Kavya, being a woman, sat behind her father who, in turn, sat three positions down from the young emperor, himself. Symeon took his measure of the man in the flesh compared to the press images he had seen.
Emperor Pyotr Mastronov occupied a cushioned throne at the head of the oblong table, dwarfed by guards on either side of his seat. Dressed in an ivory-colored suit, Pyotr’s skin appeared bluer than his gathered liegemen’s, though silver streaks accented the hollowness of his cheekbones where they shone through his long, platinum beard. Thin, almost to the point of anorexia, he looked to Symeon to be a singularly unimpressive example of the Shorvex race. That perception, however, shattered when Symeon met the emperor’s shrewd, gray eyes. Quick and darting, they conveyed the sort of sharp intellect and cunning indispensable to a man burdened with the rule of a contentious government filled with avaricious vassals. Media reports on the man hadn’t done him justice, unless the cleverness Symeon saw amounted to little more than wrapping paper on a waiting gift—a gift meant for Grand Duke Rurikid and his adherents.
Ivan squeezed Symeon’s wrist. “Remember, what you hear spoken in this room is for your ears only.”
Symeon bowed his head in acknowledgment and took up a position standing behind Lady Kavya’s seat, while Ivan did the same for Grand Duke Rurikid.
Other Luxing did likewise, their narrow eyes and dark hair a stark contrast to the silvery blue flesh of those they served.
“Honored boyars.” Emperor Pyotr Mastronov’s light tenor, though it sounded youthful, held steady when he spoke. “The time has come to discuss the Bith in open forum. I would hear your counsel on the matter.”
“My Lord, tell us your thinking on the matter so that we might advise you.” Grand Duke Zubkov, a portly man with blue, florid cheeks and a fetish for grandiose suits, ruled his duchy with the proverbial titanium hammer. Though he appeared empathetic now, Symeon had heard horrific stories of his wrath when kindled.
Of course! Tyrants beget tyrants.
“My thoughts run thus: we, as an empire, though powerful within the confines of our reach, can do nothing to either halt, or even stall, these alien invaders in our system. The Bith have paid no attention to our calls for a cessation of their activities. They merely cite their ancient agreement with the Luxing as their warrant to continue. At this point, their gate is likely finished, and we can do nothing about it.”
Despite his training, Symeon sucked in a breath at the emperor’s words. The Luxing’s agreement with the Bith? Surely Pyotr Mastronov had misspoken. He meant the Bith’s agreement with the Shorvex. But could the very emperor make such a mistake? Not even the humblest, poorest Shorvex in the Phoenix system would mix up Shorvex for Luxing.
A sidelong glance from Kavya conveyed her own confusion at the emperor’s words. The same could not be said for the boyars gathered about the table, however. Several nodded in mute agreement, and none look surprised.
“I assume you informed the Bith that we are not the Luxing?” Grand Duke Rurikid sounded like a man asking his son if had remembered to brush his teeth before bed.
“They seem indifferent to that fact.”
“Perhaps one human is the same as any other to them,” said Prince of the Blood Royal Kartoshov.
Surprised, are you? Symeon, your people haven’t always been slaves. Your ancestors lived in perfect freedom.
Symeon’s eyes went wide, though he possessed enough sense of place to keep still and silent. Never had the voice inside his head addressed him personally. Always before, it spoke in riddles, sometimes commenting on the things going on around Symeon, but as often as not, on obscure and largely meaningless topics.
“If the Luxing’s pact with the Bith had a time limit—” Grand Duke Rurikid began.
“A thousand years, if I’m not mistaken,” said Zubkov.
Rurikid nodded. “Could we not negotiate our own limit? Surely you, my Lord Emperor, could convince the Bith to forego opening the gate until our civilization is fully prepared.”
Who are you? Symeon thought, without much hope of receiving an answer inside his head. To his astonishment, the answer came.
A sliver. A shard. A glimmer of mind once known as Koan, now but a shadow of Symeon. A watcher, an advisor, a warning voice in the desert of your mind, boy.
Symeon couldn’t keep his breath from speeding up, his heart rate from rising. Ivan, ever the conscientious tutor, lifted an eyebrow at the change in his pupil’s breathing. Symeon shook his head to assuage his instructor’s concerns.
“I agree with my fellow grand duke,” Zubkov said. “What’s another few hundred years after a thousand have passed?”
“The aliens have stopped acknowledging our hails.” A measure of Emperor Mastronov’s pride slipped away as he looked about the oblong table. “Try as we might, they will not listen to us. I can’t strike a bargain with a deaf partner.”
What do you mean, you’re a shadow of me? Symeon yearned to grip the chair in front of him, Kavya’s chair, to buoy himself, but dared not for fear of causing a scene. And how could the Luxing have ever made an agreement with aliens from outside the Phoenix system?
A series of images, sounds, ancient voices, and near-overwhelming sensations washed over Symeon with the tidal power of an overflowing river. Memories, not his own, bombarded his consciousness, filling his mind with experiences beyond his imagining. Some, though foreign to him, nevertheless felt natural—human. Others stretched his mind in uncomfortable, alien ways. These, he realized after a moment, were the laser-sharp experiences of artificial intelligences cut into his synapses like a tractor gouging furrows into new soil.
When his consciousness cleared, and his awareness returned to the chamber of the High Divor, Symeon had no idea how much time had transpired. He had, by his best estimation, experienced hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of lives both from the perspective of an outside observer—Koan—and through first-hand occurrence of mundane living. While some of those lives had been complete from first infantile memories to aged senility, others presented mere snippets of experience, like digital vignettes written for Symeon alone. Most were Luxing. Some, abstract though they were, came from ancient Shorvexan sources.
Yet, despite the overwhelming breadth of what Symeon had seen, felt, heard, and tasted, it appeared nothing had changed at the oblong table. Had even a second passed?
Two seconds. Koan’s voice, which had always seemed vibrant, if not coherent, sounded weak to Symeon’s internal ears.
“It seems to me,” Grand Duke Rurikid intoned, his voice grave, “if you lack the wherewithal to engage these alien interlopers, you might also lack the leadership due this empire.”
Silence fell in the chamber. Several of the boyars made disapproving noises aimed at Rurikid’s rude sentiments, but not all, not all by a long measure. Many about the table nodded, their gazes tracking the emperor to measure his reaction.
What did you show me? And why do you sound so weak?
The pot is empty; the cup overflows.
What? I don’t understand.
A tense moment passed during which the guards flanking Emperor Mastronov placed their respective hands on guns holstered at their hips. Despite the tumult in his head, Symeon found his awareness sufficient to follow the meeting while simultaneously examining the new thoughts skirling discordant notes through his mind.
Pour out your cup to the Luxing, Symeon. Tell them what you know.
“We are all under stress,” said the emperor, his voice carefully controlled. “I will give you a chance to apologize, Grand Duke Rurikid, and we shall forget the matter with due haste.”
“Father, please,” Kavya whispered. Her usually silver skin had flushed blue.
“I don’t need your chances, Pyotr.” Rurikid stood from his chair, his back straight, his head held high. “You have none.”
At a gesture from the grand duke, the guard on the emperor’s left performed a parade ground right face and stepped out of the way. The guard on the right drew his
pistol, an old-fashioned chemical propellant gun, and fired two shots, pointblank, into the emperor’s head.
* * *
5
Blood and brain splattered the otherwise pristine marble floor. Kavya screamed, as did several of the boyars. Symeon drew back an involuntary step but found himself curiously removed from the situation as if he were watching the proceedings around him on a live feed over the net.
The initial shock passed, and the boyars stood, some screaming for their personal guards or their royal counterparts, others beating a hasty retreat for the chamber doors. Guards did appear, though whether from the boyars’ calls or the sound of gunfire, Symeon couldn’t be sure. They poured out of a side entrance, all dressed in royal livery. Their captain, separated from the others by the two gleaming silver discs on his shoulders, cursed when he saw the emperor’s limp form hanging half off his padded throne. Reaching for his weapon, the captain looked as though he might shoot either of the royal guards, except he never got the chance. One of his fellows, a short man with a grizzled silver mustache and the high silver coloring of a Kholmian northerner, shot the captain first.
The room fell into chaos. Ivan, whom Symeon noticed hadn’t flinched when the emperor died, drew a weapon from his inside tunic pocket. A Luxing holding a gun. Outrageous. For an instant, Symeon wondered if his teacher might use the thing, but Ivan handed it dutifully to Grand Duke Rurikid before placing himself as a shield before his liege lord. Guiding the old Luxing with a hand on his shoulder, Rurikid began a master class in disciplined fire, executing four of his fellow boyars before any of them had time to move or call upon their guards.
“They’ve practiced this.” Kavya’s words drew Symeon back fully to the moment. He studied Ivan and Rurikid and realized she was right, the two of them moved with fluid grace that could not have come naturally to them. Together, they had planned this day, this massacre.
More guards dressed in royal colors arrived, but for every three, two had turned traitor, or so it seemed. The surviving boyars screamed for their men, but the doors to the outer hall remained shut. Symeon could only surmise Grand Duke Rurikid’s forces had neutralized whatever forces the boyars had stationed in the hall.
The sounds of battle—the crack of enemy fire and the anguished screams of the wounded—snapped Symeon’s mind to another time and place, or rather hundreds of them: battles recorded on land, at sea, and in space. A flood of—memories? recordings?—filled him with knowledge like data streams called up from a server. He saw the Shorvex battling one another, not as they were now, silver-skinned and lithe, but sallow, even white in many cases, their hair ranging from Luxing black to brown to the golden hues of mature wheat. And though he tried to blink away the images, he could only push them aside. They rolled on, even as he focused on other things.
Seizing enough presence of mind for self-preservation and to protect Kavya to whom he had sworn his allegiance, Symeon took her wrist and pulled her away from her father and Ivan. The two of them were drawing fire like bilge bugs were drawn to a streetlamp.
Kavya turned haunted, green eyes on Symeon. She had probably never seen a gun fired in anger, nor men killed in so cavalier a fashion. Truth be told, neither had Symeon, in the flesh, but the new ancient memories in his head made it seem he had.
“I never thought he would go through with it.” Kavya pressed her back against the gilded wall, her slim frame shaking, her teeth chattering with fright.
“He chose the perfect place,” Symeon called over his shoulder. “No boyar would bring a weapon in here, and no Luxing would be searched.” Though other boyars had launched coups against an emperor’s reign, some more successful than others, none had dared do so within the divor. To do so was bad manners.
But what were manners next to piles of dead men?
“We need to leave!” Symeon shouted to be heard over the rising tide of gunfire. More guards had arrived, some with rifles and laser guns. An industrious leader on their side had managed to overturn a bronze statue of some early Shorvexan ruler onto which others had piled a secretarial desk and several chairs. Using this as a hard point, the emperor’s men were rallying.
“The doors are blocked.” Kavya pointed to the rear entrance. “And I don’t think the guards would let us through their way.”
Several bullets whizzed by their position. Kavya pulled Symeon down to crouch next to the wall. With her father and his allies between them and the royal guards, they were likely as safe as they could get in a closed-room shootout, which was no kind of safety whatsoever. And what would happen if the grand duke’s forces lost the battle? Symeon doubted the royals would show mercy to the man’s daughter or her Luxing slave.
Koan? What do I do? Koan?
No answer.
Symeon started to curse but stopped short as the running stream of information in his brain took a decided turn. Myriad gun battles played out in his mind’s eye, some between police forces and criminals, and others involving military forces, great and small. The Shorvex suffered no shortage of battles in their history, a fact their old-time generals had used to good advantage. They had made a school of battle, many schools throughout many periods of their history, all of which resided now in Symeon’s consciousness.
“I know how to escape.”
“How?” Kavya looked askance at her seneschal.
“No time. Will you go? Or are you staying with your father?”
Kavya’s gaze darted to Grand Duke Rurikid’s back, and her upper lip twitched into a sneer. “I want to go.”
“Then stay close to me, and do as I say.”
For the barest of an instant, it looked as though Kavya might reprimand Symeon for his commanding tone and word choice, but the moment passed. She nodded.
The line of guards pressing their way into the chamber had not stinted. In fact, more boiled out of the side hall in a rush as Symeon gained his feet, gripping Kavya’s hand to keep her close. The newest guards, no fewer than twelve of them, wore the black berets of the Emperor’s family guard, known as the Doormen. Elite though they were, and supposedly incorruptible, it had been a Doorman who had executed the emperor. Symeon could only hope more traitors had infiltrated their numbers, else his ploy to escape was doomed.
He launched himself forward, dragging Kavya with him. His awareness, excepting that part seemingly stuck on a never-ending stream of historical data, expanded such that he felt suddenly aware of every breath, every bullet, every movement, great and small, in the chamber.
A royal guard positioned near the dead emperor’s throne keyed in on their movement and turned to fire at Symeon with a two-handed grip on his gun. Before he had pulled the trigger, however, Symeon had already dropped, obliging Kavya to follow. The bullet buried itself in the wall above her head, leaving a smoking hole.
By instinct, Symeon swiped a piece of dislodged filigree off the floor and pitched it forward so that it landed under the heel of an entering Doorman. The guard’s boot slipped minutely, which caused him to trip over a dead man and barrel into the shooter who was adjusting his aim to zero in on Symeon and Kavya.
“How did you do that?” Kavya asked, as Symeon pulled her to her feet to restart their run.
“No idea,” Symeon lied. He had no time for explanations even he couldn’t fully explain. He was too busy calculating.
Judging by the gait of the next guard to enter, Symeon knew another man was running directly behind him. As the first man cleared the threshold, Symeon came to an abrupt stop, freed his hand from Kavya, and seized the oncoming guard’s weapon before tripping him.
The Doorman flew ass over elbows into the royal guards’ makeshift ramparts, dislodging several chairs in the process. Seeing an opportunity to press the momentary upheaval in his enemies’ ranks, Grand Duke Rurikid called to his men to attack en masse.
Symeon and Kavya, meanwhile, dashed along the hall hand-in-hand. They rushed by several guardsmen who looked torn between stopping them and continuing on to aid their beleaguered fellow
s. Symeon made the decision for them. He didn’t slow, and no one made the effort to give chase.
* * *
6
Finding Kavya’s ship was surprisingly easy. Whatever measures her father had taken to seize the palace must have left palace security in complete disarray. Symeon and she skirted a firefight near the easternmost landing area by cutting through an immaculately well-tended garden where birdsong and the gurgling of a lone fountain held sway. The juxtaposition was not lost on Symeon.
Such peace was short-lived. The sound of supersonic aircraft split the afternoon like thunder heralding a coming storm.
“Storm’s already here.” Symeon reached back to help Kavya scramble up a shallow embankment that overlooked their landing zone.
“What?” Kavya grimaced at the blue-green sky and gasped.
Though the day was bright, the outline of several large spacecraft could be seen hanging in the sky. Gleaming laser fire lanced between the ships, followed by much slower, yet still amazingly fast, volleys of missiles. Silent explosions colored the heavens in sprays of outgassing atmosphere.
“I never thought it would happen, not really. He spoke of a coup, but all the grand dukes say things like that in private. And yet, here we are.” Kavya pushed through a curtain of dense branches, making way for Symeon. Her ship stood below, with no one in sight.
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