Then he saw what he had been looking for—a woman, pushing a hover-cart, coming down a shuttle-berthing corridor to his left.
Royce smoothly pushed off from the “floor”, emerging from his corridor to make zig-zag progress at the edges of the waiting-room. The fact that he had an unconscious man slung over his shoulder attracted no little attention from the people he passed around; the crowd-cover, useful in these first few moments to shield them from the guards’ views, would rapidly become a problem.
Royce aimed the last leg of his momentum-aided travel to intercept the woman’s path before she emerged from her corridor.
“Cousin, this is an emergency. Will you sell me your cart?” Royce said as he alighted near her, partially shielded from view of the main waiting-room by the bulk of the hover-cart.
Only then did he notice the man sitting on a tow-float attached to the cart. Dressed in a Baldasshi Peacekeeper’s uniform, with medals pinned to his chest.
Royce’s adrenalin spiked till he noticed the man’s condition—sunken and frail, his head bobbing on a neck whose muscles were too weak to hold it fully upright. A mottled grey-and-black crow was perched on the cart’s handle, its head tucked under its wing.
Tow-carts were generally used to transport the disabled. The marine was retired, obviously, and helpless. Senile, too, if their luck held.
Royce relaxed. “Cousin? I need your cart,” he said again.
“What? No!”
“I’m willing to pay you anything you want.”
“My dada needs the cart. Call the medics.” The woman was getting annoyed.
“I….”
The old man raised a feeble hand, beckoned Royce closer. Royce crouched, meeting the man’s rheumy gaze—and was surprised by the amount of intelligence lurking there. The retired soldier’s frailty did not, obviously, extend to his mind.
Shit.
Suddenly, he felt his collar being grabbed. With surprising strength, the ex-Peacekeeper drew Royce’s face close to him. Royce didn’t fight it—for one, that might break the old man. For the other, anything that looked more like family-drama and less like fugitive-drama, he was willing to go along with.
“Da!” said the woman, coming around to their side and crouching down. “Da, let him go!”
The old man shook his head. “Offworlder,” he whispered, and paused to take a breath. “Are you in trouble with the Kova?”
Royce glanced up at the woman; her eyes were frightened—she’d caught her father’s whispered accusation. The crow was awake now, taking the scene in with its beady crow-eyes.
Royce went with his instinct.
“Yes,” he said. “And probably with your High Command too.”
“Black, black sheep,” wheezed the old marine. “Sold us out to the Kova. Child, give him the cart.”
“Da!”
“My cart,” snapped the man. “Empty it.”
“But Da, how will I—”
“If I may make a suggestion,” said Royce, as he reached into his belt-pocket, “a porter will be more than happy to transport you and the—” he glanced at the old man’s shoulder-tabs, “lieutenant, for a small fee.” He then pressed a couple of hard plastic rectangles—two of his untraceable credit-chips—into the woman’s hand.
She looked down, saw the number displayed on the readouts. Her eyes grew wide. “Um. Alright. Yes. A porter.”
It took a few minutes to unload everything from the hover-cart, strap Les’s still-unconscious frame to the tow-pallet. Once the transfer was complete, the lieutenant’s daughter made a call to the transportation service.
Royce thanked the two, and left them sitting on their luggage, as he began to push the cart towards the mouth of the corridor.
“Give ‘em hell!” called old man after them.
“Squaak!” That was the crow, obviously in agreement.
Despite his mounting panic over Les’s condition, Royce grinned to himself, and gave the Peacekeeper a half-salute.
7 DAYS AGO
“The near-religious zeal with which each civilization protects its FTL-variant makes any kind of comparative study impossible. The whole thing might as well be magic.”
-Introduction to Spaceflight Mechanics
193rd Edition
VENTILATION DUCT, SPACE-STATION, BALDASSHI PLANETARY SPACE
“Hush, hush now, you’re safe,” whispered Royce as Les slowly came to with a groan. His body was propped up against Royce’s chest, his legs trapped under Royce’s to stop the thrashing. Royce knew it would take his ex a few moments to adjust to the surroundings.
Once he did, “Another ventilation duct?” asked Les. “Where the hell are we, Royce?”
“In deep shit.”
Les struggled in his grasp, tried to sit up.
“Stop!” commanded Royce. “I’ve got three probes stuck into that thing in your skull. If you pull any of them loose….”
Les’s struggles ceased immediately. “What happened?”
“Your drive-core was a fake,” said Royce. “The chip didn’t see a Baldasshi FTL field once it got to zero-gee. And as far as I can tell, that triggered a failure-condition.”
“The Kova were leaving,” said Les. “Told you it was important.” The last came out as a whisper. “They can’t legally take the core, but they took it anyway, switched it out for a fake.”
“So it seems,” said Royce.
“I should be dead.” Les’s voice was calm. A false calm, Royce knew, born of shock and an operative’s training.
“Yeah well the drive’s not the only thing that’s fake,” said Royce. “Chip’s software is a hack-job. I reset it with jerry-rigged probes. But we need to get out of null-gee before it recalibrates. In…um…Maybe forty-five minutes?”
“Can you deactivate it?” asked Les.
“Not without better equipment.”
Seemingly oblivious—or uncaring—of their awkward positions, Les moved his body to a slightly more comfortable orientation, careful to keep his head still. In doing so, his hand brushed lightly against Royce’s leg. Royce bit back a groan at the sudden contact. Why is it that you can manhandle him three ways to Trinity to get him in here, prop him up between your goddamn legs and touch him everywhere when he’s unconscious without twitching, but you react like a virgin schoolgirl when he touches you accidentally?
And reacting he was. There was no way Les was not feeling Royce pressing against his hip. Royce squirmed in embarrassment, pulling away slightly from Les’s body.
Les cleared his throat. “Um. Where are we? Besides ‘in deep shit in a ventilation duct’?”
So they were both going to ignore it.
“Above the starboard hull of the space-station,” said Royce, taking care to keep his tone even. “Right where the Imperial cruiser should be.”
“We missed the ship?”
“Yup.”
“Kova have taken the station?”
“Yup.”
“We need to get back to the planet, within the hour, or my head explodes?”
“Yup.”
“We can’t get through Kovan security like this?”
“Nope.”
Les sighed. “I’m fucked.”
“We’re fucked,” corrected Royce. He could feel Les twitching against his chest; the man would have twisted around to confront Royce, eyes flashing, had it not been for the probes stuck into his head. Royce smiled ruefully.
“I’m not leaving you,” said Royce.
“I-”
“No. Think, Les. What would you do if you discovered than an Imperial Agent was being set-up—fatally—to steal tech that will start a war? Could you turn your back on a brother-agent, continue onwards with your mission, in such a circumstance?”
Les relaxed. Then, surprisingly, he chuckled. “You’re right, of course, but I might not have been quite so…touchy-feely, full-body-contact, with a brother agent.”
So they were going to talk about it after all.
“I can’t…,”
Royce trailed off. Then he cleared his throat. “You were having mini-seizures by the time I dragged you in here. I had to restrain you while I dealt with the chip. But I didn’t touchy-feely you, if that’s any help.”
Les clucked his tongue. “You passed up a perfectly good opportunity to grope me? That doesn’t sound like the Royce Ree I knew.”
And just like that, Royce’s good mood evaporated. “The Royce Ree you knew was married to you.”
Les was silent for a time. When he spoke again, his tone was absolutely neutral. “You were right. As always. The Emperor does not assign missions directly to covert-ops, regardless of whose mother he dines with. I assume you have a plan?”
Royce sighed. “Sort of. I need more information. From you, to start.”
Les settled back against Royce’s chest, careful to keep his hands to himself. “I’d been driving a desk for months at HQ. It was getting old. I put my name on the field-ops roster again. Got assigned a watch-and-report on Baldasshi…about a standard-year ago. Then, six months in, a deep-cover courier showed up. Had all the right authentication, the passphrases—I ran all the checks. I’m not gullible, Royce.” The last was a plea.
“No, you’re not. This whole thing stinks of something way above our pay-grade. The programming on the chip’s shit. The hardware’s real. So what happened next?”
“We met in my rented apartment for the implant-surgery. A quick nanobot job. Not quite professional, but I was out of it for most of the time. After the op, the courier handed over my cover ID at the research lab, then left. I started ‘work’ a week after.”
“If you’re caught or killed,” said Royce, frowning, “there’s no plausible deniability in the situation. The Spymaster couldn’t simply claim you went rogue.”
Just the mere suggestion that the Emperor had ordered a drive stolen…half the Houses would turn on him. Civil war was a very real possibility, and once Trinity started fracturing from within…
Les was shivering. Not surprising. The vent was getting cooler as the station gradually transitioned to a simulated Baldessh night.
Abruptly, Royce made a decision. “Alright. We revert back to my mission’s cover—Imperial couturiers answering the Princess’s summons. We go down to the planet, reset your chip. You then steal a ship with a real FTL drive so you can get off the surface safely.”
Meanwhile, I hunt down the fucker that put that thing in you, and castrate him with a rusty spoon—
“While giving fashion advice to the Princess of Baldessh?” asked Les.
“Um…yes,” said Royce. “There’s something you should know about the…timing….”
“Yes?”
“I was supposed to meet the Princess three days ago.”
“His Imperial Majesty will not send a task-force into what is soon to become a Kovan warzone, not to rescue an AWOL Agent, regardless of His personal fondness for you and your family.”
-Response to Letter of Petition from House Anther
VISA AND IMMIGRATION OFFICE, SPACE-STATION, BALDASSHI PLANETARY SPACE
Bedlam ruled the space-station customs office, despite the best efforts of the Kovan guards assigned to keep order. All FTL ships had just been banned from operating in Baldasshi space.
“Idiots,” Les muttered. “If they think they can fuck with the trade Cartels—”
Royce snorted.
“Sure you don’t want to play the Master?” Les asked. “You don’t do very well in subordinate roles.”
“Nope,” said Royce. “I’m the apprentice, Master, I wouldn’t know a dholag from a whore if it bit me on the ass.”
“Such language!” Privately, Les quite agree with Royce’s assessment; his ex’s skills lay in a different arena. Those same skills, combined with Royce’s react—Les groped for a better word. Royce’s words earlier, absolved him of being a pawn in the game of Drivepolitik.
The fake Imperial Command fully absolved the Emperor. Which left Les at square one, only now the chip-imposed deadline had been moved up.
Les dragged his attention back to the issue at hand. Master Roza’nal Ter-Versha, Imperial Couturier, was three days late. He had somehow acquired an “apprentice” not mentioned in the Royal Invitation. He was missing the basic wardrobe and tools required for his role.
Also, Master Ter-Versha’s head was going to explode in exactly twenty-two minutes, unless he made it back down to the surface.
At least half of Les’s problems could be solved by the Baldasshi Immigration and Visa official, sitting five meters away. But there was another person in line, ahead of him. A Baldasshi woman, with a screaming infant in her lap. She’d burned up six minutes arguing with the official.
“No! I want it changed! I won’t have my daughter sharing a name with a traitor!”
The official, meanwhile, kept stating some “policy”, and casting half-frightened glances at the Kova guard standing behind him.
The woman looked ready to cry. “But my brother said all I needed was the form! You’re a Kova lackey, you sniveling—”
The Kova guard, standing behind the official, straightened from his bored slouch.
Oh oh.
“Sweetheart,” Les interrupted as he stepped up to the woman’s elbow. “I’m sure Cousin…,” He took in the official’s nametag, “Cousin Bower is just doing his job. Sorry, my wife gets very emotional.” Les lobbied a conspiratorial “Help me! I have to live with her!” look at the guard. Then, before anyone could recover from their surprise, he grabbed the woman’s arm and dragged her away.
“What…what are…” spluttered the woman.
“Trying to save your life,” replied Les in an undertone. The woman gave him a wide-eyed look, but allowed him to maneuver the three of them into the waiting-room.
Les seated the woman on one of the hard syntha-poly chairs, and sat down beside her.
“Look, sweetheart,” he said, “you can’t insult the Kova. They’re not…tolerant.”
The woman got his gist. She looked down at the child in her arms. “I just want to change her name,” she whispered.
“A bad name on a live baby,” said Les, “is far better than an excellent name on a dead baby.”
But before he could follow up on that with an explanation, Royce moved, a flash of dark cloth and limb. Les found himself pushed back in the chair, Royce interspersed between him and the baby.
“Oh!” said the mother, startled. “You’re fast!”
And then Les saw it – the emerald-green head of a small snake undulating out of the infant’s sleeve, its forked tongue flickering to taste the air before it.
“Cousin,” said Royce, “I hate to tell you this, but there’s a snake in your child’s undergarment.”
“That’s just her pet,” the woman replied. “Isn’t it, precious? Yes, yes it is!”
“Royce,” Les said, as his ex-husband shows no inclination to relax his threatening posture, “it’s just a pet. Not dangerous.”
“Oh, he’s venomous,” said the woman. “Aren’t you, Slither? That’s right, you are!”
“Oh, who’s a venomous little snakee-wakee then?” asked Royce, his voice taking on a ridiculous coo. Then he contorted his face into a wider-than-real smile.
The baby stopped crying in that sudden, inexplicable way babies have, and returned Royce a toothless chortle.
“He likes you!” said the woman, a smile lighting up her face for the first time. “We must be closely related! I’m third cousins with S—the Princess.”
Royce gave her a brilliant smile, then gathered the child, snake and all, up into his arms.
“Is it time, Les?” he asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “Three minutes. The next shift is gearing-up in the back. The Kova have a 15-hour day-night cycle,” Les explained to the woman. “Can’t sustain a shift for more than 4 hours. This one’s been on for almost that.”
Again, the woman gave him a wide-eyed look, and rose from the seat, arms outstretched, as if to take the grinning child away from R
oyce.
“You want your daughter’s name changed?” Royce asked, holding the baby out of her reach. “Without irritating the Kova?”
The woman nodded.
“Alright honey,” said Les, “We’ll help you. Just follow our lead, okay?”
Without giving her a chance to speak, Royce entered the lineup area again. The woman gives him a startled look, and followed immediately. Really, she had no choice – either she could follow Royce, or she could make a scene, and Les’s initial words have been sufficient, he judged, to make her wary of scenes before the Kova.
The hulking guard behind “Cousin” Bower was gone. Les followed Royce’s gaze to the guard’s back, walking towards the break-room.
Royce reached the official first. “Cousin,” he said, “we’ve got a couple of forms for you to stamp.”
The official looked up, took in the five creatures before him—Les, smiling pleasantly, the mother, the worried and nervous, Royce, avec baby. And the snake, blithely twining itself around Royce’s wrist.
Cousin Bower drew in a shuddering breath. Then he gave them a terse nod, and reached for the forms. He, too, was aware he had less than thirty seconds before the new guard would be out.
He didn’t even look at the papers, just affixed three of the precious, tamper-proof holo-stickers to them.
“There you go,” he said. Then, “good luck,” he added in an undertone. “You’d better put the pet away—Kova don’t like pets.”
“Then they’re not going to be happy,” Les murmured, “when they find yours.”
Cousin Bower’s eyes widened. Sensing something wrong, a little white rat peeked out of the man’s sleeve.
“How did…?”
“He pokes his head out every time you look over your shoulder,” Royce offered. “Do you have anywhere…safe?”
The Emperor's New Clothes (Royce Ree #1) Page 4