Empress Game 2

by Rhonda Mason

  “That’s good.”

  Why was he telling her this? His words seemed to bring her some peace, and that was the last thing Janeen deserved.

  “I have questions.” He pulled the datapad from his pocket and thumbed through the files he had open. They were all secondary mission reports Janeen had sent to her handler, covert ops she had completed illegally while on legit assignments with Malkor’s octet.

  Her gaze narrowed on the tablet. “Of course you do. I’ve told Commander Parrel all I intend to say.”

  “The only thing you told him was the formula for the toxin you injected into Kayla and Isonde.” And if that was the only thing she would ever tell them, he could live with it. That formula had saved Isonde’s life. Still, he had to try. He needed more dirt on Vega and her cabal, and Janeen had answers.

  “Yup,” she said. “So you can take your questions and that oh-so-disappointed look in your eyes back to your office and leave me alone.” She turned her head away, lips tight.

  “Janeen.” She wouldn’t look at him. This whole visit reeked of futility, but now that he was here, he found he couldn’t walk away. “You were a good agent. A damn good agent.”

  “So good that both sides of the IDC recruited me,” she said, with a touch of self-mockery. “Do you know, when I first enrolled in the academy I was so full of self-righteousness about IDC’s mission that if you’d struck a match near me, I would have burned like a sun with it.” There was more than a touch of mockery now. “Almost as full of it as you still are.” She tilted her head to look at him. “You’re a fool, you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.” He was fighting his own people for the future of the agency, grabbing at phantoms, chasing rumors.

  Suddenly, the words he hadn’t known he’d come here to say tumbled out of his mouth. “Why did you do it? Why did you join the other side?”

  Janeen blinked at the question. Blinked again. “In all his visits, Parrel never once asked me that. I guess it didn’t matter to him, once I’d defected.”

  “It matters to me.” Did it? Honestly, he wasn’t even sure. It seemed to matter to her, though, he could see from the sudden interest in her gaze. If he could use that to reach her… “So tell me.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t choose the other side. At least, not intentionally.” Malkor waited in silence while she sorted her words in her head. “It started in the academy. One of my teachers presented me with a ‘special assignment’ for ‘enrichment,’ because I was such a promising cadet.” She laughed. “Frutt. I was so stupid then.”

  Memories seemed to pull her under. Her eyes shuttered, looking inward. “I was thrilled when Vega took a special interest in me. I thought, ‘My career in the IDC will be fast-tracked.’ All my special assignments, enrichment reports, field recon, character assessments… I assumed they were training.” She bumped her head lightly against the wall behind her as if to shake loose her past. “By the time I started to put it all together, all the cloak and dagger bullshit, it was too late. I was in too deep.”

  In too deep. Exactly how Malkor felt, how he’d felt ever since Isonde had asked him to help her fix the Empress Game, ever since he’d learned the truth about a conspiracy within the IDC.

  Is that how my whole octet feels? Have I dragged them under with me?

  Malkor stowed the question for another time—he couldn’t deal with that truth now.

  “Help me, then,” he said. “Give me the names of everyone you reported to. Who wanted what, when. Details.” When she didn’t answer he pressed forward. “It won’t get you out of this cell, but—”

  “No way you’re about to give me the ‘but it could set you free’ speech, boss.”

  “Would it work?”

  Janeen made a sound of disgust even as her eyes told a different story.

  Malkor slipped the datapad back in his pocket and grabbed his mobile comm. The message he wanted was weeks old, but he knew exactly where to find it. He’d listened to it over and over, kicking himself each time. He should have been there, he should have done… something. That guilt still rode him even though Vid was recovering and Corinth had been rescued without injury.

  Malkor held the comm out and hit play:

  “I’m sorry about Vid, I really am. If he’d just given up the kid none of this would have happened. Frutt!” Janeen took a shaky breath in the recording. “I never wanted any of this.”

  It was Janeen’s message to him right after she’d kidnapped Corinth, nearly killing Vid in the process. There was more, but that was all he needed. Her eyes locked on the mobile comm, face pale, lips bloodless.

  “Do you want to hear it again?” He went to hit play and she shook her head.

  “Please don’t.” Her gaze never broke from the mobile comm, as if a voice from the dead had issued forth from it.

  Malkor shook the comm at her. “This is who you are. A teammate, someone who cares about her friends.” He hit play again.

  “I never wanted any of this.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “You’ve made choices in the past that put you here, in this cell. And you deserve to be here.” Her head dipped to hang a little lower. “This doesn’t have to be the end of your work for the IDC. Make a new choice.” Malkor strode forward until he was right against the energy field fronting her cell.

  “Janeen.” He waited until she opened her eyes, looked at him. “Choose to help.”

  “Gods, Malkor—” She stared at her hands clenched in her lap. Her fingers curled so tightly that she was likely bloodying her palms with her nails. After an eternity, her shoulders slumped. She blew out a breath. Another. Her hands unfurled.

  “If I promise to help,” she said, “will you cut it out with the emotional crap?” She half-laughed, half-hiccupped, and looked at him with damp eyes. “I don’t think I can take it.”

  Malkor actually laughed, surprising himself. “Shit. Me neither.”

  She gestured to his pocket with the datapad. “Let’s get this over with, I get chow in an hour and they serve a mean steak-umm here.”

  She always could make him laugh. Damn you, Janeen, he thought sadly to himself.

  “Thank you,” he said. “And, Janeen? Vid’s fine. Healing like a sixteen-year-old.”

  One tear landed on her cheek, and they both pretended not to notice.

  22

  ORDOCH

  Cinni sighed with relief when she stepped out of the Tear where it ended underground on Ordoch. She struggled to shake off the specter of death that clung to her. The destabilizing Tear threatened to take her life on every trip, and each return was a triumph.

  Finding the Tear itself had been a triumph, and an extremely lucky one, at that.

  Or perhaps insanely lucky was more accurate.

  The rebels, by necessity, had gathered around the outskirts of modernized Ordoch, in buildings large enough to provide protection while still run-down enough to avoid extra patrols by the imperial usurpers. It was the rebels’ reliance on such structural heaps that allowed them to catch the faint comm signature that had come from the Yari through the Tear. The Tear had formed a cavern underground, dissolving reality and carving its own open space beneath an old building. The Yari’s distress call issued forth quietly, and the rebellion had heard it.

  It had taken three months to tunnel down to the Tear’s location without collapsing the cavern. Three months to realize the miracle they’d thought they imagined had in fact happened—the Yari had somehow survived and was standing ready to aid them.

  Cinni stored the two empty hover carts against the wall of the roughly gouged-out cavern before popping off the helmet of her spacesuit and taking a deep breath of stale air. Ordochian air. She was home.

  Mishe leaned against one dark rock wall, her only welcoming party. She’d known he’d be there. If anyone looked out for her, it was Mishe. Cinni smiled to see him. The expression froze when he came out of the shadows and the diamond-bright light of the Tear lit him up. Fury beat in her blood
when she saw the bruises on his face and what looked like a rope burn on his neck. One of the imperial dogs Mishe whored for liked to play rough.

  She laid her palm along his bruised cheek, her heart aching for what he suffered in the name of their rebellion. Mishe flinched, looking away.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, lowering her hand. “Why hasn’t this been treated?”

  When Mishe returned his gaze to her, the seriousness in his blue eyes hit her dead in the chest. “The others needed it more,” he said.

  “What ‘others?’” Oh void. Aarush, the raid. She couldn’t bring herself to ask about him. “What happened?” She shucked out of her spacesuit in record time. I have to see him. She had to see Aarush with her own eyes, to know that he was okay.

  “The raid was a setup. A trap.” Mishe shook his head. “I’m glad they pulled you from it and sent you to the Yari, instead.”

  And Mishe? Was he glad he was spared the raid as well, forced instead to whore himself to the imperial bastards for information? Cinni wrapped Mishe—her best friend left on the planet—in a tight hug. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she whispered, though she knew the word “safe” was very relative at this point in their lives. He clung to her for an instant, then they were both hurrying away from the Tear.

  “How many did we lose?” she asked as they jogged to the lift. Please don’t let Aarush be among the dead.

  “Five.”

  Shit. Five people more than they could afford to lose. Their raids were by necessity small, due to limited resources, headcount, mobility and so on. They had to be strategic. They didn’t have the numbers to face the occupation head-on. Most Ordochians seemed to be living in a holding pattern, as if the occupation was some kind of nightmare they’d eventually wake from. The rebellion was in no place to be waging a ground war.

  Instead they struck like thieves, each mission tightly planned and executed, each with a specific target and focus.

  The lift whirled to life and carried them to the inhabited levels of the base. Cinni caught herself rocking side to side as she agitatedly shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Bad intel.” Mishe chafed at a rope burn on his wrist, rubbing the skin as if to erase the mark.

  Cinni hit stop on the lift. “Tell me. I can take it.”

  “They had a psychokinetic field destabilizer.” A generator that could disrupt all psionic powers in a small area.

  “What? How the frutt did they get their hands on one of those?” Even if they had found one, how would they know what it was?

  “Your mother isn’t the only Wyrd to turn traitor,” Mishe said quietly.

  Cinni flinched. She saw her mother’s face—Hephesta, eyes opening from sleep—heard the blast of her ion pistol as she emptied the full charge into her mother’s chest.

  “Cinni, I’m sorry—”

  She shook her head. “No, you’re right. She did, it happened.” It happened. Her mother had agreed to help the imperials with a cure for the TNV. If we do that, if we give in, they’ll never leave. “She can’t have been the only one.” Just the one whose betrayal permanently scarred Cinni’s heart.

  “In any case,” Mishe said in his soft voice, “our people couldn’t shield, couldn’t communicate. Of course the imperials weren’t hampered by the field, not having psi powers, so they decimated our team. It’s only been a day, we’re still not sure of everything that happened.”

  Cinni nodded, trying to take it in. “And Aarush?” She had to know. Before she faced anyone else in the rebellion, she had to know.

  “He survived.” Mishe’s tone left no doubt that that was not necessarily a good thing.

  Survived. Not, “He’s okay,” or, “He escaped injury.” He only survived.

  The breath whooshed out of her and she nodded. Nodded again. Over and over.

  He survived.

  She hit the power button on the lift.

  Survived. Like she had, after killing her mother. Like Mishe had after letting those bastards use his body.

  We are messed up. So frutting messed up.

  The lift doors opened and Cinni hit the hallway with a purposeful stride and her shoulders back. They would survive. They had to, at least until the Yari was complete. After that?

  She ignored the question and walked on.

  The rebel base was situated in an abandoned manufacturing facility, chosen specifically because it sat near where the Tear had opened. It was one on a long list of buildings in this section of the kingdom that were slated for demolition. Yeah. We’ll get right on that, as soon as we kill every last imperial soldier on Ordoch. It suited their purpose for now.

  Cinni made her way to one of the sterile manufacturing rooms, transformed into their makeshift infirmary. Thankfully they saw no one else on the way so she didn’t have to adopt a neutral expression. Mishe touched her arm lightly and she stopped outside of the infirmary doors.

  “You might not want to see him, Cinni.” Mishe’s concern sent a shiver of dread through her. “Maybe in a few more days…” It was the “maybe” that sealed it for her. Mishe wasn’t even sure Aarush would make any healing progress.

  “I have to,” she said, and pushed open the door. Mishe stayed behind in the hallway.

  The infirmary was eerily quiet and dim. Four figures lay on beds like corpses on biers. They were covered in a motley of blankets and sheets in different colors and sizes, three of them asleep or sedated. The fourth body drew her eye as a medic worked on his unconscious form, a lamp directing a tight beam on Aarush’s face—or what was left of it. Even from the doorway she saw that the right side of his face was a ruined, pulpy mess. A pile of bloody bandages were heaped on the floor beside his bed.

  “Not now,” the medic said, without bothering to see who interrupted his work. The man directed a regenerating laser into Aarush’s filmy right eye. Cinni pressed fingertips to her mouth, trying in vain to stifle a horrified gasp. Aarush’s breathing was deep and even beneath the sheet covering him to mid-chest—peaceful almost, in contrast to the carnage. It was a façade. Cinni was no medic, and even she could tell that the damage to his face was beyond the simple application of a medstick to heal.

  She turned, about to leave the medic to his work, when an irregularity caught her eye. Each of the other three patients had a perfect trapezoid shape at the end of their bed—the bottom side was the bed itself, the top was their feet, tenting their blankets, and the two non-parallel sides sloped away from the feet, the blankets hanging over the edge of the bed.

  Aarush’s trapezoid was lopsided.

  The left foot held its end of the shape, but the top sloped in an angle right from there to the mattress.

  Cinni whirled and barreled from the infirmary, straight into Mishe’s knowing arms, who held her while tremors of shock shook her.

  It was an hour, two dreamers and a canteen of oblivion later before Cinni could report to Megara on the Yari’s progress.

  23

  FALANAR

  The Low Divine’s funeral took most of the next day and the entirety of Falanar seemed to come to a standstill. All of the Sovereign and Protectorate councilors were in attendance, not to mention the entire royal family, the Council of Seven members, and anyone with any remote claim to power. People clogged the streets outside the Basilica of the Dawn.

  The newsvids were choked with stories of the Low Divine’s piety and greatness, and the High Divine even broke his blissful, continuous state of Unity to come down from on high and speak before the gathered masses. He was seen so rarely that at times the novelty of his presence overshadowed the Low Divine’s death. The Mid Divine hadn’t appeared, but was said by her attendants to be buried in the archives, researching the proper way for the people to regain unity after such a tragedy.

  The hoopla finally ended at sundown, but the media would be feasting off this story for another month, at least.

  The holy day having passed, the Sovereign and Protectorate Councils were back in session the next morning.
The crisis over the TNV situation, Wei-lu-Wei and Ordoch approached a critical point. The Council of Seven was getting ready to convene, demanding plans of action from both councils so that they could use those as their guides for making the final decision on how to proceed. One thing was clear—the empire couldn’t afford to wait much longer without acting.

  The army or the IDC needed to take control of the situation on Wei-lu-Wei, and if they wanted to stop the TNV from devouring the Sovereign Planets, they needed to push ahead with a plan to secure a cure.

  Council sessions ran late into the evening. Still, nothing was decided, and the fate of the empire hung from a rope that quickly unraveled.

  Isonde was quietly inducted to the Council of Seven early the next morning.

  It had been a private and brief ceremony, she told Malkor afterward, no one willing to engage in pomp so soon after the Low Divine’s funeral. For once Isonde hadn’t insisted on turning the moment into a high-profile event. Even in that choice she’d played it right, entering into her new responsibilities with humility, solemnity and reverence.

  It might have been Isonde’s greatest moment of triumph. For Malkor, it was his greatest relief. His part was over. Finally, Isonde was on the Council of Seven and he could breathe deep, no longer tangled in her plans. From here on out it was all up to her and Ardin.

  Not that he didn’t have his own mess ready to eat him alive.

  He arrived at IDC headquarters after hearing from Isonde that all had gone well with the ceremony, to find Hekkar and the rest of his team already at their desks. Workaholics, every one of them, he thought with a smile.

  His office was as he’d left it yesterday—a mess of reports, performance reviews and paperwork due last week that he couldn’t dig out from under if he had a month. Ah, the glamorous lifestyle of an octet leader.

  He set his coffee and the datapads he’d brought from home on the pile and powered up his IDC complink. He absently swiped his fingertip across the biometrics reader and entered in his password, surprised out of his mental planning by an angry bleep from his complink.