Yet, there it is. Five habitable worlds in one system, and with an inflection point connecting it to Sidonia,” Francis said with pride.
Cosima’s mouth went dry as an idea came to her.
“There’s no way this happened by accident, five planets in the exact same orbit. A space-faring culture must have…are they inhabited?”
“No,” his mouth pulled into a half grin, “virgin territory. Not a spec of any alien presence, but the probe was a bit limited in its capabilities. Habitable worlds are jewels beyond price on the open market, and we had the location of five to auction off.”
“Had?”
“Yes, my dear. What do you think your father and I were doing on New Chosun? We brought representatives from every empire, government, and trade conglomerate that has the ability to build a jump gate together, and we auctioned off the colonization and transit rights to GY201, which we’re calling the Gaia system from now on. That tested through the roof with focus groups.”
He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head.
“And we got quite the price for it. Though some corporations wanted it more than others, we had our instructions from the king. Something else to drink? Something stronger?” He tapped at the table again. “Whiskey. Do you know what they drink on New Chosun? Soju, vile stuff, no flavor to it.”
Cosima snatched up the slate and looked at the reading from the probe. Each planet in the Goldilocks Zone was full of life, and their orbits flew perfect circles around the star with no detectable apogee or perigee, unlike every other celestial body known to science. The technology required to achieve this was thousands of years beyond what humanity had achieved.
Francis set a snifter holding a dark liquid down next to her and plucked the slate from her hand.
“State secret, for now. Once the fleet arrives from New Chosun, we’ll make a public announcement,” he said. “Let’s talk about us. What were you doing on that station all these years?”
“Theresa, my sister, had no interest in our family’s holdings. So father pushed me to learn about mining Stahlium, running our home, keeping our miners safe and busy…marrying anyone dirt side—excuse me—planet side, wasn’t in my plans.”
“And I thought I’d have another few years to sow my wild oats before being forced to settle down. Such is the royal life. At least you’re pretty,” he said with a wink.
“Thank…you?”
A tray arrived with a tiny cracked egg on a bed of frosted noodles.
“I took the liberty of ordering for you, hope you don’t mind. This dish is a house specialty.”
Cosima looked at the dish askance and poked at it with a tiny fork.
“Prince Francis, why did you return ahead of my father? How is he?”
“In any negotiation, there’s some give and take. We had our stipulations for the use of the inflection point and tolls, and the corporation that accepted countered with a few demands of their own. One: that I be named regent and eventual king. Two: that either you or your sister be my queen. And many more, but I don’t want to bore you with the details.”
Francis picked up his appetizer and tossed it into his mouth.
“Why me? Why not my sister? Don’t you know her?”
“Oh, I know her all right.” Francis coughed and tapped against his chest. “You’ll have to ask your father why he chose you. Ah, here comes the main course.”
The rest of their meal passed with less talk. Francis seemed intent on eating and drinking as fast as he could. By the time plates of chocolate mousse had arrived, his eyes were red and his words slurred.
“So, Princess…” Francis said, spilling a bit of whiskey on his sleeve, “why don’t we go back to my quarters, get an idea of what we’re in for on our wedding night.”
Cosima felt fingers caress her knee.
Her leg jerked and slammed the digits into the underside of the table. Francis yelped and shook his hand, then raised an eyebrow at her with interest.
“Prince Francis!” Cosima stood up and snatched her clutch from the table. “I-I-I have some terrible time lag from the station. Yes, it’s too late in the morning for me to consider that…with you…now.” She turned and walked away as fast as her dress would allow.
“Wait, wait!” Francis got to his feet and tripped over his chair. He managed to keep his drink upright as he fell, laughing.
The door opened for Cosima, and she zipped past Major Volenz. “Fast. Walk very fast,” she said to her bodyguard.
Major Volenz complied without comment.
CHAPTER 6
Jerrum opened the safe sunk into the floor
of his office and pushed aside wrapped stacks of Sidonian marks, New Chosun currency, and pistols loaded with hollow-point rounds. Beneath them all was a device worth more than the thirty-story building he was in.
The disk was the size of his palm, black and unmarked. He set it on his desktop and pressed a fingertip against the disk. The quantum-entangled atoms within it spun, transmitting his desire to speak with the person who held the other paired disk.
Entangling atoms was easy, keeping them separate from the many laws of physics that would break the connection was difficult, and expensive. But for those willing to pay the price, they gained an unbreakable, untraceable, and unlimited range of communication.
He swallowed hard as a pale red light blinked, then went steadily green.
“What?” a voice said from the disk.
“She lives, sir,” Jerrum said. “Our first attempt failed. New security measures make your stipulation that she die in public difficult to carry out.”
The silence from his employer unnerved him more than any ass-chewing out could have.
“Your assets remain in place?”
“Yes, sir,” Jerrum said.
“The fleet will arrive soon. Very soon. She must die before the king can abdicate. If Sidonia signs the treaty, our mission is a failure. Do you understand that?”
“Of course. We could eliminate Francis. He is just as crucial, correct?”
The line was quiet but for a slight static hiss.
“Francis is mine. Victor is mine. The king is mine. Do not touch them. Kill the girl. Public or not. You will kill the girl, or you will answer to me.”
Jerrum felt a sheen of icy fear coat his stomach. The last agent called before their employer had taken days to die.
“As you wish. You will join us shortly, correct?”
“Soon. It takes time to build an army.”
The lights on the side of the disk went red as the entanglement died. Cracks appeared on the disk, spreading like cracks in a foundation. The disk fell to pieces and dissolved into dust. Jerrum wiped the remains off his desk with the back of his hand.
****
