Out Past the Stars

by K. B. Wagers

  Mia shook her head. “I’ll speak with Aiz and see where we are. I know the virus problem was holding up some of it, but since we’ve gotten it fixed we’re probably much further along.”

  “Go talk to him.” I hated to let her go, but my plans for the evening had taken a turn that looked like it wasn’t going to involve finding a quiet corner to kiss her in. “We’ll regroup at dinner and start putting together a plan.”

  Mia nodded and left the room.

  “Your Majesty.” Captain Zov stepped up. “Istrevitel are still untested in battle but if we can help in any fashion, including a show of force at Faria, we are here for you.”

  “I have a feeling the Tsia may protest that, Captain. Though I would accept, and gladly, if I could.”

  Dirah smiled slowly. “I suspect that Tsia Brov may be persuaded to delay their reports until we are back.”

  “Well.” I smiled back. “I may accept your kind offer to act as observers as we investigate whatever the crisis is that has befallen our Farian allies.”

  “Let me go see what I can do,” Dirah replied, and headed for the door.

  I surveyed Hao and my BodyGuards, the only people left in the room, and closed my eyes briefly at the flicker in the corner closest to me. “We will need to get the others. Alba and Admiral Hassan. Emmory, send out a notice that we’ll be having a meeting in that conference room off Captain Zov’s office at twenty-three hundred hours.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “What are you thinking, ma’am?” Gita asked, and I leaned against a table, pressing my fingers to my mouth.

  “I don’t know,” I said, dropping my hand and meeting her brown gaze. “If we do this right we could coordinate a rescue of Fasé and Stasia, our Marines, maybe a few ships with Fasé’s people if we’re using the Shen and Istrevitel as decoys. Go back to Pashati and regroup?”

  It meant leaving Sybil, Yadira, and Delphine and millions of other Farians at the mercy of Thyra’s and Adora’s madness.

  It meant an end to Indrana’s alliance with Faria and a war we couldn’t possibly win.

  It also meant giving up any hope the human-born Shen had of figuring out why their souls didn’t come back.

  Fasé’s voice whispered in my ear, a memory of a conversation on Encubier when I’d seen firsthand a prophet speaking words pulled from the stars themselves.

  “You will have to make a choice, Star of Indrana. I can’t tell you exactly what the choice is, only that it will not be what you think. You cannot let this paralyze you with fear of making the wrong choice, because there is no wrong choice. People will die, that is the way of things. You hold the fate of the galaxy in the balance. Do not disrupt it.”

  Somehow I knew that this was the choice. Still one of many, but if we were talking about balance and the fate of the galaxy, the last thing I could do was leave Faria in the hands of Adora and her so-called gods.

  “You all understand why we can’t do that? Why I can’t in good conscience run from this? Why I need to see it through to the end?”

  “We do,” Emmory said, and Hao nodded.

  “I know I speak for everyone in this room, Your Majesty, when I say if you choose to march into Naraka, we will follow you.”

  “Shiva, let’s hope we don’t have to.” My laugh felt brittle in my mouth and the flickering in the corner of my eye seemed to solidify for just a moment before it vanished entirely.

  “All right. Iza, you and Indula are on the door. Gita, you and Kisah go get me an up-to-date report on ships. I want everything focused on a potential assault of Faria, even if we don’t end up having to do it.”

  “I’m going to go talk with Ragini and see how fast we can get Johar the antivirus,” Zin said before Emmory could open his mouth again. “That’s what you were going to say, hridayam, yes?”

  “Get out of here,” Emmory replied, but he was smiling when he tipped his head toward the door.

  I took a deep breath as the others left and then another, struggling to get air into my lungs past the panic that seemed to be filling them instead.

  Hao joined me, a hand resting on my back. “Look at me,” he said, and I lifted my head. “What?”

  “Everything seems so important,” I whispered. “Like I make one wrong move, one bad choice and it will all come crashing down.”

  “Hail.” Emmory didn’t say anything more when Hao raised his hand.

  My brother smiled. “Sha zhu, hasn’t it always been this way? Our choices change our lives, sometimes forever. They change the lives of those around us, those depending on us.” He reached out and cupped my chin with a hand. “You have always known what choice to make; don’t let all this”—he waved his free hand in the air—“distract you.”

  I couldn’t stop the laugh even though it sounded so brittle to my ears. “Don’t forget I’ve been seeing things. Am still seeing things.” I pointed at the empty corner without looking. “You make losing my mind sound like nothing more than an inconvenience.”

  Emmory pulled his gun free at the same time Hao did, and I froze with my hands in the air. The sound of their guns powering up was loud in the sudden silence. Part of me was screaming to grab for my own weapons, but a more rational part kept my hands right where they were.

  “You’re not losing your mind, Hail,” Hao replied, his voice strained.

  I turned, my breath catching in my lungs when I saw the pair of Hiervet standing in the corner of the room. “You can see them?” I whispered.

  Emmory and Hao closing ranks in front of me before I finished the sentence was all the answer I needed. Hao reached back and I grabbed his hand like a lifeline.

  “We do not mean you harm.” The Hiervet on the right was speaking in what sounded like a mashup of modern Indranan and the Old Tongue, the accent like nothing I’d ever heard before, and both Hiervet did an impressive replication of a very old greeting I only knew from a few ancient palace rituals of my youth.

  They finished by pressing the tips of their limbs to their chests, then their mouths, and then to their foreheads as they bowed in unison. The final gesture was much more familiar, but I didn’t echo it.

  As they came up I saw the confusion pass over their faces when Hao and Emmory did not return the gesture. “Are you not Indranan? Have we miscalculated?”

  “What are they saying?” Hao whispered in Cheng. “It sounds like Indranan, but not.”

  “It’s the Old Tongue,” Emmory murmured back. “Sort of; you’re picking up some of the Indranan that’s come from it.”

  “You got a translation for that you can give me?”

  “No, the Old Tongue isn’t allowed to be in the database,” I murmured. “Emmory can translate for you, now hush.

  “We are Indranan.” I let go of Hao’s hand and slipped between the two men to face our visitors. “That is an ancient greeting, though, and your language is not what we are used to. Where did you learn it?”

  “It has been a very long time since we looked in on your people. What would be appropriate as a greeting now?”

  Emmory cleared his throat before I could step forward with my hand outstretched.

  “I’ll have to show you a little later. My Ekam objects to the idea of me touching you right now.” Instead I mimicked the gesture they’d made. “I have seen you watching us, haven’t I? Out of the corner of my eye?”

  “Yes. You seem to have a talent for it, it is fascinating.” I could have sworn that was a smile on the Hiervet’s face. “We have not met many who can see past our defenses.”

  “Lucky me,” I muttered. “Emmory, we’re not going to have a bunch of armed BodyGuards burst through that door, are we?”

  “No, Majesty,” he murmured in reply. “I told them to stand down for the moment. But they are outside.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  The Hiervet shared a glance, and then the taller one spoke. “After the incident with our ship it seemed the safest course of action to watch until we could figure out who was in command.�
��

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “We know it was not your fault.” The Hiervet tipped their head to the side and studied me. “This one calls you Majesty, which is a title we recognize. Others call you Star of Indrana; it also seems formal though we don’t know it. Your name is Hail? Though that one calls you—”

  “Yes, we know what he calls me.” I cut off the Hiervet with a smile. I heard Hao choke on his laughter as Emmory continued murmuring a translation.

  “May we ask who you are?”

  The unexpected question hung in the air for several breaths before I laughed. “Oh, thank Shiva, that’s refreshing. Someone who doesn’t know me.” I cleared my throat at their confused looks. “My apologies. I am Empress Hailimi Bristol of the Indranan Empire.”

  “You are a long way from home, Empress Hailimi.”

  I smiled. “Oh, you have no idea.”

  “You are in charge of all this? Of the Istrevitel?”

  “Am I—” I shook my head in denial even as the reality of it sank into my bones. We had just been talking about forming a fleet to deal with the Hiervet, to stop Thyra and Adora, and to liberate Faria. A fleet that would undoubtedly answer to me. “Yes, I’m in charge.”

  “Good. We would like to surrender with you.”

  “You would—I’m sorry, what?” It was as much the archaic form of the word as the implications that stunned me.

  “I thought they didn’t know who you were,” Hao muttered.

  “We have been trying to hunt criminals, Empress Hailimi, but it does not appear to be something we can do on our own any longer. We blundered into a battle once already and it cost us in equipment. We would like to not make the same mistake twice.”

  “We are not at war, are we?” I replied carefully. “What reason would you have to surrender to me?”

  “It is not about war. It is about the safety of our people. You are in charge; it makes the most sense to surrender with you.”

  There was something wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was. “Look, I—do you have names?” I tapped the skin of my cheek under my left eye. “The others have similar designs under their eyes, but they took Farian names.”

  “The criminals?” The Hiervet shared a look and then the shorter of the pair with a trio of dots and a half a circle in bright blue on their cheek extended a limb. “You have met the criminals.”

  “We did. We killed one of them. He lived with the Farians and called himself Priam. He had a solid horizontal rectangle on his face bisected vertically by four dots.” I don’t know why I felt the need to mention that, but my comment had all the effect of dropping a silencer nuke into the middle of the room.

  For a moment at least. The Hiervet broke into a conversation in what I could only assume was their language, though it sounded different from what I’d heard from Thyra and Adaran.

  Then the pair bowed low.

  “I am Biea and this is Tolm.” The taller Hiervet had a series of gold marks under their left cheek consisting of a single line with dots on opposite sides and two Vs pointing at each other. “We thank you, Empress Hailimi, for this good news and for your actions. It makes even more sense to surrender with you.”

  “Why do you want to surr—oh, wait.” Realization dawned on me. My brain had been recognizing a word as surrender because the Hiervet were lacking the proper ending that would turn it into something more like—working together.

  “Sorry.” I folded my hands together and shook them in apology. “Two things. I didn’t kill Priam.” I pointed over my shoulder at Emmory. “He did it. And I don’t think you truly mean your entire race wants to surrender to me.”

  The Hiervet tilted their heads to the side in obvious confusion. “He follows your orders?”

  “I suppose so,” I admitted, trying not to laugh.

  “I will kick you, Majesty,” Emmory subvocalized over our private com, and the warning only made me want to laugh all the more.

  “Emmory killed Priam because the Farian Hiervet was trying to kill me. Emmory is my BodyGuard.”

  “Ah. We do not understand your term for the criminals, but you still have our thanks. That means there are only two more to deal with.” The Hiervet paused. “You used a word much like the one we used, but not?”

  “Surrender? It means you submit to my authority. That I have won a victory over you.”

  “This is not the word we want.”

  I smiled. “I figured. What you want to say is you would like for us to work together, and I would very much like that. May I bring a few others into this conversation and maybe pass along an updated version of Indranan to you?”

  I was reasonably sure Hao was going to tell people the story about the time an entire fleet surrendered to me until the day he died.

  36

  I realized shortly after the appearance of Biea and Tolm that we’d been calling the Hiervet by the Svatir’s name for them this whole time. A name that was not at all appropriate, and so a last-minute scramble had happened to figure out what the Selan actually called themselves.

  Thankfully, they didn’t take offense to the question.

  “Is the lack of Istrevitel because of us?” Biea asked, looking around the small room we’d gathered in. Captain Zov was there, as were Aiz and Mia. Admiral Hassan stood against the far wall talking with Gita.

  Dirah dipped her head. “I thought it for the best. We have only just learned the truth of what happened between you and our Svatir brethren; it is raw for some and I did not want another incident.”

  “Another?”

  The smile on Dirah’s face was heavy with pain. “I was the one who shot at your people when you tried to contact us the first time. Whatever consequence there is for the destruction of your ship, I will face it. The empress ordered us not to fire and I ignored her.”

  I sucked in a breath. We hadn’t discussed how to handle this, and I was regretting that now. Dirah’s intentions were noble, but I needed her alive and functioning as the head of the Istrevitel for the coming fight.

  I also knew I might need the Selan to help me fight this army of Thyra’s.

  “Ah.” Biea tilted their head to the side. “You are the one responsible?” They gestured at me. “This is the one who you mentioned.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Biea held up a limb. “The ship was empty of crew, Your Majesty, Captain.” They nodded to each of us in turn. “It was an older vessel we piloted remotely, though the loss of the parts we could have scavenged from it does hurt us some. We can discuss reparations at a time more suited to such things.”

  “Of course,” I replied, because Captain Zov was just staring with her mouth open at the Selan. “Thank you.”

  “Your Majesty, if Tolm and I could confer a moment before we start the proceedings?”

  “Of course.” I hooked a hand under Dirah’s elbow and led her away. “Take a breath, Captain.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone?”

  “Apparently not. You got lucky. It happens occasionally.” I hoped my smile softened the words. “Remember how that felt, Captain, and don’t ever be so hasty with people’s lives again. The lives of your enemies matter; the lives of your people matter more, understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She nodded to me and then to Emmory, and I let her cross to the opposite side of the room with her arms wrapped around her waist.

  “I like her,” I said, blowing out a breath of my own. “We dodged a Shiva-damned rail shot there, Emmory.”

  He hummed in agreement. “The timing on this worked out well,” he replied. “A week earlier and she’d be trying to kill them both.”

  “Things are going smoothly,” I said to Gita and Inana as we joined them.

  “Makes you nervous, doesn’t it?” Admiral Hassan said.

  I slid her a sideways look. “Doesn’t matter how smooth any of this is, we’re looking at a pitched battle both in the space above Faria and on the ground. Unknown odds. We’ve got three forces who’ve never
worked together to take on a unified force of unknown ability. I don’t know about you, but those odds make me nervous.” I pointed a finger at the Selan as I leaned against the wall between the two women. “Besides, whatever Thyra and the others told us, not all the Selan are fighters.”

  “You noticed that, too, huh?” Gita asked.

  I shifted, my shoulder touching hers; the warmth and solidity was comforting and eased some of the tension in my neck.

  “Thyra said they were created to be soldiers, not just any soldiers either but the elite. The Svatir told us they had to fight for their lives against the Selan. For a race that was well versed in the art of war to lose to such a force? It may have not ended the way we thought, but that part wasn’t a lie.

  “Aiz trained me for a fight against an opponent who was far above my level.” I pursed my lips and shook my head. “Priam was fucking good. I wasn’t remotely ready for him. Thyra and Adaran will be the same, I suspect. Those Selan? Biea might give me a fight, but I would probably win, and Tolm’s not a fighter at all.”

  “Is it an act?” Gita asked, rubbing at her cheek.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I have been watching them and if it’s an act, they’ve been keeping it up without it slipping in the slightest.”

  “Maybe they’ve been taught how to hide it,” Gita suggested, though her frown indicated she didn’t really believe it.

  “Something always shows,” Inana replied.

  “Maybe they are,” I said. “But what would be the point? No one wants to hear it but if they wanted any of us dead, that would have happened long before I spotted that first flicker.” I smiled at Gita’s grumble. “You know I’m right. They’re only here for Thyra and Adaran, and thank Shiva for it. If even half of what we heard about them is correct, that was a fight that I didn’t want.”

  “The prophecy, all those visions?”

  “Fasé told me that all the visions are filtered through our perception, our fears,” I replied. “What if everything from the start of it was—”