Musketeer Space

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “I cannot think why you would refuse,” she said. “Don’t you know that an offer like this is what great careers are built upon?”

  “I serve the Crown, however Commandant Essart and Amiral Treville choose to employ me,” said Dana, sounding remarkably normal considering that she was almost certainly going to be stabbed with a cake fork.

  “You realise, of course,” said the Cardinal, “That the Red Fleet serves the Crown. If you fly for Paris, you fly for our beloved Regence.”

  “I know that,” Dana said desperately, “But –”

  But I don’t trust you. I don’t know how deep your loyalty to the Crown goes. All I know is that you and Milord have worked together, and that means you could be allied with the Sun-kissed.

  “I made this offer for your sake, D’Artagnan. I have had reports of your extracurricular activities, and it seems you have spent many days and nights doing the precise opposite of serving our beloved Regence Royal.”

  The chill of those last few words was intense, like staring into an ice comet.

  “You see now,” said the Cardinal, after a silence that was far too long to be considered polite, “why I offer my protection.”

  For one shameful moment, Dana considered how she might look in the smart red-and-gold livery of a Sabre pilot.

  “If I may speak honestly,” she said, playing for time.

  “From what I hear, Arms-Sergeant, you do not usually hold back your opinions.”

  Dana took a deep breath, trying to construct her thoughts in the formal, political language that was popular in the Palace. “Nearly every friend or ally I have made since coming to Paris has been associated with the Musketeers, or Commandant Essart’s Mecha Corps. I have not tried to make enemies, but I now have several, and all of them have at one time or another been in your employ.”

  The Cardinal raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Do go on. This is fascinating.”

  “If I accept your offer, I will have enemies on all sides.”

  The Cardinal smiled with all her teeth. “I forgot how young you are. Who but a child would deny herself a career because of what her friends might think?”

  My friends would think taking your offer was in my best interest, Dana thought fiercely. That is why they do not get a vote.

  “That is my answer,” she said simply.

  The Cardinal stood swiftly. Their interview was at an end. “When you fall into misfortune, young D’Artagnan – and you will – I hope you will recall that I extended the offer of friendship to you, and that you rejected my help.”

  “I am grateful for your generosity,” said Dana, the words feeling like mining grit in her mouth.

  When she left the salon, Dana found Agent Rosnay Cho leaning casually against the wall of the gallery. “Should have taken the offer,” Ro said in a low, considering voice.

  Dana met her gaze steadily. “I’m not so easily bought.”

  Ro rolled her eyes. “She was right. You’re a child.”

  That night, in the Abbey of St Germain, over many cups of wine with her closest friends, Dana shared the story of what she and the Cardinal had said to each other.

  Aramis and Porthos, by the farewells they had to make to their various lovers, both gave Dana supportive hugs and insisted she had made the right choice.

  Only Athos, who had no one to farewell except an excellent vintage bottle of brandy, gave Dana’s refusal more serious thought. “You did what you had to do,” he said. “I would have done the same. And yet – that doesn’t mean it was the right decision.”

  Drunk enough to be daring, Dana leaned in and gave him a smacking kiss on his forehead. “Athos, you always know exactly what to say.”

  “It’s a gift,” he agreed.

  “Welcome to Supplies Team Delta!” said a cheerful young man with a shaven head and whorled tattoos that covered him from scalp to shoulder. “I’m Bass and this is Chantal.” He indicated a remarkably short and cheerful white woman with pierced fingernails and two dainty silver horn implants protruding from her forehead. “We’re your team leaders. I’m the Maintenance Specialist, Chantal is Printing and Inventory.”

  “And you’re the pilot,” Chantal added helpfully. “Welcome to the Frenzy Kenzie, Arms-Sergeant D’Artagnan!”

  Dana had never met two less military people in her life. “I guess you can call me Dana?” she offered.

  Bass gave her a friendly hug. “We’re going to get along great! Sorry your orientation is so last minute – we ship out in three hours – but the boat was still being rebuilt until early this morning.”

  “Acidsplosion,” Chantal said gravely.

  The ‘boat’ was a massive, dark blue tube of arquebus-class venturer. Dana had piloted something similar when she was a trainee back on Gascon Station, because Freedom still used arquebus-class venturers for supplies and trading. This one was newer than the ship Dana had practiced in, though the front half was a lot older than the back half, which had been all but printed from scratch in the rebuild.

  It was traditional for a new pilot to walk entirely around her ship before coming aboard. With the size of the Frenzy Kenzie, that wasn’t practical, but Bass and Chantal dragged Dana into a storage buggy so they could drive her around the perimeter.

  For the first time, this felt real. They were going into a war zone. A war zone where no shot had (yet) been fired, but still.

  It was so bloody huge. The ship, not the situation. Yes, also the situation.

  When she saw the tail fin of the venturer, Dana let out a bark of a laugh. “Who designed the tattoo?”

  “It’s mine,” said Chantal, looking pink with embarrassment. “I mean, my kids drew it. You can put your own on if you’d prefer.”

  “No, I like it,” Dana said quickly. It was a children’s drawing of three people waving madly under a squiggly rainbow. “Is it really only three of us crewing her?”

  “There’s also Wheels, our meditech, she’s kitting out the medibay right now,” said Bass. “But she hates healthy people, so don’t talk to her unless you’re bleeding. Chantal hired two assistants to help with the fetching and carrying, and I have a couple of baby engie interns to train up, they’re coming too.”

  “I don’t suppose I get an assistant to pilot the ship while I’m sleeping?” Dana asked dryly.

  “Ha!” said Bass appreciatively, then realised that she hadn’t been joking. “Oh. Ah. This is awkward.”

  “Nope, it’s just you and the autopilot,” said Chantal with a smile. “But you can borrow our assistants sometimes. If you ask nicely.”

  “I did pick baby engies who claimed to be able to pilot boats this big,” Bass said, as if it had been an afterthought rather than a major requirement.

  “Oh,” said Dana, even more overwhelmed. “That’s… good.”

  The helm and harness of the Frenzy Kenzie were heavier and more old-fashioned than the set up Dana was used to from darts, or even the transporter she had been piloting to and from Luna Palais for so many months. She hesitated, not sure where she should even start with all the cables and attachments.

  “Let me help you, boss,” said a familiar voice. Planchet popped into her field of vision. The girl wore her red hair in its usual pigtails, but she had found a Musketeer-blue coverall from somewhere, with the ship’s name embroidered on the chest.

  “Planchet!” said Dana, half alarmed. “Are you a stowaway? I think that’s treason.”

  Planchet laughed. “Don’t worry, boss. Stowing away is a misdemeanour at worst, and it doesn’t even count as a crime until we leave dock.”

  “Planchet.”

  “I’m kidding,” the teen engie said, wide-eyed. “I signed on with Arms-Sergeant Bass as an intern. It will look good on my resume when you finally become a Musketeer and need a proper engie to look after Buttercup. Can you believe they’re keeping an antique like this running? I can’t wait to get my hands on her insides.”

  Dana wasn’t going to complain. Having Planchet here helped with the overwhelming s
ense of isolation she had felt ever since she parted ways with Athos, Aramis and Porthos.

  “Quick, help me get into this helm and harness before the rest of the team figures out I have no idea what I’m doing,” Dana begged.

  Fifty gleaming red sabre-class darts in perfect spiral formation exploded out of the Church Dock of Paris Satellite. They hung in the sky for a dramatic instant before boosting in a co-ordinated jump across the solar system.

  Next came thirty blue musket-class darts – the Musketeers of the Royal Fleet, pouring forth from Lunar Palais.

  “Must be true, then,” said Bass, who had joined Dana and Planchet in the cockpit of the Frenzy Kenzie with a larger-than-regulation tub of popcorn. “The Regence herself is flying out with this wave.”

  “Into battle?” Dana said in surprise. “No one expects that of her, surely.”

  “Rumour has it that her siblings have been sniffing around, campaigning to be allowed back from exile,” said Chantal, who was flipping through a gossip app on a large clamshell. “The tall one who won all those medals, in particular. I guess the Regence wants to prove to the adoring public that she has military cred.”

  “The Cardinal’s definitely with this wave,” said Bass. “Saw footage of her Eminence waving at the crowds on the way to her Sabre after breakfast. The two of them must have left the dragon prince at home to watch over Paris.”

  Dana frowned at the slang term for Prince Alek. “Less chatter,” she said sternly. “We’re about to –”

  Her dash lit up with the command to detach from their berth and take to the sky.

  “No worries,” said Chantal. “War involves heaps of waiting around in between the exciting parts. There will be so much time for gossip.”

  42

  Space Jump

  The jump system was only legal for military operations within Crown Space, on the basis that they were the only ones with robust enough comm frequencies to be trusted with the technology. No one wanted to be part of an interstellar pileup after civilian spaceships had literally materialised inside each other.

  The Frenzy Kenzie and other arquebus-class venturers (like the Church Fleet’s own St Konstantina, chugging alongside them) were too large and antiquated to be fitted for jump engines. Their steady pace of star travel was roughly equivalent to the recharging time that dart engines required between jumps.

  As systems went, it worked fine, except for the high boredom factor of pilots in general, and Musketeers in particular.

  Dana was on constant rotation, flying the support transport, while her friends were stuck in their own darts with literally nothing to do between jumps but use Fleetnet to message her, and each other, about the most trivial things.

  It would take six jumps and eight days for the Second Wave of the Combined Royal Fleet to reach Truth Space. By the third time Dana had caught up with the Inseparables, she was amazed that they had not yet started challenging the Sabres to dogfights out of sheer boredom.

  FRENZYKENZIE3: Porthos, I don’t want to hear about your stomach.

  HOYDEN: Jump always makes me feel so sick.

  FRENZYKENZIE3: Considering you and Athos just woke up from a twelve hour sleep rotation while I was the only person fielding Aramis’ insecurities about her girlfriend for did I mention twelve hours, I’m going to go with no. No pity. None left.

  MORNINGSTAR: No one is insecure, who said I was insecure? Have you been talking to Tracy about me?

  FRENZYKENZIE3: Porthos, is this a group chat??? Warn a person first.

  HOYDEN: It’s not my fault you started talking about our friends behind their backs.

  FRENZYKENZIE3: Nothing I haven’t said to their faces.

  PISTACHIOGRUMPYFACE: I already requested to be taken off any and all discussions about anything short of war-related emergencies.

  PISTACHIOGRUMPYFACE: Right, who changed my username?

  When a message from ‘unknown user’ clicked through her comm, containing only a set of spacial co-ordinates, Dana assumed it was Aramis or Porthos pissing about, stripping their ID from the message for a joke.

  But it wasn’t obvious or funny enough, especially when Dana checked the pre-programmed flight path to discover that they were already due to cross the co-ordinates in question – and none of the musket-class pilots were cleared to know the exact flight path of the Frenzy Kenzie.

  Should she divert to avoid those co-ordinates? A diversion would show up on her daily report, and she wasn’t sure if this message constituted a threat, or a promise.

  In the end, she did an extra scan on the area while allowing the arquebus to continue on the route as planned.

  Five minutes before Dana reached that point in space, the main screen above her dashboard filled with static, picking up a signal from a local transmitter. There were no satellites in their path, so if there was a transmitter it was tiny, and had been left here like a message in a bottle.

  After a minute of static, the screen dissolved into footage from an old fleur-de-lis game. Dana knew it was old, because it showed the original Emerald Knights team: Prince Alek, Conrad Su and Minister Marie Chevreuse opposite a team called the Burly Lions.

  For a moment, she allowed herself to become caught up in the game – the fluid movements of the athletes powering through the zero gravity tank. The glee on their faces as they racked up points between the three of them.

  And oh – Conrad. His blue hair was longer in this footage, spiking low into his eyes. He and Prince Alek and Chevreuse moved together as a single unit, like their brains matched as well as their bright green uniforms.

  At one point, Conrad fell face-first into the camfeed, and threw a flirtatious grin directly at the viewer – at Dana – before spinning backwards in a series of somersaults that took his opponent by surprise and allowed Chevreuse to bodyslam that player halfway across the tank.

  Why would someone send her this footage?

  Dana checked her instruments – the Frenzy Kenzie would move out of range of the transmission shortly. She flexed her fingers and her thoughts into the ship’s engines, powering down to slow drift. She sent a message to Bass with an excuse:

  GETTING ODD READINGS FROM POWER SPHERES, CAN YOU CHECK THE COUPLINGS? WE CAN STILL MAKE THE RENDEZVOUS ON TIME IF WE DRIFT FOR 15 MINS.

  The part about the time buffer was true. She didn’t want to miss any important information from this transmission, but she wasn’t willing to risk making the entire Second Wave of the Combined Royal Fleet late for a battle.

  Bass’ response was a series of exclamation marks, and an emoji that looked like either a thumb’s up or a dick joke. She was going to assume it was a thumb.

  The game footage ran to static. Dana’s first thought was that she had slowed the Frenzy Kenzie too late, but then the screen cleared again, and she saw what looked very much like a dark, stone-walled cell.

  “Do you have nothing to say to your wife?” a voice said from behind the cam. A familiar voice, Dana realised with a chill down her spine. Those smooth tones belonged to Milord.

  A dark shape shifted and turned towards the screen. Dana bit her lip as she recognised the tired, pissed-off face of Conrad Su. It was a live stream, according to the date and time numbers running along the bottom of the screen. He was alive.

  Conrad stood slowly, stretching his legs, showing no sign of injury. He walked towards the cam. There was no sign of that gorgeous grin of his now. He stared into the screen, head tilted slightly, eyes blazing into it. “Whoever you’re doing this for, Slate, I know one thing. It’s not my wife.”

  “Oh, but that’s interesting,” purred Milord. “Which of my many enemies is it that you think you’re talking to?”

  Dana clenched her fists, because otherwise she would be reaching out for the screen like an idiot, as if she could actually drag Conrad through it to safety.

  “I’m friends with the Prince Consort,” Conrad said fiercely. “It’s not difficult to work out why you might think you can use me to hurt the royal family.”
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  “I was hoping you had more than muscle between those ears of yours,” said Milord, sounding bored.

  Conrad turned the full force of his glare into the screen. “Luckily Alek knows better than to make stupid risks just because he doesn’t want to run tryouts for a new pole attack.”

  Dana rolled her eyes at his bravado, and her own foolishness. She forgot sometimes that Conrad had been wrapped up in court intrigue long before she breezed into Paris.

  He probably didn’t even remember her name.

  “You’d be surprised how many enemies I have who think you’re worth rescuing,” said that hateful voice behind the cam. “Say hello to Arms-Sergeant D’Artagnan.”

  Conrad’s head flicked up and away, his face registering something – surprise? Irritation? Dana barely got a chance to see before static overwhelmed the screen all over again. This time, the footage did not return.

  “All clear, Sarge!” Bass said cheerfully through her comm. “The ship’s security picked up a magnetic transmitter-bot in the area, probably some new spyware thing trying to register our location. Zapped it good, so it won’t be able to trace us.”

  “Good,” said Dana, more calmly than she felt. “That’s good work, Bass.”

  Spyware. Damn it all. She should have steered clear of this location, avoiding the co-ordinates. She couldn’t risk the Fleet for one man, especially when Conrad was so determined to sacrifice himself for Prince Alek. If Milord wanted her to see that transmission, nothing good would come from it.

  “Get a grip, D’Artagan,” she muttered to herself. “War before boys.”

  But she couldn’t erase that image of the stone cell from her mind.

  Conrad Su was still alive, for now. But he was in Milord’s custody, and Milord wanted revenge on Dana.