Exodus, page 84
Their capsule had ridden up the tower for ninety minutes when Terence’s CI reported Knights and Ghosts were at his Hafnir villa. Then a few minutes later, Knights were inside the family’s apartment in the Chicado block on Barrow Avenue, frightening the hell out of the neighbors.
“We’re all fugitives now,” Terence told Jimena.
Halfway up the tower, the real bad news arrived. Terence got everyone to gather round. “The Infinite Totality just left High Rosa’s dock. That leaves the Starlight’s Shore, which is an Enfoe Dynasty starship. And High Rosa flight control doesn’t have any other Traveler starships registered on an approach vector.”
“I know the Enfoes,” Otylia said. “This gives them a monopoly; they’ll charge a fortune.”
“We have enough funds,” Zelinda said.
“That’s not the problem,” Terence told them. “Starlight’s Shore is a fast courier. It normally carries high-worth, small-volume cargoes—typically biotech products from Lidon, precision astroengineering components from Anoosha, that kind of thing. It doesn’t have room for more than three passengers.”
There was a long moment of silence.
It ended as Everett produced a near-hysterical laugh. “What do we do now? Draw lots?”
“No,” Otylia told him, visibly tempering her exasperation.
“What then? Act out the nobility Jalgori-Tobus are renowned for? Women and children first? But even that’s not good enough. Three of us? Fuck this! I’m going out the capsule airlock before I surrender to the general. I’ll be a shooting star—the best Gondiar’s ever seen. It’s a beautiful way to go.”
“Stop it,” Zelinda said.
“Nobody’s doing anything like that,” Terence said curtly. “There are plenty of interplanetary ships at High Rosa; their flights have barely been affected. We’ll find one for you that’s going to Anoosha. Its tower city, Pana-seok, still has Traveler starships arriving. That’s where you can charter a flight outsystem.”
They didn’t like it, he could see that, but they did grudgingly acknowledge it was a valid option. In fact, the only option.
Vanilda took the seat next to him as the rest drifted away. “You kept saying ‘you,’ ” she said in an accusatory tone.
“Sweetheart, I have to stay here, just for a little while longer.”
“Why? What’s so important that you’d abandon your family?”
“Our life on Gondiar is over. You must have realized that by now. Your mother and I want you and Aljan to live without fear, and that’s not possible in the Crown Dominion anymore. But, to be brutally honest, we’re not worth the effort and expense it’d cost the empress to chase us across the Cluster. So once you leave, you’ll be safe. You can have a decent life out there.”
“Mum agreed to this? To dumping us?”
“Keep your voice down. We’re not dumping you. I have enough funds to allow you to live somewhere decent. And when we’re finished here, we’ll come and join you.”
“No.”
Terence felt his jaw tightening, but he knew that tone, even with her true face hidden. “Please,” he said. “Go with the Jalgori-Tobus. You’ll be okay with them. They’re not quite the useless uranics everyone thinks.”
“Everett is.”
“Apart from Everett.”
“I’m staying with you and mum.”
“Vanilda—” Even he was ashamed of how whiny he sounded.
“You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?” Vanilda said. “That’s what you said. And as soon as you’ve finished the job, you’ll be back in space, flying after us. So what’s the difference?”
“I can’t guarantee your safety on Gondiar.”
“I see. And can you guarantee my safety if I fly outsystem in a Traveler starship to Asteria knows where?”
It was a terrible thing for a father to admit to his child, that he couldn’t keep her safe, but then she wasn’t a child anymore. “No,” he said wearily.
“Then I stay with you.”
Terence reviewed the ship register with Otylia and Zelinda. Out of all the ships docked at High Rosa, they agreed the Polkadav was the most suitable.
* * *
—
Eavrong was a habitable planet in Wynid’s second orbital band—a world that had a near fifty-fifty split between land and ocean. There were no continents, only islands, large and small. Somehow the terraformers had managed to make the seas salt-free, producing a water that was a vivid sapphire. The contrast between that and the intense emerald of every island was striking. Add to that the pristine white clouds, and its inhabitants claimed it was the most beautiful world in the Crown Dominion.
Thyra watched it impassively from the command chamber of her flagship, the dreadnaught Dracaenae. A cylinder two kilometers long and five hundred meters in diameter, it was never going to be something you could effectively conceal from warship sensors, so the designers didn’t even try. Its hull was an ultrabonded carbosilicate bristling with sharp conical turrets, half of which were topped by magnetic accelerator rings for channeling and energizing close combat particle beams, allowing it to shoot in any direction. The entire surface was cloaked in the ominous ultraviolet glow of locked neutron shielding two meters deep, capable of withstanding five-megaton blasts.
Internally, the fuselage contained hundreds of independent spherical compartments, capable of moving around each other in any direction, allowing them to connect with the fuselage ports for access, or submerge inward to the core for protection. They housed everything from the queen’s command chamber to barracks for her Knights, missile silos to hangars for fighters and auxiliary craft.
Ten separate antimatter-annihilation chambers produced the raw energy necessary to provide a combat speed of eight gees. They also powered five metakinetic railguns that ran the length of the axis. At their center was a relativistic cannon capable of producing a thirty-megaton impact blast at a five-hundred-kilometer range.
It was the proud boast of the Wynid Admiralty that the Dracaenae could obliterate the surface of a habitable planet in two hours, destroying its entire biosphere. Which was why there were only five such behemoths in existence—one for each queen in the Crown Dominion. A great deal of archon activity was directed at making sure none of them was surreptitiously building themselves a second. Under the terms of the Accord, a deployed dreadnaught had to be under the physical command of a queen. After all, their egotistical reasoning went, who else could you trust?
“Ma’am, the last frigate squadron has finished decelerating into position,” announced the fleet admiral, Lady Serrilda-Kroja.
“Excellent.” Thyra watched Eavrong slide out of sight through the broad window in front of her chair. Without its dominating glare, the intense points of the Royal Fleet were revealed as they shone brightly against the multichromatic swirls of the Poseidon Nebula. Now that the final squadron had arrived, the Dracaenae was positioned at the center of a lattice comprising a hundred eighty warships. In theory it was going to be larger than the other Royal Fleets gathered by her fellow queens—at least according to the official deployment numbers their navy envoys had supplied. She fully expected them to be equal to if not surpassing her fleet number; certainly Luus-Marcela wouldn’t want to lose the opportunity to outdo the others.
“In which case I believe we are ready,” Thyra said. She looked around at Lady Serrilda-Kroja, who was encased within a carapace of interlocking segments of golden bloodstone and navy cymech. There were no human features visible anymore. “Admiral, please set a course vector for the Kelowan ingress Gate of Heaven. You have acceleration authority.”
“Ma’am.” The admiral clicked her heels and took several steps backward.
“Take a last look, girls,” Thyra told her princesses and congregants. “You won’t get a real view again until we’re in the Kelowan system.”
Her gaggle of daughters peered forward eagerly as the dazzling plumes of antimatter plasma started to emerge from the warships. The view tilted slightly as the chamber realigned itself to compensate for the Dracaenae’s growing acceleration, then the sphere withdrew from the gap in the fuselage and began to sink deeper into the dreadnaught’s interior. Other compartments rearranged themselves around it, like bubbles in a churning foam.
Thyra awarded her father a modest smile. He remained stoic, but she knew damn well that inside he’d be burning with excitement.
* * *
—
Once the command chamber came to a halt halfway to the Dracaenae’s axis, the rest of the dreadnaught’s chambers continued to rearrange themselves until the Queen’s personal chamber was attached to it. Clavissa waited as Helena-Thyra and Lord Bekket walked through the hatchway, then she shooed the princesses and congregants through after their mother.
“Princess Roja will attend me,” the queen announced as she went into her lounge with a dismissive wave. Clavissa was mildly envious of the court staff waiting in the lounge; five of them, with only one princess to deal with.
Princess Roja gave her sisters a victorious smirk as she followed her mother. The whole court knew she was the current favorite. And did she ever relish emphasizing it.
That left Clavissa to shepherd the remaining four princesses and an additional seven congregants into the compartment that held the girls’ suite. It was a separate compartment from the queen’s, but the two were permanently attached to each other. She had some help with the girls—three maids from the palace—which just wasn’t enough to handle the perpetual semi-riot. It was bad enough just having to care for, educate, supervise (and frankly: train) the princesses, all of whom considered themselves superior to her because she had never been a princess herself. But including the congregants on the flight made the job an order of magnitude more difficult.
“Oh, darling, that’s going to hurt,” her father had said when she visited to say goodbye to him, three days before departure.
“Not ‘going to,’ ” she said in a martyred tone, “already does.” She’d taken a vacuum tunnel carriage out to their family estate four and a half thousand kilometers south of Wynid’s capital city. An isolated ten thousand square kilometers in a temperate zone where there were worn hills instead of mountains, and the winter freeze lasted for months. So very different from the perpetual heat she’d known for most of her life in the palace on the equator. It was autumn when she arrived, and her father walked with her through the gardens of his mansion on the estate’s southwestern side. She wore an elegant garllskin coat with cuffs and collar of the incredibly delicate fur.
“My poor girl,” he sympathized.
She drew a breath. “It has to be done. If we didn’t take some congregants with us, time dilation would throw the whole succession line out of kilter. The congregants we’re leaving behind will never get the queen’s giftings, and they’ll all be too old to qualify as princesses when we do get back. There has to be some continuity for the bloodline. But there’s not enough room on board the Dracaenae for their fathers.”
Jolav-Dabny put his arm through hers and chuckled. They were walking down a long stone path toward the lake at the bottom of the lawns. Several Deain were supervising horticultural remotes, tidying up the borders and shrubbery ready for the full onset of winter. The little changelings saw them coming and quickly withdrew, bowing in apology as they went.
“That’s a polite lie,” her father said. “Helena-Thyra could place a hundred fathers on board if she wanted—a thousand.”
“Then why…?”
“The fathers of the congregants are all from the court. They bring their children up in a certain fashion, the one tradition requires—always have, always will. Palace rumor has it that Helena-Thyra wants less paternal influence on her daughters.”
Clavissa gave him a sideways glance. “Excuse me, but I’m the major gossip monger for the entire palace, and nobody’s ever mentioned that to me.”
“Well…there are gossip mongers, and then there are gossip mongers. The petty feuds you hear about are on Helena-Thyra’s behalf; that’s why every charlatan and phony in the palace wants to confide their deepest secrets to you.”
“And yet you know so much more, so what does that make you?”
“Very very cautious.” He guided her under a thousand-year-old cedar tree whose flat expansive branches were coated in hoar frost. Tiny sparkling flecks drizzled down on her coat, sticking to the fur. “That particular observation came from colleagues in the senior families I know I can trust,” he said. “And those are few and far between these days, I can tell you.”
When Clavissa looked at him, she was saddened by how mournful his face was. “Oh, daddy.” She pulled her glove off and extended her hand, palm up, ready to bolster him with some genuine sympathy. His self-perceptual confirmed her disquiet; his psyche was twisted with anxiety. “Maybe you should re-host,” she suggested kindly.
“Not now. My dearest daughter, I believe you were right when you said our queen is too much Thyra and not enough Helena.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “That was spoken in haste,” she told him.
“Maybe, but it is not just the Wynid court that is changing. Unfavorable events are occurring across the Crown Dominion; outside our boundaries, too.”
“You and Gahiji-Calder need to take a break from each other’s company; you’re making each other maudlin. It’s a bad downspiral.”
“Perhaps. You know about poor Lord Makaio-Faraji?”
“Yes. Of course. It’s absolutely shocking. I know I’m never going to be setting foot on a human world now. I don’t want to die.”
“Maybe Helena-Thyra is right. Maybe congregants are too cosseted.”
“I survived all three trials, thank you, daddy! I have not been cosseted.”
“Sorry. I am distracted. I have a decision to make. No, that’s wrong. It’s a question. I don’t want to ask, but I don’t really have a choice. You’re right, my association with Gahiji-Calder could prove unhealthy—fatally so.”
“Daddy, what are you involved in?”
He gave her a sad smile. “And that’s my question: Do you want to know? Because knowledge is—”
“Power. Yes, I understand that.”
“Such knowledge can also get you killed. You’re a new life. You have millennia of that life to live.”
“What are you and Gahiji-Calder doing? Tell me,” she demanded.
“Okay, though it’s not actually just myself and Gahiji-Calder that are the interested parties here. We also included Makaio-Faraji in our discussions.”
“Oh, Goddess!”
“And now he’s dead. Killed by a human, which is to all intents and purposes impossible.”
“Until it happens,” she said wistfully.
“Quite. Makaio-Faraji was on his way to Uixic to discreetly acquire information on the family Guillrameo.”
“You’re kidding? You’ve been spying on Oneshot’s family?”
“We were interested. And we weren’t the only ones. Ualana-Lyon also visited Uixic for the same reason, so we thought. He was with his three latest sons; only Shoigu came back, as Ualana’s new host.”
“What are you saying?”
“That’s the problem, we don’t know.”
Her instinct was telling her this whole conversation was bad news. Ironically, an instinct that was a gifting from her own mother queen. “Don’t, daddy. Don’t interfere. Whatever this is, let it go.”
“There is nothing I would like more. But then again…”
“No,” she moaned.
“The queens have their Accord; they balance one another. And the Grand Families of each court’s Privy Council are a balance to the queens. Helena-Thyra has to act with the council’s ceremonial approval. It is a game that takes up most of her time, for they can vote against her.”
“Nobody dares.”
“No, they don’t because inevitably the real deals are made privately, brokered by the Master of the Court—currently the aforementioned Lord Bekket. Privy Council meetings and their vote are a mere formality. They have been for millennia. Right up until Gahiji-Calder was cast out.”
“You can’t do this,” she pleaded. “You can’t get involved with Gahiji-Calder’s scheme for revenge, or whatever he’s planning. Have you forgotten I was in the room when she had Lord Malquilvo-Beaumont executed? I nearly died of fright. You can’t go against the queen. Nobody can.”
“I know. But the Privy Council is losing their hold over Helena-Thyra just as she is becoming more hardline. Lady Lachwin-Elif should have retired from her seat as is tradition, but Helena-Thyra has allowed her to remain, telling the other families membership is their purview. The senior families, ours included, should have resisted, but instead we are struggling to hold back minor families who seek to exploit our division and gain themselves a seat. You know Lord Bekket has been meeting with them? He encourages the upstarts.”
“Daddy,” she asked uneasily, “why are you telling me this? You know better than I that my mother is a superb politician. Could it be we need some new blood at the Privy Council table? The Mara Yama fleet is still at Hoa Quinzu. We have to be hardline.”
“I tell you this because I know nothing about Helena-Thyra anymore. And she is about to leave at the head of a fleet. I do not know what she will do when she goes to Capo Frois. Frankly, that scares me and Gahiji-Calder.”
“You cannot share these thoughts with anyone, not even Gahiji-Calder—perhaps especially not him. Ualana-Shoigu might be in the Kelowan system right now, but an army of his agents remain here, and they will root out any dissension.”
“Dissension is far removed from the truth. If nothing else, we don’t know what we would dissent against.”
