Princess of the Void

Brigadier Hyax turns a heretofore unseen shade of purple when Sykora announces her intention to accompany Grant off the Pike.

“I’ll turn right around.” Sykora buttons the topmost fastener on her flight suit. “I just want to give him my goodbyes.”

“You can give him your goodbyes on the hangar deck,” Hyax says.

“I’ll hardly be in any danger.” Sykora rolls her eyes. “Arnak’s flying me. He threatened to resign his commission otherwise.”

Hyax’s armored finger tings fretfully against her pistol holster. “Can I threaten to resign my commission to keep you here?”

“You can, but I won’t believe you.” Sykora shoulders her harness on and buckles her gun belt. “What will you do without the Void Navy? Command a particularly draconian homeowner’s association?”

Hyax has marshalled the blood back out of her face. She keeps her expression impressively blank. “Maybe.”

“I will be fine, Brigadier. If I’m shot out of the sky, you have my permission to execute me.”

“Fair enough.” Hyax bows to Grant as he approaches across the hangar bridge. “Looking very Maekyonite this evening, Majesty.”

“Artifacts of my old life.” Grant hefts his go-bag over his shoulder. It clatters against his guitar case. “I used to love camping.”

Sykora’s eyes widen. “I want to go camping.”

“Excellent way to be assassinated,” Hyax says, sotto voce.

“We were about to, y’know.” Grant tousles Sykora’s hair. “Before you abducted me. I was gonna drive us into the woods, live on the lam for a while.”

“Sleeping in the chilly outdoors with no underthings on. I should have waited to summon the ship. I could have seduced you far earlier.”

“You were covered in blood and hadn’t showered in a decacycle and a half.”

“I had so.” Sykora folds her arms. “They used to spray me with a big hose every few nights.”

***

The chrome skin of the stealth fighter warps and refracts as they cross the hangar’s lip of light and slip into the firmament black. Arn, Sykora’s personal pilot, is stolid and motionless but for the twitching manipulations of the flight stick in his gloved hand. Grant has exchanged about a dozen words with the guy, mostly variations on “Good afternoon, Majesty.” Sykora reassures him that’s just how Arn is.

The armada’s guns have silenced again, now that the Pike has finished its bombardment. The vast scar is permanently seated now on Taiqan’s moon. The dust storms swirl across its surface and obscure the sigil, but the contours are faintly visible through the dim.

On the stealth ship’s monitor, the navigation computer has extended the Eqtoran vessels’ sensor ranges in scarlet wireframe cages that mushroom from their distant fuselages. Without their virtual presences or the spitting flares of their weaponry, the mighty Eqtoran fleet’s individual vessels are so diminutive that even the closest are nearly invisible in the vast dark of the firmament. They’re all dwarfed by the slender span of the Black Pike, but even Grant’s home is reduced to a silvery toothpick by the vast distances at play.

Home. That’s his home. It’s more his home than any apartment he’s ever had. How quickly that happened.

They pass the blockade and into open space. A slow decompression of Arn’s chest clues Grant into the breath he’s been holding. He flicks the black plastic cover from the sweep switch and toggles it. The abyssal night furls and folds and gives way to the rainbow kaleidoscope.

Sykora stays in Grant’s lap the entire time, warm and solid and spread out like a sunning animal. Her eyes are closed. She’s pressed tightly against him, her fingers fanned out on the tops of his thighs like she’s trying to maximize the surface area of their touch. He listens to the slow, purposeful sound of her breathing. She’s trying to get as much of him as she can before he’s gone.

He shifts below her. “Have I ever told you about my brother?”

She opens an eye. “The bandit?”

“Yep,” Grant says. “You think I’m a rebel, you should have met Joshua.”

“Jozzhua.” Sykora sounds the name out.

“Joshua,” Grant says. “Shhh.”

“Zhhh.”

He chuckles. “The sorta stuff he used to get up to back when we were kids. There was this place called Florida—”

The rainbow fades.

“Majesties.” Arn’s gruff, unsparing voice. “We have arrived.”

Grant’s mouth hangs open. “So fast?”

“It was an in-system jump.” Arn adjusts his gloves. “Simple. Could have done it quicker if Her Majesty would let me practice more often.”

Sykora sighs and climbs from her husband’s embrace. She peers out the cockpit window at the turning spindle of the listening post. Her look back to Grant is full of the same unfortified anxiety he’s feeling.

“I thought we’d have more time,” she says.

The fighter taxis into the stark white hangar of the listening post. Such contrast from the grandiose scarlet and brass trappings of the Pike, Grant reflects, as he and the Princess disembark. Waiting for them in customary bowing supplication are the staff of the listening post, accompanied by a stranger in a sleek saffron frock, with his long hair in a tight braid.

His eyes are covered by the anticompel goggles that the men of the Empire wear habitually, but Grant can see the Princess in what’s visible of Tymar’s face. He has Sykora’s silky, dark hair and her delicate, upturned nose. And he has her smile, too, when he sees Sykora jog forward and open her arms.

“Kora.” He takes a knee.

“Tyme.” Sykora folds herself into Tymar’s embrace. “I’ve missed you, brother.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” The plain steel bracelets on Tymar’s wrist clatter as he pats her back. “But it’s been so lovely to hear the ways you’ve shined. Your disappearance was only recounted to me midway through the occurrence. News travels slowly to a hamlet like mine.” He glances over Sykora’s shoulder. “I did hear about your husband. And here the gentleman is.” He stands up and extends his hand. “Brother Tymar of Indrik. Brother in a couple of ways to you, sire. It’s good to meet you.”

Grant shakes his brother-in-law’s hand. There’s dried ink crusted against Tymar’s cuticles. “Likewise.”

“We’re sheltered, somewhat, at my monastery. The only aliens I meet are the pilgrims, and there’s precious few of those in a backwater place like Indrik.”

“You’d never have met a Maekyonite regardless, I’d say. I’m the first.”

Tymar’s nose wrinkles. The motion is so disarmingly like Sykora’s. “You don’t have Maekyonite parents?”

“The first in the firmament, I mean.”

“I know.” Tymar retrieves his hand and gives Grant a playful tap on the arm. “Just rustling your robe, sire. God’s wounds, you’re tall.”

“Grantyde here is a Majesty, you know, not a sire.” Sykora smugly pats Grant’s thigh. “He’s the first alien Prince.”

Tymar bows. “The honor is doubled, then.”

“Sykora’s enthusiastic. I’m not a Prince just yet.” Grant gives his wife a gentle nudge. “We have a situation to sort out before I can feel comfortably coronated. That’s why we’ve called you here.”

“I’m at your disposal,” Tymar says. “Sykora gave me the broad outline.”

“That’s all Grantyde has given me. I’m monstrously curious.” Sykora sighs. “But he’s staying cagey until he’s sure of himself.”

“Oh—before you go, Kora. I’ve got something for you.” Tymar unzips his sizable duffel and digs through it. He removes a folded robe and a set of leather-bound and gold-leafed tomes. “Something that sloshes… here we are.”

Sykora’s face lights up. “You didn’t.”

“Oh, but I did. I traveled light, Kora, but not so light.” Tymar tugs a weighty-looking jug from his bag. “Behold the bounty of the Omnidivine.”

“Indrikan cider!” Sykora’s eyes dance. “Oh Grant, you’re going to love this stuff.”

“Uh-huh. A whole triliter of it. I had to take all of my books on comparative religion and conflict resolution out of my luggage to fit it.” Tymar bounces his eyebrows toward Grant. “We didn’t need those, right, Prince?”

“It would have been nice,” Grant says. “But I understand priorities.”

“You’re certainly going to understand when you taste this stuff.” Sykora’s little hands make the jug look cartoonishly huge. “It is delicious, and it is strong.”

“You’ll save me some?”

“Oh, I’m saving every drop, dove. We’ll crack it open to celebrate your triumphant return.” She hugs the cask to her chest, then places it on the sterile metal floor behind her. “Thank you, Tymar. With this much, I think I might finally get my husband drunk.” She kisses Grant’s wrist. “Bring him back with you, why don’t you? I’m quite overdue on hosting him.”

“I’d love that, sister.” Tymar says it over his shoulder as he re-packs his lumpy duffel bag. “It’s been far too long.”

“That it has. And there’s… I have need of your council, I think.” Sykora’s touch lingers on Grant’s fingers. “Recent events have me—somewhat faith-curious.”

Tymar beams. “I’ll bring my full catalogue. We can go dogma-shopping and pick you the perfect scripture.”

Sykora’s laugh is light and unburdened. “You’re giving Grantyde the wrong idea about the Omnidivine, you know.”

“I’ll have plenty of time to give him the party line, I’m sure. You’re going to tire of me, Majesty.” Tymar tucks his robe back into his rucksack.

As her brother rummages, Sykora draws Grant to a knee. Her lips find his. They ignore the silent aversions of the eye from the researchers standing vigil. He finds a moment of tranquility in his wife, in her scent and the warm dark of their kiss. He holds her and wills himself into the present, as if he could slow the time before their parting by counting the seconds. The Princess’s dark, sweet-scented hair whispers softly against his face.

“I’ll miss you.” She presses her lips to the point of his nose. “But I’ll be okay. And it will be worth it. You’ll focus on your idea. On your mission. And then you’ll come back to me. And I’ll leap into your arms and kiss you again, and you’ll give me a way out. And we’ll annex Eqtora in peace and sisterhood, and we’ll make love in a sledgehouse on the ice of the South Qanak Sea, under the light of the aurora.”

He brushes the cursive span of her neck. “That’s right.”

She releases her grip on him and steps back. She clutched him so tight her nails have left crescents in the skin of his forearm.

“Take care of him, Tymar,” she says.

“As best as my faculties allow, Sykora.” The cleric bows.

“I love you,” Sykora says. “Both of you.” She bows low at the waist. “Be safe. And be extraordinary.”

***

Oorta leads the cleric and the Prince to the edge of the artificial village of Yuvik. At the edge of the artificial village she holds a hand up and presses a golden button by the wall.

Up in the artificial sky, a star blinks yellow with a regular pulse.

Over the middle-distant sound of woodfire and music, Grant hears footfalls approach.

“Ma’am.” A man’s voice from the air in front of them. Grant squints and marks the subtle ripple of an invisible Taiikari.

“Hello, Zaros. That’s Zaros, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The Prince is looking for a visitation. How are our guests today?”

A tail appears and taps against the floor. That’s the mostly invisible equivalent of a bow. “Tense, but within tolerances. They’re all worried about Taiqan, of course. From what I could pick up, there’s hope we’ll finish up before the scouring.”

“That’s good,” Oorta says. “And how are you, Zaros?”

“Freezing my balls off, ma’am.”

Oorta laughs nervously. “In front of His Majesty, Zaros. Really.”

“His Majesty has balls. He gets it.”

“I do.” Grant half-bows at the approximate location of the marine. “Can we let him off early, administrator? I think we’ll be all right in there.”

“Uh. Very well.” Oorta steps back. “Let’s give the gentlemen space, Zaros. You can clock out and warm up.”

“Ma’am.” The tail thwacks again, and the invisible marine’s bare footsteps tap down the service hall behind them. Oorta bows Grant deeper into the village.

Outside a wood smoke-scented cylindrical cabin, the language implanted Eqtoran Ipqen-mek-Taqa sits on a long carved bench. Ruaq, the keeper she was worrying over the last time they met, has her head laid in Ipqen’s lap. The keeper’s munching on slices of smoked fish.

Ruaq’s humming to Ipqen between mouthfuls. Ipqen joins in, now and then, a winding up-and-down tune an octave beneath Ruaq’s.

Ipqen waves. “Hey there. Look who it is. Howzit, Majesty?”

“Lady Ipqen.” Grant inclines his head. “It’s going all right. You?”

“Can’t complain, far as alien abductions go.” Ipqen spits something into a basin by her feet.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” Grant peers at the juice Ipqen’s wiping off her chin.

“Little bit of xhurr,” Ipqen says. “Makes food taste better and music hit harder.” She reaches into her pouch and holds some out. “You wanna try?”

Grant remembers the dirty brown teeth his dad’s drinking buddies always had at the end of their chaw pouches. “I’m good.”

Oorta clears her throat as she takes in the scene, the pads of paper and the pens lying around the two Eqtorans. “You’re not trying to communicate with her, are you?”

Ipqen snorts and takes another bite. “No, ma’am. Just eating together. Little ditty.” She dangles a strip of creamy whitefish over Ruaq, who obediently opens her mouth. Ipqen drops the piece of fish and it plops partway onto Ruaq’s cheek. They laugh as Ruaq pokes the fish the rest of the way in with a thin finger.

Ipqen smiles down like the sun rises in the little keeper’s eyes. She scoots a sketchpad out of Ruaq’s hand. She glances back up at Oorta. “Pictures are okay, right?”

“Possibly.” Oorta frets at the lapel of her cream-colored uniform. “Depending on what you’ve drawn. If it’s glyphic—”

“How about this?” Ipqen flips the sketchpad to a previous page. A stick-figure version of the administrator with her hands on her hips and an exaggerated scowl is disgorging a speech bubble full of cruel-looking murder weapons.

Oorta’s hands go momentarily to her hips. “That, uh—that’s permissible.”

“Thanks, ma’am.” Ipqen licks her fingers off and picks her pen up. “Your empire’s got some fuckin’ amazing fish, you know, Majesty.”

“I’m glad to hear it from an expert,” Grant says. “The cuisine I’ve tried has been strangely lacking in seafood. You folks are going to bring a much-needed corrective to the Taiikari diet.”

Ipqen doodles idly in her notepad. “Didn’t expect to see you back before you took over the world.”

“Are they keeping you informed about our progress?”

“Uh, no.” Ipqen’s polar-blue eyes widen. The edge of her fringe leaches its color. “It’s not over already, is it?”

“It’s not. It’s only just begun. That’s why I’m here.”

“Ah. Uh-huh.” Ipqen’s face falls. “Trouble?”

“Nothing catastrophic has happened yet,” Grant says. “But I think I’ve caught the foreboding you had when I met you.”

Ipqen scratches her snout with the pen cap. “Sucks, don’t it?”

“It does.” Grant checks what Ipqen’s drawing. It’s him, he thinks, by the scribbly whiskers on the figure’s face. He’s still the only alien he’s met with facial hair. “Last time I was here, that scratched-up guy at the meeting house called me something. You remember?”

“Old Uqan? Shoot, Majesty.” Ipqen laughs nervously. “He didn’t mean nothing—”

“No. It’s all right.” Grant holds up a placating palm. “But he said Tamuraq.”

A ripple goes through Ipqen and Ruaq. “Tamuraq,” Ruaq breathes. A half-sentence drops from her before she can stop it; she bites it back and looks guiltily at Oorta.

Ipqen’s forehead wrinkles. “I remember.”

“I need to know what that is, Ipqen,” Grant says. “I need your help. Anything you can tell me about your religion and its end times mythology. There’s, uh—there’s a lot riding on it.”

“Well hell, Majesty.” She shifts. Ruaq grumbles and sits up as the thigh she was using as a pillow departs. “Whatever I can do. The Tamuraq is—he’s like a brother to the gods, or a son, or some piece of the darkness that broke off and got itself a mind. Depends on what version of the mythos you’re paying attention to. He’s destruction.”

“Tamuraq?” Ruaq reaches for the pen. Ipqen passes it.

“There was a movement for a while to make him more than that,” she continues. “But, eh… not something that lasted. The Tamuraqists.”

Grant’s mind races. What was it that Hyax told them, at the initial Eqtoran briefing? A pre-light religious schism of some kind slowed them down.

“Now when you say ‘more than that.’” Tymar has produced a tablet from his ruck. His stylus is poised. “I’d love to hear more.”

“It’s, uh… this is all before my time, you understand,” Ipqen says. “But it used to be he was more than just a boogeyman. Used to be you’d worship him, too. Like, he’s there to burn everything down for what’s next.”

“A cleansing figure.” Tymar scribbles rapidly in some kind of shorthand that Grant can’t parse. “The executor or custodian of a cycle, perhaps?”

“Yessir.” Ipqen glances between the cleric and the Prince. “You know, sometimes shaping the ice, chipping at it, isn’t enough. You gotta melt it to freeze it into something new. That, for a time, was the Tamuraq. Same fire that burns your life down can warm you in the dark.”

“Fascinating. A fascinating archetype.” Tymar’s tail is a wagging blur. “Everywhere it appears.”

Ipqen grimaces. “Uh. If you say so.”

“Forgive my enthusiasm.” Tymar adjusts his anticomps. “I don’t mean to imply that this Tamuraq is less notable by association. He’s arresting enough of a force that he appears elsewhere, with other faces. Other facets. His name among the Kovikan Mezists is Ue’vikk!ntavi. In his form as phenomenal nature rather than a figure, he’s the Lothrian Tempest of the Amadari sandbreathers, or the Genesis flood of the Maekyonite Christians.”

Grant’s heart flips a zero-G switch. “You know about that?”

“Your wife,” Tymar says. “When she retrieved that gift for you, the, uh, the instrument. She got me something, too. I’m one of the individuals she contacted about translating Maekyonite’s English. As a cleric of the Omnidivine, that’s one of my specialties. Although it’s dense enough that I’m afraid I’ve only translated a piece. I’m still on the Old Testament, on Isaiah. But it has patterns and motifs and common traditions the same as the Eqtoran religion. These are the threads my order has sworn to weave. The ones that bind the firmament.” His breath, outpaced by his enthusiasm, turns firmament into a croak. He takes a moment to inhale. “This Tamuraq expresses the destruction that brings a purer creation. One of my favorites.”

“Well, that’s a pretty thought, I suppose,” Ipqen says, though her tepid expression suggests otherwise. “But not one in fashion anymore. There was some nasty business around when the final unification happened. The Tamuraqist Rebellions. Some ecclesiasts took things too far, thought that the cleansing had to be brought forth in his name. Bombings. Things like that. Once the smoke cleared, I suppose the appetite for worshipping him ended.”

Ruaq is drawing Eqtora. Grant recognizes the continents. The world is breaking in half in a cartoon explosion. She looks up at Grant and points her pen to the drawing. “Tamuraq,” she says.

Grant glances back to Ipqen. “Is there a Book dealing with this in the Library Sacrosanct?”

“Not a recognized one. Not anymore. They expunged it. But, uh… there’s copies.” Ipqen shrugs her boulder shoulders. “Around.”

“Around here?”

“Can’t imagine there would be,” Ipqen says. “But you got a team. I know they’ve fetched stuff for us before. I only wish I could tell you where to look.”

“I’m not gonna give up that easy,” Grant says. “We need to canvass the village. If anyone has any sort of lead on the Tamuraqists, we need to follow it. Ipqen, I think you have to be present. With apologies to the administrator.”

Administrator Oorta bites her cheek. “That’s quite all right, Majesty. As long as she keeps her earplugs in.”

“I can do that,” Ipqen says. “If it’ll help. What do I do? Just sorta—” She folds her arms and puts a stern expression on her face. “Like this?”

Grant pats her tattooed arm. “At ease, Lady Ipqen. I don’t need your muscle or your mediation. They trust you more than they trust any of us. Just stand with us and look like you’re invested in the process.”

Ipqen licks her sawtooth chops. “What process am I investing in?”

“Melting Eqtora down,” Grant says. “And freezing it into something new.”