Princess of the Void ch 46 - Listening Post

Grant follows his wife—now in a form-fitting tank top and her promised itty-bitty shorts, both in scarlet—out of the lift, and along the curving ring of the hab level to the rec center. Every Taiikari they pass stops their chatter or their tasks to acknowledge her somehow. Navy marines set aside their hand carts and snap salutes. Civilians and specialists pause their gossip and consultations to issue waist-deep bows and calls of “Majesty.”

He’s already unnerved by the “sire”s and the bows that get thrown his way. When he becomes actual Taiikari royalty, and they become compulsory, he might lose it.

The deference continues into the gymnasium, where Sykora returns the hails as the two of them step past the two-tiered main floor into a smaller, private room off the side of the central chamber.

“I am so proud of us. Look at this.” Sykora steps into the room. “I was half convinced we were about to spend the whole evening in bed and we’re actually working out.”

Grant looks around the mirror-lined room. Beyond the elegant banners and hexagonal panels of dark glass, it almost reminds him of a Maekyon free-weight room—the only nod to the science-fiction future that his life has become is the stationary bike, whose front wheel is a glowing, compact gravity generator. “This is nice,” he says. “Is this your private workout room?”

“Mine and the rest of the command group’s. Hyax’s heavy bag is over there in the corner.” Sykora gestures to a threadbare leather-lined cylinder hanging from a chain. “There’s some gear in here you can use, I’m sure. Our deadlift bars might be your preacher curl bars, but we’ll make it work.”

Grant ruffles her hair as he steps onto the scale by the entrance. Its dial spins to a figure in kilograms, and he does some quick mental math.

His brow furrows.

He’s been eating, but he hasn’t been eating this much. And he and the Princess have been engaging in enthusiastically sweaty cardio.

“Grantyde? What’s the matter?” Sykora’s in a deep couch stretch against the burgundy-painted wall, watching him with concern. His perturbation must be showing on his face.

“Those longevity pill things I’ve been taking,” he says. Do they have side effects? On, like, weight?”

She switches legs and sinks into her lunge again. “They shouldn’t.”

I just—I’ve gained a lot more weight than I was expecting. Maybe it’s a dietary thing.

“Well, yes, dove.” She grins. “You came in a bit skinny, you know. Now you’re eating right. Like a Navy nobleman, not a working stiff. I don’t think I sampled the best of Maekyon cuisine when I was on your world. It was mostly some kind of meat-and-oat slurry.” She pulls a face at the memory. “Here on the Pike, we optimize for health and strength.”

“Huh.” He pinches his stomach.

Sykora stands up and drops into a forward fold. “And of course you’ve gained about 20% more weight just by being on the Pike.”

“What? Oh, shit.” He gazes at the dial between his feet. “The gravity’s different here, isn’t it?.”

“Clever Maekyonite.” She straightens out and extends her arms up toward the chamber’s vaulted ceiling. “The Pike’s gravity generators are calibrated to Taiikar. And—I looked this up, because I was curious—Maekyon’s gravity is 84 percent of Taiikar’s. Haven’t you wondered why you’re filling out here and there, without stepping into the gym?”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I have.” Her eyebrows wiggle. “You don’t squeeze your ass as often as I do.”

“My muscles have been a little sore, I guess. But I thought that was just all the sex we’ve been having.”

“Not just sex,” Sykora says. “Sex with a weighted vest on.”

“Is the gravity difference going to cause any issues?” Grant joins in on the sit-and-reach his wife is doing. “Like are my knees going to fall apart?”

“Not as long as you stay consistent with your medical check-ups. I imagine the techs are preparing joint and tendon-strengthening enhancements for you. Can you tug on these?” She extends her arms.

He takes them and pulls his wife into a deep forward stretch. The resulting smoky groan would stir something in him, if the woman making it hadn’t just drained him dry before their workout. He releases Sykora’s wrists and she sits back. “Gods of the Firmament. I needed that. Okay.” She hops to her feet. “It’s deadlift time. Grab that bar for me, handsome?”

Grant pulls the indicated barbell down from the rack and sets it on the bar jack atop the lifting platform. “I was picturing a more futuristic setup,” he says.

“Oh, there’re all kinds of clever toys and gadgets, if you’re into that. You can take a tour of the bigger room out there and see everything.” Sykora tugs a heavy plate from its peg. The muscles in her arms shift and stand out. “But I say why mess with perfection, right? Two things that our bodies got right on their own: fucking and lifting.”

She crouches to load the bar, and gives her thighs a light slap as she rises. “If anyone should stress about their body, it’s me. Fifteen cycles out of the weight room with lightened gravity. I’ve gotten a bit flabby. This’ll be a rough first set.”

Grant looks with alarm from the other side of the bar, where he’s helping her load. “You’re not trying to lose weight, are you?”

“Oh?” She smirks and sways over to bump him with her hip. “Is my husband worried about the wagon?”

“I mean… you can look however you want, of course you can, but—”

She chuckles and slides a collar along the bar’s sleeve to cinch the plates in place. “Don’t fret, dove. I’m hoping to put a couple of kilos on, not take them off. We’re going for a big round caboose, big round thighs, and a nice trim tummy.”

She stands on her tiptoes and tugs his shirt. He leans down.

“Nice and trim and ready,” she murmurs, “for when my husband makes it big and round, too.”

He goes a little lightheaded.

She snickers and nudges him away from the platform. “You’re so obsessed with me, Grantyde.”

“You’re obsessed with me,” he says.

“True.” Her tail wags as she lowers herself to the bar. The hems of her shorts hug her hamstrings.

Grant beholds the symphony along the Princess’s back, the interplay of locking strength and smushing curve as she sets up. Tomorrow, they arrive in the dark above Eqtora, and this little blue woman will dismantle a democracy in the name of her distant Empress. Will he stand by and watch it happen? Will he abet it?

Yes, he realizes, as Sykora hisses air out and her muscles fire and her blue butt flexes beneath her little shorts.

Yes, he’ll do what he can to bend Eqtora’s knee to the Empire. He’s told himself it’s because he wants to reduce the harm where he can, to ensure that the billions of aliens on the other side of the sweep are ushered into their new lives—their lives as subjects of the Empress—as painlessly as possible.

But that’s not the main reason. He can’t lie to himself about that.

The main reason is it’ll make his wife happy.

***

Sergeant Ajax’s combat-trained eyes are the first to spot the Paas System listening post. The shuttle that carries the command group and its complement of marines is a few kilometers away; Sykora’s pilot, a stuffy veteran named Arnak, magnifies it onscreen. It’s the same chilly slate color as the nebula in which it floats. From the outside, it appears like a slowly turning wagon wheel, its spoke jagged with a thicket of antennae, satellite dishes, and generators.

They coast into its membraned hangar and dock at the end of a telescoping landing pad, its suspension-bridge span like the legs of a silver harvestman spider.

Deep chill rushes through the opening shuttle door, and Grant is newly grateful for the thermal poncho Sykora insisted he bring. A staff of white-jacketed researchers, engineers, and soldiers gather at the walkway’s end to bow and applaud as the Princess and her servants disembark. She bows back. “Citizens. The culmination of your efforts is nearly here. Everything that follows is thanks to your unrecognized, remote toil.” She stands tall. “Is Administrator Oorta here?”

A brick-colored Taiikari woman hurries forward. “That’s me, your Majesty. Such, such an honor to welcome you.”

“The honor is mine, Administrator.” Sykora smiles patiently as Oorta lays another bow onto the stack. “I look forward to meeting the community you’ve gathered. If you’d care to lead on?”

“Of course, Majesty. Of course.” Oorta scurries ahead of the party. The white-clad science team parts like ocean surf to let Sykora’s scarlet-and-black party through.

Grant feels their fascinated gazes clinging to him. Perhaps word came to them of the Princess’s giant, but none of them have seen him in the flesh before. He thought he was used to it by now, this attention, but the sterile, clinical walls and the hushed observers send chills along his skin.

The whole place reminds him of Archer West. Reminds him of his last days on Maekyon.

“Before we decamp to Yuvik, as its inhabitants have named it, I’d like to introduce you to someone.” Oorta makes a cutting turn into a large conference room and takes point position at a horseshoe-shaped table, its chrome surface ringed with coffee and tea stains. The command group takes its seats across its compass—their marine guards stay standing. There’s a sheaf of papers on the Administrator’s chair, which she surreptitiously slips to the floor as she sits. It’s clear this room has been cleaned to the best of its harried occupants’ ability. “It took a few rounds of steadily increasing incentives, but one of our guests has volunteered to be fitted with a language recomposition implant.”

“That’s the thing I have?” Grant whispers to Sykora. She nods.

“She’s offered her services as your guide into the community,” Oorta says. “If you wish, Majesty.”

“That’s quite considerate of her, Administrator,” Sykora says. “We’d be honored to meet her.”

“Reckon that’d be my cue.”

Grant turns around and beholds his first Eqtoran.

She’s lightly dressed, despite the chill of the facility, in a matching linen halter and pants, worn beneath an embroidered duster with its its sleeves rolled up to expose her thickly sculpted arms. A hole in the back of the garment allows her blubbery tail through. Her fringe lays to one side across her head, like a punky side-shave. She waves. “Howzit, folks.”

The command group stands as the Eqtoran tromps into the room. Her thick leather boots give a vibrating rumble to her approach. She’s as tall and broad as the hologram suggested she’d be. And just as the command group surmised, Grant is the first Imperial citizen she approaches.

“Finally a fella I don’t got to strain my neck to talk to. Name’s Ipqen. Ipqen-mek-Taqa.” She extends her hand, palm angled skyward.

Grant haltingly takes it. Ipqen-mek-Taqa chuckles at his uncertainty. “Lesson one, folks. Take the hand, turn it vertical, then bump forearms. Like this.”

Grant finishes the gesture. “I’m Grantyde,” he says. “Prince of the Black Pike. This is my wife and the Princess of the Pike, Sykora.”

There’s a silty clatter as Sykora hops onto the table, which brings her up almost to Ipqen’s eye level. She holds her hand out in the same odd fashion Ipqen did. “An honor to meet you, Ipqen.”

“Ah. I hadn’t—well.” Ipqen bumps forearms with Sykora, though there’s a hesitation to the movement this time. “Guess I can’t be too surprised that an Empire has royalty. Your Majesty.” She looks to Grant. “Do I bow?”

Grant holds up a hand. “Really no need. It’s all right.”

Sykora gives him a concerned glance, then refocuses on their guest. She departs the tabletop and sits behind it. “What do you do on Eqtora?”

Ipqen steps into the center of the horseshoe, and puts her big paving-slab hands in her duster’s pockets. “I’m a physicist.”

Grant glances at her thick arms, the banded tattoos across them. “Really?”

“Yep. At the Nquei Conservatory on Harok. Or I was, anyway.” She scratches her snout. “Don’t know if they’ll let me back in when I don’t speak the language anymore. They asked for volunteers. Offered a title to anyone who’d do it. So I guess I’m Lady Ipqen now, but that was incidental.” She taps her forehead. “The real reason I got the damn thing stuck up in here is cause I wanted to grill these people on how the gravity’s being generated. Not that anyone’s fessing up. No knowhow. Or maybe just no inclination.”

“Oh, you give me a half hour.” Waian brightens. “I’ll blow the top of your head off.”

Ipqen laughs, a contralto rumble. “All right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Hyax has a funny look on her face. This might be the first time Grant’s seen the Brigadier’s tail wag.

“Theuqa—you’ll meet her, she’s a linguist—is drooling, trying to get me to recall Eqtoran so she can get more footholds into the language,” Ipqen says. “But the medical team kept going on about some kinda disorder. Whatcha call it—cerebrolinguistic tangling.”

“They warned me about the same thing.” Grant gives a commiserating smile. “Sounds bad, huh?”

“Sure does.” Ipqen scoots a chair out and sits down carefully—her seat is clearly custom-built, but it still doesn’t have enough surface area for her hindquarters. “So I suppose I’ve been—Well, I don’t exactly have anywhere to belong anymore.” The edge of her crest flutters. “Can’t really talk to any of my people, don’t really know what to say to any of yours. So if there’s some sorta use for me, I’m happy for it.”

“It’s a brave thing you’ve done, Ipqen-mek-Taqa,” Grant says. “The same thing happened to me, but I wasn’t so close to others of my people. I can’t imagine how lonely it must feel.”

Ipqen shrugs.

“We’ll work to bring all of it back, as soon as the pathways are settled,” Sykora says. “It’s much easier to learn a language the second time, I’m told. You’ll glom onto it at speed. And thanks to the medical longevity we’re bringing with us, you’ll have as long as you need.”

“Yeah. The crew’s been telling me,” Ipqen says. “You’re getting ready to introduce yourselves, right?”

“That’s right,” Grant says.

“And you want me to hear you out? Give you a preview, maybe?”

“Yes, Lady Ipqen,” Sykora says, and Grant notices the little flinch the alien physicist makes at the title. “First contact is a precarious time. Any insight you might have on our approach, we’d welcome.”

“Go ahead, then.” Ipqen rests her cheek on her palm. “Tell me what we’re in for.”

She listens, with sober silence, to Sykora tell her about the Empress, and the Empire, and the coming of the Black Pike to Eqtora.

“This is a new era for your entire civilization,” Sykora finishes. “An era when your horizons will stretch further than you’ve ever imagined. The future has come, and you are alive to see it. You are not alone in the firmament, and the Empire that has kept you safe while you came of age is ready to joyously receive you.”

A few beats of unspoken absorption from the big gray woman seated before them. She sits up and folds her hands in her lap. “So you’re here to conquer my people.”

“We’re here to welcome your people,” Sykora says, unflappably. “As the latest piece in a tapestry that spans the entire firmament. The galaxy you’re about to discover is peaceful and prosperous. And united.”

“Okay.” Ipqen’s big ice-blue eyes flick to the sizable rifle hanging off Ajax’s shoulder. “Awful lot of guns for a peaceful galaxy.”

Sykora’s smiling charm stays on. “Peace is too precious to go undefended.”

“We’ve been observing your civilization for several Eqtoran generations,” Grant says. “And we’re encouraged by what we see. Pious, civically minded, interdependent. Your culture will fit perfectly.”

Sykora holds up a finger. “There’s sure to be friction, of course. But we’re willing to work closely alongside your council to address any sour notes that may arise if your leaders will work with us.”

“Mmm.” Ipqen’s face falls. “Yeah. Uh. So, take my words with a dram of vquek, because I’ve always tried to tune it out, right? Just sit in my little academic corner away from the council and the politics. But I don’t think it’s gonna go the way you’re hoping.”

Sykora’s brows lower. “How do you mean?”

“I wish I thought otherwise. Honest.” Ipqen’s sad smile shows her rows of teeth. “You seem… kind, I guess. Heart in the right place, anyway. And me, I’m drooling over peeling your stuff open and seeing how it ticks. I took the offer of your implant because it seems clear, looking at all of this, the way the wind is blowing. But Eqtora, and the council…” She sighs. “Ah, you don’t need to listen to me. I’m just some dame, Majesties. With an education that’s about to go obsolete in a hundred ways, as soon as you make yourselves known.”

“We want to hear from you, Ipqen,” Grant says. “Anything you can give us will help.”

“Uh. Well, Majesty. I think…” Ipqen looks out the conference room window into the firmament, at the distant speck of her homeworld. A profound shade of mourning crosses her bullet-shaped face, like the shadow of a thunderhead over a meadow. Her crest droops lower along the side of her head.

“I think something terrible is going to happen,” she says.