by Rachel Bach
And just like that, the solution came to me.
It was so obvious, I was embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it earlier. Clearly, being around Terrans for so long had made me soft in the head. I had it now, though—how to get help for my virus without going to the Eyes, how to avoid the lelgis, even how to get my armor fixed. It was perfect, natural, beautiful, and for the first time since I’d jumped off the cliff, I felt like I had my feet under me again.
I sat up at once, leaning over to grab one of the prefilled syringes out of the medkit on the table beside me. I broke the safety cap and palmed the needle, hiding it between the wall and my body. When I was set, I called over my shoulder: “Nic, could you come help me for a second?”
“Of course, Deviana,” Nic said, hopping out of his chair. “Are you in pain? We’ve only got ten minutes of jump left. When we come out, I’ll call down to our ground contact to have a medic ready when we land.”
He stopped in front of me, all anxious eagerness, but I just pointed at my injured leg. “I need you to take a look at my patch. I think something’s wrong.”
He looked at me funny for a moment, but I kept my mind perfectly blank. Nova had said Nic could tell when someone was lying, and I’d seen him do as much myself back on Falcon 34. I had no idea if keeping my head empty would actually work, but a few moments later, Nic kneeled to check my leg. The second his head was down, I stabbed the syringe into his neck.
Unlike me, Copernicus Starchild had no built-up resistance to sedatives. I’d barely pushed the plunger down before he was slumping onto the floor. Nova’s brother was almost as small as she was, and even on my busted leg, it was no problem to pick him up and hobble him across the ship to the other bench. I laid him out and checked to be sure his breathing was steady, but he seemed to be sleeping soundly. I checked one last time, just to be sure, then I limped back over to my bench and started putting my armor back on.
It took me a few minutes to get my ripped-up leg plate to snap back into place, but eventually everything clicked. Once I was locked in, I adjusted my motors to pick up the weight for my bum leg and walked to the cockpit with only a slight limp, plopping into the pilot’s seat just as we came out of hyperspace.
Despite my fears, we came out of the ungated jump only six hours behind where we should have been, dumping out in high orbit above the blinding white expanse of Montblanc’s arctic circle. After a long prayer of thanks to my king, I buckled in and grabbed the flight stick. I’m registered to operate most small spacecraft, but that was back in the army, and I was a little rusty. Consequently, I spent the next few minutes remembering how to fly. Fortunately, the basics of space navigation hadn’t changed too much in the last few years, and soon enough I was able to merge into the ring of ships orbiting Montblanc’s equator while they awaited permission to land.
When the colony tower called, I sent them the faked information Brenton had loaded into the ship and got immediate clearance. Brenton’s flight plan called for me to set down at a medium-sized city in Montblanc’s northern hemisphere, but I veered off course the moment I got my okay from traffic control, landing in the huge public starport at the colony capital. I locked the ship up tight so no one would rob Nic blind before he woke up, and then, with a bow and a formal thank-you for saving me that he’d never hear, I closed the door on Nic’s unconscious body and hopped down onto the tarmac, losing myself instantly in the busy starport.
I didn’t have any money, but it didn’t matter. Even if I’d had a year’s pay in hand, I couldn’t have gotten a taxi. Not when I was armed and in full Paradoxian armor without a permit on a major Terran colony. Fortunately, my suit computer had already tapped into the local maps provided by the tourist board, and my destination wasn’t far. Two minutes and a four-block jog later, I was standing in front of the heavy steel door of the Paradoxian embassy.
I hit the bell and stepped back, settling into parade rest in front of the camera. A few seconds later, a man with an even thicker accent than mine addressed me from the speaker bank above the door. “Welcome to the Paradoxian Emb—”
The voice cut off abruptly, and I heard the camera whir, focusing on my armor. When the man came back, he was speaking King’s Tongue. “My lady, how can we help you?”
I smiled. Verdemont armor came through again. This time, though, I wasn’t playing at being a noble lady to scare a mechanic into a timely repair. The other side of that door was the king’s land, which meant I was back under the king’s law.
“I’m not noble,” I said quickly. “My name is Deviana Morris, honorably discharged lieutenant in the Ambermarle First Armored Division. I have important information for the crown and I need to speak with the officer in charge.”
There was a long pause, and then the heavy door unlocked with a click. “Welcome, Lieutenant Morris,” the voice said. “Blessed be the Sainted King.”
“Ever may he reign,” I replied as I stepped inside, placing myself, my virus, and all my hopes into the hands of Sainted King Stephen, Holy Ruler of Paradox, and the only power in the universe I could still trust.
Stepping into the Montblanc Paradoxian embassy was like going home.
Unlike Terran buildings with their low ceilings and normal human scale, the embassy was built for armor. Everything was oversized and reinforced, from the marble floors to the steel guard station. It was a lovely, nostalgic sight after so long among Terrans, and I was still appreciating it when a solider in a red suit stepped up to block my way.
I had to tilt my head back to look him in the face. Red suits were for military use only. The infantry model was slightly larger than Cotter’s Count-class suit at eight feet tall and plated all to hell. I could empty Sasha’s entire clip into the guard’s chest and not even tickle him. Just seeing the big lug made me feel a thousand times better, even as he gave me the caustic once-over. “Identification?”
I had my ID up for his scanner before he could finish, and I thought I saw the guard smile behind his thick visor as his suit verified mine. “Glad to be back among civilized folk, Lieutenant?”
“You have no idea,” I said. “Who’s in charge here?”
“This outpost is run by the noble Baron Kells,” the guard replied solemnly. “You said you had important information for the crown?”
“Yes, but I need to tell it to the baron myself,” I explained. “Can I see him?”
The guard looked at me like I’d just asked the impossible, which, to be fair, I had. Now that I was back on the king’s land, I was a peasant again, and peasants did not demand to speak to barons. But I wasn’t about to start talking phantoms and plasmex plagues to a door guard.
“I just need five minutes of his time,” I pleaded. “If he doesn’t want to hear more after that, I’ll take the consequences.”
The punishment for wasting a noble’s time could be severe if you put them in a bad enough mood. Volunteering to take the heat straight off was a pretty good sign I wasn’t messing around. Good enough for the guard, apparently, because after a com conversation I couldn’t hear, the red suit turned around and started walking down the hall. I followed, falling into step behind him like I was back in the army.
After the grand marble entry hall, I expected the rest of the embassy to be equally impressive, but the hallway the red suit led me down would have been at home in any Paradoxian bunker. The floor was cement, the lighting was harsh, and my density monitor was going nuts from all the armor in the rooms around us. When we reached the end of the hall, the guard led me into a secure waiting room and told me to stay, locking the door behind me. I’d barely settled onto the reinforced bench when the door opened again, and a woman in Knight’s armor just like mine stuck her head through.
“Lieutenant Morris?”
I stood at attention, and she nodded. “The baron will see you.”
I was glad my visor hid my surprise as the woman led me back into the hall, or she would have caught me gaping like a fish. With very few exceptions, all high-ranking members of the P
aradoxian military were nobly born. I’d served under a dozen barons during my four years in the army, but I’d only ever met two of them personally. Both times had been a giant to-do involving hours of waiting. When the red suit had shown me into the waiting room, I’d fully expected to sit there for the next five hours, not five minutes.
Even though coming to the embassy had been my idea, all the running I’d done recently had made me even more paranoid than usual, and as the woman led me briskly out of the bunker area into a much nicer part of the building, my stomach started to sink. Despite his Royal Warrant, I wasn’t sure how far Caldswell’s influence extended into the Paradoxian military. If my name was on a watch list, I might have doomed myself by coming home, but it was too late to worry about that now. We were already at the end of a very nice carpeted hall in front of a heavy, expensive-looking wooden door. The woman stopped at the threshold and crisply commanded me to disarm, for I was entering the presence of nobility.
I obeyed, placing Sasha and Mia gently in her hands. Elsie didn’t detach, so I held out my arm to let the woman peacebind my blade with metallic tape. She did the same to my grenade cache and then scanned my suit from head to toe to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything else. When the scanner beeped green, she opened the wooden door and stood back so I could enter.
The office I walked into was very nice, but it wasn’t a patch on the other noble offices I’d seen. There were no expensive ornamentations, no paintings, and no priceless family treasures. The man sitting behind the desk in the middle of the room was just as surprising. He looked to be in his midfifties with short, graying brown hair. He was armored, of course, Baron’s armor as befit his rank. Nice stuff, too. Not Verdemont, but definitely custom, though I’d expected nothing less. All nobles had money. What did surprise me was that he was wearing combat armor. Most nobles preferred the flashier racing suits, or dueling models if they were fighters. This man was clearly a fighter, but he looked more ready to storm a Terran battleship than engage in an honor duel. In fact, his suit design was so no-nonsense that I wasn’t sure this was the baron until he glared at me.
“Been too long among Terrans, girl?”
I jumped and dropped the deepest bow my suit could manage. “Forgive me, my lord. I did not expect to see you so quickly.”
Though my face was now parallel with the floor, I saw the baron wave dismissively through my cameras. “Only idiots ignore unexpected urgent messages,” he said. “Now, sit down and tell me what’s so goddamn important. And it had better be important, soldier, or you’re going to learn what it means to waste the king’s time.”
I paled. Threats like that were normal, but I’d never heard a noble curse before. As blood relations of the Sainted King, they were above such vulgarity. But I wasn’t about to tell the baron that. I jumped to obey, taking a seat on the heavy armor-scaled chair in front of him. Meanwhile, the baron leaned back in his own chair, watching me through the rainbow of projected screens splashed across his visor.
I fidgeted under his attention, scrambling to think of a place to begin that wouldn’t make me sound crazy. When nothing leaped out at me, I decided to just go with the broadest target possible. “Have you heard of phantoms, my lord?”
The baron’s face grew grave. “I have.”
The words held a clear warning, but all I felt was relief. In those two syllables, Baron Kells had removed a huge weight from my chest. I was no longer alone with my secret, no longer strung up between Caldswell and Brenton. I had my own side now, Paradox, my home, and as the baron listened, my story burst forth of its own accord.
It took me nearly two hours to get the whole thing out, plus answer the baron’s questions. His grave expression had only deepened as the conversation went on, and by the time I got to the end of the lelgis attack, he was looking grim as a rainy funeral.
“We’re very lucky you decided to come to me,” he said when I finished. “Knowledge of the phantoms, even among the nobility, is usually kept to dukes and higher.”
I blinked in surprise. “So how do you know about them?”
The baron gave me a murderous look, and my stomach clenched. I had been among Terrans too long, because the question had just popped out. I bowed hastily, sputtering apologies, but the baron just rolled his eyes.
“It’s none of your business,” he said. “But I’m rightly proud of it, so I’ll tell you anyway. I wasn’t born noble. King Stephen bestowed this office and my title on me last year as a reward for twenty years of service as a Devastator.”
I couldn’t stifle my startled gasp in time, and the baron’s face broke into a wicked smile. “I still keep up with the order, and I’ve heard your name tossed around a good bit, Deviana Morris. The Blackbird in the Verdemont suit collecting promotions so quickly you’d think they were giving them away. Last thing I’d heard was that you’d signed up with Caldswell’s flying coffin, so when you showed up unexpectedly at my door, I knew it would be bad news.”
I caught his meaning at once. “You’ve worked with Caldswell before, my lord?”
“A few times,” the baron said. “Enough to know I don’t want to do it again.” His look turned sour. “Up against the wall or not, you can’t trust a man who lets children do his fighting.”
“I agree, my lord,” I said. “But I hope that won’t have to happen anymore.”
The baron nodded and stood up, which meant I stood as well. “You were right to come to bring this to me,” he said. “If what you’re saying is true, and for the record, I believe it is, you’ve given Paradox a great weapon and an even greater opportunity. I’m going to send a message to the Royal Office right away. Meanwhile, I want you to get that leg to a doctor. Archer?”
The door opened when he said the name, and the woman in Knight’s armor who’d been waiting outside stepped in with a bow.
“Take Lieutenant Morris to the medbay,” the baron said, looking back at me. “I don’t need to tell you to keep your mouth shut about this, do I?”
“Of course not, my lord,” I said, bowing low.
The baron nodded and waved me into the hall before returning to his seat. I had just enough time to see him pull a top-security message screen onto his display before his door locked and the woman, Archer, ordered me to follow her.
Under any other circumstances I’d have grumbled at being ordered to the medbay like a first-year recruit who didn’t know better, but right then I’d have gladly gone anywhere the baron told me. I was so happy I even let the embassy staff take my armor away to be repaired by the staff armorsmith sight unseen. And as the army doctor numbed my leg in preparation for replacing my emergency patch with a real skin graft, all I could think was that the only mistake I’d made in coming here was not doing it sooner.
The doctor wasn’t happy that I’d gone so long on my injured leg. He cleaned the wound and grafted it as best he could, but he warned me I’d have a scar there forever. I had plenty of scars, so I wasn’t too worried about that. What really had me in a tizzy was the report from the armorsmith that they’d had to refactor my whole leg piece to repair the damage from Sasha’s bullet.
Armor can only be refactored so many times before you have to replace it, and mine had been in the oven a lot lately. Still, my Lady looked good as new when I got her back that evening. I was testing her out in the embassy’s gym when I got a message from the baron that my report had been received by the Royal Office and we’d be getting a formal answer by tomorrow.
In the meanwhile, I was put on lockdown, which only made sense. I was dangerous and possibly contagious, after all. Normally this would have chaffed, but this time I couldn’t care less. After days of near constant emergency, I was perfectly content to eat familiar foods, sleep until I couldn’t sleep anymore, and revel in the fact that I didn’t have to crawl through flooded tunnels or worry about monsters—xith’cal, lelgis, or symbiont—grabbing me in the night.
Even the few glowing bugs I saw floating through the embassy walls couldn’t bring me down. I w
as happy as a pig in mud to lie on my bunk in the little room they’d given me, eat my tray of army-style cafeteria food, and watch Paradoxian armor game shows on the delayed feed from Kingston until I fell asleep.
I haven’t slept that heavy in years. It took the guard two knocks to wake me up for breakfast late the next morning. I was happily munching my way through the huge platter of fried sausage, fried toast, and fried potatoes he’d brought when Archer came in to announce that the envoy from the Royal Office was here to pick me up.
I almost choked on my breakfast. Montblanc was a major colony, but it was about as far from Paradox as it was possible to get and still be in the Republic. Baron Kells’s report must have lit a fire back home to get someone out here so fast.
I abandoned my food and hopped up, reaching for my clean, recharged, repaired armor, but Archer shook her head.
“No armor,” she said sternly at my skeptical look. “Orders from the top.”
I swallowed. When you were talking about the Royal Office, “from the top” meant someone in the royal family, and as much as I hated the idea of going anywhere without my Lady, I wasn’t about to disobey. I locked my armor in the temporary case the armorsmith had dug up for me, lashed my guns to the top, and then followed the baron’s officer out into the hall, where four red suits were waiting to walk us out into the formal entry.
That actually made me a little nervous. Four red suits plus Archer’s Knight armor was a lot of honor guard for someone wearing no armor, especially since no one was supposed to know what I was. This was an envoy from the Royal Office, though. Maybe they’d sent an active duty Devastator to bring me back to Paradox? It could even be a Royal Knight.
That thought cheered me up enormously. I’d never actually met a Royal Knight in person, but they were exactly the sort of completely irreproachable, honorable, nearly fanatic loyalists you’d need to escort a secret alien superweapon back to Paradox. This theory was further supported when we walked into the entry hall to see Baron Kells himself waiting for us in the middle of the lobby. I couldn’t see who he was talking to, but with the baron paying such close attention, it could only be the envoy, and my spirits soared a little higher.
