Les feigned a grateful smile in the man’s direction, and took a sip to give himself time to think. So Royce and he were playing runaway lovers. And despite what the other agent did or did not believe, Les was a professional. He gestured, subtly: got it.
Royce did not respond.
“What can they do after you’re married, eh?” continued the bartender.
Les judged the question to be purely rhetorical. He sighed and put down his bottle.
“That’s what I keep telling him,” said Les, tilting his head towards Royce. “But he hates my mother. Won’t even give her a chance.”
The Baldasshi glared at Royce. “My aunt is a good woman.”
Royce raised his hands defensively, giving Les a dirty look in the process. The bartender rolled his eyes, and walked away to deal with another customer.
Les concentrated on his drink. The cool liquid slipped down his throat, relieving a thirst he didn’t know he had.
“She hated me first,” muttered Royce. It was highly doubtful “she” in this case referred to Les’s fictional Baldasshi mother. No, Royce meant Lady Anther who did, indeed, hate him first.
This was pointless. Neither of their missions would be served if they continued arguing. So Les gestured: You Make Good Cover. Less Questions.
“Whole thing is nuts,” said Royce, still murmuring into his glass. “What sane person would want to be related to an entire fucking planet?”
“It was…strange. But…” It had been a powerful force pulling Les deeper into my cover identity.
“My planet, my tribe?” asked Royce.
He knows me too well. The Baldasshi net of interconnected relationships, all traced to the current reigning monarch, it was not so different from the way Les himself was raised.
“Adoptive,” said Les. “At least for a time.”
Royce blinked.
So “adoption” is still a loaded word for him.
“I’m sorry,” Royce said after a minute. “I couldn’t warn the guards.”
“I know,” Les replied, summoning a smile from gods-knew-where. But the silence they lapsed into was less strained than before.
“About the academy,” said Royce, when his glass was almost empty, “all they’ve got in there are raw recruits. The Kova are far too smart to hurt a baby force like that. Not when a simple uniform change turns it into a Kovan navy instead of Baldasshi.”
Some part of Les’s tension drained away at Royce’s words. “You’re right,” he said.
They finished their drinks at approximately the same time, just as the bartender returned.
“Gotta close up for a bit,” he said. “Need to feed the bear.”
Royce reached for his belt-pouch.
“On me,” said the bartender, waving away the credit-chit in Royce’s hand. “What are cousins for, eh?”
It was a well-worn joke amongst the Baldasshi. Les laughed along with the others, and if his laughter was a little weak, nobody seemed to notice.
Royce makes their farewells, and rose. And as soon as he stepped outside the bar, the languor that had suffused his posture up to now disappeared.
“Where to?” Les asked.
“Spaceport.”
The Baldasshi have taken to Regia—credits—like fish to water. Who knows what it’ll do to their genome in the long run, but for now it makes them the darlings of the Cartels. Not like most of the new-FTLers, sticking to their damn gold standards and cryptocurrencies….
-Courier Pilot, Gaste Hospitality Trade Cartel
Conversation overheard at spaceport cantina, Mrigir Prime
SPACEPORT, VERR, BALDESSH
Most of Baldasshi’s offworld imports come in through its equatorial spaceport. And in the port’s sprawling launch zone, filled with hangars and shipyards and offices, the presence of two dockworkers passed without notice.
“We’re walking in circles,” observed Les.
“Ellipses,” corrected Royce. “We need to wait till a very specific shuttle-pilot is scheduled to make a run to the space-station.”
“If we need to burn time,” said Les, “can we do it at a resto? I’m starving.”
Royce gave a short bark of laughter. “Yeah, ok,” he said, and began veering towards the jumble of one-storey buildings they’d passed two circuits ago.
The jumble numbered within it two small scrap-electronics depots and a low-cal, low-price canteen for dockworkers. Not exactly a resto, but it would have to do.
The canteen was almost empty, save for a few mechanics and lifters collecting overtime, and a fat, tousle-haired man was doing triple duty as waiter and bartender and cook.
With their mechanics’ overalls and toolboxes, the waiter-bartender-cook barely gave them a second glance as they entered. He was too busy shoving shredded mushrooms through the feeder-hatch of a small cage near the back of the canteen. Two rabbits, one of them looking as if it had lost a fight with a particularly ornery hedgehog, sat on their haunches, waiting for their lunch to be ready.
Royce sighed and led Les to a booth himself; it was no use expecting service until the cook was done dealing with his rabbits.
Royce saw Les shudder a bit as his hands touched the bright red synthetic covering of the booth’s seats. But he didn’t complain—Les never complained. Just left you out in the cold without a word.
Les looked at the menu flickering on the holoscreen. “The number four looks good.”
Royce twisted his frame around, but the holoscreen was just out of his line-of-sight. “What’s a number four?”
Just then, the waiter-bartender-cook came over. “Hallo gents. I’m Geddys, third half-uncle to the Princess, twice removed on her mother’s side. What’ll you be having?”
Before Royce could speak, “I’m Lees, seventh full cousin to the Princess,” said Les, neatly taking control of the cover Royce invented. “This is Rooice, my husband. He used to be closer, fourth cousin to the King through his half-sister, but we don’t talk about his half-sister anymore.” Les shrugged.
The waiter-bartender-cook grunted. “I have a half-sister. Wish my nuclears didn’t talk about her. What’ll I get you?”
“Two number fours please,” said Les.
Refusing to be ordered for, Royce snapped out the first thing he could think of. “Coffee.”
I hate coffee.
“Darling, coffee gives you terrible heartburn,” Les said sweetly, then looked up at the waiter-bartender-cook. “He’ll have a small synthahol.”
The waiter-bartender-cook grunted, then headed off towards the kitchen.
“Did you have to?” asked Royce.
A half-smile shivered at the end of Les’s mouth, throwing a dimple into shadow. Royce blinked, taken by surprise at his heartache at the sight of that dimple.
“Let’s talk,” Les was saying, “about why HQ wants you, the most dress-sense challenged agent in the entire Empire, to go undercover as couturier to royalty.”
There was a budget hotel nearby…maybe they could rest for a bit, catch the next shuttle up. Maybe he could convince Les that they needed to have sex for cover purposes.
He left you. He doesn’t want you.
“I’m supposed to steal the Baldasshi’s impeccable sense of style,” Royce said instead.
Les’s dimple disappeared. “Their what?”
“Surely you’ve noticed it?” Royce asked, who himself hadn’t, not till he received his mission spec.
“Their ambassador is always very well dressed,” said Les, hesitant. “But they’re all fashion-savvy, I mean, look at Geddys! He’s running a cantina, and even he knows enough not to wear dholags with workplace-casuals.”
Royce wondered if that comment was aimed at him. What the hell is a dholag? “Maybe his rabbits ate his dholag,” he muttered.
The dimple was back. “The style is a cultural thing, like the pets.”
“More than that,” said Royce, “Every Baldasshi envoy, every civil servant, each and every member of their FTL crews—all of them ar
e impeccably dressed, no matter who they’re talking to. They have never made a fashion faux pas in the six years since their First Contact.
“Too perfect? Some kind of perception-filter, you think?”
“Has to be.”
“So why do we need…” Les trailed off as comprehension dawned on face. “The Millennial happens in less than a week!”
“Exactly,” said Royce, leaning back in the booth. “The Emperor wants new clothes.”
“The Imperium stretches across uncountable worlds, a thousand planets with a thousand ever-changing rules of dress and propriety…Our Imperial Master must address each of those worlds simultaneously, but every Millennial, some planet, somewhere, gets pissed off because the Emperor was not ‘dressed in a respectful-enough manner’. Then we have protests. And counter-protests. And counter-counter…you get the picture. Last time the situation devolved into a free-for-all riot across three galaxies.”
-Imperial Ambassador Awl’Murem, inebriated
Speech to the Intergalactic Senate
CUSTOMS LINUP, SPACEPORT, BALDESSH
They’d burned enough time at the cantina that Royce judged it prudent to jog to their destination. But he could see Les getting more and more nervous as they got closer to it.
Royce had no idea where Les had stashed the FTL drive core in his form-fitting jumpsuit. “Is it…?” he ventured.
“Safe,” said Les shortly.
Not your problem, that’s what that tone meant, despite all evidence to the contrary. Les’s shoulders were on the verge of being hunched, clear lines of stress radiating out from his arms; the customs officials would pick up on it. And it wouldn’t end if Les made it off planet. He was a domestic counter-espionage operative, with half a deepcover mission under his belt. A fuckup could happen anywhere between here and the Empire.
The man needed a competent escort.
But gods help Royce if he dared to voice that. So he had to keep Les distracted with the “undercover couturier” mission till the situation was suitably engineered…It wouldn’t do for Les to start questioning things…he shouldn’t suspect anything till they were both light-years away, safely onboard the intergalactic-transport. Then Les could discover Royce…maybe hiding in the luggage compartment. Royce hadn’t decided yet.
He felt a brief pang for the career he was about to throw away. Regardless of how unbelievably stupid the couturier mission was, its failure would still count against Royce’s record.
So be it.
They joined the shortest line in front of them.
“Our cover is airtight,” Royce said, his voice low. “Plus, with all the confusion of the Kova takeover, they won’t have time to spend on an escaped lab technician.”
“Stop reassuring yourself,” said Les, “and start getting ready to run if they pull ballistics.”
But the woman at the ticket desk looked harried. “I’m Tonnya, ninth aunt, once removed, to the Princess,” she began, her tone clipped and unfriendly.
Royce took charge before Les could open his mouth. “Rooice and my husband, Lees, closest lines are…” he chanted to requisite litany, tracing his and Les’s “relationship” to the current reigning monarch.
He would be glad when they could revert to an Imperial-origin cover story, and not just because it would stop the damned introductions. No, the very thought of so many relatives, however invented, was starting to make Royce jumpy. How could these people live, knowing that every single person on the street was related to them, and might just feel a familial compulsion to poke their nose into things?
“No baggage?” asked a woman, a glimmer of curiosity entering her eyes.
Curiosity was bad. “Day trip, ma’am,” said Royce.
“Aunt Tonnya, it’s our anniversary,” gushed Les, clutching at Royce’s arm.
“Congratulations,” said the woman, her voice returning to a bored monotone. “Next shuttle is at Gate 3, go straight, then turn left.”
As they walked away, “You’ve learned to lie,” Royce murmured. Frankly, he was surprised.
Les’s steps faltered. “Kernels of truth,” he said, avoiding Royce’s eyes. An indecipherable smile played around his lips.
Royce felt like he’d been punched in the gut. How could he have forgotten? How could you remember? It was always Les who remembered for both of us.
Today would have been Royce Ree’s fifth wedding anniversary.
Recall all diplomatic personnel. We will not legitimize the Kova by leaving Baldessh an embassy.
-Imperial Communiqué 87372.1
All Imperial Agents are ordered to evacuate Baldasshi Planetary Space immediately.
-Imperial Order 10991.6
Agent Les’Anther Dai-Sarn has not acknowledged evacuation order. The agent is presumed AWOL.
-Excerpt from Progress Report on Baldasshi Withdrawal
ECONOMY GROUND-TO-ORBIT SHUTTLE, BALDASSHI PLANETARY SPACE
Les dropped into his assigned seat with a groan.
“I don’t know what that man fed me—”
“You ordered…”
This was Les’s third trip to the head since they’d boarded the surface-to-orbit shuttle. Royce felt a little guilty—he knew how relaxed spaceport canteens’ health-standards were, but damnit, the man had asked for food.
“Where were we?” asked Les, reaching for the damned tablet-reader again. He’d been fiddling with the thing throughout the flight, barely sparing a word for Royce. Then something changed, in the last few minutes before his unfortunate stomach-upset.
Royce sighed. “You were about to tell me the Most Important Thing.” The capitalization was all his own.
“Right,” said Les. “Fashion has one fundamental aim: to define the subject’s relation to the background. Background is defined—”
“I don’t need a lecture,” said Royce, hastily. “I need something impressive…like the Snapping-Beetle mission.” That mission was used as a case-study in the Academy.
Les put away the tablet and turned to give Royce his full attention. “You can’t fake expertise like that,” he said. The look on his face suddenly changed to nausea.
“It’ll settle down once the shuttle stops maneuvering,” offered Royce helpfully.
Les replied by getting out of his seat and rushing towards the head. When he returned, the shuttle was firing thrusters to match velocities with the transfer station.
“You don’t have to come any further,” said Les. “You should continue with your mission—I can certainly make it to an Imperial ship on my own.”
Royce cleared his throat. “I’m in no rush—the meeting with the Princess’s representative can be delayed.” Indefinitely.
Les just reached for the tablet again. But, instead of turning it on, he held it out to Royce.
“This is the closest you’ll come to faking it,” he said. “Patterns—a selection of pieces from my mother’s wardrobe for the last two cycles. Would have been three, but, well, I’ve been stuck down here without communications for so long.”
And what the hell am I supposed to do with patterns?
“You’ll have access to a syntha-poly extrusion printer in the Palace,” Les continued. “Just plug-and-print. The dresses should more than satisfy the princess’s appetite for Imperial Haute-Couture, despite being made of synthetic polymers.”
“I…I don’t think your mother will approve of you handing over her sartorial secrets. To me of all people.”
Les shrugged. “Then don’t tell her.”
“I had been hoping for…tips and tricks, that kind of thing.”
“Sorry,” said Les. “All I’ve got is lectures, which you don’t want to listen to. And anyway, we’re out of time—I have a ship to catch.”
The shuttle’s micro-rotations stilled and its axes came into alignment with the station’s. Les immediately pushed himself off the seat and started floating down the corridor towards the shuttle’s exit.
With a muttered curse, Royce hurled himself after the man.
He’d almost caught up to him when Les gave a strangled cry, and clapped a hand over his neck. The sudden movement resulted in an uncontrolled spin. People were starting to notice, but Royce was far more concerned about the fact that Les wasn’t trying to correct his motion.
An arms-length away from him, Royce reached out and grabbed his ex’s shoulder, pulling him towards himself till Les rested against his chest. Tremors were running through Les’s frame, and his eyes were rolled up into his skull.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Royce gestured to the shuttle attendant standing uncertainly beside the exit hatch. “Medical emergency,” said Royce. “Get that open!”
“Yes, sir,” said the attendant, and hauled the heavy door upwards.
His nostrils were immediately assaulted by the unmistakable station-pong of bodies and recycled air. He didn’t allow himself time to get used to the environment. Instead, he grabbed Les, swung him into a spaceman’s hold, and pushed himself down the last length of shuttle corridor.
“Our agent is still on Baldessh.”
“Do you think he will? Return, that is?”
“Yes, and with evidence. Imperial Intelligence will even expedite the process by a task-force to extract their errant agent.”
“Do you think the Spymaster suspects…?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
-Transcript, Casual Conversation, Trinity Prime 20.2994.11
SPACE-STATION, BALDASSHI PLANETARY SPACE
The transition to artificial gravity was gradual as the station’s mass-gradient exerted itself. Royce came to rest against the station’s nadir-surface, the “floor”, and allowed himself a space of four heartbeats to scan his immediate surroundings.
The corridor opened out into a large semi-circular waiting-area. Six other shuttle-birthing corridors disgorged a continuous stream of passengers that fought for space with the lush blue foliage of numerous potted air-exchangers. Here and there he could see the black uniforms of Kovan security forces amongst the crowd and, rarer, the blue stripes of Baldasshi’s own security.
The Emperor's New Clothes (Royce Ree #1) Page 3