Princess of the Void ch 38 - Protestation

“Crew of the Black Pike.”

Sykora stands at the command deck’s balustraded edge. Her voice booms out across the sweep-lit bridge. “Once again, we’ve been tasked with driving the Yellow Comets from above Ramex. Once again, we are en route in the Empress’s name to defend her subjects. But our remit has changed. As have our methods.”

A nearly palpable shift in the air as a hunter’s anticipation ripples through the assembled Taiikari officers. Grant feels it rising in him, too, loathe as he is to admit it.

“No hailing,” Sykora says. Her topcoat’s ebony fasteners glisten in the red-and-blue combat lighting. Her hair drifts about her—they’re pre-emptively zero G. “No warning, no chances to flee. From this moment on, any fool who still flies the Yellow Comet flag is to be destroyed on sight. If we need to task salvage crews to pick the shrapnel from orbit, so be it. The Empire is finished with the Comets. We have been entrusted to finish them. Glory to the Pike.”

“Glory to the Pike!” The cry returns to her as one.

Her chin is high. “Glory to the Empress.”

“Glory to the Empress!”

“Signatures in focus, Majesty.” The reedy voice of the navigatrix. “Three corvettes.”

“Combat trajectory,” Sykora says. “The lead ship.” Her eyes burn beneath the brim of her tricorne. “Ram it.”

The Pike screams from the tear it’s rent in reality and plows into the frontmost corvette, like a spear striking a sparrow. A great pale flash fills the monitor; when it abates, the first corvette has been obliterated. Nothing remains but a cloud of whizzing shrapnel and combusting gas.

Sykora sweeps her arm toward the two remaining corvettes, which are already flaring orange on Waian’s infrared screen. “Fire at will.”

Grant beholds the full power of the ZKZ Black Pike.

A storm of flame and magnetized steel. The vessel rumbles below his magnetized boots. The corvettes’ membranes fizz and burst into scintillating shards. The metal beneath boils away into slag and smoke.

Bare seconds. Dozens of pirates are reduced to charred meat.

Brigadier Hyax’s stentorian voice rings out. “All targets eliminated.”

The bridge erupts in cheers and applause. “Sweep outta that one, bitches,” an ensign yells, to a chorus of laughter.

Sykora isn’t watching the spreading cloud of shrapnel and vapor. She’s watching Grant. Her expression isn’t celebratory—it’s anxious.

He remembers the line of bodies. The workers marching back into the factory to boil.

He gets to his feet and joins in the applause. “Let’s fucking go,” he cries.

Sykora smiles, big as the horizon.

***

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.” The spindly clerk adjusts his anticomps as he places his folio of papers on the command deck table. “And thank you, Majesty, for furnishing the Pike as our meeting place.”

Sykora nods. “It is an honor, Clerk Raelix.”

“A great honor,” Governess Garuna adds.

Sykora’s annoyed huff is quiet enough that only Grant, standing at her shoulder, can hear it.

This is the third time Sykora’s met with the clerk handling Garuna’s protestation against her since it began last cycle. With Grant’s grinning help, she spun up a long, stuffy thread about operations over Ramex, to force them to come to her this time.

Their confidence was high, when the protestation came from Garuna and not Narika, that this would be a quick and easy dismissal. But with every plodding meeting, Sykora’s nerves have grown and Garuna’s confidence has asserted itself further. With no links to Trimond’s wrongdoing, Sykora’s been denied her clearest defense. Things are dragging out.

“I hope today we might be able to conclude all this,” Sykora says. “My management of the sector is under threat by these interruptions. The extermination of the Yellow Comets is only halfway complete, by my Brigadier’s estimates.”

“You needn’t worry too much, I’d think, Majesty.” Garuna side-eyes her. “You’ll have less sector to manage soon.”

Sykora’s frown is deeply cut. Garuna’s been sneaking these jabs in as her morale has grown.

“I will not be passing judgment on this case today,” Raelix says. “That’s not why I’ve called this meeting, I’m afraid.”

Garuna huffs. “Do we need to wait longer?”

“No.” Raelix steps to one side and presses a button on his tablet. The table holoprojector lights up and displays a two-dimensional camera feed. The distance renders the figure within grainy. But even with the low detail, he recognizes her.

He recognizes her from his wife’s wall.

This is Empress Zithra XIX.

She looks like the portrait. Only with more pronounced crow’s feet and less sleep. Her A pair of glasses balance on her nose.

Sykora and Garuna simultaneously go as pale as paper.

“—some cream in that,” the Empress is saying, to someone offscreen. “Thank you. Okay.” She sits the rest of the way down and adjusts the camera facing her. “Greetings, clerk…?”

“Raelix, High Majesty.” Clerk Raelix bows low enough his face nearly touches the table.

“Case number, Clerk Raelix?”

“Sureph 3886, High Majesty.”

“Uhhhhhh huh.” Empress Zithra XIX clicks her tongue. “Here we are. The exo assassinations.”

“Yes, High Majesty.”

“Just a moment…” The sound of a keyboard clacking off-camera. “Okay. The matter of the dispute between the Princess of the Black Pike and the Governess of Ptolek. I’ve read the brief, and reviewed the arguments from each side, and skimmed the letters of support—Cousin Garuna certainly has plenty of those—but it occurs to me that this has all been rather complicated by the events of Marquess Paxea’s execution and the bringing of protestation by a Governess in Narika’s name, rather than by Narika herself. Ultimately, I’ve decided that it needs a bit of further elucidation. Some messy business, eh? Greetings, cousins. I believe I had the chance to speak with you both at the last Void Convocation.”

Sykora bows at the waist. “Yes, High Majesty.”

Garuna joins her. “You did, High Majesty.”

“Splendid.” The Empress sits back. “Let’s hear from Cousin Garuna first, and then Cousin Sykora will have her turn.”

“High Majesty. I, ah. I.” Garuna looks like a fawn beholding a tractor trailer coming her way. In her defense, Grant’s warrior wife barely looks better.

The Empress blinks placidly. “Take your time, cousin.”

“High Majesty,” Garuna says. “The actions of the Void Princess have been materially damaging to the operations of Ptolek. In her investigations, she took power that oughtn’t have been hers. She repeatedly refused the counsel of the planetside nobility, and she illegally took control of the holdings of one of my exo baronesses, which—”

“This would be Tri-something,” the Empress prompts. “Trimond.”

“Yes, High Majesty.”

“Who’s under trial herself, at the moment.”

“Under trial, High Majesty, but still in process. And I would note that she has a petition to censure the Void Princess currently routing through the clerk’s office.”

The Empress folds her hands. “So noted. Continue.”

“High Majesty, the refineries on Ptolek have been processing more and more every cycle. I’ve sent you our numbers. The Void Princess’s insistence on micromanagement has coincided with a refusal to properly control the unionists who constantly threaten the growth of our industry.” Garuna points a shaky but accusatory finger at Sykora. “The result is our first decacycle since records began of negative growth.”

“Because of the work stoppage,” the Empress supplies. “And the attack, I suppose.”

“Just so, High Majesty. Sykora failed to prevent either. Narika has volunteered to resume control of the system in case of protestation, and it is the recommendation of myself and my peerage that she does so.”

The Empress leans on her armrest. “All right. Cousin Sykora?”

“High Majesty.” Sykora’s bow rises back up with her little shoulders square and her expression of command back on. “Garuna doesn’t know what she’s talking about and is grossly unfit to run her world.”

Garuna’s eyes bug.

“It’s become too personal,” Sykora says. “This unionist talk has been a steady stream throughout my investigation, even once the idea of their involvement became farcical. It’s moved from stewardship to vendetta. I’ve reviewed her security measures. She’s spending more resources on covering the inefficiencies created by her discontent workers than it would take to keep them willingly obedient.”

“The more we give, the more they’ll demand. Empress, her husband was an energy refiner on Maekyon,” Garuna says. “If anyone’s getting too personal—”

“If their demands outstrip the losses incurred through security and disobedience, we’ll confer and change course. Not before. Your campaign against the union has proven shortsighted and self-serving.” Sykora angles herself to speak to Garuna. “We’re not keeping order for the sake of your ego. We’re keeping order to maximize exo refinement, minimize expenses, and provide safe, comfortable lives to our subjects. The workers are not a hostile nation to conquer. They are your utilities and citizens. And there are real culprits. Trimond is surely not the only exo baroness engaged in this smuggling while you’ve been squabbling with your workers. I need a Governess in place who I can trust to ferret these people out.” She bows once more to the Empress. “I regret that I have no further comment, High Majesty. But the conclusion to be drawn seems clear to my eyes.”

The Empress stares.

She glances downward and types something out on her unseen keyboard. “All right. Sykora carries it. Hew to the void princess in all matters related to this case. The Governess is to be reassigned. I’ll accept a shortlist of proposed replacements, Cousin Sykora, if you care to provide one.”

“But—” Garuna’s tail bristles. “But High Majesty, the protestations of my fellow noblewomen—by sheer volume, surely—”

“Final decision, Cousin Garuna. It seems to me you’ve done a splendid job getting Ptolek’s exo industry set up, but we’ll need someone else for day-to-day maintenance. The best thing would be to move you to another promising extraction site and have you break ground there. Cousin Sykora, kindly send the Governess these survey records of unoccupied resource worlds I’m looking at, if you judge them up-to-date. Cousin Garuna, ranked choice of reassignment preference within the next cycle, please. File it with your Void Princess.”

“High Majesty, you can’t—”

Zithra XIX removes her glasses. The transformation is instantaneous. It’s as though the Empress’s face has been pulled off along with them, revealing the titanic steel edifice of autocracy beneath the flesh.

Grant thought his wife had a scary Icy Royalty face. It’s a snowflake compared to the glacier that now bears down on Garuna.

“I can,” the Empress says.

“I am sorry,” Garuna whispers.

The Empress hologram’s fist-sized eyes blink. She slides her spectacles back on. “Apology accepted, Cousin Garuna. Chin up, yes? I’m seeing some very promising reports outer-spinwise. You might check on this Crassus-613 one.” She taps something on her desk. “This mineral survey puts a great deal of Neodymium there. Can never have too much Neodymium. I think you’ll fit nicely. Get it producing on a level near Ptolek and we’ll call this mismanagement here an honest mistake.” She steeples her hands and rests her chin on them. “That’s all, I should think. Thank you, cousins. Glory to—”

“High Majesty.” Sykora steps forward. “I apologize deeply for the interruption and for taking more of your time. But I must petition you about a related matter; it cannot wait.”

The Empress’s hand twitches to her glasses. She purses her lips. She adjusts them up her nose. “Very well, Cousin Sykora. Your judiciousness has earned you that.”

“High Majesty, this is my husband Grantyde, Prince Consort of the Black Pike.” Sykora indicates Grant. His heart stops for a few beats.

“I noticed him. Difficult not to. You’ve found a tall one. Well met, Prince Consort.”

“Bow,” Sykora hisses. “Bow deep.”

He does. “High Majesty.”

“Grantyde has been my most stalwart companion, who has inspired me and kept faith in me, who has been indispensable as I’ve, uh, as I’ve gone about this case, and…” Sykora’s shaking like a leaf. “And the judiciousness is at least halfway his. He saved my life on Ptolek II. He killed the traitor Thror of Entmok. I request, with great humility, that he be freed from my possession and awarded citizenship.”

“What? Awarded—” The Empress squints. “Ahh, of course. He’s a husband-of-the-void, isn’t he.”

“Yes, High Majesty. From a Class-H planet called Maekyon.”

A grin tugs on the Empress’s lips. “You’re rather gobsmacked with him, Cousin.”

“High Majesty—”

“It’s all right. He’s a looker. And it sounds as though the two of you have found a good equilibrium. You trust him?”

“Beyond any reproach, High Majesty.”

The Empress furrows her brow. In the background, Grant could swear he hears a pen clicking and unclicking a few times.

“Right,” she says. “Let’s get him set up as a vassal and citizen of the Taiikari Empire for a probationary period of one decacycle. I’ll have a Marquess Palatine reach out to you after that to set up a review, and we’ll make it permanent. Clerk Raelix: get that written up and sent to my desk for the seal. Import Level Aleph, so I remember.”

“O my Empress thank you.” Sykora drops to her knees. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

“What about the rest of them?” Grant asks.

The room freezes.

“Hmm?” The Empress looks at Grant as if she’d forgotten he was there.

“The rest of the husbands-of-the-void.”

Sykora is staring up at him, her face frozen in abject terror.

The Empress leans forward. Her forest-fire eyes peer at him over her glasses. “You really do need to do the bow and the title, Prince Consort. That’s not elective.”

He bows low. “High Majesty, what about the rest of them?”

The Empress’s expression is unmoving. The silence reminds him of the silence a Maekyonite security guard had, a long cycle ago, when he was signing an NDA.

A finger rises into the screen. The Empress rests it on her chin. “It is all rather medieval, isn’t it? One of those tough little crusty bits that hang on the edges of the larger reforms. Well, that’s frontier military for you.” She clicks her tongue. “Due a re-examination, I suppose. We’ll have to get around to that. Put a working group together, perhaps, speak to a few more Void Princesses and their husbands. But I do acknowledge the request, Citizen Grantyde. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, and for all you have done for my good cousin, the Princess of the Black Pike.”

He bows again. “Thank you for the consideration, High Majesty.”

“You’re most welcome. Well done on the bow this time.” She adjusts her robe. “Okay. That’s all, good cousins. You will, I’m sure, continue to honor me with your loyalty and your civic works. Glory to Taiikar.” She shuffles papers on her desk. “Okay. Let’s move on to—”

The feed’s cut off.

“You beautiful brave wonderful stupid dumb idiot!” Sykora leaps into Grant’s arms as the screen flickers away. “I love you, I fucking love you, you’re free, what the fuck were you thinking?” She kisses him madly. Her tail thwaps the top of his head. Her heartbeat hammers against him.

“Majesty.” Raelix clears his throat. “Perhaps I might be dismissed.”

Sykora glances past the shoulder she’s nuzzling. “Yes. Of course. Yes. Thank you, clerk. You may go as well, Governess.”

“I— uh—” Garuna’s fists open and close.

“Go, Governess,” Sykora says, “before I change my mind about the lenience I’ve granted you.” Grant feels the notches in her spine straighten as she adopts as imperious a posture as she can with her ankles wrapped around her husband. “I will send the scouting reports presently.”

Garuna scurries out of the command deck in the red-cloaked train of Clerk Raelix.

“You are the most perfect husband in the firmament,” Sykora says, “and I adore you, and also you are a lunatic. What the fuck, Grantyde?”

He shrugs helplessly. “I misjudged her. I thought—I didn’t realize she’d just be a person. I thought I’d ask.”

“She’s not just a person, you dope! She rules a half trillion lives!” Sykora shivers. “She could kill us all with a word. With a sentence, in my case.” She taps the base of her neck. “Remember?”

He shudders as he does. “It all ended up okay, though.”

“It did. Gods of the Firmament, it did. More than okay.” She laughs, bright and relieved. “Grant. My love, you’re free. You’re free to everyone. No more pretending. No more having to sweat these parties out without anticomps. You’re the first free husband-of-the-void in I don’t know how long. Ever.”

He feels in a daze. Drunk or high.

Sykora pokes his nose. “I told you, dove. Didn’t I? How wonderful you were and how wonderful she’d be to you?”

Grant’s thumb pensively rubs the stalk of his wife’s tail. She didn’t seem wonderful. She seemed busy. The ease with which she freed him was no less than the ease with which he was enslaved. And it’s occurring to him that an Empress doesn’t have to be bad for an empire to be bad. Even if Zithra were flawless, she’s one woman. Just one woman, managing the galaxy. It still makes no sense to him. It still seems abominable.

And he still doesn’t think of himself as her subject.

But his wife called it. Empress Zithra XIX has freed him. “You told me,” he says. “I should have had more faith that you knew what you were saying.”

“I knew you doubted me.” Her grin is smug. “You looked at me like I was a brainwashed little bimbo.”

“I promise, I never thought that.”

She tuts and shakes her head. “I don’t care one way or the other. You trusted me enough not to say it, and to follow my lead. And I love you for that. And I am so relieved. God.” She tips back and he releases his hold on her hips. She lies down on the conference table. Her tail swishes invitingly.

He slips up onto the surface and joins her, lying on his back. He’d be worried about this thing holding his weight, but he’s fucked Sykora on it two or three times now.

She drapes herself into his lap and happily shudders the last of her tension out. “I’m glad you got to meet her, finally,” she says.

“I am, too,” he says, and decides that’s the truth, or close to it.

“And now,” Sykora says. “Now that the conspiracy is smashed and the pirates are in disarray and my station is secure and my husband is free.” She scoots so that she’s nose-to-nose with him, straddling his stomach. “Now I am going to take you to Ramex, and we are going to make love in the sabsum springs.”

The conspiracy isn't smashed, not if Thror was telling the truth. The conspiracy is wider than any of them had guessed. But Grant grins anyway. His prudence finally relents its grip on the rest of him. His cute little wife is lying on him and he finally met the Empress and she's a bureaucrat, not a monster, and that's something, anyway. And they're safe, for now. He lets himself be happy.

“Do you—” Sykora’s nose rubs his jaw. “I think we have time, now. If you want to. Now that this isn’t hanging over us. We could find a night. And a day.”

Her breath is damp on his neck. He sees the gleam of her fangs.

They’ve talked about this a few times in the wake of the Ptolek action. They’ve talked about the breeding bite. Every time, he’s demurred. He sees himself a hectocycle from now, the two marks on his neck. Sykora’s forever, by joyful choice this time. And he wants it. He does. But the thought has opened strange little holes in him, and opens them again now.

And he thinks he’s brave enough to tell her why.

“Not yet,” he says, carefully. “I’ve, um. I have a proposition.” He rolls over so they’re on their sides. He puts his hand on her hip.

“Go on,” she says, softly.

He tries to force his heart to stillness.

“I’ll do it when it works,” he says. “I’ll be your breedmate when we can breed.”

Her lips part. “What are you saying?”

“I want to do the real bite. The bite that sticks. If we’re gonna be breedmates…” He takes a deep breath. “I want to breed. I want to get re-encoded. I want a family.”

“Grantyde.” Her tail, which was slowly wagging, has frozen. “That’s not possible.”

“Neither was this.” He sits up. “Neither was me being free. I didn’t believe you about the Empress. And I’m still skeptical of it, of living in an empire, but you were right about what she’d do, and I was wrong.”

He slips his hand under her ribcage and lifts her into a seated position opposite him. She stares agape.

“Maybe it’s greedy of me or ungrateful of me, but I’m not satisfied with just this from her,” he says. “If she can give me my citizenship, she can give you the right to have children.” He leans forward and rests his forehead on hers. “And if you don’t want any—like if you don’t, I don’t care about the Empress—then I can live with that. I promise. I can be happy with just the two of us. I can. But I think you want this too.”

“I don’t—” She swallows. “I don’t even—I never even…” She trails off.

“Tell me,” he says. “I don’t care what you tell me, as long as it’s the truth.”

“The truth.” She leans back. She steels herself like she’s circling at a spear duel. She takes a deep inhale.

“The truth is I cry sometimes in the mornings before you’re up,” she says, “because I imagine waking up in a little pile of our children. Sons with these eyes, daughters with this pokey nose. The truth is I’d give anything.” Her voice breaks. “But they won’t let us, Grant. We have to bury this in us. We’d drive ourselves mad thinking about it.”

“No,” he says.

“Grant, please…”

“No,” he repeats. “You’re the first Void Princess with a free husband and you’re gonna be the first Void Princess with a family. I’m not about to call her up again and demand it right now. I can wait as long as I have to wait. I’m glad to have you to myself for a while. But know that I’m not giving up. Now that I know there’s a way. You gave me my freedom.” He scoots forward and lays his head on her shoulder. “I’m gonna find a way to give you yours.”

She shivers. “God, Grant. You’re so stubborn.”

“That’s right. I am. And I’m going to be stubborn for you.” He settles back and stares into his wife’s fearful eyes. “If you really want me to stop, if you really want me to, if you don’t want me to fight for this, tell me now. Say it. I’ll obey you, Majesty.”

Her mouth opens. It shuts again. Her lip quivers.

He leans forward and kisses her. A few stunned seconds where she doesn’t move a muscle, and then she whimpers and kisses him back like the only breathable air in the firmament is between his lips.

He pulls away. “Are you gonna say stop?”

“No.” Her voice is hoarse. “No. I’m not. I—” Her fingers tighten on his chest. “Oh, God, Grant.” The horror at herself for saying this is mingling with desperate, whispered excitement. “I want your babies.” A terrified little gust of laughter. “I want your babies so badly.”

“Then we’ll find a way,” he says, and he believes it with all of him. “Someday, we’ll find a way.”

He swings his legs over the lip of the table. He stands up and turns around. The table is high enough that he and his wife are more or less eye-to-eye. “And in the meantime, to make up for it, not doing the bite thing, I had another idea.”

“God, spare me.” But she says it with a smile, as uncertain as she is.

He clears his throat. “That stuff you put in Azkaii,” he says. “The compound seventy stuff.”

Her ears twitch. “Yes?”

“You said you didn’t want to know if it would work on me.” He puts his hand on her knee. “What if… what if I did?”

Her eyes dance. “Grant?”

“I know it’s controlled and secret and we don’t have much,” he says. “And I would only want enough to have it work for a little bit. One night, at most. And I only want to do this once, ever. But all the other guys, they’re always talking about the warmth. And how good it feels when it’s from someone you trust. Someone you love.”

He raises her hand and kisses it. He puts its palm on the side of his face. He stares into the conqueror crimson of his wife’s eyes.

“I’d like to feel it,” he says. “If you’d be willing. I want you to compel me.”