“The only proper way to change the subject is to toast the best boss in the skies,” said Athos, coming to his feet suddenly in a dramatic change of subject. “Amiral Treville!”
“Treville!” thundered Porthos.
“You clown,” snapped Aramis, pulling Athos back down to the bench. “I almost cut half your chin off.”
None of them noticed that Dana failed to join in the toast. What had Amiral Treville done for her?
The door of the bar swung open, and a Sabre officer walked in, resplendent in a red and gold uniform. She was accompanied by three uniformed Red Guards – Hammers – with the Cardinal’s cross shining brightly on their scarlet jackets.
Athos was a different man in an instant, his smile vanished. Aramis had left a thin layer of beard close to his chin. There was a scar running over the top of his freshly-shorn scalp, as if his head had once been cut open with an axe. He leaned into Dana as the Sabre and her underlings approached. “D’Artagnan. If the sight of them makes you want to draw a sword, or swing a chair in their faces, then you are a true Musketeer at heart.”
Then he winked, one long-lashed blue eye.
Dana knew it to be true. Other children were trained by their parents to love particular TeamJoust colours, or to nurse a deep patriotism for the station or planet on which they were born. For Dana, since she was a baby, it had been Team Musketeer.
She had never met a Sabre or a Red Hammer to talk to, and yet she hated these guards on sight.
The Sabre was a short and stocky white woman with a spiky mohawk, and the bars of a major on her lapel. “Drinking at mid shift?” she said in a low drawl. “Sad, Captain-lieutenant Athos. You used to be someone.”
“Claudine Jussac,” Athos replied, lifting his glass as if toasting her health. “I note your uniform still fits. Strange, as you seem to be losing height every year. Perhaps it’s the artificial gravity. You need to get yourself dirtside for a holiday. Suck in some sun, get laid, and then maybe the terrible shrinkage will abate.”
Jussac scowled at him. “There’s been a complaint, Athos.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” he said in a reassuring tone. “Some people are simply never going to like you. I think it’s because you’re not very friendly.”
Jussac’s eyebrows drew in even closer. “Athos. You’re not helping yourself here. Shut your mouth.”
“Now talking is forbidden by the precious Cardinal!” Porthos interrupted, drumming her fingernails on the table. “What next, are they taking our wine?”
Aramis was deeply unimpressed with both of her friends. “How about you state your business and get out of here, Claudine?” she asked in the calm voice of a peacemaker.
Jussac smiled at Aramis with all her teeth. “You three have been fighting again, on church property, behind the Luxembourg. In our jurisdiction.”
“Lies,” said Porthos immediately. “What would your mother say if she saw you hassling poor innocent Musketeers, Claudine?”
Jussac bridled. “I’ve been in service to the Cardinal for seven years, Pol. I outrank all three of you. Don’t you think it’s time to take me seriously?”
“We would, baby doll,” said Aramis. “But it’s hard for us to keep up with all you bright young things, with your freshly pressed uniforms and your busywork.”
Jussac folded her arms, and she really did look like a sulky teenager, Dana decided. “We have security footage of Captain-lieutenant Athos baring sword behind the Luxembourg.”
“We didn’t even fight,” Dana burst out. Aramis gave her a warning look and placed one finger to her mouth.
Athos stood up, turning to face Jussac. She came up to his collarbone, just about. “I thought it was illegal to monitor so close to a house of worship,” he said calmly.
Jussac tilted her head back, obviously hating to do so. “The Cardinal has made a new ruling,” she snapped. “So many unsavoury types took advantage of the Church privacy laws to play their dangerous games.” She let her red jacket slide open to show the baton of a pilot’s slice on one loop of her belt, and the glittering red chrome of an arc-ray on another. “Guess what, Athos Bloody Smartarse Musketeer? You’re under arrest.”
Dana held her breath. Athos looked at Jussac up and down quite deliberately, as if he was preparing to pick her up and throw her bodily through the nearest window. “No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t think I am. The Luxembourg and its grounds may be under the Cardinal’s jurisdiction, but this is bar is on Crown property and I’m wearing the blue and white. I’m not under arrest.”
Jussac barely blinked. She flexed her hands once, and in response to that signal, the door of the Abbey of St Germain was flung open and a dozen more Red Hammers entered the bar. It all looked official, right up to the point that they drew blades instead of stunners.
The saucy monks and other customers melted back into the far corners.
“You don’t have a sword,” Aramis said in an undertone to Dana. “Better hide under the table until this is all over.” Before Dana could react to that, Aramis was up and over the table, her pilot’s slice baton extending into a wicked gleam of a sword.
Porthos roared and turned over the table in the same moment, leaping towards her friends.
Dana D’Artagnan paused in horrified amazement as the bar erupted into the most fearsome brawl.
“Fuck this for a joke,” she decided, and dodged around the fallen table to punch the nearest Sabre in the kidneys and take his slice off him.
Paris Satellite, the centre of elegant civilisation. Not entirely what she had expected.
But not boring, Dana thought, grinning wildly as she ducked and punched and figured out very quickly how to get the most effective use of a pilot’s slice at close quarters. Most certainly not boring.
7
A Royal Reception
Lalla-Louise Renard Royal, Regence of the Solar System, awoke in a haze of perfumed sheets and the musky scent of her husband. Even with her thoughts already turning towards the business of the day, she always enjoyed the performance art that was the morning ritual of Prince Alek of Auster. It was the only reason she had not suggested separate bedrooms after their first night together.
The prince was slim like a cigar, and he had an endless supply of suits as beautiful as himself. Alek’s eyes were modified emerald this season, to match his shoulder-length emerald hair. A man built for jewel-tones, if ever there was one. She might have enjoyed the effect more if she didn’t know it was chosen to honour his TeamJoust colours.
Alek selected a suit of mint and silver, dressing himself slowly and with great deliberation. A long streak of metallic scales traced a line directly from his temple, down his neck and the side of his torso, over his bare hip and all the way down to the soft underpad of his foot. It was a common mutation for the inhabitants of the warm, desert climate of Auster, a continent in the southern hemisphere of Honour.
“I hear they fuck dragons,” was a common slur, a drunken joke, and one that Lalla-Louise had steeled herself against when the betrothal was first mooted. But she liked her dragon man, and from the few times they had touched each other, she knew that his skin was soft where it was not scaled. As the metallic streak disappeared beneath layers of silk and cotton, she found herself even more fascinated by the phenomenon, peeking out as it did at his throat and ankle.
This morning, Lalla-Louise lifted herself on one elbow to watch the dressing process through lidded eyes. Oh, men. Why were they so much more attractive when their angular lines and curved muscles were covered in pretty things?
“I suppose you can’t come to the match today,” he said when he reached the cravat, his fingers hovering in the act of a careless knot as if he wondered whether to bother. More scales disappeared beneath that whisper of silk so that the silver flecks on the side of his face were all the more stark and surprising against his beige-gold skin.
Such a question was rare for him; she was as disinterested in the game he played as he was in her own
work, and her favoured recreations.
Oh, how she longed for the Hunt. There were three opalescent ampoules awaiting her in her dressing table drawer, awaiting a moment of leisure. But there was never enough time.
“I’d adore to, dove,” Lalla-Louise said lightly. “But I have Amiral Treville to meet for morning chocolate. Some of our pilots have been misbehaving.”
Alek gave her a twist of a smile. “Your marvellous Musketeers. Are they making you look bad again?”
He was sharp, her husband. She had not expected intelligence or wit from this planet-born New Aristocrat of the wrong religion, who only came alive when he was playing that zero gravity sport, but Alek had proved to be a pleasant conversationalist with occasional moments of incisive commentary. Keeping her side of the contract was hardly a chore at all. If only Lalla-Louise enjoyed the embrace of his body as much as she liked looking at it, they might have a marriage to speak of.
Another eight years. It seemed like an eternity. Ten year contracts were rare these days, even among royalty, but Lalla-Louise and her advisors had wanted to make a statement to the solar system: that the Church of All was not the only source of moral stability. By the time this marriage contract ended, Lalla-Louise would be secure in her position, but Alek? She had no idea what he would do or want or need when their time as husband and wife was done. She barely knew those things about him now.
“You have hit the nail on the head, darling,” she said. “There are times when I seriously consider letting the Cardinal’s Fleet take over once and for all. Let the Musketeers disappear like the anachronism they are.”
Alek winced at that, she noticed. If the Cardinal gained more power than she already held, life would become much harder for those who followed the Elemental faith of the planet-dwellers. “Not really?” he asked.
“No, not really.” Lalla-Louise rose naked and crossed the room. A quick bath was all she had time for, with Treville waiting. At least Treville wasn’t the stickler for punctuality that the Cardinal was. “I like to dream sometimes, of a life free from responsibility. Can you imagine how splendid it would be to have nothing to do all day?”
The bathroom door slid shut between them, and if her husband replied to her tactless remark, she did not hear a word of what he said.
Lalla-Louise wore formal silks and a wrapped star-scarf over her sleek black hair when she greeted Amiral Treville in the breakfast room, less than an hour later. She preferred modesty when discussing the Musketeers for exactly the same reason that she chose scandalous outfits for discussing Church business with the Cardinal – it was best to keep them all on their toes.
Theirs was a fractured and fragile ecosystem. If either Amiral Treville or Cardinal Richelieu believed for a moment that the other had lost credibility with her, it would go to their heads and might well translate to political instability. Lalla-Louise Renard Royal had been taught by experts since the age of five: she was a sleek weapon of the diplomatic arts.
“My dear Jeanne,” she said as the fearsome commander of the Musketeers stomped into the breakfast room in full uniform. “What a week you’ve been having! Sit down, please. I’d hate you to overdo it.”
“My job requires a steady state of overdoing everything,” Treville grunted, and then gave Lalla-Louise a wary look. “As does yours, of course, your Majesty.”
“Indeed,” said Lalla-Louise with a very small smile upon her lips. Her maids bustled around them in starched-perfect uniforms, presenting steaming cups of chocolate with cream and pastries.
Lalla-Louise knew for a fact that Treville detested sweets, but was always too polite to say otherwise. It made these breakfasts so much more entertaining. “My dear,” she said as she inhaled the fragrant spices from her cup. “What are we going to do about your broken Musketeers?”
Treville gave her a flinty look across the delicate breakfast table. “Who said anyone was broken, your Royal Highness? My gals are as robust as they ever were.”
“Ah yes,” said Lalla-Louise with a secret smile that suggested that wasn’t the ringing endorsement that Treville might have hoped. “But the current calamity is beyond the pale, you must agree. I spent simply hours placating the Cardinal last night. The poor darling has made herself quite ill with the strain.”
Treville’s expression did not alter. “I had no idea that her Eminence was so frail. Perhaps she needs an ocean holiday to blow the cobwebs away.”
That was going too far. Lalla-Louise frowned. Witty side-stepping of the issues was expected at a meeting such as this one, but she was only prepared to allow a certain amount of wilful ignorance. “I don’t think her Eminence is the one falling down in her duty, Amiral. How does it reflect on me to have the Royal Fleet brawling in churchyards and bars?”
Treville leaned in, giving up all pretence at drinking her chocolate. “How am I to do my job when the Sabres and Hammers are allowed to run rampant across Paris Satellite and beyond, claiming rights of jurisdiction where none exist, and picking fights with my pilots?”
“If the Musketeers and not the Sabres had won the war against the Sun-kissed, the Cardinal would not feel so entitled!” Lalla-Louise bit into a lemon-dusted croissant the size of a peach, allowing the powder to explode prettily across the tablecloth. “This nuisance behaviour helps no one.”
“I quite agree, your Royal Highness,” said Treville. She reached for what appeared to be the only unsweetened pastry on the plate, and chewed vigorously on it until she reached the gooey centre of plum jam and almond crème. After an almost imperceptible pause, she kept chewing as if the pastry had not horribly betrayed her.
Lalla-Louise licked lemon sugar off her lips and fingertips. “Tell me about the girl. The one who was taken into custody along with your gallant troublemakers.”
Amiral Treville blinked. She did not look suspicious, but Lalla-Louise knew that it was best to proceed as if Treville was thinking the worst of her at all times. “Dana D’Artagnan. Daughter of one of my best pilots from your mother’s reign.”
“A new recruit?”
“Hardly,” Treville scoffed, then realised that Lalla-Louise was not joking. “No, your Royal Highness. Not possible with our recent budget cuts. I’d have liked to offer her something. The kid has guts, and a good flying record.”
“Perhaps her Eminence could use a new Sabre…” Lalla-Louise teased, knowing that this was a sore spot with Treville; the Cardinal’s pilots had not been subject to the same degree of financial restraints. Then again, the Cardinal largely funded the Sabres herself, thanks to the ample finances of the Church of All. It was hardly the Crown’s fault.
“I am on your side, your Royal Highness,” Amiral Treville said sharply, out of nowhere. “You remember this, don’t you? My Musketeers serve the Regence first in all things.”
“Are you suggesting that the Cardinal and her Sabres are not equally loyal?” Lalla-Louise countered. She met Treville’s angry eyes and sighed. “Oh, my dear. You know how it is. The balance of power is a tricky thing, and we owe the Cardinal so much.”
“You don’t owe her your throne,” Treville snapped. After a far too long pause, she added, “Your Majesty.” The rebuke still stung.
“As I said in the beginning,” Lalla-Louise said, dropping the game. “Let us see what can be done. Captains-lieutenant Athos, Aramis and Porthos have been released from the Cardinal’s custody and returned to their quarters. No charges are to be laid this time, given the faults on both sides for the – ruckus.”
Amiral Treville’s eyebrows rose almost completely up into her closely-shaven scalp. She had come prepared for a greater fight than this. “I received no word of their release.”
“The matter was handled about thirty seconds after you entered this room,” said Lalla-Louise. “Keeping them overnight has been enough to assuage her Eminence’s outrage… for now.”
“I understand.”
“But let us speak of the young Gascon. I believe she felled five Red Hammers in the fight at the Abbey.”
“That suggests that she is very loyal indeed,” said Lalla-Louise. “She had only just met these Musketeers, and yet was prepared to fight against impossible odds to defend their honour. I like that.”
Treville’s mouth twitched as if she had almost thought about smiling. “I like her too,” she admitted. “A year ago, I’d have put her in the blue and white already.”
“Is it true she fought Major Jussac to a standstill, and wounded her in the arm?”
“After the Cardinal’s favourite knocked Athos unconscious with a wine bottle,” Treville confirmed.
Lalla-Louise sighed. She would rather have liked to see that. She had been at school with Claudine Jussac, and found her a most irritating creature. “Time to put security cameras inside the bars, Amiral.”
“As you say, your Majesty.”
From the look of her face, Treville thought she had won. But Lalla-Louise had a card she had not yet played. “I would like to meet these Musketeers, Amiral. Also, their new friend. Arrange it.”
Groundfall had never agreed with Dana. Even the joy of being allowed to ride in Porthos’ beautiful musket-class dart, the Hoyden, was not enough to compensate for Dana’s alarm at descending towards the moon.
Paris Satellite had been in her head for years, and Dana had not once thought about how near that would bring her to Luna Palais, the Royal Moon of Honour.
The Hoyden was several generations newer than Dana’s old Buttercup, but that didn’t make it new. The midnight blue paint job was less than pristine, and there were several meteor dents along the outer frame. Like all Musketeer ships, there was an elaborate and artistic tattoo splashed over the tail-fin – most of these were monochrome, but the Hoyden’s tail was decorated with a multi-coloured mural of a spiral galaxy.
Inside, the surfaces were gleaming and bright, better tended than any ship Dana had seen before. She was reminded of the heavily studded belt that Porthos had been showing off when they first collided with each other. Was it professional pride or personal vanity that led her to keep her ship in such good condition? It was quite a contrast to the scratched and battered interior of Athos’ dart, the positively antique Parry-Riposte.
Musketeer Space Page 6