Empress Game 2

by Rhonda Mason

  The look Carsov shot him was definitely surprised. “You breaking IDC ranks?”

  Malkor nodded.

  “First time for everything,” Carsov said.

  “I can’t sit back while corruption eats away at the IDC.”

  Carsov chuckled, then chuckled again at Malkor’s annoyed glance. “That’s rich. The IDC’s been corrupt from the start.”

  “Are we really going to get into this old pissing match?” Same brawl, different day. “The army saying we’re corrupt because you can’t get your heads out of your asses and realize that running an empire needs a combination of strength and diplomacy?”

  “And people willing to ignore all decency, laws and morality to ‘get the job done,’” Carsov added. “You forgot that part.”

  Malkor gritted his teeth. “If you want to be a dick about this, go ahead. Just not on my time.” He rose to leave. “My mistake, thinking you were a man who wanted justice, who wanted honor to mean something, no matter which of us had the power.”

  Carsov stopped him. “Don’t get your frutting panties in a bunch, Agent. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think the same thing I did—the IDC’s out of control. Gone too far.”

  “Actually I’m here because I’m thinking the same thing about the army.”

  Carsov mulled that over, glanced at the people gathered to mourn, then back to Malkor. “You might not be wrong.”

  Sensing common ground, Malkor resumed his seat on the bench. He felt Carsov’s opinion sliding his way. “Someone in the army’s dirty,” Malkor said. “You know it, I know it. Someone buried your report on the TNV. I’m admitting the same about the IDC.” Though it had taken him too damn long to see it. “I’m here, being honest with you. Some shit is going down, and only good men like you and me can fix it.”

  “You believe that?”

  The words, oddly introspective, caught him off guard. “What, that we can fix it?” Malkor shrugged. “Trying’s better than doing nothing.”

  Carsov shook his head. “No, that you’re still a good man. You believe that?”

  It wasn’t a question Malkor cared to think about. And in the end, it really didn’t matter. “I’m working for something real here, Carsov, something worth caring about—freedom for the Ordochians and the withdrawal of our men before the other Wyrd Worlds get their fleets rebuilt and annihilate us. A possible end to the TNV, with Ordoch’s cooperation. Exposing the corruption at home. They’re all linked.”

  Carsov heard him, Malkor could tell by the way the soldier nodded slightly to himself while listening. If he could tip the man over…

  “I’d love to give you some kind of bullshit ultimatum like, ‘This is your one chance to do right by the Low Divine, by your family, by the empire.’ The truth is, I’m going to keep coming back. I need your honesty and I need what’s in that report about who supplied Trebulan with the TNV and framed the Wyrds.”

  Malkor’s mobile comm buzzed. He ignored it. When Carsov pulled his own comm out Malkor fought the urge to shake the man. Give me the damn file.

  Carsov’s eyes went round. “Wow. You’d better check in with your princess and her ‘bodyguard,’ Agent. I’d say shit just got heavy.”

  He had his comm out in a second. One look at Kayla’s message had him on his feet. “The file?” he asked.

  “You’ll have it.”

  Malkor nodded and took off into the night. Isonde, what have you done?

  * * *

  The royal guards had hustled Kayla from the press room so quickly her head spun. She finished reading Isonde’s little speech and then bam, she was out of there, guarded on all sides like a priceless package. They’d deposited her in a suite of rooms—her rooms now, apparently—in one of the many wings of the palace with an order to stay put, and that was that.

  That had been maybe an hour ago. She was still fighting the urge to pack everything she owned and run. The choice was made somewhat easier by having none of her own things with her, not even her kris daggers. Someone was being sent to Isonde’s townhouse for them.

  And run? Where would she go this time, back to Altair Tri and the Blood Pit?

  Kayla paced the square of her sitting room over and over, fight or flight instincts still in high gear even after reprogramming the allowable IDs on her door lock and demanding a weapon from one of the guards outside.

  She’d kept her identity a secret for five years with good reason. The empire and Ordoch, while not at all-out war, were still in a military conflict. The army could take her prisoner and use her as leverage any number of ways. As far as anyone on Ordoch knew, she was the last surviving member of the Reinumon family. The army could demand the Ordochians work on a cure for the TNV or they’d kill her. Or they could publicly execute her to show the Ordochians how serious they were about retaining power in Wyrd Space. Or they could torture her for any number of state secrets that could help them consolidate power on Ordoch.

  No doubt they’d find other ways to use her as well.

  Isonde had made her a symbol. More than that, she had made her a target. And if things went wrong? If anti-Wyrd sentiment continued to grow, went the way of the Low Divine? She had made her a martyr.

  Malkor commed the door, breaking her out of her thoughts. When he entered, she couldn’t tell from the look on his face who was more furious, him or her. It was a tight race for who could wring Isonde’s neck first. Malkor had known her longer, he probably had dibs.

  “Did you know?” Deep in her heart, she knew his answer, but she had to ask the question. “Did you know she planned to do that?”

  Malkor shook his head. He seemed to have nothing to say and she felt the same. What was there to say about their new reality? If I had known… If there had been a chance to stop it… They hadn’t and there wasn’t. All that was left to be decided now was their next course of action.

  “We have to get you out of here,” Malkor said. “Somewhere safe, until I can secure you passage to Wyrd Space.” Ah, defiance from Malkor. She liked it.

  Unfortunately, acceptance was their only option.

  “She’s gone too far this time,” he said, hands clenching into fists. “Kayla, I’m sorry.”

  “Isonde owes me that apology, not you. This was not your doing.” An apology would never happen. Isonde might regret the “necessity” of revealing Kayla’s identity, but Kayla doubted the woman regretted her actions, for doing what she thought was essential. “Besides, I can’t leave anyway; she’s made sure of that.”

  “How do you figure?”

  Kayla sank down onto the nearest couch, drained from the midnight hour and the full weight of Isonde’s betrayal. She slouched down, exhausted, and let her head fall back, her eyes close.

  “She told the entire empire I was here to sign a possible treaty.” Not that Kayla had the authority to do that. “If I disappear now, people will assume a peaceful withdrawal and Ordoch’s help is off the table.” She cracked an eyelid to look at him. “Not to mention if the only Wyrd in Imperial Space disappears right after the Low Divine is assassinated…”

  Malkor cursed.

  Kayla closed her eyes again. “My thoughts exactly.”

  20

  THE YARI, MINE FIELD

  The trip to the engine room from the commissary was surprisingly convoluted and tense. Apparently there was a more direct path from the landing bay to the main engine chamber, which is how they were able to get the parts through the ship. It was far out of the way from the commissary, though. Instead they traveled sparsely lit corridors and took turns climbing down ladders because the lifts weren’t active in this section.

  “Protocol,” Ida had said, without her usual grin.

  Vayne was getting a handle on the crew’s strange syntax. Either that or I’m getting closer to Ida’s level of wackiness. At least it made communication easier. They passed through several powered decks, Ida stopping at one point to declare the decks below that level off-limits. Something about safety and stepa at es. When they reached the
engine room without incident, everyone seemed to breathe a little easier, though why remained a mystery to Vayne.

  The bay doors opened to an immense cavern-like room so large it swallowed sound. Here great sheets of a gray material hid the molychromium ribs of the ship—heat and radiation shielding, possibly? The vastness of the room alone was impressive after the close confines of the rest of the Yari, but the engine itself demanded all of Vayne’s attention.

  About eighty percent of the massive hyperstream engine was stunning. Silver in color and ovoid in shape, it seemed to hang from the ceiling like a liquid pendant. All other hyperstream drives looked miniscule in comparison. Graceful struts secured the engine to the far walls and a series of plascrystal tubes extended in a radial fashion from its midsection. When the drive was powered, those tubes would carry the fuel to the drive and siphon off the waste byproduct into giant holding structures deeper in the ship.

  The lowest twenty percent of the engine, however, looked like a child’s craft project gone horribly wrong. The ovoid shape was unfinished, and bits of the original metal structure hung down like loose teeth. Attached at every odd angle was a conglomeration of parts in various sizes, shapes and colors, some battered, some shining like new, each of them foreign to the original structure and design.

  He remembered the vids of how the engine should have looked when fully assembled. If memory served, the remaining necessary parts were supposed to be housed in the Yari’s storage bays. What had happened to those?

  Ida grinned, looking like a pleased shadow panthe showing off her cub. “Is fantastically coming along, Gintoc.” She turned to the party. “Fantastic, no?”

  Gintoc grumbled. “Adding this… this…” he gestured to the lower part of the ship, “this trash to such a beauty… No right. No right.” He wandered off toward the scaffolding built around the engine, muttering to himself.

  ::What about the original parts?:: Corinth asked, without taking his eyes off the thing.

  “The parts lost to us,” Ida said. “Some time before this time.” She snapped her fingers. “Then we get contact with Ordoch and parts we are having now! Much progress, much progress.”

  Vayne narrowed his eyes at Ida. Somehow, even with all of her friendliness and apparent openness, he got the feeling that her often cryptic answers were more than “accidentally” evasive.

  Ariel and Larsa arrived not long after, coming in from one of the many other entrances to the engine room. They brought with them the hover cart full of parts that had come through the Tear with Cinni. Gintoc clucked and grumbled over each piece as it was unloaded, inspecting each, tilting it this way and that, alternatively shaking his head and nodding. Corinth wandered closer, clearly fascinated. He selected a piece Gintoc seemed to have discarded and Gintoc froze, eyes narrowed on the boy. Corinth must have said something to him. Vayne could only assume so, because a minute later Gintoc nodded again, completely at ease. They continued their silent communication as the parts were picked over and divided, completely ignoring everyone else.

  Vayne interrupted the conversation between Tia’tan, Noar and Ida. “So this is it, this is your grand plan to save Ordoch: patch together a hyperstream drive that’s as likely to go nova as it is to actually work, jump the frutt out of here and blast… something… with a weapon destined to do no less than tear the fabric of space apart?”

  Ida chuckled like he’d said something funny. And wasn’t the entire situation laughable? Unless of course, one happened to be standing in the engine room of such a ship, likely to go out in a ball of flames with the whole damn thing.

  “And you don’t even have the fuel to run it,” he said, looking specifically at Tia’tan. “If the Radiant had survived the Mine Field, they would have been here by now.” Tia’tan’s lips tightened, looking angry at the statement. Vayne held up a hand to forestall Ida when she chimed in. “You know it’s true,” he said to Tia’tan. She held his gaze, refusing to admit it.

  “Even if you could fix it,” he went on, “even if you could fuel it and fly the Yari right out of here, what then?”

  Cinni piped up. “The Yari would hold its own in a fight against imperial ships blockading the planet.”

  “Without using the Planetary Decimator?”

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “Exactly.” Idiots. All of them. Reckless idiots. “You can’t fire the PD at ships anywhere near Ordoch. The thing has the targeting precision of a catapult—you stand as much chance of hitting the planet as you would hitting their ships.” A fact they seemed to be ignoring.

  “Then we don’t take it to Ordoch.” The engine room nearly swallowed Natali’s husky voice, but he was attuned to every pained nuance of it. “We take it to their homeworld.”

  Tia’tan was the first to recover from the suggestion. “You’re not talking about emancipation—you’re talking about all-out war.”

  More like genocide.

  From the corner of his eye, Vayne saw Natali nod once.

  Noar frowned, obviously hating the idea. Well that makes two of us, at least.

  Tia’tan cleared her throat in the awkward silence. “Ilmena hasn’t decided what exactly—”

  “What is there for Ilmena to decide?” Natali said. “This is an Ordochian ship. Crewed by full-blooded Ordochians, am I right?” All around them the Yari’s crew straightened, at attention now, with the exception of Gintoc. Natali pointed at Cinni. “Ordochians have taken the risk of bringing parts through the Tear.”

  The air between Tia’tan and Natali grew charged, each woman standing at full height, arms held loosely at their sides. “As far as I can tell,” Natali said, “the Ilmenans failed at their only task—bringing fuel.”

  “There’s no proof that the Radiant has been destroyed,” Tia’tan snapped. “And if it has been, my people died for this ship.” Noar put a hand on her arm. She shook him off. Tia’tan looked pretty pissed, but in a fight, Vayne would bet on Natali any day. Natali had been cut from the stone of prison after five years and was every bit the dangerous animal that he was. Maybe more so, because she at least cared about something: Ordoch.

  Natali lifted her chin a fraction. Her low voice held an authority that couldn’t be questioned. “As of this moment, the Yari is under my orders. Captain Janus will take any and all action that I deem necessary.” She glanced around the room at everyone in turn, save him. “Is that clear?”

  All eyes fell on Ida. Even Gintoc was paying attention now. The captain clicked her heels together, spine perfectly straight, and snapped off a crisp salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Natali nodded again, then turned her attention back to Tia’tan. “Make no mistake—we’re already in an all-out war, and the imperials will pay for what they’ve done.”

  * * *

  After the tense scene in the engine room, Ida declared their guests tired and bundled the Ilmenans and Ordochians off to crew quarters, where they were each given a room. With only six—or five point five, as Tanet had joked—crew members left, Vayne expected the rooms to be empty, possessions packed away.

  Instead, everything had been left as it was when the occupant had lived, as if they might return any moment. Or, as if the crew couldn’t quite accept that, even after all this time, these people really were gone.

  Vayne took one look at his room and balked. Though sparsely outfitted, it had enough personal mementoes to give it an eerie, haunted feel. He lit out as soon as he could and headed for the observation deck, where he enjoyed two blissful hours of privacy.

  The observation deck overlooked the diamond-bright impossibility of the Tear. His eyes were drawn again and again to that rending of space. He saw it behind his eyelids when he closed his eyes. As insane as it was, the existence of the Tear made about as much sense as anything else had today.

  Someone entered the room and he knew immediately who had come looking for him. He took a subtle taste of her mind to confirm it.

  Tia’tan.

  She stopped some distance away as if uncerta
in of his mood, uncertain of her reception.

  Fair enough. He had attacked her on her own ship and told her off on more than one occasion. Which, she had coming. Even now he wanted to shake the shit out of her for getting him into this disaster. Willingly. Knowingly.

  His ever-present, churning anger spiked.

  Tut tut, Dolan whispered in his mind. Mustn’t be ill-mannered, now.

  “You son of a bitch,” he growled in response, and was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath from Tia’tan.

  Bah.

  “Not you,” Vayne said on a sigh, and turned to face her. “Sorry, my thoughts were somewhere else.” Some time else.

  “Mind if I sit a bit?” She gestured toward the comfortable chairs that had been dragged up to this observation deck from some other part of the ship. He looked at the chairs, back at her. Would “Yes, I mind” be too rude?

  She probably heard his answer coming from a light-year away. Naturally, she sat in one of the chairs anyway. She looked at him, at the chair beside her, him again.

  So. She hadn’t idly wandered here, she’d come for a “talk.” Vayne eyed the door. In reality, he had nowhere else to go.

  “I’ll stand, thanks,” he said, and leaned back against the observation window. “I’ll save you some breath: you’ve come to ask if I agree with Natali or not.”

  She tilted her head to look at him and her long lavender bangs fell over one eye. She tucked them back behind her ear. “Partly. Mostly I came to see how you were doing. With the number of surprises hitting you since we dropped into the Mine Field…”

  That moment felt like it had happened a month ago. What had it been, a day? Two? He should probably attempt the impossible: sleep.

  Tia’tan looked concerned. Genuine concern, or a calculated concern meant to lull him into some sort of friendship? Would he ever be able to trust in the authenticity of another’s emotions ever again?

  Unlikely.

  And really, not even necessary. All he wanted was peace. A place to live quietly, away from everything. Ilmena would do. It wasn’t home, but it also wasn’t occupied by imperials or harboring an underground rebellion.