I didn’t want to interrupt your dialogue with Kavya.
“Long enough to know you’v e lost you r mind, and Kavya plans to have her fathe r butcher my family.”
“He won’t know whom to attack.” Kavya put on an air of certitude, one brittle as spring ice. “The Wuxia’s anonymity will protect them.”
“ You know that isn’t true.” Czarina spoke in a soft voice, the tone of an older sister, chiding but patient. “What happens when you blind an angry shcheritsa? It lashes out at anything that moves. If you inform on us, your people will slaughter mine in job lots. Luxing with grudges will inform on one another for revenge. Innocent people who have never heard of the Wuxia will die in the streets. You’re proposing a genocide the likes of which we haven’t seen since humans first arrived on this planet.”
Kavya shook her head in defiance. “That would never happen.”
“Why? Because you wouldn’t let it?” Czarina shook her head, her expression mournful. “In all the years I’ve known you, that’s been your greatest weakness: overestimating your own power. Don’t misunderstand, it’s an endearing trait—believing in yourself to a fault—but it grows tired, Kavya. You think your words sufficient to stay your father’s hand, but when has that ever worked for you?”
Kavya wiped tears from her eyes, her teeth bared. For a moment, it looked as though she might rage at Czarina, but she instead deflated, her shoulders drooping, her gaze cast to the floor. “Never.”
Symeon yearned to gather Kavya in his arms the way he had back at Gomarov Castle, but those days lay behind them now. He settled for placing a hand on her shoulder. “I fear she’s right. The Shorvex haven’t dealt lightly with previous Luxing rebellions. If they catch even a whiff of how deep the Wuxia infiltration goes, it will drive them mad. Your father and his enemies would put their differences aside in a second to root out that sort of conspiracy.”
“And the blame would fall on me,” Kavya said.
“It wouldn’t be you committing the atrocities,” Symeon said, though he knew his words carried little consolation.
“You shouldn’t beat yourself up so much over a hypothetical,” Czarina said. “It’s not like you could ever reach your father to speak with him anyway.”
“Why is that?” Kavya sounded fearful of the answer.
“Ivan rab Rurikid would never let you get near the grand duke. He’d return you to my father. ”
* * * * *
Chapter 28
“Ivan is Wuxia?” Symeon scarcely heard his own question for the racing of his heart. Even Yudi sent a tendril of shock through their connection.
“Of course.” Czarina shrugged as if what she said was a matter of course.
“But Fang told us otherwise.” Kavya turned her gaze on Symeon. “I don’t believe her. She’s lying to get her way.”
Czarina laughed. “Can the two of you get more naive? The Wuxia, and my family in particular, have been manipulating the Shorvex into acting as they desire for over half a millennium. Do you think all that fell away the moment you met my father? He told you what he needed to motivate you.”
“Why lie about Ivan?” Kavya asked, her brows gathered in anger. “Both of us suspected him from the start.”
Czarina shrugged. “I can’t know my father’s mind—you might have noticed he’s the devious sort—but I suppose he worried Ivan’s involvement might cause one or both of you to balk at joining us. You’ve known him your entire life, Kavya. He’s like an uncle to you. And I don’t doubt Symeon’s looked up to him as the epitome of a loyal seneschal since he could walk. Treachery out of such an icon might have bolstered your natural resistance to our way of thinking.”
A quiet alarm sounded from the shuttle’s control panel.
“What is it?” Symeon asked, thankful for something to draw his thoughts away from his disappointment and frustration.
“Upcoming course correction,” Kavya said. “I programmed the ship to change trajectory at the last possible second to bypass Dyeus and head at top speed for Bastrayavich. That was the two minute warning; we’re about to maneuver.”
“You can still return to Gomarov Castle,” Czarina said. “Go back, tell my father you’ve reconsidered; show him you’re contrite, you’re willing to aid the Wuxia, and he’ll welcome you back.”
“Why would we do that?” Symeon turned to Kavya. “I think we’ve been manipulated enough. At this point, I don’t know if the decisions I make are my own or the result of a lifetime’s worth of brainwashing.”
Kavya gazed at the star field, her silvery blue skin awash in light from the shuttle consoles. “We can’t escape our fathers, can we Czarina? They have a hand in every choice we make. Our entire lives revolve around them and the influence they wield over us.” She turned to look at her former handmaid. “If only mine would see reason. If only yours would hear caution. What sort of peace might we bring to the Phoenix System?”
“There can’t be peace,” Czarina said. “Not while the Shorvex enslave the Luxing. And anyway, it’s not like Grand Duke Alexei would, or even could, quit his claim to the throne. He’s executed the rightful heir, just as the Wuxia decreed he should since before his birth. His enemies can’t let that stand.”
“If I could have shown him the forces swaying his judgment, he never would have taken these drastic measures.”
“You couldn’t have stopped him.” Czarina shook her head, a look of pity in her eyes. She stared at Kavya for a moment, as if contemplating something she might say.
“What is it?” Kavya asked.
“I only tell you this in order to show the futility of running from the Wuxia. Our plans run deep, our influence wide. Kavya, it was Emperor Stepan Mastronov who had your mother executed.”
Kavya folded her arms. “My mother died in a shuttle accident.”
“Your mother died by the emperor’s order. He felt your father was growing too powerful and popular, so he arranged the shuttle malfunction that killed your mother. Afterward, he made certain your father discovered the truth and sent a direct warning that the same would happen to you should your father continue to build wealth enough to threaten the throne.”
“And the Wuxia made that happen?” Symeon asked.
“More than that,” Czarina said. “We bred enmity between your father and his brothers from their earliest days—a bitter rivalry that grew into hatred.”
“Vynor, Nikolai, and Sumarev were jealous of father,” Kavya said in a small voice. “He was the youngest of the brothers, but my grandfather favored him. He made father his heir while my uncles settled for minor titles in the duchy.”
“Just as the Wuxia ordered,” Czarina said. “It was they who soured the emperor toward Alexei. How could he doubt your father’s possible treachery when all three of his brothers accused him of amassing power for a coup.”
“But there was no coup,” Symeon whispered. “Not then.”
“It became a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Czarina said. “Rumors of the coup sparked the emperor to move against Alexei, but he couldn’t do so openly, not without angering your father’s allies.”
“The same allies who are backing him now,” Kavya said.
“Exactly.” Czarina dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “Don’t you see, Princess? You can’t go to your father. He will never stop the coup. He can’t. And you can’t run elsewhere or you’ll be captured by my kind. We are in control. You’re only option is to return to Phoenix and make amends with Fang. I’ll speak for you. We’ll make this right.”
Kavya met Symeon’s gaze, her own growing hard as steel. She shook her head. “No, that isn’t our only option. There’s the Bith gate.”
“You’re not serious.” Czarina sounded incredulous. “You don’t even know if it’s functional.”
Symeon felt an unexpected grin crease his lips. He wasn’t certain how he felt about traveling to an unknown star system, but he relished the idea of defying Czarina. “True, but we know how to find out.”
Kavya tap
ped the shuttle’s holographic controls and the engines, which had been quiet for some time, roared to life. Though Phoenix’s largest moon, Dyeus, had been growing closer in the forward display, it now slewed sideways out of view as the shuttle changed trajectory.
“Even if it is functional, how will you pay to use it?” Czarina demanded, her voice rising with her argument. “The Bith might not have told the emperor much about their gates, but they made one thing clear, they don’t run them for free.”
“I think I’ve got an idea about that,” Symeon said.
Kavya nodded as she increased speed and laid in a course for the outer reaches of the Phoenix system. “A good one?”
“Let’s hope so.”
* * *
It took four days to reach the Bith gate. They might have reached it in two, but Kavya had taken the shuttle in a long arc to avoid the battle zones near Bastrayavich. One of her father’s ships, a small tactical cruiser likely performing a scouting mission at the farthest reaches of newly won territory, had hailed them the second day, but Kavya had ignored the message, and the ship hadn’t pursued.
Symeon, Kavya, and a none-too-thrilled Czarina had fallen into a workable life pattern. He and Kavya took opposite watches while the other slept to keep an eye on their captive. Though they relented on trussing Czarina hand and foot for the entire trip, Symeon ensured she remained tied either by wrist or ankle to her seat at all times, thereby thwarting any ideas she might have harbored about overpowering them and taking the shuttle. Symeon didn’t know if Czarina knew how to pilot, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Czarina spent the first two days arguing against traversing the gate, and begging for release. Without any means to do so, Symeon and Kavya were forced to deny her requests.
“Unless the Bith have some way to shuttle you home, you’re going with us. That’s the end of it,” Kavya had said the night before after a particularly harsh exchange with Czarina. “Now, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to sedate you for the rest of the trip.”
Based on Kavya’s expression, she meant it too. Czarina subsided, though she sat fuming and staring lasers at her captors.
“You know,” Symeon whispered so that only Kavya could hear. “Technically, we could lock her inside the suit, switch on the beacon, and leave her in space for someone to find.”
Kavya shook her head. “Too dangerous. What if no one got the message? Or, what if they got it, but with the war going on, they came too late and her air and water ran out? I may not like Czarina, but that doesn’t mean I want her dead. She’ll have to take her chances with whatever we find on the other side of the gate, just like you and me.”
Symeon nodded. “What do you think is over there?”
“Freedom from the Wuxia and my father. Beyond that, who knows? But there must be civilization, otherwise why would the Bith build the gate at all?”
“Yudi says humanity spread out to many planets after leaving Earth. Perhaps we’ll meet other humans.”
“Assuming the Bith let us pass.”
The Bith gate, magnified by the shuttle’s holo display, had been growing larger for the last four hours. It looked like what Symeon expected, in that it favored every science fiction space gate Symeon had ever seen in holo vids, games, or novels: a massive, ring-shaped superstructure, its outer surface brightened by what must have been hundreds of thousands of lights. At a distance, it appeared smooth. Closer on, its surface became a cavernous landscape outlined by various levels of structures which looked to Symeon like skyscrapers on a scale he had never before imagined. To his mind, the gate’s size alone bordered on the impossible. Three battle cruisers abreast could have passed through its ring with room to spare.
Shorvexan scientists had teased the idea of creating such gates by bending space-time for the whole of human history in the Phoenix system and likely long before that.
Long, long before that , Yudi said.
But, much like sentient, human-created artificial intelligence, such fantastical machines had never come about. They remained, at least for Phoenix science, fanciful ideas not worth the time spent daydreaming about them.
“Is it me, or does it look like there are living spaces all around the outside?” Kavya asked.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Symeon said. “And did you notice, the Bith’s ships are missing? The one’s they used to travel here and build the gate?”
Kavya’s eyes went round. “Meaning it’s functional.”
Symeon nodded.
“I’m hailing them.” Kavya tapped a holo control. “Bith builders, my name is Kavya Rurikid. I am aboard the shuttle approaching your gate. I would like to arrange passage through it. Will you respond?”
Nothing happened.
“Should I hail them again?” Kavya asked.
“What if they take that as an insult, like we’re being impatient with them? Maybe wait a bit.”
Kavya shrugged her shoulders and they settled in to wait. At this distance, a little over fourteen thousand kilometers, communication was instantaneous, but the comm remained silent for several seconds before a voice spoke.
“Kavya Rurikid, stop your approach,” said a deep, bass voice.
Kavya reversed engines until the shuttle came to a gentle stop, its nose pointed toward the gate less than a thousand kilometers away.
“Your system has no galactic banking infrastructure,” said the voice. “How do you propose to pay for gate passage when you clearly possess no credit?”
“To whom am I speaking?” Kavya asked.
“You may call me Gatekeeper.”
Kavya raised her eyebrows at Symeon who nodded.
“We offer you this shuttle in exchange for passage through your gate and transport to the nearest habitable—and peaceful—planet.”
“No.”
“It’s a new shuttle, Gatekeeper,” Kavya said. “It has millions of light years ahead of it.”
Without warning, a green-skinned, bald alien’s head appeared on the holo display. Symeon remembered it from the videos Kavya had released of Emperor Pyotr Mastronov ’s negotiation with the aliens. Whether this was the same Bith or some new one, he couldn’t tell. Either way, the thing still favored a turtle in Symeon’s estimation.
“What would I need with a shuttle crafted for humans?”
“Aren’t there humans on the other side of the gate?” Symeon asked. “Perhaps you could sell it to one of them.”
“Too much work; not enough profit.”
“We have some weapons.” Kavya brandished the sidearm she had taken back at Gomarov Castle.
“And battle armor,” Symeon said, turning to point at it.
Gatekeeper squinted his black eyes, and his slit of a mouth creased with wrinkles in some approximation of a smile. “You are warriors?”
“No,” Symeon said.
“Yes, we are,” Kavya said at the same instant. “We’ve been in many battles.”
Symeon shot her a questioning look. He wanted to contradict her but didn’t. He hadn’t been her seneschal for some time, but he had been a slave his entire life. That sort of conditioning didn’t wither overnight.
“Standby.” Gatekeeper’s face winked out of existence.
Kavya touched a holographic control to mute their end of the conversation and twisted in her seat to face Symeon. “You almost ruined our chance at going through.”
“By telling the truth?” Symeon lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Doesn’t it concern you that this Gatekeeper only showed interest in us when you said we could fight?”
“Symeon, don’t be a fool. You can’t enter a negotiation if you’ve got nothing the other side wants. Clearly, Gatekeeper is interested in warriors. If that’s what he wants, then that’s what we are. After that, it’s all trading honey for vinegar.”
“We aren’t warriors.”
“Aren’t we though?” Kavya gestured around the shuttle. “How did we get here otherwise?”
“She has a point there,” Yudi said.
/>
“I’ll grant we fought our way free of the Wuxia,” said Symeon. “But half that debacle was luck and the rest was Yudi. Without him, the only person on this tub with any real fighting skill is Czarina.”
“And I want nothing to do with this entire affair.” Czarina slapped an armrest to gain their attention. She pointed with her free hand, her teeth bared. “You two have gone insane. You risked our lives coming here, and now Kavya wants to bargain them for passage through a gate to God knows where.”
“It’s not the where that frightens me,” Symeon said. “It’s the who. This alien wouldn’t ask if we’re fighters without reason. What sort of people ask that question? Militias? Pirates? Slavers? I don’t know about you, but none of those sound appealing to me. What’s the use of escaping slavery only to dive back into it head first?”
“Which is worse, the possibility of enslavement or the certainty of it?” Kavya looked from Symeon to Czarina and back again. “If the Wuxia catch us, you and I resume our lives as puppets, Symeon. If my father catches us, how long before Ivan finds a way to place us back in their web? We can’t live free in Phoenix. Not now.”
Symeon hesitated and even Czarina kept quiet, seemingly out of fresh arguments.
“I’m not proposing we fight for this Gatekeeper, or whoever he has in mind,” Kavya said, her tone earnest. “I say we cross through the gate and then explain to whomever we find on the other side that there’s been a misunderstanding. We aren’t the sort of warriors they’re looking for, but we are willing to work to earn our passage. We do what it takes to pay back what we owe. Perhaps give them the shuttle after all. It must be worth something despite what Gatekeeper says. After that, they drop us off in a friendly city on some habitable planet where no one knows us, and we go on with our lives from there—no grand dukes, no Wuxia—nothing but the future ahead of us.”
The image she painted appealed to Symeon, not least of all for its lack of fetters. In a new world, given time and a lack of outside influences, perhaps he could convince Kavya that their feelings for one another were more than the vestiges of lifelong brainwashing. And who knew? Together they might even work out a way to free the Luxing. They certainly weren’t going to do that on this side of the gate.
Salvage Mind (Salvage Race Book 1) Page 25