He rolled on top of her. ‘You want to know?’ He stared at her with that familiar scowl on his scarred face.
‘Yes. You’re not a renegade.’
‘No!’ he said, hotly.
‘You’re not some castaway half-blood either, so you must be a runaway.’
He stared down at her, silently, without moving.
‘My story isn’t unusual. Not in the ultra-conservative circles I come from. My mother wanted a daughter to succeed her. Instead, she got me and nothing more.’
Kambisha had heard it before; the disappointment, the anger. She nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘There isn’t all that much to say. She couldn’t stand the sight of me and she couldn’t get rid of me. Our relationship hit rock bottom when I was twelve, and then I ran. First to Port Dvarghish; after a difficult year I signed on with a ship bound for Brisa. That place was worse, so I came to Seatome. I was fourteen and almost as big as I’m now. There were some fights,’ he touched the scar on his cheek from the inside with his tongue, making it bulge out. ‘I never lost one. Not once.’ He suddenly smiled. ‘But then, none of my opponents was the granddaughter of my queen. I was proud to find you the stronger one, ma’am.’
‘You’re a conservative yourself,’ Kambisha said with a little smile.
He nodded. ‘In those things I am old-fashioned. Well, I formed my own gang and was at a loss what to do. I wasn’t going to start robbing merchants, so I did the other thing and turned on those who did.’
‘The Dullon Gang,’ Kambisha said. ‘The matter that so pissed off the Guard.’
‘Those bandits were not the only ones, only the worst,’ he said. ‘They needed to be captured, and those fools of the Guard were too scared to do it themselves. I’ll probably run a risk going back to Seatome, but what the heck.’
‘You won’t run any risk; you are a Realmfleet Marine officer, not some ruffian of the streets.’ She looked at Ram. ‘And you still haven’t told me who you are.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I was born as Hallar of the M’Odayr. My mother is their clan lady.’
‘Odayr,’ Kambisha said. ‘That’s one of the West Coast clans. You’re almost inside the Peaks.’
That made him laugh. ‘Don’t mention it to my mother; she’s the most Kellish of Kells.’ Then he sobered again. ‘I guess the time for hiding is gone. I’m eighteen and done with her.’
‘And the succession?’
‘They would never accept a clan lord.’ Ram smiled bitterly. ‘Too bad; I will not renounce my right of succession. The queen won’t be able to name another clan lady while I live.’
‘We’ll tell her what’s going on. Don’t be surprised if grandmother simply orders them to accept you as the heir to the title. She’s quite harsh in those things; adapt or be disbanded.’
He raised his eyebrows at that. ‘Harsh indeed. I’m not sure if I want that.’
She pulled his head down and kissed his lips. ‘You can tell her.’
A buzzer sounded and a flashing light screamed for attention. Gunild wouldn’t enter her bedroom uninvited, but used this alarm instead.
Kambisha slipped from under Ram’s body and came to her feet. ‘Gunild?’
‘A call, ma’am. It’s Do-T 99, Captain Henor, who was searching for that strange signal I mentioned. I think you should hear his report, ma’am.’
Henor—he was one of the former senior midshipman from NavBase. A capable officer.
‘I’ll take the call.’ Kambisha waited, watching Ram as he began to dress. Then she caught another mind. ‘High Admiral, Captain Henor,’ she said, while she walked to the wardrobe and got her uniform.
‘Pardon for disturbing you, ma’am. We found the origin of that vague signal. It is a ship, or rather a stasis transporter, containing one person. All seems well aboard, only we think the transporter’s AI has been tampered with. I request instructions, ma’am.’
‘I’ll be with you in a few moments,’ Kambisha said, while she pulled up the coverall and zipped it closed.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Henor said, and broke contact.
‘One person in stasis inside a suspicious vessel,’ she said to Ram.
‘Today is the opening of our Firstworld HQ.’
‘I’d forgotten that.’ She smiled. ‘We must be quick then.’
She put on her boots, then picked up her belt and stared. ‘This isn’t the same one.’
Ram smiled. ‘No, and you distracted me, so I forgot to tell you. This is the one with the new shield. I tried and found I can both wield a blade and a gun in it. I didn’t fire at myself to see if I would be unhurt.’
‘You didn’t?’ Kambisha said. ‘Well...’ Then she gave Ram a quick kiss. ‘Silly! Let’s go.’
Together, they hurried to the hall.
‘Gunild, put us on board Do-T 99, will you?’ Kambisha said.
‘Your injury, ma’am?’
She moved her shoulder blades. ‘Look; healed. I am fine. And in a hurry; it will be a long day.’
Henor looked worried as she arrived, as if he wasn’t sure calling his admiral had been a wise move.
‘Good that you first reported your find, Captain,’ Kambisha said crisply, to dispel his fear. ‘That’s far better than porting some unknown danger inside our dome. Now, show me this mysterious vessel.’
‘We’ll have to ride over, ma’am,’ Henor said. ‘The ship is airless, but it has one of those short-range portals, so getting inside is easy. Its communications are... extraordinary, ma’am.’
The transporter was the size of an airship at home; just a series of eight narrow cabins, each with a coffin-like contraption that was a stasis sleeper. The vessel had no cockpit, the AI was located in the engine room, and there weren’t any windows either.
‘Strange vessel,’ Kambisha said. ‘What would they use these for?’
‘Transport of wounded,’ Henor said. ‘Or sick. Though my healer couldn’t find any trace of those, either. The ship carries no papers, as you would have expected with a patient.’ He hesitated. ‘I heard rumors these ships were sometimes used as a prison for some high-level political opponent who’s getting too dangerous. Park him in stasis in some faraway orbit for ten, twenty years, or until his party’s powers were gone. Humane and effective.’
Kambisha cocked an eye at him. ‘Humane?’
‘I don’t know. I’m constantly torn between what I was brought up with and your ways of doing things.’
‘Discuss it,’ Kambisha said. ‘Try to find out why your way and ours are different. There are always reasons. Now; the brain. Do you have the code?’
‘Yes, ma’am. She’s Tran 5, Huncha 7h.’
‘Tran 5, report,’ Kambisha said. ‘Command code Huncha 7h.’
‘I’m not here.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Kambisha said, taken aback by the childish reply.
‘I’m not. They told me I’m not,’ the transporter AI said. ‘I can’t see me, I can’t feel me; I’m not here.’
‘But you can hear me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you couldn’t hear me if you weren’t here, so you are.’
‘Maybe my ears are, but not me.’
Kambisha sighed. ‘Open your casing, will you?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Then I’ll do it for you.’
Kambisha went down on her knees and unlocked the panels of the brain’s housing. Inside was a mass of cogs and wires. She was a mana-drive techneer, and she had done one general course with Gunild to learn the bare bones of the Nithalai machines, but this looked both old-fashioned and chaotic. Colored plugs in differently colored sockets?
‘Tran 5, what’s those yellow plugs?’
‘Eyes.’
‘And the blue ones?’
‘Main sensors.’
Quickly she changed the plugs.
‘I see!’ the ship cried. ‘Who’s that big one beside me? I can’t receive her.’
‘What are your receivers, Tran?’ Then she noticed a loose green wire
and plugged it in a small green socket.
The brain bleeped. ‘Resuming full service,’ it said formally. ‘This is Tran 5; come in, Do-T 99.’
‘Huncha 7h, Tran 5,’ Kambisha said.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the AI said. ‘I am delayed, ma’am. I must resume my journey.’
‘Your orders have changed, Tran 5. You are able to teleport?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Then after we leave, you will port to Flor 3 and wait outside the dome for clearance.’
‘Yes ma’am. But my passenger is wanted at Moigar.’
‘Have you noticed the date, Tran 5? Moigar is no longer in operation. All orders come from Realmport, Flor 3 now.’
‘If Do-T 99’s data are correct, I have been delayed for a long time,’ the ship said. ‘That does not please me, ma’am.’
‘It is not your fault, Tran 5. We will leave now and you can go to Realmport. The port operator will explain the situation.’
‘That will be welcome. I will go to Realmport, ma’am.’
Kambisha returned the three of them to the frigate. ‘You can go back to base, Captain Henor,’ she said. ‘It was well you warned me. Now I must hurry; I’m expected in Seatome.’
She grabbed Ram’s arm, for a moment wishing she could hop back into bed with him. Their eyes met, and he winked. She grinned and returned to Realmport’s hall.
‘Gunild,’ Kambisha said the moment they arrived. ‘About that transporter.’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Do-T’s crew found it drifting, with one passenger in stasis. Some other agency scrambled her wires, and she drifted a long time, blindly. I don’t know what is going on with it, but I don’t trust it. I’d like you to search the ship carefully before taking it down. The same with the passenger. We need to be sure what we’ve got first.’
‘I see,’ Gunild said. ‘I’ll have a look at her logs and her memory, then search the ship. Tran 5—maybe NavBase has info on her; there were only six or so transporter vessels in service, so she should have left a trail.’
Ram touched her arm and handed her a mug of cawah.
‘Thank you!’ she said, suddenly realizing how parched she was. She smiled at him and wanted to say something more, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.
‘How come that vessel was in normal space?’ he said slowly.
Kambisha stared at him. ‘Because someone mixed up its wires?’
‘How could anyone have done that?’ Ram said. ‘When? Not before departure, or the vessel wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Not in that half-second it takes to teleport to Moigar either. So it must have been in normal space, but why was it there?’
‘A first search tells me Tran 5 has no memory of anything after the moment she was first commissioned, except for the need to bring her nameless passenger to Moigar,’ Gunild said. ‘If her memories have been wiped, it was done very skillfully, for I can’t find a trace of any meddling.’
‘Was she hit by the quake?’ Kambisha said.
‘She has no knowledge of it,’ Gunild said. ‘But there isn’t any damage. Given the ship’s general position and probable drift, had it been in normal space then, the quake would have hit her. I am inclined to think Trans 5 came out of her port after the quake had passed.’
‘That still doesn’t tell us why,’ Ram said. ‘Would it have any reason? Meeting another ship, perhaps? What ships were still active after the quake?’
‘Those who obeyed the order to return to Moigar,’ Kambisha said.
‘Or someone engaged on skullduggery,’ Ram said. ‘Could that transporter have been engaged in anything illegal?’
‘Criminal doings?’ Kambisha said. ‘Gunild, call me NavBase, will you?’
‘Present, ma’am,’ Cruishand’s heavy voice said almost immediately.
‘Good day, General,’ Kambisha said. ‘This morning we discovered a transporter vessel, Tran 5, with one passenger in stasis. What can you tell me about the ship?’
‘Tran 5 was one of three identical ships seconded to the heritor’s service,’ the general said. ‘I have no information as to what purpose; the heritor’s ships operated outside my supervision.’
‘You don’t know where they were based, either?’
‘No, ma’am. The heritor was... not communicative in these matters.’
‘Then you probably won’t know about the passenger either. Could it have been a criminal or a political enemy?’
‘I strongly doubt it. The heritor didn’t have political enemies—at least not among the Moi, and he wouldn’t soil his hands with a criminal.’
‘An associate perhaps?’ Ram said.
‘A highly placed underling?’ Cruishand harrumphed. ‘It could be, I suppose. We outside his circle had little insight in who served him.’
‘A pity. Thank you, General. Should you discover anything, let me know, will you?’ Kambisha drained her cawah. ‘Gunild will watch the stranger. We must go to the Opening; we are late already.’
‘You want me to come?’ Ram said.
‘Don’t be an idiot. Of course.’ She cocked her head at him. ‘Do your people know you’re alive and kicking?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea; I never told them. Why?’
‘It’s your birthright; you won’t let anyone else run off with it.’ She patted his cheek. ‘I’ll present you to grandmother. That’ll do the trick.’
He gripped her wrist. ‘I’m not sure I want to be lord of the Odayr.’
‘You can decide that when you must,’ Kambisha said. ‘I wouldn’t do it now.’ She grinned. ‘Wait until you’re older.’
He kissed her hand and released her. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
CHAPTER 19 – GRAND OPENING
Exactly at eleven o’clock, Kambisha saw the three hundred foot long shadow of her flagship darken whole city blocs as she came to rest over their new H.Q., and dwarfing Kyrus’ S-Az and Realmport’s tender already at HQ.
‘I hope we don’t frighten the people,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realized how huge we are.’
‘They won’t, ma’am,’ First Officer Zhivas said. ‘The Weal Gazette and the other newspapers have fed them long pages full of photographs and news about Realmport, the Realm and its peoples. They should know all about us.’ He smiled. ‘At least now I can tell my family what I’ve been up to in my new job.’
Kambisha looked at Unnaerd. She wasn’t her father, who could read another’s mental well-being with a single thought, but he seemed calm enough.
‘You find this difficult?’ she asked. ‘All those guys talking of home and family?’
The captain smiled at his first officer’s suddenly anxious face. ‘Don’t worry, for most of us Moi the Fleet is our family. When we joined, we knew we probably would never meet our kin again; we would grow apart too much. Remember what young Ythan told you at BES. Like his family, most planetary Moi are fishers and farmers, not overly well educated and content with a simple life. We of the Fleet have always been the odd ones.’
He looked at Kambisha. ‘By law, every Moi child got tested at reaching their twelfth year. It was a similar test to the one Gunild uses to assess people. For most children, nothing changed. They would finish basic education and became what the generations before them were. A small number of lucky ones made their parents proud as they were transferred to a government center to join the bureaucracy, or because like Ythan, they had some useful talent. And a still smaller percentage joined the Fleet.’ He pursed his lips, his eyes far away.
‘No familial pride there, generally our relations saw us depart for space with a sigh of relief. We always were the awkward ones; the know-it-alls, the contrarians, the dreamers. So for most of us—not all, mind you!—the mana quake didn’t change too much. It was the destruction of the Realm, the loss of so many friends and colleagues, and of our very purpose in life, that hurt the most.’
‘That makes me wonder how all those who went back must have coped,’ Kambisha said.
‘If they’d been Realmfleet, I guess
badly. The idea of having to go back and join my brothers at our family brewery...’ Unnaerd shook his head. ‘Never! I wouldn’t have gone back in a million years.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We’re in position, ma’am. Go and enjoy meeting your family. I’m not jealous.’
‘But you will come with us,’ Kambisha said. ‘You’re a senior officer; meet people, make contacts, show the flag and all that. Ready?’
As Kambisha ported them down into the large hall, there was an immense press of people outside, blocking the street on three sides, to the visible despair of the city guards.
‘All those people,’ Captain Unnaerd said, surprised and a bit nervous. ‘Is that allowed? It would have been unthinkable in Moigar. Even if the populace had so far forgotten themselves, the soldiers would have cleared the streets. The government was always afraid of mobs.’
‘We are not; the people are just curious,’ Kambisha said. ‘We have Marines out there keeping order, and I’m sure several mentalists are monitoring the crowds.’ She smiled. ‘Now you guys enjoy yourselves; I’ve got to play hostess to the collected rulers.’
With Ram at her side, Kambisha crossed the immense room. Whether it was the lightning or a trick of the mind, but the HQ’s ground floor looked much like a fairytale ballroom, with draped curtains, vases filled with a wealth of alien flowers, and the guests dressed in gala and glittering uniforms. Amid the splendor, her people in their unadorned jumpsuits appeared both deadly and elegant.
They were all there, she saw. Her grandparents Queen Maud and Jurgis, both in uniform. Her father and mother with Odysson’s parents, and Ody’s brother Ilyan who was looking far more proud of his sibling than she’d expected. Granduncle Basil and his naval husband Yarwan, with her grand-cousins Argyra, Ruth and Archmage Naudin. And of course there was Overcaptain Varan of the Chorwaynies, tall and still handsome in his sternly corseted gala uniform. Around them a host of diplomats, officers, PTC directors and other dignitaries had gathered in a glittering swarm, buzzing and whispering.
‘Come,’ she said, and half-dragged Ram to meet his Queen. ‘Grandmother, I’m happy to see you here.’
‘I couldn’t stay away, my dear.’ Queen Maud embraced her. ‘I am very proud of my two grandchildren.’
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