by M. D. Cooper
Diana may be many things, but she didn’t have a masochistic bone in her body. The woman would not cause herself true emotional pain just for control or revenge. Which was why she typically banished, or sometimes killed, those who wronged her like Petra had.
“You look perfect, perfect!” Danny declared. “Well…as perfect as possible without a beak.”
“Danny, really. Drop it,” Janice said, the assistant’s voice taking on more of an edge than Petra had ever heard in it before.
The costumer gave her a sidelong glance and then nodded, a meek look crossing his face for just a moment. “Very well. But next time, Petra, promise me you’ll give me more notice so I can turn you into an actual bird?”
Stars…reasons to never give him enough notice are just piling up.
“Of course, Danny. Anything for you.”
* * * * *
“Ambassador! Not again!” Kory said as Petra walked down the corridor that led to the spire’s landing.
The agent did little to hide the smirk on his lips, and she gave him a stern glare in response.
“What? Little bird on your lip?” he pressed.
“That’s some weak humor,” Petra replied as she reached the man and he fell in beside her. “I’m just trying to offer an olive branch to the empress.”
Kory snorted. “Gonna fly it in? Swoop down and present your gift on one knee?”
“Think it will work?” she asked, a laugh slipping past her cool façade.
“Maybe. I can arrange to have a window opened.”
Petra snapped her right wing open, the sharp talon on the end scraping the wall before she wrapped the wing around the man.
“Shit, Petra! We’re gonna need a bigger shuttle.”
“Funny, Kory.” She folded her wing back. “Just demonstrating that the window might not be big enough.”
“Noted. I’ll call in a demo team to blow a hole in the wall. That’ll make for quite the entrance.”
She snorted a laugh, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You always know what to say. Glad you made it back from your last assignment in time for all this.”
The agent gave her a sidelong look, reaching up to touch one of the cones that protruded from the side of Petra’s head. “Me too. I’m going to have so much blackmail material.”
“You know the motto. ‘What happens on assignment…’ ”
A sigh escaped Kory’s lips before he nodded and finished, “Stays on assignment.”
“Exactly.”
“Except…”
Her head swiveled, and she fixed Kory with a stern look. “Except what?”
“Well…I mean, you’re going on a date with the Scipian empress. This is pretty much a matter of public record.”
“Agent Kory?”
“Uh huh?”
“There are aaaaaall sorts of missions that you really don’t want to get sent on.”
“Umm…noted, ma’am.”
* * * * *
Petra and Kory walked out onto the spire’s rear pad, only to see Chimellia waiting next to the shuttle’s entrance. The woman’s brow was lowered in a stern glower, and her arms were folded across her chest.
Alastar said.
Kory glanced at Petra’s forehead and groaned.
The agent nodded to Petra and approached the shuttle, inclining his head to the sum adjut as he walked past.
“Chimellia.” Petra’s lips curled in a wry twist as she came to a halt. “I wasn’t expecting a chaperone tonight.”
The other woman’s expression hardened further. “You’re very funny, Ambassador. You seem to think the world is a joke.”
Petra took a moment to wonder if she’d ever harbored such a belief before replying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chimellia, but I have to be on my way. I wouldn’t want to keep the empress waiting.”
“Yes, that is why I’m here. The empress spends a lot of time with you, so you have her ear more than any other.”
“Not very much of late,” Petra replied.
“I think you underestimate your influence.”
A sigh broke free from Petra’s lips. “What of it? What do you want, Sum Adjut?”
“I’m here as a concerned citizen of the empire. I care greatly for Diana, and I want to be certain she is in a strong position to rule without issue.”
“Then we are aligned,” Petra replied. “You know that is all I’ve ever wanted for her, and what I’ve always wanted for Scipio.”
The sum adjut’s eyes narrowed. “Is it? I’m not so certain. You’ve revealed an infiltration of many levels of our government, and I suspect there is much more you’ve not revealed. I don’t think that you explicitly have our best interests at heart.”
“Then you need to look more carefully at the actions I’ve taken in the past,” Petra said. “Show me the fault in what I’ve done—outside of the errors any human would make.”
“Oh, I’m certain I could catalogue a litany,” Chimellia hissed. “But that’s not the point. The point is that in the end, you are not loyal to Scipio. You are loyal to President Sera of the Transcend. That much is more than evident.”
“What of it? I am her ambassador.”
“It is unseemly for one in such a position of power to court the empress.”
“Was it unseemly before?” Petra asked. “I shared the empress’s bed for decades.”
Chimellia shrugged. “You were a nobody then. It was but a dalliance. Everyone knew that Diana would never give you any position of prominence. But now…now things have changed.”
Petra decided she’d had enough of the sum adjut’s insinuations. “I don’t know what you expect to have happen, Chimellia, but know this. I shall remain the ambassador for the Transcend’s delegation, and moreover, whatever Diana and I decide to do is between us. It is not your concern, or your office’s concern.”
The other woman opened her mouth to respond, but Petra swept past her. She saw Chimellia’s jaw snap shut, clenching with impotent rage.
Without looking back, she palmed the shuttle’s door and strode through the cabin to where Kory was seated.
“That woman infuriates me,” she muttered upon reaching his side.
“I could instruct the pilot to have an accident, knock her off the platform,” the agent deadpanned.
Petra’s eyes snapped up, locking on Kory’s, to see a twinkle in his gaze. “Core…you had me going for a second there.”
“Forget about her. All she cares about is her domain, and you threaten it. She’ll try to get you to back down, but she has no power over you, and she knows it.”
Petra nodded pensively. “I know that…I’m not so certain she does.”
ATLIOR PACEL
STELLAR DATE: 10.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSF diplomatic shuttle
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
The flight to the restaurant Diana had chosen—the Atlior Pacel—was long, but uneventful. It was situated in Delorum, a low orbit asteroid that had long since been hollowed out and turned into a playground for the wealthiest members of Alexandrian society.
“Looks like Diana bought the whole place out,” Kory called back from the cockpit. “Only service vessels at the dock.”
Petra nodded from where she stood on her pointed feet in the cabin’s aisle. None of the chairs were made for someone with wings, so she was relying on the a-grav emitters in her hands and feet to hold her steady.
Petra hadn’t considered that. She’d contacted Danny on a whim, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t reached out to the empress over the Link while dressing her.
The AI didn’t reply, his silence speaking volumes.
Petra turned her attention to Delorum, watching as Kory managed the approach. She saw a supply vessel ease into the service side of the long docking arm, and nodded with approval, knowing that it contained several of Kory’s people, all there to ensure that she was safe.
The empress’s ship was not yet present, but that suited Petra just fine. She was hoping to be situated at their table before her companion arrived, perhaps able to avoid Diana scrutinizing her as she approached.
A vision of the empress making her put Danny’s work on display came to Petra. She could just imagine Diana ordering her to show off every detail, probably demanding that she fly through the restaurant’s dining room.
Of course, arriving first doesn’t forestall any of that. She’ll probably make me do it anyway.
A few minutes later, the shuttle was docked, and Kory moved to the small airlock, cycling through first before sending the all-clear back to Petra.
A minute later, Petra and Kory were walking down the long terminal concourse, a few microdrones ranging ahead. They’d passed several of the empress’s guards, and she’d let Kory interface with them, willing herself to relax in the face of what was bound to be a trying evening.
It had always been that way, even back before Diana had learned the truth about Petra. At first, she’d wondered if the empress was somewhat deranged, or perhaps gained a pyrrhic pleasure from being capricious. Petra had been the Regional Director of the Hand for several years before she approached the empress. When she finally did, it wasn’t because she wanted the additional complication of romancing the Scipian empress, but rather that every other agent she’d sent to woo the woman had utterly failed.
Ultimately, it came down to success at any cost, so she’d set herself up as an ambassador from a small and distant alliance of stars and insinuated her way into the court.
Because she’d been studying the empress for years, it had been easy to give the other woman what she craved in a companion and start up a relationship. Within just a few weeks, she’d initiated a romantic liaison with the woman, and from there, they’d been casual bedmates for decades. In a strange twist of fate, Petra had to admit that her mark had become one of her best friends.
Something that had been shattered the day the message had come from President Tomlinson informing Petra that the unveiling was to begin at Scipio.
And I’ve been in damage control mode ever since.
Dinner on Delorum was definite progress. What worried Petra was that it was also a fulcrum. The night was hers to ruin, and the empress would give her every opportunity to do so. That was how the woman operated. She handed out nooses like they were candy, waiting for those around her to hang themselves.
That’s my goal for tonight. Don’t hang myself on the rope she’ll dole out.
At the end of the concourse, a dockcar waited, and Petra carefully folded herself into it, facing backward and kneeling on the seat to give her wings and horns enough room.
“Bet you wish you’d gone for something simpler,” Kory said, chuckling as he sat next to her.
“I’m doing this for her, not me,” Petra replied. “Olive branch, remember?”
“Sure.” Kory signaled the car to take off, a twenty-kilometer drive ahead of them before they’d reach the Atlior Pacel.
“So, what if she doesn’t go for your whole winged getup there?” Kory asked after a minute.
“You mean what if she’s not into it, or what if she rejects me outright?”
The man pursed his lips and raised a brow as he thought over her question. “I suppose outright rejection is what I’d be concerned about.”
“You should be,” Petra replied, laughing softly. “Because then, you’d have to take over as ambassador to Scipio in my place.”
The man snorted. “Like they’d put me in that role. I’m just a grunt. Admiral Malachi would fill in.”
“Not a chance in the universe,” Petra replied. “He and Diana have never met, but I can tell you that they’d be like oil and water. He has no idea how to play her games.” She paused and shuddered. “Stars…she’d have him wrapped around her finger inside of ten minutes.”
“I think you underestimate the admiral.” By the expression on Kory’s face, Petra couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Well, I think you underestimate the empress,” she replied. “I have no idea how I’ll weather the evening, and I know everything about her.”
“You know,” Kory mused. “Maybe that’s the problem. Instead of trying to use all your long observations of Diana to mold and manipulate her, why not just engage in an honest and open conversation? Just focus on being her friend.”
At first, the agent’s words seemed glib, and Petra was about to reply in kind, but then she paused and reconsidered them.
She knew that the loss of their friendship had to be what pained Diana the most. Rekindling that before any romance made the most sense.
“You know, Kory, maybe you’ve got some good advice after all.”
“Right,” he said, laughing as the car began to slow. “It’s almost as though I’ve been doing this job for the past century and know how to read people or something.”
He gave her a significant look, and she realized that his statement about needing a friend was directed at her as much as the empress.
Petra snorted. “I have plenty of friends.”
“Spies,” Kory countered. “You can’t trust any of us.”
“Oh?”
“Well, at least not when it comes to sending out pictures of you with those amazing wings.”
Petra shook her head. “This is going in your review.”
* * * * *
The Atlior Pacel was a gorgeous restaurant set on the far end of the asteroid. The floor was set on a pivot and rotated slowly, causing the heavens and the planet to make a full passage overhead every fifteen minutes.
Like much of the décor in the Scipian capital system, the restaurant tended toward an ancient Greco-Roman style, though Petra knew from ancient vids she’d studied that Scipian designs had greatly diverged from the source material.
Low columns dotted the restaurant’s rotating floor, ruddy-hued lights hanging from them, casting long shadows that made Petra feel as though a summer evening were spilling over the area.
“I almost feel like I should practice, but I’m worried I’ll hit a hanging brazier and light myself on fire before the night even starts.”
The AI’s words cut off as a pair of Impera Protego marched past her, flanking the entrance, their wary eyes surveying the area and the man at the podium Pe
tra was approaching. The guards added to the dozen already in the restaurant, and Petra wondered what other hidden protectors were present in the room.
Kory was nearby in a secret monitoring station that the Hand had used many times in the past. A pair of agents was with him, ready to render aid if things went awry. Their main task, however, was to monitor the breached comm node that they believed would be used to attack Petra and be ready to backtrace any activity.
It was expected that whoever was behind the threat was not on the asteroid and would be on the planet below. Should the trail lead there, Harold had a team on standby, ready to move on the perpetrator.
Or maybe nothing will happen, and we’ll have a nice, relaxing dinner.
Petra nearly snorted aloud at the thought, settling instead on a rueful shake of her head as she reached the podium and greeted the man standing there.
After a brief exchange, the maître d led her to a table near the edge of dome, where Petra carefully settled onto her chair, letting her wings drape over the back and brush the floor.
“Rather late for her.”
“Waiting I can do without trouble,” Petra replied as she touched the holoemitter on the edge of the table, perusing the wine list.
She ordered a sweet red she knew would be to Diana’s taste, and when the waiter arrived with the bottle, she sampled the vintage and nodded in satisfaction.
“Should I pour?” he asked.
“No,” Petra replied. “She likes to pour her own wine.”
Ten minutes later, the empress swept into the restaurant, resplendent in a flowing, golden gown gleaming with turquoise highlights.
Petra rose and stepped around the table, a smile on her lips as Diana approached.
“You look beau—”