Princess of the Void ch 9 - guns

(the sentence fragments in the letter are supposed to be crossed out. guess patreon doesn't have that kind of formatting. Enjoy!!)

A shift in the bed's surface awakens him, as Sykora slips out from the covers. He doesn’t open his eyes. He hears her moving around the cabin, the sound of her getting dressed and made up. As she brushes her hair, she hums quietly to herself. He recognizes the tune, a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song he played for her back on Maekyon—Earth. Back on Earth.

He hears the scratching of a pen. There’s another subtle shift in the bed as Sykora returns and places something on her pillow. He hears her breath pause. Her hair brushes his exposed shoulder as she leans in and lays a slow, gentle kiss on his temple. And then she’s gone, the hydraulic hiss of the cabin door announcing her exit.

He feels a pang of loneliness. And he admits it to himself: It’s not his old life he’s yearning for. Maybe it never was.

Those thighs pressing together so softly, his treacherous brain whispers. What would they feel like pressing on you? That body. So small, but so full. So yielding to the touch. She’s right about you. You might break first.

For the first time, he lets himself picture it fully. Being Sykora’s husband. Discovering her routines and her loves. Letting her dote on him and tease him, and teasing her back, the way they talked before lunch on Ptolek II. Standing by her side at her affairs of state and trading little affectionate touches, without artifice or reservation. Sharing her bed, and watching her shake and whimper the way she did last night, but from above her, inside her.

This is dangerous. This is Stockholm Syndrome. He must stand firm. He can’t want her truly until he can want her by choice.

His lethargy rises again, and he lets it clamber back into dominion over his mind. Sleep isn’t nearly so confusing.

When he awakens again, he’s still alone in Sykora’s expansive bed. There’s a folded-up piece of paper lying on her pillow.

Darling—

Early meeting today with the chief engineer. Apparently, there’s a score of obsolescences per square foot that MUST be addressed or we’ll all suck cold vacuum. Waian says our fine vessel is a creaking jalopy. Who knew?

You may employ the cabin in whatever way you please. Should you wish to tour any part of the Pike, I’ve made Hyax available to you. Don’t take any of her grousing personally or let her intimidate you—it’s how she is. The price we so often pay for talented people. She’s a doll, honestly. Just a chewed-up doll with its felt all crinkly.

Breakfast is in the nook and there’s a communicator for you on the nightstand. My contact information and Hyax’s are both present, though I’ll be slow to respond while Waian tries to budge my budget.

I wish

I hope that

I will be free at 1300 hours and would be grateful for your company back in our cabin. I hope to have a surprise for you!! A very chaste & proper one. Hands to myself. Promise.

Your wife,

Fondly,

Sykora

Grant eats breakfast. Today it’s a wedge of grainy, seeded bread, accompanied by an oblong rinded fruit in an eggplant shade of purple, which he peels to reveal a creamy, peppery flesh that sticks to his fingers like brie.

He picks up the communicator and flicks its on switch. Most Taiikari technology he’s witnessed so far is minimalist and tactile—all big, chunky controls and purpose-built programs. The communicator’s a stark contrast from his old phone with its dozens of apps. Its sole menu is a white-on-black list of names, and the extent of its controls are a scroll wheel, and two pleasingly clicky buttons.

It’s still disconcerting, the way the alien glyphs trigger the pathways in his mind. He scrolls from the first entry, which Sykora named MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE, to the second entry, BRIGADIER SOURPUSS.

He picks one of the buttons at random and presses it. The menu flickers and the word SPEAK appears on it.

“Um. Hello, Brigadier Hyax.” As he says it, the sentence appears onscreen. “The Princess says you’re available to escort me within the ship. I don’t have any specific destinations in mind—I guess I don’t know enough about the place. But I’d be grateful to visit anywhere that might educate me.” He clicks the button again. The text stays in place.

Three familiar dots appear beneath it. They resolve into a response.

on my way

you text like a grandmother

“The keyboard is a slide-out. Like this.” Hyax pulls and the communicator’s back slots downward, revealing a circular touch panel that looks like a radar screen.

Grant squints at it. “How do I use that?”

“I will leave a more patient being to show you how to type, Maekyonite.” Hyax slides the lift’s door shut with the push of a diode. “Shall I teach you how to shoot a Taiikari gun?”

Grant perks up. “Hey, all right.”

“Promise you won’t kill your wife with it.”

“Sykora mentioned you were brusque.”

“We’re going to be going to the far end of the Pike. I’m going to boost us.” Hyax’s tail flicks the catch on a button Grant hadn’t noticed before, large and bright yellow. “Kindly keep your hand on the rail.”

Grant has to crouch to close his fist around the railing. He braces himself. Hyax hits the button. The expected burst of speed doesn’t come. Instead, there’s a queer weightless feeling in his chest and Hyax floats from the ground. Her tail loops around the railing and she crosses her legs, canting to one side as they go.

A hum rises in pitch. One wall of the lift is glass, and he watches through it as the floors they skid past become a flickering blur of light and color.

“How fast are we going?” he asks.

“The firing range is near the tail of the spire,” Hyax says. “About a mile. So…”

The flickering slows and becomes floors whizzing by again. Grant sees a crewmate strolling along what he thought was a wall, and realizes that the lift is turning in space as well. By the time it stops and dings, it’s back in alignment. Hyax’s legs unfold just in time—the gravity kicks in and her chunky combat boots tap onto the ground.

“That fast,” she says.

“How does the gravity work?” he asks.

She disembarks. “What does it matter?”

“I’m just curious.” He follows her down a clinically-lit hallway. “It’s fascinating. I thought maybe it was from the engine thrust, but then how would the lift—”

“Inquire with Chief Engineer Waian.” Hyax interrupts him. “She’ll quickly cure you of that. The woman has an endless appetite for words like centripetal.”

She rests the edge of her tail on a panel on the wall. The light above it blinks green. They step through a sliding door (Grant, as usual, stoops) into a floor-to-ceiling arsenal of chunky black firepower.

Between a rack of heavy-caliber marksman rifles and a gaggle of grenade launchers, Hyax plucks a pistol from the wall. “Here we are. Unprinted.” She presses her thumb to its switch and it blinks blue. She passes it to him. He imitates her action. “Thirty seconds after first activation, it imprints on any thumb that’s supplied. Like a baby tek’ka bird. That’s yours now.”

He gingerly takes the pistol. It’s small in his hand, like one of those James Bond guns, but it’s heavier than it looks. “Does Sykora know you’re giving me this?”

She passes him a holster. “Are you going to tell her?”

“I guess not.”

“Test failed. Now it’s mine again.” She presses her tail to another door, which releases a trilling five-second buzz and then slides open. “Step through.”

He bends his head again. He’s going to clock himself on one of these some day.

They emerge into a cavernous shooting range. A pool of light illuminates their firing platform; the tunnel beyond is massive and polygonal, studded in places along every facet, floor-to-ceiling, with craggy outcroppings and geometric cover. Two Taiikari, a man and a woman, look up from their booths, pulling their shooting earmuffs off.

“Brigadier.” The woman salutes, fist-to-chest. She’s tall for a Taiikari, and a fetching shade of periwinkle. “Uh. And Prince Consort.” She salutes him, too, though her fascination slows her.

“Comrades.” Hyax’s voice echoes. “Kindly give us the chamber.”

She indicates her broad-chested, goggled companion. “Ensign Kamen and I were in the middle of a shooting competition, Brigadier.”

“You may flirt with Ensign Kamen outside the firing range, Gefreitor Reina. Clock out and I’ll permit you back in once we’re finished here.”

“This doesn’t mean we reset,” Reina says, as the Taiikari pack up. “I’m still ahead fifteen to twelve in points.”

Ensign Kamen stows his rifle onto a magnetized harness. “See, I remember fourteen.”

They continue bickering on their way out of the chamber.

Hyax pulls a lever by the chamber entrance. With a deep rumble, the tunnel beyond the platform rotates, until the lane directly before the booths is a smooth, slotted plane.

Hyax taps a console by the closest booth and presses a foot pedal. A set of a half dozen thin wooden targets shunt from the floor.

“Here we are.” She gestures to them. “You’ve shot a gun before?”

“On Maekyon,” he says. “Once or twice.”

“Let’s see Maekyonite technique, then.” She passes him a pair of shooting muffs.

He slips them on, squares up in as close to a Modified Weaver stance as he can remember, aims down the sights, and fires.

The recoil he was expecting is barely enough to jostle his wrist. An outsize hole, the size of a fist, blasts out of the closest target’s center mass. Four more shots. The action is so smooth this thing almost feels like a toy, like an arcade center gun, if not for the splintering craters it’s opening.

“Better than I expected.” Hyax peers downrange. “Your stance is odd. You were expecting more recoil, I think.”

“I was.”

“I’ll feel superior about that, then, if not your accuracy.” She turns and saunters toward the armory. “I’ll fetch my own pistol, and then I can give you the diatribe I’d intended to give you.”

“A diatribe? What have I done to earn a diatribe?”

“It's what you haven't done, Prince Consort.” She opens the armory door. “Your ridiculous abstinence from your smokeshow wife.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Because I’m not a fool, Prince Consort.” Hyax rolls her eyes. “Every time I see her, the Princess is so desperate for dick that she’s clawing her eyes out. That is not a well-fucked woman. Excuse me a moment while I pick a sidearm.”

He sighs and places the gun on his booth counter. “Promise you won’t shoot me."

“I promise I won’t shoot you,” she calls. “Fatally.”

Hyax returns with an even smaller handgun than his. She occupies the booth to his right. “Have sex with your wife, Prince Consort.”

“I figured this was coming,” he says.

“Of course it was,” Hyax says. “Sykora of the Black Pike is a superlative woman. One of the finest Void Princesses the Taiikari empire has produced, in an otherwise ignominious generation. And you are winding her up past the point her mechanisms can bear.”

“If she didn’t want that, she shouldn’t have married me against my will.”

“How terrible. Forced into servitude, and your bare consolation is delicious cuisine on demand, your pick of the treasures from across an interstellar empire, and sexual bliss with a nubile noblewoman who’s obsessed with you.” Hyax loads her gun. “The hearts of the free firmament weep at your martyrdom.”

“I don’t need them to weep,” he says. “And I’m not a martyr. But my refusal is all I have. My only leverage. if I’m gonna be what she wants me to be, she either needs to force me or free me. And neither of us want the former.”

“She’s not mistreating you. She saved you from execution. She’s offering you a pleasant, comfortable life, and your only job is to let her fawn over you and give you excellent sex.”

“You all seem overconfident we even can,” he says. “I’m twice her size.”

“You can,” she says. “Taiikari girls are one-size-fits-all.”

He tries to banish the lascivious imaginings that statement raises. “Look—I didn’t ask for any of it. I didn’t want it.”

“So what? That doesn’t excuse your attitude. Nobody wants most of what they’re given. Precious few of them have the pickings you have. Earpro on.”

He slips his earmuffs back on and she stomps a pedal by her feet. The targets spring up at the other end of the firing range, much farther out than his were. The pistol blinks blue under Hyax’s rock-steady hand. Bright blue light blooms and burns. Five sizzling flares. Three wooden hearts and two wooden heads burst.

“What are we shooting, anyway?” he asks.

“Targets.”

“No, like—what comes out of the gun?”

“Bullets.”

“It’s not lasers or plasma or micro black holes or something? They seem quite destructive.”

“They’re going fast.” She raises an eyebrow. “What do Maekyonites use?”

“We use bullets, too,” he says.

“First thing I’ve heard about you gals that gives me hope for your civilization.” She slides the magazine from the pistol.

“I don’t want to be anyone’s pet, Brigadier,” he says. “That’s what it comes down to.”

“Men.” Hyax rolls her eyes. “So dramatic sometimes. Do they have sex with their pets on Maekyon? Do they give them feasts and gifts and royal titles?”

“The former, no. The latter, all the time.”

She snorts. “I revise my opinion. You are a strange and unfit empire.” She clacks bullets into her magazine. “Like how often you say sorry. You really ought to stop. It’s not the Taiikari way.”

“Where I come from, it’s the polite thing to do.”

“Fine. But in the wider firmament, you do not apologize as often as you are. You can’t continue to insist so incuriously upon these Maekyonite impositions, or you’ll keep crashing into things. I don’t care if it ends up hurting you, but if it hurts my Princess, I’m going to shoot you.” As if to punctuate her threat, she slots the reloaded magazine into the pistol. “In the leg, so she doesn’t execute me.”

“How are you meant to show regret, then, without an apology?”

“You fix it,” Hyax says. “An apology is what a Taiikari gives when she has nothing else. It’s an acknowledgement that her offense goes beyond her ability to repair it. It’s a very sad thing to say and to hear. Acknowledge your fault. Sure. Say that you wish you had done otherwise, fine. Do not apologize. Fix it. Give a gift, or show it won’t happen again. Sorry is surrender. It’s despair. Not good.”

He thinks about Sykora last night, holding his hand and weeping in the dark. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. His stomach twists. “The way she talks, it sounds like there isn’t any way to repair this. No way of having my freedom.”

“Of course she’d say that,” Hyax says. “She’s a Princess of the Taiikari Empire and she’s desperate for you. This is how she was taught to woo.”

“How is it not patently obvious I don’t want anyone else deciding what I do with my body, Brigadier?”

She scoffs. “Listen to him. Is she trying to sell your organs? You want her and she wants you. She cannot parade around proclaiming herself equal to an alien husband who breezily ignores compulsion. Not if she wants to keep you both safe. It’s facile to imagine she can. It ignores the laws of empire and reality. Insist upon these impossibilities and make yourself miserable, or meet her somewhere in the middle and live a happy life. Were you free back on Maekyon?”

“Yes.”

“Guarding our Princess’s cell was what you wanted to be doing with your life, then.”

“Well, no—”

“So someone else was deciding what you did with your body.”

“I wasn’t—at least I had—” Grant cuts himself off. “That was labor. Sex is different.”

“Why?”

“It just is. If the Taiikari don’t think so, I don’t know how to translate it.”

“Perhaps it’s a fault of your implant,” Hyax says. “Or perhaps things truly are different on Maekyon. But in the Taiikari empire, none of us are free, Consort Grantyde. We design our own prisons; we trade pieces of our so-called freedom away for the beautiful things in life. Love, status, safety. And we hope that what we trade for is worth it. You have received an unbelievable bargain, and you’re moody because you weren’t present for negotiations. You surely don’t think your wife is free, do you? Do you know how many edicts and restrictions bind her?”

“Garuna’s mother said that she can’t have children. And that’s why she has to marry an alien.”

“That wasn’t her place to say, but she’s right. An alien or a womanborn, but that’s barely ever done because you can’t compel a womanborn. So now you’ve got a vulnerability.”

“A vulnerability?”

“A non-compellable spouse can be turned. Or can cause the kind of scandal and drama that would sink you in the coterie. A void princess must command an entire sector. One who can’t even command her own spouse is a punchline. The two remaining options are you stay chaste, maybe take Kabira’s wort to squash your libido, or you get a husband-of-the-void. An alien. Usually it’s a Kovikan. They’re one of the few other taiikarinoid species in the firmament with conversational skills and compatible anatomy. And don’t get me wrong, all right, there’s some good-looking Kovikans, but you.” She whistles.

“You, too?”

“Not me, no,” she says. “I’m a duelist. I’m speaking objectively.”

“A duelist?”

“I prefer women,” she says. “Two lovers who can’t compel each other. Duelists.”

“Oh.”

“But your average straight lady likes a big fellow who can keep her warm and throw her around. A man a full head taller than the tallest Taiikari maleborn? With no horns and kind eyes? Sploosh.” She accompanies this onomatopoeia with a gesture that makes clear its meaning. “No tail, but not everyone is into a tail, and there’s certainly plenty to hold onto. And the—what do you call this.” She mimes a goatee.

“Beard.”

“The beard is odd but fetching. You’re built like a Taiikari maiden’s wet dream. One Taiikari maiden’s wet dream in particular, in fact.”

A creeping realization. “When you say maiden…”

Hyax shrugs. “She’s barred from her own species’ men, and most of her life has been training and duty. She’s schooled herself in the arts of the betrothal bed, but in terms of raw experience, how much do you think she’s had?”

“Am I—are you telling me I’d be that woman’s first?”

“Don’t bring it up. She is going to work very hard to hide it from you, I’ll wager. Too proud not to.” Hyax’s tail is occupying itself by flipping a spent shell into the air and catching it. “But yes. Quite likely. By order of the Empress.”

“That’s cruelty.”

“We are an empire, Grantyde. Empires are cruel places to live. You have drawn the winningest ticket an alien male can in our lottery. Earpro on.”

They blitz through another round of targets. Grant tries setting his out at Hyax’s distance and promptly humiliates himself.

“Dismal,” Hyax observes.

“Thanks. I have a dismal instructor.”

She smirks. “We’ll have to get you trained up more.”

“Would Sykora allow that?”

“Of course she would. She wants you happy, Prince Consort. You know this.” Hyax releases a thunderous sigh. “Look, Maekyonite. Sykora is returning to a world of tense political machinations after fifteen cycles away, during which her enemies tried their hardest to encroach and expand and chisel away at her power. And in her absence, they have. Vora’s good, but there’s only so much room she had to maneuver without an imperial title. The Princess is bearing a deep-sea trench amount of weight. She has self-control, but I am seeing cracks in her foundation, and I can’t even blame her, because the beautiful alien she liberated from his class-H barbarian empire is some kind of monk. If not for her sake, and if not for your sake, then for the sake of her underlings, and for the love of the Gods of fortune who have blessed you, please fuck your sexy wife, you big handsome dunce.”

“You can’t blame a class-H barbarian for being slow to act.”

That wins him a brief chuckle. “You have me there.”

“I can’t have sex with her while I’m her property, Brigadier. Maybe that’s juvenile. Maybe it’s a Maekyonite absurdity, but it’s one I will not surrender.”

Hyax shrugs. “If that’s truly what it takes, figure out a way to un-property yourself to your satisfaction so you can pack her properly.”

“I’m trying.”

“You said your refusal was all you have,” she says. “That’s not true.”

“What else do I have?”

“Your desire for her, and her desire for you. Use it. Sykora is going to snap in half at some point, whether into your arms or into a total meltdown. If you time it right, you can push her over into an advantageous position.” She bumps another crop of targets out of the ground. “Pun halfway intended.”