by Sean Danker
“Sales records at the Bazaar,” Diana told him.
“I knew it,” the Admiral murmured. Salmagard didn’t want to leave him, but Cyril’s people were surrounding the house. She had to make sure it was secure. She paused in the doorway. The Admiral looked awful, but she could see his face.
She’d seen that look before, back on Nidaros.
Salmagard made her way around the first floor of the house. Sei checked the upper floor, and Diana was keeping an eye on the situation developing outside.
“I count about two dozen,” she said, letting the curtain fall back into place. “The lights on the road probably mean more.”
“They won’t make a move,” Sei said as he returned. “Is it just you guys? Where are the GRs?”
Salmagard went to the Admiral, who was lying back on his sofa, his hand resting on his chest. He was wearing strange antique clothing, like the other people here.
“How are we getting out of here?” he asked.
She hesitated, heart heavy. “We have to call for help,” she said, showing him the code crystal. She put it back in her pouch and sat down beside him. “But we need a com system to do that.”
He took that in, and for a moment there was something like relief on his face. Then it was gone, and Salmagard wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all.
“How did you get here? If we’re moving, how did you catch up?”
“A . . .” She hesitated, trying to remember the words. “Fighter. Quite a fast one. But it can’t get us out of here. It doesn’t have the fuel, and it’s not big enough.”
He raised an eyebrow, reading between the lines. “I see,” he replied, closing his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Salmagard said, feeling sick.
“Don’t be. It’s your duty. We’re really on a ship?”
“It’s just a dome. The ship’s pulling it.”
“How big is it?”
“A little over a kilometer in diameter.”
“Sounds expensive. Where are we in relation to the edge?”
“Toward the aft.”
“Does that do us any good?”
“No, we have to get to the ship. The tug.”
“Where are your weapons?” the Admiral asked, frowning.
“They didn’t want to . . . trust us with weapons,” Salmagard told him.
“We can’t risk puncturing the shell,” Diana said. “And we can’t fire on these people—they’re victims.”
“Victims?” Sei looked away from the window. “They were going to kill us. Sacrifice us to some imaginary space octopus.”
“I think it’s a squid,” the Admiral said.
“No,” Salmagard said, looking up. “Well, yes. Perhaps they were going to do that. But you’re not the real sacrifice. You’re a distraction.”
“What?”
“For them. They are the sacrifice.”
“I don’t understand,” the Admiral said, struggling to sit up. Salmagard helped him.
“Cyril is going to throw the entire habitat into Shangri La,” Diana said. “Everyone on it is the sacrifice. They just don’t know it. They think they’re out here to do something, that they matter. But they’re just bodies, a certain number for this ritual thing.”
“Shangri La.” Sei tilted his head. “That’s a black hole.”
“Yeah. Like the painting in the church,” the Admiral said, grimacing. “Explains a lot. Are they doing anything out there?”
“No. They’ve got a nice perimeter, though. I don’t think they know what they’re up against,” Diana said, peeking out. “I don’t see any weapons.”
“I doubt they’ve got any, especially if Cyril wasn’t being straight with them,” said the Admiral. Diana was watching him with open suspicion. Salmagard bristled, but the Admiral didn’t seem to mind. “You obviously had help. I guess EI and probably IS both know I’m here?”
Salmagard swallowed. “Yes,” she said.
“Good.” He looked resigned. “I don’t have to stress about it if it’s already decided. Cyril won’t let us stay here all night. What’s the timetable for Shangri La? Is that immediate, or are we just worrying about Cyril?”
“Hard to say, but probably tight,” Diana told him warily. “He accelerated as soon as he detected us coming. He might be planning to forget all about us and abandon ship to finish the job.”
“I know just the moment he must’ve picked your ship up on his tow’s scanner.” The Admiral looked satisfied. “So that’s what he was doing. You’re right—he is planning to run. Did you see his file? Do you know who he is?”
“Yes,” Salmagard replied, unable to hide the disgust in her voice.
“Would I like him?”
“I would hope not,” she replied.
“I thought so. It’s all falling into place. He’s not a believer, is he?”
“No,” Diana said. “He’s a facilitator. The true believers set all of this up. They’re out there in the wind, probably watching from the good seats.”
“They aren’t our problem.” The Admiral shook his head, and even that looked pitiful.
Salmagard mimed the hypo with her hand. “Is it not helping?”
“It’s not going to do me any good anytime soon,” the Admiral said. “I have to get the levels up before my body responds. Takes hours. I’m not going to do you any good here. I’m deadweight.”
Salmagard opened her mouth, then shut it and clenched her jaw. What could she do? Promise him that she would protect him? She would. She would protect him from Cyril.
Somehow, they were going to accomplish this rescue mission. There was no doubt in her mind of that.
But what then?
She felt a light squeeze. He’d found her hand.
“Relax,” he said. “You saved me. I’ll take it from here.”
Staring at him, Salmagard touched his face, rubbing her thumb lightly over the stubble on his cheek. “You can’t even move.”
“Could be worse. Sei. How’s it look out back?”
“They’re out there, but not moving up on us yet,” he called from the next room.
“If they don’t have weapons, we win in close quarters. Nobody wants to be the first to die. They have to be careful about how they try to come in here. And I think you knocked out Cyril’s favorite thug.”
“The guy with the rifle?” Diana asked. The Admiral nodded minutely.
Sei came into the living room, tugging at his collar. “You think they’ll just let us stay the night here? Or come in and talk?”
“I told you, I don’t think so.” The Admiral looked thoughtful. “Don’t worry. With you here, we can’t lose.” He smiled at Salmagard. Under different circumstances, she wasn’t sure how she might’ve reacted to that, but now there was only cloying nausea.
“We’re getting out of here.” The Admiral pushed himself to sit up straighter. “And this is how we do it. I think I’ve figured out what’s going on, more or less.” He turned to Salmagard. “Who are we signaling? Uniformed military, or GRs? Shangri La’s in unregulated space, right? GRs, then?”
“Yes,” Salmagard replied. And Collins had said that her men would be following as well.
“Of course,” the Admiral said, looking annoyed. “Shangri La. I’m barely here. All right. You’ve got to use the tug ship’s coms to broadcast our SOS so the GRs can find us so close to the black hole? Why can’t you broadcast it from your fighter?”
“It’s got no coms to speak of.”
“The tug it is,” the Admiral said.
“But we don’t really have a good plan to do that,” Diana said, peeking out the window. “There’re more of them than I expected.”
“You don’t need a plan—you just have to break through,” the Admiral said. “There’s no other way. They don’t have weapons. You three can just scatter from
the house. If you end up in close quarters, you’ll win. First you have to get past their perimeter,” he told Salmagard. “They’re not going to know what you’re trying to do, and you’ll have their attention—they’re not going to worry about me. You’re going to want to cause as much trouble as possible. Only go for the ship if you can shake them off first. Sei, you don’t go at all. You have to get out there and just make a mess. You’re buying us time. Diana, you can fake them out. Get past, make trouble, then angle for the ship. Make them think that’s your objective, then break off. That’s the soft moment—that’s when Salmagard takes care of business. She’s the one with the codes. Right?”
She nodded, swallowing.
“How’s that sound? How’s everyone’s cardio?”
Sei and Diana exchanged a look.
“He’s just like the commander,” Sei said.
Diana scowled. “Don’t remind me.”
“I am an admiral,” he said. “So I do outrank you. Sort of. Questions?”
Salmagard resisted the urge to look out the window.
“The longer we wait, the longer they have to get ready for us,” the Admiral said.
“You’re just going to stay here?” Diana said, raising an eyebrow.
“You said they were speeding up,” he told her. “Cyril’s getting ready to get clear—he’s moving up his schedule. He doesn’t care about us. He just needs to get the job done for the people that hired him to sacrifice these idiots. Don’t worry about me.”
“I wasn’t,” Diana said.
Salmagard thought her molars would grind into powder. The Admiral squeezed her hand again. It seemed to be all he had the strength to do.
“Waiting won’t help our chances,” he said. “We don’t know how close we are to the point of no return. Once we get too close to Shangri La, even the GRs can’t help us.”
“He’s right,” Sei said. “It’d be nice to catch up, but if we don’t know the timetable, this might be time we don’t have. How fast can he get to Shangri La?”
“I’m not sure,” Diana replied. “I don’t know how fast the tug is . . . but we might not have much time.” She looked to Salmagard, who nodded.
Salmagard turned to the Admiral, who surprised her by pulling her in for a kiss. Maybe there was a little strength in him after all. Salmagard did her best to return it, as if she could somehow communicate everything through this gesture alone—but he pushed her back almost immediately.
“I’m just being selfish,” he said. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
There was nothing to say to that. She felt she ought to say something, but there was nothing. Her head was as empty as her throat was tight.
Salmagard forced herself to let go of him and get up. She stepped back, her eyes still locked on his. Even if this worked, he was done for. Evagard would have him. He knew it.
There had to be a way to change that. The Admiral always had a plan, but he was only a man. Only human. He wasn’t special. He didn’t have a monopoly on strategy.
Salmagard could plan too. There had to be a way.
But first Cyril had to be stopped—or, failing that, they needed to set the beacon. There wasn’t time to debate the Admiral’s plan. Diana and Salmagard had tentatively agreed on a course of action on the way, but they’d been approaching blind—once they were actually inside the habitat, it became clear their plan wouldn’t work. They needed to adapt, and no one was better at that than the Admiral.
He wasn’t trying to subtly tell her anything. He wasn’t silently begging for her help. When she reached him on the road, it had been there, if only in that moment. She’d been his savior.
Now that was gone. He knew the truth, that she was bringing the Empire with her. That she was the instrument of his capture. But he showed no sign of distress, and not even resignation.
There had to be a way.
“We’ll do it. I’ll go out the front,” Diana said, looking down at her hands.
“I’ll take the back.” Sei looked to Salmagard.
“I’ll go that way,” she said, pointing. “Go on my signal.”
“What signal?”
“You’ll know.” Salmagard swallowed, looked at the Admiral, then turned her back on him and left the room.
She climbed the stairs to the second floor, looking in either direction.
She remembered when she had first set foot on the black surface of Nidaros. The swirling green mist, the towering spires.
She remembered the xenos there, and how it had all been so alien.
She’d been trained. She’d traveled. But nothing could have prepared her for the unknown, for the profound variety offered by the universe at large.
Alien.
That was how she felt now. This was all new to her. She thought about her family, and Alice Everly—about the life they had built for her, and the person they had shaped her to be. Or tried to shape her to be. Salmagard knew what their vision had been, and she knew what the result was. There wasn’t much overlap.
There wasn’t supposed to be room in an Evagardian high lady for things like hatred or rage. Or fear, or anything like it.
For a first daughter, there was never supposed to be a need for those things.
This was all the Admiral’s fault.
Salmagard set her gaze on the window at the far end of the hallway and went down to one knee, positioning her feet. She activated her helmet, pressed her hands to the floor, and pushed off at a sprint. She leapt into the air, crossing her arms in front of her to break cleanly through the glass. Something so crude couldn’t cut an EV.
She sailed out into the night air, the man directly below looking up in surprise at the figure in gray and the sparkling rain of glass shards.
Salmagard crashed into him, leaping free before he could hit the ground. She touched down and rolled, sprinting into the trees. Cyril’s perimeter was pointless. He might as well not even have bothered.
There were shouting and footsteps behind her, and she could hear noise from the direction of the house.
Historically, threatening or challenging imperials never ended well for the people doing the threatening and the challenging. Even in the best of times, even when the Empress was at her most compassionate. Salmagard almost felt bad for these people.
Hand lights flashed behind her and to her right. Some of them were chasing her through the trees, and more were on the road using vehicles to try to get ahead. Maybe they wanted to cut her off.
Salmagard angled sharply, darting up the hill and onto the road itself. The nearest vehicle had to swerve, plunging down the embankment with a crash. She carried on across and into the trees on the other side, pouring on more speed.
The Admiral might not have any strength left, but Salmagard had plenty. She didn’t need stims. Why would she, when she had all this fury and adrenaline to work with? How could synthetic chemicals compare?
It had been an enlightening day. Everything was different now. Things could never go back to the way they’d been before.
A figure loomed up out of the dark, and she didn’t even slow—she just struck him down, letting her momentum carry her onward.
A part of her was glad firearms were no good here. Salmagard had never killed anyone outside a simulation, and she had no desire to—but with a weapon in her hand, here and now, she didn’t know what would happen. Her training—the very best there was—was there, just under the surface. That was her purpose, after all. Countless months of training had made her a negotiator. More than half of that training had, in one way or another, pertained to combat.
And that was what she wanted.
But these people—they weren’t the ones Salmagard really wanted. Whom did she want to get her hands on? Willis and Freeber? Yes. But no—they had been acting on orders from Idris. And Idris had been catering to his clientele. And his clientele was . .
. what? Just people.
People with different values.
Salmagard was tired of values. No, that wasn’t true. She was tired of galactics. She wanted the things she took for granted. She wanted a little imperial decency.
But even the Empire was no comfort now, not with what they were going to do to the Admiral. And she’d seen them at the Bazaar. The imperial tourists, the same people who would shake their heads and laugh about galactic savages with their primitive ways and less evolved sensibilities. Salmagard had seen them, looking on at the people trading humans as if it were a curiosity.
She knew there were bad imperials, and she knew there were good galactics. She knew it wasn’t her place to judge good and bad. Only God could do that.
God, and the Empress.
But it didn’t matter. She burst out of the trees, tearing across the grass. Speed came easily to Salmagard. She was used to being timed. Every drill, every VR training simulation—she was always timed. Every action was judged for efficiency and practicality. Every decision made, every shot fired—it all had to be accounted for.
Salmagard could see the lights of the settlement. There was noise and movement, but Salmagard wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t in her way.
Under Cyril’s synthetic night sky, she felt profoundly alone. These galactics weren’t her people. Not if they thought people could be bought and sold.
At least, that was what she’d been brought up to believe. That was what Alice Everly believed. What her family believed. What all the great thinkers and writers believed.
But how was the Empire any different? They had used the Admiral, perhaps used him up. Now that they were finished, his status as human seemed to have been revoked. He was no longer a subject or a citizen. Now he was just an inconvenience. Or, worse, an embarrassment.
It wasn’t so different.
How could the Grand Duchess have made it any clearer? Her writings weren’t ambiguous; they weren’t difficult to understand. Any child could read and comprehend what the Duchess had to say. She believed in freedom of thought and the indisputable dignity of man, regardless of race or creed. These were the foundations of Evagardian life.