by Dave Bara
He stepped back and pointed at my bleeding thigh. “That’s the first of many, Cochrane. You’ll feel plenty of pain before you die,” he said. I said nothing, but the injury was deep enough that it did indeed burn, and it weakened both my planting and my ability to push off in attack or defense.
Round one to the prince.
We continued to circle as my blood dripped slowly onto the gray marble floor. I assumed a crouch, which was easier than standing up straight, but I could already feel my thigh muscle tightening from the damage. Arin charged me again, and again I fended him off, but he used a roundhouse kick with his left leg to hit me hard in my wound, and I let out a howl of pain, which made him smile. We grappled then, swords locked and our open hands twisting, trying to gain leverage on one another. With a sudden thrust he pushed me back, and I buckled just a fraction, my leg wound giving ground. He slashed at me with his sword, left and right across his chest. I strayed too close, trying to get inside his swing radius to strike. His final swing caught my right biceps. I gripped my arm and retreated. To my surprise, he didn’t pursue me. But there was no question now: I had two serious wounds.
I was losing.
Arin stopped to catch his breath. My right leg and my right arm ached; I could barely hold my sword, and my thigh was stiffening up quickly.
“Any final words on your death that I can convey to my sister?” he mocked me. But I said nothing. Everything I had now, all my focus and energy, was on the fight.
“Time to finish this,” Arin said, and then he charged at me, swinging his sword with two hands like an axe. I gave ground toward the throne, then stumbled on the marble step in front of the chair. He didn’t miss the opportunity. He bull-rushed me, and with a growl he pushed me back into the throne, which flipped over and sent me tumbling, my head hitting hard as I slid across the moss-covered floor. My momentum was only stopped by the back wall of the hall.
I was dazed. I could see my own blood streaked across the marble floor, taste it in my mouth. It stung as it washed into my eyes from a head wound. I looked up to see Arin kick the throne aside as he calmly walked toward me. I scrambled up, and the room spun a bit as I tried to gain my feet, but my injured leg betrayed me, and I fell again. Arin closed the space between us. We were barely three meters apart when he dove forward and swung at me. I couldn’t raise my sword to defend with my wounded arm, so I stumbled and weaved, trying to avoid him as he patiently closed the circle on me. I had only one idea left that could save me, one that I’d learned from Dobrina.
I managed to get to the center of the dais again, bleeding, half helpless, my right side taken away from me. No doubt the prince believed he had me, and all signs surely pointed that way.
I made my play.
I extended my sword, and the prince hacked at it, then slashed me across the right forearm. I dropped my sword. He was anxious now to finish me; I could see it in his eyes.
He lunged at me with his sword. I kicked my sword past him with my left foot and then did a shoulder roll off my one good leg, sliding past his left leg as his sword clattered off the floor. His eagerness had left him out of position. What he didn’t know that Dobrina Kierkopf did was that I was nearly as deadly with my left arm as with my right.
I finished my roll right next to my sword and picked it up with my good left hand. It was inches away from him. He turned quickly to bring down a killing blow on me, but I had him. I stuck my sword deep into his abdomen, and blood started flowing. I let go and stepped back as he held his sword poised over his head to strike me, as if he were frozen in time. Then, in a moment of madness, he brought his sword down and shattered mine, the hilt now gone and a broken, jagged edge sticking out of his stomach.
With stuttering breath, he dropped his sword and went to one knee, trying to pull my sword from his stomach. I didn’t waste a second, grabbing him by the back of the shoulders and throwing him forward to the marble floor. The point of my sword emerged from his back. But I wasn’t finished.
I picked up his dropped sword and went to his fallen body, raising him up to his knees, and he stayed there, still alive but in shock, blood ringing his mouth. I took his sword in both hands, as he had done, and raised it over my head.
“For the grand duke. For Carinthia. For humanity,” I said, then brought the sword down with all my might. It shattered bone between his right arm and his head, and his neck listed to the left as the gaping gash I had just put in him filled the floor with blood. He looked at me, eyes empty and far away, and I looked at the fallen broken throne of his true father. Then I took my good leg and kicked him full in the chest, knocking him to the floor a final time, his legs twisted under him in an unnatural manner.
Prince Arin was dead.
I went to my knees and then felt Serosian’s large hands under my arms, pulling me up. “We have to get you back to Defiant. Your wounds need tending,” he said. “Can you stand?” I nodded, and he helped me to my feet, pushing me toward our gunship. But I stopped him. I wasn’t quite finished here. Not yet.
“Tralfane,” I said, my voice cracking from weakness and fatigue. “If I had the strength, you would be next.”
“But you don’t,” he said in reply. I looked at him with all the hatred and disdain I could muster.
“Leave this system. Leave human space, you and all the other Historians like you. If we encounter your kind again, we will destroy you,” I said.
“Leaving is what we had always planned,” he said. “There are mysteries both great and terrifying to be discovered out there. For your sake, you should pray that we can solve some of them. I doubt the Founders will be as generous to you as we have been. Our time here is over. I wish you well, Cochrane, and much luck. You and humanity are going to need it.” And with that he started for his shuttle, followed by the automaton.
“You,” I called. “Robot. I am not finished with you or your kind. Tell your masters they must withdraw from human space as far as the boundaries of the First Empire, four hundred and fifty light-years from the Sol system. Beyond that, you may do as you please. But if we find you in our space, we will destroy you as well. Leave humanity to itself, and don’t come back.”
The automaton made no acknowledgment of any kind, but after a few moments of hesitation, it turned to follow Tralfane to the shuttle.
A second later, Serosian fired my coil pistol, scattering robot parts throughout the hall. Tralfane turned sharply and looked at his former colleague.
“What did you do that for?” he demanded. Serosian kept his pistol trained on Tralfane.
“You said they were all linked, all the AIs, through that machine. That means they’ve gotten the message now. The messenger was irrelevant,” he said. Then he waved Tralfane to the shuttle, never taking the pistol off of him.
As Tralfane departed, I hoped it was the last time I would ever see him. Serosian helped me back to our gunship and treated my wounds with an anti-infectious sealant that also numbed the pain at the source, and then he injected me with a painkiller for good measure. I sat next to him in the copilot’s chair as we rose out of Corant’s atmosphere. Vaguely I heard him call in to Defiant as we left the palace, telling them that I was still alive. I mumbled something about my last order to destroy Corant standing, but I didn’t hear a response through the painkilling fog. At some point I became lucid enough to talk again.
“What did you think of my combat skills?” I asked.
“Certainly not classic, and I doubt your trainer would be proud, but you were effective,” he said.
“My trainer . . . Dobrina . . .” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth like I had no ability to stop them. “My trainer is the finest woman I’ve ever known . . . and . . .” I stumbled to get the words out. “I believe I still love her.”
Serosian said nothing, then gave me a second painkiller shot, and I closed my eyes and went right to sleep.
When I next came
to my senses, I was in a hospital bed on High Station Artemis in the Levant system. I’d been out almost twenty-four hours, but I was told by the doctors that I was healing well. Karina came as soon as she heard I was awake, and the medical staff left us alone.
“You won, Peter. I didn’t dare hope, but you won,” she said proudly.
“It’s all a bit vague to me,” I admitted. “Tell me, did Lena carry out my orders on Corant?”
“She did. Wesley was none too happy about it, but it was a legitimate order from a sovereign. What could he do?”
“My commission—did the Navy accept my resignation?” I asked. She smiled.
“You’re no longer captain of Defiant, Peter. The Union is safe. Plans are being made to contact new worlds to join us, the fleet is being repaired, and new Lightships, fully built, are on their way from Earth. There is only a small population there now, and almost all the Historians have left, save the few thousand that followed Serosian,” she said.
“Despite it all, we owe him a lot,” I said.
“Wesley wants to try him for treason.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m granting him full asylum on Quantar.”
“Your father may have something to say about that,” she said.
“I am sovereign of two worlds, Karina, as our children will be. He may object, and the Navy, too, but I have the power to grant it, and I will. Serosian will live on Quantar.”
“But why? Why is he so special?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you,” I said, wanting to keep the threat of the Founders’ return from her. “But his presence is critical, and that’s all I have to say about the matter.”
“Very well then,” she said. “The Duke of KendalFalk gets his way.” Then she moved closer to me as I yawned. “I look forward to starting a family with you, Peter, and having many happy years free of war.”
“I do too,” I said, then felt the force of sleep coming over me powerfully. “You dosed me, didn’t you?”
“I did,” she said. “You need to rest. And I need to make arrangements to get us home.”
“Home,” I said. “Better words have never been spoken.”
“Soon enough, Peter. Soon enough.”
And then she kissed me on the forehead, and I drifted off to sleep once again, contented for the moment, but not at peace.
Dénouement
One Year Later
I rubbed at my wife’s swollen belly; the act of touching our future child, a son, gave me comfort. I bent over and kissed Karina on the lips with more than just a hint of desire in the act. She was almost six months pregnant, and quite frankly, she had never looked sexier to me.
“Come and sit,” she said, pointing to the parlor chair next to her. Afternoon tea was on the agenda today and not much else, and after the last three years, that suited me fine.
I filled my plate with my favorite smoked-salmon-and-cucumber sandwiches, plus a pastry or two at my whim. The attendant filled my teacup with Levantine Jardon, my personal favorite, then added two sugars and a dab of milk as per usual.
I took a bite of one of the sandwiches, then swallowed before addressing my wife. “You know, I’ve been thinking. I’d still like to call him Henry,” I said. Karina sighed, smiled at me, then took a sip of her tea.
“I thought we’d already had this discussion,” she said. “Prince Henrik Nathan Cochrane has a very nice ring to it. You don’t call a future heir to princely lands and estates on two worlds ‘Henry.’ At least not in public.”
I sipped from my teacup before responding. “It would make him more appealing to the masses, give him a more ‘everyman’ kind of persona, I think,” I said. She smiled back, humoring me.
“The name Henrik has very strong significance on Carinthia, you know that,” she replied.
“Even carrying the last name of Cochrane? Even knowing that Benn’s future children will be the actual heirs to the Carinthian dukedom?” Now her smile twisted just a bit.
“First of all, Benn and Janaan are only engaged, and they may have trouble conceiving once they get married—you never know. The codex still demands natural birth to maintain the chain of inheritance, and they do come from very disparate genetic lines. Henrik may have to carry the mantle of the Feilberg house for quite a while,” she said. “He could even be the eventual heir to a united Cochrane-Feilberg house.”
“I think those are far-fetched assumptions. I see no reason at all why Janaan should have any trouble conceiving. She’s a normal, healthy young woman,” I said. Now my wife’s eyes narrowed as she peered at me.
Uh-oh.
“And you would know this about the princess how, exactly?” I quickly stuffed another sandwich into my mouth before continuing.
“Well, from my experiences with her—”
“Which were what, exactly, husband?” I could feel my cheeks flushing at her insinuation. It was my own fault. I took another sip of tea and said nothing in response.
“You don’t have to answer. I know of her propensity to excite Lightship captains of both sexes. Hopefully poor Benn will be able to keep up with her,” she finished.
“And what if Benn wants to name his first son Henrik?” I asked.
“Then he can do that. And we will revert to calling our son Henry,” she said.
I nodded. “That’s a very nice compromise. Now, about a daughter’s name—”
“Bertrude Eden after both our mothers will do,” she said quickly, “and you may call her Bertie in public, as it can be a proper name for a princess.”
“Well, then, that’s settled,” I said, turning my concentration to finishing my tea.
After some more small talk about less pressing things, I suggested a walk in my mother’s autumn gardens. The day was sunny and warm enough, and the hydrangeas had turned a beautiful burgundy.
“If you’ll give me just a few more minutes to rest, it would be lovely to join you,” Karina said.
“Granted, madam,” I replied just as a knock on the door interrupted us.
“Come in,” I called. The North Palace Chief of Staff, Perkins, came through the door.
“My apologies for interrupting, Your Graces, but it seems Historian Serosian has requested the duke’s presence in the Map Room,” Perkins said.
“The Map Room?” I responded. “Whatever for? Isn’t he engaged in some binge-reading of Old Earth classics or something?” After the events on Corant and my mentor’s personal loyalty to me, I had offered him a home here at the North Palace from which to conduct his business, such as it was. With the disintegration of the Historian Order after the battle at the old Imperial capitol, there wasn’t much to keep track of. Fewer than a million souls on Old Earth had stayed loyal to him.
“He merely stated that your presence was requested, Sire,” said Perkins. I looked to Karina, who gave me a positive nod. I turned back to Perkins.
“Tell him I’ll be right up,” I said, then turned to Karina as Perkins departed. “I probably won’t be long.”
She nodded. “I’ll meet you for our garden walk in half an hour,” she said. I smiled and got up to kiss her again. As I pulled back, she blushed.
“Someday we are going to have to discuss your personal fetish for women in a state of pregnancy,” she said.
“Oh, it’s not ‘women,’” I said. “It’s just you.”
She pointed to the parlor door. “Out,” she said. I smiled and went happily on my way. Marriage and peacetime were both suiting me well.
I knocked on the open door to the Map Room. Serosian was engaged in a three-dimensional projection of distant star systems, no doubt using the Historian’s ansible and probe network to feed him the data. A mass of stars was in slow rotation over the projector table.
“Peter, thank you for coming. Please join me and shut the door behind you,” Serosian said. I thought
it was an odd request, but I did so and then walked into the room, noting the changes the former Historian had made. Gone was the large dining table where I had announced my marriage to Karina and where I had received my captain’s stars for temporary command of Starbound before the Battle of Pendax. It seemed an eternity ago. In its place were comfortable-looking leather club chairs and small tables, all stacked with books, journals, plasma screens, and God knows what else. And bookcases. There were many new bookcases.
I approached the projector table. Serosian said nothing to me as I came up, seemingly enchanted by the views before him. I didn’t recognize any of the star systems, and none were identified on the projection.
“What are we looking at here?” I asked.
“A view sent back by a longwave probe about fourteen thousand light-years from here,” he replied.
“Fourteen thousand light-years? That’s way beyond our probe and ansible system.”
He nodded. “That’s why the probe took seven months in traverse space to get there,” Serosian said. With that he zoomed in on a section of unknown space multiple times. He switched to an infrared view until finally the screen filled up with what looked like a mass of red dwarf stars.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Those are the twenty thousand ships of the Historian fleet that left Earth a year ago,” he replied. I looked at the dots again.
“But aren’t they in traverse space, traveling faster than light in another dimension?” He shook his head.
“These ships are traveling faster than light, but they are in normal space,” he said.