Princess of the Void

“We’ll send word to the Pike immediately.” Oorta hurries in Grant’s steps as they enter the ready room, to a ripple of deep bows from white-clad researchers. “They can dispatch an interceptor on triple-burn and it’ll be here in minutes to blow them out of the sky.”

“No,” Grant says. “We’re not wiring the Pike. We don’t have time and they can’t depart Taiqan anyway. They swept in. If they find us, they only have to sweep out again, and we’re hosed.”

And we’re not telling Sykora. Not yet. If she knows her call did this she’s going to fall the rest of the way apart. She’s going to lash out at the Eqtorans for even daring to threaten him, knowingly or not. Grant loves Sykora more than he’s loved anyone. Which is why he needs to keep this from her, and why he hates himself a little for it.

He promises himself that he’ll let her know once he’s back.

“We handle this ourselves,” he says. “What are our options?”

“They’re getting closer to our defense emplacements.” The security chief of the post steps forward. He’s a frowning, slender Taiikari with a tight regulation braid. “If we reroute power to the turret daemon, we have a strong chance to have them zeroed in before their sensors even find us. Say the word and we’ll blast them out of the sky.”

“Okay.” Grant isn’t sure what a daemon is but the man seems confident. “That’s plan A. But is there a way to take them in? Military prisoners and captured technology. An Eqtoran sweep engine. We can use that.” He glances at Ajax, who's silent by his side. This is an excuse, but a good one, he thinks. “And I don’t want to be responsible for the first Eqtoran casualties of the campaign. Nothing that risks the Pike’s mission.”

“Our point defenses are lethal,” the security chief says. “Especially on a ship this small. We’d need an interceptor, and we don’t have one.”

“We have the drop shuttle,” Ajax says. “Not exactly an interceptor, but that thing out there’s not exactly a ZKP. We have the speed.”

“Begging your pardon, sergeant.” One of the post's marines ducks his head in a quick, apologetic bow. “But you came here on assisted auto, yes? It’s not like we’ve got an interceptor pilot in this outpost.”

Grant takes a deep breath. He looks at Ajax. The marine’s helmet inclines in assent, just a fraction of an inch.

“Yes you do,” he says. “Get that drop shuttle prepped. I’ll fly it.”

An uncertain stillness meets his words.

Oorta breaks it. “Majesty—”

“Your Prince gave you an order.” Ajax’s helmet-modulated bark cuts her off. “Prep the drop shuttle.”

Oorta snaps into a downward bow like her head has suddenly magnetized toward the floor. “Immediately.”

Grant sidles over to Ajax as the listening post Taiikari scurry from the room. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, sergeant. I’ll try to live up to it.”

“You are my Prince, Majesty. And you’re the crazy bastard who cleared the belt in under a tenday. We’ll be fine.” Ajax holds the door open for Grant. “Can’t lie. Kinda hones my horns to get royal orders from another dude for once.”

Grant strolls past him. “That’s, uh—that’s good, right? Hones your horns?”

Ajax snorts. “It’s good.”

The hangar is a hive of activity. Workers swarm the shuttle, running through checks and checklists. Grant zips his flight suit on and plucks his Maekyonite-sized helmet from the ready-rack. A knot of marines stand by the shuttle or lean on the catwalk rail, speaking in low, amused voices as the hubbub unfolds around them.

“Tighten up, gentlemen,” Ajax calls, and they come to rapid attention. He points at two of his marines. “Talem, Pentine. With me.”

The selected marines salute and retrieve their kit from the nearby stack of footlockers.

“All right, Majesty.” Ajax steps aside to let a hurrying dockworker past. “We’ll disable that alien vessel and launch ourselves on. Get you some prisoners.”

“Launch yourselves?” Grant’s brow raises. “Like through space?”

“Shuttle’s got a sling system on it. Once we knock out the engines and the weapons, we can fly to the outside and breach. The targeting computer makes it simple. Don’t even need to crack a membrane.”

“You hate flying.”

Ajax press checks his rifle and peers down its sight. “Sometimes, you hate your job. It’s still your job.”

“We don’t know how many crew are on there. Is three enough?”

“Yes.” Ajax folds his stock and snaps his gun across the magnetic rail on his chestplate. His chosen team is forming up in front of them. “Okay, boys. I’m point, Talem’s assault, Pentine’s slack. His Majesty wants living captives. So it’s negotiations to shock rounds to takedowns.” He holds his fist out, knuckles up. “Pike’s up.”

His two marines clatter their gauntlets against his. “Pike’s up.”

They look upward, to Grant.

He puts his fist in. “Pike’s up.”

“Let’s catch us some fish.” Ajax steps out and salutes. “By your leave, Majesty.”

Grant ducks into the shuttle and squeezes himself into the cockpit. His knees come up past the lip of the console. “A little tight in here, sergeant.”

“Uh huh.” Ajax steps to his side. “Controls aren’t Maekyonite-sized but they’ll be familiar.”

Grant’s hand lingers over a bank of camera and trigger mechanisms. “These aren’t.”

“Those are the chain gun controls. Don’t touch them. I’ll handle it from the turret.”

“You’re trained on that?”

“Yes, Majesty. Can’t promise I won’t kill anyone while I’m disabling the weapons and the engine. But it’ll give them a better chance than those defense turrets.”

Grant eyes the 3d wireframe of their prey, projecting up from the center of his pilot console. “Do you even know where the engines are on that thing?”

“That thing’s a standard Qunar Cruiser,” Ajax says. “Looks like the newer model with the missile pods on it. Those are on its upper plate there.” He points. “Which means the engines are right there, below. The projection out on the rear left there must be the sweep sail. I’ll take that out, too.”

“Jeez, Ajax. You did your homework on these guys.”

“That’s why you employ me, Majesty.” Ajax indicates a boxy control by the gun controls he’s not supposed to touch. “When I tell you, engage that. It’ll turn on the sling system.”

“You got it.” Grant’s hands are tight on the undersized joystick. The gangplank folds in and the shuttle raises and orbits to face the vast night.

Grant floors it.

They plummet through the firmament. The glacier-blue nebula swirls around them. A strident klaxon sounds as the heads-up display magnifies the cruiser and outlines it in fire-engine red. Grant’s heart climbs to his throat. It didn’t feel, as he was formulating the plan, like he was heading into combat. Suddenly, it does.

They’re a few kliks out when the orange glow on the cruiser’s infrared display flares.

“They’ve seen us,” Grant reports.

“All good.” Ajax is cool as ice. “Little closer, Majesty.”

Tracer fire spirals through the void and splashes pale against the membrane. Grant watches the percentage tick down, faster than he’d like. He pitches into an evasive plunge. Ajax’s targeting reticle dances across the dark and chimes as it locks onto the cruiser. Grant sees it appear on the wireframe and slide across the boxy canopy to the gun turret on its underside.

“Ears,” Ajax says. “Button on the left of your chin.”

Grant hastily presses it and the world muffles. Ajax lays into the joysticks. The twin-linked chain guns’ screaming rebuke fills the crammed metal box.

“Thing called aiming, sir.” One of his marines says, light and casual on the radio line.

“I’m aiming, private. Focus on yourself and cut the chatter. Helm fifty clockwise.” Ajax’s voice loud and metallic in his ear. “That’s you, Majesty. Stay on them.”

“Fifty clockwise.” Grant rolls them into position, flicks the nav computer on, and watches the interception parabola it paints into space in front of him. He tugs the yoke and blazes a wide loop through the firmament along the glittering virtual path. Ajax’s chaingun bellows and the distant tracers fall silent. The cruiser’s gun turret is out.

“Missile pods are rotating.” Ajax has a hardline urgency. “Launch launch launch.”

Grant slaps the evasive path router and carries them across its computerized countermeasure. Twinkling chaff spins from the shuttle like a galaxy. A flock of micromissiles flashes past them like an incensed hornet’s nest and spirals off into space.

“Could that have gotten through the membrane?” Grant calls.

“Let’s not find out, yeah? Level out. I have my shot.”

The nebular clouds corkscrew as Grant twists them round and locks them in.

Another whining howl from the chainguns. “Solid hit,” Ajax reports. “Missiles out. Those engines still flaring, Majesty?”

Grant watches the infrared glow sputter and die on their target projection. “You got them. That there’s a neutralized vessel.”

Whooping applause from the carrier bay. “Good shit, sarge,” a marine calls.

“Yeah, yeah.” Ajax swings down from the turret hatch and pulls his rifle off the magnetic rail. “Don’t think I forgot you mouthing off, Talem. Have your ass doing burpees with a weighted vest.”

“I hate burpees,” Talem grumbles to Pentine.

The sergeant taps the back of Grant’s headrest on his way to the carrier bay. “Sling button, please, Majesty.”

Grant hits the button and a section of the shuttle’s wall flips and slides with a buzzing, clattering cacophony. Five podded-off harnesses are on the other side. As the marines step into the middle three, their armor shifts and locks into the inlaid mechanisms. The men strap themselves in and ready their brutal, boxy weapons with workmanlike calm.

“Ready check.” Ajax rattles it off with the air of a memorized ritual.

His marines chorus in reply. “Ready, sir.”

“Harness check.”

“Harness locked, sir.”

“Route check.”

“Route clear, sir.”

“Kit check.”

“Kit primed, sir.”

“Horns check.”

“Horns pointy, sir.”

“Pointy as shit, sir.”

“Tighten your tails, gents.” Ajax nods up to the cockpit. “Hit the button again, Majesty. It’ll transfer the trigger to me.”

Grant obeys. The buzzing rattle intensifies to a low roar. The pods rotate; the marines are invisible, now, out on the other side of the shuttle, in cold vacuum.

Over the sound of the machinery, Ajax’s voice is clinical. Bored, almost. “Sling in three, two, one… out.”

The shuttle rocks on its gyroscopes. Three red-and-black blurs blast outward from the vessel.

“Fucking hell,” Grant says to himself. He looks out the cockpit window at the streaking formation of marines rocketing toward the drifting cruiser.

“Majesty.” Ajax’s voice bumps and jostles with the furious speed of his flight. “Do me a favor.”

“Oh. Anything.” Grant’s forgotten he’s on a live feed.

“Don’t ask me to teach you this one,” Ajax says.

A loud trilling beep sounds from the dashboard as if to punctuate his words. The sling system’s light flashes blue. Someone’s voice, Pentine’s maybe: “Contact.”

***

It takes Ynaqi a few seconds to understand. She thinks something has fallen on her at first, when the ratcheting taktaktak of the bullets sound and the sparks kick out.

But how could it have, Naq, you dimbulb? You’re in zero gravity.

She’s been shot. For the first time in her life, Ynaqi’s been shot. For the first and second time, she realizes numbly. Maybe third. Hard to say what’s happening down there below the spreading stain.

It doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. It’s almost like a dream. She experimentally pokes around the edge and—ah. There’s the pain.

Okay. She’s pretty sure she’s dying.

She thinks about staying in the turret but the thing’s fucked. She can hear the muffled burp of the ammo cooking off in its exterior silo.

She opens the hatch instead, and floats into the bridge. She wants to see Tennek and Suqen before it’s all done. She leaves a trail, a constellation of dusky red jewels hanging suspended in the air. She watches them dance blobbily against their surface tension. Beautiful, she thinks. That’s from inside me and it’s so beautiful. I was beautiful.

A scream jolts her. That’s Suqen’s voice. “Ynaqi!”

The keeper speeds through the air and catches Ynaqi by the tail. “Oh no, oh no no no no. Tennek, she’s shot.”

“Get her back here.” Her captain is calling from the cockpit. A blanket of safety drapes across her and muzzles the gnawing pain. Tennek is going to take care of them, like he said.

Suqen pulls Ynaqi into the cockpit and holds her still by the vacant captain’s chair. Tennek is loading shells into his shotgun, his disciplined breath rhythmically puffing across his helmet’s transparent front.

“Whuzza gun for?” Ynaqi’s tongue feels thick and blobby in her mouth.

“They’re boarding.” Tennek takes his hand away for a moment to reach for a medical kit, already open, its contents drifting balletically from it. “Qen.” Tennek catches a pack of pressure patches and pushes them through the air to Suqen. As the keeper hastily works and tries to stave off her panic, Ynaqi notices the tourniquet around her leg.

“Oh. Qen. Honey.” Ynaqi reaches weakly for Suqen’s hand. “They got you, too?”

“They didn’t get shit. I’m fine. Just a scratch.” Suqen catches Ynaqi’s grip and redirect it downward. “Hold that down for me, okay?”

Suqen puts both their hands tight on the pressure patch where it’s slapped across Ynaqi’s stomach. She’s singing under her breath. A calming medicinal hymn. Ynaqi drifts on her gorgeous, silvery voice.

A roaring crack from the shotgun. Tennek cycles the shell, which somersaults out of the gun and tinks parabolically off his console. Suqen's hands shake and her singing catches, but she recovers and keeps going with both.

“Tell you guys a secret?” Ynaqi says.

The singing pauses. “Of course, hon.”

“If I didn’t have this stupid fucking space helmet on I’d want to kiss you,” Ynaqi says. “I’d kiss both of you. I’ve wanted to kiss you since our first week on the Rivenland.”

“Gunner.” Tennek adjusts his grip on his shotgun and glances away from the doorway he’s got it zeroed on. “That can’t be the secret. Come on.”

“Better not be.” Suqen giggles and shakes her head around to scatter the zero-gravity tears that are cluttering her vision. “Babe. It was so obvious.”

Ynaqi laughs and winces. “If it was so goddamn obvious, why did you fuckers wait?”

“Regulations,” Tennek says.

“I just like watching you get frustrated,” Suqen says.

Ynaqi blinks slow. “I’m gonna find you,” she murmurs. “I’m gonna wait by Apqar’s bonfire. Find you both. We’ll go to the river together.” Her eyes droop. “Kiss you then, maybe.”

Suqen’s helmet tilts down and clonks into Ynaqi’s. “We’ll kiss after this, okay? Stay awake for me. And we’ll kiss after.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Nothing sexier than a lady staying awake through trauma injury,” Tennek says.

Suqen laughs wetly. “That’s right. You’re being a dreamboat right now.”

“Howdy.” The voice echoes tinnily from behind the lip of the bridge door.

“Who’s that?” Tennek calls.

“My name is Ruaq-nai-Taqa.” A keeper’s voice, warped by radio waves and the echo through the metallic hallway. “They’re asking me to talk to you. Who’s this?”

“Captain Tennek-nuq-Highstep of the Eqtoran Armada.”

“Ooh. Highstep. Nice. Never been, myself.”

There are low voices beneath Ruaq’s. Muttering to each other in a liquid, loop-de-loopy language.

“Well, listen, Captain Tennek,” Ruaq calls. “How about you toss out your weapons, surrender peacefully, go with these people, and you’ll be unharmed. There’s some good eating and some good folks and some weird-smelling beds. Real plasticky.”

Tennek looks back. “Just about time,” he whispers. “We go with the gods or we go with the aliens. Could take one or two out with us. What do you reckon?”

Ynaqi reckons she wants to sleep. But Suqen’s movement jostles her back to alertness.

“I want to live,” Suqen says. “I want to be around. You can’t just say you want me and then buy the farm like a couple pussies. Gotta prove it. I want to be a fucking keeper sandwich.”

Tennek nudges Ynaqi’s arm. “Naq?”

“I’d do a keeper sandwich,” Ynaqi mumbles.

Tennek raises his gravelly voice. “We have wounded.”

“We can take care of them. We’ve got a doctor here. He—what?”

Rustling in the background. Low conversation.

“We’ve got a pediatric nurse practitioner.” Ruaq corrects herself. “But he’s good, and the facilities are good. And we got an amp, and a bonfire. And some nice fish. Yuvik Village will take care of you, best we can. And in a few weeks, we’ll go home, if it’s still around.”

Tennek’s nostrils flare. “Where the hell is Yuvik Village?”

“Go peacefully with these people,” Ruaq says. “And they’ll show you. Please, captain. The war is over. We lose. If you want to stick it to them the best way is to keep living, anyway.”

“I go first,” Tennek whispers. He releases his shotgun, which hangs in the air, and nudges it forward. It floats out into the hallway and bumps against the ceiling.

“All right,” he calls. “Coming out.”

Ynaqi’s eyes drift shut as her captain stands. She’s vaguely aware that she’s shivering, but she doesn’t feel cold. She barely even hurts anymore. She just feels tired. She’s ready to go home.

Suqen’s saying something. Sounds kind of urgent. Hands on her, moving her through the weightless air. Small, armored hands. Rocking her to sleep.

Ruaq was right. The war is over.

Ynaqi loses.