Princess of the Void

5.47. Broken Record

Seven cycles into Sykora’s pregnancy

“Crew of the Ziya’s Valor, this is Prince Grantyde of the ZKZ Black Pike. Your vessel’s armed presence within a lunar span of Marquess Lewyn’s orbital station is a breach of Frontier Nonaggression Protocol. You have one minute to respond with an explanation for your breach of Imperial Law or to vacate the premises, or your vessel will be disabled and boarded. Acknowledge.”

Grant releases the broadcast button on the throne’s armrest.

“I know I’m being a broken record, but I’m hoping we could raise the camera just a little further, Mags,” he says. “Top of my head’s still getting cut off.”

On the bridge below, Ensign Magziwa bows from her place at the Monitor station. “We are regrettably maxed out, Majesty.”

“Perhaps it’s more intimidating that way.” Hyax looks up from the communicator message she’s tapping out. “It gets your considerable height across.”

“His hair is too nice. You wanna let that effort go to waste?” Waian strides to the camera’s boom, takes it in her mechanical hand, and cranks it higher with a crack of plastic. “There we go.” She sits back at her console. “I’ll fix that later.”

“It’s crooked now,” Hyax grunts.

“That’s fine,” Waian says. “Artsy.”

“I didn’t really work on my hair,” Grant says. “To be clear. It’s just like this.”

Waian winks. “Sure it is.”

“I use some of that sabsum shampoo Sykora has in the shower and I do a quick little heat dry and that’s it. Really. Takes like five minutes.”

“Hail from the Ziya’s Valor, Majesty,” Magziwa calls.

Grant sits up and rolls his shoulders back. He’s tried doing the imperial slouch that Sykora does; he can’t make it work. His throne posture is all rigid formalism. The command group’s been calling it his Sergeant Grolli pose, which is apparently a very funny reference to some sort of Taiikari adventure serial. “Onscreen, please.”

Grant’s words summon a sliding hexagon of liquid glass. A middle-aged lilac woman appears and—as is common when Grant is on the throne—her eyes momentarily bug in shock to witness the stern, bearded alien male sitting where she expected her Princess. To her credit, she recovers quickly. “Black Pike, this is Captain Ixka of the Valor. We have requested the use of the station’s hydrolines, with the intent to pay standard Imperial rates. The captain of the station has refused our matronage. We have nowhere else to go. Our arms are strictly for cargo security in the deeper sweep lanes and have been misconstrued as a threat.”

Grant adjusts the brocade on the sleeveless cuff of his uniform. It used to feel loose right here; it’s started pinching. His arms have grown a little too big for this tunic, he thinks. “My Majordomo tells me your sponsor is Countess Ordia of Lithiki, correct?”

Ixka hunches evasively. “Er. Yes, Majesty.”

“Given the extensive history of ill will between the Countess and the Marquess, I’m not surprised you’d be refused,” Grant says.

“Majesty, I assure you—”

“Chief Engineer.” Grant speaks over the nervous captain. “Is there a way we can remotely check the hydro levels on the Ziya’s Valor?”

Waian grins. She’s always all smiles when Grant’s in charge. “Sure is, Majesty. Provided they’re willing to transfer their reserve information.”

Grant refocuses on his dodgy subject. “You heard her, Captain. We’ll have your reserve info, please. And if you’re as deprived as you say you are, the Pike will provide you with a partial refill at no cost. More than enough to get to a different station. Provided you agree to depart as soon as the transfer is complete.”“Respectfully, Majesty—”

“The way to show your respect is to do as I have ordered, Ixka,” Grant says. “Am I understood?”

“Uh, yes, Majesty,” Captain Ixka stammers. “We, uh... we’ll get on that information immediately. We will contact you as soon as it’s ready.”

“Send it now,” Grant says. “I’ll remain on the line until you do.”

Waian mouths an oooh at Lomanza, who nods primly. Majordomo Vorakaia—Citizen Vorakaia, Grant reminds himself—is still on leave, visiting her son at the academy on Aodok. After this spot of business, he and Sykora are headed to that world to host the first micro-convocation of the Cloud Gate inheritrixes. A gesture toward cooperation with Dantia and Narika. With any luck, he can make time for Vora while they’re planetside.

“Uh. Would you..." Ixka glances off-screen, her obsequious smile increasingly a rictus leer. "Just a minute, please, Majesty.”

“Sounds good,” Grant says. “Monitor, let’s put one minute up on the board, please.”

“One minute, Majesty,” Ensign Magziwa calls. The number appears above the camera feed in downticking crimson.

“Thank you, Mags,” Grant says. “One minute, Ixka. As requested.” He mutes the feed and turns from the captain of the Ziya’s Valor, whose pale lilac face has gone even paler, to the Brigadier. He expects her usual grim attentiveness—but Hyax is giggling at something on her communicator. That is definitely a giggle. Her tail wags.

“What’s up, Brigadier?” Grant asks.

Hyax snaps her communicator off, stows it, and fires off a solemn salute. “Pardon my brief distraction, Majesty. Shall I prepare a suitably intimidating display of wrath for these truants?”

“You talking to the mek-Taqas again?”

“Just some personal business.” Hyax shoots a warning glance to the chuckling chief engineer. “I am wholly on-duty, Majesty. The Eqtorans are not my concern until my watch is ended.”

“The other day you said Eqt’s tits,” Grant says. Waian is barely suppressing her cackle.

“I don’t remember this,” Hyax says.

“You did. You were looking at the security detail that Marquess Reka was requesting for the birth celebration, and you said Eqt’s tits, this craven woman.”

Hyax’s icy mien cracks. She lets out a frustrated scoff. “I don’t know what you want from me. You want me to be friendly with these women or not?”

“Oh, we do,” Waian says. “We’re fucking thrilled. We’ve just also been waiting forever to make fun of you.”

“Majesty.” Ixka’s returned to her station. “It seems we have found another station near Ramex’s moon that will address our needs. No intercession or interdiction from Lewyn’s station will be required.”

“Oh, good.” Grant favors her with a smile. “I suppose those readouts won’t be necessary, then.”

“No, Majesty.”

“And you can go,” Grant says. “At once.”

“At once, Majesty. Of course. At once.” Ixka bows effusively as Grant reaches for the call disconnect. Her face vanishes; in its place, the silvery span of her cruiser flares its repulsors and speeds away from the orbital station.

“Okey-doke.” Grant stands. “Thank you, Bridge. At ease, everyone. Please fix my wife’s camera doo-dad, Chief Engineer.”

“Yeah, um.” Waian frowns at the apparatus. “We might need a replacement hinge here.”

The door to the lift opens. Heads turn. “Princess on deck,” Hyax announces, surreptitiously pocketing her communicator.

Sykora staggers onto the command deck in a billowy robe over her bulging stomach, her bare feet smacking against the hardwood. Her hair is still damp from the bath.

“Dove.” She waves a tablet upward at Grant. “Look at this. Look at this.”

To Princess Margrave Sykora & Prince Grantyde:

I thank you once again for your forbearance and understanding after the unfortunate events of the inaugural Qarnaq Cloudsprint. I am determined to give you cause to celebrate your decision.

In that spirit, I write with somewhat less-than-celebratory news. Word has come to me of a nascent protestation within the Ptolek coterie.

I have not yet been approached to take part in this action; be assured that should I be contacted I will refuse to engage. But this, like the previous attempt, has been planted and nurtured by the Exo Clan baronesses, whose influence is profound. Their professed motivation is that they are unnerved by your close association with the Exo Union, as well as the treatment of Marquess Shoskia, as justified as it was against such a villain.

But I have secure knowledge from the trusted agents of House Konia that this action has been conducted with the knowledge and aid of Princess Narika of the Glory Banner.

Majesties, I pray this intelligence reaches you in time for decisive action against this unwise skulduggery. Should my fellows in the baroness coterie bring forth and succeed in their protestation, I intend to exile myself from Ptolek to remain in your sector and your graces, and beg your pardon. In every eventuality I remain,

Your Obedient Servant,

Baroness Arenta of House Konia

“Hellfire,” Grant murmurs.

“It’s about Ptolek. Again.” Sykora struggles halfway onto her throne. Grant hurries to help her. “It’s always been about Ptolek. This bitch wasn’t trying to distract me from Cloud Gate—she was trying to keep my eyes off Ptolek. And she isn’t in-system to attend any kind of micro-convocation. She’s here to take my goddamn planet from me.

We are sweeping to Aodok,” she says. “Now. Double burn.”“I should have known. How foolish of me not to have known.” Sykora storms through the paperwhite hallways of Aodok’s administrative building, toward the expansive meeting chamber she and her fellow Princesses have appointed. “Of course that blackbellied bitch had a knife she was sharpening for me.”

“Hon,” Grant says, hurrying ahead of their HAK suited escort. “Slow down.”

“I should have known she’d be too busy nipping at my heels to turn her attention to Cloud Gate. Why take from the dead when you can shiv your sister. The rotten whore.”

“Batty.” He places himself in her path. “Please.”

“You’re not about to talk me down from this, Grantyde.” Sykora stabs a finger into his chest as he crouches. “She has taken advantage of me. Of you.”

“I know. I’m fucking pissed, too. But please.” He puts a hand on her stomach. “Please, just be careful you don’t hurt yourself.”

“Right.” She heaves a breath and lets a stabilizing exhale out through her nose. “Thank you. Yes. I’ll be calm.”

“Fuck being calm,” he says. “Just slow down. Or let me carry you.”

“I can’t tell you how tempting that is, dove. But I must be on my two feet for these harridans, sore and swollen as they are.” Sykora starts off again, this time at a more measured pace.

The automatic doors to the conference room are embossed with ivory images of proud civic Taiikari shoulder-to-shoulder beneath majestic ships in orbit. Grant recognizes the thin spire of the Black Pike among them. The doors slide open into a sleek, open-walled chamber, ringed with hydroponic greenery (or purplery, really—the plants are from Taiikar). The calming effect is marred somewhat by the score of marines who surround the room’s perimeter in the colors of the three Princesses who have gathered.

Dantia glances up from the game she was playing on her table display. Narika sits stirring a steaming cup of Kabira’s Wort tea, tracing Sykora’s waddling with cool disaffection.

“Gentlewomen,” Sykora says. “The latest on the Cloud Gate sector will have to wait. I have a matter closer to home to discuss.” She stabs her finger across the toroid table. “With Narika.”

“Oooh.” Dantia sets her tablet aside and steeples her fingers. She’s backlit by the bright Aodok afternoon. “You seem upset, Black Pike.”

Sykora ignores the seat that Grant hastily scoots out for her. “This doesn’t concern you, Dantia.”

“I have swept across the firmament for this.” Dantia has a shit-eating grin on her face. “I have no intention of missing whatever delicious drama you have in mind, Black Pike.”

“Kindly depart, Dantia,” Narika says, studiously ignoring the Black Pike marines trooping into the chamber to fill out their spot on the perimeter with professional menace. “I believe I know what Sykora is here for, and it’s nothing new. Just old hat.”

“Oh, who gives a shit,” Sykora snarls. “Stay, go, I don’t care. You’ve been brazen enough, Narika. Why shouldn’t I get a taste? You serpent. You’re running a protestation on Ptolek. Again.”

Narika folds her arms. “And?”

“You’re so hideously obsessed with relitigating that world over and over. Outside of all sense. It’s because I outsmarted you on it, isn’t it? The first world of yours that really stung when I took it.”

“I want Ptolek back because Ptolek is a priceless exo producer. We’re not all emotional volcanoes, Sykora.” Narika’s nostrils narrow—Sykora does that same thing when she’s leashing her anger. “You have Qarnaq now. An exo world of great promise. One that I aided you in securing.”

“You aided me? You supported the bitch who tried to kidnap my husband.”

“And then I revoked that support at a key moment and allowed her overconfidence to destroy her.”

“Oh really, Narika. You can revise history again and again to cast yourself as a heroine and me as some raving maniac. But do you really think your deception will survive if I go to the baronesses with the whole story? The way you used a refinery as a catspaw? I see through you. So hungry for approval from the firmament’s bleeding hearts because anyone who gets too close to you sees how low you really are.”

Dantia is watching this back and forth with the rapt, satisfied attention of a tennis fan, her jewel-threaded tail jingling as it wags.

“Brash of you, sister, to sit there tongue-lashing me about my business ethics,” Narika says. “What would happen were I to launch a close investigation into the acetylene mishap at Shoskia’s refinery? Do you suppose it was a simple misfortune that tainted its exo supply?”

“You are so inconstant. You hated Shoskia as deeply as I did. Now suddenly you’re crusading in her name? You have no right to launch investigations into my—ooh.”

Sykora’s rage drops from her face. She clears her throat.

“I really do mean to continue this diatribe as soon as is feasible, ladies,” she says. “But I believe my water just broke.”