by K. Eason
“I thought you had renounced your title, Princess.”
So had I. Rory lifted her chin. “As you observed, Sub-Commander, one cannot renounce one’s lineage. I am a princess, and princesses can negotiate with authority.” Strictly true, if not in this particular instance, as the Confederation recognized no royalty.
Koto-rek stared, and Rory braced for an invasion of arithmancy. None was forthcoming (or Koto-rek was skilled enough that, unlike Zaraer, she did not rip holes in her target). “Wait,” said Koto-rek, as if Rory had a choice. Then she called Zaraer’s name, and went to make Rory’s case to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Grytt did not like the small conference room into which she and the rest of Vagabond’s crew had been banished. No room on the bridge, bah. There’d been room before. Well. All right. Maybe not for Thorsdottir and Jaed and Zhang, but that Battlechief Crow fellow was out there with Rupert.
It was a matter of propriety, Adept Kesk had assured her. The vakari were touchy about—and here Kesk had fluttered her fingers at Grytt’s face and arm and tied her lips up into an apologetic moue.
“So they don’t like cyborgs,” Grytt said. “They don’t have to like me.”
“It’s fine,” Rupert had said, and given her one of those looks which meant please. And because he was the only one likely to use the word, even in gesture, and because he was Rupert, she’d been dumped back here, with the—not kids, could not call them that now, nor her subordinates, nor—eh. Call them Rory’s crew. That’s what they were.
Still. It was a luxurious banishment. A fancy holo-projector mounted on an oblong table (made of real wood, a show of the Harek Empire’s conspicuous wealth) surrounded by chairs (just a little too small), in which Zhang and Thorsdottir had deposited themselves already, Zhang with more success. Jaed was stitching a path along the rear bulkhead, farthest from the door. Grytt both sympathized and wished he’d sit down. There wasn’t room for her to pace, with him doing it, too.
She leaned against the bulkhead instead, careful not to scuff any of the art (was it art? it was just painted on the metal, like a mural) with any of her metal bits. A hardsuit necessarily covered everything; Grytt’s personal garments left her mecha arm bare, so that folds of cloth did not interfere with its mechanisms (and also, truthfully, she liked how it looked). The alwar as a whole seemed to find the prosthetic fascinating. Hworgesh hadn’t batted an eye. Crow had eyed the limb with speculative appreciation, which he had transferred to her skull, her eye, and eventually the rest of her.
Interesting fellow, that Crow. He got to stand out with Rupert. Battlechief must outrank Hworgesh’s Special Attaché. She suspected her own relegation had less to do with the size of the bridge and more to do with her mecha implants, and not because of what the vakari might think of them. Adept Kesk probably reckoned that Grytt could hear whatever anyone said on that bridge—which was true—and that she might just record and pass that along to Rupert—also true, because Grytt was sure he wasn’t negotiating with the vakari.
So Grytt employed her mecha optic, instead. The holographic display hanging over the central table showed the system in real-time in an identical, but much smaller, copy of the bridge display. Grytt amused herself by focusing on the very tiny readouts beside each ship, noting the dips and surges in Sissten’s outputs (surging now, out of the decidedly red and into more orangey-yellow). She also noticed the Confederation ship blip into the system, though on the minimized hologram it appeared first as a few lines of text that, of course, she could not read. She could see that this ship bore a different chromatic designation from the others, and that it was coming at high velocity from the vicinity of the gate. Not Empire. Not tenju. Another Tadeshi, maybe?
Grytt tightened the focus of her eye. The reaction among the ships already present was immediate (as much as anything is immediate, in the void). The readouts for both Bane and Favored Daughter changed, surging in all categories, as if the ships were preparing to move and shoot or be shot and then move. Only Sissten, which had only just recovered some level of basic function, made no changes. But the most marked reaction came from the dreadnought, which actually changed orientation, presenting its broadside battery toward the incoming vessel: a detail lost on everyone not in possession of a mecha optic (or in close proximity to the readouts, which at this point included only the relevant alwar bridge officers).
Thus it was that Grytt leapt (or rather, stepped carefully, but with confidence) to a conclusion about the identity of the newcomer. After a moment’s mulling she shared that conclusion with the room at large; they already knew Rupert had forged his credentials, and the likelihood of official consequences. Grytt was a little surprised Dame Maggie had actually sent a ship to retrieve Rupert, a sentiment which Thorsdottir echoed.
Zhang said nothing, which was typical; the look she traded with Jaed, and his silence, however, were not. Grytt made a note of that new rapport, and decided that sometime in the last couple of years, Jaed had matured into someone who did not speak just to hear his own voice.
So that was something positive.
Then Grytt noticed a slew of tiny orange blips rising off Sissten’s larger, purple shape and she quite forgot everything else.
“Those are hoppers,” she said. “The dreadnought’s calling the boarding parties back.”
The conference room got suddenly quiet, as if all the breathable atmosphere had been sucked away.
Thorsdottir recovered first. “Do you think they have Rory?”
“I think it’s because of that newcomer Confederation ship,” said Jaed.
Thorsdottir shot a look at Jaed that promised a follow-up comment.
“There’s no way to be sure,” said Zhang, in the tones of someone trying to head off an argument. (That, too, was new: Thorsdottir had seemed to like Jaed, when Grytt had last seen them. Now there was a great deal more friction, though without any apparent rancor. Fascinating.)
And not as fascinating as the dreadnought’s behavior. “You think they’re going to fire on the vakari.” Grytt looked at Jaed as she said it. “They don’t want to hit their own people, and that’s why they’re recalling the boarding parties.”
“Probably.” He took a breath. “I think that argues they don’t have what they were looking for, and they intend to make sure that Sissten is either there to come back to, or that no one else gets it.”
“It.” Thorsdottir sounded bitter. “You mean me.”
Jaed did not look at her. “Are you a genocidal rosebush of xeno-alchemical origins? Then no, I don’t mean you.”
“We can’t let them destroy that ship.” Thorsdottir’s gaze bored into Grytt. “Rory’s still on it.”
Grytt, as well as Jaed (from more practical experience), knew that Tadeshi dreadnoughts typically used mass-driven projectiles in an initial assault, with battle-hexes scribed on the stones (or metal pellets, or whatever). A defending ship’s counter-measures did not typically fare well against small, very fast-moving rocks. Even though those rocks then burned up on contact with a shield, their hexes did not, and those hexes tended to hack and neutralize local shielding so that the next round, electromagnetic bombs, could penetrate and disable the turings. That was probably how the Tadeshi had punched through the vakari shields in the first place, and it was likely what they intended for the incoming Confederation ship.
But for the vakari vessel, which was medium-large, to destroy a ship of the dreadnought’s size, well. Grytt shook her head. It was easy to punch holes in a hull and kill everyone, but the ability to render a ship unsalvageable except for scrap and destroy everything on board required serious ordnance. Plasma. Perhaps even atomic weapons, targeted on the parts most inclined to explode.
Or saboteurs left on board.
She said as much to Thorsdottir, and added: “It’s not like we can do anything from in here. Or that this ship can handle a dreadnought, even with Bane’s
help.”
“We don’t know that.” Thorsdottir pushed her chair back and splayed her hands on the table. “We don’t know what they can do. The Empire or the tenju. They might have some defenses we don’t. Or some weapons.”
But would they fire, and risk Tadeshi hostility at such close range? That hung unasked over the conference room, joining the hologram in dominating everyone’s attention.
“Give them a reason,” Jaed said, very softly. “If we give them a reason to fire on the dreadnought, they might.”
Thorsdottir understood him immediately. “I’m willing.”
Beside her, Zhang bit her lip and offered no objection.
Grytt felt a little betrayed. She had relied on Zhang for sense. “We talked about this. Rupert asked you to let him do his job. You said you would.”
“That was when we thought we just had to negotiate with vakari.” Jaed looked miserable. “If that dreadnought fires on the vakari, she’s dead, Grytt. We have to act before that happens.”
Grytt looked from face to face, Thorsdottir to Zhang to Jaed. Rory’s crew. Of course they’d say that. It was her job to deflect their enthusiasm, contain it. That was really why Rupert had wanted her back here: so that these three didn’t do anything ill-advised.
So Grytt gave them her best advice: “You stay here. I’ll talk to him.”
* * *
—
Rupert, Kesk, and Battlechief Crow never made it to the conference room door to continue their negotiations.
Captain Kahess’s voice cracked across the bridge. “Adept. Vizier. The vakari are hailing us. They’ve found the princess and they want to talk.”
“Let me see her.” Rupert realized the impropriety of demand the moment he made it. Kesk hoisted one of her eyebrows. Battlechief Crow hoisted both of his.
“Vizier,” Kesk said, feeling her way through the words. “Of course we will ask for verification of the princess’s health and well-being, but I am reluctant to include you in the negotiations.” She paused again, permitting Rupert a chance to concur, demur, or otherwise retreat from his demand.
She was correct, Rupert knew, to refuse his request. The Protectorate was no doubt aware of Never Take Our Freedom’s approach. To see the Confederation Vizier on Favored Daughter’s bridge might undo what little rapport they—Kesk, that is—had built up so far with her vakar counterpart. He must trust the alwar, or he must explain his personal interest in Rory’s well-being and undermine everything he had done so far. Or he must admit to Thorsdottir’s nanomecha passengers here, in front of an entire bridge crew.
Improbably, he was saved from making a decision by Grytt, who burst out of the conference room and fired herself at Rupert like a ’slinger bolt.
“They’re evacuating their hoppers,” she said, with regard for neither decorum nor volume nor pronoun antecedents.
Kahess and Crow (not Kesk; she kept her eyes on Rupert, and he misliked the speculative gleam in her eye) turned to Grytt, who was pointing at the holographic display. The tenju recovered first, whipping around to look where she aimed.
His expression rotted. “She’s right. The dreadnought’s withdrawing.”
Grytt ignored this unlooked for, unnecessary endorsement of her accuracy. “The Tadeshi are going to destroy that vakari ship. Fire on it, blow it up, something to make sure no one gets it.”
The adept folded her face into a strict disapproval. “That is impossible to predict.”
“No, it’s not,” said Crow. “It’s what I’d do, if I were them.”
Grytt and Kesk together fired a look of mild irritation at him.
Rupert aimed at the chrome side of Grytt’s skull, with the apparently unbroken surface in which he knew very well there were sensors inbuilt. “They could have Rory,” he said, partway under his breath. “The Tadeshi could have her already. Firing on them would kill her.”
Grytt heard. She faltered, just barely, a hitch in her gate that someone unfamiliar with her might blame on the mecha leg. Her voice lurked at the edge of audible. “And if they don’t, we can’t let them fire, because she’s still on Sissten.”
“You think the veeks are lying that they’ve got her?” Crow also pitched his voice low. Rupert shot him a startled look. The tenju sense of hearing was very good. Better than the alwar, or Kesk was more skilled at supervising her reactions to overheard speech.
“Couldn’t they be?” Rupert sought Crow’s gaze.
“They want our help, maybe they would.” Crow turned back to Kahess, and bowed from the waist. It was an oddly stiff, formal, respectful gesture. It also clearly excluded the adept from his appeal. “Captain,” he said, in a voice meant to carry. “My recommendation is that you let the Vizier have the comm to talk to the vakari. Make sure this Princess is really in custody.”
Rupert gathered breath to make his argument—he would know best if Rory was well, if she was real, if she was under duress—but Kahess seemed disinclined to argument. She nodded at Battlechief Crow, and then to Rupert. “All right. Vizier, please. With me.”
* * *
—
Rory waited through a heated and somewhat protracted argument between Zaraer and Koto-rek, involving (she gleaned, with the help of the fairy gift) the reliability of her prediction about the dreadnought and whether allowing her to speak to the alwar was wise.
Rory pretended to ignore their argument (which of course she did not) and side-eyed the bridge crew instead, who were, like her, pretending to be oblivious. She particularly watched the comms officers, one of whom seemed especially busy maintaining a constant stream of keystrokes punctuated by bursts of speech. That one must be overseeing the on-board comms, coordinating resistance or directing personnel to shelters. The other, silent, divided her attention between murmuring into her headset and more surreptitious side-eyes at Zaraer’s blustering versus Koto-rek’s quiet force.
There were, during this latest exchange between the vakari commanders, more bared teeth. Koto-rek did not recoil and withdraw this time, either. She appeared to be winning the argument, though whether by application of reason, or sheer personal will, or a convolution of Protectorate protocol, Rory could not say. At last, after five minutes of eternity (or perhaps less than that: perceived time is tricky to calculate), Koto-rek returned to Rory. She radiated satisfaction, even as her chromatophores pulsed with the reds of elevated aggression.
Rory peered around Koto-rek. “He seems angry.”
“He dislikes defeat, even in mere argument.”
“What did you say to convince him?”
Koto-rek bared her teeth. “Now you will have to trust me, Rory Thorne. Only know that I succeeded, and that you must produce a result or we’ll both regret it.”
No pressure, then. The knots in Rory’s throat, chest, and gut might become permanent. At least she had not eaten in long enough she no longer wished to throw up.
Rory crossed the deck and took up position beside the silent, unbusy comm officer, who, without acknowledging her arrival, opened a channel.
Rory had been expecting an alw, though she had no idea what that might look like. What she got instead was Messer Rupert, formally robed, features composed in the bland patience of a professional courtier. He could not see her yet, she was certain. It was a recording, a still image, no life in it. Then Rory was grateful for the hardsuit’s rigidity, and for the fail-safes that locked the suit’s knees when her own turned to water.
“You know him,” said Zaraer. It was not a question. “The Vizier of the Confederation.”
“Yes,” said Rory, and added Rupert’s promotion and return to public life to the list of things she’d missed.
“And that?” Zaraer jabbed a finger at the screen.
Rory’s face split in a smile. “That is Grytt.”
“Is it . . . a mecha?”
“She’s human with mecha prosthetics. She wa
s badly injured in—she was badly injured.”
“Sss.” Zaraer recoiled. He jabbed something at Koto-rek, the tone of which sounded less angry and more revolted. Rory thought she heard the word wichu, more than once.
“It does not matter,” said Koto-rek, finally and in GalSpek. She shouldered Zaraer aside. Her breath moved across Rory’s head, raising sweat and chill together. “Now we can all say why the Empire was asking for you, Princess Rory Thorne. There is an alliance.”
Rory wished she were that certain herself. She wished she could have five minutes with Messer Rupert and no one listening so they could get their stories straight, and while she was at it, a sandwich, a shower, and a nap. Most of all she wanted to get off Sissten alive, and that would depend on how well she and Messer Rupert could navigate the next few minutes.
“That doesn’t really matter, does it? They”—and here Rory pointed at Rupert and Grytt—“are enemies of the Tadeshi, just like the Protectorate, and if there is to be at least a temporary alliance to deal with the dreadnought, that must include the Empire, too.”
“The weapon,” Koto-rek said, very softly. “Do not forget your promise.” Then she barked something at the comm officer.
Rupert’s image flickered, then blanked, then reappeared in real-time. He had scarcely moved, his features composed in what Rory recognized as his I can outwait you expression, deployed to great effect against royal children and politicians alike.
Then he saw her, and his mask cracked—only briefly, but enough that Rory’s heart clenched in sympathy.
“Princess,” he began, falling back on, or choosing to return to, all the formality she despised.