by Alex Oliver
Bryant wasn't sure about that either. With a network of launchers all over the planet, it made sense to leave each base to be maintained by the imps and have a central control room here. If they were fortifying against potential retakes by the Kingdom, anything less than full planet coverage made them far too vulnerable to ground attack from armies that set their ships down on an undefended side of the planet and marched over.
But that should be discussed with Aurora. He knelt down to rub his fingertips possessively over the plan of the city, over the operating theater he had begun to think of as his. He was thinking of planetary defenses, and sacred ground, and starting his business again. Putting out concealed package advertisements on the needle-net and letting the customers come to him, bringing their prestige and their money and their protection with them.
There was a future here. A future that contained everything he wanted, a future shared with someone extraordinary. But he would have to fight for it, and he was no fighter.
“Yes,” he said, missing Aurora suddenly, needing her spinning dynamo of self-confidence, her assurance that they would be just fine. “Let's go and report.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hail to the Queen
The governor's chair resembled the command chair of a star ship in that from it Aurora could stay in touch with any area of the planet supplied with comms. "I have Jenkins from the Froward for you, ma'am," Crouch told her, looking small and blue toned in the corner of one of her screens.
"Put him on."
"I don't know what I should call you," Jenkins gave her a wide white smile, the scruffy little bridge of the Froward visible behind him, the hole in it filled in with welded metal that was not yet painted. "Ma'am?"
"Or 'captain'," she agreed, soothed by his voice and his easy friendliness. "Some of my officers are arguing for 'queen' but I think not. How's it coming?"
"Good news," he said. "Initial reports were somewhat exaggerated. Now I've seen it myself I think we can get her flying again in three weeks. Sooner if we had more hands."
"Excellent," she smiled, and made a mental note to send a division of marines to supervise the work immediately, so no one got any ideas about just taking the ship and leaving. "Mr. Jones is due back this afternoon. I'm sure he'll be happy to help you reopen the launcher and move her to a silo. Then you'll have additional drone help."
He gave her a look that said 'I see what you did there, helping me with one hand and controlling me with the other. On balance I approve.' But he only said, "Yes ma'am."
"We've had some success fishing today. I'll make sure you and your team get sent your share. They roast nicely."
"Roast fish for supper," he smiled. "Yes ma'am."
She toggled off the display and looked up as Bousaid and Rabinovitz came in. They could not have been more dissimilar in appearance - Bousaid willowy and melancholic, with a flare like a poet's in his dress and a cynicism in his dark hazel eyes, Rabinovitz green eyed, heavily fleshy and humorous, but they had bonded over the stores and were now scarcely to be seen apart. People had started calling them the twins.
Not even Rabinovitz was smiling now, though.
"Saif? Ernie? News?"
"Yes ma'am," Rabinovitz handed her a smartboard displaying a list of supplies, graphs of consumption and acquisition of food displayed against the length of the planetary year. "I'm afraid it's not good news. We've been testing a number of samples. In addition to the large fish there are several different kinds of crayfish and snails suitable for human consumption, but the numbers we're catching are not sufficient to feed us all through the winter.
Our hunting teams have found no large land animals. The squirrel like creatures are not edible by humans; their cells contain too high a concentration of arsenic, which they get from the leaves of the blue ribbon tree. Humans can become tolerant to arsenic with time, so with care we might be able to build up exposure to the point where we can add them to the diet in a couple of months. If so, they might be a useful source of meat, particularly if they could be farmed. I suggest catching a triad or two and attempting to get them to breed. That's a long term project that doesn't help us right now, however.
“Our gathering teams have identified several different kinds of berries, nuts and grains which are edible, but the majority of them have either been eaten by the local fauna or have begun to go rotten. We're well into planetary autumn by now, and if we were going to gather enough to see us through the winter, we should have done it three months ago."
Right, she had the gist of it now. "Bottom line?"
"We should look into gathering what seed we can find to plant for next year," Rabinovitz went on, watching Saif wrap the ends of his scarf around his hands, "And perhaps dedicating land to cultivating the bushes that produce food, also for next year, but it isn't going to be enough to get us through the winter."
Bousaid looked up, shrugging, "And none of us will work ten hours a day planting food and digging ground while we're hungry and we know we're not going to make it anyway. If we could have started this before the native harvest rotted on the trees we might have stood a chance but--"
"The Terran crops are useless?"
"Fucking useless, yes. Yield goes down 16 percent every year. Now it's scarcely worth planting at all, except for the fruit trees. I'm guessing stuff here needs deep roots. The trees are cutting it but nothing else is."
Well... Well, it was a hope. Aurora felt her mouth tip up in a wry grin. She'd hoped to avoid war, but that was not her kind of luck, and maybe not a case of playing to her strengths.
Okay, so she would have to buy food to take the colony over the winter. That made a number of decisions easier. She got on the com.
"Mboge."
"Ma'am?"
"I'm going to need you to take the Charity on a trip to Snow City to set up a trade route for food. Pick your crew. You can take the governor and any of his staff who choose to go with him. I'm sure they can find transport back to a Kingdom world from there."
"When do I depart?"
"ASAP, but you'll need to speak with Bryant Jones first. He's going to be able to provide you with contacts, and he may..."
She tried not to feel the roil of anxiety and hope and deep cold dread. She'd scared him off with her talk of marriage, that was clear, and she was not his jailer any more. She'd promised him this, there was nothing more that need be said. She did not go back on her promises.
"He may also be going with you. I promised him a way out."
She successfully put the thought out of her mind for half an hour while she spoke to the man she'd put in charge of the animals. A small, sharp little man with penetrating, foxy eyes, and a small sharp smile, Pacheco put her on edge, but the animals seemed to love him. The whole time they talked, the plow horses were huffing in his hair or nibbling over his jacket and trouser pockets as though they expected treats.
"Long story short," he concluded, after a very long tale indeed of his adventures yesterday, supervising his charges while they tried to browse on the alien flora, "they all found something to eat and none of 'em look poisoned this morning."
"So we've got arable land aplenty if I bring in animals?" Good news. Rabbits, for example, bred like... well, rabbits, and could be farmed throughout the winter.
"All takes time to establish, though, don't it?" Pacheco patted the gelding's neck as it leaned over his shoulder to sniff at Aurora. He leered at her a little, or perhaps she was imagining that and it was merely the recognition that he and she were animals too. "And they didn't trust us with breeders. We got cows and no bull, same with the pigs and the chickens. The horses are geldings."
"Breeding stock," she agreed, stepping down hard on the associated idea of children. And then she paused, internally and took her foot back off. There was something she was forgetting, and that something was that she was Aurora Campos, the lioness of the kingdom. If people took something of hers, did she really just lie down and let them?
"Okay," she finished, min
d already somewhere else and her raw heart pulled in every direction by hope and need and fear. "Have a think about what we'll need to get us through the winter and keep us viable the year after. Give me a shopping list in an hour. I'll be back at the mansion."
As she was walking back, admiring the ice bright shine of the ring in the sky, white against the deep velvety blue, and the fluting glasslike cries of something native floating up from the patch of rustling white-trunked ribbon trees, trying to find some serenity in her soul, the sound of swoops made everything in her leap up and want to dance.
She stopped, crossing the courtyard in front of the mansion and Bryant and Nori blew dust and fallen leaves from under her feet as they settled to the stone in front of her.
There were considerations of propriety and face-saving to think about but for some reason she couldn't have cared less. The sight of him looking all tousled and wind blown and waiflike, with that faintly anxious look on his face, overrode shame and restraint. She gave a single skip as she changed direction and then sprinted over to pull him off his seat and hug him tight, holding on to his lanky warmth and burying her face in his rebellious hair.
Nothing about the posture said 'I am a tough and unassailable Queen' so she stepped back quickly, let him brush himself down and glance up at her with a blush on his cheeks and amused eyes.
"Hey you," she said quietly. "I missed you."
"I missed you too," he admitted, catching a glimpse of all the people hurrying behind her shoulder and shrinking back close to her side. She wanted to ask him if he was staying with her. If he'd given the idea of marriage any thought. If they might perhaps have a future together, but she was sidetracked by the faint tremor running through his arm where it pressed into her chest and stomach. He was scared?
"Nori give you any trouble?"
"No," he lowered his voice and leaned closer to her, and she took the chance to kiss just below his ear as he continued "Not yet, but I think he could be." He trailed his fingers over her cheek as she pulled away, and it was like a homecoming. Something she wanted to be able to get used to.
"But you are scared?"
He laughed. "It's going to take me a while to stop seeing all these people as potential rapists and murderers and start seeing them as neighbors. I'm going to be scared for a while."
Was that? Was that an admission that he was staying? The sky was glorious behind him and Aurora wanted to hug him again - to hug him so tight he couldn't get away even if he wanted to. Instead she took the alien datadisc necklace from around her neck and fastened it around his. Both Bryant's hands came up to link themselves around it and the two imps who had been following Aurora all day long gave a rustling of their armour plates as they reorientated themselves on him.
"They're your bodyguards," he protested faintly.
"I don't think I need them any more," she was still in that honeymoon period where her new people believed she could turn stones into bread. As long as she proved she actually could, she should have nothing to worry about. "I'd rather have you feel defended and happy."
His smile kinked into something warmer and more self-depreciating, shy almost, and she couldn't keep doing this to either of them. It was time they talked it out. "So what do you think?"
"I think we should move into the city at once. We should contact as many sovereign states outside the Kingdom as we can and ask for their diplomatic recognition and protection as a free world. And then we should buy every damn thing we need to start out with every advantage we can. Once they realize we've got a planet full of alien antiquities the value of them is going to go down fast. But right now we can probably name our price. There's a number of pieces of specialist surgical equipment I'd like to order, and I have a list of contacts I can give to whoever you're sending to help them get the most out of our money."
She hadn't entirely caught all of that. Only the rough outline had made it through the overwhelming tide of joy. "You're staying?"
"Yes of course," the Celtic swirls of shepherd moons in the stripe of ring above them ornamented his open surprise, and then his incredulity. "Aurora, of course I'm staying. I presume you're going to let me practice my art? There's a theater and a house beside it that's all but ready made for me. And I... I don't want to be anywhere where there's no you."
They were out in public and it was just as well. It meant she couldn't let the kiss progress as she wanted to. It was hard enough to separate, to draw back from the luxurious and welcoming heat of his mouth when someone was wolf-whistling at her from one of the parapets.
"Bed?" his eyes looked dazed as he smiled at her, and she was pretty sure he was not like Keene, but she still didn't intend to test it out. Slipping her arm around his back she relished its springy slenderness as she guided him to start walking back to the citadel. The comms were going to be busy this afternoon.
"If we bring in food and animals and Crouch's family and the families of anyone else here who wants them..."
Her parents were old by now, but still hale, still perfectly capable of toiling ten hours in their vineyard and then drinking and dancing for six more. Every time she grabbed leave, they'd said she should visit more, stay longer. And they were farmers to the bone. If anyone could work out how to get the best out of this neglected paradise, they could. Her sister Selena, who had just finished training as a vet. She might come too.
Oh God, that thought ached. To have everything, a job, a family and a lover, all at once? She scarcely dared reach out for it, it felt so greedy.
"Yes? Aurora?"
As she thought, her feet had brought them both inside the concrete walls of the prison stronghold and up, into the oppressive ugliness of the governor's throne room. If she was starting anew, there were also things she would like to burn down to the ground in her wake. All her bridges, for a start.
"Sorry. What was I saying?"
"If we're bringing in food and families..." Bryant prompted, looking concerned.
"Oh, yes. If we're bringing in food and families, and we're seeking official recognition from our neighbors, there's no keeping quiet about the fact that we're still here. There's going to be war, Bryant. You sure you want to stay?"
He reached down and took her hand, laying his two long fingers over the closed mouth in her palm the way he had done before she went to kill McKillip. She could burn his hand off like that, and they both knew she wouldn't. "Oddly enough," he said, "I'm more certain than I've ever been about anything."
She raised the hand and turned it, bringing the modification into the light. "We'll need every edge we've got. I'm going to want you to make us invincible. Can you do that?"
Bryant gave a bark of astonished laughter and gestured at the criminals walking all around them. "You want me to make these people even more dangerous?"
"Yup. Can you?"
His look of anxiety transformed by degrees into one of academic interest, and then fascination, as he clearly began to consider the details. "If you can tell me exactly what you need for an invincible army, I can give it to you."
There were datascreens open around the chair as she slid into it with a feeling of repulsion for its red livery and the design of a martial, flaming cross etched into the wall behind it. "How about we discuss that over dinner, Mr. Jones?"
His eyes gleamed, half fond and half sultry. "It's a date, Captain."
And see. They might be having a little tussle over marriage - whether she would sleep with him before, or after, or at all. And maybe she'd win that and he'd marry her, or maybe she'd make a tactical surrender at some point down the line when it felt appropriate. But he was staying here for her regardless, so she had already won.
There was someone's face she really wanted to rub in that.
"Crouch? Patch me through to Admiral Keene. He's at HQ on Hector. It's going to be the middle of the night there, but wake him up and drag him in front of a monitor. I want to talk to him right now."
He had been asleep. All too obviously, he had been dragged out of his
bed to the console in his stateroom. From the disarray of his hair he had attempted to smooth it down with both hands - it was flat on the top and spiky around the ears.
"What?" he was saying, looking sideways at a monitor outside Aurora's field of vision, from which see caught a twisted red glimpse of Crouch's fiery hair. "What do you mean, priority?"
An extraordinary full-body sensation pushed out from Aurora's core and made the hair on her neck and the crown of her head stand up. It was rage, rage so pure it was scarcely distinguishable from calm, except that she felt larger than life, untouchable.
"Where's your daughter, Admiral?" she said, her voice strange even to herself, both flat and brassy and inhuman with anger.
He whipped around to face her, and his dropped jaw was one of the best things she'd seen in her life, unshaven as he was, caught with the sleep still gumming up the corners of his eyes.
"Do you even know?"
"Campos, you whore. How the hell did you--"
She was shaking, a little, in her fingertips, but it was not fear, not sorrow. Only the need to hold herself back from putting a fist through the viewscreen.
"Just a short call, Keene. A courtesy call. I thought it was only fair to warn you. I want my daughter back. I'm coming for her."
"You're dead," he managed, scrambling for something on the other side of his desk, catching his lamp on his dressing gown sleeve. He grabbed for it. It fell with a crash of expensive glass shade and she hoped he cut his feet on it. "You're on a no account worthless failing colony surrounded by angry criminals. You're going to be raped and eaten. You're in no position to be making threats."
Oh, God, he was scared. She got the taste of his fear in her mouth like steak and it was so rich, so juicy after the past three months of misery, she almost forgot who she was and went for him anyway. "I'm not making threats, Sir. I'm telling you I want my daughter. You can send her to me, or you can make me come get her. It's your choice."