* * *
By the time I emerge, she’s had the chance to come up with something.
“I thought about what you said,” she says, turning the Skolig over in her fingers, “and, you know, with a little industrial-grade drive lubricant I might be able to—”
“If you can cease being puerile for one moment,” I say, going for austere haughtiness, “I have something to show you.”
“Do you need the thingie?” Ahn says innocently. “Or the drive lubricant?”
Fortunately, a few hours alone in my cabin, including an extended shower to rid me of the customs officer’s lingering presence, have done wonders for my disposition and I’m able to respond to Ahn’s “humor” with something approaching equanimity. I find it helps to think of her as a divinely appointed burden, assigned to me by the creator of the multiverse to make up for my sins. Which particular sins, I’m not sure, but they must have been fucking awful ones.
Ahn comes in and sits on my unmade bed, which takes up at least half the diminutive cabin. I ignore her and move to the console, tapping at the inputs.
“Do you remember my smuggler friend Kestra?”
Ahn frowns. “I remember Kestra, but I’m not sure about the friend. Didn’t she try to kill you after Gaios?”
“If I cut off contact with people after they tried to kill me once or twice, I’d have a hard time filling out a dinner party. I got in touch with her, and she’s willing to take the Skolig off our hands.”
Charts flicker into being above the console, showing the Igan system and an object in a long, elliptical orbit. I rapidly plot a hyperspace course from where the Wild Ride is currently resting, somewhere above the third fractal harmonic.
“She hasn’t heard about the Commonwealth alert yet?” Ahn says.
“I warned her myself. Less chance of a misunderstanding that way. But she’s a smuggler, and she has a better chance than we do of selling the thing over the border somewhere. So she’ll buy it, at a significant discount.”
“Perfect!” Ahn bounces to her feet. “See, I told you it would work out.”
“You did not, in fact.” I press my hand to my forehead. “And it may still not ‘work out.’ Kestra can be... twitchy, and she might expect me to be angry about Gaios. So when we get there, no Plan Z, understand?”
“I mean, sure.” Ahn grins. “Unless there’s no other alternative, right?”
“Ahnika.” I grab her shoulders. “Please. I need you to trust me. I will make this work, but I need you to stay calm. Can you do that for me?”
She blinks her irritatingly beautiful blue-green eyes. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I let go of her, and she leans in to kiss me.
“Looks like we’ve got...” She taps the console, and the ship thrums as it starts executing the hyperspace transition. “Three point two five hours to kill.” She arches one eyebrow.
My girlfriend, master of subtlety. But there’s fuck-all else to do in hyperspace, I suppose.
* * *
Three point one hours later, Ahn is hurrying through her shower, while I finish getting dressed. I frown at my reflection, and reluctantly conclude that the crown with the spikes is perhaps a bit over the top.
Ahn emerges, naked and tracking wet footsteps across my bedroom floor. She gives a low whistle. I turn around, fast enough to make the cloak flare. No point in wearing the thing if you’re not willing to go for effect.
“Wow,” she says, toweling off. “Are we selling stolen goods or accepting the surrender of an enemy kingdom?”
“One never knows,” I say coolly, “what the day may bring.”
But I’m smiling, because the dress is a good one, red and black with little silver touches, clingy where it needs to be and swinging dramatically elsewhere. It’s the kind of thing you could wear on the bridge of your battlecruiser to order the subjugation of a recalcitrant planet. My hair, long and red, gleams like it’s been polished.
Ahn, of course, dresses in dark pants, a light shirt, and the same ratty synthleather vest she always wears, open at the front. Her hair, still damp from the shower, is short and brilliantly blue, contrasting with her soft brown skin. And, of course, there’s the pair of blasters holstered low on her hips. She honestly wouldn’t look dressed without them.
The ship’s system pings, indicating imminent emergence into realspace. I turn the wall from a mirror into an exterior display. Labeled AH-1310, the small object we’re approaching looks like a smallish asteroid. There are thousands like it scattered across the Commonwealth—played-out mines, abandoned military outposts, and so on. A typical smuggler meet.
It isn’t, actually, quite typical. But if all goes well, that’s not going to matter.
Kestra’s ship, the Alcie, is already docked to one side of the rock. It’s several times larger than the Wild Ride, with a crew of about a dozen and plenty of space for illicit cargo. Our security system reports they’re scanning us, but politely, no targeting beams. I tell the ship to take us in, and the Wild Ride accelerates, leaving a wake of coronal blue particles dragged out of hyperspace.
“So what are we going to do?” I ask Ahn.
She frowns. “Sell the thingie to Kestra?”
“And?”
“Not shoot anybody.”
“Right.”
“Unless—”
“Ahn!”
“Right.” She sighs, patting her blasters mournfully. “But what if—”
“Don’t shoot anybody unless I tell you to, all right?”
She takes in my expression, which is thunderous, and grins. “All right.”
I examine her for signs of insincerity and find nothing obvious, so I give a short nod. “Good. Let’s go.”
We dock on the opposite side of the rock from the Alcie, nestling against the bulbous surface of AH-1310. The Wild Ride attaches itself to the airlock, proclaims the environment safe, and opens her doors onto a corridor lit by intermittent glowpaint. It’s native rock on all sides, bulgy and weird-looking, with only the floor smoothed. I step out gingerly, but gravity holds.
“You have the Skolig?” I ask Ahn.
“The what?”
“The thingie.”
“Oh, yeah.” She holds it up, spraying rainbows, and tosses it to me as though it weren’t a priceless cultural treasure. “Here.”
I catch it—not that it really matters, the thing is basically indestructible—and run my fingers over the sharp facets. It’s surprisingly heavy, denser than lead. I tuck it into a hidden pocket—of course this dress has hidden pockets—and stride purposefully into the asteroid, with Ahn following cheerfully behind. It’s a good dress for striding purposefully.
The tunnels are a maze, but that doesn’t bother me. My ability to keep track of myself by dead reckoning is essentially perfect, courtesy of the genetic meddling of a long-ago ancestor who figured that would be a useful ability for the royal family of an orbital kingdom. A glance at the map before we left the Ride was all I needed to keep it straight.
I direct us through several junctions to a large central chamber, roughly equidistant from both ships. It’s some sort of old command center, its walls lined with derelict equipment. A catwalk overhead supports more dead monitors and broken terminals.
Kestra’s waiting in the middle of the room. She’s a large, broad-shouldered woman, blonde hair buzzed short, her lower body swathed in a power suit. I recognize the man standing at her shoulder as Drav, her lieutenant, who has sleepy eyes and a ready smirk. But it’s the third figure that really catches my attention. He’s a Wrax—a humanoid lizard, basically, though that description would annoy any Wrax as human-chauvinist. He wears what looks like a gilded loincloth and a purple sash over hard gray-green scales, stippled with blue patches.
His presence is unusual not because the Wrax are unknown in Commonwealth space—quite the opposite, rather. For the last decade, the Wrax and the Commonwealth have been in a state of not-quite-war, fleets bristling
along the shared border. Finding one of the lizards here is a bit of a surprise.
I can tell it unsettles Ahn, too, by the way her hands drop to her blasters. I quickly touch her shoulder, and she subsides. Kestra glares at us like we’re a particularly unpleasant bit of septic discharge, and I give her my sweetest smile in return.
“Hello, Your Highness,” she says.
It’s mockery, but I accept with a nod. “The correct term of address would be ‘Your Radiance’, actually, but I appreciate the effort. Hello, Kestra.”
“You're looking well.”
“That must be very disappointing for you.”
“A bit.” She smiles, humorlessly. “But from failures come new opportunities, they say.”
“So I hear.” I glance at the Wrax. “Fascinating company you’re keeping.”
“This is Custodian Xythiss,” Kestra says. “He was very interested in meeting you.”
“Custodian?” Ahn says. “Like he cleans the toilets?”
“The translation is not exact.” Xythiss takes a step forward and executes a deep bow with unexpected dexterity. His speech is surprisingly good, too, with only a trace of the hiss one usually hears from Wrax. “It means one who cares for the needs of his people. In your language, ‘prince’ might convey the meaning better.” He straightens up, a forked tongue flicking past a muzzle full of needle teeth. “Greetings, Princess Ilya Fortuna Dobraev McDonaugh. Rumors of your beauty have, if anything, understated the case.”
Bemused, I bow in return. “Greetings, Custodian Xythiss.”
“Smooth-talking lizard,” Ahn whispers, and I wave a hand to shush her.
“Before we get bogged down with chit-chat,” Kestra says, “can we finish what we came here to do? I’d like to see the merchandise.”
I turn my back on them for a moment and extract the Skolig, holding it up for inspection. Even in the dim light of the corridor, the gemstone throws fractured rainbow patterns into every corner.
“Drav?” Kestra says, her eyes fixed on the stone.
“It certainly looks right,” he says. “Have to run a test to be sure, of course.”
“Of course,” I say. “We'll wait right here while you do that.”
Kestra gives a nod, but Xythiss holds up a hand.
“Actually, I think that Princess Ilya would be much more comfortable aboard our ship. I would like to extend an... invitation.” His tongue flickers again. “We have a great deal to discuss.”
Kestra turns her glare on her companion, frowning. “That wasn’t what we agreed. If you want to talk to her, you can talk here.”
“Indeed,” I put in. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m afraid I must... insissst.” Some of Xythiss’s hiss comes through.
Now, I’ve been doing this long enough to know that when someone says that, in that tone of voice, everything is about to go rapidly sideways. More to the point, so has Ahn, and so I get ready to throw myself flat in anticipation of the inevitable thunder of blaster fire. But it doesn’t happen—there’s a clank of metal and the rising hum of energy weapons overhead, but that’s all.
The catwalk above us is suddenly ringed by two dozen armored shapes. Half are Wrax soldiers with long, ugly-looking rifles, while the others are spindly wardroids, skeletal things that look like they’d fold up into neat little cubes.
From the looks on Kestra and Drav, this development is as unexpected to them as it is to me. Even more unexpected, though, Ahn is standing still, perfectly calm, arms crossed and not going for her blasters. When I look at her incredulously, she raises her eyebrows, and I can practically read her mind.
No Plan Z, right? There’s no gloating in her expression, nothing passive-aggressive, just simple faith. You asked me to trust you.
Which is, of course, what I wanted. I just wasn’t anticipating running into a platoon of Wrax marines on top of Kestra’s smuggler goons.
I force myself to take a deep breath and be calm. It’s probably for the best that Ahn hasn’t defaulted to shooting everyone. Twenty wardroids and lizard soldiers might be a bit much, even for her, and it’s a long way back to the Wild Ride. Whatever Xythiss wants, there’s still a chance of getting out of here without bloodshed.
“You fucking snake,” Kestra snarls. She rounds on him, suit legs whirring. “What exactly do you think you’re doing—”
Xythiss calmly draws a small pistol from behind his back and shoots her in the head. The crackling energy bolt sprays a mist of blood, brain, and bone against the wall behind her, incidentally painting Drav a mottled red in the process.
Okay. We can still get out of here without any of my blood getting shed, which is what really counts. Xythiss holsters his pistol as Kestra’s body wobbles and topples over. Drav, looking up at the ring of weapons, raises his hands sheepishly.
“I hope that clarifies matters,” Xythiss says. “Master Drav, in case you are pondering anything clever, the squad I left on your ship will have secured it by now. Princess, will you do us the honor of accompanying me to have a conversation in less... squalid surroundings?”
“Well,” I manage calmly. “When you put it that way.”
The Wrax soldiers descend from the catwalk while the wardroids keep us covered. They search me, not roughly, and to my surprise make no attempt to confiscate the Skolig. Whatever this is about, it doesn’t appear to involve the most valuable gemstone in the sector.
Two lizards relieve Ahn of her gunbelt and take hold of her arms. She gives a yelp when one of their claws catches her, and I see a trickle of blood. I take a long step forward and glare at Xythiss.
“I don’t know what you’re planning,” I tell him. “But if you don’t tell your thugs to back off, I swear I won’t rest until I put you out an airlock.”
He blinks, nictitating membranes sliding into place, and hisses something in his own language. The two Wrax step away from Ahn.
“Escort Master Ahn somewhere she can... rest,” he tells them. “Politely, please.”
I catch Ahn’s eye as they lead her away. There’s no sign there that her faith in me has been shaken, which perversely shakes me in a way I can’t really explain. The last I see of her, she’s vanishing into one of the weirdly bulbous tunnels, flanked by armed Wrax.
Fuck.
* * *
Xythiss’s soldiers provide a polite escort back to the Alcie. He dismisses most of them, and they take Drav away, while a couple follow us to the rear of the ship. The Alcie is older than the Wild Ride, but she’s in good repair, with no discarded underwear strewn in her corridors. We end up in a passenger cabin—Kestra’s smuggling business often includes people, especially those interested in staying clear of the authorities. It’s furnished neatly but blandly with a simple bunk, storage unit, and wall console, while a few alien-looking pieces of machinery are presumably Xythiss’s. I can’t tell if they’re navigational systems or kitchen equipment.
“Leave us,” he says to the guards. “And do not bother me unless a Commonwealth battleship drops out of hyperspace.”
They hiss in the affirmative, and the door slides closed behind us. Xythiss lets out a very human-sounding sigh.
“I apologize for the... unpleasantness,” he says. “My research indicated that you and Kestra were not on the best of terms. I hope her demise was not unduly painful to witness.”
“I’m used to it,” I say. I walk slowly around the room, feeling wary. “It’s going to make my business arrangements significantly more difficult, though.”
“Selling the Skolig?” He extends a clawed hand. “May I?”
I hand it over with a shrug. He holds it up to the cabin light, watching rainbows swirl and re-form on the walls.
“Beautiful,” he says. “But ultimately, of course, simply a gew-gaw.” He hands it back to me. “I have a proposition for you, Princess. One I think you will find considerably more advantageous than disposing of stolen merchandise.”
I toss the Skolig from hand to hand, feeling its weight. “I’
m listening.”
“How would you like to be queen?”
I nearly miss the next toss. Xythiss smirks at me, to the extent a lizard can smirk, and turns to a wall console. A few taps bring up a map of the Commonwealth, with the Kingdom of Ventimosk highlighted. My father’s kingdom. My home. Two dozen orbital habitats and half a hundred asteroids spread over three systems.
“You may not be caught up on current events,” I say, finally. “My father disowned me and officially struck me from the line of succession. And even if he hadn’t, I have two sisters, three brothers, and a great-grandfather in cryonic suspension who would ascend the throne before I could.”
“I am aware,” Xythiss says smoothly. “But as your father demonstrated, the legalities can be... amended.”
He taps another key, and long, curving blue lines slice over the display, crossing the Commonwealth border from Wrax space and impaling it like a volley of arrows. One them goes straight through Ventimosk.
“You’re planning an invasion.” I keep my voice level, not quite successfully.
“The Commonwealth has grown weak,” he says, staring at the plans with satisfaction. “Kingdoms like your own chafe under the rule of your obstreperous Senate. With the proper encouragement, we believe the people of Ventimosk would accept a new ruler. One with... more appropriate ideas.”
“Proper encouragement meaning a Wrax war fleet, I assume.”
He inclines his head. “Certainly it would be preferable to the alternative, in which your ships are broken and your stations taken by storm. A great deal of unnecessary resource expenditure, and unnecessary bloodshed for you. It could all be so much... simpler.”
My heart is beating fast. I swallow, playing for time. “Why me? Why not my father or someone else in the family?”
“Your father and your siblings have a great deal invested in the current order,” the lizard says. “You, on the other hand, are an outlaw. Hunted by your own people. Our analysts suspected you would be more open to persuasion.”
Silk & Steel Page 8
