Princess of the Void

2.26. Attack

“Countess.” Sykora buckles her pistol to her hip. “I regret I couldn’t try Tikani’s coffee. I have to go.”

Wenzai rummages on an overcrowded kitchen counter. “I figured as much.” She pulls a silvery bullet-shaped thermos from Tikani's chaotic coffee rig. “That’s why we’ve got a thermos for you.”

She holds it out to Sykora, who passes it into Grant’s hands. “Thank you, Countess,” she says. “The fortification is appreciated.”

Wenzai bows to Sykora. “That’s one of my favorite thermoses. So try not to get shot down.”

“Wen,” Tikani warns. “Be nice.”

Wenzai crooks a brow at her husband. “That was nice.”

Sykora manages a smile. “I look forward to our future partnership, Countess.” She takes Grant’s hand in hers. “Last night was lovely. Hopefully we’ll gather again soon.”

Paxea clomps into the kitchen in a vac suit. “We’re warmed up, Majesty. I have a suit for you and something a bit jury-rigged for the Prince Consort.”

“You needn’t accompany me into this, Marquess,” Sykora says. “We can charter a military shuttle.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Majesty. Who would I be if I abandoned you now? Besides.” Paxea puts a hand on her chest. “They’re my people too.”

“All right.” Sykora forces herself to breathe, and wraps Paxea in an embrace. “Thank you, Pax.”

Bows for the Count and Countess, a quick hug for Mava, who woke up in the commotion, and her hand in Grant’s. The Princess and Prince Consort of the Black Pike follow Marquess Paxea to the shuttle that was supposed to take them home. It cuts through the sky, toward the dark patch spreading like spilled blood across it.

The report loops as the shuttle beelines for the ruin. A wing of five fightercraft, outfitted for air-to-ground combat. A half-dozen strafing runs against the refinery. Casualty count unknown. Perpetrators unknown. But the grainy footage shows the mustard-yellow color of their fuselages emerging through the smoke. Paxea lowers the volume to a backdrop hum of calamity.

Sykora sloshes the thermos into Grant’s hand. “You drink this, dove. I’m not in a place to appreciate it right now.”

He uncorks the slivery stopper and takes a bracing sniff.

Sykora gazes out the window. “Hopefully it’s as good as Wenzai says it is.”

He takes a sip and lets the berry notes bloom on his tongue. “It’s fantastic.”

She gives a weak smile and squeezes his leg. “That’s something, at least.”

Paxea’s shuttle cuts above the torpid crimson clouds. Its nose shines in the ruddy light of Ptolek’s red dwarf sun. Frost glistens at the edges of the fuselage. The viewport goes matte and the cabin shakes as they descend the cloud layer. An ocean of exo gas swirls like a sea beneath the refinery ring’s mile-wide scaffold, which stretches into the fog on either side of the ruin.

Dirty black fog rises from the Trimond West refinery. The shuttle coasts low beneath its canopy and Grant gets a look at the attack’s aftermath. The south wing of the three-story complex is cracked open like a china model dropped to the distant ground. Its guts splay across the exo ring. Grant sees wreckage blown far. Bodies and pieces of bodies. He looks away from the window. Sykora’s touch tightens on his arm. Her gaze is unflinching.

The shuttle twists downward toward the glowing yellow ring of an open landing pad. They nest at the edge of a thicket of emergency vehicles and carriers. The shuttle’s ramp rattles to the steel catwalk and Sykora’s storming out before the resonant ring of metal on metal has faded.

Grant stays close on her heels to avoid being separated by the swarm of Taiikari who gather around her. His helmet and rebreather are tight around his head; the rest of the suit barely fit him, and they’ve had to supplement its insufficient length with billowing thermal tarps wound and bound around his arms and legs. They’re thickly bundled, but his breath still sharpened against the cold when they first left the shuttle. It’s arctic out here.

“Someone give me casualty numbers.” Sykora snaps her fingers at the cloud of hangers-on she’s obtained.

“Fifty-one deaths.” A vac-suited emergency worker passes her a tablet. “And rising. Twice that number wounded. The evacuation was botched. Most of the deaths were on the factory floor. They were crushed to death at their workstations.”

Grant’s heart is in his ears. “Why didn’t they leave?”

The worker glances at him and shrugs before turning back to his wife. “We have around two dozen who were blown off the platform. Rescue efforts are ongoing. But only about half of the workers down there had emergency antigrav belts on, and no transponders. So we’re stuck scanning for them.”

“Why were the proper precautions not taken?” Sykora asks.

“Just didn’t have enough units. This station had twice the number of people working here than was reported.”

“Gods of Ptolek,” Paxea murmurs.

“And the warehouses, majesty,” the worker says. “We need to discuss them. They—”

“They were full of weapons,” Sykora says.

“Uh—yes, Majesty.”

Sykora looks dismally across the wreckage. “This was a universal dereliction of Imperial duty. The owners, the staff, the attackers. Myself.”

“They shot one down, Majesty.” An armored man, his anticomps smeared with ash, elbows to the fore of the crowd. “They got one. It was rigged to self-destruct and melt the interior and the pilot down, but the system must have been damaged in the crash, because it didn’t go off.”

Sykora’s attention whipcracks to the speaker. “So we have a body.”

He bows at the waist. “We do, Majesty.”

“What’s your name, citizen?”

He salutes. “Officer Oro, Majesty.”

“Oro.” Sykora returns it, fist-to-chest. “Take me there.”

They pass two rows of yellow rubberized bags. Two suited workers carry another between them, and begin a third row at one corner. The bags come in two sizes, Grant notices, for the Taiikari dimorphism. The lumpen shapes concealed within leave little doubt as to the contents.

On the opposite corner of the refinery, a yellow-plated fighter has carved a fire-scarred groove in the exo ring deck. Its terminal dive took it haphazardly to the edge of the ring, where it hangs partway into the exo gas sea. Oro jogs to a med tech near the wreck, who’s crouched over a charred corpse, in thick carapace armor, that’s splayed on a tarp, stomach-down, a few feet from the wreckage. “Ennik. Tell her Majesty what you told me.”

“Full suite. Adrenal implants.” The med tech looks up from the dark ruin of the pilot’s brainstem. “This was a trained warfighter pretending to be a pirate.”

Sykora paces around the wrecked pilot. “Get me manufacture on this armor and his firearm. Get me an identity on this man and get it today, you understand? Within the hour.”

“Of course, Majesty.”

“I need those warehouses locked down and any weapons that weren’t destroyed in the attack confiscated. They’re all evidence.” Sykora turns to the hive of subjects who have followed her to the edge of the ring. “And someone get me the Governess on the line, now, before I have her dragged before a firing squad.”

***

They pile back into Paxea’s shuttle to make the arranged call to the Governess. Garuna’s face is pale and drawn on the console communicator. “Unthinkable, Majesty. Unthinkable and terrible. None of us expected—”

“Then you’re all fools.” Sykora’s words are like razors. Grant has never seen her this furious. “These are the consequences of backroom dealings. These are civilian casualties in a stupidly unnecessary shadow war. I could have prevented this, you understand?”

“It was the unionists. It must have been. Trimond ran a refinery without their interference and when they caught wind, they collaborated with the Yellow Comets—”

“I have had enough of your scapegoating.” Sykora practically roars it. “I don’t give a damn about your petty squabbles with the union. I am scant meters away from fifty mangled corpses who would be breathing right now if I’d been given the information and deference I was due, rather than these jumbled puzzle pieces and constant deflections.”

“I remember when we were a Glory Banner world.” Garuna’s teeth are bared. “There were no labor crises in Glory Banner.”

“There were no labor crises because there was half the labor. Narika had other worlds. More productive worlds. It was under me you were given the funds and support to turn this planet fruitful and productive. And after all the work I have done, now Narika looks to sweep it back into her demesne? No, cousin. I will not allow that to happen.”

“It’s not up to you.” Garuna’s putting as much ice into her voice as her amateur command can supply. “This world was hers before. She has every right to claim it from you again.”

Grant’s only half paying attention. A realization is setting into him that nearly pushes him out of the shuttle to be sick on the deck. They were compelled.

He only realizes he said it out loud when the cabin and its attendant caller all fall silent to look at him.

“They were compelled,” he repeats. “Your people compelled those men to stay at their stations. That’s why the evacuation didn’t work. They were fucking compelled. Those compulsion clauses in the contracts. That you and Lorimare talked about at the gallery. You did them, didn’t you?”

“My people?” Garuna stutters. “Prince Consort. Whatever Trimond did—”

“You and Trimond have been working together the whole goddamn time.” Grant leans forward. The heartbeat he’s been hearing this whole time has become a thunderous war drum. “This blood is on you. The factory was collapsing around them and all they could do was stand at their workstations and watch. You smug fucking ghoul. You killed those men.”

“Be silent, husband-of-the-void.” Garuna’s eyes flare as she uselessly compels the camera on reflex. “I will not be lectured by a noncitizen.”

“If you talk to the Prince Consort like that again,” Sykora says, “I am going to hang this call up and have you arrested.”

“Majesty, he’s barely been in the coterie for a cycle. He can’t hope to understand—”

“I’ve been to Maekyon, Governess. They have their own cruel idiots. He understands you well enough, I should think.”

“That dead Yellow Comet wasn’t a unionist.” Paxea is staring at a tablet. She passes it to Sykora. “Look.”

Sykora scrolls through the readout. Grant looks over her shoulder.

A photo of the pilot, alive, unsmiling, and looking straight ahead. His name beneath it: LT. ROKAI NEEM OF THE GLORY BANNER.

“The Comet pilot.” Sykora raises the tablet to Garuna’s blanching face on the screen. “He was a marine. He was Narika’s marine.”

“What—” Garuna’s brows knit. “Why would she—”

“Arming the Trimonds to fight the Comets. Arming the Comets to raid the Trimonds. Bringing chaos to the sector to undermine my hold on Ptolek and bring it back into her fold.” Sykora’s ears are flattening against her head as her voice raises. “Lady Frelle. You are listening. I know you are. Show yourself. Damn her seat—your daughter is in danger of losing her head.”

Lady Frelle steps into the frame behind Garuna, her face closed-off and tight. “This is needless aggression, Majesty. Whatever is going on in the attack on Trimond West, we have absolutely nothing to do with it. Why would the Governess abet an assault on her own people? On her most productive refinery?”

“This productive refinery was double-staffed by compelled offworlder labor. Would you care to explain that?”

“You’d have to ask Baroness Trimond,” Garuna says.

“I permitted you draconian measures,” Sykora says. “You employed them on your workers, and blithely ignored this Trimond blacksite. If my forensic accountants look into Trimond West’s books, how long until they find the kickbacks? The coverups. Now you seek to build political advantage atop the coffins you sealed these citizens into. It is time to take responsibility for what has occurred under your watch.”

Garuna sputters. “The Glory Banner—”

“The Princess of the Glory Banner has more important things to worry about than protecting you and your mother from me,” Sykora says. “She’s my next call. When I track her down, I’ll have many answers to extract from her.”

“She’s here,” Lady Frelle says. “She’s on Ptolek II.”

Sykora’s tail twitches. “What?”

“She’s on Ptolek II.” Frelle repeats it clinically. “She’s been here for a few days, taking meetings with the exo baronesses. In preparation to bring protestation against you. To take Ptolek back.”

Garuna’s aghast. “Mother.”

“Oh do think, Garuna,” Frelle snaps. “Either the protestation is airtight and the Pike is chasing its own tail, or it isn’t, and we must remain neutral. Majesty. There have been dealings on protestation. There has been no criminal wrongdoing, no treason. Whichever Void Princess my daughter favors, it has been our understanding that you are all extensions of the Imperial seat. The allegations you bring to Narika are new and disturbing to us. Our interest has entirely been in the completely legal process of protestation. To act against protestation is an illegal overreach.”

“Protestation brought by a woman who’s stooped to this.” Sykora indicates the ribbon of smoke behind her.

“If this accusation is proven true, we absolutely disavow the Princess of the Glory Banner and disassociate from any claim she has on Ptolek,” Frelle says. “We will give you her exact address, for a guarantee that your investigation doesn’t touch upon the Governess. You can keep trying to pin Trimond to us, but you expand this conspiracy past its verifiable limits at your own disadvantage. You’re looking for a connection that doesn’t exist and cannot be proven. This is volunteered from us. Do you understand?”

Sykora glares daggers at Frelle. “Give me the address.”

“Give us your guarantee.”

“Your daughter has grossly mishandled the Trimond case from start to finish,” Sykora says. “And I will give my recommendation she be removed. But I will not investigate the Governess for this debacle, and I won’t attempt to tie her into the Baroness’s deceptions or the Comet Queen’s crimes. I’ll excuse her actions as incompetence, not malice. That’s all I give you. Take it now or I’ll see Garuna strung up for treason.”

Garuna’s tail lashes behind her. “You coldhearted b—”

Frelle shoves her daughter out of frame. “We take it. If I transfer coordinates to your vessel’s flight computer, will that do?”

Sykora steeples her fingers. “That saves you from the worst of it.”

“Then I’ll send them through now.” Frelle reaches for a console offscreen. “Is this conversation over, Majesty?”

Sykora stabs the hangup button in reply and slumps backward into her seat. “The day I no longer have to deal with Garuna and her scalpel of a mother is the only day I look forward to anymore,” she says.

“I wish we could have nailed her to the wall, Majesty.” Paxea taps a few buttons on the console and raises a planetary topography onto the windshield. “But it was the right choice.”

Sykora nods. “Confronting her in person, unexpectedly. That’s virtue enough to sacrifice a tenuous case against the Governess. We’ve still got Trimond and Lorimare in the net.” Her fingers drum on the pistol at her belt. “And we might catch Narika. If she’s here in secret, she’s here with little or no security.”

“It’s not going to come to violence, surely?” Grant glances at the handgun on Sykora’s hip.

Sykora’s lips press together. “That’s up to Narika.”

“We have to move fast.” Paxea flicks a bank of switches. The preflight lights flicker on. “I’ll drive.”

“Pax.” Sykora grabs the Marquess’s arm. “You don’t have to involve yourself with this any longer. If Narika is our culprit, she’s either the Comet Queen herself, or working with her. We’re flying into danger.”

“If that’s true, then this is all on her,” Paxea says. “Not just the refinery. But Ramex and Aodok and the Cloudsprint. Which means she’s the one who compelled my husband. Who tried to turn him into a killer and a corpse. Please, Majesty. Let me come with you. I want her to understand the mistake she made when she did that.”

Sykora pinches the bridge of her nose on her exhale. “All right, Marquess.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Grant murmurs, as the shuttle’s engines hum to life. “Letting the Governess off the hook. She was working with Trimond at a minimum.”

“I know. But Frelle wasn’t wrong.” Sykora leans into his ear. “The only solid evidence we have is yours, Grantyde. The Lorimare connection that Frelle let slip while she was compelling you. And if we use it, the jig is up. There are other ways to hold the Governess accountable. When all this is through, Ptolek won’t be hers any longer. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Almost there, right?” His hand lands on hers. “Almost through.”

“Uh huh.” Her exhale shivers the steely dominance from her body. He feels that ramrod spine decompress. His hand slips under her butt and scoots her closer.

Her eyes flutter shut. She clings to him and lets him comfort her for just a moment. Just a few heartbeats of being Batty, of hiding in the shelter of her husband’s touch. Then she snaps back to frowning Imperial focus. “Where are we flying, Marquess? Where’s the nav pointing us?”

“A short sweep to Ptolek II’s southern hemisphere,” Paxea calls. “Forty five minutes if I floor it.”

Sykora climbs into the copilot seat and buckles herself in. “Then floor it.”