Princess of the Void ch 29 - Bump

Sykora cracks the cap on an oblong water bottle from the break room’s pill-shaped fridge. “I won’t waste anyone’s time. An individual in my skybox was compelled into an attempt on the life of Azkaii Trimond. I’m now firmly convinced that the deaths within the Trimond clan are assassinations, and have been for some time. I want to know how much both of you were aware of this.”

Glowering silence from her interviewees.

“Don’t stand on ceremony, now,” Sykora says. “Speak freely.”

“This was clearly a premeditated attempt,” Garuna says. “But the other deaths? Orwen of Trimond was in the middle of his sixth kilocycle. Penta of Trimond’s accident was in front of a score of witnesses. Nobody reported foul play.”

“Before you expound on the other half-score dead Trimonds,” Sykora says, “I’d like to hear from the Baroness.”

“I will tell you nothing,” Baroness Trimond says, pacing the yellowy tile floor, “until Azkaii is returned.”

Sykora takes a deep gulp of water that clears half the bottle as she stands. “It’s clear to me that both of you need time to absorb these new circumstances. In the absence of a convincing argument otherwise, I’ve made my decision: the situation is a threat to the exo production in the Black Pike sector. I’m stepping in. Governess, take what security measures you deem sufficient to bring order back to your world. Use your judgment. I don’t want martial law. From now until this matter is closed, your proposals come to me before they’re implemented.”

“Majesty.” Garuna’s hands twist into her dress. “You really needn’t—”

“I am taking this investigation over, Governess. Is that clear?”

Garuna’s expression goes cold and brittle. “Yes, Majesty.”

“Good. Send me a liaison to work aboard the Pike for the duration. And prioritize the interview list you were going to send me. Any suspect you have, I want to meet.”

“I have one for you now,” Garuna says. “Today and now. I saw her in the crowd. It was that unionist woman. Corska Ondai. Guard captain, I need you to dispatch some people to that union barge—”

“Belay that.” Sykora raises her hand. “We’re not arresting a union officer in front of a horde of exo refiners, Governess. If this Ondai character is a person of interest, put her on the list and I’ll investigate her.”

“Majesty, if you truly suspect ongoing foul play, the unionists are a stark frontrunner. Especially considering the links you proclaim to piracy.”

Baroness Trimond’s ears twitch at piracy; her eyes dart away from the Governess. Grant tries not to make his intrigue obvious.

“You may conduct your own investigation into whether unionists infiltrated this vessel, Governess,” Sykora says. “Only see that it doesn’t take priority over mine.”

“Where’s Azkaii? Where is my daughter? If you’ve arrested her, I demand to know the charge and gain visitation.”

“Baroness. Your daughter is in my protective custody.”

“What?” Trimond bristles. “Did she volunteer for this?”

“This is not voluntary. This is for her safety.” Sykora hands Grant her half-drained bottle. “Once we’re satisfied that her security against these attacks is assured, we’ll return her home. Until then, she will be our guest aboard the Black Pike.”

The Baroness’s eyes flare. “How dare you.”

A shift in Sykora’s mien. “How dare I?” The three foot tall woman seems suddenly to fill the room. “I dare a great deal, when I judge I am being lied to.”

“I—” Trimond shrinks back, but her glare is still affixed. “You go too far, Princess.”

Sykora takes a step forward. “This is in your analysis, Trimond?”

“Yes, Majesty. And I want my protest clearly recorded.”

“Lodge it with the clerks of the Imperial Core. If it’s ratified, your complaint will show up on the official record and a Core investigator will determine whether to issue an Imperial reprimand. The process takes a handful of cycles. But never fear. I heard you just now, quite clearly.” Sykora taps her forehead. The smile she wears reminds Grant of her sister. “And I’ll keep what you have said at the very front of my mind.”

She turns on her heels and strolls to the door.

“While you wait,” she says, “my suggestion is to cooperate fully with my investigation. The sooner I know exactly what is happening to the Trimonds, the sooner I can be assured of Azkaii’s safety, and my conscience can allow her to depart my protection. I am always reachable whenever you are ready to speak with me, Baroness and Governess.”

Garuna seems about to speak; she changes her mind when Sykora pauses in the doorway and turns, leaning back into the sparse chamber. The Princess’s voice is leaden and uncompromising:

“I trust that my mushroom’s growing on your logs.”

A chorus of “Yes, Majesty.”

“Splendid.” Her back straightens. Her eyes flicker at Grant. “Come, husband.”

“What the hell did you just tell them?” he whispers, under the tromping tread of their security escort leading them out. “Mushroom on their logs?”

“It means,” she replies, “that they know I’ve got them by the short-and-curlies. Did that one translate?”

“Crystal-clear, Majesty.”

They re-emerge into the festivities and dismiss their armor-clad escort. As Grant turns to return to the skybox, Sykora’s tail tugs his pant leg. “Not yet,” she murmurs. “I think we have one more port of call.”

“What’s that?”

She gestures out the wide glass wall, where the bedecked feast hall has a view of the raceway and the barges on the other side of it. “I told the Governess otherwise. But I want to meet this unionist she despises.”

Grant eyes the hardbitten crowd aboard the barge and the retreating backs of their security detail. “Are you sure we should go there without security?”

“I am not the sort of Princess who fears her own subjects,” Sykora says. “And besides. None of them protected me today.” Her tail tightens. “You did.”

He adjusts his collar as they move to the sky bridge. “I, uh, I don’t know if I’m ready for a repeat performance today.”

“You don’t need to be. Just look confident and huge.” She pinches his butt. “You’re halfway there.”

The skimmer cabbie Sykora orders to ferry them across does so with silent, obedient terror, glancing back in disbelief a few times at the Princess squeezed into her backseat. Grant has to curl up to fit in the cramped pod.

They’re dropped into a weatherbeaten and graffiti’d airlock that opens onto a freezing skybridge. The temperature here is low enough that Grant can see his own breath—the refiners clearly lack the heating he was taking for granted in the noble skyboxes.

Sykora strides through the ramshackle hall as if she’s aboard her own warship, and slams the door open onto the barge roof with enough of a clang that a full third of the rowdy crowd look her way. A wave of shock and nudging elbows silence the festivities.

“Citizens.” Sykora folds her hands behind her back and stands at a fearless parade rest. “I’d like to speak to your union representative. Is Corska Ondai present, please?”

Whispered conference. The crowd parts. At the other end of the barge is a long table covered in a steaming row of hot-plated foods. The unionist Grant saw from his box—the dirty blonde one who threw him the horns—leans against it. “That would be me.”

Sykora taps her foot. “Mind the rank, Ondai. I’m not your enemy. I can help you if you give me the deference I’m due.”

Ondai smirks and delivers a quarter-bow. Like she’s only a few ranks below the Princess, not a commoner. “Your Majesty,” she says.

The look on Sykora’s face isn’t thrilled, but she inclines her head back as she steps into the corridor formed by the refiners. “Better.”

“Didn’t expect to see you here, Majesty.” Ondai turns from the Princess back to the plate she’s preparing. “Thought this gig was for the exo clique.”

“I was overdue for an appearance,” Sykora says. “A diverting race this year. My husband and I appreciated the soundtrack your barge supplied.”

“You a fan of Tremorlocc, then?”

“It was enjoyably bottom-heavy.” Sykora moves to Ondai’s side. A brawny union enforcer steps toward her. Grant steps in front of him, and dwarfs him by a full head. He’s never thought of himself as a heavy-duty bruiser type dude. But he never tackled a man with a gun before today. And by sheer height, he seems to have the guy cowed, at least for the moment.

“I have taken the investigation into the Trimond case from the Governess,” Sykora says. “She pointed me your way as a person of interest.”

Ondai piles greasy pulled-protein from a tureen onto her clean-sliced roll. “What’s the Trimond case?”

“Someone’s killing Trimonds.”

“Shit.” Ondai chuckles and licks orange brine from her thumb. “And the Governess thinks it’s us.”

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks. She’ll accuse you. You’ve been unsubtle in antagonizing her, and this is her opportunity to hurt you.”

“Unsubtle.” Ondai’s grin drops a few degrees. “A riot cop’s unsubtle. A waiver promising you won’t blame the corroded catwalks and the machines from last kilocycle if they cripple you for life. That’s unsubtle. Just a conversation, that’s subtle as hell. You wouldn’t think it, the way your fellow owners treat it.”

The crowd is tightening around them.

“I’m not here to discuss ideology, Representative Ondai.” Sykora makes no sign she notices anything but the woman she’s talking to. “I’m here to warn you. The Governess has a ripe excuse to crack down on gatherings and activism. She’s going to take advantage. Things will get worse for you, from now until this is solved. Whatever aid you can tender, you should.”

Ondai puts her plate on the table with a clack. She gives the Princess her full, frowning attention. Sykora puts her hands on her hips.

The two women stare at one another across the yawning gap between their stations.

Ondai’s tail twitches as she makes her decision. “You want Trimond West.” She picks her plate back up and slides a grainy-looking sandwich roll onto it.

Sykora follows her down the table. “Trimond West? What’s special about it?”

“That’s the scab refinery. Only offworlders. Mercenaries, like. They don’t let normal folk in. If there’s something below the level happening, it’s happening on Trimond West.”

Sykora presses. “Below the level how?”

One of Ondai’s blue-sashed minions speaks up in a rebreather rasp. “You’d know more than we do, Majesty. You figure it out.”

Sykora turns her head on a smooth swivel to the man who spoke; she’s making sure to keep the entire crowd in her peripherals. “The pay irregularities you’d expect from a place like that don’t show up on my ledgers.”

Ondai shrugs as she parcels wilting vegetables onto her sandwich. “You gonna tell me exo baronesses never cook the books?”

“And this is all known and accommodated? By Governess Garuna?”

“Why not? It’s her dream come true. No unions, no Ptolek citizens, no drama.”

Sykora rubs her chin. “It would be wise of you to refrain from informing the Governess I was here.

Ondai shuts the roll over the sweating meat and takes a high-gravity bite. She asks around the mouthful: “You gonna try and ratfuck her, then?”

“I am going to ensure that the agents of the Empress are acting with the best interests of her Empire at heart,” Sykora says. “And if I find out that they haven’t, I will ratfuck them.”

A murmuring ripple of laughter from the assembled refiners.

“Your cooperation is appreciated, Citizen Ondai. If you have been honest with me today, I doubt we’ll meet again.” Sykora looks over her shoulder at Grant, who’s trading mean mugs with Ondai’s enforcer. “Come, Prince Consort.”

"Your first taste of the working class," she murmurs, as they return to the skybridge. "I hope it didn’t put too much ash in your mouth."

"Oh, it’s all fine. It was familiar, actually. Reminded me of the crowd from Alberta back on Maekyon." Grant rubs warmth into his hands. "I guess in a way I was one of them once."

Sykora purses her lips as she looks from Grant to the roof they’ve departed. “I find that difficult to imagine.”

He smirks. “It’s true, Majesty. You married a lowborn energy refiner.”

She chuckles. “You are nothing like them, dove.”

He stops in his tracks. Her tail yanks a moment before she does, too, and looks quizzically back at him.

“Yes, I am,” he says.

She observes the look on his face. “I didn’t—” She flushes. “That was boorish of me, Grantyde.”

“It’s okay.” He puts a hand on her back. “You’re working on their behalf.”

“I am.” She sighs. “It seems I could use reminding sometimes.”

He steps with her onto the cab platform. “I’ll be here to remind you, whenever you need me.” He folds an arm around her shoulders. “Promise.”

“I’m counting on it.” She smiles as they hail the same doe-eyed pilot who brought them over. “Insufferable Maekyonite.”

***

“I’ve got Waian’s team examining the gun and the spike for any hints at manufacture. No high hopes for the piece, but the EMP? That’s specialized equipment, and it looks quite jury-rigged. You and Waian have my undying appreciation for finding it.” Sykora's returned to the proud stride she always carries herself with aboard the Pike. She takes a proffered tablet from a bowing engineer who's waiting for them at the exit from the shuttle bay. “Let’s double check that route with the navigatrix, shall we, Ensign? New lanes just opened up by Corwan. I don’t want to cause a pile-up.”

“Right away, Majesty.” The engineer scurries off.

“You have any suspects as to whose EMP it was?” Grant asks.

“There’s a chance we’ll trace it to some clan forge or another,” Sykora says. “But that link you made. Yellow Comets flush with exo, exo family dying off. There’s something ripe there. Makes my nose itch.”

Grant nods. “I mean they have to have something to do with it, right? And it’s a piratical method, killing families off.”

“Piratical, sure.” Sykora taps the side of her nose. “But don’t underestimate political.”

That reminds Grant. “Where’s Azkaii?”

“Azkaii I have in your old cell,” Sykora says. “Doubtless she’s going to wake up and wonder why the bed is so high, but we didn’t have time to refit. After this command group debrief, I’d like you with me when we visit her. The only experience she’s had of you is as muscle, and I want your reputation as my kindness to keep growing. Just be your friendly self with her, yes?”

“I can do that,” Grant says. The lift chimes gently as they arrive on the command group floor. “Gives me a chance to banish some of this kidnapping guilt, maybe.”

“She’s got a reputation as a brat.” Sykora pats his thigh. “So try not to get too righteously upset if she’s haughty at you. I know you can get.”

“What? How can I get?” He follows her out.

“You have a rebellious streak when you’re talked down to,” she says. “I imagine she’ll test it.”

“Hey, now,” he says. “I’m only rebellious to the people in charge of me.”

She laughs. “Don’t I know it.”

“What about the Lorimare thing?” he asks. “Has the leech chip—”

A loud metallic CLONK. A dull throb. Grant has just brained himself on the command deck door. He staggers backward, clapping his hand to his forehead. “Fucking hell.”

“Oh God. Oh my God, Grantyde.” The Princess is immediately at his side, pulling on the hem of his shirt. There’s raw panic in her voice. “Darling. Let me look.”

Grant grunts out a laugh around the ache and kneels. “This was inevitable, I guess. I was ducking every time on that one.” He moves his hand out of the way.

Sykora issues a horrified gasp. “Grant, it’s swollen.”

Grant gives his forehead an experimental poke and immediately feels a tender twinge. “Ooh, yeah. That’s gonna be a goose egg.”

“I’m taking you to the medtech.” She tugs his arm. “We’re getting that looked at.”

“Majesty, it’s fine. Just a bonk on the head.”

“You don’t know that. We’re going.”

“The command group’s gonna be here in five minutes.”

“They can wait.”

“I’m honestly—”

“Grantyde, we are going to the medtech. Now.” Her eyes flash. She gasps and covers them. “Oh, no, I just rage-compelled. Oh, God.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t.” Her teary eye peeks out between her fingers. “Accidental compulsion, like I’m a goddamn toddler.”

“Baby. Baby.” He tries not to laugh—this morning he helped this woman kidnap someone and witnessed her terrify half the Ptolek court into submission, and now she’s tearful over a bump on his noggin. “It’s really fine. It doesn’t even work on me, remember?”

She nods.

He takes her hand. “Let’s go to the medtech, right?”

“Okay.” His wife executes a thunderous sniff as she tries to get her emotions under control. “I’m being a baby. I know I am.”

“We ought to go anyway to get my longevity… what did you call them? Spinal doo-dads?”

“Yes.” She laughs wetly at that. “Let’s get your doo-dads.”

***

Technician Malo snaps the pen light off. It leaves a blob in Grant’s vision that asserts itself over the poster on the clinic wall of healthy Taiikari physiology. There’s a brightly colored maglev train game whizzing in the office's corner, for pediatric patients, which makes the whole thing feel even more infantilizing. “Simple hematoma,” Malo says. “Just some blood under the skin of the forehead. Nothing that won’t go away on its own.”

“There, you see?” Grant smiles at Sykora. “We’re fine. Thanks, Malo.”

The fastidiously dressed Taiikari tech nods and polishes the telescopic lens on his minimalist chrome anticomps. “I’ll prescribe something to make the swelling go down faster.”

Sykora’s got her sleeve up in front of her face. “I feel like such a dumb overreactive idiot.”

“It was good that you came, Majesty. These things can be deceptively damaging.” Malo hands Grant a velcro’d black cuff. “And it gives me the chance to take those old Maekyonite tracking chips out of you, and draw some blood from your husband. Hold that on your biceps, please, Prince Consort.”

Grant obeys. “What do you need my blood for?”

“Three reasons.” Malo steps behind him and straps the cuff shut. “The first is so we can replicate it and have it on-hand in case you ever need a transfusion.”

“You can do that?”

“We can. And the second is we’d like to make sure there won’t be any adverse reactions to the longevity serum or the panacea.”

“And the third?”

“Check-up, Prince Consort.” Malo gives him a squeeze on the forearm. “We’ll run a full panel. Make sure there’s nothing affecting you adversely in the Pike’s environment.”

“Surely we’d know by now.” Sykora’s fingers are tight around Grant’s wrist. “Wouldn’t we?”

“I doubt there’s anything to fear, Majesty. His physiology is strikingly similar to ours.”

Grant sits back on the plastic-lined examination chair. “Why is that?”

“One for the philosophers, Prince Consort.” Malo slips a tube into the cuff. “Perhaps it’s just what works.”

Grant nods. “Like the crab planet.”

“If you say so, sire.” Malo flips a switch on a nearby console. The tube turns red. Grant’s brow furrows.

“Is that my blood?”

“Yes, sire.”

“I didn’t feel a thing.”

“That’s the phlebotomy tube’s job, sire.” Malo unstraps the cuff. The only evidence that anything happened beneath it is a tiny freckle of dried blood on Grant’s arm. “We’ll have a liquid longevity suite ready in a tenday or two. We’ll follow up on the panacea then. Start him on a low dose to ease him in. He’ll probably need some replacement injections after his next kilocycle.”

“That’s fine, Technician Malo.” Sykora’s recovered her regal bearing. “Thank you.”

“A Kilocycle?” Grant counts in his head. “That’s what, fifty or sixty years. I’ll be a senior citizen at that point.”

“No, you won’t.” Sykora lays her hand across his on the armrest. “You’re on a longevity program now, remember?”

Grant glances at Malo. “How long are we talking, here?”

“If your physiology adapts to the implants like your indicators are showing, sire, I’d wager you’ll have parity with the average Taiikari. Roughly five kilocycles, discounting any additional advances that emerge in the interim.”

“Five kilocycles…” Grant’s head gives a plaintive throb as he tries to add this all up. “Jesus, I’m gonna live to three hundred?””

Malo shrugs. “If you say so.”

Sykora’s head leans on his arm. “We have so much ahead of us, dove. A whole firmament to explore and a whole life to share. I just got you. Nothing’s allowed to happen to you. Okay?”

He rests his chin on her scalp. “Okay.”

“I took the liberty of giving your implants a quick scan as well, Majesty.” Malo taps the console as Grant and Sykora stand. “All looks well, but you might have cause to go to the Imperial core in a hectocycle or two to get your cranial detonator serviced. We don’t want any of those threads detaching.”

“Excuse me.” Grant pauses at the clinic exit. “Her cranial what?”

“ThankYouMaloThatWillBeAll.” Sykora practically drags Grant out the clinic door.

They return along the wide thoroughfare of the topmost hab level, which is a strange combination of cozy small town main street with sleek space station. Ivy spills from silvery holders, framing nebular views of the deep firmament. A fragrant-scented bakery abuts the spacesuit depot. There has to be some kind of gravitational weirdness happening, because the view of the firmament is across the ceiling and there’s a perceptible downward curve. The level must be ring-shaped; they’re walking along the wall.

““I’m getting all the doors raised. Every single one. We’ll go floor by floor.” Sykora cringes as she eyeballs the low overhang at the lift door. “It was a dereliction of me to delay it. My poor man.”

“Sykora.” Grant halts as she tries to pull him into the lift. “I need you to tell me what your cranial detonator is. Tell me that’s not what it sounds like.”

“It’s—” Sykora takes a deep breath. “You will not like this. But it is really very truly nothing. All right? Come into the lift, please. We’re going back to the command deck.”

Grant steps inside and feels a pulling flutter as they rise and gravity reorients itself. “Go on.”

“I have a little implant right here.” Sykora taps the back of her head. “The Empress, and the Empress alone, knows a phrase that, if she were to say it to me, would cause it to…” She bites her lip as she hunts for a way to say it.

“Detonate,” Grant says.

Sykora nods. “Quick and painless.”

“Your Empress put a fucking bomb in your head.”

“Our Empress.” Her eyes flare. “I didn’t mean to sound sharp. But she is. She’s your Empress, too, Grantyde. She was your Empress before you even knew what the Taiikari were. Next one, comrade, please.” This she says to a gobsmacked functionary who’s standing before the slid-open lift door.

“Yes Majesty of course Majesty I regret delaying you Majesty.” The poor woman genuflects so rigorously Grant wonders if she’s the next head trauma case.

The lift slides shut and resumes its rise. Sykora leans on the door close button.

“You were right.” Grant folds his arms. “I don’t like it.”

“I am in charge of a world-killer, Grantyde.” Sykora gestures out the lift window as they pass a deck full of towering piers, each containing racks of cannon. “Of a ship that cannot be destroyed. This needs to be in place, for every Void Princess. It would be far too dangerous to give the voidships to us with no safeguard.”

“There have to be better answers than this,” he says. “Better ways. Everything I learn about how you became a Void Princess—it feels so unjust.”

“Grantyde.” Sykora puts on a hardline voice. She isn’t turning her full commander high-beams on him, but he hears a thread of that steel. “I’m a royal bastard. My existence was a direct threat to the Imperial line. A grave insult and mistake from Marquess Inadama. Her reputation has only begun to recover from it. I shouldn’t be alive. I should have been disposed of. And instead I am one of the most powerful women on the frontier. And that is thanks to the Empress.” The lift coasts to a stop. Sykora keeps the button held and the doors stay shut while she finishes. “She legitimized me. She gave me a life I wasn’t supposed to have. Her having the power to take it back is correct.” She releases the button and the lift doors hiss open.

“I’m trying hard to temper my reaction to this.” Grant follows her out. “But you know how you felt when I bumped my head? I just found out there’s a goddamn bomb in yours.”

“I—” She sighs and halts in the carpeted hallway. “Yes. I understand. It’s not as though I’m thrilled about it. But it’s the trade I made for the Pike, and I’d willingly do it again. And nothing will ever come of it, because it’s for emergencies, for Void Princesses who go mad, who try to destroy Imperial worlds or overthrow the Empress. And I will never do that, because I am loyal, and she rewards loyalty with benevolence. Come down here, okay?”

She tugs at his shirt, and he takes a knee. She embraces him, and after a moment of hesitation, he holds her back, tight.

“Let’s both of us just take a moment and breathe, all right?” She strokes the downy hairs on the back of his neck. “You’re fine and I’m fine. No concussions, no explosions. We’re fine. And we are going to have a long, beautiful life together, you and me.”

Grant wants to argue more. Wants to say that a bump on the head is nowhere near same thing. Instead, he takes a deep breath with her and vents it out across her back.

“Retirement age is late sixties back on Maekyon, you know,” he says. “Guess that’s not in the cards.”

“You can declare yourself retired whenever you want, dove.” She scratches his hair. “My entire ambition for you was to have you lounge around and look pretty. Remember? Everything else has been above and beyond.”

“When I’m two hundred, maybe,” he says. “I’ll buy some motorcycles, get into fly-fishing. That sort of thing.”

He feels the vibration of her giggle along her back. “Motorcycles are cool. What’s fly-fishing? Does it involve interceptors?”

He hums. “Maybe it will, how we do it.”

He returns to his feet and holds his wife’s hand, light but sure, as she leads him to the command deck. His hand strays to give a shallow scritch to the back of her head, where below her long, silky hair, her Empress’s unrealized wrath sleeps.