Queen
Page 35
Jeff smiled wanly. “I could get behind never meeting like this again,” he agreed. “Allyce says I’ll be walking again soon.”
Nicole nodded. “She told me that, too.”
Though she’d also warned Nicole that he might never walk properly again. She’d done everything she could, but it might not be enough. They would just have to wait and see.
“Nise told me that you had Iyulik’s memorial service while I was still under,” Jeff said quietly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t well enough to attend.”
“It’s all right,” Nicole assured him. “Everyone understood. Iyulik’s people hold specific time periods for remembrance, memorial, and interment, and Nise wanted to honor those.”
“He’s with the humans in Q4?”
“That was the original plan,” Nicole said. “But we decided instead to make his memorial the first of a new group in Q2. We’re not slaves anymore. We’re free people, Leviathan’s friends and allies.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “I’m still a little unclear about how all this is working now.”
“So am I,” Nicole admitted. “But we’ve got time to figure it out. Before we do anything else we need to sort out everyone who wants to leave and send them home.”
“That’s most of them, I assume?”
“Surprisingly enough, it isn’t,” Nicole said. “About two-thirds of the workers are staying, including most of Miron’s green team—including Iosif—and most of our blue team.” She felt her throat tighten. “Tomas is going home, though. He says the ship has too many bad memories for him.”
“I figured if anyone left he’d be the one,” Jeff said, nodding heavily. “Who else?”
“The Q3 gray team’s sticking around,” Nicole said. “And like I said, about two-thirds of the rest.”
“Green, blue, and gray,” Jeff said, nodding. “Interesting.”
“What is?”
“Our team, Miron’s team, and Kointos’s team,” Jeff said. “People who’d actually met you.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Nicole protested. “They just like what they see here and want to keep going.”
“Right. Like I said.”
“Jeff—”
“What about the Ghorfs?” Jeff asked.
Nicole gave him another half second of glare, just to make it clear that she still wasn’t agreeing with him. “Surprisingly, they’re all staying. Kahkitah said they decided Leviathan needs a good internal security team, and that they were the best qualified for the job.”
“I wouldn’t argue the point for a minute,” Jeff said. “I presume the Thii and Ponngs are heading out?”
“Actually, no,” Nicole said. “Well, okay, they are, but only so they can alert their governments as to what’s going on out here. Nise set up a return Wisp rendezvous for next week, while Moile figures it’ll take two weeks to work his way up to the people who need to hear him. But both Ponngs and all three Thii will be back before we finish with the rest of the teleport work.”
“Again, people who’ve met and worked with you.” Jeff held up a hand. “I know, I know—I’m imagining things.”
“Whatever.” Nicole eyed him. “You didn’t ask about Allyce.”
Jeff’s amused half smile faded. “Don’t need to,” he said. “She told me two days ago that she was leaving.”
“Yes,” Nicole confirmed. “She left yesterday morning.” She paused, just long enough to watch his expression droop a little more. “And came back this evening.”
Jeff sat up a little straighter in his bed. “She’s back?”
“Uh-huh,” Nicole said, enjoying his surprise far more than she probably should have. “And with a surprise: her husband, Tad.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me,” Jeff said. “I thought she betrayed us in Q1 because she wanted to go home.”
“She wanted to go home to her husband,” Nicole corrected. “And I guess he missed her as much as she missed him. Twelve years since she disappeared and he hadn’t remarried.”
“So did she bring him here to explain why she didn’t come home that night?”
“I think she’s hoping to persuade him that this would be a good home for both of them, at least for the next few years,” Nicole said. “He’s a doctor, too, it turns out. I only talked with them for a couple of minutes, but from what he’s seen already it sounds like he’s three-quarters of the way to agreeing to stay.”
“Great,” Jeff said. “So we’ve got Ponngs, Thii, Ghorfs, work crews, Sibyls, and now a couple of doctors. Sounds like we’re set.” He eyed her closely. “The question is, set for what?”
Nicole looked away. “You know what the Fyrantha was all about,” she said. “Finding useful fighters and selling their worlds to people who wanted battle slaves. We’ve stopped the Koffren … but I’ve seen the records. Nevvis wasn’t shy about selling to anyone who had money, and there were a lot of people out there with money.”
“You want to free all the slaves.”
“For starters, yes,” Nicole said. “But the fact that there are so many battle slaves out there also means there are a lot of battles. Battles, wars, people fighting and killing and dying. Like the streets where I grew up. It’s a horrible, horrible waste.”
“It’s also stupid,” Jeff agreed, his gaze steady on her. “So…?”
“So we have Leviathan,” Nicole said, waving a hand around her. “The biggest, nastiest warship around. And my experience is that the person with the biggest, baddest gun usually scares everyone else so much that he almost never has to use it.”
“So Leviathan becomes Peacekeeper?”
“Why not? That was its role once. Why can’t it fill the same role again?”
“I’m not arguing,” Jeff said. “But my experience is that people who like to beat on other people are pretty stubborn. They don’t give up easily. You’re looking at a long, uphill climb.”
“I know,” Nicole said. “But really, I’ve got nothing else planned.”
“I figured.”
“Yeah.” Nicole braced herself. “I’d really like to have your help. Unless you were planning to go home?”
“Actually, home sounds great,” Jeff said.
Nicole nodded heavily. She should have known he would want to leave. His life aboard the Fyrantha had been nothing but work and boredom before she arrived, and afterward had been nothing but danger and pain.
“Which is the funny part,” he continued. “A long time ago I realized that I was a slave who would spend the rest of my life here. Once I accepted that fact, life became reasonably pleasant. Now that I’m not a slave, the place is even more comfortable.”
Nicole frowned. “Are you saying this is home for you?”
“It’s better than that,” he said, smiling. “I joined the Marines because I wanted to stand between the evil and the innocents. Then I was injured, and that dream went away.”
He waved a hand around the room. “Now, you’re giving me the chance to do that on a scale I’d never have imagined. So, bottom line: damn straight I’m staying.”
Nicole huffed out a relieved sigh. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“No problem.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “So I suggest you haul Allyce and Dr. Tad up here and get them back to work on my leg.”
He smiled. “And then let’s take the biggest, baddest gun in the neighborhood and find some bad guys to scare.”
BOOKS BY TIMOTHY ZAHN
DRAGONBACK SERIES
Dragon and Thief*
Dragon and Soldier*
Dragon and Slave*
Dragon and Herdsman*
Dragon and Judge*
Dragon and Liberator*
QUADRAIL SERIES
Night Train to Rigel*
The Third Lynx*
Odd Girl Out*
The Domino Pattern*
Judgment at Proteus*
STAR WARS® NOVELS
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
> The Last Command
Specter of the Past
Vision of the Future
Survivor’s Quest
Outbound Flight
Allegiance
Choices of One
Scoundrels
Thrawn
Thrawn: Alliances
Thrawn: Treason
Fool’s Bargain
COBRA SERIES
Cobra
Cobra Strike
Cobra Bargain
Cobra Alliance
Cobra Guardian
Cobra Gamble
Cobra Slave
Cobra Outlaw
Cobra Traitor
Cobras Two (omnibus)
Cobra Trilogy (omnibus)
The Blackcollar
Blackcollar: The Judas Solution
A Coming of Age
Spinneret
Cascade Point and Other Stories
The Backlash Mission
Triplet
Time Bomb and Zahndry Others
Deadman Switch
Warhorse
Conquerors’ Pride
Conquerors’ Heritage
Conquerors’ Legacy
The Icarus Hunt
Soulminder
Cloak
Angelmass*
Manta’s Gift*
The Green and the Gray*
SIBYL’S WAR
Pawn*
Knight*
Queen*
*A Tor Book
about the author
TIMOTHY ZAHN is the Hugo Award–winning author of more than fifty science fiction novels, including Night Train to Rigel, The Third Lynx, Odd Girl Out, and the Dragonback sextet. He has also written the all-time bestselling Star Wars spin-off novel, Heir to the Empire, and other Star Wars novels, including the recent Thrawn: Treason. He lives in coastal Oregon. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Books by Timothy Zahn
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
QUEEN
Copyright © 2020 by Timothy Zahn
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Stephen Youll
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2968-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-5146-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781429951463
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First Edition: April 2020