The Hidden World

by Melinda Snodgrass

  She shot him a sharp look. “I hope you’re not going to be resentful if I don’t pretend to be in love with you, and if I also play a role in this dance we’re doing.”

  “Not at all. I just hope you understand that once the music actually starts I’ll be leading.”

  “Of course.”

  He bowed and went off in search of a drink. The entire exchange had left his feelings in turmoil. Another loveless marriage. Well, that wasn’t quite fair. He was pretty sure he had loved Mercedes when they had married at twenty-one, but she had never needed him. Never looked at him as if he had hung the sun, the moon, and the stars. His gaze roamed across the crowded ballroom, finally located Paloma dancing with some young man who still had a spray of acne on his cheeks. Boho’s chest felt too tight. He gulped down the rest of his drink and went off to fill the rest of his dance card.

  As soon as the music ended he sought out Paloma and secured her for two country dances. The big eyes flew up his face and she looked confused and a bit hurt.

  “More would cause comment,” he said gruffly.

  “Not one waltz?”

  “Not tonight.”

  She studied his dance card, then her gaze went to Sofia who was being led onto the floor. “Ah,” she said and in the moment the face of the maiden showed the cold wisdom of the crone. Then her next partner arrived. Boho bowed and stepped back.

  Sofia proved to be as proficient and precise at her dancing as she was with everything else. She conversed with him even through the complex steps of the quadrille and at one point it was Boho who lost his place as he tried to keep up the conversation. That actually drew a smile from her, which was both encouraging and alarming.

  At the dinner break Boho escorted Sofia, and filled a plate for her. He then returned to the buffet to fill his own. He was surprised to see Paloma sitting with her mother and not surrounded by a bevy of boys. They seemed to be in earnest conversation. He toyed with going over, but decided against it.

  After eating he found himself suddenly overheated. Boho brushed away the bead of sweat in his sideburn and left the dining room to seek fresh air on the balcony. A flash of memory returned of finding Mercedes in the arms of that intitulado. The satisfaction he had felt as he dragged that lowborn scum away by his collar like a misbehaving dog. He had actually dueled the fellow. He should have just beaten him rather than crossing swords.

  The click of heels on stone brought him around. He was expecting Sofia, but it was Paloma. She seemed to float into his arms. “I’m sorry. I was jealous, but that’s stupid. You have things you have to do that require finesse and I’m just a silly girl. I understand I can’t be at your side while you accomplish these things, but I can always be waiting to ease you.”

  He crushed her against his chest, breathed in the scent of her perfume. He held her at arm’s length, studying that piquant face, then pressed fervent kisses onto her palms. “I don’t deserve you. You’re wonderful. I’m playing a game, my darling. One for which there are no rules. Having you—”

  “No games with me. You can trust me, Boho.”

  “You’re the only one I can.”

  15

  WHAT’S IN THE HEART

  “Translation to normal space in two minutes,” Graarack said from her position at navigation.

  Tracy had insisted they use the formal language he had learned at O-Trell from the moment they had obtained the ship. At least now his crew all knew why he had been such a stickler. Tracy tightened his crash webbing. Jahan was perched on the back of his chair, her tail and prehensile feet holding her in place.

  “I wish we knew why Control on Kusatsu-Shirane always wants us to come in so close and so hot,” Luis said from his post. “They can’t wait a few days for us to come in from the outer system?”

  “Their planet, their rules,” Jahan said.

  “One minute,” Graarack said.

  “My guess it’s defensive,” Tracy said. “Anybody who’s known to them comes in close. Anybody appearing out at the edges will be known to be an enemy.”

  “Not that it will do them much good if the League finds them,” Jax’s voice came over the intercom.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  There was the sensation of being turned inside out and the familiar sharp pain in the back of the eyes and then they were back in normal space. “Good job,” Tracy started to say, but his words were drowned out by the blaring of proximity impact alarms.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Graarack’s frantic and profane recitation was barely audible over the whooping sirens. Her claws flew across the controls. Tracy unhooked his webbing and fell more than ran to join her. His eyes flicked from sensor to sensor. In a debris field this dense the ship’s computer could react faster than the crew, but Tracy felt the need to at least be ready to respond.

  A giant piece of steel and composite resin, its edges ragged and blackened by fire, tumbled past the front viewport. It had been years but Tracy recognized the material and the colors, occluded by burns though they might be. It was a piece of an imperial ship. He was frozen in shock. Fortunately, Graarack wasn’t. She slammed a hand down on the jet control and sent the Selkie off on a new trajectory. Relative to Tracy’s position it felt like he was riding in a falling elevator. His stomach seemed to hit the ceiling and his balls were climbing into the back of his throat. One of Graarack’s eight limbs shot out and she grabbed him by the belt and kept him from joining his stomach on the ceiling.

  A few minutes later and they had pulled back out of immediate danger of impact. The scanners revealed the magnitude of the disaster. The computer’s best analysis was that there had been four ships. Interspersed among the pieces of ships were rocks of various sizes. It was as if a new asteroid belt had formed around Kusatsu-Shirane.

  “Match trajectory and image capture on that big piece,” Tracy said. “It looked like there was writing on the fragment. Maybe we can get an ID.”

  “And do what? Report to the League about how a bunch of their ships got all blowed up, and admit we were trading with a Hidden World?” Luis said.

  “A lot of people died here, Luis. Don’t make light of that or just think about us. Now get on the radio and get in touch with Orbital Control. See if you can find out what happened and what they want us to do.”

  “Okay.” The tone was grudging, but Baca turned back to his station. After a few minutes he turned back. “Nobody’s answering, and worse, nobody is talking—”

  “Maybe the League found a way to knock out communications?” Jax suggested as he came rustling onto the bridge.

  “No,” Luis said. “Communications are still up, but the whole planet’s gone silent. Except for the music.”

  “Music?” Tracy asked. “Put it on speaker.”

  A mournful song filled the bridge. A woman’s voice throbbing with loss and grief. The song ended and an instrumental piece began that was equally as heart-rending as the vocal piece. Tracy shivered. Something terrible had happened on Kusatsu-Shirane and judging from the carnage around them something equally terrible had happened in orbit.

  Minutes passed as Graarack and the computer worked to match velocity and vectors with the large fragment. The cameras zoomed and compensated. A portion of the name came into focus. San Medel y Cel. The rest of the letters were gone, but Tracy could fill in the rest. San Medel y Celedon. A dreadnaught and a flagship. Her flagship. Vomit clawed up the back of his throat. He forced it back, and bent forward, arms wrapped around his belly. They had parted so bitterly and now it could never be put right. Straightening, he gave the bridge of his nose a hard squeeze, fighting back tears as Luis, accessing the computer files, yelped, “Holy crap!” He spun to face Tracy. “That was the flagship of the Infanta.”

  The bridge was gripped in silence as the shock of what that meant sank in. It was the shaking of Jax’s fronds that broke the spell.

  “She would have held the lives of billions of humans and aliens in her hands once her father passed. Instead she precedes him into oblivi
on,” Jax said somberly.

  A fur-covered finger swept away the moisture beneath Tracy’s eyes. Tracy was glad Jahan had used her knuckle and that the fearsome claws were sheathed. “You weep,” Jahan whispered into his ear.

  “It’s a tragedy for the League,” Tracy said gruffly.

  “They came here to do violence to the people of Kusatsu-Shirane,” Jax said.

  “It was a duty they would not have relished.”

  “But they would have done it just the same,” Dalea said. It startled Tracy; he hadn’t noticed when the Hajin had joined them on the bridge. “If the Infanta gave the order.”

  “And now the captain will say something about orders being orders,” Graarack said.

  “Look, people, a bunch of ships were destroyed here. Several thousand men and women lost their lives. If life had turned out differently I might have been among them. So of course I’m upset. Now we need to find out what’s happened on Kusatsu-Shirane.” He stood and started for the access ladder.

  “Did you know her, Captain?” Dalea asked.

  He didn’t pretend not to understand. “I was at the academy with her,” Tracy said.

  Luis leaned back in his chair. “It’s interesting how you never actually answer that question, Captain.” In response to the curious looks from the rest of the crew the young man added, “I asked him that back on Nueva Terra and he didn’t answer then either.”

  “And you’re not getting one now. Figure out a course to the planet.”

  “Let’s not burn fuel landing the Selkie until we know more,” Jax said.

  “Okay, I’ll take the Talon.”

  “You still want me to plot a course for you?” Luis asked.

  “No, in a ship that small I can handle it myself. You try to figure out how a Hidden World that was only colonized a few decades ago managed to take out a League strike force.”

  Tracy grabbed the rails of the ladder and slid down to the cabin and galley level. Then down another level to the large hold filled with the farming equipment they had purchased, the new loader, and the Talon. He was pulling a spacesuit out of a locker when Jahan came bounding down the ladder and grabbed her own suit.

  “I take it you’re coming along?”

  “I don’t think you should be alone in your own head at the moment.”

  “And now you’re my shrink,” Tracy grunted as he shrugged the oxygen pack onto his back.

  “Hey, being free and all I’d say the price recommends me,” the Isanjo said.

  They secured each other’s helmets and headed for the Talon. It was an older model fighter that had been replaced almost thirty years before with the saucer-shaped Infierno. With its needle nose and swept-back wings it looked like it was traveling at light speed even when it was sitting still. Jahan unclipped the restraints while Tracy climbed the ladder and settled into the pilot’s couch. The Isanjo came swarming up, leaped over him, and took her place in the gunnery chair. Not that it had guns any longer. Tracy sealed the dome, and radioed the bridge.

  “We’re ready.” They could faintly hear the sound of the air being sucked out of the cargo bay and into the rest of the ship. Then it was very quiet.

  “Opening bay doors,” came Graarack’s voice.

  Tracy brought the engines online as the massive doors swung open ponderously. In the distance they could see the debris field falling into an orbital pattern around the planet, which bulked like a green, blue, and white marble. Tracy lifted off and they eased out of the bay. A piece of broken ship tumbled past.

  “Mind the trash.”

  “And you think I need the reminder… why?”

  “You seem distracted.”

  “Shut up, Jahan.”

  They moved into the debris field. “How the hell did they bring all these rocks close enough to the ships to have any impact?” Tracy asked aloud.

  “There seem to be blast marks on some of them,” Jahan remarked.

  Tracy used the proximity radar to help him negotiate the rocks and wreckage, but he sometimes overrode its decisions and took them closer to the bits of floating detritus that had once been people. Ice formed patterns on the skin, in some cases frozen blood haloed their faces where lungs had exploded. After he flew past the eighteenth body, Jahan said, “That’s who you’re looking for, right? The Infanta?” He didn’t answer, just tightened his grip on the controls. “She’s dead, Tracy.”

  “I know. Maybe. Probably. She is… was the heir to the throne. I have to think there would have been emergency measures in place. Some kind of added protection.”

  Jahan kept silent for another twenty minutes then said, “Did you even intend to go to the planet? Or was that just an excuse?”

  “All right! All right!”

  He reprogrammed and set them on a trajectory for the planet. Jahan switched on the radio. Haunting music filled the cockpit. Occasionally Tracy sent out a hail. “Kusatsu-Shirane Control this is Selkie drop ship. Come in, Control.” There was no answer, just the music.

  They passed relatively close to one of Kusatsu-Shirane’s small moons. The planet sported six but only one was presently in view. Jahan suddenly stiffened and the flexible ears on her suit pricked straight up.

  “What?”

  “I’m hearing something.” Her gloved hands flew across the controls, amplifying the signal, and then Tracy heard it too. The ping of a distress beacon sending its cry into the void.

  “Lock onto that,” Tracy ordered.

  “Way ahead of you. There,” she pointed. “On the moon.”

  Calculations were made and input, trajectory burns plotted. It would take almost two hours for the Talon to reach the pitted surface of the moon. Tracy tried not to hope. Reminded himself to focus on dodging the debris, but couldn’t stop the internal prayer.

  It has to be her. Please let it be her. It has to be her.

  * * *

  Paloma reclined against a nest of pillows and watched as Boho paced. The light from the setting sun slanted through the blinds painting Paloma’s bare breasts in tones of red and gold, and soft brown curls tumbled across her shoulders. The aromatic smoke from his Tiponi stim stick formed a writhing dance before his face. Boho had pulled on the robe that the InterGalactic hotel chain provided to guests, and as he paced his now flaccid dick flapped against his thighs. The thick carpet, the fibers interwoven with memory foam, was plush and soft beneath his bare feet.

  “…Can you really know what’s in a person’s heart?” Boho concluded.

  “You don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t know. I grew up with Arturo. We moved in the same circles, seduced the same girls. I would call us friends. The question is how much power he wields in the family. Arturo thinks they need me, but will Mihalis, or will he view me as a rival and a threat?”

  “You are a military leader too, you’ve been closer to power than Mihalis, the people love you, and—” Paloma gave him an impish smile “—also you’re far more handsome than Mihalis. We ladies like that.”

  Boho chuckled, charmed and flattered she felt that way. Sometimes the age difference was daunting and he worried he disgusted her. The lighter moment faded. “So, you’re saying I shouldn’t trust the del Campos?”

  “I don’t know, my love. They have offered you a daughter, a sister. They must think they need you for something. And what is their plan? To formally remove Mercedes from the succession and then wait—”

  “They’re not going to wait. Musa’s been gnawing on his resentment for twenty-six years. They’ll force a constitutional crisis by removing Mercedes, then claiming the Emperor is mentally unfit. Which I could attest to. The old man is becoming very vague.”

  “So maybe that’s what they need you for.”

  Boho stubbed out his stim stick and settled back on the bed. He pulled Paloma into his arms. Her hair tickled his chin and caught in his stubble. She ran her fingers through his chest hair. “What if you just stayed married to Mercedes? Nothing would change for us. If you divorce—”

&n
bsp; “It would have to be an annulment. Which I could do since she’s barren.”

  “My point is that the only difference in our relationship would be which wife you were—” Paloma broke off abruptly.

  “Betraying?” Boho said. A kernel of anger settled into his chest.

  She pulled away, leaned on an elbow and looked down at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I suppose if you don’t love them then maybe it isn’t really…” She caught his expression. “I’m making it worse.”

  “It’s all right. I understand what you are saying. I did… do love Mercedes, but if I stand by her after she’s removed from the succession it will be a potential source of resistance to the del Campos. She will have to be isolated, as will the other two possible contenders for the throne.”

  And perhaps mere isolation wouldn’t be sufficient, Boho thought and he felt suddenly queasy. No, if anything happened to Mercedes it would be provocative. But the other two eligible Arango daughters? They would not be safe. It would be easy to remove Beatrisa. She was still in O-Trell. Put her aboard a ship and send her to Sector 470. Carisa would be harder. She had made it through the High Ground, done her five years, and was now back at the palace; an unmarried daughter and a living bargaining chip for the Emperor. Marry her to a del Campo supporter? A death in childbirth or a tragic accident? Boho didn’t think Arturo was that merciless. He wasn’t sure he could say the same for Mihalis.

  Paloma lowered herself until her bare breasts were pressed against his chest. She gently kissed him. “All of this may be moot. Mercedes rolled up the corsarios. I expect that will make the del Campos’ plans harder to get underway.”

  * * *

  Boho had just left the hotel room when an emergency signal set his ring to drilling at his finger. He keyed it and Jaakon’s holographic image appeared. “Sir.” Jaakon’s face was gray and his eyes wide, showing white all around. Boho waved back his security.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Out,” he said shortly.

  “Class five security protocol please, sir.”