Book 6: Chapter 4: I Know You [and bonus Chapter news] |
I am immune.
The pronouncement ripples through his audience like a physical force. The bridge crew do not speak when their superior is addressing them, but the urge is clear in them. Eyes darting and meeting, expressions of galled disbelief.
“Every Maekyonite is,” Grant says. “That was always my strong suspicion, but it has been confirmed aboard the Prelate system research vessel. The men, the women. All of us.” He reaches behind his head and clicks the strap of his anticomps open. “I wore these to disguise myself. But I want to meet your eyes when I tell you this.”
His sweeping attention snags on a woman in the crowd, a researcher whose name escapes him but who always smiles sweetly at him every time she bows. She’s staring at him like he’s confessing to a murder in front of her.
“When Sykora took me from my world and brought me into yours, we resolved to keep this secret until the sector was ready to hear it. it wasn’t compulsion that made me choose her. It wasn’t compulsion that made me choose you.”
He forces his eyes up, away from his stricken audience and into the camera that is broadcasting his words to the legion of crew aboard every level of the Pike.
“You have all come to know me and accept me as one of your own. It’s a natural feeling to second-guess yourself now, and to question who and what I am, and wonder whether there are other deceptions. But I swear this to you, as your Prince.”
He wills his hands out from behind his back and points to the holoprojection of his homeworld.
“Maekyon will be ours,” he says.
“My loyalty has always lain with the Black Pike sector and its Princess, and still does. I will stand with her, and with all of you, as this ZKZ annexes my home world. I will—” An unwelcome quiver starts in his throat. He shuts it off before it hits his voice. “I will see Maekyon join the Taiikari Empire. I’ll prove your fears unfounded; I’ll repay the loyalty you have shown me in kind, and I’ll show the sector that my people need no compulsion to be made proud citizens of the Imperial firmament.”
He looks across them all, sees the fear and confusion at war with love and fealty.
“Glory to the Pike,” he says.
His people may be stunned and conflicted and standing in the wreckage of what they thought was an ironclad truth of the firmament. But they are warriors of the Taiikari, and his call breaks through the daze. “Glory to the Pike!”
He keeps his chin up, even as he feigns what he does not feel. “Glory to the Empress.”
“Glory to the Empress!”
And he’s done it. He’s survived. Whatever they say about him now, to his face or his back, he’s made it through. He has that.
“End transmission,” he says, and the camera’s light blinks out. He turns from the humming dark and stoops at the waist down to Sykora and Vora. “Would one of you take over again?” he whispers. “I kinda need to lie down and stare at the ceiling for the rest of the day.”
“You did wonderfully, Grant.” Vora embraces him around the shoulders. “As wonderfully as you could. They’ll acclimate.”
“They totally will,” Waian says. “There’s Void Princesses who take wives, after all. It’s not, like, so odd for a—”
“But I’m a man, chief.” Cortisol spikes in Grant’s mind, tunnels his agitated vision. “I’m male.”
“I—” The color drains from Waian’s face. “I mean, yes, absolutely. Of course you are. All I mean is that, uh… there’s context already for the people who can’t… I’m gonna stop talking, actually, before my foot goes the rest of the way down my esophagus.”
Grant remembers what Brother Tymar told him once, when they were eating fish together on a remote research station. This might be where the implant is complicating things for you. The Taiikari word for someone who can be compelled is male.
He sighs himself out of his cornered-animal tailspin. This isn’t an antagonist; this is Waian. “It’s okay, Chief Engineer,” he says. “I know you.”
“So do they,” Waian says. “It’ll be a weird couple days while they try and get with the system, and then everything will be okay. Y’know?”
“Yeah,” he says, and feigns again: “I’m not worried.”
“Nor should you be,” Sykora says. “Because if any of them place a toe out of line in their fealty to you, I will launch them into a moon hard enough to ding the axial tilt a degree.”
Grant ought to reprove Sykora’s threat of violence, but this one time it makes him feel better. “Will you come with me?”
She kisses his hand. “Anywhere in the firmament you’ll take me.”
Ziavra’s fussing. Grant sits up in the dark.
“Gurm,” Sykora mumbles, which is close enough to his name.
“I’ve got her.” Grant clambers out of bed over to the creche and takes his squeaking baby into his arms. “C’mon, Zee. Gotta give Mom her beauty sleep.”
Sykora mumbles a laugh. “Beauty sleep,” she repeats, like he’s told a joke, and then she’s snoring again.
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Grant steps out from the cabin with Ziavra into the warm glow of the suite hallway, shushing and rocking as her daughter’s squeaky little squall works itself out.
He nods to the lift guards at the end of the hallway. They salute him, and he’s not sure if it’s his sleepy imagination that the fists-to-chest, usually fired off with simultaneous choreography, are off from one another. Maybe by a second? He needs to stop trying to read this crisis into every gesture toward him.
He waves with the arm that isn’t wrapped around his sniffling daughter. “Evening, gents.”
“Majesty,” the marine on the left says, monotonically.
Grant recognizes that voice. He moves a meter or two closer, enough to see the glyphs on the man’s half-cape. “Master Sergeant,” he says. “Pulling the late shift?”
“Yes, Majesty,” Ajax says.
And then Grant’s just standing there looking at him, and maybe he’s looking back. The visor on his HAK makes it impossible to tell. Nobody speaks—not even Ziavra, who’s slipped back into dream time.
Grant checks his partner’s designation. “Pentine,” he says. “Please give me a few minutes alone with the Master Sergeant.”
He almost expects the men to stiffen at this, but of course they’re both already standing at unimpeachable marine attention. Pentine salutes, gives a “Majesty,” and summons the lift.
Ajax stays quiet.
“I’ve been dreading the announcement today for decacycles,” Grant says. “In that context, I guess it went as well as I could have hoped.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Nobody tossed themselves out an airlock or anything.”
“No, Majesty.”
“It’s me, still, Jax,” Grant says. “I’ve been like this the whole time and it hasn’t mattered.”
“No, Majesty.”
“No as in it hasn’t mattered, right?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“The command group has known the entire time. We’ve used it. Where I’ve exploited this, it’s been in the name of the Pike.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Jax, man, I need you to say something beyond yes majesty or no, Majesty.”
Ajax remains impassive. “What do you need me to say, Majesty?”
“I don’t know. Your thoughts. Whatever is sticking on you that’s set you back to factory standard with me. We’re friends. I know I’m not supposed to say that about most of my subjects, but you and me, we’re friends.”
Again, there’s quiet. Ziavra lets out a sleepy little sound into Grant’s shoulder. He adjusts his supportive hold on her. His daughter’s tiny heart beats a fleet, faint triplet against his collarbone. “Fine,” he says. “Sleep on it, maybe.”
He starts back down the burgundy-carpeted hallway to his cabin.
“I comforted you.”
Grant turns around. “What’s that?”
“I comforted you,” Ajax repeats. “After you were compelled. After you brought on a bomb and shot Ipqen Mek-Taqa. After my wife flashed the compulsion out of you. I sat with you while you cried. I told you it wasn’t your fault. You were compelled.” The omnipresent marine readiness has scraped off on the corner Ajax just took. “Weren’t you? Were you?”
Yes. He was. Compelled because of a top-secret black site drug. High treason against the Empress to reveal it. Grant swallows that excuse and tries to come up with another one. Ziavra makes another slight, plaintive sound, and he notices his grip on her has tightened.
“Did that—was that all a lie? How could it have been?” Ajax’s face is hidden behind the wall of crimson glass, and his voice has never been very expressive, but the master sergeant is the best friend Grant has made among the marines. And right now Grant knows he’s helplessly adrift. “You tried to—”
“I know,” Grant says. “I will explain myself as soon as I can. Please believe that. And this is cruel of me, but don’t bring it up in the meantime, not with anyone else. You understand?”
Ajax salutes. “As you order, Majesty.”
“I’m—” I’m asking you as a friend, he wants to say, but this is the sort of thing orders are for. And wherever his friendship is with Ajax, he knows where he stands in the hierarchy. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Sorry is not a word you say in Taiikari. Not if there’s a chance you can make amends in some other way.
Ajax absorbs the forbidden utterance of his Prince like a punch to the solar plexus. But ultimately he has his armor on.
“Majesty,” he says, and then says nothing more.
Grant goes back to bed.
“We have to tell them,” Grant says.
“Tell them what, now?” Specialist-Gefreiter Axyna wags her puppet in front of Aurora’s delighted face as she affixes the phlebotomy tube with her other hand.
Sykora’s hold tightens on her daughter. “Were you not paying attention, Axyna?”
“No,” Axyna says, cheerfully.
“La,” Aurora says. Axyna chuckles.
To Sykora’s distinct displeasure, Aurora adores Axyna. Her tail wags every time the leering gremlin creeps into the cabin for an examination.
“Compound 70, Specialist-Gefreiter.” Sykora shifts Aurora to cross her legs. “The time has come. My husband and I are in agreement.”
“They remember I was compelled.” Grant rolls a ball across the kitchen table to Ziavra, who watches it with a nature researcher’s fascination. “Ajax was staring at me. And Ipqen—I fucking shot Ipqen.”
Axyna sticks her tongue out at Aurora, who giggles her approval. “Which one’s Ipqen, again?”
“The Eqtoran woman,” Sykora says.
“Ahhh.” Axyna unstraps the cuff from Aurora’s pudgy little arm. “Your little disobedience. She’s the owner, yes? Not the slave? We’ll have Kiar next.”
“Ruaq-nai-Taqa’s mandated period of indenturement has ended, Specialist Gefreiter.” Sykora reluctantly perches Kiar on her lap. “She is now a citizen.”
“Your two little disobediences, then.” Axyna repeats her tongue routine with Kiar, who, having been taken away from his blocks for this, is less enthused. “Naughty, Princess.”
“Ruaq, too,” Grant says. “I shot her girlfriend. How do I explain it?”
“Explain it? Axyna scoffs. “Whyever do you need to explain it? You are a Prince. They are a Lady-Ensign, a hitherto indentured junior specialist, and a HAK hound master sergeant.”
“HAK hound?”
“Unkind slang for a marine.” The sheer weight of Sykora’s icy contempt toward Axyna is undeterred by the son wriggling in her lap.
“Correct,” Axyna says. “You don’t owe the slightest explanation to him, or any of these people. Perhaps you could frame your little shooting as a lighter shade, compared to the expected outcome of an unindentured alien aboard a ZKZ.”
“If you have no words of value to contribute to my husband, then I would prefer you refrain from speaking entirely,” Sykora says.
Axyna shrugs and returns to her ministrations. “Just trying to be facilitative.”
“You can facilitate by helping us strategize our disclosure.”
“Strategy?” Axyna leers. “Forget a strategy. The Empress will not allow it. Certainly not to ameliorate your crew’s feelings. Anyone you disclose it to will be executed. And you will, too. And then who will blow raspberries on this little tummy? Hmm?” She gives Kiar a playful poke.
“I’d like you to help us present our case to her,” Grant says.
“Nah.” Axyna places the phlebotomy tube in Kiar’s cuff. “Don’t wanna. The Empress likes me. She’d like you too if you were less hard-to-please.”
“They’re my subjects,” Grant says. “And even if their loyalty wasn’t contingent on me honoring their trust, they’re my friends, too. We’re already facing such a challenge with this first revelation. We’re about to annex Maekyon. It’s time.”
“Not your decision.” Axyna corks the flask of his son’s blood. “You are alive, all of you, all of them, because you are important to the Empress’s plans. You have survived so much you shouldn’t have. If you go from an asset to a liability—”
Kiar begins to tantrum in Sykora’s lap. Sykora winches him close against her chest. “You have your blood,” she says. “It is time to leave.”
“All right.” Axyna stands as Kiar wails into his mother’s breast. “Little brown-eyed boy,” she coos. “Look at you. So clueless about your import. So intimidated by this big bad world. There’s nothing to be afraid of, child.”
She strolls to the door and lingers as it slides open.
“Because your parents will behave,” she adds, and then she’s gone.