Date: 2016-06-15 15:10:10+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: In a galaxy controlled by massive corporations, few worlds are truly free. When explorers find a priceless wormhole near Sidonia, the hostile attention of the Aquitaine Corporation focuses on the small, backwater kingdom. To protect their world, Sidonia's royalty rush seventeen year old Princess Cosima into an arranged marriage, one that will guarantee a treaty and shield Sidonia from Aquitaine's clutches. But Cosima never asked for the honor of becoming the next queen to a man she doesn't love. With the fate the planet in the balance, a team of deadly assassins targets Cosima. The best killer
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The Queen of Sidonia
by

Richard Fox

Text copyright © 2015 Richard Fox

All Rights Reserved

For Kristy,

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

From the Author

CHAPTER 1

He’d never killed a princess before. Jerrum’s targets were almost always rival businessmen, suppliers who delivered defective products or ran off with their deposits, or the occasional pirate who inflicted more damage than could be written off.

The kill order for the daughter of a minor House on some backwater planet came with a very specific stipulation—her death had to be public and it had to be memorable. The deviation from Jerrum’s usual assassination contract meant a premium payday. His team didn’t complain, not that they could.

Tracking his target was easy, as every major news outlet on the planet was fixated on her arrival to Margrave Spaceport just outside the domed capital city. The banks of vid screens before Jerrum followed the target’s shuttle as it descended through the atmosphere. Ribbons of text on each screen shared the same basic information over and over again: Princess Cosima would marry Prince Francis on her eighteenth birthday, the first royal wedding in decades.

The networks had two grainy pics of Cosima, which were years old and taken from lousy angles. Jerrum’s target packet was much more detailed. He swiped a recent pic of her up onto a monitor—tall, strawberry-blonde hair that fell to her neckline in loose waves, sharp features with smart green eyes. Pretty…too bad she had to die.

Jerrum tapped his throat twice to activate the microphone hidden beneath his skin. “Carter, Glint, stand by. She’s about to make planet fall.”

Glint mumbled, the sound of a cheering crowd in the background of his terse reply.

“I don’t like being up here,” Carter said, her voice low and modulated, as if several women were speaking her words at once. “Too hard to escape if spotted.”

“You’re a professional. If you can’t evade a couple of local security guards, then I’m better off without you,” Jerrum said.

The shuttle slowed its descent and made a leisurely approach to the landing pad on the outer edge of the spaceport. The crowd, throngs of people lining the wide road from the spaceport to the fortress walls surrounding the capital city, cheered as the black and silver shuttle from House Zollern passed over them.

The crowd extended into the open Tannhauser Gate and stretched almost to the gates of the palace centered in the city. The sudden holiday spirit around the royal engagement had brought out almost everyone in the city, which suited Jerrum’s purposes. There would be thousands of eyewitness accounts to bolster the live video feed beamed to the rest of the planet of Sidonia when Princess Cosima died.

His employer wanted a spectacle, and Jerrum was about to deliver that in spades.

****

Cosima felt the shuttle rumble as it settled against the landing pad. Her empty stomach lurched as the whine of engines faded away and green all-clear lights lit up around the exit hatch.

She looked at the door with dread, as if it was about to open into the raw vacuum of space and not her fiancé’s reception. She had never met Prince Francis before, and the butterflies in her stomach grew into eagles as the hatch cracked open with the snap of bolts.

Her handmaid, a tall woman with a lined face and gray creeping into her black curls, sprang from her acceleration couch and unbuckled Cosima, who was suddenly befuddled by the safety harness she’d used since before she could walk.

“Lana, I don’t know if I can do this,” Cosima said, looking up from her seat with wide eyes.

“You can and you must, my lady. Now stand up so I can make you look presentable,” Lana said. She pulled Cosima to her feet, the young woman’s legs wobbling more from nerves than re-acclimation from zero gravity.

Lana ran her finger down Cosima’s spine, and the spacesuit fell away. Sleeves and breast- and back plates clanged against the deck. Lana pushed the leg plating away from her charge. Cosima stood in her skin-tight under suit, shivering despite the warm air of the shuttle.

Lana wrapped a black silk-dress bottom around Cosima’s waist and a matching shawl over her shoulders. Tiny wires in the dress activated, smoothing out wrinkles in the fabric and pulling it tighter against Cosima’s frame.

“Almost done.” Lana pulled out a silver necklace, blue Stahlium gems glistening in the meager light of the shuttle, and draped it over Cosima’s upper chest. Clasps found their own way around her neck and connected with a click.

“It’s heavy.” Cosima shrugged her shoulders.

“It was your mother’s, and this is the perfect time to show off. No second chance for a first impression,” Lana said. She ran a wand over Cosima’s hair. The blonde strands that had been abused by her helmet grew in volume and arced ever so slightly around Cosima’s face to accentuate her features.

Lana took a stylus off her forearm and held the tip over the silver-filigreed Stahlium choker wrapped around Cosima’s neck. Gold flakes glittered within a deep blue lapis lazuli the size of her thumbnail set into a platinum base crown. A holo screen appeared over Lana’s forearm, and a diagnostic showed the shield emitter active and fully charged. The shield was worth several hundred times the cost of the heirloom necklace and was one of only a few full-body shields in the entire system. Lord Zollern had spared no expense to protect his youngest daughter.

Lana stepped back and looked Cosima over. The handmaid’s lips pressed into a fine line, and she swallowed hard.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” Lana said. She wiped a tear from her eye and stripped off her suit with a spacer’s ease. Lana wore a light brown tunic with House Zollern’s seal embroidered on the breast. “Come on, let’s go meet your fiancé.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Cosima said.

“Not in that dress, darling. Remember, smile and wave.” Lana tapped the exit hatch twice.

The hatch lowered with a pneumatic whine. Bright light flooded into the shuttle and assaulted Cosima’s eyes. She blinked hard to adjust to something so alien to one raised on a space station: natural light.

A roar came from a crowd somewhere in the haze of light. Cosima blinked hard and saw hundreds of people waving and cheering for her, and a red carpet leading from the stairs descended from it.

Cosima took a deep breath…and stepped back from the door.

The press of a hand against her lower back stopped her.

“One foot in front of the other. I’m right behind you,” Lana said in a stern tone that hinted her handmaid wasn’t above shoving her out of this shuttle if it was necessary.

Cosima gritted her teeth and stepped out onto the staircase. Cheers rose into a thunder of shouts and applause. The claps and shouts of her name jarred Cosima like a steady electric shock as she made her way down the stairway.

“Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip,” she murmured, the hem of her dress blocking her view of the stairs. She imagined a video clip of herself tumbling down the stairs broadcasting through the entire solar system, on replay until the sun burned away.

Her foot touched the concrete landing pad, and she strode away from the shuttle, her gaze locked on the reception party waiting for her at the end of the red carpet.

“Slow down. Wave,” Lana hissed from a step behind her.

Cosima raised her arm and gave a quick wave to the crowd, which responded with even louder cheers.

She kept waving, her eyes still locked on the reception party, a slightly pudgy man flanked by two of the King’s Guardsmen. The guards, a man and woman, each wore gleaming white ceremonial armor, white chain mail tight against their bodies, and black sashes over their chests bearing medals and ribbons she didn’t recognize. The sash on the male guard, who stood nearly half a head taller than her, had a single red border on it. That decoration she knew: the Blood Stripe for a soldier wounded in combat.

Each guard had a holstered pistol and a sheathed sword hilt hanging from thick leather belts. Both stood as still as statues, their half helms covering the top half of their faces. A single black line serving as a vision slit made her think of the construction droids that tended to her space station. The left gauntlet of each guard bore a raised bump running down the forearm, the cheaper and less effective cousin to the shield emitter she wore around her neck.

The man between the guards, wearing a high-collar suit with coattails and gleaming white gloves, smiled at her. She couldn’t help but notice his bulging stomach and puffy face, but this was Prince Francis, her fiancé.

Cosima forced a smile and strode a bit faster.

The guards unsheathed their swords, the blades flashing in the sunlight. Each brought the hilt of their weapon up to their helm in a salute dating back to the knights of Earth. They held the salute for a moment, then sheathed their blades.

“Curtsy,” Lana said, reminding her of protocol.

Cosima measured off the requisite three-step distance from the prince, pinched the hem of her dress with her thumb and forefingers, and raised it ever so slightly to perform a proper curtsy, just as she’d practiced since she was a child.

She glanced up to see the prince finishing a bow. He stepped beside her and offered up the crook of his arm. She entwined her arm with his, and they stepped off toward a pair of ground cars waiting at the edge of the gate leading into the walled-off capital.

“Smile and wave, smile and wave. That’s half of being in the royal family,” Francis said. He followed his own advice and twisted his hand from side to side, a technique to maximize waving and minimize effort. Cosima followed suit and smelled an aroma that was too rank to be cologne coming from the prince.

“And what’s the other half?” she asked. She picked out a group of young girls holding a banner with her name on it and extended her arm to wave just at them. Squeals of excitement from the girls carried through the din of the crowd.

“Doing it with an enormous hangover,” Francis said. “I realize this is all a bit sudden for you. My apologies.”

“Sudden?” Cosima struggled to keep her smile as her grip tightened on Francis’s arm. “I received a sealed message from my father last night announcing our engagement and that the wedding would be on my birthday next month. And when will my father be back from New Chosun?”

“Soon, another day or so depending on the gravity tides. In the meantime, you have a great deal of planning to do for the wedding,” Francis said. His perfect smile and robotic wave kept up unabated.

“Me? Alone?”

“Not alone, we have staff for that. My attention must go to matters of state. You can handle the women’s work,” Francis said. Life aboard Styria Station was egalitarian, there was nothing she knew of that constituted “women’s work.”

He took his arm away and motioned to the ground car on the right. Small pennants bearing the royal crest on each corner of the vehicles lolled in the breeze.

“We ride separate. We aren’t married yet, can’t give off the impression of anything improper.” He winked at her and broke away to the other car.

The male guard stepped past her and opened the car door. She made a beeline for the sanctuary away from the cheers and the annoyingly natural air. The unmanaged humidity and free-flowing pollen were already starting to bother her sinuses. She was careful to keep the hem of her dress low as she sat in the backseat.

The driver was a robot, a cap and jacket over hydraulic limbs bolted to the driver’s seat.

Cosima felt a blast of cool air and looked at the guard still holding her door open.

“Well?” she said, a petulant tone to her voice.

“Your dress, my lady,” the guard said.

She glanced down and saw a slip of fabric hanging over the door frame. She pulled her dress close, and her head sank to her chest.

The door shut and she took a ragged breath. All the emotions she’d managed to keep hidden during the walk welled up inside her and threatened to spill over the dam of comportment.

The car drove forward, electric engines in the wheels carrying them forward without a sound.

“Wait, my handmaid.” Cosima looked over her shoulder and saw Lana slip into the crowd. The guard flanked her car, one hand on the trunk as he jogged alongside.

“This vehicle is for royal passengers only,” the robot driver said.

Cosima twisted to look over her other shoulder. Lana was lost somewhere in the crowd. The car passed into the tunnel running through the wall, twenty feet thick to house the shield emitters that protected the king’s palace and the seat of the planet’s government, surrounding Sidonia City. She knew there were two great arches that rose from the wall and crossed above the palace. Holograms covered the arches, disguising them as another part of the sky.

She sank into her seat and watched the faces of the crowd as she passed by. So many people had come out to see their future queen, but they barely knew her and she barely knew them. House Zollern lived on Styria Station, going “dirt side” was something one had to do, not what they ever wanted to do. Cosima, who hadn’t been planet side since King Rasczak’s seventieth birthday celebration years ago, now would be bound to the capital for the rest of her life, never to return to her home orbiting the planet.

“How much farther?”

“My programmed route will bring us to the palace in nine point seven minutes,” the driver said.

She leaned forward and saw the palace, gleaming white marble with red roofs and trim against the spires, was the center point of city. Of all the places to be stuck, at least the palace cut a decent photo.

“Caution,” the driver said.

A throng of people pushed against the railings, the metal bars bulging forward and losing their battle against the press of bodies. The railings gave way, spilling people onto the street. A child stumbled forward and fell to the ground in front of the car.

Cosima slapped at the robot driver and pointed to where the child had fallen. The guard sprinted forward and scooped the little boy up and sidestepped away from the approaching car, which had swerved to avoid the sudden hazards.

She gave a sigh of relief as she looked back and saw the guard hand the child over to a man and woman.

Her world vanished as an explosion ripped into the car, flipping it straight into the air. The shield emitter around her neck activated the nanosecond it detected a dangerous acceleration, surrounding her in a shell of green energy. She felt gravity lose its hold on her as she floated in the shield’s inertia less cocoon. Shadows swirled against the shell as panic gripped Cosima’s heart. She beat against the shell, screaming for help, but the shell cut her cries short.

A shadow loomed over the shell, and the border of her tiny green world poured back into her choker.

Her car lay on the road, twisted into a snarl of composite plastics and steel. A neat circle smoked in the street behind the car. Her shield had ejected her from the wreck and left her on the road. Sound slowly returned to her, muffled shouts and screams of pain and fear. Citizens scattered away, pushing and cursing to get distance between themselves and the carnage.

“Are you OK?” The guard grabbed her shoulder and finally got her attention.

She looked up at him, shell shocked.

“Answer me!” the guard said. Cosima tried to form words, then she saw a silhouette atop the building behind the guard. The silhouette hefted something against its shoulder.

Cosima pointed.

The guard’s gauntlet shot out over her, and a semi opaque energy shield came to life with a snap of air. The shield shimmered with a sudden impact, and spider webs of light exploded across it.

A silver dart fell from the shield and clattered next to her feet. Cosima pulled her knees to her chest and covered her head as the guard put himself between her and the sniper. Two more bolts struck the shield. The guard grunted as the impacts hit like hammer blows.

Static spread over the shield, and it popped with a hiss. The sniper lingered over the edge of the rooftop, then vanished.

“Under fire! Principal unharmed!” the guard yelled. “Can you move?” he asked her.

“Yes, I think,” she said.

The guard pulled her to her feet and rushed her across the road. He used his bulk to cover her as best he could. He limped badly but managed to keep up with her.

A pair of guards pushed their way through the fleeing crowd and joined the huddle over her. Their shields snapped to life and covered them both.

“I’m hit, get her out of here,” her guard said. He pushed her on and stumbled to the ground. She looked back. Blood ran thick and bright red down the back of his right leg, staining his white armor.

A ground car screeched to a halt in front of them, and the guards shoved her into it with all the grace and ease of dockworkers chucking freight into a truck bed.

Her last glimpse of the guard was of him lying on his side, blood running down his leg.

CHAPTER 2

Colonel Pavel Stolzoff entered the palace’s infirmary with the rigid bearing his position demanded. The head of the King’s Guard did not rush, did not let the cold pit in his chest push him into haste. One of his soldiers was wounded, but no matter how badly he wanted to run to the operating suite to check on him, he couldn’t.

For him to show worry or doubt would infect the rest of the palace as word spread that the Stone Man had a crack in his façade, and there was reason to worry.

Medics and workers in their light green scrub suits put their backs to the wall as he passed. Stolzoff always moved with a purpose, and everyone but the royal family knew to stay the hell out of his way.

Stolzoff glanced at the placard outside of a treatment room, noted the name of the patient, and entered without knocking.

He found Warrant Officer Remi wearing his matte-black mail body glove, and the rest of his uniform—tunic, trousers and sash—were laid out neatly on a hospital bed. Remi snapped to his feet and saluted Stolzoff. Stolzoff returned the salute with a shake of his head. Remi, a powerfully built man in his early twenties, had an aura of strength and vitality that Stolzoff envied. He’d been young once, many years ago.

“Patients don’t need to salute while under treatment,” Stolzoff said.

“Just a flesh wound, sir,” Remi said. “The droid surgeon stitched me back together and gave me two liters of synthetic blood to top me off. Good as new.”

“Has a human doctor signed off on that diagnosis?”

Remi shrugged. “She said something about resting for a few days. I’ve had worse, no reason I can’t stand a watch.”

Stolzoff placed a case on the bed and opened it. He took a silver-colored dart bigger than his thumb out of the case and held it up to Remi.

“They dug one of these out of your…upper thigh, let’s call it. Missed an artery by a hair. Know what it is?”

Remi took the dart and tested the weight.

“It’s heavy, tungsten?” Remi asked. Stolzoff nodded. “This could hit hard without moving that fast. You think it’s designed to bypass body shields?”

“Given that four of these were fired at Princess Cosima, yes, I’m certain they were designed to bypass her shield. The explosion could have killed her even with the shield, but the shaped charge went through the front of the car instead of right beneath her. The shield drained protecting her from the blast and enough hits from these darts would have penetrated, same as they did with your gauntlet.”

“We’re dealing with a professional killer, aren’t we?” Remi asked. “He knew exactly how to hit her.”

“Might be a ‘they,’ we’re still working the scene reconstruction at headquarters. But we’re going on the hypothesis that this is the work of one or more professionals until we have evidence otherwise.” Stolzoff took a gauntlet from the case and handed it to Remi.

The gauntlet looked like a fingerless glove that would run almost to Remi’s elbow. Remi slid it up his left arm and it tightened automatically. His fingers danced over a holo panel projected from his forearm.

“Voice print, Remi, Paul,” he said.

“Voice print accepted,” came from the gauntlet.

“The attempt on the princess was a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. She became a target the moment Prince Francis returned from New Chosun with news of the treaty,” Stolzoff said. “Francis’s transport was the first ship in the system for weeks. The hit team must have been here before that.”

“Someone doesn’t want the treaty signed, someone with a lot of resources,” Remi said.

“As such, Prince Vincent wants you on Cosima’s detail until further notice.”

Remi didn’t move for a moment, then frowned.

“I thought you had the new girl on her detail, another spacer from House Zollern.”

“We did, but she’s new, untested. Vincent trusts you more than anyone in the Guard, so you’re on Cosima’s watch.”

“Sir, I broke protocol, ran off and got that kid out of the way of her car. I should be disciplined for that, not put on something so important.”

“Paul,” Stolzoff put his hand on Remi’s shoulder, “you’re human. You saw a child in danger, and you did what you could to help. If you hadn’t, you would’ve been right next to the blast and I’d be planning your funeral. Your instincts saved you…and her. Besides, what have I always said about protocol?”

“‘Protocol is great, until someone beats you to death with your own playbook,’” Remi said.

“Go to Cosima’s quarters. We have some progress on tracking down the shooter, and she could use some good news.”

****

“Not one more minute!” Cosima punctuated her statement by slamming an armful of clothes into a suitcase. She turned and stalked back to her closet, her fists balled in rage. The walk back to her closet took time. Her quarters were high in the residence tower and took up a third of an entire level. The room afforded a view of the west of the capital, where the setting sun lit low clouds with red and orange, as if they were slowly burning in the sky. Lights populated the distant towers in the city, mimicking the emerging stars in the twilight.

“My lady, the danger has passed, I’m sure of it.” Lana scooped the clothes out of the suitcase and followed Cosima back to the closet.

“Oh, that’s so reassuring.” Cosima swiped a dress encrusted with onyx and pale garnets from its hanger and carried it to the suitcase. “Just go down to the capital, marry the next king, and—oh by the way, there are a bunch of people waiting to kill you.” Cosima waved her arms in the air. “Have fun!”

Lana shook her head and returned clothes to their hangers. “It isn’t like that.”

“How do you know?” Cosima’s voice cracked.

Lana kept her face down as she reached into the suitcase. Cosima grabbed the suitcase and flung it off the bed, clothes and jewelry scattering across the floor. Lana sighed and bent over to clean up the new mess.

“I’m dirt side for not even an hour and look what’s happened to me.” Cosima crossed her arms and sulked. “You don’t know anything,” she spat. “You don’t…wait.”

Cosima went to her door and yanked it open. She stuck her head into the hallway and saw Remi standing across from the door.

“You. Meathead. Get in here,” Cosima said, wiggling a finger at Remi.

“My lady,” Remi said. He entered the room and stood with his back to the wall adjacent to the doorway.

“What happened out there? Who tried to kill me and when can I-I-I get his head on a spike? We do that, right?”

“The kingdom uses hanging for death sentences,” Remi said.

“Whatever. Have you caught the person you’re going to hang?”

“The city went on lockdown immediately after the attack. Whoever did it is within reach. The city’s police force and the King’s Guard are closing in on a lead as we speak,” Remi said.

Cosima paced back and forth, chewing on a fingernail.

“So he’s still out there?” she asked.

“For now, but you’re safe here.”

Cosima gave Remi a dirty look. “I bet you would have said that the moment I got off my shuttle too.”

“The attempt on your life took place where you were in the open: visible and vulnerable. Here, you are surrounded by the best-trained soldiers in the kingdom and by the best security systems the king can acquire,” Remi said.

“If you’re so great, then how did that bomb…?” Cosima trailed off, then sat down heavily on her bed. “My god, it was a bomb,” she buried her head in her hands and sobbed, “a bomb right underneath me, then they tried to shoot me.”

Lana got up and wrapped an arm over Cosima’s shoulders.

“I mean,” Cosima wiped her sleeves over her eyes, “do you know what it’s like to get shot at?” she asked Remi.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Were you a mess like me afterward?”

“No. But I was trained, armed, and expecting to get shot at. Even then, it isn’t easy to deal with.”

Cosima pushed Lana away and stuck a finger in her chest.

“I’m going home. Now,” she said, her eyes wide with desperation. “Get me a shuttle.”

“My lady, this is your home now,” Lana said quietly.

Cosima groaned and shot off the bed. She stopped at the window and peered into the darkening sky. Styria Station had just crested the horizon, the haze of atmosphere dimming her view, fading like an old memory. Cosima put her hand out and touched the glass, covering her view of the station.

“Why can’t I just go home?”

Lana cleared her throat and looked at Remi. The guard took the hint and left the room. She got on her hands and knees and picked up little pieces of jewelry from the floor. Earrings and brooches went into a cupped hand.

A few minutes later, Cosima joined Lana on the floor, picking up after the mess she’d made. “I’m sorry, Lana. I’ve been such a brat.”

“I would never say that, my lady.”

“Oh you might not say it.” Cosima picked up a bracelet and slipped it onto her wrist. “But I can see you thinking all those ‘she’s a brat’ thoughts.”

“This is a lot for you. You find out you’re getting married—to Prince Francis, no less—you move off the station, someone tries to…hurt you,” Lana said.

Cosima sat back, her legs bent beneath her. “And where is Francis? He doesn’t care enough to check up on me after all this?”

“I’m sure he’s locked away in a secure room until the threat is gone,” Lana said, her tone rushed and uncertain.

“And what about my sister? Why isn’t Theresa here with us?”

“She’s in Sidonia City. The tubes into the capital are down until the assassin is caught, so we should see her soon.”

Cosima stood up and frowned. “I’m sure she’ll be so happy about all this. Father picked me over her, the older and prettier one, to marry the prince.” She sighed. “As if things couldn’t get any worse.”

****

Jerrum looked at the headline on his data slate and flung the device against the wall. The two assassins standing across from his desk didn’t flinch as the slate shattered. The pair was in their base setting, their faces blank slates with the barest hint of features on their bald heads. Carter’s vaguely feminine shape distinguished her from Glint.

“She’s alive, and unharmed,” Jerrum growled. He glared at his fellows, disgusted with them and with himself. He’d paid a fortune for their augmentation and enhancement, and they’d failed in a simple mission.

“I thought I hit her,” Carter said, her voice modulating between a dozen different tones.

“We’re getting paid for results, not honest efforts,” Jerrum said.

Glint reached out and touched a microphone on the desktop. “The King’s Guard will accept our patsy.” Glint’s words came through a machine, their inflection flat and wrong. Glint didn’t breathe; augmented gills on his body extracted oxygen from the air to feed his bloodstream. Not breathing meant not speaking. “Another public opportunity will present itself. We can accomplish the mission at any time, even if we forfeit the bonus.”

“No, I’ve lost my access,” Carter said. “Stolzoff has everything locked down tight, and he’s changed up the routines, work schedules. No one has more than a few hours’ notice of where they’ll be posted.”

“Smart old fart, isn’t he?” Jerrum said.

“He was part of New Warsaw’s militia when Aquitaine Interstellar made one of their corporate takeovers of the local government. He is more security conscious than we’d anticipated,” Carter said. “Our implant into the palace’s communications system is worthless. All his assignment orders are done face to face.”

Jerrum waved his hand over the desk. A holo of Cosima’s face, captured during her arrival ceremony, sprang up.

“We have two days until our employer arrives. He’s expecting a dead princess and a grieving planet. I can’t change my face like you two, so consider me motivated to avoid pissing him off,” Jerrum said.

“The patient hunter always gets its prey,” Glint said.

CHAPTER 3

Their target building looked inauspicious enough, a five-story apartment complex connected to a civil-engineering substation on one side and another apartment block on the other. The suspect lived on the first floor, which made Stolzoff’s job that much harder.

Stolzoff bought a kebab from a stall across the street from where the only identified bombing suspect lived, and moved onto the sidewalk. The spiced lamb wrapped in flatbread smelled delicious, but this wasn’t the time to eat. If the suspect was watching the street, Stolzoff would have to act perfectly natural to get close. Glowering at the target building while speaking into his wristwatch would set off alarm bells and a more lethal reaction.

An anonymous tip had identified the man living in the building as the one responsible for the bombing. The message had come peppered with details of the attack not released to the public, which made that tip stand out from the half-dozen crank calls from attention seekers and the mentally deluded.

The man at this address, Sturm Hedelson, was already on Stolzoff’s radar for his heated rhetoric against the royal family. Criticism wasn’t a crime on Sidonia, but out and out threats were. Hedelson hadn’t crossed that line, not until this morning.

The chief of the royal family’s security glanced at his forearm holo projection. The location of pairs of agents in civilian clothes formed two rings around their target, uniformed police beyond them. If the suspect tried to run, he wouldn’t get far.

Stolzoff crossed the street and tossed his kebab aside.

“Breach team, go!”

A pair of men standing next to the open trunk of a ground car shrugged off their coats, revealing deep blue uniform jerkins over black mail body suits. They hefted a metal tube from the trunk and ran into the target building.

Stolzoff flipped his hat off and pulled his pistol from inside his jacket. He ran in after the breach team and saw them slam the ram into an apartment door. The door shuddered but didn’t give way.

Two more uniformed officers flanked the breach team, their weapons out and ready.

The ram slammed into the door again, and the door shimmered as ripples of static emanated from the impact point.

“It’s shielded,” one of the breach men said, adding a string of expletives to his observation.

“Move,” Stolzoff said. He reached behind his back and pulled a disk off his belt. The police saw the device in his hand and scrambled away from the door.

He held the device up to his lips. “Inversion, cancel safety protocol.”

“Safety protocol canceled,” a pleasant woman’s voice said from the disk.

Stolzoff tossed the disk at the door, and it snapped against the wooden frame. Beeps came from the disk, growing closer and closer until they became a single whine.

Stolzoff activated his gauntlet shield and widened the pale green energy field so it was large enough to cover his entire body. He braced himself against the floor.

The energy field blocking the door snapped and popped like a live wire. It blew the door clean off its hinges and sent it hurtling into the apartment. Stolzoff dialed back his shield and charged into the apartment, pulser aimed over the lip of the shield.

Turning a shielded door into an improvised breaching charge was an effective way to enter a building, but not so great if you wanted to interrogate anyone standing behind the door.

“King’s Guard! Search warrant!” he shouted as he charged into the apartment.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. The air was rank with ammonia so thick that his eyes stung. Police rushed in behind him, coughing in the bad air.

Stolzoff kicked in the first door in the hallway and swept his pistol across the room. The floor was covered in torn paparazzi magazines, and the walls were covered with pictures of the royal family. Lengths of string ran from tacks in each member’s forehead from picture to picture. Hundreds of years of royal bloodlines were on the wall, from King Ehrhardt, the first ruler of Sidonia, to the current king, Rasczak. The pictures of the king and Princes Francis and Vincent had the word TRAITOR! written across their faces.

“Hands! Show me your hands!” shouted one of the police.

Stolzoff went back into the hallway and ran to the sound of the shouts.

In the apartment’s living room was a bank of holo screens, each carrying a different news feed. A policeman stood next to a high-backed chair in front of the holos, shaking his head. The officer holstered his pistol.

“Sorry, sir,” the officer said and held up a hand to cover his nose. He swiveled the chair around.

Sturm Hedelson was in the chair, his head cocked to the side against his shoulder, face blue, eyes slack. An open pill jar lay clenched in a rigid grip. Hedelson looked like he’d been dead for hours.

Stolzoff lowered his weapon and leaned over to examine the pills in Hedelson’s hands. A cartoon cat’s face was on the label, not a prescription. He knew the brand, a rogue laboratory that had poisoned the streets with opiates years ago. Stolzoff would bet a month’s pay that Hedelson had filled his stomach with thebaine pills to avoid arrest. A four-sided crossbow lay at his feet under the desk.

“Sir, you’ll want to see this,” another police officer said.

The kitchen had a mound of small white spheres in an aluminum bowl meant to hold dinner salads. A mortar and pestle, stained with white dust, lay on the table next to the bowl. A hole in the floor next to the wall was wide enough for a man to slip into. The smell of a sewer wafted into the kitchen and mingled with the reek of ammonia.

“What do you think, sir?”

“Ammonia fertilizer, crushed and combined with an oxidizer to make an explosive compound. Access way into the sewer system where he rigged up a shaped charge under Richthofen Avenue. We’ve got the bolt launcher,” Stolzoff said. He chewed on the inside of his lip, unsure of his assessment.

“Pretty open and shut,” a policeman said.

“How the hell did nobody complain about this smell?” asked another cop.

Stolzoff pointed to a fan installed in the kitchen wall.

“Must have shorted it out when we came in,” Stolzoff said. “My guess is there’s a filter unit on the other side of the fan. All right, have everything sent to my headquarters for analysis in case we missed anything. Like you said, looks pretty open and shut.”

He tapped out a quick update to the surrounding officers, then sent an encrypted message to his executive officer, Major Volenz.

Volenz, a petite woman with jet-black skin and a thin sheen of curly blonde hair, met him in the doorway.

“Sir? You need me?” she asked.

Stolzoff motioned to the exit with a nod of his head. They left the building and emerged into a sea of police cars and flashing light racks.

“Something’s off,” he said. “Hedelson might as well have had a bow wrapped around his neck for us. It’s too easy.”

“But it fits. Guy obsessed with the royals, means and opportunity to commit the crime,” Volenz said.

“Perfect excuse to give to the media and calm everyone down,” he said. He jammed his hands into his pockets as the wheels in his head kept turning. “Here’s what we’ll do; we put out to the public that the case is closed. Privately, quietly, we keep digging.”

A small crowd had formed across the street and behind the barricades the police were putting up. The kebab place was still open, the cooks in their greasy aprons rubbernecking on the sidewalk with the rest of the neighborhood.

“We let the public think we’re back to business as usual. Hey,” he said to Volenz, “you hungry?”

CHAPTER 4

Cosima sat in the backseat of a ground car, her fingers writhing against each other in her lap.

Lana reached over and put a hand over hers. “Mustn’t worry anymore, dear. The man who tried to hurt you is off the streets.”

Cosima pulled her hands away and kept staring out the car windows. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Remi?” Lana asked the Guardsman in the front seat.

“The case is closed, my lady. We wouldn’t have you out and about otherwise,” Remi said, not taking his eyes off the road ahead of them.

At first glance, their car was typical of the city’s self-driving fleet. The dark brown sedan with tinted windows could have transported any of the city’s well-to-do, though most of the city utilized the subway and bus lines to travel to and from work. Beneath the surface, the car was armored against small-arms fire and had emergency override controls for Remi if the robot driver was hacked or incapable of responding to a threat.

“Where is the museum? I’ve always wanted to see the probe that discovered Sidonia,” Cosima said.

“That’s in Northwest Ring 2, we’re going to East 3,” Remi said.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Cosima replied.

“Forgive me. There’s a circular wall around the city. Within the city are five highways running in greater circles, numbered starting with the innermost. Then eight highways running from the palace to the walls, corresponding with cardinal directions and their halfway marks. The direction and the highway ring closer to the palace in Sidonia City is how we mark boroughs.”

“What about the city outside the walls?” Cosima asked.

“Then we just use an address,” Remi said with a shrug. He raised his arm and glanced at his gauntlet. “Two minutes away.”

Cosima leaned forward and saw the Orozco Art Exhibition Center, a ten-story edifice with marble gargoyles and carved pillars.

“It looks so…garish,” she said.

“Wait until you get inside,” Lana said.

Their car turned into a covered garage around the back of the center and stopped next to a wall of frosted glass. A panel slid open and a tall man in a camel-colored suit stepped into the garage.

Remi left the car and slammed the door behind him. He stood in front of Cosima’s door for several seconds, his muffled conversation with the only other person in the garage lost to Cosima and Lana.

Remi opened Cosima’s door. She left the car, her eyes darting from side to side.

“We have guards surrounding the garage, and the center is empty of visitors today, my lady,” Remi said.

“No corner cut for your glorious visit!” came from the other side of the car.

Cosima turned around and looked at the speaker. The man wore a black-tailed suit with subtle pinstripes, a coffee-colored vest, and a red rose in the breast pocket. A starched white collar stood tall around his neck. The man’s hair was gray with a few defiant strands of black, and his goatee tapered to a fine point beneath his chin.

“My lady, meet Reginald Blake, curator of this fine establishment,” Lana said.

Cosima held out her hand, and Blake brushed his lips against it.

“‘Curator’ implies I have some sense of control. I am merely a conductor, providing guidance to the symphony of artists that toil within these walls,” Blake said, his words tinged with a highborn Spanish accent.

“Inside. Now,” Remi said.

“Yes, yes. Can’t have you out here, not after that dreadful event.” Blake waved his hand at the glass wall, and a doorway slid open. “After you,” he said to Cosima.

Remi moved ahead of them all and entered first.

“Or him,” Blake said. “Have you ever been here before, my lady?”

Cosima rolled her eyes at Blake as they entered the building proper and came into a large room full of statues equally spaced apart from each other in orderly rows.

“House Zollern doesn’t bother with art; we are miners and spacers,” she said. She stopped in front of a pink marble statue of a female figure holding a vase into the air, blue veins running through the stone. The woman’s dress was rough, almost as if it was chiseled in haste. Details came into focus higher on the statue, but the face and hair were too nebulous to ever identify the model, if there was one. Cosima glanced down at the commission contract and huffed in disgust.

“A hundred and fifty thousand marks for a statue that isn’t even finished? That’s more than five times what our miners make in a year,” she said.

“My lady, this work is indeed finished and awaiting delivery,” Blake said. He reached up and gestured to the statue’s hands. “If you look closely at the hands, you’ll see some exquisite detail to them, so perfect you’d swear they were laser cut by a machine and based off a real woman’s. But the artist carved this from Roman Sylvia marble with a hammer and chisel. And the hands, my dear, are always the hardest part.”

“If the sculptor was so good, why didn’t he finish the rest?” Cosima asked.

“The buyer wanted a glimpse of beauty; this is what the artist delivered,” Blake said with a shrug. “Please, shall we continue? Everyone is so excited for your visit.” He led her toward a hallway lined with paintings on the other end of the display room.

“Are they? Isn’t this where the artisan revolt started a few years ago?” she asked. Cosima stopped to look at a painting of Styria Station, individual stars and the diffuse glow of the Milky Way shining with an internal light.

“Fools, self-important fools, every last one of them,” Blake said. “I almost had to beat them about the head and shoulders with naked economics before they saw reason. At least their ignorant notions were squashed before they could spread to the noble Houses and the indentured artists there.”

Cosima continued on, averting her eyes from a painting of nude women lounging around a fountain.

“My father almost sent our house guard to storm this place when they tried to break into the Stahlium vaults,” she said.

“The miscreants would have had their hands broken if they’d laid a finger on the Stahlium—the sanctity and security of the Stahlium supply is critical to our entire economy.”

“Which I find ridiculous. We are the only planet in human space that exports art,” Cosima said. She scrunched her face at the price tag of a painting, a white canvas covered in multicolored paint dribbles. “Art that some five-year-old could do.” She shook her head at the impressionist piece. “Art anyone could copy perfectly.”

“There,” Blake said, “I must disagree with you in the most polite terms you can imagine, my lady. No one can copy Sidonian art, and that is why it is so valuable. Let me show you.”

At the end of the hallway, the center opened into a long display room. Benches ran its length, parallel to open work cubes, large rooms without a wall on one face so those on the benches could watch the artists working within each.

Blake stopped at the first cube. A coal-fueled kiln roared within, and a shirtless blacksmith in a black-stained apron pounded on a metal ingot against an anvil. The heat and noise Cosima anticipated from the smith were absent, as if she was watching him work on a gigantic HD screen with the volume muted, not in person.

“We have force screens to keep each work area private,” Blake said. “Keeps the artists from killing each other. This is Yoritomo Kunagi, greatest blade smith in human space. The shogun of Ryukyu commissioned him to forge a katana, one that would have no equal on their world. He’s worked on it for almost a year now.”

Cosima watched as the smith hammered against the red-hot metal, folding the steel against itself.

“They don’t have maker factories on Ryukyu? Why doesn’t the shogun just choose a design for what he wants and have it 3-D printed, like every other human being in civilized space?” she asked

“Because then it would be like any other blade from any other maker factory in civilized space,” Blake said. “Watch closely.”

The smith held his hammer in an open box. A red laser beam ran over the head of the hammer, and the smith returned to his work.

“He embeds Stahlium into the blade. It is inert and won’t spoil whatever piece of art it’s embedded into. Sidonia is the only known source of Stahlium, and this is what makes our art so valuable. Once the piece is finished, the Stahlium will be sealed, set, and recorded. The unique signature of the Stahlium will correspond to our registry, and anyone with a scanner can verify the authenticity of the blade. There will be only one such katana in all the universe, and for that assurance people are willing to pay a very, very high price.”

Cosima gave Blake a sidelong glance.

“I don’t see why that’s so valuable. We use only maker parts on the station; we can’t leave anything critical to human error,” she said.

“Scarcity is the source of all value, my lady. Consider…a pair of shoes from a maker machine. What does that cost?”

“Almost nothing,” Cosima said with a shrug.

“Because the maker needed some raw material and a little bit of energy to produce it. With wage-free robots to gather materials and free energy from the giant solar furnace in the sky, those shoes cost almost nothing. Anyone with access to a maker and that design of shoes could have it for the same cost, almost nothing. So those shoes are worth almost nothing.

“Kunagi-san will create a one-of-a-kind blade, and the Stahlium will ensure it can’t be copied. The shogun will have a priceless katana—not that he won’t pay for it.” Blake nodded to a data slate next to the work cube.

Cosima read the quoted price and touched her fingers to her lips.

“The shogun will pay…fifteen heavy construction droids and a dozen space fighters? That’s…why isn’t the price in marks? Or standard credits?” she asked.

“Sidonia doesn’t trade in standard credits or any system’s currency. We only trade goods for goods, never goods for capital. It can take years for a commission to reach Sidonia from the far edge of inhabited space, years more for the work to be completed and delivered. Let’s say Earth agrees to a price of a thousand standard credits for a piece, but what if the Aquitaine Interstellar bank—which controls the standard credit supply—devalues the currency before the piece is delivered? The artist will have a thousand deflated standard credits, and the buyer will have a piece of art that will sell for many times that amount on the current market.

“I don’t think I should be one to teach you trade, my lady. But remember this: assets are the only material things of value. Bills in your pocketbook, bitcoins in your accounts, and promissory notes from a bank or government are all worthless until they’re traded for assets.”

Blake smoothed out his jacket and lowered his head slightly.

“And what is Kunagi-san to do with a dozen space fighters?” Cosima asked.

“Artists don’t set up their commissions. The king and the noble Houses do that through their trade missions. The military will buy the fighters from him, and the construction droids will be auctioned off, with the cost of transporting the goods and his work studio deducted from the net proceeds. Kunagi-san will be a very rich man once the transaction is final. Let’s hope the emperor over on Edo gets a little jealous and wants a blade for himself.”

Blake looked over his shoulders, then leaned toward Cosima.

“In fact,” he said in a loud whisper, “our trade delegation on Edo will make sure the emperor hears about the Ryukyu shogun’s new acquisition.”

“That doesn’t seem entirely honest,” she said.

“My lady, if there’s one thing about rich people that I adore, it’s that they love to make sure everyone knows just how rich they are. Now, if you would be so kind as to attest to Kunagi-san’s work.” Blake tapped on the slate, and a handprint appeared on the screen. “Your endorsement is greatly appreciated.”

Cosima sighed and put her palm against the slate. A bell chimed as her genetic markers were recorded.

Kunagi laid down his tongs and hammer and came to the edge of his studio cube. A portal in the screen opened to allow him, and a wave of heat and the smell of embers, to exit. Kunagi wiped soot from his face. He was well past middle age, gray-black hair plastered against his head with sweat. Sidonia was home to a varied population, but Kunagi was the first Japanese man she’d ever met.

Kunagi brought his hands to his sides and bowed, his head almost level with his waist.

Cosima returned the bow with one not as deep.

Kunagi stood up and spoke to Blake in a gruff language Cosima didn’t understand, then returned to his studio.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“It’s just a little bit too hot for him in there. I told him his furnace might have something to do with that. Artists, all a bunch of insecure whiners. ‘It’s too hot. This isn’t the shade of teal that I ordered. What do you mean the health inspector won’t let me use my own bodily fluids for this painting?’ It never ends with them. Shall we continue?”

The next studio housed a pair of women sewing together a black and white gown. They passed their needles through a Stahlium field periodically as they worked. Cosima recorded her presence and moved on to the next, where an ancient black man whittled wood into masks.

“Mr. Blake, there’s no commissioned price for him,” Cosima said, reading from the slate.

“Nobuto isn’t taking commissions anymore. His work will be auctioned off on Bern or the gate junction on Sirius. If you attest to his work, it will likely go for a higher price,” Blake said.

“And you’ll receive a bigger cut?” she asked with a cruel smile.

“No, my lady, all material and facilities are provided at cost to the artists by the king. I manage the facility for a small salary and a bit of Stahlium for my business,” Blake said.

“And what business is that?”

“You don’t recognize me? I must fire my marketing team,” Blake said incredulously.

“Lady Zollern is a bit young for tequila,” Lana said.

“I am the face and CEO of Don Russell tequila, the finest agave liquor in the settled worlds. I was going to save this for later, but…” Blake reached into his jacket and pulled a glass bottle the size of his palm from a pocket. Specks of light twinkled among the small bubbles of the imperfectly blown glass. He handed it to Cosima with a flourish. She held the bottle of pale green liquid up to her face and squinted at what looked like a bit of twine at the base.

“What is that?” she asked.

“That’s the gusano, the worm,” Blake said.

Cosima yelped and dropped the bottle, backpedaling from Blake.

The bottle fell through the air and landed in Remi’s hand, an inch from the ground.

“I’ll need to inspect this,” Remi said.

“You think I’m going to drink something with a worm in it?” Cosima demanded.

“And only the finest worm at that, my lady,” Blake said. “Genetically engineered to add a slight kick to one’s evening. I don’t recommend it on an empty stomach.”

“You sell worms to people? To drink?” Cosima asked.

“If you want to be a purist, it’s mescal,” Blake said. “I tried selling it without the worm, but mis-informed customers kept demanding it. Can’t go against market forces, bad for business.”

Cosima shuddered and continued on, pressing her palm against slates as she went, giving a cursory glance at each artist toiling within. Blake dogged her steps, offering tidbits about the artist and commissioned piece as she passed by.

She sauntered past a double-wide cube, swiping her thumb against a reader as she went, but the commission slate on the side didn’t read her touch. She stopped and spun around. The slate read “Special Project – House Zollern”.

She walked to the middle of the work space and put her hands on her hips. A canvas fifty feet across and thirty feet high was turned away from her. She could see the feet of the artist within from beneath the canvas. There was no Stahlium infuser anywhere in the studio.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked Blake.

“Ah, I thought we’d see this one last. Wilson is working on something for the king,” Blake said.

“My House is paying for this, and I don’t even get to see it? Ridiculous.” She rapped against the field with her knuckles.

“My lady, please don’t tap on the glass. The artists don’t like it,” Blake said.

Cosima slapped her palm against the field, harder and harder with each blow.

The field dissipated and the tapestry wavered as fresh air wafted into the studio.

“This had better be good, Blake,” a rough voice said from behind the tapestry.

Cosima marched toward the edge of the artwork. “You had better have a damn good explanation of why you’re hiding—oh.” She stuttered to a stop when she saw what was around the other side.

A battle unfolded across the tapestry. Soldiers in tan armor charged toward a white adobe fortress on a blasted desert world. Laser beams and pulser bolts shimmered against the canvas as it undulated in the breeze.

Cosima stepped to the side, and the image of the battle changed with her new viewpoint. The three-dimensional view morphed with each turn of her head, as if she was looking at a holo capture of the battle and not a two-dimensional plane.

“My lady,” said a heavyset man with a gray beard spilling onto his chest. A wire lattice covered his right hand; his left hovered over a color palette floating next to him. A slate rested on a stool between him and Cosima.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked.

“It’s art, my lady. You have to decide what it means,” the artist replied.

“Don’t get smart with me,” Cosima said. “What makes you so special that you can work in private, and where is your Stahlium? I get lectured to about how important that is, yet you seem to be above that requirement, why?”

“Your father commissioned this work for King Rasczak. This will hang in the palace—no need to squander Stahlium when the authenticity is a matter between friends,” the artist said.

“Wait, you I recognize. You’re a wanted criminal from Stygia; I’ve seen you on their video imports,” Cosima said, backing away from him. She thumped into Remi and pointed at the artist. “Go on, arrest him. Aren’t you afraid he’ll hurt me?”

“Wilson is guilty of being a cantankerous old…man, but he is no criminal,” Blake said.

Wilson grunted and touched the color palette. His right hand swayed inside the lattice, and a small portion of the painting morphed with his motions.

“Stygia has strict emigration laws, which Wilson violated when he was smuggled off world and found his way here. But Sidonia doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Stygia, so we’re under no obligation to return him,” Remi said.

“Why did you sneak off your planet? Such a strange thing to criminalize,” Cosima said.

“I couldn’t make any damn money,” Wilson said. “My paintings would be copied and sold before I could even get them to a gallery. I was in debt to the planet’s corporate boss. Couldn’t pay him in credits, and I had the choice of doing prints of his ugly kids or getting smuggled off world to come work here.”

Wilson pressed a finger against the tapestry and slowly ran his finger down the side of a soldier lying in the dirt. A path of blood followed his touch.

“This one’s free,” he said.

“You must have owed a lot of money for them to make you a wanted man across settled space,” Cosima said, unconvinced with Wilson’s explanation.

“When you owe money to Aquitaine, you owe your life. They didn’t get so big being nice to people,” Wilson said.

Remi stepped away from Cosima and took in the whole tapestry. His eyes darted across it, soaking up details.

“Ah, I’m glad you’re here,” Wilson said to the bodyguard. “Would you sit for me?”

Remi didn’t answer. He raised a hand and pointed to a soldier sprawled against a patch of rock, head lying against his shoulder at a painful angle.

“That is—was—Jeremiah, not Sullivan,” Remi said. He touched his breast where the dead soldier’s mislabeled name tag was.

“I know, the family came and asked me for the change,” Wilson said. He picked up the slate from the stool. “Would you?”

“Here I thought you were supposed to be protecting me, not being immortalized,” Cosima said with a snort.

“I’m sure we’ll be safe for the next few seconds,” Lana said, using a motherly don’t-push-it tone.

Cosima waved a dismissive hand in the air and stood against the back wall. She shifted her head from side to side, fascinated with how the image changed ever so slightly with her movements.

Remi sat on the stool and held stone still. Wilson waved his framed hand around Remi’s face slowly, a composite picture of the bodyguard’s hairless head appeared on the color palette.

“You’re young, no need to take a few years off for this piece,” Wilson murmured.

Cosima huffed with annoyance and stepped over to a large gray spot on the image.

“Who’s supposed to go here?” she asked.

“Prince Quinn, rest his soul. He led the assault on the Jutland corsairs’ fortress. The vid capture I’m working from doesn’t have him at…the best angles,” Wilson said.

Cosima leaned closer, the holographic lattice composing the image appeared to her, interlocking white grid lines within a haze of color. She walked along the mural and did a double take at a group of three soldiers. One, a plain gray placeholder for a head, supported a badly wounded soldier. The wounded soldier’s face was hidden beneath a helmet, blood pouring from a rent in the side of his armor. In front of the two was someone she recognized, his force shield active and held between them and their foes in the fortress.

“Is that Prince Francis?” she asked.

Remi chuckled but quickly stifled the laugh.

“No, my lady. That’s his brother, Prince Vincent. They used to look a lot alike. Less so, now,” Remi said.

“Hmm, interesting,” Cosima said. The longer she looked at the mural, the more it appealed to her. The assault on Jutland had been a major event for Sidonia—its first military expedition beyond the solar system. The corsairs—pirates really—had seized a merchant ship from House Wilhelminer and tried to ransom back the crew and cargo to Sidonia. King Rasczak responded by attacking the pirates’ stronghold. Casualties had been high, but much of the stolen cargo was recovered. There hadn’t been another pirate attack on a Sidonian ship since. For all the news of the event, Cosima had never seen a vid recording of the battle.

“What will you call this?” she asked. She wandered past Wilson and passed her hand over the data slate tucked into his belt. The data storage device built into a bracelet soaked up all the data from the slate. She glanced at the holo panel on her forearm and saw the new volume of data stream onto her bracelet.

“Should be called Thirty Seconds before Everything Goes Wrong,” Remi said.

“I’ll go with Charge of the First Expedition, perhaps,” Wilson said. The artist tapped at his palette and hovered his palm over the blank face of the soldier guarded by Prince Vincent. Remi’s face morphed onto the mural, his expression blank and even.

Remi turned away from the mural and Cosima, wiping his sleeve across his eyes.

Blake, waiting in the wings, glanced at Remi’s face, then walked toward Cosima. He clapped his hands twice.

“My lady,” the curator said, “why don’t we move on to the gardens? I’ll have tea and sandwiches waiting for us.”

Blake entwined his elbow with hers and led her away. Remi followed, his eyes turned from the battle scene.

CHAPTER 5

Remi stepped into the sparring ring, sunk deep into the floor and surrounded by empty bleachers. He rolled his shoulders and slid his guard helmet over his head, one with a loose grill to protect the bottom half of his face.

He touched his gauntlet, and his armor tightened against his body.

The memory of an alien desert, the copper smell of spilled blood and burning air came to him as the familiar press of armor brought him back to that terrible day on Jutland. He could rationalize the emotions, his physiological response to the memories. Sidonia had gone to great lengths to care for the soldiers injured in body and mind during the expedition, and Remi knew the beast of post traumatic stress disorder would scratch at his mind for years to come.

Too many men and women turned to substance abuse or pharmacology for solace. Remi turned his anger outward, to something he could fight with blade and fist.

“Training scenario: riot,” he said. The lights surrounding the sparring ring went amber. Three panels slid aside from the floor, and elevators lifted three androids onto the ring to face Remi. The androids had no faces, only blank shovels with black sensor dots for eyes. Remi knew the androids’ well-built physiques under plain overalls were a ruse; each opponent relied on hydraulic actuators in their joints for strength, not muscles. The rubbery layer over their bodies was a self-healing polymer but approximated the feel and function of human flesh. These soft-bots were the standard sparring partners for Guardsmen who preferred living assailants.

Two soft-bots held baseball bats; the third had a crowbar.

“Set aggression level,” a feminine voice said.

“Aggression level: maximum. Authorization: Remi, Paul H.” The computer acknowledged with a pleasant chime.

The soft-bots charged. A bat whiffed past his face. Remi activated his gauntlet shield and brought it up in time to absorb the second soft-bot’s strike that would have shattered bone if it had impacted against his ribs.

Remi slammed his shield against the first soft-bot and sent it sprawling to the ground. He kept the standing bat wielder between him and the soft-bot with the crowbar. An overhead smash from the bat sizzled against the shield.

Remi’s shield took another blow, driving him down to a knee. He drew his sword and stabbed it into the soft-bot’s chest. The blade sank into “flesh,” catching against metal within the android.

The bot fell to its knees, hands grasping at the blade stuck in its chest, just like a human opponent would have.

Remi tugged at the blade, which refused to budge from its artificial scabbard. He smashed a boot into the soft-bot, freeing his blade with an audible pop. The dead opponent collided with the android carrying the crowbar, sending both to the floor.

He caught a blur of movement from the corner of his eye and brought his shield up just in time to deflect a strike from a bat. The bat bounced off the top of his shield and ricocheted against his helmet.

Unimpeded, the blow would have knocked him unconscious. It still hit him hard enough to turn his head and send his vision swaying. Remi gambled the android would remain rooted to the ground for the return swing. He shifted his weight and bull-charged where the android had been standing. His shield impacted with the android’s solar plexus and knocked it to the ground.

Remi kept his momentum going—which saved him from the claw end of the crowbar that missed the back of his neck by inches and stepped over the fallen android. He raised his knee to his chest and slammed his heel into the android’s head.

Remi spun around and deflected a stab from the final opponent. He reversed the grip on his sword and swung the tip of the weapon in an arc across the soft-bot’s throat. The blade slid through its neck, exposing the metal spine within. The android clutched at its throat and fell to the ground, the crowbar clattering as it entangled with its knees and feet.

Remi glanced up at the timer against the wall, which was still ticking away. It should have stopped with the last android being incapacitated.

Arms wrapped around Remi from behind and crushed him in a bear hug. The new assailant lifted him off the ground, its vise grip so tight Remi couldn’t breathe, much less call out an end to the exercise.

Remi lowered his chin against his chest and thrust his head back. His helmet smacked against the soft-bot’s face. Even wearing his padded helmet, the blow hurt Remi. The grip lessened and Remi found footing again. He stuck his foot behind the soft-bot’s ankle and stepped back.

The android fell, tripped up by Remi’s maneuver, but it held on to Remi all the way down.

Remi fell against the bot and managed to pull his sword arm free, running the blade against the android’s forearm. The blade split the android’s overalls and pseudo flesh like a steak knife against a rib-eye. The grip finally broke as the android registered severed tendons and arteries in its arm.

Remi rolled to a knee and slammed the edge of his shield into the android’s head. Its head bounced against floor. Remi hit it again. And again. He lifted his shield arm high and laid in a final blow with a roar.

The android’s head split in two. The upper half of its skull bounced away and sizzled as wires burned out.

Remi sprang to his feet and whirled around. Nothing else threatened him. The timer on the wall had stopped. He’d completed the exercise in less than a minute.

He fought to control his breathing, bring down the adrenaline surge that coursed through his veins. In the field, his mission was always to protect his charge, not go on a rampage.

A slow clap came from the darkness.

“Bravo, Mr. Remi. Bravo.” The man’s voice was imperfect, a slight metallic tinge to the words.

Remi wiped sweat from his brow and brought his blade up in salute.

“Prince Vincent,” Remi said. “Did you change the riot scenario?”

Prince Vincent stepped from the shadows, dressed in the same training armor as Remi. He was tall with a willowy build. Remi’s gaze lingered on the black patch where the prince’s right eye should have been and the black glove over his right hand. Vincent’s battle scars always brought a tinge of guilt into Remi’s heart.

“Caught you by surprise?” Vincent tried to laugh, but his prosthetic larynx garbled the sound, making it sound evil and forced. The prince rubbed his ungloved hand against his throat and shifted his jaw.

“Can’t expect just three rioters; there’s always someone else ready to jump in,” Vincent said. He nudged a foot against a fallen android. “Reset training area,” he said loudly enough for the computer to hear.

The four soft-bots got back to their feet as if they’d been playing possum, picked up their weapons, and stepped onto the elevator platforms. They sank back into the floor, split flesh reknitting without a sound or complaint.

“You seem well since your injuries from saving my future sister-in-law. You are well?” Vincent asked.

“A bit stiff, nothing to keep me from my duties,” Remi said. He deactivated his shield and sheathed his sword.

“Better than being a bit rusty,” Vincent said. “Let’s have a go. Beating on droids is never as challenging as a real opponent. Computer, training blades.” A wooden box rose from the floor. Circuits inlaid onto the blade would count hits and send injury stimuli through the training armor. The blades wouldn’t pierce flesh, but any strikes that landed would trigger a mild shock to the recipient.

“Sire, are you sure? Your cybernetics…” Remi said. He unbuckled his sword belt and set it outside the ring.

“Did I ask to be coddled?” Vincent tossed a training blade to Remi, who caught it by the hilt with ease. “Defend yourself!”

Vincent tapped a jewel hanging from his neck, and a shield shimmered against his body. Full-body shields were common among the royal family, but Vincent’s was designed for sustained combat.

The prince struck at Remi with a fencer’s lunge. Remi barely managed a parry, and the prince’s blade tugged at his gauntlet as it slid past him. Remi brought his sword down in a quick strike against Vincent’s exposed forearm. His blade bounced off the body shield. A surge of electricity spiked up the blade and into Remi’s arm.

Remi gritted his teeth as his arm numbed from the shock. He activated his shield and used it to turn a strike from the prince that would have pierced his throat.

Remi swung the flat of his blade toward the prince’s head. If the prince still had his right eye, he might have seen the strike coming. The blade careened off his forehead, the energy shield rippling like a still pond disturbed by a stone, and smacked the prince’s head to the side.

Vincent responded with an angry growl and punched at Remi with his gloved hand.

Remi brought his shield up to take the blow and wasn’t ready when the gloved hand fought through the shield and clasped on to his gauntlet.

Vincent jerked Remi off his feet and threw him to the ground. Remi rolled with the impact and once more rose to his feet. He swung his blade around in a wild blow, forcing the charging Vincent to block the strike with his own weapon.

Remi leaned away from another grab by Vincent and caught a glimpse of his sword resting against the raised edge of the ring. He backpedaled from another slash by the prince and kept going until his heel hit the edge.

He brought his foot down on the handle of his weapon lying on the floor and used the ring’s edge as a fulcrum to catapult the blade, sheath, belt, and all at Vincent.

Vincent brought his arms up to block the ungainly attack. The sword belt fell over his arm and sent his shield into a riot of ripples and sparks as he wrestled with it.

Remi grabbed the hilt of his sheathed sword and drew it. He jammed the hilt of the true blade against Vincent’s chest. A flash of energy arced into Remi’s hand, and he dropped the weapon.

With his other arm, he jammed the tip of his training blade into Vincent’s shield. It passed through the weakened shield, and the blade collapsed in on itself.

“Mortal strike. Match ended,” the computer intoned.

Vincent looked at Remi’s collapsed blade and flung the sword belt away from him. His chest heaving, he stumbled toward Remi.

Remi caught Vincent under his arms and guided him to the bleachers.

“Even when I cheat I can’t beat you,” Vincent said between heaves.

“Do you need a medic?”

Vincent waved his good hand and shook his head quickly.

“New lung. Not used to this,” Vincent said. The prince’s gloved hand twitched and spasmed like a fish caught on a line. The prince tore the black glove away, revealing a bare metal prosthetic, the fingers jittering of their own accord.

“Damn thing, never works right to begin with,” Vincent said. “I had an energy modulator installed so I could break through shields. It’ll work, but then it’ll send my parts,” he spat out the last word, “into a frenzy. Good thing there’s some flesh between my hand and the rest of the metal, eh?”

Remi sat beside the prince, his hand on the prince’s quivering forearm. He felt the metal beneath the mail armor, cold and alien.

“I’m sorry,” Remi said. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault. I’ve told you that a hundred times already. I forgot to duck, you’re the one who got me out of there.” Vincent turned his good eye to Remi. “I made it home thanks to you. Not everyone was so lucky.”

Vincent’s metal hand ceased twitching. The prince held his arm out and flexed his fingers.

“There we go,” he said. “So, how is your detail with Princess Cosima?”

Remi huffed. “Exciting to begin with, now a bit ordinary.”

“You’ll stay on her detail until after the wedding and the treaty is signed. Colonel Stolzoff and I are of the opinion that there’s still a credible threat against her,” Vincent said.

“I saw the official report. You think Hedelson had help?”

“I don’t think he had anything to do with it,” Vincent said. “He was on our radar and was a suitable fall guy. There are a number of very powerful corporations angry with our arrangement with the Chaebol Corporation. I don’t think they’d settle with one amateur attempt on her life.”

“Why is she so important? The king will sign the treaty, not the heir or his wife,” Remi said.

Vincent’s face fell.

“He’s dying. The life support bay can keep him alive for a few more weeks. Long enough for him to abdicate in favor of my brother once he and Cosima are married. The Chaebol Corporation had a number of demands to their treaty. My brother as king and her as queen were at the top of their list.”

Remi sat back and nibbled at the inside of his lip in worry.

“Why Prince Francis, why not you?”

“Francis led the delegation, he’s a known quantity. Besides, who’d want to marry this?” He pointed to his eye patch. “I’m a monster.”

“You’re not a monster, Vincent. You’re a hero. You were the one who—”

“No. Prince Quinn, who gave his life for Sidonia, is the hero of that day.”

“Sire, you and I both know what happened.”

Vincent stood up and pressed a metal finger against Remi’s chest.

“Yes, we do. And you’d best forget it.” Vincent walked out of the gym.

****

The vanity was a disaster zone; lipstick tubes lay scattered among eyeliner, foundation, and powders, as if an earthquake had sent the once-orderly rows into scattered chaos.

Cosima sat underneath the vanity’s lights, examining her face and the latest application of makeup. She wore shorts and a loose T-shirt, at odds with the gold wires woven into her neck-length hair and heavy makeup.

“What do you think?” Cosima asked Lana.

“I think you’re young, and you have nothing to cover up,” Lana said. The handmaid ran a wand over Cosima’s face, and most of the makeup pulled away and attached itself to the wand, like iron flakes to a magnet. “Let’s go with subtle, like you aren’t trying to look beautiful, it just happened naturally.”

“Fine, but hurry. I have to meet Prince Francis in half an hour.”

Lana scooted a stool next to Cosima and picked up an eyeliner case from the detritus. “My lady, you must learn to make men wait,” she said, focusing on Cosima’s eyelashes.

“Somehow…I thought I’d have a bit more time to date. I still don’t know why Theresa isn’t the one getting married off. She’s older, prettier, and if the tabloids are right, she’s definitely more into dating than I ever was,” Cosima said.

“Well, ask your father when he arrives with the trade fleet. Or ask Prince Francis. He was there with your father on New Chosun,” Lana said.

“Is that what people normally talk about on a first date? The circumstances of their arranged marriage?”

Lana rubbed rouge into Cosima’s cheeks.

“Need to get some sunlight on you. You look like a fish belly,” Lana mumbled.

She turned Cosima toward the vanity mirror. Her brief efforts had managed to highlight Cosima’s delicate features.

“Now the dress that Francis sent over,” Lana said. The handmaiden vanished into a closet.

“Lana, what am I supposed to talk about with Francis? Stahlium yields and oxygen-scrubber mean time between failure rates?” Cosima applied a deeper shade of red lipstick and pressed a napkin to her mouth. She examined herself in the vanity and smiled at the results.

Lana came out of the closet, holding a black dress by a hanger.

Cosima stared at the dress and would have gone visibly pale but for the makeup.

“Where’s the rest of it?” she asked. Most of the dress, what little there was, was a sheer black fabric. Cosima ran her hand behind the dress, which was so thin that she could still see the lines of her palm. Darker patches around the breasts and hips would give her little more modesty than a bikini. The sheer fabric had a high cut against the thigh, as if anything would have been hidden from view.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Cosima asked again.

“This is all of it, my lady,” Lana deadpanned.

“I can’t…I mean,” Cosima glanced down at her shorts and T-shirt, “I wouldn’t go out in this, and he wants me to wear that in public?”

“I cannot explain or fathom your future husband’s taste in evening wear,” Lana said.

“No, just no. Where’s my slate? I’ll cancel dinner, tell him I have hives or something,” Cosima said, pawing through the vanity top for her slate.

Lana thrust the dress into Cosima’s hands. Cosima held it away from her like it was infected with plague.

“Take it back to the closet,” Lana said.

“If you think—”

“Now!”

Cosima sprang to her feet and took a step toward the closet. The dress tugged in her hands, and a ripping sound came from behind her.

Cosima looked, and saw Lana’s foot on the train of the dress, which had ripped in half.

“Lana…you clumsy oaf,” Cosima said.

“Forgive me, my lady, I don’t know how I could commit such an egregious error.” Lana deadpanned. She bustled into the closet and retuned with three new dresses. She held up a red and gold sleeveless dress with a plunging neckline. Cosima shook her head.

“I hereby admonish you in the strongest terms.” Cosima shook her head again at the next offering, a sky-blue affair with a silver trim. Lana shook it slightly, and Cosima’s shake turned into a nod.

“I stand admonished.” Lana helped Cosima into the dress and ran her finger up the back to seal it.

Cosima stood in front of a bank of mirrors, listening to the swish of the dress as she twisted and turned. Her lips stayed firm as she picked up a clutch from her bed. “This isn’t how I thought my first date would play out.”

“Nor I, my lady. Let’s not keep your fiancé waiting too long.”

****

Prince Francis had a private room reserved at L’Auberge Chez Pierre, which billed itself as the finest French restaurant for several light-years. Major Volenz, her guard for the evening, escorted Cosima from a back entrance and into a small elevator.

The elevator let them out on a walkway overlooking the main dining room. Tables for two, all occupied by only those Sidonians who could afford the luxury of meals prepared by actual chefs, were spaced out to ensure some privacy for the diners. White-jacketed servers pushed noiseless hover carts laden with small plates of food between the tables and kitchen.

A massive chandelier flanked the walkway, and crystal glistened like Stahlium fragments in the planet’s rings.

Cosima ran her hand along the golden railing as the smell of braised duck wafted past her nose.

A Guardsman, the upper half of his face covered by his helmet but his perpetual scowl on full display, opened the door to the private dining room and stomped his foot in salute as Cosima walked past him.

The prince sat at a small table, his back to the door. A regal jacket hung from the chair. Francis, his shirt collar undone, stood up and opened his arms wide.

“Cosima, you look…lovely. That’s not the dress I sent you.” He placed his hands against her bare shoulders and examined her as if she were about to be served for dinner.

“There was a horrible accident. I will be most cross with my handmaid for its loss,” Cosima said.

“Maybe I can see you in it—or a little less—later on.” Francis pulled out a seat for Cosima and flopped into his chair. He picked up a nearly empty wineglass and took a sip.

“Sorry, I got started a bit early.” He tapped on the table twice. A door behind her opened, and a tray hovered toward them, carrying a pair of wineglasses.

Francis finished his glass and swapped it out for a full one from the tray. He set the other glass down for Cosima.

“No waiters tonight. Colonel Stolzoff and that stack of bricks nursemaiding me want the staff kept well beyond arm’s length. Such silliness,” he said.

Cosima looked at her wine but didn’t touch it. Her hands stayed balled up in her lap. “Is there a reason for that?”

Francis rolled his eyes and swirled his wine before taking a sip. “Rampant paranoia. He’s even got a tester in the kitchen, and I’ll tell you that the chef’s hate having someone looking over their shoulders. Do try your wine, it’s actual champagne from France,” he said.

Cosima lifted the flute to her mouth. Tiny bubbles tickled her nose as she took a sip. She grimaced as the alcohol burned her throat on the way down.

“Oh, that’s different,” she said with a slight cough.

“You’ve never had champagne before?”

“I’ve never had alcohol before.”

Francis chuckled and leaned toward her. “The more you drink, the better it tastes, fascinating stuff. You’d best drink up. We won’t have many chances to go out and really enjoy ourselves after the wedding. We’ll have much to do, appeasing nobles, keeping the big corporations off the planet, managing the expansion.”

Cosima took a deeper sip and didn’t find the taste much improved.

“I don’t follow you. We’re a backwater planet, we’re far from any of the trade routes, and our system doesn’t even have an inflection point to support a jump gate. All we really have is Stahlium and a bunch of high-strung artists,” she said. “We don’t even have the population to colonize two continents, and you’re talking about an expansion?”

Francis finished his champagne and reached under the table.

“I’m going to do something very rude, forgive me,” he said. Cosima’s eyes widened as he fumbled around his pants and finally pulled out a small slate.

Francis put the slate on the table and tapped at it.

“A little over a hundred years ago, my grandmother, Queen Ibiza, sent survey probes toward the neighboring star systems. You’re right, we’re gate-locked from the major trade routes, and it takes months for FTL ships to get to and from the nearest gate. But maybe there was an inflection point connecting our system to another that tied in to the wider network. That’s what the probes were looking for.

“A year ago, we received the survey from the probe that went to star GY201, and this is what it sent back.” Francis moved his hand away, and a holo projection emanated from the slate. A solar system with several planets slowly churning in their gravity ballet appeared. Cosima had studied orbital mechanics since she could walk, and what she saw defied the laws of physics.

Within the system’s Goldilocks Zone, where it wasn’t too hot or too cold to disallow liquid water, there were four planets, all sharing the exact orbit and evenly spaced around the system’s star.

“That’s impossible.” She peered closer at the projection. One of the planets was actually two smaller planets in a tight orbit around each other.

“Yet, there it is. Five habitable worlds in one system, and with an inflection point connecting it to Sidonia,” Francis said with pride.

Cosima’s mouth went dry as an idea came to her.

“There’s no way this happened by accident, five planets in the exact same orbit. A space-faring culture must have…are they inhabited?”

“No,” his mouth pulled into a half grin, “virgin territory. Not a spec of any alien presence, but the probe was a bit limited in its capabilities. Habitable worlds are jewels beyond price on the open market, and we had the location of five to auction off.”

“Had?”

“Yes, my dear. What do you think your father and I were doing on New Chosun? We brought representatives from every empire, government, and trade conglomerate that has the ability to build a jump gate together, and we auctioned off the colonization and transit rights to GY201, which we’re calling the Gaia system from now on. That tested through the roof with focus groups.”

He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head.

“And we got quite the price for it. Though some corporations wanted it more than others, we had our instructions from the king. Something else to drink? Something stronger?” He tapped at the table again. “Whiskey. Do you know what they drink on New Chosun? Soju, vile stuff, no flavor to it.”

Cosima snatched up the slate and looked at the reading from the probe. Each planet in the Goldilocks Zone was full of life, and their orbits flew perfect circles around the star with no detectable apogee or perigee, unlike every other celestial body known to science. The technology required to achieve this was thousands of years beyond what humanity had achieved.

Francis set a snifter holding a dark liquid down next to her and plucked the slate from her hand.

“State secret, for now. Once the fleet arrives from New Chosun, we’ll make a public announcement,” he said. “Let’s talk about us. What were you doing on that station all these years?”

“Theresa, my sister, had no interest in our family’s holdings. So father pushed me to learn about mining Stahlium, running our home, keeping our miners safe and busy…marrying anyone dirt side—excuse me—planet side, wasn’t in my plans.”

“And I thought I’d have another few years to sow my wild oats before being forced to settle down. Such is the royal life. At least you’re pretty,” he said with a wink.

“Thank…you?”

A tray arrived with a tiny cracked egg on a bed of frosted noodles.

“I took the liberty of ordering for you, hope you don’t mind. This dish is a house specialty.”

Cosima looked at the dish askance and poked at it with a tiny fork.

“Prince Francis, why did you return ahead of my father? How is he?”

“In any negotiation, there’s some give and take. We had our stipulations for the use of the inflection point and tolls, and the corporation that accepted countered with a few demands of their own. One: that I be named regent and eventual king. Two: that either you or your sister be my queen. And many more, but I don’t want to bore you with the details.”

Francis picked up his appetizer and tossed it into his mouth.

“Why me? Why not my sister? Don’t you know her?”

“Oh, I know her all right.” Francis coughed and tapped against his chest. “You’ll have to ask your father why he chose you. Ah, here comes the main course.”

The rest of their meal passed with less talk. Francis seemed intent on eating and drinking as fast as he could. By the time plates of chocolate mousse had arrived, his eyes were red and his words slurred.

“So, Princess…” Francis said, spilling a bit of whiskey on his sleeve, “why don’t we go back to my quarters, get an idea of what we’re in for on our wedding night.”

Cosima felt fingers caress her knee.

Her leg jerked and slammed the digits into the underside of the table. Francis yelped and shook his hand, then raised an eyebrow at her with interest.

“Prince Francis!” Cosima stood up and snatched her clutch from the table. “I-I-I have some terrible time lag from the station. Yes, it’s too late in the morning for me to consider that…with you…now.” She turned and walked away as fast as her dress would allow.

“Wait, wait!” Francis got to his feet and tripped over his chair. He managed to keep his drink upright as he fell, laughing.

The door opened for Cosima, and she zipped past Major Volenz. “Fast. Walk very fast,” she said to her bodyguard.

Major Volenz complied without comment.

CHAPTER 6

Jerrum opened the safe sunk into the floor of his office and pushed aside wrapped stacks of Sidonian marks, New Chosun currency, and pistols loaded with hollow-point rounds. Beneath them all was a device worth more than the thirty-story building he was in.

The disk was the size of his palm, black and unmarked. He set it on his desktop and pressed a fingertip against the disk. The quantum-entangled atoms within it spun, transmitting his desire to speak with the person who held the other paired disk.

Entangling atoms was easy, keeping them separate from the many laws of physics that would break the connection was difficult, and expensive. But for those willing to pay the price, they gained an unbreakable, untraceable, and unlimited range of communication.

He swallowed hard as a pale red light blinked, then went steadily green.

“What?” a voice said from the disk.

“She lives, sir,” Jerrum said. “Our first attempt failed. New security measures make your stipulation that she die in public difficult to carry out.”

The silence from his employer unnerved him more than any ass-chewing out could have.

“Your assets remain in place?”

“Yes, sir,” Jerrum said.

“The fleet will arrive soon. Very soon. She must die before the king can abdicate. If Sidonia signs the treaty, our mission is a failure. Do you understand that?”

“Of course. We could eliminate Francis. He is just as crucial, correct?”

The line was quiet but for a slight static hiss.

“Francis is mine. Victor is mine. The king is mine. Do not touch them. Kill the girl. Public or not. You will kill the girl, or you will answer to me.”

Jerrum felt a sheen of icy fear coat his stomach. The last agent called before their employer had taken days to die.

“As you wish. You will join us shortly, correct?”

“Soon. It takes time to build an army.”

The lights on the side of the disk went red as the entanglement died. Cracks appeared on the disk, spreading like cracks in a foundation. The disk fell to pieces and dissolved into dust. Jerrum wiped the remains off his desk with the back of his hand.

****

Remi stood outside Cosima’s door. He flexed his feet against the floor, then tightened his muscle groups one at a time from his calves up to his neck. Duty as a Guardsman was mostly boredom, punctuated with moments of sheer terror. He’d learned several tricks to keep his mind and body alert during the many, many boring periods. It didn’t really lessen the boredom, but it kept the cramps away.

Cosima’s door opened, and the princess walked out wearing camouflage fatigues, the bottoms of the pants unbloused over the boots. She had a patrol cap over her head, the brim turned up at a ridiculous angle.

Years of impeccable uniform standards in the Sidonian army and King’s Guard demanded he reach out to correct the many errors in Cosima’s dress. He wasn’t a drill sergeant, he was a bodyguard.

“You,” she waved a hand at Remi, then put her hands on her hips, “take me to the place you shoot your guns. Teach me.”

“You mean the firing range, my lady?”

“Yes. There. Let’s go, chop-chop!” She clapped her hands for emphasis.

“My lady…may I suggest a more appropriate dress?”

“What, this isn’t right? I can soldier.” She saluted. Instead of the standard straight right hand to the right eyebrow, she bent her fingers toward her palm and bounced her hand against her forehead.

“No, my lady.” Remi struggled to keep his frustration at bay. Was she trying to upset him?

She tried again, this time with her fingers spread and thumb tucked against her palm.

“No.”

She turned her palm toward Remi and touched her fingertips to her temple, then swung her hand across her face.

“Maybe if you were an air force officer. My lady, there are…at least twenty-three errors in your uniform, the first being that you haven’t sworn an enlistment or officer’s oath to serve. Can your handmaid prepare some khakis, perhaps?”

Lana crossed her arms over her chest.

“I gave her the day off to visit family. I suppose that was a mistake.” She turned her nose up and went back into her quarters.

She reappeared several minutes later in khaki pants and a safari jacket.

“Does this satisfy you? I don’t even know why I’m asking you. Go! Take me to your gun place,” she said, waving him on.

Remi tapped their movement into his gauntlet and went to the elevator. “Have you ever fired a weapon, my lady?” he asked

“A few times at the arcade, games like Space Cop and Bug Fest. Are they that different than the real thing?”

“Yes, quite different. What prompted this new interest, if I may ask?” The elevator opened as they approached. Remi tapped a three-digit code into the control panel to take them to the armory. Elevators in the palace could travel laterally as well as vertically.

“I’m tired of sitting in my tower, thinking of new ways to make myself look pretty,” she said.

She tapped her foot as they traveled into the basement where the King’s Guard kept their armory. Cosima looked at the pistol on Remi’s hip, secure in a leather holster.

“Let me see your gun.” She reached for the weapon.

Remi slapped against the holster and twisted away from her. Cosima brought her hands up to her chin in surprise.

“It is not a toy,” he said firmly. He relaxed and smiled at her. “Forgive me, my lady. We are trained to keep positive control over our weapons at all times. I understand there are no pulser weapons on Styria Station, correct?”

Cosima brought her hands down and stood up as straight as she could.

“That is correct. Projectile weapons on space stations could hit something critical or puncture the hull. We have no shootings on the station. The occasional stabbing, yes. But never a shooting.”

The doors opened, and a guard stood up from behind a ballistic shield and saluted Cosima. She attempted to return the gesture and mangled it into a little wave to the guard as they passed him.

“My lady, may I suggest you refrain from saluting. It isn’t required or expected of you,” Remi said.

“I thought I was getting the hang of it.”

“No, my lady.”

The pistol range was a series of lanes partitioned by sound baffles. Black lines extended the length of the range from each firing position, with range lines every ten yards. The range smelled of ozone and brass built up over a hundred years of continuous use by the military and Guardsmen living and working in the palace.

Remi took Cosima to a lane in the middle of the range, took a pair of headphones from the wall, and handed them to Cosima, then grabbed himself a pair from another lane.

“These will cancel out high decibel noise, but we can talk normally.” He pressed a palm against a sound baffle. A circle traced around his hand as his palm print and DNA were logged into the range’s computer. A panel slid aside at the base of the shelf, and a drawer with a pistol and three magazines opened.

Remi beat Cosima’s grab for the pistol, and he held it in front of her, his finger off the trigger.

“This is a J-90 service pistol. It holds eight variable penetration rounds per clip and is accurate out to one hundred yards. The first and most important rule you must know is that you never point this weapon at something you do not intend to shoot. Understand?” he asked.

Cosima nodded and grasped the pistol by the handle. The pistol almost fell to the shelf as she struggled to hold its weight.

“Oops,” she said with a nervous laugh. She picked up a magazine and slid it into the handle and gave it a slap. The pistol vibrated in her hand as it automatically cycled a round into the chamber.

“Range, known distance target, ten yards,” Remi said. A hologram of a black silhouette of a man appeared above the ten-yard line. “Flip the safety to ‘single’ and aim for the center mass and gently squeeze the trigger.”

Cosima held the pistol up with both hands and pulled the trigger, nothing happened. She pulled at it harder.

“Safety,” Remi said.

Cosima muttered a few choice miners’ curses and took the weapon off “safe.” She re-aimed the weapon and squeezed the trigger.

A bullet fired with an electric snap, and the pistol jerked in her hands. She glanced at the display on the shelf, which didn’t show a hit on the target. She fired off three more shots, still no hits on the target.

“There must be something wrong with this gun,” she said, pouting.

“May I?” Remi took the weapon from her and aimed it at the silhouette. “Range. Fifty yards.” The hologram vanished and reappeared farther away. Remi fired three shots; each hit center mass within a thumbnail’s distance from each other.

He shifted the pistol to his left hand. “Range. One hundred yards.” Three more shots hit the target in the head.

“Show off,” she said.

“Range, reset.” Remi flipped the pistol in his grip and handed it back to her, handle first.

She examined the weapon in her hands. “Show me how you did that.”

“Square your feet, a little more than shoulder-width apart. Nonfiring hand at the base of the handle for support.” Remi tapped his foot against Cosima’s to get her feet wider and took her by the wrist to extend her arms slightly. “Line up the target with the front and rear sites, then squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it. The shot should almost come as a surprise.”

Cosima’s face narrowed in concentration, and a shot snapped from the pistol.

A hit on the edge of the silhouette’s shoulder pinged on the shelf display.

“Ha! Got him,” she said.

“Yes, he’ll need at least a bandage to recover. Hit center mass, my lady. That will cause the round to detonate within the target and eliminate the threat.”

Cosima looked at the pistol. “Did you say ‘detonate’?”

“Yes, the round requires the presence of blood and flesh to detonate. The exit wound from this caliber bullet will leave an exit wound the size of your fist. One shot is normally enough,” Remi said.

“Oh.” The weapon trembled in her hand. The idea of shooting an actual person and not a bloodless hologram brought a level of realism she hadn’t considered. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

She lowered the pistol to the shelf, but Remi cupped his palm under her hands.

“There is nothing wrong with saving your own life, or innocent lives around you,” he said.

Cosima nodded and raised the pistol. Her next two shots hit an arm and the lower abdomen.

“There, you’re getting it.”

“Can I have my own gun now?”

Remi shook his head. “Let’s not be hasty. Actual pulser shots will disrupt your body shield, making you more vulnerable.”

“You mean these are fakes?”

“Perfect ballistic and recoil simulations, no different than firing the real thing.” He reached for a magazine on the table. “Now let me show you a trick to reloading faster.”

“It doesn’t even shoot?” Cosima asked. She tapped the pistol against the shelf, then put her free hand over the muzzle.

Remi snatched the gun away from her and roared, “That is not a toy!”

His shout echoed up and down the range. Cosima backed away from him and bumped against the sound baffle.

He set the pistol down and looked away from her. “I’m sorry, my lady. It’s my fault for not explaining things to you correctly. Please forgive me,” he said quietly.

“Could it have hurt me?”

“No. Even if it had been a live round, your shield would have protected you. We’re trained to treat everything like it’s real. Every threat, every danger. I overreacted.” He removed the magazine from the pistol and set it back in the drawer below the shelf.

“Then don’t you snap at me! I am Cosima Elizabeth Melanie Zollern, and I’m about to be the queen of this planet. Unless you want to-to-to peel potatoes for the rest of your career, you’d better let me do just about anything I want.” She poked a finger against Remi’s chest.

“Yes, my lady,” Remi said.

A message beeped on his gauntlet.

“The trade fleet is about to arrive,” he read. “Prince Francis would like you to join him on the arch observation deck to watch their hyperspace transition.”

“Then let’s get up there.” She turned and stalked away. She got three steps before she whirled around and said, “But first I need to change.”

****

Two arches crisscrossed in a single point over Sidonia City. An elevator shaft, hidden from view by a layer of holographic tiles that made it blend in to the sky when seen from the ground, connected the palace to the junction.

The junction, a slightly concave circle, was large enough for a dome that housed antennae and satellite dishes and an observation platform. The arches, their undersides camouflaged by the same technology that kept the elevator hidden, projected the bombardment shields that kept the city safe from orbital attack. While citizens appreciated the defense, no one wanted to see a constant reminder that death from above was a real threat during humanity’s settlement across the galaxy.

The hidden shields served their purpose day in and day out without much thought from those in Sidonia City, to no one’s complaint or consternation.

The only time the junction and shield came to attention was when a trade fleet returned to Sidonia, then the noble Houses, expecting to see their ships full of goods traded for art, fought for a spot on the tiny observation deck to see the fleet the moment it translated from hyperspace.

Getting a spot on the junction to see a translation was something of a status symbol, and the noble Houses that paid the exorbitant fee to gain access doled out tickets to only those who’d earned a spot through superior business acumen or the lottery of birth. Any ship captain or artist who “stood on junction” was assured their pick in trade contracts and commissions for the rest of their lives.

Cosima was the last to arrive, and she exited the elevator to soft applause from the dozen men and women gathered there.

“My lady,” a rotund man with a baldpate and extraordinary muttonchops bowed to her, “I am Helmut von Boelcke. Let me be the first to welcome you to junction.”

Cosima, wearing a pale blue dress over a black body glove for warmth, nodded her head to Helmut. She knew him by reputation; her father had her watch a teleconference with his House a year ago when their House refused to release a pair of artists from their indenture contracts. House von Boelcke claimed the artists hadn’t repaid their advances through some trickery with basket accounting and compound interest.

The conversation had been one-sided. Her father read House von Boelcke the riot act for deceptive practices and demanded they release the artists. When the House demurred, her father cut off their supply of Stahlium, which would have led to quick economic ruin for them. The House didn’t appeal to the king, who’d have looked into the contract in question and likely done worse things to them than take away their Stahlium. House von Boelcke released the artists…and quickly removed similar contract provisions from all their other outstanding contracts.

“Sir von Boelcke, pleasure to see you. What are you expecting to arrive?” she asked.

“Auto harvesters for our almond orchards, protocells for cancer treatment, and a few luxury items,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

Ever the one to brag, she thought.

She caught sight of her fiancé across the deck, speaking intently with a tall, blonde woman, who was dressed most immodestly for high society, by Cosima’s standards.

She excused herself from Helmut and stopped in the middle of the observation deck. At the apex of the city’s shield, the sky opened up around her. Distant storms stretched into the upper atmosphere where trade winds scalped the tops of thunderheads into wisps, tearing away the might of the storm. The setting sun cast multihued bands in shades of fire across the Tauern Mountains stretching over the horizon. The first lights of the small towns along the tube lines running to and from the capital mirrored the stars emerging from the darkening sky.

Cosima crept toward the railing and dared to look down at the entire city and its radial and circular highways dappled with lights from ground cars moving along their routes. Her stomach lurched into her throat. Vertigo was a new feeling for her.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever had someone from House Zollern stand on junction before,” Francis said from behind her.

Cosima spun around and focused on the prince’s face, hoping to quell her dizzy spell. “We have no need to come here. We can see the transitions quite well from Styria Station,” she said. A breeze whipped through her hair, and she clamped on to the railing with both hands.

Prince Francis chuckled. “No worries, my lovely. I could jump from here, and the shield would carry me down as gently as a mother’s arms. We had to install that feature right after the shield went active—too many birds hitting it.” Francis took a swig from a flask and grimaced as the liquid burned its way down. He offered the flask to her.

“No, thank you.” Alcohol and heights struck her as a poor combination.

“Father used to bring us all up here for translations,” he said. “Quinn—rest his soul—always teased that he knew the code for the shield, claimed he’d say a magic word and throw me right through it. Vincent would complain to father and fight with Quinn when he’d try and lift me over the railing.” He took another swig. “Now it’ll be you and I up here for every translation. At least we won’t have to wave.”

“Where is Prince Vincent? I haven’t met him yet,” she said. Another gust of wind tugged at her earrings and brought tears to her eyes. Francis’s warm arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close to him, their sides touching. He smelled of booze and old smoke.

“He’s in the bunker, pretending he’s some sort of secret squirrel looking for spies. They’re around every bush if you ask him. Father’s illness got worse while I was away for the negotiations. He’s been running the kingdom ever since. Not to worry, you and I will be king and queen, with all the pomp and circumstance, in no time.”

“We could go up to my station, watch the translation from the star docks,” she said.

“Ha! I’ll be damned if I ever leave atmosphere again. Space is so miserable.” He made a poor attempt to hide a sidelong glance at the blonde in the impractical dress, who doted over an old, and wealthy, ship captain from House Brunonen. “And it’s good to be the king.”

“Translation!” a noble called out, pointing to the sky.

A silver streak wavered in space, like a comet’s tail in reverse. Slowing from hyperspace skewed the fabric of the cosmos. Ships left a path that writhed like an aurora for a few seconds before vanishing back into whatever tortured physics birthed it.

More streaks came into being, as quickly as the meteor showers that marked the beginning of spring for the planet’s northern hemisphere. The nobles cheered; their proverbial ships had come in. The influx of wealth and news from the wider galaxy had returned to sustain Sidonia’s economy and curiosity until the next trade fleet.

“Watch this, Cosima, it won’t happen again in our lifetime,” Francis said.

A streak as wide as Styria Station appeared, stretching across the entire sky as the massive ship slowed as easily as an antique steam train trying to stop going downhill. Cosima could actually see the vessel, running lights beaming up and down the flanks of a gargantuan vessel with a massive hangar through it. The ship looked like a metallic whale shark that swam through Sidonia’s deepest oceans.

It must have been three times the size of Styria Station. Smaller craft translated around it, forming around the huge ship like lampreys.

Silence fell over the nobles as they took in the spectacle.

“That, ladies and gentlemen,” Francis announced to everyone on the observation deck, “is the Chaebol Corporation, and it will build Sidonia’s first jump gate to the Gaia system.” He took a deep sip from his flask. “Drink up! We’re all going to be filthy rich.”

Cosima pulled away from Francis and gazed up at the growing construction fleet. She didn’t see a bright future in those stars; she saw a future of uncertainty.

CHAPTER 7

Cosima walked around the gown hung on a floating hanger. The blue fabric shimmered like deep waters of lagoons around the Aina Islands as she circled. Opals and sapphires glittered in the light.

“I’m getting sick of this,” she said to Lana.

“I think you’ll look lovely.” Lana swiped through pictures of Cosima’s head, each with a different hairstyle.

“Wear this, wear that, never wear the same thing twice,” Cosima said. “I grew up in a space suit, for goodness sake. That was practical, it had a purpose. What purpose does this dress serve, other than making me look like a fish?”

Lana’s tone shifted to a mocking whine: “I have too many clothes to wear. Everyone thinks I’m beautiful. Lana, my diamond shoes are too tight!”

“Shut up, Lana! You think these are the kinds of problems I want to have? A week ago I was on a spacewalk, rerouting a power line to a drill head, trying not to bust my radiation count for the day and finish the repair with almost empty air tanks. Those are problems, real problems.”

Cosima flopped down onto her bed and put her face in her hands.

“Now the rest of my life will be nothing but being a clothes horse and fodder for the paparazzi magazines. Oh, maybe I’ll be a baby factory for Francis, who doesn’t seem to be interested in me for anything else but…that.”

“Boo-hoo-hoo,” Lana whined.

“Shut. Up!” Cosima rolled over and pulled a pillow over her head. She lay in her semi-dark cocoon, wondering what high society would do if she showed up to the ball in her dirty, patched space suit.

She heard the doors open and slid the pillow away.

“What now? A shipment of shoes to agonize over?” she asked, her face still buried in her blanket.

“Hello, Cosima,” a familiar voice said.

Cosima sat up in a flash and blinked hard at the two people standing in the doorway. The man, bald headed and clean shaven with an ageless grace to his face, leaned against a cane.

“Daddy!” Cosima leaped from the bed and ran to embrace her father, burying her face into the spun silk of his finery. She recounted the last few days with blazing speed, particular attention paid to how bad the air smelled and how dusty the surface of Sidonia was compared to their life in orbit.

Karl Zollern let his daughter vent, nodding along.

“And now I have to wear that ridiculous dress for tonight. Could you imagine someone in that back home? They’d get laughed out of the nearest airlock.”

“I don’t think you have the boobs for it, really,” another familiar voice said.

Cosima ducked her head to her father’s side, and glared at her older sister. Theresa, her blonde hair done up for contemporary Sidonia fashion and her lips a very deep red, looked tired, but no less stunning than usual.

“And where the hell have you been, Theresa?”

“Deep in lust with the heir to House Welf on his ocean-side villa in the Aina Islands,” Theresa said. “A hurricane shut down the tube lines for a few days. Sorry it took me so long to get here, but now that I’m here I can apply some fashion sense to your wedding. It really isn’t fair that you’re getting married before I am, I should add.”

“And about that, Father,” Cosima said, “why am I the one getting married?”

Karl limped toward a chair, pain dogging his every step.

“Daddy, what happened? Are you hurt?” Cosima said. Guilt and dread welled up inside her as she followed her father. She’d been so wrapped up in herself that she hadn’t bothered to notice that he could barely stand.

Karl almost fell into the chair. His right leg remained straight and stiff as he settled in with a grunt.

“Negotiations on New Chosun grew heated,” Karl said. “Some of the bidders were less than pleased that they’d lost.”

“What happened?” Cosima knelt next to her father’s chair, her hands resting on his forearm.

“Someone had the nerve to shoot me,” he said matter-of-factly.

Cosima gasped and hugged her father around his waist, which elicited a yelp of pain. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s nothing serious. The doctors patched me back up without any problem. I’ve got all my original parts,” he said with a smile.

“Who? Who tried to kill you? And me!” Cosima said.

“We suspect Aquitaine Interstellar Corporation, maybe Daimler. Both put in substantial bids for the rights to Gaia System; both are known to be sore losers. They lodged formal complaints after we awarded the contract to Chaebol. They insisted their bids were higher.” Karl accepted a glass of water from Lana with a nod of thanks.

“How would they know their bid was higher? I thought all bids were silent when it came to contracts this large,” Cosima said.

“Because Aquitaine and Daimler’s bids were larger than the sum total worth of Chaebol Corp. King Rasczak gave us strict instructions not to accept the bids from those two companies, no matter what they offered. Chaebol’s offer was acceptable, and we came to terms,” Karl said.

“So one, or both, of the largest corporations in known space went after you, and now they’re after me?” Cosima said.

Karl shook his head slightly. “That’s why we had to…accelerate the timetable on the wedding. We thought we could have the treaty signed before the disaffected parties could act. They must have had a team already in place.”

“Wait, why is my wedding the focal point for all this? We have a king, he signs treaties, why does this involve me?” Cosima waved her hands over her face.

“The king is ill, Chaebol knows this. The jump gate and colonization effort are a long-term effort between them and us. They don’t want the deal spoiled because of a succession issue, so they want a long-term partner. They trust me, they trust Francis, and they think if you are married to Francis, then Chaebol Corp. will have more leverage over him through me.” Karl shrank into his seat.

“And why in the hell would they think that? Did they know about the great track record of obedience you have with Theresa?” Cosima looked to the ceiling and groaned.

“I’m right here, you know,” Theresa said, looking at her fingernails.

“Chaebol is of New Chosun,” Karl said. “New Chosun is of old Korea, and in that culture, they can’t imagine a daughter disobeying her husband or her father. Besides, the Articles of Founding forbid the king from abdicating unless he has a married heir. Chaebol won’t sign the treaty until you’re married and you and Francis are king and queen.”

Cosima pointed at Theresa.

“Why not her? She wants to be dirt side. She hasn’t spent her life learning to mine Stahlium like I have. Why me?” Cosima demanded.

Karl looked down at his shoes.

“The king wouldn’t agree to it. It has to be you.”

Cosima’s chin quivered with rage. Her mouth opened to argue, then snapped shut with a click of teeth.

She spun in place and stalked toward the closet. She sent the blue dress flying with a swipe of her hand and locked herself inside.

Karl struggled to his feet, but Theresa’s hand pushed him back into his seat.

“No, Dad, leave this to me,” she said. “I talked her out of that cargo container when she was eleven and you wouldn’t buy her that new scanner she wanted.”

“Just help me up,” he said. He got to his feet like a man much more advanced in age and limped to the closet door. He could hear crying within.

“Cosima, darling, this isn’t fair to you. It’s what’s best for Sidonia and everyone on it. Someday, I hope you’ll understand. I’m going to leave now.”

“Bet you wished you’d had sons, much easier right?” Theresa said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

“I didn’t say I was thinking that. If you go to the ball, try and behave yourself for once in your life,” Karl said. He got three steps away, then looked over his shoulder. “No, save the ‘for once in your life’ for the wedding. If you can manage it twice, I’ll be impressed.”

****

On the surface, plainclothes duty at a ball would be desirable for the King’s Guard: a special clothing allowance, hair and skin adjustments, and the chance to hobnob with high society. In practice, few of the Guard volunteered for the opportunity. The Guardsmen were almost always former soldiers drawn from Sidonia’s lower castes. Few had the social acumen to pass as a noble; fewer still had the desire to rub elbows with the high born.

Remi was one of those few, and he’d been to so many balls, art galas, and associated soirees that most nobles in Sidonia probably thought he really was the head of an import/export firm specializing in carbohydrate paste for maker kitchen units.

His skin was pigmented to match a native of the Mediterranean coast, his hair lengthened and teased with oil to make him look drastically different from the soldier and Guardsman he was at heart.

The royal family hosted translation balls for two purposes, one obvious, the other, less so. Celebrating the safe arrival was an easy surface explanation. Beneath that, gathering all the noble Houses together served to get the wheels of commerce rolling. After every translation ball, meeting halls around the capital were booked solid as nobles traded their newly arrived goods and bought from the king’s auction goods any artist had received.

Lords and ladies in finery that cost more than Remi’s yearly salary stood in small groups, dropping subtle hints about the new cargo that had arrived and discussing the latest gossip. The younger unmarried scions of the Houses took to the dance floor, where a string quartet played from a set list.

Remi scooped up a flute of sparkling wine and took a sip. His stomach was coated with a layer of proteins to stop alcohol from absorbing into his bloodstream. Not for the first time, he wondered if humans would drink wine and spirits just for the taste and not for the inebriation effects. The hangovers, liver damage, and nascent threat of a family history of alcoholism were enough to deter his social drinking. Not so for most everyone else at the ball.

He overheard a knot of conversation bandying about the idea of resorts on the Aina Islands. Sidonia, separated by seven months of hyperspace travel to the nearest jump gate, received little to no tourism. Once the worlds of the Gaia system were settled by billions and billions of people, separated by a mere day or two at sublight speeds to get to and from the gate leading to Sidonia, the wealthy would need someplace to vacation.

Another conversation lamented a shipment of bananas from a hydroponic farm. The containment field had failed during transit, and the ship carrying the load reeked of spoiled fruit and was swarming with fruit flies.

No one was acting suspiciously or speaking ill of the royal family.

“Reginald, you look fit as ever,” a woman with thick, lensless glasses said to him. She was another Guardsman plant at the ball, and what she had really said was. All is well.

“Gina, I owe it all to clean living,” he said, his words as haughty as a well-to-do merchantman’s should be. All is well.

“Have you seen the meatball tray?” VIP en route.

“I think the kitchen is a bit slow tonight.” I’ll cover her entrance.

“Shame, I’ll have to make do with the tartare.” I’ll cover Prince Francis.

Remi remembered her from the assault on Jutland, remembered her placing the charges against the fortress wall and charging through the breach beside him. Now she was indistinguishable from the nobles as an executive from an accounting firm.

He made his way toward the main entrance where the royal announcer, an old veteran Remi knew had a machine leg under his uniform trousers, stood fast at attention. Remi spoke with a weaselly man from the tariff collection bureau and complained about the latest poor outing of Sidonia City’s baseball team.

The announcer breathed deeply and shuffled his feet ever so slightly.

“Princess Cosima of House Zollern,” thundered through the room.

Everyone turned to watch the entrance. Small talk faded away, and the string band rose to their feet. Remi’s spot would allow him to watch the crowd as Cosima entered the room.

Cosima stepped into view, and Remi almost dropped his drink when he saw her. Holographic waves rippled along the sea-blue dress as she walked into the center of the ballroom, head held high and confident. Despite his duty to watch everyone in the room but her, he couldn’t take his eyes away.

He shook his head and scanned the rest of the crowd. Ladies leaned toward their peers and whispered jealous comments, their mouths hidden by a wave of their gloved hands as they spoke. Lords nodded in approval and did their best to hide their gazes lingering on Cosima from their wives and courtesans. Nothing unusual yet…

From the corner of his eye, Remi saw a man scratch at the side of his face and tap at the side of his monocle with a fingertip.

Remi took a sip of his drink and moved toward the man with the monocle. He was new, unfamiliar to Remi. After enough time with the King’s Guard, he had more than a passing familiarity with Sidonia’s movers and shakers, but the man with the monocle was an unknown. It wasn’t unusual for a noble to bring an off-worlder to a ball, but those special guests normally stayed close to their patron. This man stood apart from the cliques and conversation knots.

Prince Francis approached his fiancée and bowed to her. She returned a curtsy. The monocle wearer gave several more taps during the exchange between the two royals. Francis offered his hand to Cosima, and the band struck up a slow-tempo dance song.

More couples moved onto the dance floor, a black and white checkerboard, sharing a dance with the eventual king and queen more of a draw than previous songs.

Remi slowed his pace as he came to the man in the monocle, whose attention was focused solely on the prince and princess. He brushed past him and got a strong whiff of ozone as he bumped the man.

“Pardon me, good sir, so clumsy,” Remi said.

The man with the monocle waved a hand at him, his gaze never wavering from Cosima.

Remi moved to the edge of the room, adrenaline seeping into his bloodstream as he backed away from the newly detected threat. There was only one thing that would release a smell of ozone. He tapped a throat mic hidden beneath his high collar.

“This is Remi, we’ve got a skin caster in the ballroom. Height sixty-five inches, green overcoat, gold trim, suede leather shoes with a white scuff on the rear left heel. Permission to engage.”

****

Cosima raised her arm and twirled beneath Francis’s arm. The galliard dance was basic, taught to every noble child soon after their seventh birthday. Going through the steps was as easy as walking, but thus far Francis had missed his footing and nearly tripped himself up several times during this number.

He was either a poor dancer or half-drunk. Given the smell of his breath and abysmal dancing skills, Cosima wasn’t sure which reason was true or if both were right.

The song ended and the dancers bowed to each other. Francis stumbled a half step as his bow went too low. He did his best to laugh it off.

“Let me introduce you to some very important people,” Francis said. He put a hand on the small of her back and nudged her towards three men wearing immaculately tailored suits, behind each man was a woman wearing high wasted dresses seemingly designed to camouflage any hint of femininity. As they got closer, Cosima squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

The three men were identical, down to the part in their hair and the slight crow’s feet around their eyes. The women behind each man were eerie with their perfect porcelain-like faces. Their hands were folded inside voluminous sleeves. The women’s eyes snapped open and took in Cosima and Francis. They shut in unison, and Cosima swore she heard a click.

“Cosima, these are Ambassadors Kim, Park and Lee of the Chaebol Corporation. They’ll liaise with us during the gate construction and help manage traffic through our glorious star system,” Francis said.

The three men bowed to Cosima with such synchronized precision that she questioned if two of the men were just holo projections of the one true ambassador.

“We were most upset at the attack on your person,” said the one on the left.

“We are thankful for your good health and upcoming nuptials,” said the one in the middle.

“Thank you for this invitation,” the third finished. They even sounded exactly the same.

“Yes, I was rather upset too. Can I meet your…wives?” Cosima asked.

The band’s cellist rapped his bow against his instrument, the next song was about to begin. Francis led Cosima back to the dance floor, his hand dangerously low on her back.

“They aren’t wives,” he said to her. “They’re gisaeng, bodyguards.”

“Are they,” Cosima’s voice lowered to a whisper “real? Actual people?”

“I’m not sure. Culture on New Chosun is a little hard to grasp. The entire planet is obsessed with unity, sameness. Kim, Park, and Lee weren’t born looking like triplets, they’ve had plastic surgery since puberty to make sure they’ve all got ‘the look’. Same with the women. Every city on that planet is the same, architecture, restaurants, street layout. It got boring quickly when I was there with your father.”

The band struck up a minuet, a more complicated dance number. Francis placed a hand on her waist, then let it slide too deep for comfort. She yanked his hand back up to her waist and forced herself to smile. This dance would be a long one.

“May I cut in?” a voice with a mechanical whirl asked.

“You most certainly may n—oh, hello, brother,” Francis said, guiding Cosima around so he could look at the intruder.

Prince Vincent wore his military dress uniform: blazing white trousers and jacket with a black sash from shoulder to hip full of ribbons and medals that she didn’t recognize. A blood red stripe ran along the upper edge of the sash.

Vincent held out his robotic hand to Cosima and nodded his head slightly. She looked at the hand’s bare metal and gears where knuckles should have been with unease. The idea of sharing another dance with Francis proved less appealing to her, and she gingerly put her hand atop the metal palm.

Vincent stepped between her and Francis and led her away as the song began. He quickly proved to be a better dancing partner than his brother.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I must admit to ulterior motives. We haven’t had any chance to speak since your arrival.” Vincent cocked his head to the side. They spun around and Cosima saw a man with a monocle standing on the edge of the dance floor, smiling at her.

“I’ve been busy attesting to art and trying on clothes. I do hope you’re more engaged in something important than I am,” she said.

“There are no end to things that need the attention of Sidonia’s director of security,” he said. His right eye twinkled with mischief; his left was oddly neutral. She looked harder at the left eye, which matched the movement of the other but was a barred door, not a window, into Vincent’s soul.

“It’s fake,” he said. “It gives me depth perception and doesn’t frighten the children too much.”

“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to stare,” she said.

“If staring was all I got…” He half smiled, the left part of his mouth stiff and unresponsive. “Do you know what they call me in the tabloids? ‘The viper’ or ‘the spymaster.’ Childish, isn’t it?”

“I thought you were the spymaster.”

“Yes, but one of the tenets of intelligence work is to never confirm or deny anything.” The music tempo shifted and they stepped apart. Cosima squinted at the medals on Vincent’s sash.

“I’m not familiar with all those baubles. Do you get to pick which you wear?” she asked.

“No, they are all earned, my lady.”

“You have a red stripe on your sash.” She slid her hand off his shoulder and ran it along the stripe. Vincent recoiled at her touch and guided her hand back to his shoulder.

His metal hand squeezed her flesh-and-blood fingers.

“It’s a Blood Stripe, and no one wants it,” he said. His eyes narrowed and he looked away from her face, as if he was fighting something deep inside.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Cosima tried to step away from him, but he gently held her in place.

“No offense meant, no offense taken,” he said.

“Why haven’t you had a clone graft to replace…your injuries?” she asked. “The tabloids say you keep your cybernetics just to intimidate people.”

“Grafts of replacement tissue are very, very expensive. While the royal family has the resources for me, the kingdom does not have the resources to do the same for every soldier with prosthetics. I will not receive better treatment than my men. If the procedure becomes affordable, I will be the last to get it.”

The song ended and they bowed to each other. An incredibly photogenic young nobleman approached, intent on asking Cosima for the next dance. Vincent poked two mechanical fingers into the handsome man’s chest and pushed him away.

Vincent snapped his true fingers at the band and they lurched into the next song, bad notes squealing against strings. Vincent grabbed her and led her into the dance. She rolled her eyes and went along with him.

“Sorry, but I need to keep you close for a few minutes longer. There’s been a security breach. Must keep you safe until I’m sure it’s handled.”

“What? Who—” Her head shot to the side, looking for a possible assassin.

Vincent put a finger to her cheek and turned her face back to him. “Act normal. Watch the man with the monocle.”

He twisted them around so she could see the man in question from over Vincent’s shoulder.

The man kept tapping at his monocle, still smiling at Cosima. A pair of party guests, both well-to-do businessmen by their dress, came up behind the man and grabbed him by the arms. The taller of the two guests whispered in the monocle-wearing man’s ear. His eyes went wide and he nodded furiously.

A hand swiped the monocle away and the two “guests” led their captive away from the dance floor with hardly a ripple in the festive atmosphere.

“Who is that? What does he want?” Cosima asked, her voice quivering with fear.

“I don’t know, but we will find out,” Vincent said. He craned his neck to see the man being led from the room, then turned his attention back to Cosima. “Let’s get you to my brother. I spent too much time with you, and rumors will start.”

****

“Unhand me, you brutes! Is this how Sidonia treats all its guests?” The man Remi singled out for wearing a skin caster struggled against the iron grasp of the two plains clothed King’s Guardsmen who had taken him from the ballroom. They half shoved, half carried him through a service corridor, where a uniformed Guardsman stood next to an open door.

“I am Mohamed Ibn Faisal of the Hashemite Kingdom.” The man wiggled uselessly as he was led out the door. “My sultan will not be pleased to hear what poor hosts you all are.”

They moved into a courtyard, where stables and a blacksmith’s station lined the walls. A trio of uniformed Guardsmen, all with scowls on their exposed lips, waited in the middle of the courtyard.

The two Guards in civilian clothes handed Mohamed off to the Guards, who grabbed him by the arms and knocked his feet apart. They held his arms up and turned Mohamed’s limbs into an X.

“What is the meaning of this?” Mohamed demanded.

One of the guests shook a toupee from the top of his head and pulled a thin membrane off his face. Stolzoff spat out a pair of cheek pads and leaned toward Mohamed, sniffing.

“Is this some sort of Sidonian—” Mohamed’s protest ended in a grunt as Stolzoff’s fist slammed into his gut. Stolzoff’s nose wrinkled at the sudden smell of ozone. He grabbed Mohamed by the face and lifted it up level with his.

Where Stolzoff’s fingers touched the face, tiny motes of light rippled away from the fingers.

“Where is the skin caster?” Stolzoff asked.

Mohamed tried to shake his head, but Stolzoff’s grip tightened against his face so hard he winced in pain.

“Please, play games with me. Give me an excuse,” the chief of the King’s Guard said. His grip lessened an iota.

“My neck! The back of my neck,” he mumbled through his clenched jaw.

Stolzoff ran a hand over the back of Mohamed’s neck and plucked a white plastic circle from under his collar.

Mohamed’s face crackled like a screen with poor reception. The façade vanished, revealing a pasty-faced man with jet-black hair and pale blue eyes. The new man gave a sheepish smile.

“Well if it isn’t Mickey Papadopoulos from the Sidonia Enquirer,” Stolzoff said. “Thought what would happen if we ever caught you trying to steal pics was pretty clear.”

“Colonel!” Mickey said. “Great to see you again, really. I can explain all of this. I wasn’t here trying to get pics for the Enquirer. No…you see—”

“Eight hundred thirty-seven images on this camera,” Remi said. He had the monocle attached to a slate and was flipping through pictures stored on the device, most of them of Cosima.

“OK, yeah I was here for some exclusive snaps,” Mickey admitted.

“The iron,” Stolzoff said.

The Guards yanked Mickey off his feet and dragged him to the iron at the blacksmith’s station.

“I’m doing a public service,” Mickey squealed. “You have Cosima under lock and key. The people, the people want to know, man.”

The guards slammed Mickey’s arm against the iron and held his palm against the metal.

“Colonel, we can work this out like civilized men!” Mickey squirmed against the two men holding him against the anvil.

“The last time we caught you taking unauthorized photos, the judge issued a trade injunction against you. Which means you lose your method of earning your living; you lose your hands, or your eyes.” Stolzoff took a smith’s hammer from the wall and tested the weight in his hand. “But it was suspended.”

“Wait, can we talk about this?” Mickey asked.

“You committed the same offense. Recidivism is frowned upon in our justice system, which is why I can carry out the original sentence if accompanied by ‘egregious circumstances.’ This is pretty egregious, wouldn’t you say, men?”

The Guards holding him grunted their agreement. Mickey whined and tried to jerk his hand from the iron, to no avail.

“Remi? Pretty egregious, right?” Stolzoff asked.

Remi didn’t answer right away.

“There’s no harm done. I say we turn him over for a public flogging,” Remi said.

Stolzoff sniffed at his suggestion and bent over, his face contorted in anger.

“I was there when we caught you in the hospital,” he said to Mickey. “Saw the pictures you’d taken of our fine prince suffering from wounds received in battle. I wanted to take your eyes right then and there.” He tapped the hammer against Mickey’s forehead, and the man started blubbering.

Stolzoff stood up. “I’ll make do with your hand.” He raised the hammer over his head.

“Stop!” Cosima called out from the doorway.

Stolzoff lowered the hammer to his waist as Cosima rushed over, Prince Vincent two steps behind her.

“What are you doing to him?” she demanded.

“Carrying out a judge’s sentence. This piece of filth had his method of trade revoked with a suspended sentence. This violation lifts the suspension,” Stolzoff said.

“Prince Vincent,” Mickey said, “help me out here, I’m begging you.”

“The law is quite clear,” Vincent said.

Cosima whirled around to Vincent.

“You’re OK with this? On Styria Station we revoke void certification for method-of-trade cases. We don’t cut anyone’s hands off,” she said.

“That works on your station. It doesn’t work down here,” Vincent said.

“We are a kingdom of laws, my lady,” Stolzoff said. He twirled the hammer in his hand. The chief of the King’s Guard looked to Vincent, who nodded.

Stolzoff raised the hammer again and swung it down. Halfway through its arc, Cosima’s dainty hand flashed out and covered Mickey’s trembling appendage. Stolzoff shifted the strike at the last moment, and the hammer sparked against the anvil, just missing her hand.

“My lady, that was unwise,” Stolzoff said.

Mickey looked up and saw Cosima’s hand on top of his.

Cosima snatched her hand away and looked Mickey right in the eyes.

“How did you get in here?” she asked him. “There are gene scanners on every entrance. No skin caster could get you past that, and I’m damn sure you aren’t on the guest list.”

Mickey looked at her and swallowed hard.

“If I have to ask again, I will help him swing the hammer,” she said.

“Franks, the butcher. He smuggled me inside an aurochs for the wedding feast. He owes a couple of bookies. I agreed to cover his debts,” Mickey said. He looked from her to Stolzoff, eyes pleading.

“I think identifying a hole in your security is worth a little leniency, don’t you?” Cosima said to Stolzoff.

Stolzoff smacked his lips and glanced at Vincent.

Vincent, his arms crossed, tapped metal fingers against the true flesh of his other arm. “I do believe the accused has right to counsel in this situation,” he said.

“My lord, he confessed in front of witnesses,” Stolzoff said.

“I do believe.” The prince looked hard at the colonel, who backed off like a scolded dog. “Put him in a holding cell. Find this butcher, see if his story pans out.”

One of the guards pulled Mickey from the anvil. The photographer jammed his hands into his armpits.

“Thank you, my lord! Thank you, my lady!” Mickey said. The guards dragged him away, his heels cut twin paths through the loose straw on the ground.

Cosima straightened her dress and knocked away bits of straw. She snatched the skin caster out of Stolzoff’s hand.

“In the interests of safety, best you retire to your quarters until we have this worked out,” Vincent said to her.

“I’m blown up. This guy gets within arm’s distance of me. Best we should hold the wedding up on my station. No one ever almost killed me there,” she said with a snap. Cosima stomped past Vincent without a second glance and disappeared back into the palace. Remi fell in behind her.

****

Cosima rushed down the hallway, then came to a sudden stop. She looked over her shoulder at Remi and waited.

“Straight ahead, there’s a lift after the remembrance hall,” Remi said.

She continued on, glancing at him. “You look…different with hair.”

“Plain clothes requires a light disguise,” Remi said. “We don’t use skin casters. Too flawed and expensive.”

Cosima looked at the disk in the palm of her hand. She tapped it with a fingertip, projecting the image of a man’s hand over hers.

“How did you know he was wearing one?” she asked.

“The smell. The casters will ionize air, give off a smell of ozone when they have to work too hard or fast to maintain the image. If he’d tried to maintain a disguise that looked more like him, I might not have noticed.”

“I’m keeping this,” she said.

“It costs several hundred thousand marks and might be evidence in his next trial,” Remi said.

“Are you going to take it from me?” She raised her chin.

“No, my lady.”

“Then you’d better forget that I have it.”

“Have what?”

“Good man. Why are you all so hard on him? The press has rights by the Landing Constitution, why wasn’t he screaming about them?” she asked.

“Just because he has rights doesn’t mean he can break the law to exercise them. You, and the rest of the royals, have a right to privacy. Photojournalism is allowed at public events, not private ones,” Remi said.

“Stolzoff said I was ‘unwise’ to save that fool’s fingers. Do you agree?”

Remi looked into her emerald eyes, and felt something stir within his heart. Something he hadn’t felt for years.

“You were kind, my lady. Kindness isn’t a trait we see much in this palace. The royal family has no need for it, nor the King’s Guard,” he said. “I don’t believe you would have really helped Stolzoff carry out the sentence like you claimed.”

“That paparazzi believed it, which is what I was after,” she shrugged.

Cosima was different than the greedy noble women and taciturn Guardswomen he mingled with on a daily basis. She was uncorrupted by power and wealth and, despite a few outbursts, sweet. Part of him wished he’d had a chance to know her before she was to be queen, and he sworn to protect her life.

“I’ve seen some embarrassing photos of nobles and their heirs in that man’s magazine. Why are those allowed?” she asked.

“You read the Enquirer?” Remi asked, deadpan.

“No! Sometimes it’s just lying around and I glance at it. I don’t buy it,” she said—too quickly for Remi to believe her.

“The rules are different for the royal family. You are the head of state, not fodder for the gossip mill. There are plenty of misbehaving nobles and other celebrities for Papadopoulos and his kind to annoy and embarrass.”

“You mean ‘misbehaving nobles’ like my sister?” Cosima asked.

“I didn’t say your sister,” Remi said.

“Don’t sugarcoat it. I got an earful from my father every time Theresa got snapped doing the walk of shame away from some nobleman’s house, the bills for trashed hotel rooms, the wrecked cars. The cars drive themselves, how does she manage to wreck them?” Cosima threw her hands up in surrender. “Now she’ll undoubtedly continue her party-all-the-time life, and what do I get? I kept my nose to the grindstone to learn the family business and behave myself, and what do I get?”

“To marry the future king?” Remi asked.

“You—I—shut up,” she said.

They entered a portrait gallery. The first painting was of Queen Catherine, the first ruler of Sidonia, standing in front of a lander on a field that would one day become the capital city. A line of paintings stretched across the room, each successive king and queen immortalized signing a trade deal or commissioning some great public work.

The last painting wasn’t of King Rasczak, but of a cruel-faced man in a military dress uniform. A black sash with a red edge ran diagonally across the painting, and black drapes hung from either corner.

“Prince Quinn, I take it?” She stopped in front of the painting.

“That’s correct,” Remi said.

“Father heard whispers that King Rasczak cut Prince Quinn from the line of succession. Is that true?” she asked Remi.

“I can’t speak to that,” he said.

Cosima narrowed her eyes at Remi. “Why? Because you don’t know or because you can’t tell me?”

“I don’t know, and if I did, I couldn’t tell you. The King’s Guard oaths of secrecy are absolute. What we hear and see will never be spoken of except to each other, and only to ensure the safety of the royal family.”

Cosima tapped her foot and tilted her head at Quinn’s painting. “What happened to him? I know he died during the battle on Jutland. I don’t remember there being a state funeral.”

“He was lost during the battle. The king held a private ceremony for the royal family only,” Remi said.

“Wouldn’t some war hero warrant more attention? You were there, right?”

“I was there, yes.” Remi’s face went as still as stone. “But Prince Quinn was no hero.”

Cosima shrugged. “Fair enough, at least he isn’t the one I have to marry. He looked mean.”

****

Remi escorted Cosima to the door of her quarters. Major Volenz, in her duty uniform, waited for them.

Remi saluted Volenz as Cosima slipped into her room without a backward glance.

“How is she?” Volenz asked.

“She took this security breach better than the last one. She was chatty, asked about Prince Quinn in the remembrance hall,” Remi said.

“What did you tell her?” Volenz looked up and down the hallway to ensure no one else was within earshot.

“Nothing of substance. The king’s orders remain in place,” he said.

“I’ll be glad when that painting is gone. I never liked it, always seems like the eyes are following you. You did good tonight. Imagine the trouble if the Enquirer had pics of the ball in their morning edition. Stolzoff would have a fit, and we’d have to tear apart the entire palace figuring out how they got in.”

“Did Stolzoff get the man Papadopoulos said let him in yet?” Remi asked.

“They’ve already got him in interrogation.”

****

Cosima sat in front of her vanity and unfastened her earrings. She put the lapis lazuli studs away, then glanced around to find Lana. The clink of hangers against wood came from the closet. Lana was out of eyeshot.

Cosima slipped the skin-caster disk into the earing box and snapped it shut.

“Lana, what do you know about the Battle of Jutland?” Cosima asked, her voice high enough to travel through the room.

Lana returned from the closet, already dressed for bed in silk pajamas. “Pirates captured the Argosy,” she said, “a House Wilhelminer trade ship, and took it to Jutland where they tried to ransom it back to the House. King Rasczak brokered a deal. Instead of sending a ship full of payment, he sent a ship full of soldiers in a merchantman converted for battle. They recaptured the Argosy in orbit, along with her crew.

“My cousin was on the expedition. He said the ship’s cargo, years’ worth of undelivered commissions, was dirt side in the pirates’ fortress. Prince Quinn ordered a ground assault, and that’s where most of the casualties happened, including poor Prince Quinn. They never found his body. Not unusual, as the pirates had plasma weapons. The commissions were recovered, and the pirates swore a vendetta against our planet. Now our ships travel in convoys for mutual protection.”

Cosima’s mouth screwed into a crooked line. “Lana, father always said that Sidonia is its citizens, its artists. We can always replace stuff, never people. He said the king told him that every time father had to report a loss from an accident. King Rasczak would never forgive my father if he chose an amount of marks over anyone’s life. I had to know all this because I would take over the House’s business when I was old enough.”

Cosima twisted around in her chair and rested her chin on its back. “If the expedition had the Argosy and the crew, why send soldiers into battle for…stuff?”

“I have no idea, my dear. I find it best not to worry about things you can’t control or are beyond helping.” Lana picked up a slate and swiped through pictures of bouquets. “We have an appointment in the morning with the wedding florist. Do you have a theme in mind? There are these beautiful nova blossoms from Brittany that would look wonderful.”

“Joy, flowers,” Cosima said. She didn’t accept the offered slate and climbed into bed.

Lana crossed her arms and held the slate close to her chest.

“Theresa will join us in the morning. Lots to do.” The handmaid walked away and turned down the lights before retiring to her quarters.

Cosima lay in bed staring at the ceiling. She waited until she heard the click of Lana turning off her own lights, then rolled over and opened a drawer on her nightstand. She pulled out a pair of virtual-reality glasses and her data stylus. The stylus held the data she’d snagged from Gregor Wilson, the artist who’d been working on the mural of the Battle of Jutland.

With the glasses over her eyes, she tapped the stylus against the rim. A list of files scrolled past her vision, most of them videos and single pictures. She tapped the stylus into the air and opened the longest and most recently accessed file. Titled: REMI, PAUL H. ARMOR CAM FOOTAGE.

****

The video opened to a blinding white sky. A black contrail of smoke poured from a dying fighter jet. The fighter exploded in a puff of fire, fuselage and wings bursting apart and scattering into the sky like a meteor breaking apart as it entered atmosphere. The sound of the blast reached Remi moments later.

He coughed and rolled over. He lay on a hardscrabble tan desert floor, wisps of dust playing across the ground. He slapped a palm against the side of his helmet, and a tactical feed came across his vision. The feed was almost all red with error messages.

He picked up an assault rifle from the ground and brushed sand off it. A full clip registered on his visor.

“At least something works,” he murmured.

The distant thump-thump of artillery caused him to duck out of reflex. He looked toward the sound. The adobe fortress of the pirates lay in the distance. Tracer rounds, bright red streaks from the pirates, yellow from the Sidonian forces, crisscrossed between the fortress and the deep ravine that the expedition used as a trench line.

“Vincent?” Remi whirled around. A crashed lander lay at the end of a rut of its own making. Broken wings and hunks of the craft lay in its wake. Fire rose from the blackened and shattered cockpit.

Remi ran to the crash. He stepped around the bright red remains of a soldier, nothing but a hip and ripped armor. The rear hatch of the lander was open, bent and torn free from one of two hinges that connected it to the lander.

“Vincent!” Remi tried to enter the lander, but smoke forced him away, hacking against foul air.

A woman’s voice called to him. “Remi! Over here.”

He ran to the other side of the lander where a soldier waved to him from a wash in the desert, little more than a deep cut into the surface. “Shoshana, where’s the prince?” Remi asked as he ran over. The other soldier was in full armor, bulky enough that her curves couldn’t give away her away as a woman.

“Here,” said a strained voice. Prince Vincent, his helmet in the dirt beside his knee, knelt next to two lightly armored bodies, red stains streaked over their deep gray armor. A pool of water lay behind him. “Pilots didn’t make it.” He had a gash along his jawline, blood dripping from it like a leaking pipe.

“Sir, we’ll signal an evac for you, get you back to our ship,” Remi said. He pulled a med pack from his hip and removed a cauterizer wand. He ran the red-hot tip along Vincent’s jaw, and the torn flesh pulled together and fused as it passed.

Vincent’s face twitched from the pain, but he didn’t utter a sound.

“No,” Vincent tapped the back of his gauntlet against the fuse work, “we join up with the rest of the assault. Mark this spot, we aren’t leaving any bodies on this cinder. You hurt?” he asked Remi.

Remi shifted in his armor. Sections had compressed against injuries in his shoulder and lower back. His display showed the amount of painkillers sent into his system. “Just some bruises, sir.”

Vincent looked at Shoshana.

“Bruises,” she said.

“Liars, both of you. Follow me,” Vincent said. He slipped his helmet onto his head.

The three jogged out of the ravine, Shoshana and Remi flanking their prince. They activated their gauntlet shields, and blowing dust sent ripples of static across the shields like whitecaps on waves coming in to the beach.

They ran toward the battle, Remi with a slight limp that didn’t stop him from keeping up with the other two. Tracers zipped between the two forces. Black scorch marks and the blown-out adobe façade on the pirates’ fortress became more visible as they neared.

A dry riverbed led into the Sidonian positions. They slid down the embankment and hugged the edge closest to the fortress. The defilade offered some cover, but aimed shots from the pirates snapped over their heads and speared through the loose soil.

Remi took a hit on his shield, the strike sending him stumbling into Shoshana, who managed to keep him on his feet.

“Careful, Paul,” she said. He lurched back to his spot flanking Vincent without a word, his shield up and ready.

A ring of soldiers surrounded a makeshift aid station nestled against the ravine’s wall. Medics, each with a white band and red cross painted on their armor, worked on a dozen soldiers. Their groans and screams mingled with the sound of gunfire.

A doctor waved to Vincent. “Sir! Prince Vincent, a word.”

Vincent stopped and removed his helmet.

“Sir, we’ve got more wounded coming in, urgent surgical who won’t last another half hour unless I can get them back to the surgical bays we have in orbit,” the doctor said.

Vincent grabbed the hand of a wounded soldier on a gurney that reached to him.

“Gruber, I know you,” Vincent said to the wounded man, his chest wrapped in bloody compression bandages. “Hang on.” Vincent turned his head to the doctor. “Where are the lander ambulances? They should have been here by now.”

“The pirates have a Vulcan anti-aircraft gun on a tower. Anything flies too close and it gets cut to ribbons,” the doctor said.

“Where is Colonel Greer? Where is my brother?” Vincent asked.

“At the command center, though the ravine,” the doctor said.

Vincent clasped the hand of the wounded man and bent over him. “I’ll get you out of here, just hold on.” He pulled away and ran deeper into the ravine, Remi and Shoshana with him.

Soldiers dug firing steps into the steep banks, and others worked furiously to deepen shallower areas so soldiers could run past without exposure to the pirates on the fortress walls. Men and women nodded to Vincent as he jogged past them, none so foolish as to salute and signal his importance to the watching enemy.

They found more soldiers bunched together. Only a few took sporadic shots over the ravine’s edge. A knot of knee-high satellite dishes and mingling soldiers drew Vincent like a beacon.

Vincent pushed his way through the ring of soldiers, where Remi saw Colonel Greer, his armor covered in dirt, speaking to a tall man sitting on a case of ammunition as if it were a throne—Prince Quinn.

“My lord, it is suicide to charge the walls,” Colonel Greer said. “They have plasma guns that will cut through our shields like they aren’t even there. Please, call down the armor. The tanks can take the hits and knock out the air defenses, then we can finish them off easily.”

Quinn, his helmet off and hair skewed in a wild angle, shook his head and looked at Greer with disgust. “My good colonel, we have goods, valuable goods in that palace. We can’t put them at risk just to save our skins, now can we?” Quinn’s voice rang reedy and high for such a large man.

“That is exactly what we should be doing, brother,” Vincent said.

“Ah, you lived. How nice,” Quinn said with a grin.

“Greer is right, call down the armor,” Vincent said.

“No.” Quinn crossed a leg over a knee and tapped his foot in the air, as if he were waiting too long for a drink at a bar back in Sidonia City. “Greer will lead the charge. And he’ll lead it now, before the pirates can destroy the commissioned works they took off the Argosy.”

“My lord, the casualties will be high, and we need not lose another life on this planet,” Greer said.

Quinn got to his feet with a roar and drew his saber with a flash. In less than a heartbeat, the blade’s tip hovered over Greer’s exposed throat. Greer didn’t flinch.

Remi’s hand went to his hilt, waiting for Vincent’s signal.

“Cowardice, Greer?” Quinn sneered. “I thought you had more backbone to you. Refusing a royal command, on the field of battle no less, is a capital offense.”

“I will lead them,” Vincent said.

Quinn snapped his head toward Vincent. The blade didn’t waver from Greer’s throat.

“Will you? Fair enough. I’ll signal the second wave once you make it to the walls. Get on with it,” Quinn said. He lowered his blade to a low guard.

Vincent waved Greer over, who kept his front toward Quinn as he backed away.

“Sir,” Greer whispered to Vincent as he got close, “this is suicide.”

Vincent pulled Greer away from Remi and Shoshana, keeping them away with a raised hand as he spoke with Greer in hushed tones.

Shoshana tilted her head to Remi. “What is going on? Why is Quinn doing this?”

“That’s not our concern,” Remi said.

She sidled closer to him. “Quinn’s guard isn’t here. If Vincent orders us…you’re better than Quinn with a sword. Even with his body shield we could—”

“Stop,” Remi hissed. “We aren’t some praetorian guard that intervenes when it feels the need. We protect, we defend, and we obey.”

“We charge face first into enemy bullets. That seem right to you?”

“No. But no one seems to care about our opinions,” Remi said.

Shoshana shifted from side to side. She put a hand on Remi’s arm. “Remi, you should know how I feel. If we—”

“Not now,” Remi said. “We’ll talk after this is over. Promise.”

Vincent broke away from Greer and trotted along the line. Soldiers roused to their feet, obeying the same orders that came across Remi’s display. Prepare to charge.

The prince stopped at a low berm and went to a knee. He unholstered his pulser and activated his gauntlet shield with the thumb of his pulser hand.

“You think Quinn would loan you his full-body shield for this,” Shoshana said.

Vincent took several deep breaths, then glanced over the parapet.

“The more I think about this,” Vincent said, “the less I want to do it.” He looked at Shoshana, then locked eyes with Remi. “You with me?”

“Always, my prince,” Remi said.

Vincent stepped into the center of the ravine and drew his sword. “Sidonia!” He raised the blade over his head. “Charge!”

A roar went up and down the line as soldiers pulled themselves over the top of the ravine and charged toward the fortress.

Remi scrambled into the open. The few hundred yards between the ravine and the fortress looked as distant as Earth. He powered his shield to life and moved forward, firing bursts from his assault rifle at the pirates bobbing up and down from the top of the fortress walls.

Teams of soldiers ran ahead of him, shields raised over their heads, sappers with demolition charges more intent on crossing the distance than shooting.

The snap and whine of enemy shots sliced through the air around Remi. Missed shots smacked into the bone-dry ground with puffs of dirt.

Vincent raced past him, his sword raised high, his shield to the side. Shoshana ran on his right, her shield trembling with impacts.

Remi cursed and sprinted toward his prince, who insisted on making a target of himself with his useless sword.

A sudden tremor ripped through the ground as a mortar shell burst ahead of them. Bits of shrapnel zinged past Remi. His shield sparked as tiny shards of metal bounced off the energy shield.

Remi caught up to the pair as they skirted the newly made crater, hunks of dirt falling around them like rain. A small group of soldiers hugged the edge of the crater, embracing the cover from the oncoming fire like a newborn at its mother’s breast.

“Are you going to let me beat you to the wall?” Vincent challenged. “Get up!”

He didn’t wait for their responses. Bodies of Sidonians littered the field ahead of them. Some of the wounded crawled back, slow targets for the enemy on the walls.

A flash of green fire erupted from the base of the wall, enveloping a sapper team and leaving nothing but fused armor and blackened bones behind.

“Target the plasma gunners!” Vincent ordered. He slapped his hilt against his belt and drew his pulser. He took aimed shots at the wall, exposed and in the open. Remi and Shoshana raised their shields over Vincent, giving him enough room to aim and fire. Pirate bullets thumped against Remi’s shield. A fault line broke across it, a lightning bolt against the static of his weakening shield.

“Vincent,” Remi said, “I don’t know how long—”

Remi’s world erupted in smoke as the blast of a mortar sent him crashing to the ground. He lay there, groaning. He rolled over, a hiss of fire in the air. Smoke and a fog of diffused dirt surrounded him.

“Vincent! Shoshana!” he screamed. He tried to get to his feet and fell over. A twisted lump of metal was imbedded in his thigh, and blood bubbled from where it seeped against the red-hot edge. He fell back and grabbed the shrapnel with his fingertips.

Remi cried in pain and pulled at the metal. It came free with a slurp, and Remi dropped it to the ground, shaking heat from his burnt fingers. Blood spurted from the wound in time with his heartbeats. His armor compressed around it, and Remi slapped a bandage over the still-bleeding wound.

His breathing shallow and labored, he crawled toward a soldier partially covered by earth rent by the mortar strike.

“No, no, no,” Remi said. It was Shoshana, limp and unresponsive to his touch. The word EXPECTANT flashed over her body on Remi’s display.

“No, don’t do this to me.” Remi reached under her helmet and pulled it free. Blonde hair, streaked through with blood, spread out under her head. Blood trickled from her mouth, ears, and nose.

“Shoshana, please. Stay with me, darling.” Remi slid her arm over his shoulder and tried to get them both to their feet.

“Remi! How is she?” Vincent emerged from the smoke. The prince put Shoshana’s other arm over his shoulder, and the two men dragged her away.

A warning cry came from the distance. Vincent looked up, then let go of Shoshana. The prince’s gauntlet shield snapped to life as a green bolt of fire found them. Remi tucked Shoshana against him and put himself between her and the incoming plasma shot. Another wave of overpressure threw them both to the ground.

Remi, his back armor steaming from the heat wave, moved off Shoshana. He padded toward Vincent’s prone body on his hands and knees.

“Vincent?”

The prince lay on his side, motionless.

Remi rolled him onto his back. The left side of Vincent’s face was ruined. White bone peeked out from beneath shredded black flesh. His left arm was gone, his shoulder a mass of cinders and bleeding tissue.

****

Cosima ripped the VR glasses from her head with a shriek and flung them across the room. They clattered in the darkness. The room was silent and still, a welcome relief from the battlefield.

She curled into a ball and pulled the covers over her head, then lay there, trembling.

“My lady? Everything all right?” Lana said.

Cosima didn’t answer. The memories of the bombing on the day she’d arrived on the planet, the smell of burnt leather and plastic from the car, and the screams of the crowd enveloped her like the blanket she had wrapped around her body.

“Cosima?” Lana asked. She felt her handmaiden’s touch against her shoulder. Cosima rocked from side to side to shake off the attention.

“Call if you need me,” Lana said. Cosima heard the sound of her door close.

The memories faded away, but in the hours that passed Cosima couldn’t sleep. She went over the attack as well as her strained memories could manage. Details of the bombing nagged at her. Something was off with the official story, and she’d get to the bottom of it. Her life really did depend on it.

CHAPTER 8

Cosima opened the door to her room and stepped into the hallway, Theresa a few steps behind her. Remi stood guard at the door, and Cosima did a double take when she saw him. She glanced at his right thigh, no worse for wear, despite the video in which she’d seen a hunk of metal sticking out of him.

Remi was as stern as ever, no hint of the man who had pleaded for a wounded soldier to live, who had charged across a battlefield where death waited for him, ready to die for his prince. She looked him in the eyes and saw a deep sadness behind them.

“My lady, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Remi said.

“Yes. No. I mean…” She cleared her throat and composed herself. “Mr. Remi, you will escort me to the Household Guard’s forensics lab. Theresa and Lana will go to my appointment in my stead.”

“My lady.” Lana went pale. “My lady the florist is expecting you there. The bouquets, wreaths, window treatments…why, we haven’t even tried to coordinate the color scheme with the caterers.”

“Theresa knows what I like. She’ll be fine until I can catch up,” Cosima said.

“But the appointment time is—”

“The florist will make a veritable fortune on my wedding and will brag about it for as long as they remain in business. They. Will. Wait.” Cosima stomped her foot in emphasis. She stared down Lana for a moment, then spun on her heels and left.

Cosima glanced over her shoulder after they’d taken a few turns through the hallways. “Oh, thank goodness.”

“May I inquire as to your interest in the forensics lab?” Remi asked.

“Why? Do I need to justify myself to you too?” she snapped.

“I can send a message ahead, have whatever you need ready. Your time is valuable.”

Cosima’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. She chided herself for taking offense to Remi’s question.

“I want a 4-D mock-up for the blast scene from the attack on me. Have whoever put together the final report on the incident there as well. Something’s been bothering me,” she said.

Remi whispered into his gauntlet and nodded to Cosima.

“Have you read the final report?” she asked as they stepped into the elevator.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Summarize it for me. I swear you people use an acronym for every possible word combination instead of plain English.”

“Sturm Hedelson, a known dissident, assembled a shaped charge bomb in his home using common materials from his farm in the mountains. He set it underneath Richthofen Avenue and triggered it with a command wire from his vantage point on top of a building. He tried to shoot you with heavy mass darts designed to beat your body shield when the bombing failed. After the attack, he returned to his residence and overdosed on thebaine before we could arrest him,” Remi said.

Her father had hired body language tutors for her since she was a girl—knowing when a prospective partner or employee was lying by the way they shuffled their feet, touched their face, or inflected their voice was a vital business skill. Remi’s summary had an even kilter, no indications that he knew different from what he said.

“You believe all that?” she asked.

“I wasn’t involved with the investigation after the explosion. I have no reason to doubt the report.”

“Something is off, Mr. Remi. Maybe I’m just overly worried. Is that wrong? Being so paranoid?”

“It’s my job to be paranoid, my lady. Not yours.”

Cosima sighed, her shoulders drooping. In the reflection off the elevator’s control panel, she saw Remi lift a hand to touch her, stop, then return it to his side.

****

Carter, the assassin under the guise of Guardsman Thorgill, completed her review of yet another travel voucher and sent it back into the computer system. Busy work, she’d been on nothing but busy work since her reassignment. As much as the mind-numbing drudgery bored her, it fit with her cover to not complain about her lot.

But there was only so much idle conversation she could stomach in the cubicle farm where the Guard’s bureaucracy functioned, or didn’t function. Jane from two cubicles over seemed determined to make sure the entire office knew how well her dating life was going, and Eric from procurement was probably selling “lost” ammo to some criminal underground.

Carter didn’t lash out or rock the boat, that wasn’t her place. Steady determination would get her back to the ideal position. The patient hunter seldom went hungry.

The doors to the headquarters opened, and Princess Cosima entered. If Carter’s heart still functioned of its own accord, it would have skipped a beat.

“Room, attention!” the nearest Guardsman to the door announced. Carter and everyone else snapped to their feet and went back to their seats following a lazy wave from Cosima. She walked past Carter without a second glance.

Carter typed a code into her keyboard, and a small text box opened in the corner of her screen.

She typed TARGET ACQUIRED into the box, and pretended to work, waiting for a response.

STAND BY came back, then vanished with a keystroke.

“Hey, Carter, you’re on feed detail with me.” A Guardsman by the name of Sanders, chinless and with a greasy complexion, tapped his fingertips along the top of her cubicle wall. “Mickey’s been complaining about his bread-and-water diet. I say we change it up and give him stale bread and warm water this time. What do you think?”

Carter forced a smile.

“Let’s stick to the schedule and get this over with,” she said. She closed her screen a split second after the text box returned—even her eyes weren’t fast enough to read the message. She’d read it once she’d finished with Sanders.

****

The walls of the 4-D visualization room were a series of linked hexagons, dark green tiles bordered by bright white lines. Cosima, Remi, and Colonel Stolzoff stood in the entryway, waiting while a technician swiped and tapped frantically at the workstation raised up to his waist.

Holographic images coalesced in the room. Richthofen Avenue with the crowd on either side. The car that carried Cosima, once whole, then a smoking ruin in the street, jittered wildly, oscillating between the two states.

“Sorry, sir and my lady. I mean my lady and sirs, wasn’t expecting this today.” The technician wiped sweat from his brow.

Cosima rolled her eyes at the man.

“You’re trying to integrate multiple time captures from the wrong angle,” she said. “Time sync your points of view with the gamma-filter subroutines.”

The technician looked at her like she’d just grown a second head.

“Do you even have the interpolation lattice set up?” She craned her neck over the workstation. “No, you don’t. Move!” She pushed the technician away gently and took his place. Her hands flew over the panel, and a holo picture of Richthofen Avenue sharpened into view. The holograms were slightly opaque, the hexagon lattice just visible through the images.

Cosima picked up a small control slate and walked into the middle of the room.

“My lady, I didn’t know you were a holo engineer,” Stolzoff said.

“We used 4-D to plan our mining operations,” she said. “Asteroids and comets full of Stahlium are difficult work environments. Have you ever done a manual extraction on a comet less than an AU from the sun? CO2 geysers bursting around you and footing the consistency of kitty litter? No? I did when I was eleven, planned the whole operation by myself.” Cosima spoke into the slate. “Show me all capture points of this location.”

White globes appeared around the room, most from handheld smartphones level with the crowd. Globes covered cameras perched over intersections with Richthofen Avenue, store entrances, and the corners of buildings three or four stories high.

Cosima pointed the slate at a glove along a wall and clicked a button. The holograms shifted to the point of view of the elevated camera, and Cosima could see the bombing location as if she were a bird perched on the wall.

She tapped a button, and the crowd came to life. Their distant cheers became part of the simulation. Cosima muted the sound and watched as a car drove into view and vanished into the edge of the holograms.

“That was Prince Francis,” she said. “Here I come.”

A second car drove into the hologram. The fence to the right of the car broke free, and onlookers poured onto the street. The Guard on her car ran forward to scoop up a child, and her car swerved around them. A moment later the road exploded beneath the car and sent it flying. Cosima froze the program, her car stuck in midair.

“My lady, I’ve been through this many times during the investigation. What are you looking for?” Stolzoff asked.

“Something’s been bugging me,” she said. She tapped the slate, and the hologram shifted to the seat of the explosion. A column of fire and shattered asphalt punched her car like an uppercut.

She rewound the video, the road reknit itself, and her car returned to it with nary a dent in it. The projection reversed time until a few seconds before the crowd broke through the fence.

“Tell me, Colonel, do you believe in coincidence?” she asked.

“Never, my lady.”

Cosima walked along the fence, her eyes lingering on the joints between each segment.

She knelt next to where the fence broke and pointed to the joint. “Give me a true image on this part. Max pixel density.”

She had to look at the technician before he sprang into action.

The hologram of the hinge grew denser, and details down to fingerprints and oil smudges appeared. Cosima held the slate over the hinge and zoomed in on the hologram.

“Remi, come here and tell me I’m not crazy,” she said.

Remi complied and looked at the close-up view of the hinge. A tiny red string ran down the side of it.

“Burn cord,” he said.

Stolzoff marched over and snatched the slate away from Remi.

“That’s what I thought. We use burn cord for precision cuts into certain metals,” Cosima said. “Not an accident—it’s right where the crowd broke through the gate, isn’t it?” She took the slate back from Stolzoff.

The hologram advanced second by second, Cosima controlling the pace from the slate. The hinge on the gate broke apart, but the crowd didn’t break through right away. Another second, and the faces of those at the edge of the fence line shifted to surprise. Another second, and the crowd surged forward in panic and fear.

“They’re being pushed,” Remi said. He walked through the hologram and found a gap in the crowd. A man, two hands against a pole held parallel to the ground, shoved it into the backs of at least a dozen onlookers.

“This can’t be right,” Cosima said. “No one is strong enough to do that.” She advanced the recording another second, and the pole collapsed in half. Another second and the pole had telescoped into the size of a can in the man’s hand as he turned away from the crowd. Several of the people he’d shoved were off their feet from the force of the push.

“There are augmented humans that strong. Full bio replacements are just as capable as dock-lifter androids,” Stolzoff said.

“Was Sturm Hedelson augmented? The one you pinned this attack on?” Cosima asked.

“No, one hundred percent true body,” Stolzoff said.

“Now, watch this.” She jumped the recording ahead to after the explosion and watched dispassionately as her image crawled from the wreckage, assisted by the Guard. Her image pointed to a roof, and the Guard’s gauntlet shield snapped to life. She stopped the recording.

“Forty-three seconds between when that augment shoved the crowd into the road—to get my car to swerve over the bomb—and the first shot on me from the roof,” Cosima said.

“There’s no way the augment got to the roof in that time,” Remi said.

“There’s more than one assassin,” Stolzoff said. “Damn it, how could I be so blind?”

Cosima watched as the guard’s shield took several hits from the metal bolts, saw him get between her and the assassin’s line of fire and seize up in pain as a bolt shattered his shield and struck him.

“I didn’t…” Cosima stepped closer to her image, her fingers passing through the guard as he pulled her projection up and carried her away. “I didn’t know he’d been hit that badly. All that commotion and I never thought of him. Is he OK?”

“Fine, my lady,” Remi said.

“Who is he? I should pass on my thanks at the very least.”

“It was nothing,” Remi said.

Cosima’s jaw went slack. “That was you!”

Remi nodded.

She tried to speak, but words caught in her throat.

The door to the chamber opened and Carter walked in, her eyes locked on Cosima. The technician stepped between Carter and the holo environment.

“Thorgill, you can’t walk out there without—” Two bullets burst through his back, and Carter shoved his collapsing body aside.

“Down!” Stolzoff tackled Cosima, his gauntlet shield active between her and Carter.

Carter aimed her service pulser at Cosima and fired, rapid-fire shots faster than should have been possible for anyone.

Stolzoff’s shield buckled as bullets pounded an area no bigger than a thumbnail.

Remi’s blade lashed out and sliced through Carter’s hand. The pulser and most of her fingers fell to the ground, without a drop of blood with them.

Carter, devoid of emotion, looked at Remi. She snatched her hilt from her hip and thrust the blade at Remi as it extended. Remi parried the strike and cut a quick riposte across her forearm. His strike cut through her sleeve and bit into her arm. If she felt any pain, her face and voice didn’t tell.

The stump of her firing hand hooked around, as fast as a cobra’s strike and aimed at Remi’s throat. His shield deflected the blow and sent it into the technician’s workstation. The impact broke it to pieces, and the holograms flashed and blinked out of existence.

Carter grabbed a fragment and hurled it at Remi. It hit his shield hard enough to send him reeling backward. Carter dropped her sword and picked up her pulser with her good hand.

A pulser round fired and hit her in the eye, snapping her head back. Stolzoff, his pulser barrel poking from the edge of the shield, fired again, hitting Carter in the chest. Carter took a step back, then her head snapped forward. One eye was a torn mess, wires and circuits exposed in her ruined socket. She bent into a sprinter’s crouch.

A whistle sang through the air. Remi’s sword flew like a spear and embedded in Carter’s side. The cyborg jerked away from the impact and tried to pull the blade free from her body. Remi picked up the cyborg’s discarded blade and swung with both hands. The sword severed the cyborg’s head from her body.

The head fell to the ground with a thump. Her one good eye looked around in confusion. The body righted itself and clumsily aimed its pulser at Cosima.

Remi jammed the blade into Carter’s skull. The eye twitched and went slack. Her body collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Cosima, are you OK?” Remi asked. He dropped the sword embedded in the severed head and grabbed the hilt of the blade still in Carter’s body. He grunted with effort and slowly pulled it out.

“I’m fine, fine.” She pushed Stolzoff away and looked at Carter’s head, dumbfounded. “What is that?”

“Cyberhuman,” Remi said. “Nothing but a brain embedded in an android body.”

A hissing sound filled the room. Steam rose from Carter’s exposed flesh, and an acrid stench came with it.

Stolzoff slapped a hand over Cosima’s mouth and nose and carried her from the chamber with no grace or comfort. His iron grip kept her from breathing, and she squirmed as her lungs burned. He didn’t’ stop until they were outside the garages adjacent to the King’s Guard headquarters. Stolzoff released his grip, and she sucked in air. Remi fell against the wall behind them, fighting to breathe.

“Sorry, my lady.” He sank against the wall, hacking. “Poison…kill switch.”

Remi raised his gauntlet and struggled to find enough air to speak.

“No.” Stolzoff swatted Remi’s arm down. “Not yet. I’m declaring an omega protocol until I know we don’t have another threat in our ranks. Get her out of here. I’ll handle this. Find the other assassin.” His breathing eased.

“Where?” Remi asked, gasping.

“Don’t tell me. Don’t tell anyone until you get there. Take an air car, I’ll set the city’s shield for your exit.”

“What is going on here?” Cosima asked.

Remi grabbed her by the hand and pulled her away from Stolzoff. “We have to…get out of the city. If an assassin can infiltrate the Guard, we can’t trust anyone now,” he said, his words coming easier

“Where are we going?”

Remi opened the door to the palace’s garage. Two lines of cars, air and ground, sat in their individual garages. A robot gently waved a feather duster over a cobalt-blue ground car done up in a classic design from almost four hundred years ago.

“I’ll figure that out later. Come on.”

CHAPTER 9

The forests of the Lindau Peninsula were a close match to the pine and redwood trees of the Pacific Northwest back on Earth. The pseudo-pine trees shed seed nodules shaped like bunches of grapes instead of the pinecones an Earther would expect from the trees. The ocean currents from the Mimir Sea kept the air cold, wet, and foggy most of the year.

A pair of skrats skittered up a tree, one chasing the other. The four-legged creatures were the size of squirrels, and thin brown feathers served as a coat for the lizard-like animals. Biologists classified them as reptiles, albeit warm-blooded ones. These same biologists opined that had the dinosaurs on Earth not been wiped out millions of years ago, they would have evolved into something similar to the skrats and larger animal species native to Sidonia.

The whine of an air car pierced the evening calm, sending flocks of seagulls, one of many Earth species that thrived on the planet, retreating from the meadow, where they scavenged for worms in the wet grass.

The car hovered ten yards in the air above the meadow. A window cracked open and four small disks flew from it. The disks zipped through the air, scanning an ever-widening perimeter around the car. The disks returned to the open window and the car set down, hovering a foot above the ground.

Remi got out, his gun drawn, eyes scanning the tree line around the dead and broken reeds that found purchase in the soft earth. His drones assured him the area was safe of intruders, though he was never one to put all his trust in something mechanical.

Satisfied that there wasn’t another human around, he opened the passenger side door.

Cosima gingerly stuck her head out of the car, then retreated like a startled turtle.

“No,” she said.

“My lady, this is our stop.” Remi holstered his pulser. He grabbed a pack from the backseat and slung it over his shoulder.

“No! There’s nothing out there. Did that cyberman hit you on the head or something?”

Remi pointed to the tree line. “There is a well-equipped shelter ready for us.”

Cosima shook her head quickly. “Nope. No. Never. I have spoken. Take me someplace that has walls.”

Remi frowned and took a deep breath. “My lady, by section thirty-five delta of the Guard’s operation manual, I hereby initiate physical contact in the interest of your safety.”

“What? That’s not a thing—unhand me!” Cosima squealed as Remi grabbed her beneath her armpits and hoisted her from the air car. The doors closed of their own accord, and Remi set her on the ground.

The car floated aside, turning from them and slowly gaining speed as it moved away.

“I am not staying here!” Cosima tried to catch up with the air car, her footing unsure over the uneven ground.

The air car floated over a shallow pond, its repulsors sending concentric circles rippling across the surface. Cosima’s feet sank ever so slightly into the soft ground as she fought to catch up.

“My lady, the car is on autopilot, please come back,” Remi said.

Cosima tried to jump to a spot of raised ground, and her foot sank into mud up to her ankle. She froze as if she’d stepped into a wolf trap instead. She tugged her foot against the mud and brought her other foot next to it, which sank too.

“Remi, what’s happening to me?” she asked.

The air car stopped moving, the engines revving louder. The water beneath the engines churned, kicking up water spray and tiny drops of mud.

Cosima covered her face as the air car took to the air, the blast from the engines pelting her in a brief storm of water and a hail of mud. The car vanished into the low clouds, and its whine died away seconds later.

The princess stood stock still, the front of her clothes and her hair wet and muddy.

“Remi, what is this…stuff?” she asked, a reed of fear in her voice.

“The mud, my lady?” Remi replied. He fought the urge to laugh, but an involuntary smile fought through his self-control.

“This is mud? It’s horrible!” She tried to wipe the mud from her arms and only managed to smear it across more of her skin.

“You’ve never seen mud before?” Remi grabbed her around the waist and lifted her from the pond’s edge. Cosima grabbed his arm and wiped his sleeve against her face, then wiped her hands off against his jacket.

“You think we have mud on a space station? No, it’s temperature controlled and clean. Very, very clean.” She started shivering, her breath fogging with each exhale.

“Follow me, the way station isn’t far.” He led her toward the forest, his steps easy and practiced through the reeds and ferns. Cosima moved like a toddler getting used to her first pair of shoes.

“If you tell anyone about this—ever!—I will have you thrown in the dungeon,” she said.

“The palace doesn’t have a dungeon, my lady.”

“Then I will have one built just for you! A dark, wet one…full of spiders! Where are we? I know the planet is sparsely populated, but this is ridiculous.”

“The Pathfinder school keeps several shelters throughout the training area. The way stations are there in case of bad weather and for LOM drops,” Remi said. “Loss of motivation, excuse the acronym. If a Pathfinder candidate wants to quit during their solitary navigation phase, they signal a LOM and the location of the nearest way station will appear on their gauntlet. Promise of a hot shower and food gets better and better after a few days on your own with nothing but the wet clothes on your back and whatever food you can scavenge in your stomach.”

“Is it literally a hole in the ground? I don’t—” She stumbled, losing a shoe to the muck as she fell forward. Remi scooped her up before she could take a header into a puddle.

“I’m not wearing the right shoes for this,” she said, pouting. She looked back to where she lost her shoe, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“There are clean clothes in the way station,” Remi said. “Here, get on my back.” He swung her around and hooked his hands beneath her knees. He carried her through the rest of the meadow and into the tree line.

The sun, lost behind the overcast sky, set somewhere against the horizon, darkening the forest as they entered it. Cosima tightened her grip over Remi’s shoulders when she heard a rustling in the bushes.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“A skrat or a squirrel, shouldn’t be any dragon wolves here during this time of the year anyway.”

“What’s a dragon wolf?”

Remi continued on for several more steps before answering with, “Nothing.”

Something small and dark darted across their path. Cosima’s grip squeezed into a vice around Remi’s neck.

“What was that!” she squealed over and over again.

Remi stopped and shook his head against her hold, struggling to breathe. Cosima saw his face reddening and loosened her grip.

“It was a rabbit,” he said after a deep breath.

“I hate this place. Give me space, with its vacuum, absolute zero, solar rays that’ll fry your eyeballs. At least there I know everything that can kill me.”

The passed through the forest and came up to a lake that wound around a small isthmus.

“Here we are.” Remi set Cosima down and held up an arm for her to balance against. He tapped at his gauntlet and waved his hand slowly in front of him.

A red light blinked on the ground, and a plinth rose up to waist height, shedding dirt and grass.

“Have to hide them, can’t have a Pathfinder candidate claim he stumbled into a way station,” Remi said. He pressed a palm to the plinth, and a holo screen, the joined hexagons briefly visible, fell away from a square building embedded in the tree line. A wooden dock appeared, extending a few yards into the water.

The way station smelled of mothballs and old sweat. Scuff marks marred the bare concrete floor, testimony to the first desperate steps of a Pathfinder candidate that found a place of respite from failure.

Cosima’s lip twitched at the thought of staying there for long, with only a few small rooms with double bunks, semiprivate shower areas, storage areas, and a wooden picnic bench for a dining room.

Remi poked at the control panel next to the door. The holo screen reappeared, semi opaque through the way station’s windows. They could see out, but anyone around the building or on the shoreline would see the building as another copse of trees and brush.

“Clothes,” Cosima said dryly. She held her arms away from her body and flicked dried mud from her arms. “I can’t wait to get in the sonic.”

“We have wet showers here,” Remi said. He set his pack against the door and opened a wall locker in one of the rooms. He picked out a set of fatigues, underclothes, and boots and brought them to a stunned-looking Cosima.

“Just clean myself with water, not hygienic sound waves like a civilized person. Sure, par for today’s course. Mud. Vicious rabbits. Killer cyborgs. What’s next? No Internet?”

“There’s no Internet.”

“Damn it!” She limped into the bathroom on her shoeless foot and slammed the door.

Pipes knocked as the antique plumbing got to work. Remi opened the backpack and took several wide but shallow cylinders from it.

He held them up to his lips and said, “Perimeter. One- and two-hundred-yard detection lines. Categorize local wildlife as false positives. Immediate alert for any detection.” He opened the bunker’s door and tossed the disks outside. They bounced against the water-saturated ground, then spouted tiny filament legs and scampered into the darkness.

Remi shut the door and watched each sensor take up a position around the way station on his gauntlet. Detection lasers shot across his display, turning green as the sensors synchronized with each other.

He shut the door and locked it with heavy composite steel bolts along the upper and lower edges. Remi leaned against the door and let his head bounce ever so slightly against it. They were safe, off the grid and away from any threat, but a sick sense of worry wouldn’t leave his chest.

****

Jerrum checked his computer display again: still no word from Carter. He’d sent her the kill order hours ago, and he hadn’t heard from her. She should have checked in, success or failure, at the earliest opportunity.

“She’s dead,” Glint said through his voice box. “Failed. You shouldn’t have sent an inferior model against this target.”

“You telling me some spoiled little brat took out a cyberman that costs billions to create?” Jerrum huffed at his own impossible supposition.

“The Sidonian Guards have proved annoyingly competent,” Glint said. “As we aren’t in a jail cell or dead, there is a high probability that she managed to self-destruct to avoid interrogation of her or her memory banks.”

“Aren’t you just all sunshine and roses?” Jerrum asked. “You know I’m still paying the mortgage on her augmentations. Aquitaine will lobotomize me and turn me into a cat-house servitor if I get behind on the payments.”

“If I still had tear ducts, they would function for you,” Glint said.

The computer display beeped, another tranche of captured messages sent from their implant in the palace’s communications system. At least that still worked. Jerrum swiped through the message traffic, reading headlines and opening a few choice e-mails from key personnel like Stolzoff and Volenz.

“One fatality, some peon, definitely not Cosima. No other casualties. No word on her…or her bodyguard. He’s not showing on any traffic, and he’s off the Guard rosters…all of them.”

“They’re in hiding,” Glint said.

“Agreed, but if we don’t know where, then what do we do? Just sit on our thumbs?” Jerrum asked.

A quantum disk vibrated in the desk. Jerrum looked at the desk, nibbling on his lower lip.

“All yours, boss,” Glint said.

Jerrum pulled the disk out and pressed his thumb against it. The entangled atoms unraveled the data from their paired sets.

“Report,” their boss said.

Jerrum cleared his throat and summarized the unsuccessful assassination attempt.

“What is the name of her bodyguard? The one you think she’s with?”

“Remi, one of Stolzoff and Vincent’s favorites,” Jerrum said.

A low chuckle came through the connection. “I know him. I know him very well. Soldiers can be so predictable. Let me see if I can succeed where you have failed.”

Jerrum swallowed hard and wiped his sleeve across his forehead.

“Mr. Glint,” their boss said, “do you still have access to the implant?”

“I do,” Glint said.

A shrill sound came through the connection and Glint shuddered slightly.

“Mr. Glint, I have released your governor code set. Consider yourself a free agent once this job is complete,” the voice said.

“Wait!” Jerrum jumped to his feet and backed away from Glint. “Wait, we still have our access to the palace. Give me a few more days and I’ll complete the contract.”

“Thank you, Jerrum. But your services are no longer required.”

Glint vaulted over the desk and slammed his spiked fingers into Jerrum’s chest, piercing through his heart and out the back of his suit. Jerrum pawed at Glint’s face, then went slack. Glint lowered the arm impaling his former master and pointed it to the ground. Jerrum slid free and thumped to the floor.

“It seems we’ve lost our chance at subtlety, Mr. Glint. Get inside and wait for my signal. You know what to do.”

Glint shook blood from his arm. “Yes, my lord.”

****

Remi tapped the light switch in the dining room, and the glow strips overhead flickered and died. He slapped at the switch again. The light stayed dead.

“Lowest bidder,” he mumbled. He slid the door to the supply closet aside and looked over the stores: meal packs stacked nearly to the ceiling, first aid kits, glow sticks, water jugs with UV purification linings and filter tops. The bare necessities for an extended stay.

He pulled out a meal pack, glow sticks, and two empty jugs, which he filled from a tap in the men’s restroom. He stopped outside the women’s restroom and knocked at the door. He hadn’t heard a peep from Cosima for several minutes.

“Everything all right, my lady?”

The door flew open. Cosima, inexpertly dressed in fatigues, dried her hair with a towel, her motions fast and angry. Steam filled the room and fogged the mirrors behind her.

“You could have mentioned the showers had a hot setting before I got in there. Does the water come straight from a glacier?” She looked at him with disdain.

“Sorry, my lady. The toilets require—”

“I can figure out the frigging toilet!”

Remi backed away, and Cosima slammed the bathroom door.

He snapped the glow sticks and gave them a quick shake to activate them, then tossed a stick on either side of the picnic table, bathing the table in pale light. The meal pack had an assortment of prepackaged food preserved in tan plastic sleeves.

His fingers sorted through the packs, and he cursed whatever soldier had beaten him to the cherry brownies.

“Is this your idea of romance, Mr. Remi?” Cosima asked. She stood at the end of the table, her hands on her hips.

“I’m sorry?”

“A candlelit dinner for two overlooking a lake. Seriously, what are you trying to do?” She tapped at the light switch. The overhead light’s remained unresponsive. “Fine, the lights are out.” She sat across from him and looked at the meal pack with suspicion. “What is this?”

“Meal pack B. I suggest the beef stew with some Sriracha,” Remi said. He picked up the recommendation. She shrugged her shoulders. He set the pack in front of her along with a knife and fork wrapped in plastic.

Cosima looked down at the tan packet and poked at it with her finger.

“Bend the pack to heat it up,” he said.

She snapped the heat strip in the packaging and dropped it to the table when it burned her fingers. A moment later, the pack opened of its own accord, and the smell of beef and cooked vegetables wafted from the pouch. She ate a spoonful and shrugged.

“Not too bad. How’s yours?” she asked.

“Tuna with noodles, bland as ever. But hunger is the best sauce.” He opened a tiny packet and squeezed a red paste over his food. “Sriracha a close second.”

Cosima watched as he ate far too intensely for her comfort. “Mr. Remi, are you always this dull?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re about as much fun as a stump. Prove to me you’re not a cyberman and say something interesting.” She tried another bite of the bland stew and looked at him expectantly.

Remi set his fork down and stared at the table. “I’m one of the best swordsmen on Sidonia. My parents are journeymen artists working in the stained glass studios in Bamberg. Not much money but we’re better off than indentured citizens. I never had the talent for anything regarding art, but I excelled in blade sports. I took provincial champion when I was seventeen, took second at the grand tournament a year after that. Sidonia doesn’t have much of a league, so I tried to figure out a way to get to the core systems where the sport has more visibility.

“Travel to the big systems is expensive, and none of the major leagues will take in a nobody unless they’ve got a sponsorship. So I joined the army, thought I could save enough money to get off world or get a trade mission assignment to a decent planet and stay there once my enlistment was up.”

Remi huffed and went back to his dinner.

“Why didn’t you? If you’re a warrant officer, then you must have decided to stay on after your enlistment term. Isn’t that how it works?”

“Indeed. I got picked for the King’s Guard out of basic training due to my skills. Prince Vincent took a liking to me after I beat him in a sparring match, and I found myself on his protection detail. After Jutland, I lost interest in fencing. Prince Vincent sponsored my warrant officer application, and I’ve been in the palace ever since.”

Cosima had a half-dozen different questions on the tip of her tongue about the battle on Jutland, none of which she could get up the courage to ask when his face darkened as he glossed over the events she’d seen on his recording of the battle with his recitation of his history.

She looked at the sword hilt on the dinner table. She resisted the impulse to pick it up, remembering Remi’s admonition about what was and wasn’t a toy.

“How does it work?” she glanced at the hilt.

“The blade is hollow, but a graphene lattice fills it as it extends, making it stronger than a solid sword. A disruption field in the hilt can cut through energy fields and body shields, if the strike is lucky. The art of swordsmanship was nearly extinct, then energy shields found their way onto the battlefield and into service of the rich and powerful. Assassins turned to blades, so did bodyguards. Corporations brought fencing back as a sport to find and train bodyguards. Lucky me.”

“You must have loved fencing. Why stop?”

Remi looked up at her, his eyes sad.

“It wasn’t real anymore. Modern fencing uses shields and body fields, but when a strike hits home, there’s just a buzz from the computer judges and the two players reset. After using a real blade in combat…I couldn’t bring myself to train to fight with rules. When the stakes are life and death, there are no rules. Trying to compete in a tournament setting felt like I was practicing to fail in a real fight. Prince Vincent deserves better than that. You deserve better than that.”

“You couldn’t go home again? Not after Jutland?” she asked.

“No. I guess I couldn’t.”

She finished off her stew and looked over the ration box.

“I guess we have that in common. Yours figurative, mine literal. Prince Francis thinks I’ll never get back to Styria Station. If there’s an assassin around every corner even after I get married, I might as well lock myself in my room for the rest of my life. What do you recommend for dessert?”

“The lemon poppy cake isn’t terrible,” Remi said. He found a packet and slid it toward her.

She looked at the dessert and her face fell.

“We had a baker on the station, one of the few people that actually cooked. He’d make lemon cookies, always kept a stash of them for me under the counter. Claimed they were some ancient Earth recipe from a secret sisterhood or some nonsense.” She tossed her spoon in the stew packet and turned her head away.

Remi glanced at his gauntlet.

“Would you like to see the station, my lady?” he asked.

Cosima’s face lit up. “What? How?”

“Follow me.”

They left the way station and walked into the night air, the buzz and snap of insects surrounding them. The thick strip of the Milky Way fell into the trees on the opposite shoreline. Cosima followed Remi to the edge of the dock, the waterlogged and rotten wood creaking as it swayed atop the water.

She halted, not daring to put a foot on the old wood. “I can’t swim.”

“My lady, if I won’t let you be shot, I certainly won’t let you drown.” He held out a hand to her.

Remi, his face lit by starlight, smiled at her. It was the first time she’d seen him look anything other than completely serious, and she decided if there was anyone she could ever trust, it should be him.

She took his hand, and he helped her onto the dock. He placed her hand around his elbow and escorted her farther over the lake. Sidonia’s silver rings hung low over the horizon.

At the end of the dock, he pointed toward a tall set of distant trees. “There, any second now.”

True to his word, the spires of Styria Station came into view. Running lights of spaceships swirled around the station in slow motion. She could pick out the main docking bay, a rectangle of yellow light against the station’s light gray hull, could see a merchant ship docked against the dorsal bays.

“Oh, there it is,” she said. Her hand squeezed Remi’s arm tighter, and she pointed to her former home. “You see those emerald lights on top of the two high spires? Everyone who calls themselves a spacer in House Zollern has done a float between the two.”

“A float?”

“You spacewalk up one spire with a bunch of friends, then push off and let your momentum take you to the other. You float over the entire station. Just you…”

“What if you miss?” Remi asked.

“Then you use a repulsor to get you back onto the station, and your friends call you a dirty Flying Dutchman until you do your float right. I did it on my first try,” she said with ill-concealed pride.

“You’re much braver than I am, my lady,” Remi said.

Cosima felt an itch on her arm. She looked down and saw a dark spot on her forearm. She looked closer and went pale when she saw it was an insect.

“Remi…what is that?” she said in a high-pitched voice.

Remi flicked the insect away with a finger.

“A mosquito.”

“What was it doing?” She looked over her exposed flesh and slapped at the back of her neck.

“Feeding, they drink blood.”

Cosima slapped her hand against his chest and backed away from him, wiping her hands over her arms furiously.

“You brought me out here knowing these things were waiting for me?” she backpedaled another step, and her foot fell into air. Her momentum took her over the edge as her arms pin wheeled.

Remi grabbed her hand and yanked her back onto the dock. She wrapped her arms around him and whimpered.

“Nothing to worry about. Your shield would form a cocoon around you, keep you on the surface and float you to the shore,” he said.

“Get me out of here,” she said into his chest.

“Yes, my lady.”

****

To the space control center on Margrave Spaceport, the droid’s drop pod was another lump of junk finally burning its way through the planet’s atmosphere after decades of decaying orbit. With the planet’s rings and the detritus of over a hundred years of human space flight, loose objects descending to terra firma were too numerous and usually too inconsequential to bother with. Only if an object would interfere with space lanes or be large enough to survive reentry and damage something on the ground would the Orbital Guard intervene.

The Orbital Guard’s computer categorized the droid as the lowest-level event and logged the reentry. The sailor on duty didn’t even glance up from his copy of the Enquirer, a photo of Cosima exiting the Orozco center on the cover, when the notification popped up on his screen.

The droid’s pod burned through the atmosphere, lighting up a thunderhead over Lindau Peninsula with an orange glow as it traversed. It held to its ballistic trajectory as wind within the storm buffeted it with turbulence. Sudden course corrections were not the behavior of space junk.

The pod impacted nine miles from its intended landing zone with a slight thump into the wet earth. The droid broke through the shell of its pod and climbed out. An old combat model designed for function over form, it stood seven feet high, blocky limbs covered by chipped plates of titanium-reinforced steel. It cycled rounds into the gun barrels it had instead of hands, and loped off into the woods, each step a pneumatic whine.

The target wasn’t far, and the droid’s programming was set to kill.

****

Remi blew dust from the barrel of his disassembled pulser and glanced at his gauntlet—perimeter still secure. He swallowed another caffeine pill—several came with each ration pack—and ran a cloth over each of his pulser rounds. He had a dozen bullets and his sword to defend Cosima, which struck him as particularly pitiful when compared to the cyberman who’d attacked them earlier.

He glanced at the way station’s control panel and tapped his fingers against the table. It wasn’t time to contact Stolzoff, not yet. It took eighteen hours for the House Guards to do a complete overhaul of the palace’s communications system. If the assassins had the system compromised, sending his commander an update now might put a nice bulls-eye to Cosima’s location for whoever was after her.

With her sleeping in one of the bays, Remi had a few hours for maintenance on his weapon and shield. Sleep wasn’t an issue for him. Even without the caffeine pills, he could go three days without it and remain combat effective.

He’d graduated from Pathfinder school years ago, the constant exertion of forced marches, combat simulation, impromptu hand-to-hand combat bouts with his fellow candidates—or the fresh and merciless instructors if anyone was caught pulling their punches—had taught him just how deep he could dig for the will to go on. All of that paled in comparison to the fight on Jutland, but staying awake and alert until he could signal Stolzoff for extraction seemed pretty easy.

He remembered this way station. He’d been in the valley, alone and somewhat lost during a land navigation test when a lightning storm rolled in from the east. The instructors had declared a weather emergency and directed him to shelter here…and Shoshana, another cadet, had been here waiting for him.

A day off the lanes, with showers and food and an actual bed to sleep in had been nothing compared to getting to know Shoshana. They’d reconnected after graduating from Pathfinder school and kept their relationship hidden from the Guard.

Personal feelings were a detriment to a Guardsman. Their mission was their principal, that royal or noble who required their total focus and dedication. For Guardsmen to have a relationship and ever be in the position of choosing the safety of their loved one over their charge was anathema to that mission. Had Vincent ever suspected him and Shoshana?

Not for the first time, Remi wondered if Vincent might be whole had he not tried to help Shoshana on that battlefield.

Remi’s gauntlet chimed with a perimeter alert. He quickly reassembled his weapon and reloaded it. The pulser cycled a round into the chamber and vibrated twice to signal it was ready to fire. He held his gauntlet up in front of his face and triggered the thermal view. He saw the perimeter displayed on his forearm, fed from the sensor net, as he rotated slowly.

The forests around their bunker swayed gently in the wind, the shades of red and white making up the thermal view showing nothing unusual. He double checked the location where the sensor was tripped, and found nothing.

The sound of a rhythmic whine crept into the bunker. The clomp of heavy steps against earth.

An icy blast of fear blossomed in his chest as he turned around and switched his view to night vision, magnifying the low ambient light.

There, just a few feet beyond the wall, was the war bot. It swept a gun arm across the bunker, a thin red laser scanning for their refuge. The way station’s camouflage wouldn’t last if the robot got much closer.

Remi had a few rounds, his saber, and no chance against that mechanical monster. He couldn’t beat the machine. Cosima’s only hope was for him to beat its programming.

He cycled his gauntlet shield up to full power, and it vibrated along his arm as the batteries readied. His shield wouldn’t last long against the war bot’s guns and his armor was about as useful as tissue paper.

Remi opened the door to Cosima’s room. She lay on a bunk curled up in a dark green blanket. He got a step into the room, and she sat bolt upright.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Shh!” Remi hissed.

“Don’t you shush me. This is my room and—” Remi slapped a hand over her mouth and held her firmly. Her eyes cycled between surprise and panic.

Remi put his face next to her ear and whispered, “There is a war droid outside.”

Cosima froze at his words.

“We must run. Now.” Remi took his hand away from her mouth and pulled her out of bed. She wore nothing more than a T-shirt and exercise shorts. She hissed when her bare feet touched the cold concrete floor.

They got out of the room, and the whine of the droid’s steps got louder and faster. Remi grabbed Cosima by the waist, tossed her over his shoulder, and ran for the front door.

Rapid thunderclaps erupted outside the bunker, bullets tore through the walls and shredded the room where Cosima had been sleeping. Rounds stitched across the ground, trailing Remi’s steps.

Kicking the front door open, Remi snapped his shield to life. The emerald-gray barrier shivered with energy as the batteries spent themselves as fast as their capacitors allowed.

Remi kept his focus on the end of the pier, not bothering to look at the war droid as it came around the edge of the bunker, the active camouflage sputtering. He sprinted, jostling Cosima up and down against his shoulder.

A bullet snapped through the air in front of him and hit the lake, kicking up a gout of water.

“Body shield! Set to default! Set to default!” Remi yelled as he tore down the pier. The base of the pier exploded from a grenade, pitching the wooden planks beneath his feet. He felt stings against the backs of his legs and stumbled.

“Remi! I can’t swim!” Cosima screamed.

Remi got back to his feet, and the war droid’s aim finally found him. The bullet hit his shield with the force of a mule kick and launched them both into the air. Remi and Cosima hit the water in a tangle of limbs and sank into the darkness.

The war droid advanced to the lake’s edge, its bullets pounding the water where his target disappeared. It stopped as the wet soil proved too weak to support its half ton of weight, and backed off. Its sensors scanned the water, waiting for the target to surface. Humans had to breathe.

****

Cosima’s world was darkness, falling. She flailed against her arms and kicked against Remi, who held her in a bear hug, pulling her deeper into the abyss. The sense of falling ended as Remi fell against something, his iron grip against her unwavering. Cosima lay against his chest and pawed for his face, searching by feel with no light to aid her.

“Let me go!” She smacked her fist against his head, to no effect.

“Stop! Damn you.” Remi rolled over and Cosima felt wet sand press against her back and soak through her clothes. She inhaled sharply at the icy touch. Remi kept her pressed against the ground, his breath hot against her cheek.

“The war droid can’t follow us here, we’re safe,” he said.

Cosima shifted as the cold water seeped up through her T-shirt. “Why aren’t we drowning?”

“I set your personal shield to default, which is zero buoyancy and big enough for the both of us,” he said. “The shield will cycle air, keep the water out until the battery dies.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’d better be the hell away from that war droid,” he said.

Cosima reached up and felt a buzz from the edge of the shield. Her hand passed through the barrier, and she felt cold water. The lake leaked through the breach and dripped against Remi’s head. She pulled her hand back.

Her body shivered as the lake bed leeched heat from her.

“I’m freezing.”

He wrapped an arm around her back and rolled them over. She opened her hips and lay against him, the tiny links of his mail armor pinching her bare skin. She put her head against his chest and heard his heart thundering.

“Cosima, we can’t stay here,” he said.

“Are you asking me for ideas?” Even with Remi’s body warmth, she still shivered.

Remi grabbed her by the hips and pushed her a few inches in the air. He rolled over and put her arms around his chest so she clutched against his back. He tapped on his gauntlet, and a wan red light filled their cocoon. Grass and sunken branches spread across the lake bed around them.

Remi reached through the shield and grabbed a patch of grass and pulled them forward. They inched along the lake bed, handhold by handhold.

“How far is it?” she asked.

“Don’t speak, save air.”

Cosima squeezed Remi tight, feeling safer the closer she was to him.

“Remi,” she whispered, “this is so weird.”

****

A pair of Guardsmen hefted the heavy iron manhole cover aside, red lasers crisscrossing through the new gap in the floor. Stolzoff leaned over the hole and spat. The glob hit a laser and hissed as it burned away.

“Still works,” a Guardsman said.

Stolzoff brought his gauntlet up to his face. “Deactivate portal I-M-3-7. Authorization: Stolzoff November 9.” The lasers vanished, and the smell of mold and sewage came up. Stolzoff spat again, and the spit hit the ground beneath the opening with a smack.

“Go,” the colonel said to the Guardsman. The man lowered himself halfway into the hole and let go. He thumped against the ground, his feet scraping against wet stones. The Guardsman’s shield snapped to life, and a flashlight attached to his pulser lit up the darkness below.

“Clear,” came from the hole.

Stolzoff lowered himself down, his senses recoiling from the stench. The maintenance tunnels beneath the palace were a legacy of the initial colony effort. The first settlers had come with little in the way of advanced tech. Adding in pipe scrubbers to the palace, and all of Sidonia’s plumbing, had earned King Joshua a number of scatological nicknames that none dared utter in the presence of the King’s Guards.

The maintenance tunnels were sealed and monitored for pressure, temperature, and motion disturbances. Nothing larger than a mouse should have been able to move around without a swift investigation. Despite this, the breach in the palace’s communications system had been traced to an old pipe ten yards away from where Stolzoff stood.

The colonel unholstered his pulser and thumbed the flashlight on.

“Come on,” he said to the Guardsman.

Carter had infected the Guard’s computer network with a virus that tapped in to the communications network, but was so unobtrusive it didn’t trip the system’s firewalls or protection programs. It was useless to anyone outside the palace; only Carter could tap in to the system from her workstation. How she’d communicated with anyone outside the palace remained a mystery. Only a data leak from her computer had led to a trail of digital breadcrumbs that ended in this maintenance tunnel.

Stolzoff moved along, shining his light in air shafts blowing fetid air against him. A dance of shadows deep down a side tunnel was nothing more than rats.

“Here, sir,” the Guardsman said. Stolzoff looked up at a wrought iron pipe, mold and rust infecting its surface. The Guardsman knocked against the pipe with the butt of his pistol, and a panel swung loose. Lines of fiber optic cables shimmered within.

Stolzoff felt a sudden breeze, strong as if a speeding ground car had just passed him. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he swung his pistol down each end of the hallway.

“Bit drafty, eh, sir?” the Guardsman asked.

“Hurry up before I have to burn this uniform to get the smell out of it,” the colonel said.

The Guardsman raised his gauntlet over the pipe. An X-ray view of the pipe showed the fiber optic cables…and a cylindrical device deep inside the mess of wires that shouldn’t have been there.

A green light pulsed on the gauntlet.

“Clear of explosives,” the Guardsman said. He took a wand from his belt and jammed it into the cables. There was a click and a smell of burnt air. He extracted the wand, the foreign object attached to it.

“Vampire clamp,” the Guardsman said. “I’ve seen these in corporate espionage cases. I’ll get it to forensics, but I’ll bet a month’s pay we won’t find a bit of DNA or marked components to track down the manufacturer.”

“Run a mouse droid through the pipes, make sure there aren’t any more,” Stolzoff said.

The device was a plain metal cylinder, as plain as it was sinister. What else had the assassins learned about the palace and its security?

At least Remi hadn’t tried to contact him yet. He and Cosima should still be safe. With the last security leak plugged, Stolzoff could finally welcome them back to a home that was both safe and secure.

He hoped.

****

Glint watched as Stolzoff spoke with the other Guardsmen. He’d slipped past them easily, and they were courteous enough to lower the laser detection system just long enough for him to sneak into the palace right under their noses.

He held an arm toward the wall, and his appendage telescoped out to touch it. He shimmied up the wall silently and swung his feet back to anchor against the ceiling. Humans so rarely bothered to look up while they walked. With mechanical limbs that would never tire, he started his slow migration to the first of his two objectives.

He had to drop off a tiny package, then he would make his way to the palace’s control room.

CHAPTER 10

Edwin Baumer awoke to a beautiful fall morning. For once, the sky was bright blue. No depressing blanket of overcast clouds to spoil his day. The silver rings around the planet shimmered like the auroras common to the northern latitudes, and a fresh breeze blew in off the lake.

His dog, a black and white collie, ran in from the forest and barked at Edwin as he emerged from his tent nestled along the lakeside.

“Hush, Gizmo, you’ll scare the fish,” Edwin said. Gizmo trotted over and sat down next to the embers of their campfire. The dog looked up and whimpered.

“Fine, fine. You don’t catch any fish, but you sure aren’t above eating them, are you?” Edwin opened a cooler and tossed a cooked trout filet to the dog, which jumped in the air and caught it in his jaws.

Edwin stretched his arms wide and pressed his fists against his lower back, massaging the tight muscles. He was getting too old for these hikes deep into the woods just for the sake of fishing, but there really was nothing better than a few quiet days along the lakeshore to clear his mind.

Well, there was one thing that could make it a bit better.

Edwin walked down to the lake and pulled at a line extending into the water. He fished out a six-pack of beer cans and yanked one from the plastic rings. The chill aluminum sent a spike of pain through his arthritic knuckles, but he didn’t mind it too much.

He popped the can open and took a deep sip. To hell with what time it was, there was no one out here to judge him. He attached a lure to his fishing pole and made his first cast of the morning. He waited for the soft plink of the lure hitting the water and sat back in a folding canvas chair.

With nothing but the sound of nature around him, he enjoyed a moment of serenity.

A tremendous splash in the water startled him so badly that his chair tipped backward. He caught a glimpse of a man standing knee-deep in water as he fell back, careful not to spill his beer in his fright.

Edwin slapped against the ground, and the very wet, very angry-looking man stood over him, a pulser in his hand.

“Are you alone? Who else is out here?” Remi said, his questions loaded with threat.

“No one, sir! Just me and the dog,” Edwin said, one hand up in surrender, the other holding his beer perpendicular to the ground. Gizmo barked in alarm, jumping in a circle instead of coming to aid his master.

Remi pointed a finger at Edwin. “Don’t move.”

He turned away and sloshed back into the lake. Edwin pushed himself up on his elbows and watched Remi dive into the water.

Edwin took a quick sip of his beer, a spike of adrenaline causing his hand to shake.

He looked at Gizmo, who came over and licked his face.

“You call yourself a dog?” Edwin muttered.

Remi emerged from the water a moment later, a wet and shivering Cosima in tow.

“Towel. Fire, anything,” Remi said to the fisherman. He scooped Cosima up and carried her out of the water.

Edwin scrambled to his feet and ran to his tent, where he grabbed a terrycloth towel from the top of the backpack and handed it to Remi.

“My sleeping bag is heated,” Edwin said.

“Oh, thank god,” Cosima said through chattering teeth and snatched the towel out of Remi’s hand. She crawled into the tent and zipped the flap shut behind her.

Remi, his skin tinged blue from cold, wiped water out of his hair and shook his pulser. “Who are you? How did you get out here?” he asked. “This is the king’s land for military training.”

Edwin grabbed a floppy hat from the ground beside the tent and showed Remi the permit tucked into the brim. “Journeyman Edwin Baumer, bound artist to House Carinthia. I have a remit for access. Paid the fee at the office in Port Kenyon. Say, is that Princess Cosima in my tent?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to the man!” Cosima said from the tent.

Remi rolled his eyes and looked over the campsite. “Where’s your vehicle?”

“Walked, took my leather personnel carriers, sir,” Edwin said, pointing to his boots. “There’s a trail up the hillside, leads right back to Port Kenyon. Nice hike keeps the heart young.”

Remi looked Edwin up and down, then said, “My lady, change into his clothes.” He turned his attention back to Edwin. “How far to town?”

“You can’t be serious,” Cosima said. The tent rustled as she moved around its cramped confines.

“It’s a hard day’s walk for me. Twenty or so miles,” Edwin said.

“Ew, everything smells like fish!” Cosima said. “And his shoes are too big.”

“Shove a pair of socks into the shoes,” Remi said to her. “Do you have any cash?” he asked Edwin.

“Do you want my dog too?” Edwin asked, backing away from Remi.

Remi’s hand snatched him by the front of his shirt, and the fire in Remi’s eyes gave Edwin a clue that maybe he shouldn’t fool around with this man.

“A few marks.” Edwin pulled his wallet from his pocket and Remi snatched it out of his hand and released him. Remi took the marks out along with a travel debit card.

Cosima came out of the tent, wearing a flannel shirt and black corduroy jeans. She looked at Remi and turned her nose up at her new clothes.

Remi pulled his gauntlet off his arm, the shield emitter black and burned out.

“You stay here for at least another day.” Remi shoved the gauntlet into Edwin’s chest. “Then you go back to Port Kenyon and you ring the palace. Ask for Colonel Stolzoff; he’ll reimburse you for everything.”

Remi grabbed a small backpack hanging from a tree near the fire and looked through it. He nodded in approval and threw it over his shoulder.

“If anyone comes by, you never saw us and this never happened,” Remi said. He grabbed Cosima by the hand and led her up the hillside behind the campsite.

“Son, I don’t think anyone would believe me if I told them,” Edwin said.

****

The trail was sand and gravel, level and wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. An infantryman could have walked this trail with half his weight in gear on his back from dusk to dawn without complaint or effort. Cosima took to hiking about as well as Remi suspected she would.

“Can we please stop,” she whined.

“One hour, my lady. We’ve only been walking for one hour,” Remi said. His hand went to his holstered pulser out of habit, ensuring that it was still there. Walking with the weapon drawn would alarm anyone else on the trail and probably get their presence noted to the local law enforcement. He needed to keep him and Cosima off of their pursuer’s radar, which meant off everyone’s radar. That the fisherman in the middle of the woods managed to recognize Cosima in her disheveled state meant keeping her from notice would be difficult.

“Just for a minute?” she asked.

“No. Look around, we’re in the middle of a clearing, no cover or concealment anywhere. Keep going until we’re someplace we can hide,” Remi said. He shifted the pack against his shoulders and waited for Cosima to step ahead of him.

Cosima’s shoulders sank as she plodded along.

“Why can’t we call for an air car? Pretend we just got lost out here,” she said.

“Because whoever is after you knew where to find us in that way station. They penetrated the palace’s security, and I don’t know who to trust anymore. We call in the park Pathfinders and it’ll send up a red flag in the system.”

“Then why are we going to a town that’s full of people and cameras and what not?” she asked. “Why don’t we just stay in the woods, hunt for food, and make clothes from animal skins and—oh my god, I can’t believe I just said that.”

Remi grinned. “I’ll need you to not be Princess Cosima for a while.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. You think I can make that gig permanent?”

“No, sorry. Being part of the royal family isn’t like this, most of the time.”

Cosima turned around, walking backward. She held her arms up to the sky. “Oh, explosions, assassins, and killer robots aren’t de rigueur? Guess if I wanted all that, I would have joined the army, not been tapped to marry some fop who’ll inherit a kingdom.” She spun back around, her fists balled. “Don’t tell Prince Francis I said that,” she said over her shoulder.

“Said what?”

“Exactly.”

They continued on until they reached the edge of rolling hills covered by a thick forest, the tops lost in the mist.

“Can we take a break now?” Cosima asked.

Remi pointed to a brook cutting along a hillside. Cosima ran over and sat down against a moss-covered rock, and massaged her feet through the ill-fitting boots. Remi dipped a canteen into the water and shook it to activate the UV lining and kill whatever microbes were in the stream. He handed the canteen to Cosima, who grimaced as she took too big of a gulp of the ice-cold water.

“Ugh, does it run straight off a glacier?”

“It does. Let me see your feet.”

Cosima looked at him sideways. “Excuse me?”

“I imagine that your feet are about as soft as a silk purse. If I can hold off blisters, you’ll thank me later.”

Cosima rolled her eyes and put a booted foot up on his thigh. His rough hands tickled her feet by accident as he pinched the skin of her feet, looking for hot spots and white nodules, the beginnings of a blister.

“That’s not so bad—would you mind rubbing them for me?” she asked.

Remi pushed her foot off his thigh and repeated the inspection on the other foot.

She kept her socks off to air out her feet and ate a ration bar Remi found in the pack. Remi didn’t ask for a bite, didn’t try to rest. He climbed up against a boulder and watched the trail.

“Remi, how do you do this? All the fighting, the running. Why aren’t you a nervous wreck like me?” she asked.

He jumped down from the boulder and pointed to her boots. She took the hint and put them back on, shoving her toes against the wadded socks within.

“To give up is to die.” He helped her to her feet. “That’s how it is in combat. If you think the enemy will let you have a second to rest, to rethink how the heck you screwed up and landed yourself in the army in the middle of the war, you are dead.” He pointed up the path, its end lost in the mist. “You focus on the mission, the objective, and keep going.”

She shook her head and put one foot in front of the other.

“I’m not a soldier, Remi. Wait, what’s your name? All this time together and I don’t even know your first name.”

“Paul, my lady.”

“And you can cut out all that ‘my lady’ business. I’m not a princess right now, correct, Paul?”

“Yes.”

She could see his face strain against adding her title to his word. “What would you do if you were me? Would you keep calm and carry on through all the attempted murder, or would you run? Get off this planet and try for a new life somewhere else?”

He didn’t answer right away. The trail angled upward through the hills, and Cosima had to push against her thighs to relieve the strain on her legs.

“I’d do my duty,” he finally said.

“Not hard for you, is it? You’ve been ‘doing your duty’ for years, all voluntary I might add. I’m born to a particular House at a particular time and my duty is chosen for me. Does that seem fair to you?” The mist thickened around them, so cold Cosima could swear she saw ice crystals glinting in the fog.

“No, I don’t think that’s fair,” Remi said. “But life isn’t fair. Just because I’ve had the chance to choose my path doesn’t mean everything’s worked out the way I wanted.”

Cosima let the conversation die away. The march through the hills became more miserable than she’d imagined as her legs started to cramp up.

She made it to the top of a hill, and her calf seized up like an unoiled gear. She hissed in pain and fell to the ground, clutching her leg.

Remi pushed her hands away and massaged the knotted muscles and pushed her toes toward her shin. The pain lessened; weak muscles spasmed as they loosened.

“Paul, I don’t know if I can do this,” she said. “I’m a spoiled rotten brat. I can’t do this pain-and-misery business.”

Remi pressed his palms against her calf, and the spasms faded away.

“You have to, Cosima. There might be someone tough underneath all this whining. You need to keep going until you find her.”

“I’m not you, Paul. I’m not Shoshana either,” she said.

The name of Remi’s partner in the Guard struck him like an electric shock. He took his hands away from Cosima and stood up. “How do you know that name?”

Cosima got to her feet and brushed herself off. “I saw the recording Wilson had, the artist making that mural. I borrowed a copy while he wasn’t looking.”

Remi looked away from her and walked down the hill, his footsteps loud against the dirt.

“Wait, where is she? Why haven’t I seen her around the palace?” Cosima followed him, his pace fast enough for her to struggle to keep up. He didn’t answer her.

“Paul, wait, I’m sorry,” she said. She caught up to him and grabbed him by the hand. He snatched it away from her. “Is she OK? In the video she was ‘expectant’ or something like that,” she said.

Remi whirled around, his face a mask of pent-up anger.

“You don’t know, do you? You were cooped up in that ivory tower for so long that you don’t even know what it means. Expectant, it means the soldier will die from her wounds.”

Cosima stopped, a terrible realization coming to her. “But, how could she…what happened?”

Remi’s face softened. His breathing grew even as he fought against his emotions.

“After Vincent was hit, I dragged them both back to our lines. Slow, the pirates were still shooting at us. Vincent was my duty, protecting him was my only mission, and I put him in jeopardy to bring Shoshana back. His wounds were cauterized in the blast, hurt him bad enough that he’d survive. She…she died on the way up. Never made it to the surgery.”

Remi took a deep breath, his composure returning.

“You were with her, at least?” Cosima asked.

“No. After I got them to the field hospital, I found a rifle and went back to the fight.”

“Why would you do that? I thought you and she…were…”

“We were. I don’t expect you to understand. I’d already put Vincent at risk for my personal feelings, I wasn’t going to let down the rest of the task force to stay with her. I’m a soldier, not a doctor. I went where I was needed.” Remi pointed down the pathway. “We must keep moving. Fog like this means worse weather is on the way.”

He took a few steps, but Cosima stayed still.

“I’m just a mission to you, aren’t I?” she said. “You could leave Shoshana and Vincent behind without a second thought. You’ll do that to me too because you don’t have a heart, do you?”

Remi’s hands curled into fists.

“I will carry you, if I must.”

Cosima huffed and started walking.

****

Hours later, the mist had moved on—replaced by dark clouds that rumbled with thunder. The hills were lower, farther apart, but with her aching feet Cosima dreaded going over anything higher than a curb.

Remi hadn’t spoken to her, ignoring her attempts at conversation.

Her right foot stung with every step, her left foot throbbed every time she took it off the ground, and her knees hurt in ways she didn’t know were possible.

“Are we there yet?” she whined.

A drop of rain hit her forehead, so cold that it must have been a fraction of a degree away from being sleet. More rain hit around them, big drops that swayed the tall grass with their impacts and slapped against rocks.

Remi looked to the sky, his palms turned up to catch a few drops.

“This isn’t good,” he finally said.

“And how is rain ever good?” Rain hit her flannel shirt, cold drops spreading against her skin, and she started to shiver.

“Come on.” He ran, she hobbled toward a pine tree with branches just thick enough to offer some protection from the rain. It found its way to them anyway down the labyrinth of needles.

Remi pulled a small metallic blanket from the pack and wrapped it around her.

“Sit on it or you’ll lose heat to the ground,” he said, his breath fogging in the freezing air.

Cosima complied, feeling a bit warmer even as rain dripped onto her.

Remi sat down, crossed his arms over his chest, and lowered his head. Raindrops ran down his face and dripped from his nose. He took his pulser from the holster and shoved it into the pack.

“You look miserable,” she said.

He neither replied nor even bothered to look at her.

The rain intensified, turning to sleet as tiny bits of ice snapped against rocks. Remi’s shoulders trembled as his body shivered to create heat.

Cosima scooted over next to him and lifted the blanket. A rush of cold air robbed her of what little comfort she’d achieved. She tried to put the edge of the small blanket over his shoulders, which proved just large enough to cover one shoulder each and provided little to no protection for the both of them.

Remi looked up and saw Cosima trying to help him, her face earnest and growing paler as the sleet storm grew stronger.

Remi gave her a little smile. He pulled her against him and sat her down, spooning her with his larger body. He wrapped the blanket around them, holding the edges in his hands.

Cosima nestled closer to him, feeling safe at last.

“Paul, why are you doing this for me? You got shot, right? Do you always take a bullet for a girl you just met?”

“Only when they need it,” he said.

“Honestly, I can keep a secret, isn’t saving a damsel in distress just a little bit appealing to you?”

Remi shifted nervously. “After consideration of my sworn duty, the greater interests of Sidonia, protecting the public…I suppose saving a princess has some appeal.”

“I knew it! I’ll have a white horse brought to the palace, and we’ll get a holographic dragon to torment me up in whatever tower I decide to lock myself in. ‘Save me, Sir Remi, your damsel needs you.’”

“I don’t know about ‘damsel.’ You can be a right pain in the ass sometimes.”

“Oh really!” She jabbed an elbow against his ribs. “You’re lucky you’re so warm. Don’t think I was kidding about throwing you into the dungeon.”

She jumped at a sudden crash of thunder. Remi wrapped his arms around her a little tighter.

“So maybe,” she said, “just maybe, you care about me?”

“Guardsmen can ask for a transfer off any protection assignment, no questions asked. I wouldn’t be with you if I didn’t want to be,” he said.

“That’s the nicest almost-a-compliment I’ve had in a long time. You may be the only person on this planet who sees me as someone other than a thing to be married off and to…or someone who has to be killed. Promise you won’t leave me?”

“I promise.”

She turned her face up and kissed him on the cheek.

****

The rainstorm ended almost an hour later. The path had turned into the consistency of cooked oatmeal, which managed to make Cosima’s every step even more painful as her boots shifted in the mud, adding more friction against her suffering feet.

The path bent against a cliff, and Remi trotted ahead and looked down. “Good news, I can see Port Kenyon.”

She caught up to him and saw a bow-shaped bay and the town nestled against it a few miles away. An enclosed bullet-train line and a highway ran to and from the city.

“Civilization, finally.” She put a hand against Remi’s arm to steady herself. “Do I get a medal when we get there?”

“How about a change of clothes and lunch instead?”

“Now you’re talking my language.” She grimaced as pain shot up her calves. “This is why humans invented cars and domesticated horses. So they wouldn’t have to walk everywhere.”

“For what it’s worth, it is all downhill from here.”

“Checking to see if that makes me feel better…nope. Doesn’t,” she said. “Do you think Prince Francis has ever done something like this?”

“His physical activity seems limited to sitting at a desk and lifting drinks to his mouth,” Remi said. “Vincent completed Pathfinder school, but he’s slowed down some since his injuries.”

“What about Prince Quinn? He was in the army, right?” she asked.

Remi mulled over his answer. “The king is the commander in chief of all Sidonia’s military. He can delegate that authority to his family in the field. Quinn was always more interested in looking like he was part of the army than he was in actually learning how to lead it.”

“The video I saw…it doesn’t really match with the mural we saw at Orozco Center,” she said. “Why is that?”

“Artistic license,” Remi said.

“Did Quinn really lead a charge against the fortress? What really happened?”

Remi touched his hands against his sword hilt and his pulser.

“There were rumors…rumors that the king was displeased with Quinn and was going to cut him off from the line of succession. Quinn demanded a chance to redeem himself and took command of the expedition to rescue the ship seized by the pirates. We were there for the Sidonian crewmen, getting the ship and its cargo back weren’t a priority.

“After we’d boarded the Argosy in high orbit and rescued the crew, Quinn ordered a ground assault on the pirates. We could have smashed them from orbit, put no Sidonian lives at risk, and every other band of pirates in human space would think twice about targeting our ships. Instead, Quinn sent us into that meat grinder to get back the cargo. Art, it was all art. That bastard traded our blood for money.” Remi’s face twitched, the vestiges of anger not that far beneath his words and thoughts.

“Why would he do that? The Argosy was from a noble House; none of that money would touch the royal family.”

“To punish King Rasczak, Cosima. The king loves this planet and its citizens. To have so many soldiers dead and maimed…it was almost too much for the king. He took ill soon after the expedition returned. He hasn’t been the same since,” Remi said.

“Seems odd that Quinn would…lead a frontal assault from behind, then get killed in that same battle,” Cosima said.

“Quinn came into the fortress before we’d secured it,” Remi said. “A group of pirates we’d bypassed decided to make a break for it and ran into Quinn and his retinue. Plasma weapons were used, there wasn’t much left to recover.”

“You saw this happen?”

“No, just heard about it. Colonel Greer took command after that and got us off that rock.”

“Then why is Quinn made out to be the hero of the battle? Not Vincent?”

Remi gave Cosima a sad look.

“Public perception. The king wants the people to see the royal family as their protectors, benevolent rulers that act in their best interest. For a prince to throw the sons and daughters of Sidonia into the grinder like that, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Vincent could have ridden a wave of sympathy and been next in line for the throne, but that isn’t in his nature.”

“It doesn’t bother you that Francis, not Vincent, will be king? Isn’t Vincent the kind of person the king would want to succeed him?”

“There’s more to running a kingdom than valor and selflessness. Francis has a tremendous aptitude for negotiation and business. He will make a fine king. Vincent will remain the head of the military and the intelligence services. They will lead Sidonia, Francis from the fore, Vincent from the shadows.”

“Seems like Vincent could take over whenever he wants. The army and the guard are with him,” she said.

Remi chuckled. “We are with him because he is loyal, honorable. The moment he steps from light he’ll find himself very, very alone. You know our oath is to Sidonia and the king, never to an upstart.”

“Where will I fit in all of this, once I’m queen?” she asked.

“That will be up to you, Cosima.”

****

The path led to a park just outside of Port Kenyon. The children’s playground was empty. Cold, wet weather kept families indoors and away from the elements. A few ground cars parked far from one another in the parking lot next to a baseball diamond were the only signs of the locals.

Once he’d seen the park, Remi took Cosima off the trail and stopped in a small clearing out of sight from the path and the park. He pointed to an old tree trunk, hollowed out and rotted by time.

“You need to stay here. I’ll go into town and get you a change of clothes and tickets for us to get out of here,” he said.

“Do you think I don’t know how to shop for myself? I’m going with you, don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

Remi gently grabbed her by both arms.

“You are the most famous, most recognizable woman on the planet. If you set one foot in town, you will be mobbed, especially if they think you’ve gone missing from the palace. I don’t know how Stolzoff and Vincent are handling this mess publicly.” He pulled the pulser from his holster and offered it to her, handle first. “You know how to use this?”

“Alone? You’re going to leave me alone out here?” She took the pistol and thumbed the safety off. Remi snapped the weapon back on safe with a flick of his finger.

“Not a toy. Only aim at what you intend to shoot. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Stay out of sight, and if there’s any trouble, run into town and find the constable. He’ll get you back to the palace if I can’t.” He gave her a pat on the arm and left, his steps thumping against the wet ground.

Cosima sat on a root, old and thick, rising from the dirt like a wave off the ocean. She glanced around. Skrats scampered through the underbrush, and sparrows and pigeons flew from branch to branch, knocking water loose from the needles with each landing.

The distant whoosh of passing bullet-train cars was an infrequent reminder that civilization was nearby.

An overwhelming sense of dread built up inside her. She gripped the pulser hard, her knuckles white as she glanced over her shoulders.

She remembered her father’s lessons on worry and anxiety. She had to find what was making her feel this way, know that this was her body’s way of reacting to stress and stimulus. A spacer had to keep their calm; the void killed those who panicked and those who let their body make decisions for the mind.

“I’m alone,” she said. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she was well and truly alone. No Lana at her beck and call, no space station full of people around her. No Remi to protect her. She’d spent her entire life waited on and protected; now there was no one.

Every twig snap and birdcall manifested itself to her like an approaching war droid.

As fear grew in her chest, every heartbeat sending another pulse of ice water through her body, she wanted to sink into the ground. Bury herself there until Remi came back to rescue her from nothing more dangerous than her own fears.

She felt her body tremble, the adrenaline building in her scant muscles. Sounds grew more distinct. The smell of wet earth, rotting wood, and salt-tinged air blowing in off the bay. She had felt like this the first time she’d soloed a mining skiff across the silver rings, before she did her float from spire to spire on the station. There had been real danger then; now she was surrounded by fuzzy lizards and birds.

Cosima’s tension slipped away, lessening with each breath she took in through her nose and out through her mouth. No queen should ever be afraid of something as innocuous as being alone.

Still, she wished Remi would hurry the hell up and get back to her.

A branch snapped behind her. She fumbled with the pulser and dropped it. It bounced off the root and fell beneath a fern. She sprang from her seat and tried to reach the weapon, pawing at the ground.

A bush rustled and something moved toward her. Cosima whined and her fingers finally brushed against the gun. Her fingernails raked across the handle and pulled it an inch closer to her.

She reached again and grabbed the pulser, then swung it over the root and aimed it at the moving bush…and saw a deer emerge from behind it. The animal had a wad of flowers in its mouth and chewed without much concern for Cosima’s presence.

“Seriously?” She pressed her thumb against the safety, but it was already set to safe. She might have caused the deer more harm if she’d thrown the pulser instead of trying to shoot it.

Sidonia’s deer population had been transplanted to the planet in the years after human settlement. The animals ate a number of native weeds that were a problem for farmers, and they found a niche in the local ecosystem. Hunting the animals was strictly prohibited until they’d colonized the continent. As such, most of the deer didn’t have a fear of humans.

Cosima stood up and reached a hand out to the deer. The animal sniffed her hand with a moist nose and stepped away. Leaves rustled around the deer, and two fawns, both striped and spotted, poked out from the undergrowth.

“Well, looks like they’re safe,” Cosima said.

The mother deer flicked its ears and wandered away.

****

Remi ran through the woods, a brand new backpack thumping against his lower back in time with his footfalls. Port Kenyon had everything they’d need and at tourist prices. Buying new clothes wasn’t too unusual in a town this far north. Most of Sidonia lived in the warmer areas down south, and the cold and wet climate was something of a surprise for visitors. The outdoorsman store even had medical supplies he could purchase without a second thought.

He was down to a few marks from what he’d taken from the fisherman, but it had been enough.

Remi ran through the park and onto the trail leading to Cosima. Everything looked normal, no signs of an attack or any indication that she’d somehow set the forest ablaze in his absence.

He vaulted over a downed branch and found the hollow trunk where he’d left her, but there was no sign of her. The area was pristine and quiet.

“Cosima?” Remi glanced behind the trunk, she wasn’t there. “Cosima,” he said, just loud enough for his voice to carry further into the woods.

He looked around, panic rising in his chest. A path of beaten grass led into the underbrush. Remi took his hilt from under his shirt and snapped the blade out. The power core in the handle hummed as the disruption field activated.

He followed the trail, his feet squishing against wet leaves. Sunlight wavered through shifting branches, and irregular spots of light danced across the forest floor.

“Cosima!”

He moved deeper into the woods, no sign of her.

He turned around to recheck the path, and found her against a tree trunk, cradled against the trees roots. She was wrapped in the blanket, sleeping.

Remi retracted the blade and ran to her. He gave her shoulder a gentle shake and said her name.

She stirred, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Oh, you’re back,” she said.

Remi gave her a quick hug and shook a finger at her. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“How about you not leave me in the forest surrounded by killer deer?”

“Fine, deal.” Remi slung his new pack from his shoulders and opened it. “I’ve got you some new clothes, shoes, and a melanin kit.” He took out a set of shrink-wrapped pants and blouse and a ball of rolled-up cloth. “New socks, they’ll help your feet heal up.”

Cosima looked over the clothes and shrugged. “You don’t have bad taste for a man. You got me a what kit?”

“Melanin, it will naturally darken your hair and skin. Keeps pale people like you from getting sunburned. Should stop people from recognizing you at first glance.” He took a small aerosol can from the pack. “Just your face and hands should be enough.”

“Good. I tried sunbathing with my sister once. Me in a bathing suit in direct sunlight was like putting a fork in a microwave. This might have been helpful back then.” She looked around and narrowed her eyes at Remi. “Where am I supposed to change?”

“We’re alone, wherever you like.” He glanced at his watch. “Our tube leaves in an hour. Let’s get going.”

“Hold on, because there’s a we, that means I am not alone.” She pointed to an oak tree with a wide trunk. “Go, put your nose in the corner until I’m done.”

Remi opened his mouth to argue, then shut it and went to the tree. He covered his eyes with the crook of his arm and leaned against it.

Cosima scurried behind the tree she’d slept in and changed clothes, glancing from time to time to make sure Remi wasn’t peeking at her.

“I’m decent,” she said in a singsong voice. She removed her old socks, which smelled even worse than she could imagine, and put on the new pair he’d brought her. The fresh, dry socks felt so good she could march another ten miles. Not that she wanted to, but it was at least possible.

Remi stripped off his shirt and tore open a shrink-wrapped package. He shook out a light jacket and an undershirt. The 3-D printer in town could have produced any outfit he wanted, so he had opted for something that could hide his pulser and hilt. He put a hand on his belt, then looked up at Cosima. “The same courtesy, if you please.”

Cosima hid behind her tree and listened as Remi’s belt buckle jingled. She crept toward the other edge of the trunk and peeked around. She caught a glimpse of Remi’s bare backside as he pulled up a new pair of pants, and saw a jagged scar running down one of his cheeks.

“All set,” Remi said a moment later. He took their old clothes and stuffed them into a pack.

“Take a seat, I need to change your face,” he said. He passed the melanin applicator over her face a few times, as attentively as a sculptor finishing the details on a statue. He twisted the applicator to a wider setting and ran it through her hair and over her hands.

“If you turn me orange, I’ll be very upset,” she said.

“Don’t tempt me…There, all done.”

He handed her a small mirror. Her reflection was a bit darker, as if she hailed from New Iberia. The dark brown hair didn’t match with her green eyes, and she felt wrong about whom she saw.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“It has to work, not be liked. Our tube leaves soon, come on.”

Cosima’s feet hurt a bit less than before, but walking was still miserable.

“And where are we going?” she asked.

“Back to Sidonia City. Stolzoff set an all clear message on one of our dummy websites, the palace is safe again.”

“I’ve heard that before. What if something else happens?”

“Then we lay low. I have access to an off-the-books bank account the Guard uses for operations we need to keep quiet. We’ll be fine for a while.”

Cosima laughed. “So we’re like spies, or something? We’ll need a cover story.” Her eyes glinted with mischief, and she rubbed her hands together. “We came to this town for a weekend getaway, far from our boss who disapproves of office romance.”

“I think you’re going a little too far with this,” Remi said, deadpan.

“Not at all. You’re my boyfriend, and I call you…honey. And you call me pumpkin. What do you think, honey?”

“I am not calling you ‘pumpkin.’”

“Oh, has our romance fizzled so quickly?”

“Maybe we should take our chances in the woods for a few more days,” Remi said.

“No! Fine, we’ll be Paul and Cosima. You have no passion, I’m just going to have to appreciate you for your body.” Cosima slapped a hand over her mouth in shock at her words and sped ahead of Remi.

****

The train station overlooked the bay, where small boats fished for squid and crab. Most were robotic, but a few had actual humans moving about their decks. Marquees flitted between different ads for hunting lodges and nature excursions based out of Port Kenyon. A signboard with tube arrival and departure times clicked as it updated.

Cosima sat at a bench, looking up at the board. They could go almost anywhere on Sidonia from here; the tube network stretched to every major city, shuttling personnel and goods through the vacuum tubes with speed and efficiency unmatched by any other form of transport on the planet. The original tube line ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, cutting the travel time between the two cities down to a mere forty-five minutes. The first planet-wide tube system had been built on Mars, where it took two hours to travel from Elon to Hellas Planitia on the opposite side of the red world.

Remi sat down next to her, a white paper bag in his hand with steam rising from within.

“Hungry?” he asked.

She smelled fresh dough and something sweet coming from within the bag. Inside was a small pile of pastries shaped like, and almost the size of, a walnut. She plucked one out and sniffed it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Hodugwaja, walnut cakes. The baker is from old Seoul on Earth, nice lady.” Remi looked at her expectantly.

She popped the pastry into her mouth and bit into it. It had a gooey center mixed with tiny bits of nut.

“Since when are walnuts sweet?” she asked, her fingers over her full mouth as she spoke.

“Red bean paste.” He shook the bag for her to try another.

“Since when are beans sweet?” She took the bag from him.

Remi sat up, ramrod straight. His glance moved from entrance to entrance, scanning every person who came into the train station.

“You need to relax,” she said. “You need to act like my boyfriend, not a pit bull on a short leash. Now put your arm around me.”

Remi did as ordered, his arm stiff as it went over her shoulders.

Cosima squeezed his knee and gave it a little tickle. Remi bit his lip and shook his knee from her grasp. Cosima chuckled evilly.

“You’re enjoying this far too much,” he said.

“Maybe you aren’t enjoying this enough.”

****

Nate Thomas, of the Sidonia Enquirer, lounged against his bench in the train station. He checked his watch again: four hours. Four hours he’d been waiting for the Duke of Swabia to arrive with his mistress for yet another one of his trysts. That the duke kept a number of mistresses around the planet wasn’t much news anymore, but which one he decided to entertain this weekend would move copies.

Another starlet or model from Sidonia City was practically a nonevent. If he got a photo of the duke with the wife of another noble, then Nate could count on a bonus big enough to finally pay off his transit to Sidonia.

His snitch in the duke’s entourage swore Nate could catch him here, he just didn’t know when the duke would arrive.

Nate stretched his arms and checked the arrival board: nothing for another half hour. He smacked his lips and glanced at a young couple sitting on a bench against the wall.

No. It couldn’t be.

He scratched at his temple to activate the camera in his fake eye. He zoomed in and took several pictures of the girl, then ran color filters across her image to cancel out what looked like a reasonable melanin coating. With strawberry-blonde hair and pale skin, it had to be Princess Cosima. He ran the girl’s face through a facial recognition program, matching the distance of her eyes and twelve other points of reference against photos of the future queen. She came back as a 99.999 percent match. It had to be her.

Nate’s mouth went dry as his camera captured her digging into a bag of food, then popping a little cake into the mouth of the man with his arm around her. To hell with the duke, Nate’s bonus for these pics would be enough to buy an island.

He tapped a quick message out to Mickey Papadopoulos. He got a response back almost instantly that read FOLLOW THEM.

An announcement for the next tube to Sidonia City came over the PA system, and the couple stood up. Nate raced to the ticket kiosk.

****

The hyper loop passenger tubes rode atop the cargo line. Cars, each sealed against the vacuum within the tubes, sat several dozen passengers each. Traveling from Port Kenyon to Sidonia City would take less than three hours, short enough that the cars’ only amenities were the restrooms and an overpriced vending machine.

Holo panels served as faux windows, showing the view outside as if they really were windows. The holo panels kept the passengers from getting restless and allowed for stronger, easier to maintain tubes.

Cosima looked out the “window,” watching the coastline blur past as they zipped along. There was an emptiness in the pit of her stomach; the thought of returning to Sidonia City and the palace was anything but comforting.

“Paul, why am I going back?” she asked.

Remi, sitting next to her, kept his attention on the other passengers more than the view. “For your protection,” he said.

“What if I went to the spaceport in Franconia, took a shuttle up to my station? Maybe book passage off world and far away,” she said. “You could even come with me.” She watched his face in the reflection off the holo panel as he considered his answer.

“What would happen to Sidonia if you did that?” he asked.

He said “you,” not “we,” she noted. “Francis would find someone else to marry. Maybe even my sister.”

“Your sister will never be queen, sorry to say.”

Cosima sat up and frowned at him. “And why is that? Francis seems to like her.”

Remi coughed and looked away.

“King’s orders,” he said.

“Elaborate. Now. Or we will have a very loud argument about text messages you’ve been getting from your ex-girlfriend,” she said. When Remi didn’t respond, she raised a finger and took in a deep breath.

Remi grabbed her hand and put it against her armrest.

“Fine. About a year ago, she went to the Hotel Schwartz to…have dinner with Francis.”

“‘Have dinner’? Are you euphemizing?”

Remi tightening his lips into a thin, pale line.

“That slut.” Cosima crossed her arms. “Continue.”

“She acted strangely during her security screening, and one of the Guards found narcotics in her purse. She was arrested and questioned. She claimed the drugs were for her alone, but King Rasczak suspected she would have shared them with Prince Francis.”

“What kind of narcotics? Theresa was always a party girl, but I didn’t know that sort of thing was even on Sidonia.”

“Heroin. A group of smugglers from Pashtunistan on Earth set up poppy fields in the unpopulated mountains around Landsduhl. They charged quite a bit for the drug, which kept the users among Sidonia’s richest, those with enough money to keep things quiet if they were caught. Your sister aided in the investigation, and the Guard dismantled the entire network.

“I was on the raid to burn down the poppy fields. That was a good day,” he said.

“And then what?”

“Your sister agreed to a dopamine reset for treatment and was put on a blacklist on the king’s orders. All the users we tracked down were sent to treatment. Everyone involved in the sale, distribution, and manufacture was hanged.”

“Bit strict, are we?”

“King Rasczak has no mercy on those that profit on the suffering of others. That is why we do not trade with any planet that allows slavery.”

Cosima shook her head and watched as their tube banked into a thick forest.

“That idiot druggie slut. If she hadn’t been such a piece of garbage, she’d be the one marrying Francis right now, wouldn’t she?”

“That’s above my pay grade,” Remi said. “But I think you’ll make a much better queen than she ever would.”

“You really know how to charm a girl, Paul.” She lifted the armrest between them and nuzzled against him. She tapped his arm, and he draped it over her.

“You ever get tired of this Guard thing,” she said, “you could find work as a pillow.” She yawned and closed her eyes.

CHAPTER 11

Spillover South, as the town outside of the walls of Sidonia City was called by the locals, was an industrial area. Most of the workers tended to the spaceport and the loading docks both on the water and for the void. Longshoremen and their families lived in prefabricated homes packed together like cordwood.

Cosima had never seen so many bars, cabarets, and tattoo parlors before, most on streets leading from the army base that sprawled beyond the edge of Spillover.

Remi led her down a sidewalk, the adjacent street a slow-moving chaos of beat-up ground cars and uneven asphalt. Tired-looking men in dirty coveralls stepped into bars, their preferred haunts after a hard day’s work on the docks.

Cosima got a couple looks from dockworkers and a few whistles from across the street.

“Why are they doing that?” she asked. They passed a food stall hocking plates of noodles and warm beer.

“They think you’re pretty,” Remi said.

“Do I need this kind of attention right now?”

Remi held her hand and entwined his fingers with hers. “Now they’ll only whistle if they want to fight me.”

“Great, does the winner get to drag me back to his cave by the hair or something?”

“So you know where we’re going?” Remi asked.

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“Here.” Remi pointed to a bakery. A few sourdough rounds and French loaves still lay in the window. They went inside. The place was plain but for mostly empty baskets and a glass case with a smattering of doughnuts. The baker, an ogreish man with a too-small paper hat on his head and skin that seemed to be impregnated with flour, grunted when he saw them.

“Half off everything, come back in the morning for the fresh stuff,” the baker said.

“Do you have any kaiser rolls?” Remi asked.

“Sold out.”

“Glenn said you might have some in the back.”

“Yeah.” The baker looked Cosima over, his eyes growing wide. “Yeah, maybe I do. Come with me.” The baker lifted a wooden plank and pointed to an oven around the corner. His feet thumped against the bare concrete floor, hard even for a man his size.

Cosima looked at the baker. His legs were mechanical from what she could see beneath his apron, his feet three-toed and clawed like a bird’s.

The baker put his hand atop an oven, and a metallic clink sounded. He grabbed the edge of the oven and pulled it aside, revealing a hole in the ground beneath a false panel. A ladder descended into the darkness.

“Here, Your Highnessness.” The baker pressed a greasy twist of bread covered in cinnamon and sugar into her hands. “My abuela’s recipe.” He smiled, showing several teeth missing.

“Light?” Remi asked. The baker found a flashlight in a toolbox and handed it over. “Thanks. We were never here.”

Remi went down first. His light snapped on and shone on the corrugated metal rungs that made up the ladder.

The baker snatched his hat off his head and held it to his chest as Cosima lowered herself down, struggling to hold on to the ladder and the pastry at the same time.

The oven slid back into place, and Cosima found herself in a concrete passageway barely wide enough for Remi’s shoulders, a tiny yellow beacon far away.

“There are emergency passageways in Spillover North and South leading into the city. If we’re ever attacked, the civilians will use them to get inside the walls and under the dome for shelter. This passageway is off the books, used to get into and out of the palace without notice,” Remi said. “The Guard puts veterans like Raul in charge of the end points, men and women we can trust.”

The passage smelled of mildew and dirt, and the walls felt slick with condensation.

Cosima looked at the pastry in her hand and frowned. “What is this?”

“A churro. Raul really does make the best ones in town.”

Remi took a few steps down the passage. Cosima caught up and grabbed him by the hand.

“Cosima, that’s not necessary.” He tried to pull his hand away, but she wouldn’t let go.

“Please, Paul. I might be…scared, a little,” she said.

Remi relaxed and held her hand tight. “When we get to the palace…we can’t have any more of this.”

“I know.” She reached for his face, but he turned away before she could touch him.

They went down the passage without another word.

****

Smoking jackets and brandy snifters were standard for evening drinks in one of the palace’s many smoking rooms. A quartet of noblemen smoked cigars rolled from tobacco that had just arrived with the trade fleet and was imported from the Cuban plains. The nobles laughed at each other’s jokes as they drank more brandy.

Well-appointed bookshelves held a trove of books bound in true leather and protected by climate-control force fields that kept dust and moisture away from the plastic pages. Each book was a cleverly disguised electronic reader. The pages were designed to look and feel like real paper, but each book contained tens of thousands of works within. All the reader had to do to switch from the ancient poetry of Abyssinia to the latest literary fiction coming out of New York that everyone pretended to read was say the name of the author or topic, and the book’s pages would display the new text.

“So then I said to her, ‘We best ask the other lady if she’d like one too’!” a noble with jet-black muttonchops said. Rancorous laughter filled the room.

“If she’d like one too!” a fat man belted out, bending at the waist as his face turned red from laughing so hard.

The sound of rapid footfalls echoed down the hallway. The door to the library burst open, and a SWAT team of Guardsmen in full armor came into the room, rifles ready.

The nobles put their hands up, the joke teller sneaking a sip of booze and a puff from his cigar.

“I dare say the joke wasn’t that funny,” one of the nobles said.

A bookshelf swung open, and a gust of stale air blew into the room.

“Identify yourself!” a Guardsman yelled.

Remi, his hands up, leaned into the room. “Remi, Paul H., India-Mike-3-7.”

“You have her with you?” the same Guardsman asked.

“I’m here,” Cosima said from behind Remi.

“Stand down.”

The Guardsmen lowered their weapons. The nobles turned around and watched, dumbstruck as Cosima walked past them, waving her hand across her face to avoid the smell of cigar smoke.

“They’ll take you back to your quarters,” Remi said to her. “I have to find Colonel Stolzoff and brief him.”

Cosima couldn’t get out of the smoky room fast enough. She gave Remi a second glance as she followed the armed Guardsmen out of the room.

“Well,” one of the nobles said.

“My word,” said another.

“Drink?” A third poured two fingers of brandy into an empty sifter and offered it to Remi.

Remi raised the glass in a slight salute and took a sip.

****

The Enquirer’s newsroom stood in rapt silence as Mickey Papadopoulos swiped through Nate’s photos on a slate. The staff of twenty had only an inkling of what Nate had brought back, just that he’d caught a royal off the reservation.

Mickey stopped at the photo of Cosima feeding something to the Guardsman who had snagged him at the ball, and at another of her sleeping against the Guardsman’s chest on the tube—all the smiles and laughter between them. The vast majority were of Remi as alert as a hawk, seemingly on the edge of committing violence to anyone who got too close or threatened the princess.

As a newsman, he could paint the story of the two of them on a romantic getaway on the eve of the royal wedding. The photos and just the right innuendo and everyone on Sidonia would think exactly the way he wanted them to think.

Mickey turned the slate over and rubbed a knuckle against his tired eyes. He’d just been released from the Guard’s not-so-tender mercies. He’d given up every single detail they demanded on how he’d snuck into the palace and been told that if it wasn’t for Princess Cosima’s mercy, he’d be in a cell for so long children wouldn’t recognize him by the time he got out. One more violation of his parole and Stolzoff swore he’d carry out the original sentence personally.

God, how he hated that wicked little man.

Nate beamed at him. The photographer had the scoop of a lifetime, and he knew it.

These photos of Cosima and that meathead weren’t protected by the intrinsic right to privacy encoded in Sidonian law. All the pics were taken of the two of them in public. Mickey could put these photos out with the morning edition and laugh his way to the bank, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing Stolzoff could do to him.

Mickey rubbed his thumb against his fingers, remembering just how close he’d come to losing them on that anvil in the stables. She’d put her hand on top of his to save him. Mickey knew he was many things: a newsman, a snoop, a rat. But deep down he wanted to believe he was a good person at heart.

“Go home, everyone.” Mickey waved his employees out as Nate’s jaw just about hit the floor.

“Mickey, are you OK? I’ve—”

“Shut up, kid. I’ll talk to you in a second,” Mickey said in a hushed voice. He waited for the last grumbling newsie to file out, then he flipped the slate back over.

“You gave me every photo in your fake eye?” Mickey asked. “No copies anywhere?”

“Yeah, boss, it’s your equipment, you’ve got the access codes,” Nate said. “No backups, I know the rules.”

Mickey went through the photos and started deleting most he came across.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nate grabbed at the slate and got a knock across the wrist for the attempt.

“You know where she’s been, Nate? Seems there was another attempt on her life the other day. Some Guard was a cyberman and turned on her. You hear about the war bot they found burnt out up in the Pathfinder training area, you think that’s a coincidence? Now Cosima finally makes it back to the city and you want me to—what? Make it look like she and Knuckles are an item?” Mickey tossed a few choice photos against a wall screen. Nate looked at the photos and saw a different story play out.

“We’ll still make a fortune on these photos, Nate. We won’t make as much, but at least I can sleep better at night with the story we got,” Mickey said.

“Well, guess the new queen will owe you a favor, won’t she?”

“No, Nate, I’ll still owe her.”

****

Calling Charlie’s Bar a dive was a stretch of the imagination. The tables had a sheen of spilled beer, and the dark room smelled of body odor and grease. The clientele were a mix of off-duty soldiers and firefighters—easy to spot with their short haircuts and healthy physiques—old drunks who didn’t care to be home with their wives, and Guardsmen. Charlie’s was one place the Guard was sure to never come across the nobles or royals they interacted with on official business.

Remi set a basket of hushpuppies—fried cornmeal with two tiny pots of spicy mayo dipping sauce—in front of Stolzoff at their table in a dingy corner of the bar. Stolzoff looked uncomfortable in civilian clothes, his grip on his beer so tight Remi wondered if it might crack under the pressure.

“Thought you said we needed to go out and relax,” Remi said.

“Dumb idea. I’m not sure why I let you talk me into it,” Stolzoff said.

“Sir, you were the one who—”

“Semantics. Shut up and drink your beer. Have fun, that’s an order.” Stolzoff scowled at the basket, grease from the hushpuppies already soaking through the paper lining. Rumor was that the robot cook in the back room had a short and could only cook fried food, but that paired well with low-quality beer, and the eponymous Charlie was too cheap to have it fixed.

Remi nursed his drink, in no particular hurry to follow orders.

“Grounds control detected the attack on the way station. The war bot self-destructed the instant the military police got there. Didn’t find anything but ash and shell casings around your little hideaway. No forensics hits,” Stolzoff said. He chomped down on a hushpuppy and nodded in approval.

“Any idea where it came from? Or how it found us?”

“Sky Guard traced it back to a piece of space junk that’s been in orbit for months. Wasn’t a threat to navigation, so it never got a second look. I’ve got those lazy bastards looking at everything zipping through the sky that’s bigger than my fist now. As for how, the implant we found on the fiber lines did a query of active way stations. Yours must have stuck out.” He finished his beer and slammed the bottom against the table. “These guys, whoever they are, are good. They know our playbook.”

“Anything on the cyberman’s body?”

“No, and we haven’t found a trace of the real Carter, and I doubt we ever will.” Stolzoff cursed under his breath.

The bartender changed the channel on the vid screen over the bar away from a fencing match to a news channel. The woman announcer’s face was so perfect that it had to be bio sculpted. She hadn’t seemed to have aged a day in the forty years she’d held the anchor’s chair, removing all doubt that she’d had work done.

“Good evening, and welcome to Sidonia Tonight! I’m Vanessa Blanco, and have I got a story for you tonight,” Blanco said through pearlescent teeth and lips plumped to within a nanometer of ideal plumpness.

“Not this crap,” Stolzoff said.

Remi shook his head and took a swig of his beer.

“Looks like Princess Cosima took time for a little excursion before the big wedding day,” Blanco said.

Remi spat his beer out over the hushpuppies.

The screen showed Cosima at the Port Kenyon train station, her melanin disguise scrubbed from the photo.

“These exclusive photos, courtesy of the Enquirer, show the future queen at the seaside resort town of Port Kenyon. Was she there for the hiking, the fishing, or the four-star restaurant known for its use of live chefs and the freshest crab cakes north of the capital?” Blanco’s voice-over continued. “But we sure do know what she does like.”

“Oh no,” Remi said.

The picture flashed to Cosima holding the bag of walnut cakes, then her eating one. The picture zoomed in, and an information panel on hodugwaja popped up next to the finger food.

The screen flashed to show Remi taking away the empty bag, then another picture of him returning with another sack of walnut cakes.

The bartender’s head twisted on a swivel and he stared right at Remi, shock on his face. Remi put a finger over his lips.

“Then,” Blanco’s voice said, “Princess Cosima took a bullet tube back to the capital. Was she out to see how the regular Sidonian lives? We haven’t seen a royal on public transportation since Philip II commissioned the lines decades ago.”

“It’s Papadopoulos,” Stolzoff said. “I’m going to rip his fingers off one by one for this.”

“Wait,” Remi said. The pictures of Cosima were of her sitting on the train, speaking with Remi, chatting with another passenger. None were of her sleeping against his chest, none of the kind looks she’d given him. He was in a few photos, all of them showing him alert and on guard. “I think he did her a favor.”

“And what does that mean?” Stolzoff asked.

Remi scratched the label of his beer off with a fingernail. “I’ll tell you back at the palace.”

“Then we should go now.”

“Hey! Look at that guy with her,” a drunk at the bar slurred. “What you want to bet he got in there before Francis had the chance?” He and a pair of his buddies had a laugh at the crude joke.

“Why don’t you ask him? He’s right behind you,” one of the drunk’s friends said as Remi and Stolzoff walked behind them.

“Hey, buddy, is it true what they say about spacer girls?” the drunk asked, a chubby lout with greasy hair that fell over his face. Remi kept walking.

“I asked you a question!” the drunk grabbed Remi by the arm and jerked him toward the bar.

Remi looked at him, his face set in stone.

“I hear spacer girls are as frigid as—”

Remi grabbed the drunk’s arm and shoulder, and slammed his face into the bar. The drunk, unconscious, slithered down the scuffed bar and came to rest on the foot rail. A pair of teeth were embedded in the bar in a smear of blood and spit.

The drunk’s friends weren’t laughing anymore, and neither seemed in a hurry to jump to his aid.

Remi, his fists clenched, nudged the drunk with his foot.

Someone cleared their throat behind him. Remi looked over his shoulder and saw a pair of police officers, their faces flush from a few post shift drinks.

“We heard what he said,” the first officer said. “Shame he tripped like that.”

“You really need to keep the floor clean, Charlie,” said the second. “Would be a real shame if someone else tripped,” he said to the drunk’s friends, who nodded furiously in agreement with the police officers’ version of events.

“We’ll take care of him,” the first officer said to Stolzoff. “Nobody insults my queen.”

Stolzoff grabbed Remi and pulled him out of the bar.

“Damn it, Paul, what have you done?”

****

Cosima came out of the shower wrapped in a bathrobe and flopped face-first onto her bed. She buried her nose in the comforter, thankful for the smell of something clean and fresh. The memory foam mattress adjusted itself to optimal comfort for her, and she was sure she could have slept for the next week.

“Then I told the florist that if she put those ugly violets anywhere on the gift table, I’d have her shipped to Al-Sham and sold to the highest bidder,” Theresa said.

Cosima groaned and rolled onto her back. “You did not say that to the florist.”

“No, there were a few four-letter words sprinkled in there. Violets with marigolds, Cosima! I almost lost my lunch.” Her sister swiped polish against her toenails and wiggled them in the air.

“Sounds rough; how did you ever survive?”

“Alcohol, can’t beat it at the end of the day. Or the middle of the day. Or after a rough morning. You want some tequila? Don Russell sent over a case for the wedding. His stuff is so good. I can have a bottle sent up,” Theresa said.

“I have some in the dresser, I think.” Cosima pointed to her nightstand, still too comfortable to sit up.

She heard Theresa rustle through the drawer and give a squeal of delight.

“There.” Theresa took a sip from the glass flask and scrunched her face as the alcohol burned its way down her throat. “I went to the baker’s. You wouldn’t believe the monster they’re making for you. I had to stand in for you for the cake topper. They’re casting you and Francis in porcelain and selling off replicas for charity, isn’t that just darling? I also took a few pics with Francis. That’s me on your wedding invitation.”

“Wait. How did you stand in for me?”

“Your skin caster, the one you had in your earing box. Stolzoff suggested it. We’re about the same height and no one seemed to notice—except Francis. That was awkward.” Theresa took another swig of tequila.

Cosima waited to see if she’d take the opportunity and mention her previous relationship with her future husband…nothing.

“Do you want to wear the skin caster for the rest of your life? You can marry Francis, fine by me,” Cosima said.

“Why? So you and that hunky bodyguard can run off together?” Theresa jumped on the bed, careful not to spill any tequila. “So, how was he?”

Cosima bolted upright and backed away from her sister.

“Theresa! Just because I was alone with him for a while doesn’t mean we…did anything,” she said.

“That’s not a denial.” Theresa’s eyebrows jiggled.

“We didn’t—no! What is with you?”

“Why not? He’s adorable, besides no one cares what you do before you’re married. You’re not even legally married until you and Francis do the deed, still have to consummate the marriage…wait.” Theresa swirled the half-empty bottle of liquor and narrowed her eyes at Cosima. “Are you a virgin?”

“Of course I am.” Cosima’s words came out stilted. She looked away from her sister and rubbed her hands together in her lap.

“Oh. My. God. Francis is either going to be in for a real surprise or a terrible disappointment.”

“You are such a slut, Theresa. What’s wrong with waiting for marriage? Saving myself for my husband is very honorable,” Cosima said.

“You’ve never even dated a guy before you got engaged,” Theresa said matter-of-factly.

“Also yes.”

“Cosima! You could march right down to beefcake’s quarters, and I guarantee you he’d be up for it. Go.” She pointed at the door.

“Paul wouldn’t do that. He’s actually honorable, trustworthy.”

“Nonsense, men are pigs, all of them. There’s not one man on Sidonia that wouldn’t like some quality time with a princess.” Theresa threw on a pair of pants and a jacket, then grabbed the skin-caster disk from the vanity. “I’ll prove it to you. I’ll go down to him, get him riled up, then you can go back after you’ve ‘changed your mind’ a second time. Get some practice in before Francis.” She tapped the skin caster against the back of her neck, and Theresa morphed into Cosima. Theresa/Cosima gave her a sultry look and ran for the door.

“Don’t you dare! Get back here!” Cosima struggled to get off the bed, but Theresa had made it out the door with a laugh long before Cosima could catch up with her.

Cosima opened her door, and a Guardsman nodded to her. “My lady,” he said.

“Did you just see me leave the room?” she asked.

“Your sister just left, my lady. Do you need to go somewhere?”

“No.” Cosima slid the door closed. She put her back to the wall and slid to the floor. Her sister was about to do something brash, and Cosima wasn’t sure if she wanted the scheme to fail miserably or work itself out.

****

A door chime buzzed through Remi’s small quarters. It buzzed again and he jerked awake. He shook sleep from his head and glanced at a clock next to his bed. He wasn’t due for a shift for hours, why was anyone bothering him?

His back and legs stiff after hiking through the hills, he tottered to his door, another buzz ringing through the one-person room.

“Coming, by the king I’m coming,” he said. He slapped the lock panel, and the door slid open. Theresa stood in his doorway, smiling at him through her sister’s visage.

“Hello, Paul,” she said in a low voice.

“Cosima.” Remi stuck his head into the hallway and looked around. “Where is your escort? How did you get down here alone?”

“Business later.” She pushed him back into the room and locked the door behind her.

Remi looked at her, confusion written across his face.

“Now, Mr. Remi, I’ve come to thank you properly for saving my life.” Theresa unbuttoned her jacket, revealing cleavage and bare skin down to her stomach. She stepped closer to him and shrugged her top off.

Remi tried to protest, and Theresa put a finger over his lips. “Shh, no time for talking.”

Remi reached up and put a hand on her neck. “You’re not wearing your shield,” he said. His hand swept behind her neck and tugged the skin caster away.

Theresa got a whiff of ozone as the disguise vanished, and she forced a nervous laugh. Remi kept his eyes locked on her face.

“Would you settle for little old me instead?” She giggled.

“Please leave. And don’t masquerade as your sister ever again, it puts you in danger.” Remi pressed the skin caster back into the palm of her hand.

Therese scooped up her jacket and got dressed quickly. “I could send her down here…”

“Please leave.”

Theresa gave Remi a once-over and winked at him before she left.

****

Cosima sat against her headboard, knees pulled against her chest. Her gaze varied between a slate in her hand and the door, her focus on neither.

Her door slid open and Theresa barged into the room, muttering furiously.

“That was fast,” Cosima said.

“He saw right through the skin caster.” She tossed the disk on the vanity and stood in front of a full-length mirror, twisting to examine herself. “Wasn’t even interested in me when I was right in front of him ready and willing.”

“So he didn’t—I mean, at all? You?” Cosima crawled to the edge of the bed, a smile across her face.

“I don’t know what you just said, but no. He told me to leave before I could even get my pants off.” Theresa leaned closer to the mirror and pulled the skin around her eyes taut, checking for wrinkles. “Am I losing my looks?”

“You’re twenty-three,” Cosima said. “Why are you so upset?”

“I’ve never had a man turn me down before,” Theresa said, fuming. “Rich men, powerful men, a couple of married men, all it took was the right look and maybe a little wiggle and I had them.”

Cosima laughed and pointed at her sister. “At this rate, father will have to marry you off to some goat herder.”

“Oh you shut up.” Theresa looked down at her backside and frowned. “I can score at least a billionaire’s son.”

Cosima fell back on her bed, elated. That Remi had turned away her sister filled her with a joy she couldn’t explain. She stared at the ceiling, happier than she’d been in years.

“Well, at least you can swear to a virgin-white dress tomorrow at your fitting,” Theresa said.

Cosima rolled over and looked at her sister in confusion. “Tomorrow? I thought that wasn’t on the calendar for another three days.”

“Well the wedding was moved up, it’s in two days, and you sort of need a dress. I guess I forgot to tell you.”

“What? I don’t turn eighteen for another month.” Cosima felt a wave of anxiety clutch her heart. She started breathing quick and shallow breaths, and her face flushed red.

“Um, by the way, while you were on your little vacation with Remi, Francis and Vincent decided to have the wedding sooner rather than later. On account of people constantly trying to kill you, something like that.” Theresa stopped preening and watched as Cosima suffered on the edge of hyperventilating.

“Don’t…want…to get…married,” she said between gasps.

“Cossie, my poor little mouse.” Theresa picked up the flask of tequila and sat beside her. “It won’t be so bad. Francis is an OK guy, I promise. Here, take a sip, alcohol makes everything better. And worse. But right now I think it’ll be better.”

Cosima put the flask to her lips and upended the bottle. Her eyes went as wide as saucers, and she spat the tequila out and coughed furiously.

“Cosima, that’s alcohol abuse,” Theresa said as she plucked the flask from Cosima’s hand.

“That was horrible!”

“The more you drink the better it tastes.” Theresa tried to pass the flask back to Cosima, who shoved it away. “Maybe you shouldn’t turn to booze when you have a problem, that’ll open a whole can of worms.” She looked at the worm at the bottom of the flask and took a swig.

“I want to go home,” Cosima said.

“Just get through the next two days, Cossie,” Theresa said. “It’ll get better.”

Cosima fell on her side and pulled a pillow over her head.

CHAPTER 12

The dress-fitting was held in an emptied-out dining room on the eastern side of the palace. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors let the morning sun bathe the room in golden rays. Doing the fitting so early in the morning was essential, according to the seamstresses, as they wanted to see the dress on Cosima in the exact same light as when she’d wear the dress on the wedding day.

The seamstresses, two rotund women who spoke to each other in Italian, tapped at Cosima with measurement wands, the dress shifting and tightening in response.

Cosima looked down at the wedding dress, the pure white of driven snow, a collar covering her body-shield choker and extending into a geometric pattern from the base of her neck over the top of her chest and down to the small of her back. A different scant pattern covered her arms, and the train and bustle were silk, embossed with pearls and diamonds that sparkled in the morning light.

Lana and Theresa stood against the wall, stuck there after several admonishments from the seamstresses for getting in the way of their light. Lana dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Theresa kept her nose buried in her slate and made threatening phone calls to a list of artists, suppliers, and contractors involved in the wedding.

“Your chest, a little smaller than we’d thought,” a seamstress said. She tapped her wand against the side of Cosima’s bust, and the dress lifted and squeezed in response.

“Too tight, too tight,” Cosima said.

“But you look like you finally have a pair, Cossie dear,” Theresa said.

“Can’t…breathe,” Cosima said between breaths.

The seamstress muttered and tapped again. The pressure lessened instantly.

“The dress does fit very well. Will this take much longer?” Cosima asked.

The seamstresses shook their heads and chided her in Italian.

“We make dress from your body scan, but that still no good for the real thing. Must be perfetto,” one said.

“You will be the most bella bride in all of Sidonia,” said the other.

Cosima sighed and did her best mannequin impression while the two women continued their work.

“Prince Francis, he a lucky man, no?”

“I suppose,” Cosima said. Francis had sent her a few e-mails once she’d returned to the palace, inquiring about her good health and asking her up to his quarters for drinks. She hadn’t responded.

“Lana,” Cosima said, “how involved was Prince Francis in searching for me after the attack at the Guard office?”

Lana glanced at Major Volenz, Cosima’s Guard escort for the morning.

“The prince was sent to a secure location within the palace following the incident,” Major Volenz said. “He received regular updates, but wasn’t an active part of the search.”

“And why was that?”

“He delegated that to Prince Vincent.”

Anger rose in Cosima’s heart. “And why,” she said through gritted teeth, “would he delegate that?”

“With all due respect to Prince Francis,” the major said, “he has the tactical and strategic acumen of a potato. He would have done more harm than good if he’d involved himself in the search.”

“What of the king? How did he take the news?” Cosima asked.

“King Rasczak remains indisposed. The doctors can wake him for the wedding and the abdication ceremony, but his health is too fragile to risk otherwise.”

Cosima held her arms parallel to her shoulders on the seamstress’s prompting and listened as the two women got into a heated argument over whether or not to lengthen her sleeves by a half inch.

“Major, how long has the king been so ill that he can’t make decisions as head of state?” Cosima asked.

“Almost two years,” she said.

Cosima did math in her head, and a key aspect to her selection as the next queen didn’t add up.

Cosima’s shoulders started to quiver from being held out for so long, and a seamstress pushed them down with her fingertips. The argument between them ended with the sleeves a tiny bit longer.

Major Volenz’s gauntlet beeped, and the woman shook her head.

“Something’s come up that requires my attention, my lady,” the major said. “Excuse me.” She bowed slightly and stepped out of the room.

Remi came in to take her place. He froze midstep, his eyes wide and jaw loose as he stared at Cosima.

Cosima’s heart skipped a beat when she caught a glimpse of Remi in a mirror.

Theresa blushed and tried to hide her face behind her slate.

“It’s good now, yes?” a seamstress said. The two backed away and admired their handiwork.

“Lana? Theresa?” Cosima asked.

“Amazing,” Lana said.

“Yeah, good,” Theresa said.

Cosima turned around on the step stool and looked at Remi.

“Paul?” she asked in a quiet voice.

Remi seemed to fight for the right words. “You’re beautiful, my lady.”

Cosima saw herself in a full-length mirror, saw herself in a wedding dress she’d wear for a man she didn’t love. A man who hardly seemed to care for her.

She choked back a sob and waved a hand at Remi. “Out. I have to change.”

****

Prince Vincent spun a holo of the planned star gate around on his desk and pulled up the specs on the monumental project. The three Chaebol executives, all in identical deep blue suits and matching haircuts, sat on the other side of his desk.

“And this will accommodate the Leviathan-class bulk carriers? The circumference on the quantum regulator ring doesn’t have much room for error,” Vincent said.

“Our engineering is precise, Prince Vincent,” Kim said. At least, Vincent thought it was Kim. The three answered questions interchangeably no matter what name or which person he addressed.

“You’re projecting one point two billion colonists within the first year,” Vincent said. “Have you ever handled a settlement like this before?”

“What is your concern?” Park, probably Park, asked.

Vincent saw the three stiffen slightly, impressive for the trio that would normally give ramrods inspiration. He’d framed his question poorly; they must have taken it as a question of Chaebol’s competence.

“Sidonia was settled by a few hundred thousand people, and the logistics of such an endeavor were very complicated for our forbearers. That Chaebol Corp. can handle the settlement of orders of magnitude greater is very impressive.”

The three nodded in unison, which sent a chill down Vincent’s spine.

“It has been more than five hundred standard years since Sidonia was colonized, and we’ve made many advancements since then. We already have applications from over five hundred billion people across human space to settle the worlds of Gaia. The price people will pay for a new start is most lucrative for our efforts,” Lee, the one on Vincent’s right, said.

“Very well. I will remind you of our agreement. The construction of orbital defenses and the transfer of the battle cruisers to our navy and the training of crews for those ships should be done before the star gate is built,” Vincent said.

“Prince Vincent, you have Chaebol’s security guarantee. Why not use Chaebol crews for your new navy so we can begin construction sooner?” one of the three, Vincent didn’t bother to keep them straight anymore, asked.

“Contractual obligations are never as strong as the desire to defend one’s home,” Vincent said.

“The defenses are already under construction and the cruisers are on their way. But nothing will be delivered until the treaty is signed.”

“Yes, naturally. You received the amended invitations I trust? The abdication will proceed immediately after the wedding,” Vincent said.

Someone knocked against the door to his office, loudly and in full defiance of the do-not-disturb instructions he gave to his secretary.

The gisaeng droids standing against the wall turned their heads to the noise. Clicks sounded from beneath the sleeves of their hanbok robes as weapons readied themselves.

“Is there a problem?” the one on the left asked.

Vincent glanced at a screen on his desk and saw who was knocking on the door. This day wasn’t going to get any easier for him. “Gentlemen, if there’s nothing else to discuss, perhaps you’ll join me for lunch in the spire?” He stood up.

The three executives also stood and shook his hand before leaving.

Vincent keyed the door to open, and it slid aside, cutting off Cosima’s next round of knocks.

“Cosima, please come in. You remember the Chaebol executives, Misters Kim, Park, and Lee. They were just about to leave. Why don’t you take a seat so we can discuss matters?” He gestured to an empty seat with his mechanical hand, hoping she’d take the hint and not say anything that might damage the relationship with the executives.

Cosima nodded politely to the three men as they left, and shied away from their escorts. The door closed behind them, and Cosima stood in the middle of the office, her arms crossed.

“They are a bit unnerving, aren’t they?” Vincent said.

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

He sighed inwardly. This would be a long day.

“Would you care to sit down?” He gestured to an empty chair again.

“Cancel the wedding,” she said.

Vincent sat down and rubbed his true hand against his face.

“Now why would I do that, and what makes you think I even have the authority to do so?”

Cosima advanced, brandishing a finger at him. “The king has been in his stasis tube for months. Their demand that someone from my House marry your useless brother came when the king wasn’t even conscious. You were the one who chose me, weren’t you?”

Vincent rapped the fingers of his true hand against the top of his desk. “That’s correct.”

“Then cancel the wedding, marry my sister off to Francis,” she said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why? I certainly don’t love your brother.”

“Irrelevant.”

“I,” she raised her nose slightly, “I haven’t been chaste since the engagement.”

“Irrelevant, and untrue.”

“How do you know that?”

Vincent shook his head slightly. “What do I do for a living? And I debriefed Remi personally when you both returned. There is no man on Sidonia more loyal than him. I didn’t even have to ask if there was a physical relationship between you two.”

Cosima’s head and shoulders drooped. She finally sat down and buried her face in her hands.

“It’s not fair to you,” Vincent said. “But your sister is an impossible choice.”

“So what if she did drugs? She went to treatment, she’s clean now, right? Pick her instead.”

“There is more to your sister than narcotic use.” Vincent tapped at a slate, and Theresa’s security profile came up. “When she was in custody, the psychoanalysts uncovered some…conditioning. Someone planted an impulse for her to harm Francis.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“It isn’t a very effective technique, which is why we rarely screen for it. The impulse is general. Theresa manifested the impulse when she tried to bring what she thought was heroin to Francis. We aren’t sure if she’d have tried to force the drug on him or simply encouraged him to use it. Knowing my brother’s appetites, I’m sure he would have given it a try.

“But it wasn’t heroin. It was a rather interesting poison the likes of which I’d never seen before.”

“Who did that to her?”

“We never did track down her handler. I thought it would be one of those involved in the heroin traffic, but none of them admitted to it after I’d broken them in interrogation. We removed the impulse as best we could, but your sister can never be trusted around Francis. I’m sorry.”

Cosima looked at the holo of the star gate hovering over his desk and slapped the slate against the wall.

“What is so damn important about this treaty, this business deal, that my entire life has to be ruined for it? Aren’t we rich enough without-without toll fees?”

Vincent took a manila envelope from his desk and hesitated before handing it over to Cosima.

“This isn’t just about toll fees, Cosima. This is about the survival of our people and our way of life. The Gaia system is worth more in colonization and potential alien tech than our planet and all the Stahlium several times over. Sidonia is a very small fish swimming among sharks in these matters. Please, open the envelope.”

Cosima ran a fingernail along the security tape on the envelope and pulled out a photograph. Several star cruisers and smaller vessels, all armed with mass driver cannons and rail guns, floated over an ocean world.

“What is this?”

“The last communication I received from my team of spies on Odessa, an Aquitaine world a few months from Sidonia. That fleet holds enough mercenaries and war bots, and has enough firepower to turn this city to dust. I couldn’t stop it if I put a pulser rifle in the hands of every man, woman, and child on the planet, and the fleet is heading this way,” Vincent said.

Cosima held the picture in trembling hands. “What’re we going to do?”

“You’re going to get married, and we will have a mutual defense treaty with Chaebol. Without that treaty, Aquitaine will conquer our home and build their own star gate to Gaia.”

“The Alliance of Worlds would never stand for it. We’re a sovereign system, recognized as such before the parliament. Aquitaine can’t just invade us and get away with it,” she said.

Vincent took the picture away from her.

“Aquitaine controls much of the debt, and thereby the economy, of many worlds in the Alliance. Aquitaine would delay and stymie any investigation into an attack on Sidonia, and the worst thing the Alliance would do would be to slap them on the wrists with a fine for a sovereignty violation. Not really an expense, as Aquitaine prints the currency the Alliance uses for their business transactions.

“What Aquitaine can’t afford is a trade war with Chaebol. They drive a hard bargain on New Chosun, but they’ll honor their agreements. Once the treaty is signed, attacking Sidonia will be a losing financial position, Chaebol would swoop in and seize dozens of their worlds. The juice, so to speak, wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.”

“You think that photo is reliable? Maybe Chaebol planted it so we’d rush into a treaty with them,” she said.

Vincent tucked the photo back into the envelope. “My team on Odessa was compromised. Every agent is either dead or in the process of being tortured to death. I can’t acknowledge their loss publicly, not yet. Such is the nature of spy work.”

“So if I sacrifice my future, I’ll save the planet,” Cosima said.

Vincent dropped his metal arm against the desktop, the clang startling Cosima. “We all must sacrifice for the greater good. Some more than others.”

Cosima, defeat written across her face, nodded and stood up to leave.

“Paul asked me for a transfer. Off world, someplace where he could pursue a professional fencing career,” Vincent said. “I convinced him to stay on until the treaty is signed. After that I fear we may lose him.”

Cosima, her back to Vincent, wiped away a tear.

“Why are you telling me this? To rub it in?” she asked.

“No, I think you could convince him to stay. It’s hard to see a friend suffer.”

“But not me?” She turned and slammed her hands on his desk. “Look at me, Vincent, do I seem happy to you?”

“No. This isn’t fair to you. I will put the safety and security of this planet above your feelings and desires, and I do not regret it. These are the hard decisions adults and leaders have to make, Cosima. When you’re queen, you’ll be responsible for much more than just yourself.”

“You are a monster, you know that?”

“Sidonia is better served by a cold heart than a bleeding one. Now, will there be anything else?” Vincent squeezed the slate in his mechanical hand so hard that it shattered into pieces. The servos whined as his hand malfunctioned, curling in against the arm.

“Do you need—”

“Get out!”

Cosima backed away and left.

****

The view from the battlements was breathtaking, Cosima had to admit. The crenellated walls offered no real defense and were lined with benches so those strolling along the walls could appreciate the vista from leisure.

Cosima sat on a padded bench, looking over the city and counting the air cars that passed in the distance.

Remi stood behind her, as silent and motionless as a statue.

Cosima looked at Remi and patted the spot next to her.

“My lady, I don’t think that’s wise,” he said.

“Shut up and sit down, Paul. I don’t care who sees us.”

Remi complied, sitting several inches away.

“If I don’t get married to Francis, all this will get turned to rubble.” She waved at the city below. “One hell of a deal, isn’t it?”

“Could be worse, could’ve been Quinn,” Remi said.

“Marry the drunken sure-to-be-philanderer over the psychopath? What a lucky girl I am,” she said. She put a hand on Remi’s. “You’re going to leave me?”

Remi pulled his hand away. “I’m almost too old to compete anymore, best to take a career shot before age and injury take the chance away.” He didn’t look at her when he answered.

Cosima could sense the falsehood behind his words. “Tell me the truth, Paul.”

“I can find a sponsor on a trade world. I might even make the quals for the games back on Earth if I’m on a transport soon after the wedding,” he said, looking away from her.

“Don’t you care about me? You’ll leave me to be protected by amateurs?”

Remi finally looked at her, his face clouded with emotion.

“You’ll be well taken care of. Stolzoff and Volenz are just as good, if not better, than I am.”

“You’re the only one I trust. You think the threats will stop once I’m married off and we have a treaty with Chaebol? I…need you, Paul. Here. Stay with me please.” She moved next to him and put her head against his shoulder, the chain mail creaking against the pressure.

Remi leaned his head against hers for just a second. “I can’t. You’ll be queen. I don’t think you can do your duties with me here, and I can’t do mine fully around you.”

“Are you leaving because of my feelings for you or your feelings for me?”

“Yes.” He pulled away from her.

“Paul, you’re the only one I know who cares about me. To everyone else, I’m just some object to be bartered away.”

Remi knelt in front of her and put her hand on the Sidonian crest on his awards sash. “This is who I am. I swore to defend this with my life. I, my presence, compromises you, it weakens the kingdom. Staying is just as dangerous as dismantling the shield over this city. I swore to defend and protect Sidonia. If that means I have to leave, then I will leave.”

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “If I have to die, then my life for yours.”

Cosima ran her fingertips down the side of his face. “Paul, I—”

“We should go.” Remi stood up. “No doubt there are a million details that need your attention before the wedding.”

Cosima crossed her arms and looked away.

“Cosima, what’s at stake?” Remi asked.

She looked up, past the dais atop the convergence to the faint outline of Styria Station transiting across the sky.

“Everything, I guess,” she said.

“Be brave, do it for me, for everyone.”

Her hands fell to the bench. “How can I be so important and so useless at the same time? I’ll get up, but you have to pay me.”

“Pay you?”

Cosima turned a cheek to him and tapped it.

“My lady…”

“Either a peck on the cheek or I go kicking and screaming down the aisle. Choose quickly. Choose wisely.”

Remi glanced around, and seeing no else, he leaned toward her.

Cosima turned her face and got the kiss on her lips. Remi let the kiss last for a moment, then pulled back.

“We shouldn’t,” he said.

She held out a hand, and Remi helped her to her feet. She gave his hand a squeeze and they left the battlements.

CHAPTER 13

On the day of the wedding, the biggest nightmare for the King’s Guard wasn’t securing the grounds but dealing with every noble and merchantman who felt they were above something as pedestrian as a security inspection.

If Guardsman Voss heard, “Don’t you know who I am?” again, he’d mark the offender for a less-than-gentle body pat down. He knew he’d end up transferred to a trade mission on the far end of space on a planet that exported bat guano for offending some noble, but the look on their face would probably keep him content for years.

“Next,” Voss said to man patiently waiting behind the yellow line. The man, in his late thirties and powerfully built, smiled at Voss and offered up his identification without prompting or protest.

The man’s passport bore a planetary seal Voss had never seen before. It scanned as legitimate, and Voss frowned as he read over the visas and planet-fall entries within.

“Mr. Gregory Matusevich…from New Prussia? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from there before,” Voss said.

“Small world, known more for its academies than its exports,” Matusevich said, his Standard perfect and without accent.

“Invitation please,” Voss said.

Matusevich passed him the gold inlaid invitation, a 3-D image of Cosima and Francis embossed beneath the calligraphy. The other side bore Matusevich’s photo and a serial number for the invitation.

“Place your palm on the sensor and look at the camera for identification and scan,” Voss said. A line of blue light ran up and down the guest, a smile on his face.

Matusevich’s DNA matched the invitation…and a red flag popped up on Voss’s slate.

“Sir, you have a scaffolding prosthetic over your face,” Voss said. His thumb crept toward an alert button on his slate.

“Had an accident a few months back. Deckhand didn’t secure a load of graphene capacitors correctly. I should have jumped out of the way instead of looking up when I heard the warning,” Matusevich said.

“Sounds painful,” Voss said.

“The miracles of modern medicine. Just have to stay out of bar fights for the next few months.”

“What brings you to Sidonia?” Voss asked. He’d been in the Guard for a few years, and something about this merchantman bothered him.

“Transporting machine parts for the Chaebol jump gate. They hired every square meter of cargo space within five light years of New Chosun to get this project going. For the price they were offering, I would be a fool not to take the job.” Matusevich’s gray eyes didn’t waver from Voss as he spoke.

“Your invitation…you won it from the charity auction?” Voss asked. The price Matusevich paid was part of the security readout. He’d paid more for the privilege to attend the wedding than Voss would ever earn in his lifetime.

“Royal weddings are so rare across settled space. Who knows when I’d ever get the chance to see one again?” He smiled like a cat that had just found its way into a birdcage.

“I say! What is taking so long up there,” came from the line behind Matusevich.

Voss passed the invitation and the passport back to the merchant captain.

“Sorry for the hold up. The security situation demands it,” Voss said.

“No problem, can’t be too careful, what with recent events.”

“Your complimentary gift bag will be waiting for you on your way out. Please remain in the marked areas of the palace and follow all instructions from security personnel,” Voss said, reciting the parting litany.

Matusevich nodded and walked into the foyer.

“All too easy,” he muttered.

He plucked a flute of champagne from a passing servant and made his way to the portrait room, no directions needed.

In the portrait gallery, a crowd of guests was bunched up next to a holo mural, the finished piece titled Charge on First Expedition. Matusevich chuckled as he walked across the mural, seeing so many soldiers at battle, Prince Quinn leading the charge. Wilson stood on a small platform and answered questions of how he’d managed to create such an amazing depiction.

Matusevich shook his head at the lie immortalized by Wilson’s talent and dedication.

“Do you enjoy revisionist history?” he asked a man with a gray beard so thick it was nearly indistinguishable from the hair around his head.

“I’m sorry, what?” the man said, his accent placing him from the world of Deseret.

“This isn’t true at all. Prince Quinn was arrested by his own general, charged with treason. Now how could the head of state ever be charged with treason?” Matusevich asked.

The man shrugged. “I just think it looks nice.”

“No appreciation for art.” Matusevich moved down the gallery and stopped at the portrait of Prince Quinn, still adorned in mourning black. He sat on a bench across from the painting and finished his champagne, then set the glass on his knee and let it fall to the ground. It clinked and rolled beneath the bench.

Matusevich bent over and reached down to pick up the crystal flute. His hand missed, then reached up to touch the bottom of the bench. He ran his fingers along the bench, and his fingertips grazed something attached to it.

He slipped it between his fingers and picked up the glass. A scratch against his lapel and the body shield, disguised as a diplomatic seal from New Prussia, joined his outfit. He could never have smuggled the device through security. Having a man on the inside was very useful to his plans.

Matusevich gave the shield a slight twist, and a whine filled his ears.

“Mr. Glint.”

“Here,” said Glint’s voice, badly modulated. He must have been cloaked. “I’m ready. Are you in place?”

“I am, but let me enjoy myself a bit more. Wait for my signal after the ceremony, then we’ll burn this to the ground,” Matusevich said quietly.

There were two clicks, and Glint cut the transmission.

Matusevich shook his head at Quinn’s portrait. The eyes weren’t right. He found it so odd that the king would go to such great lengths to eulogize his son, the same son he’d “found wanting” in his fitness to be the next king.

Matusevich scratched at his neck. The façade itched and he longed to remove it. How long would it take before someone realized that a dead prince was walking among them?

Quinn, for it was he behind the mask and identity of Gregor Matusevich, could wait just a bit longer. His revenge had been years in the making, and he would be Sidonia’s next king once King Rasczak, his brothers, and Cosima were all dead.

A chime sounded through the gallery.

“Attention guests,” a pleasant voice said through the public address system, “please make your way to the throne room for the marriage of Princess Cosima and Prince Francis. Doors will close in ten minutes.”

The noblemen and women of Sidonia, the well-heeled and well-connected migrated toward the throne room. Servants standing atop round stools along the way collected glasses and small hors d’oeuvres plates as people shuffled by.

Quinn held up his empty glass, and it was plucked from his fingers.

He smiled as he scanned the faces around him, recognizing many. The Aquitaine Corporation wanted the treaty stopped, and they promised him the planet once they’d conquered it. Quinn didn’t want to rule over a planet smashed by orbital bombardment, its skilled workers killed by war bots. Why inherit a mess when he could remove all opposition to his—and Aquitaine’s—plans for the planet in one fell swoop?

The year after the mission to Jutland, where he’d killed most of the officers that had tried to arrest him and managed to escape during the chaos of battle, had been difficult. He joined up with another pirate band on the planet and worked as a menial on their ship until casualties and a few well-timed accidents brought him to the attention of the ship’s captain…who had connections to the Aquitaine Corporation.

The throne room had row after row of seats laid out in front of a stage prepared for the wedding. Quinn went to his assigned seat, toward the back of the room. Even with the enormous price he’d paid to win the ticket, it was well below the priority of nobles closer to the king and Cosima’s House Zollern.

The King’s Guard was there in full force, wearing ceremonial gray armor and half helms. Stolzoff, easy to spot as he was the shortest Guard in the palace, stood to the side of the stage, speaking constantly into his gauntlet.

Where was Vincent? His little upstart of a brother should have died on that desert world. Quinn had wanted to bring the news back of his heroic death to the king, that Vincent had volunteered to lead an assault was serendipitous. He fought down the rage that boiled in his heart. Just a little bit longer. A little bit longer and he’d have everything he deserved as the rightful heir to Sidonia.

“Please rise for the groom’s party,” the master of ceremonies said from a thin lectern on the opposite side of the stage from Stolzoff.

A side door slid aside, and both Vincent and Francis entered the room. Francis was fatter than Quinn remembered, with a thin beard over a red face. No doubt hung over from an egregious bachelor party. In a tailed tuxedo and a sparsely adorned service sash, Francis was a passable groom.

Vincent, wearing his dress uniform and walking a step behind Francis, opted to cover his mechanical hand in a black glove. Quinn decided he’d hang Vincent’s mechanical arm over the entrance to the throne room. Let that be a reminder for any who’d ever dare cross him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, King Rasczak,” the master of ceremonies announced.

The main doors to the throne room opened, and a House Guard stood at the end of the red carpet, holding a pillow. A projector flared to life, and a hologram of King Rasczak coalesced in front of the pillow.

Quinn felt his bile rise as he saw his father for the first time in years. His sallow skin hung limply from his face, and his claw like hands lay clasped against his chest. One eye was milky with cataracts. His hair spread from his head in wild strands, no doubt splayed across the pillow in his stasis tube.

The king’s hologram didn’t walk; it bobbed up and down slightly in time with the Guard carrying the projection camera. The feed from the camera would be sent back to the medical ward and displayed on the inside of the king’s cocoon. Such a Herculean effort to keep the king alive for this moment—a half smile crept across Quinn’s face.

The king’s proxy went to a seat on the stage. Quinn’s father nodded to his other sons, and some words were exchanged that Quinn couldn’t hear. He shifted from side to side, his finger twitching with the urge to signal Glint and begin the final phase of the operation. No, just a bit longer.

The string orchestra began the traditional wedding march, and every pair of eyes in the room turned back to the main entrance.

Cosima, her father on her arm, stood at the edge of the red carpet. Her dress glimmered from the embossed diamonds, and the silk shimmered as sunlight played across it. As much as he wanted her dead, Quinn had to admit she looked beautiful. If his father hadn’t been so myopic in his vision for Sidonia, it would have been Quinn on that stage.

Cosima needed a little tug on the arm from her father before she took her first step down the aisle. Of all the weddings Quinn had ever attended, the bride always found her fiancé and would look to him as she approached the altar. Cosima kept her eyes locked straight ahead, as if she didn’t even want to look at Francis.

With Cosima on stage, the guests were seated.

Quinn’s fingers tapped at his thighs as a priest blathered on about the union of husband and wife and read an old prayer for blessing the marriage that had come with the original colonists.

Finally, Cosima and Francis joined hands over the altar. Francis mumbled his way through his vows. Cosima said hers by rote and without conviction.

What a farce, he thought.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the priest said.

The guests clapped, politely and without much fanfare. Quinn smiled as Cosima recoiled at Francis’s first attempt to kiss her, then relented and let him plant one on her lips. The crowd rose to its feet, and the clapping continued for an uncomfortably long time. No one seemed to want to be the first one to stop applauding the future king and queen.

Quinn decided he’d commit the faux pas and let his hands fall to his sides. Men harrumphed and clapped harder around him. The man beside him nudged Quinn with his elbow. Quinn looked at the man, his gaze promising murder. The offender shrugged his shoulders and kept clapping.

He was going to enjoy killing all these people.

****

The wedding dinner was a nightmare for Cosima. She’d changed out of her wedding gown and into a more manageable red and gold dress that was too tight for her tastes, but Francis enjoyed ogling her in it. She shivered at the thought of calling him her husband, but that’s what he was now, and she his wife.

She sat next to Francis at a long table in a ballroom repurposed for the wedding feast, an untouched plate of food in front of her. Guests could enter in their dinner choice from slates on their tables, and waiters brought out their selections within minutes. Cosima, lacking any appetite, hadn’t bothered to choose her meal. Lana must have picked something for her.

A few select nobles had come by their table to wish them well and promise their unending support once they became king and queen the next morning. King Rasczak had retired after the ceremony. What little strength he had left would be needed when he swore the oath of abdication at dawn in front of Francis and the rest of the Sidonian government as required by the Founding Charter.

And just like that, she would become Queen Cosima.

Ambassadors Kim, Park, and Lee came to their table, each holding a small plate with a pyramid of walnut cakes.

“Princess Cosima, we understand that you enjoy this treat. Please accept this small token from us,” the one on the left said. They each slapped their left hand under their right forearm and set the plates in front of her.

“It is my mother’s recipe,” the rightmost added.

“We will have the recipe transferred to your kitchen robots,” the one in the middle said.

Cosima smiled politely and took a bite of one of the walnut cakes, which was surprisingly good. She had a bad feeling she’d be eating these at every interaction she’d ever have with the Chaebol Corporation for the rest of her life.

“Thank you Mr.…Kim, Park, and Lee,” she said. “They are my new favorite snack.” She thanked god that Remi hadn’t brought her the fried sticks of tofu or the curry noodle sticks she’d seen in the same food stall.

“We will sign the treaty tomorrow afternoon, correct?” one of them asked. “We are already behind schedule.”

“Most certainly,” Francis said.

The three men bowed deeply and in unison. “Chugha habnida,” they said.

“Chuck-a had needy to you too,” Francis said.

Cosima scanned the crowd again, looking for Remi. She saw her sister, already drunk and flirting with the son of a shipping magnate. Her father had a steady stream of well-wishers, all no doubt inquiring as to how quickly his space station would expand to handle the influx of trade and tourists once the Gaia system was settled. Remi was nowhere to be found. He must have found a way out of this assignment.

Maybe he actually cares enough that he didn’t want to see me married off. Maybe I’m just being a silly little girl, she thought.

She glanced at Francis, whose clothes smelled of cigar smoke and breath reeked of alcohol when they’d kissed at the altar. He’d spent the rest of the evening focused on their guests and barely paid attention to her, which was something of a relief for Cosima.

“My lady,” Lana said in her ear, “would you care to retire now?”

Francis overheard the suggestion and wiped a napkin across his mouth and backed his seat away from the table.

“Isn’t there some sort of formal…anything else on the schedule?” Cosima asked.

“Yes, but the bride and groom normally leave well before the party ends,” Lana said.

“Come, darling,” Francis said, “let’s get out of here.”

Cosima wished there was some way to handcuff herself to her chair, but the touch of Francis’s clammy hand against her bare shoulder put an end to that idea. She stood, hesitantly, and left with her husband.

****

Remi had bargained for a spot on exterior security, far from the wedding and the feast, but the duty roster—signed by Prince Vincent—listed him for principal intervention and internal escort for the night. Appealing to Stolzoff for a different slot had been met with a firm rebuke. Tonight was critical, there would be no chances taken.

Instead of redirecting drunken guests who’d wandered beyond the velvet ropes, he spent the evening on the other side of a wall from the wedding and feast, ready to rush in and remove the royals at the slightest hint of trouble.

He watched Cosima and Francis stand up from their dinner table, and steeled himself for Stolzoff’s next order.

“Remi, Volenz, on shadow,” the colonel ordered over the radio.

Damn him, Remi thought.

He jogged through an access tunnel and caught up with Major Volenz, who was already two steps behind the newlyweds.

Cosima saw Remi, and she looked down at her feet, a brief sorrow crossing her face.

Francis had a spring in his step as they made their way to an elevator, though Cosima walked as if she was going to the gallows.

The elevator opened ahead of them. Cosima and Francis took up the back. Remi and the major stood in front of them.

“Your place or mine, my lovely?” Francis asked.

“I—mine,” she said.

Remi, his back to them, jabbed the button for Cosima’s floor.

He kept his eyes focused on the steel doors in front of his face, forcing himself not to watch their reflection behind him. He heard the rustle of a hand against fabric and the smack of lips.

“No, not yet,” Cosima said.

“Sweetie, they’re sworn to secrecy. Just treat them like furniture,” Francis said.

Remi had an overwhelming desire to turn and punch Francis right in the mouth, but his military bearing bore out.

“Just wait, OK?” Cosima said.

The elevator chimed and the door opened. Remi hated every step he took toward Cosima’s quarters. He heard at least one slap against Francis’s wandering hands.

Cosima rushed into her room. Francis gave Remi a wink as he followed her in. The door shut and mag-locked behind them, leaving their escorts in the hallway.

Remi put his back to the door, a glacier of pain sliding into his chest. He and Cosima never had a chance. His brain knew this, could rationalize this. His heart…his heart felt differently, and it made him suffer for it. She was another man’s wife now, and he would have to stand outside while…he forced his mind to the next day’s schedule, moving VIPs to and from the atrium where the treaty would be signed.

“Hey, Remi,” Major Volenz said, “I got this. Why don’t you do a perimeter sweep?”

“Shadow detail is one per principal. Thank you, but…no,” Remi said. The major knew better than to compromise the standard operating procedure. She just had more heart than Vincent and Stolzoff.

He heard a thump from within Cosima’s room, and his nervous system jumped into high gear at the thought of trouble.

“I said no!” Cosima’s voice carried through the door. Remi’s hand went to his pulser; Major Volenz grabbed his wrist before he could draw the weapon.

“What’re you thinking?” she hissed. “I don’t like it either but remember your oath.”

Remi pulled his hand from Volenz’s grasp and slammed a fist against his thigh. What he wouldn’t give to be anywhere but here.

The door slid open, and Francis, his shirt stained purple and reeking of wine, stumbled out. The door closed and locked again.

“Whew, she’ll take some time to win over,” he said. He looked at Major Volenz and ran a finger over his wet shirt. “Let’s go change, then back to the party.” He handed an empty wineglass to Remi. “Take care of that, would you?”

Francis left, no worse for wear.

The instant the elevator doors closed on Francis and his escort, Remi overrode the lock on Cosima’s door.

She sat on the bed, still clothed, her back to the door. She was hunched over, sobbing.

“My lady, are you…can I…”

Cosima took a deep, heaving breath and waved her hand at him, not daring to look up and show her tears.

“Get out,” she said.

Remi stepped back from the room—and hated himself for doing it.

CHAPTER 14

Glint watched Guardsmen enter and exit the control center from his perch against the ceiling. He had no muscles to tire, no endocrine nervous system to exhaust, and no bodily functions that could distract him. He could stay cloaked against the ceiling without blinking, if he’d had eyelids, for months.

All he had to do was wait for the signal the Sidonians would give him.

There, a Guardsman ran for the control room, hands on his blade and pulser belt to steady them as he went. They were trained to maintain calm and composure, therefore the sight of a rushed or harried Guardsmen meant there was good reason for everyone else to panic. The attack had begun, and now Glint would play his part.

The door recognized the Guardsman’s gene-code and opened.

Glint released his hold on the ceiling and leaped toward the Guardsman standing in the open door. The pistons in his legs shot Glint like an arrow, and he slammed into the unsuspecting Guard, stabbing him in the heart and base of the skull.

The Guard tumbled into the room, dead before he hit the ground. The Guardsmen in the control room stopped what they were doing and looked at the fallen man. Glint held perfectly still, his stealth field holding as a technician scrambled over to the dead Guard.

“Jerry? What happened?” The technician ran into Glint and bounced off him. He looked at where Glint was standing, confusion giving way to comprehension.

Glint loved the look of fear in his victim’s eyes.

“Stealth sui—”

Glint swiped his bladed hands across the technician’s throat, cutting off his warning and spraying bright arterial blood across workstations and the face of anyone too close to the departed Jerry.

Glint leaped at the first Guardsman fast enough to draw his pulser, his stealth field morphing to compensate for his speed. The men and women in the control room would see him as a blur and little else. Glint stabbed the Guardsman in the chest, then hurled his body against a pair of naval officers standing in front of an orbital display.

He grabbed the wrist of a stunned woman and used her hand to draw her own pulser. He used her to fire the pulser, scoring head shots with eight of the nine bullets in the weapon. He put the pulser against her temple and killed her with the last round.

Glint shoved her body away and let his stealth field flicker off. The two naval officers panicked at the site of him, but neither managed to crawl a few feet before Glint stabbed them, pinning them to the floor until they stopped twitching.

The shield control station was still manned, the dead technician now slumping against his seat, bleeding all over the slates. Glint shoved him aside and took his place. A compartment snapped open on his thigh, and he removed an oblong data spike. He twisted it into an access port and watched as the displays across the room went blank.

Sidonia, for all its pretense about a strong middle class and self-determination, was still a technological backwater. The secondhand automation systems maintaining their defense systems were woefully inadequate when facing the latest in Aquitaine attack software.

Glint went to the door, stepping over bodies and pools of blood beneath them. He ripped open the wall around the door frame and bent the servos that opened and shut the reinforced door. He’d have privacy while the data spike went to work.

He looked at the orbital display, several objects were already through the outer atmosphere and would impact against the city’s bombardment shield in the next few minutes.

A bell chimed and red warning lights flashed along the walls.

“Warning. Shield emitters off-line. Shield emitters off-line,” a computer voice announced.

Glint returned to the empty chair and kicked his feet up on the desk.

****

Quinn looked up through the skylights. The energy shield protecting the city and palace wavered as a pale silver aurora of light danced across its surface. He got up from his table and strode to the outer edge of the dining room, dabbing at the corner of his lips with a napkin.

None of the guests bothered to notice that the protective shield over their heads had ceased functioning. He glanced up and saw one of the twin arches, its silhouette blocking out part of the night sky above.

Guardsmen around the room cocked their heads and looked at the screens on their gauntlets as a message reached them all at the same time. His plan didn’t call for complete surprise; that they had an inkling of what was coming hardly mattered.

A low rumble grew in the sky. It wasn’t until the tables shook that the conversation died away and Sidonia’s rich and powerful realized something was amiss.

Quinn tapped the body shield emitter on his lapel, and a sheen passed over his body. If there’d been anyone but Glint in the control room, the energy signature from his shield would have had guards swarming over him.

A yellow glow grew through the skylight, and Quinn put his hands over his ears.

War bots, not bound by the weakness of flesh, could enter an atmosphere much faster than any human, and could impact their targets with a remarkable amount of force. Quinn didn’t want his palace obliterated, but his army needed to make an entrance.

The drop pod burned through the sky over the palace and disgorged a dozen war bots across the palace grounds. One honed in on the energy signature of his body shield and crashed through the skylight, sending glass and masonry tumbling down on the wedding guests. The war bot crashed into the dining table where Cosima and Francis had been sitting. Its landing cocoon sizzled and snapped as it opened, blossoming to reveal the war bot as it rose to its full height.

Quinn’s shield flared as flecks of glass bounced off the energy field. Screams of pain and fear filled the banquet hall. Quinn stepped around bloodied bodies and shoved aside anyone who stumbled into him.

Guardsmen fired on the war bot, their pulsers useless against its heavy armor.

The war bot leveled its arm cannons and fired single shots from each cannon into the Guardsmen. Some of their gauntlet shields deflected the first hit; none survived the second shot.

Quinn walked confidently up to the war bot, pulser shots bouncing harmlessly off his shield. The war bot ignored him until the final Guardsman was dead. Then it turned its attention to the three gisaeng escorts huddled around the Chaebol executives. The gisaengs’ hands opened at hinges at the wrists, and energy crackled from the laser barrels pointed at the war bot.

“No! Not them,” Quinn said.

The war bot kept its weapons level but didn’t fire. Quinn opened a hatch on the side of the robot and pulled out a pulser inlaid with Stahlium and an ornate sword hilt. He flicked the hilt and a blade snapped out.

“Ah, how I’ve missed you both,” he said.

Quinn turned and pointed the blade at the Chaebol executives, peaking at him from beneath their gisaengs’ dresses.

“No need to antagonize your corporation,” Quinn said. “You may live so long as you do not interfere.” He tapped the sapphire on the pommel of his hilt against the war bot’s armor. Speakers activated on the war bot’s chassis.

“The rest of you.” Quinn’s words boomed through the speakers. Wedding guests, most clustered at the sealed double doors at the entrance, winced at the volume and malice of his words. “The rest of you will die as soon as it pleases me.”

A side door burst open. Three man-sized war bots carrying compact rifles marched into the room. They formed a perimeter around Quinn and leveled their weapons at the crowd. The larger bots were ideal for seizing control, but they simply weren’t designed for stairwells and elevators.

“Deployment complete,” one of the smaller war bots said, words buzzing from the speakers on its faceplate. “Extermination protocols loaded.”

“First things first: we need to find dear Prince Francis,” Quinn said. Now where would his brother be on his wedding night?

****

The percussion of cannon shots came through the floor beneath Remi’s feet. He glanced at his gauntlet, but the alert screen was blank. He tapped at his ear piece.

“This is Remi on quarters 3, what was that?”

No response.

“Any station, respond.”

The floor trembled and Remi decided not to wait for any further instructions.

He keyed open Cosima’s door, and it slid open a quarter of the way right as the power went out. Canary-yellow emergency lights lit up along the hallway, and the thrum of air-conditioners ceased.

Remi tried to force his way through the gap, but it was too narrow. “Cosima! Cosima something’s wrong, we have to go.”

“Stay out of my room,” she shot back.

Remi gripped the edge of the door and heaved, inching it open slowly.

“What did I just tell you?” she asked, her voice angry.

He heard her footsteps approaching.

“I will have you—what’s wrong with the door?” She jabbed at the dead control panel on her side of the wall.

“I think we’re under attack. Help me open the door a bit more,” Remi said.

Cosima wiggled her way through the opening.

“Or that,” he said. “Are you wearing your body shield, is it charged?”

Her hand went to her choker, and the body shield within it, and she nodded.

“Come on.” He took her by the hand and led her down the hallway.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Remi drew his pulser and opened the door to the stairwell. He left Cosima behind, checked to make sure the stairs above and below them were clear, and then pulled her along with him.

Cosima looked over the railing at the dozens of flights of stairs leading down. “Oh, seriously?” she whined.

“Can’t trust the elevators with the power out. Let’s go.” Remi took her hand again, and they ran to the stairs.

“Where are we going? Don’t tell me you’ve got another hunting lodge or something hidden in the palace,” she said.

“An attacker has two options when it comes to this palace: destroy it outright or eliminate the royal family and take their place. We haven’t been blown to bits, so that means they’re after you,” Remi said.

“And the king and Francis and Vincent. What about them?”

“You are my only priority. Their Guardsmen will get them to safety. We bunch up with them and we’re one big target. I keep you away from them, keep moving until the Guard beats whoever is behind this or the army moves in from Fort Schwehr,” Remi said as they descended. “You have an assigned exit route, an emergency passage that’ll get us out of the palace and into Spillover North. The passage is on level 10.”

Cosima glanced at the number on the level they just passed. “We’re on level 44. I have got to start wearing more practical shoes.”

“Less talking, more running,” he said.

****

With full control of the palace through Glint, Quinn wasn’t going to waste time taking the stairs. The elevator dinged when it reached his target floor, and his war bot escort braced themselves in front of him. The doors opened to still silence.

One war bot should be enough for this target.

“Alpha, go,” Quinn said. The war bot sprinted down the hallway. The elevator doors closed, and Quinn leaned to his side to get a better look at Cosima’s door. Was it open? Might have been just a trick of shadow from the emergency lights.

Quinn thumbed the safety off his custom pulser and waited for the elevator to take them a few levels higher. “No restrictions, shoot everything that moves,” he said.

The doors opened and the war bots opened fire, their mechanical arms holding the pulser carbines with enough strength to fire them on full auto. Screams of wounded men and women echoed down the hallway.

The war bots stepped from the elevator and flanked Quinn as he walked down the hallway, his pulser leveled at the closed door to Francis’s room. The hallway split off and around his room. Quinn could see the palace ground burning through the windows.

A team of four Guardsmen lay dead in front of the door, victims of the war bots.

Two more Guardsmen ran into the hallway, shields up and pulsers drawn.

Quinn took careful aim and hit one of the Guardsmen in the ankle as it peeked beyond the edge of his shield. The wounded man screamed in pain and fell. His shield hit the ground and bounced to the side. The war bots perforated his exposed body with shots.

The second Guardsman fired a burst of pulser rounds that hit one of the war bots in the chest, overloading the armor and sending a single round into the processor core. The war bot fell back on its haunches, sparks flying from the hole in its chest.

Growling, Quinn stepped between the Guardsman and the other war bot. Pulser rounds bounced harmlessly off Quinn’s body shield. He powered up the disruption field in his blade, its edge glowing red.

“We’ve got a brave one.” Quinn waggled the blade low, level with his knee.

The Guardsman, charging behind his raised shield, dropped his pulser and snatched his hilt from his belt. He swung it at Quinn’s neck, the blade still extending as he struck.

Quinn parried the strike and drove his blade into the Guardsman’s bicep.

“Pathetic.” He twisted the blade and forced the Guardsman to turn his back to the war bot. The war bot fired a burst into his back, the bullets tearing through the Guardsman’s chest and spattering against his shield.

Quinn let the Guardsman’s falling body pull his blade free. He tapped the flat of his blade against his shin to shake away the blood and made his way to Francis’s shut door.

Quinn gave Major Volenz’s body a nudge with his toe, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Beta, the door,” he said.

The war bot jammed metal fingers along the edge and opened the door with ease. Quinn heard a frightened shriek and looked through his brother’s room at racks of extravagant clothing and a mess of slates on dressers and nightstands—but he didn’t see his brother.

Of course, there was really only one place Francis went when he was scared.

Quinn grabbed the bed frame and hurled it aside.

Francis lay on the floor, his hands up in front of his face. “Please, I’ll give you whatever you want,” the prince pleaded.

“And father thought you would’ve made a better king,” Quinn said with a shake of his head.

“What?”

Pressing a finger against his jawline, Quinn winced as the nanowires contorting his face into his false visage relaxed and his true countenance revealed itself. Now they looked like brothers.

“Quinn? Quinn is that you?” Francis said. His eyes widened in hope and he got to his feet, arms held up in surrender

Quinn raised his pulser up next to his face. “Where is Cosima?”

“Her room! I left her in her room! Where have you been? I thought you were dead. You-you look good.” Francis laughed nervously.

“I never liked you.” Quinn shot Francis twice through the heart. The prince fell to his knees, then face-first on the floor. Quinn put two rounds in the back of his head.

“Alpha, is she dead?” Quinn said to Beta, using the robot’s communications network.

“Target not acquired.”

“Damn it.” Quinn tapped his body shield. “Mr. Glint, find her. Kill her. ”

“I’ll have to abandon the control room,” Glint said. “There’s a counterattack forming in the—”

“I don’t care. Go! I must attend to my father,” Quinn said.

****

Remi inched the door from the stairwell open. The sound of shouted orders and pulser shots echoed down the hallway. Waving to Cosima, he led her into the hallway. The passage was a wreck of shot-through walls and broken vases. Busts of notables from Sidonia’s history lay on the ground, knocked from their plinths.

A dead civilian sat against the wall. Blood smeared down from the place he’d been shot and sank to the floor.

A handful of Guardsmen in full armor, their shields burning at their maximum settings, stood shoulder to shoulder at the end of the hallway, facing off against a war bot, its heavy steps reverberating through the floor.

Remi held his arm out to stop Cosima. “That’s our way out, but we’d—”

A cannon shot hit the shield wall and knocked a Guardsman back, as if he’d been kicked by a mule.

“Hurry! Up!” a short Guardsman shouted over his shoulder. A soldier ran up behind them, a grenade launcher clutched in his hands. He dove forward just as a cannon shot angled over the shield wall and blew a hole in the floor.

The soldier struggled to his knees and flung the grenade launcher to a beckoning Guardsman, who caught it and held it over the shield wall. The launcher thumped, and a crack of thunder shattered windows along the hallway.

“Get the core!” a Guardsman ordered, and the four ran ahead.

Remi and Cosima ran down the hallway. The Guardsmen were climbing up a war bot that had fallen against, and mostly through, a wall. A Guardsman jammed his blade in between the armor plates of the chest and pried a gap open. Another stuck his pulser into the opening and fired off his entire magazine at full auto.

“You get it?” one asked.

“Give me another one.” Someone tossed a pulser to the Guardsman standing on the war bot’s shoulders, and he fired into the gap again. Something groaned inside the war bot and it went slack.

“Guardsmen,” Remi said, “I need you with me.”

“Remi,” the short Guardsman flipped up his visor, a sweaty and exhausted Stolzoff gave him a quick salute. He looked at Cosima and let out a relieved sigh “You’ve got her, thank God.”

“Help me get her to an evac tunnel,” Remi said.

“There may not be as many war bots that way, fine.” He turned to the Guardsmen. “Three-sixty on the princess. Jones,” he said to the Guardsman who had been knocked back from the war bot’s round, “you hurt?”

Jones got to his feet, his arm held tight against his ribs. “No,” he said. He joined the ring of Guardsmen around Cosima and fired up his gauntlet shield.

Remi, next to Cosima within the circle, tapped the Guardsman in front of him and they hustled forward.

“Wait, what about me?” the soldier asked as they moved past him.

“Get the launcher, we may need the EMP again,” Stolzoff said. “Electromagnetic pulse rounds,” he said to Remi, “knocks the big ones down just long enough to disable them. Damn bots are everywhere, more coming through the dome all the time.”

“What happened?” Remi asked.

“The control room went off line and the shields came down along with all our communications. Then all hell broke loose as you may have noticed.”

“There’s a tunnel that leads to Fort Schwehr in the library, you think it’s safe for her there?” Remi asked.

“Better there than here,” Stolzoff said.

“Fine, library it is,” Remi said.

Cosima kept her head down and tucked against Remi as they made their way to the library. The sound of pulser shots and muted explosions reverberated through the palace. Watching a battle on a VR set was a pale reflection of being in an actual battle—every rumble, every window shattered by a stray round, sent Cosima’s body on edge.

The adrenaline kept her moving, but fear took up root in her heart and refused to budge.

“There,” Remi said. The double doors to the library, ten foot tall hand-carved oak, had been blown open. One door lay on the ground, smoldering. The other was a mess of splinters still attached by the heavy brass hinges.

“Stack up,” Stolzoff said. The Guardsmen shifted their formation into a single line, their pulsers aimed between the shields.

Remi pulled Cosima back and let the Guardsmen take the lead into the library. Remi grabbed the soldier by collar before he could follow the Guardsmen.

“Stay with us, go in with the EMP if there’s a war bot,” Remi said. The soldier nodded and aimed his grenade launcher down the hallways they’d just come from.

Stolzoff, at the rear of the stack, said, “Three, two, one…go!”

The line of Guardsmen snaked into the library, their pulsers firing.

Remi pulled Cosima close and held his gauntlet shield over her. A pulser round blew through the wall with a puff of masonry. The firing died down, but sporadic shots snapped from within the library like threats from a hostile crowd.

“Damn it,” Remi said. He pulled away from Cosima and charged into the library.

Smoke hung high in the two-level repository, shattered glass from the walkways fell to the ground, sounding like a heavy downpour against concrete. One Guardsman lay dead in the entrance, and the rest were behind an overturned bookshelf, trading shots with a group of man-sized war bots holed up in a nook on the second level.

“Pinned down!” Stolzoff shouted to Remi. A pulser round shattered the back of the bookshelf and exploded in a book, blowing burning pages into the air.

A shadow glanced across the back wall. Remi looked up and saw two war bots running along the walkway right toward them.

Before he could shout a warning, the war bots leaped off the walkway and slammed to the ground between him and the Guardsmen. Remi fired his pulser. The round sparked off the war bot’s armor and did little more than get its attention.

The war bot’s torso swung around on its hip gimbal. Its carbine sent a burst of rounds into Remi’s shield, and dense spider webs burst across it, their momentum carrying through like hammer blows.

Remi swung his shield into the carbine, knocking the muzzle to the side. The war bot struck out with a backhanded strike that would have crushed Remi’s skull if it connected. The tips of its metal fingers missed Remi’s forehead by a hair’s breadth.

Remi grabbed his sword hilt and activated it. The blade extended as he thrust it at the war bot, the telescoping sword imbedding into the armor. The distortion field flared to life, and the war bot jerked as if it were having a seizure and collapsed to the ground.

Remi raised his sword and slashed at the other war bot, snapping its neck and knocking it over.

A pulser round snapped past his face. The war bots across the library had taken interest in him at last. Remi dove for the overturned bookshelf and slid over loose sheets of paper torn out of mangled books.

“Thanks,” Stolzoff said, “but we’re still pretty screwed.” A bullet hit the bookshelf and sent splinters through the air.

“Maybe if we—”

An explosion thundered through the library, and the incoming fire ceased.

Remi glanced over the bookshelf and saw a flaming mess where the war bots had been firing at them.

Cosima ran over and knelt next to him. “I was getting worried and had an idea,” she said.

The soldier stood in the doorway, smoke rising from the barrel of his grenade launcher.

“I had one regular grenade left,” the soldier said. “Worked pretty well didn’t—” He choked. Blood spilled from the corners of his mouth and the soldier rose into the air, his toes scraping against the floor.

Remi grabbed Cosima by the arm and jerked her against the bookcase. The soldier flew to the side and Remi thrust his shield over Cosima.

A thin line ran against the shield and slid off the side, chipping the marble floor where an invisible blade tip struck. Remi struck out with his sword and hit nothing.

“Shoot! Shoot!” Stolzoff and the two remaining Guardsmen fired wildly around the room. Bullets ricocheted off walls and careened off Remi’s shield still protecting Cosima.

The Guardsmen’s pulsers clicked empty, and they slammed fresh magazines into the handles.

“Did we get it?” one asked.

The Guardsman crashed to the ground, crushed by an invisible weight. A bloody blade tip slashed from the crushed guard and tore across the chest of the second, who fell back with a grunt, a rent across his uniform.

Stolzoff fired his pulser on full auto, stitching a line of shots across Glint’s thighs. His stealth field wavered; light bent and pulsed across his frail form.

Glint lunged and impaled Stolzoff’s chest with a blade.

Stolzoff dropped his pulser and grabbed Glint’s arm. Glint tried to flick Stolzoff away, but the colonel’s grip held.

“Bastard,” Stolzoff said through bloody teeth.

Remi struck, severing the sword arm impaling Stolzoff.

Glint emitted an electric squeal. His stealth field failed revealing a rail-thin body, his face nothing but two eye holes on a white ceramic mask.

Remi parried a clumsy stab from Glint and stabbed him in the chest. Grabbing his hilt with both hands and ripping the blade up, Remi split Glint in half from his sternum to the top of his head.

“Stolzoff?” Remi went to the colonel, lying on his side, still clutching Glint’s severed arm. Stolzoff didn’t respond to Remi’s touch, his eyes quiet and unfocused. The other Guardsmen lay still.

He turned around and saw Cosima, her hands over her mouth and tears flowing.

“Oh my god, they’re dead,” she said.

“And you’re not. Hurry.” Remi turned her away from the bodies and hustled her toward a nook at the far end of the library.

The entire room trembled from a distant explosion. Books shook free of their shelves and clattered to the ground. The sounds of a running gun battle echoed through the library, the sound growing closer.

Remi came to the end of the room. Instead of a bookshelf tucked into the corner, there was a red ceramic vase on top of a thin wooden table. Remi tossed the vase aside, then the table. He pawed at the wall and found a hidden control panel beneath a holo screen. The holo image snapped off, and his fingers ran across the screen.

“Here we go.” He was about to key in the code when the slate exploded.

Remi swung his shield around and stepped in front of Cosima.

Quinn, his smoking pulser in hand, stood in the center of the library. “I don’t think so.” He advanced toward them, his weapon leveled at Remi.

Remi fired two shots, put both bounced off Quinn’s body shield and didn’t even break his stride. He aimed carefully and blew Quinn’s pulser out of his hand. The body shield flared as the pistol went flying.

“Clever.” Quinn drew his blade and stopped ten feet from Cosima and Remi.

Remi passed her his pulser and drew his blade.

“Wait for an opening,” he whispered to her.

“I remember you, Mr. Remi,” Quinn said. “Remember your dogged devotion to Vincent, and I see you’ve found someone else to latch on to.” Quinn raised his blade and looked down the edge at Cosima and Remi.

“Quinn, this is all your doing,” Remi said.

“Naturally, I found a few backers who didn’t want to lose the Gaia system, and they gave me the resources to make sure it never happened. A palace coup just before the treaty is signed, tragic…and convenient,” Quinn said. “Now, let’s not waste any more time posturing. She has to die, Remi. You don’t. Step aside and I’ll see you have a place in my new kingdom.”

Remi didn’t move.

“Step. Aside.”

“Cosima,” Remi said, his body tensing and his eyes locked on Quinn. “You get that door open and you run. No matter what you hear or see, you don’t stop running.”

“Paul, don’t do this,” she said.

“Listen to the girl,” Quinn said. “Trade her life for yours.”

Remi stepped away from Cosima, his blade held high behind his shield.

“Never.”

Quinn lunged. His blade tip corkscrewed in the air and struck at Remi’s face as fast as a cobra’s strike. Remi ducked behind his shield, and the edge crackled against the distortion field on Quinn’s blade. Quinn snapped a kick out that hit Remi in the shin, knocking the foot out from under him.

Remi rolled into the fall and felt a breeze as Quinn’s blade snapped past his neck. Remi made a blind strike as he got to his feet. His blade connected with something, and the smell of ozone burned into the air.

Quinn growled, blood trickling from a cut across the back of his hand. He rushed Remi, knocking his blade aside and slamming him against a wall of books. Leather-bound novels rained down, some catching fire as they hit Quinn’s shield.

Quinn swung a hook into Remi’s jaw, staggering the Guardsman. The deposed prince grabbed him by the hair and pulled him away from the bookshelf to get momentum before he slammed Remi into the wooden shelf frames.

A pulser round hit Quinn’s shield over the temple, just hard enough to knock him off balance. A second round tweaked his nose and a third flashed over his eye. Cosima, the pulser in her hand, stood with her feet braced as if she were at the range. Another shot hit over his chin and cocked his head to the side.

“Stop that!” Quinn yelled at her.

Remi’s fist plowed into Quinn’s stomach, and he hunched over, his grip on Remi’s hair lost. Remi’s sword flicked out and raked across Quinn’s shoulder. The prince’s shield flared, deflecting the blow. He sliced across Quinn’s throat, earning another flash from the shield.

Quinn stabbed at Remi, aiming his sword point up and into Remi’s stomach. Remi’s shield turned the strike, and Quinn rode the momentum and brought his blade over his head. He but both hands on the hilt and chopped down on Remi.

Remi got his shield up and blocked the blow. His energy shield coalesced, cracks striking out like lighting across the bottom of storm clouds.

Quinn raised his blade again and brought it down with a cry.

Remi’s shield shattered, and Quinn’s weakened blow cut into Remi’s exposed arm.

Remi groaned in pain and backed away from Quinn, blood flowing freely down his arm. He flipped the grip on his sword and swung the blade across Quinn’s stomach. The body shield still held, but Remi finally saw what he’d been looking for as Quinn’s shield strained against Remi’s assault.

Ley lines of energy ran to and from the pin on Quinn’s lapel—Remi finally found Quinn’s emitter.

Quinn grabbed Remi by his service sash and hurled him at Cosima. Remi’s head bounced off the carpet, and he saw stars dance in front of his eyes. He grabbed his sword and looked up at Cosima, still holding the empty pulser.

His arm screamed in pain, and broken ribs stabbed in his chest like hot irons. Remi looked Cosima in the eyes, then got back to his feet.

He raised his blade high over his head with his uninjured arm.

Quinn, flicked blood from his hand, shook his head in pity. “Fool. One more pass?” He held his blade behind his hip, both hands on the hilt.

Remi and Quinn charged. Their blades struck as they crossed. Quinn’s shield flared and he slowed to a stop, blood across his blade’s edge.

Remi stumbled forward and crumbled to the ground.

“Paul! No!” Cosima screamed. She tried to run to him. Quinn caught her and shoved her back against a wall. She sank to the ground, still reaching for Remi.

“I think we’re done with this little game, Princess,” Quinn said. “I was going to make this quick, but now…”

Quinn, his eyes burning with hate, raised his sword over his head and swung the bloody blade at Cosima.

A metal hand caught Quinn’s wrist.

Quinn looked over and saw Prince Vincent, the escape passage open behind him. Vincent’s face showed barely restrained fury.

Quinn wrenched his hand out of Vincent’s grip and sneered. “Vincent, you saved me the trouble of tracking you down.”

Vincent aimed a pulser at Quinn’s head.

“Are you going to waste your bullets against my shield too?” he said with a chuckle.

“What shield?” Vincent asked.

Quinn looked down at his lapel and saw his emitter, smashed and smoking. Remi’s final strike had destroyed Quinn’s protection.

Quinn looked up into Vincent’s barrel.

Vincent shot his brother between the eyes, knocking Quinn’s head back over his shoulders. Quinn wavered and fell to the ground, dead.

Cosima didn’t hear Vincent’s orders to the Guardsmen and soldiers that poured from the escape passage. She tore free from helping hands and ran to Remi’s side. Blood pooled beneath him, and his arms wrapped tightly across a cut that ran across his flank.

“Paul! Paul can you hear me?” She cupped her hand under his face. His skin was cold to the touch and deathly pale.

“Cosima,” he said weakly. “Quinn…get away.”

“He’s dead. He’s dead I promise. Vincent is here, you’ll be OK now.”

Remi reached a blood-soaked hand to her. She grabbed it and held it against her chest.

“Hold on, please, Paul, just hold on.”

Remi ran his finger down her cheek, leaving a streak of blood.

“Cosima….” Remi’s hand went slack and his eyes closed.

“Paul?” she bent her face next to his. “Don’t leave me. Please, please, I love you don’t leave me.”

Someone grabbed her around the waist and pulled her away from him. She screamed and clawed, begging to stay. Vincent pointed to her and barked orders to the Guardsman dragging her away from Remi.

She saw Vincent kneel next to Paul and put a hand on his shoulder. She caught the edge of the escape passage and refused to let go. It took three men to finally pry her loose and carry her to safety.

CHAPTER 15

The palace smelled of smoke and ash. Everywhere Cosima went had the smell of battle and loss. The morgue was no different.

There were three bodies, each cleaned and dressed for their funerals: King Rasczak, still in his stasis tube, Prince Francis in a military dress uniform, a golden braid worked into his service sash, and Remi. Remi’s body held a sword in his clasped hands. A gleaming blade ran from his chest to his knees.

Cosima, dressed in mourning black, sat on a stool next to Remi. She wiped away another tear and set her hand over Remi’s. His hands felt cool through the black lace gloves she wore.

It had been barely a day since the attack. Vincent had rallied the surviving Guardsmen and led reinforcements from Fort Schwehr in a counterattack. The attacking war bots were smashed, their mechanical heads hung from the palace walls in victory. The source of the droids, a merchant ship registered to a string of shell companies, had self-destructed before the orbital police could seize it.

Vincent had wasted no time asserting control over the palace and all of Sidonia. He was on TV within an hour of the last war bots’ destruction, assuring the planet that he and Cosima had survived and the palace still belonged to Sidonia.

Cosima had spent a sleepless night on Fort Schwehr surrounded by a battalion of infantry. She’d refused to eat or drink until she’d returned to the palace and found Remi. She’d been by his side since.

The door to the morgue opened and Vincent entered. He wore his military dress uniform, a gray glove over his prosthetic hand. He was entitled to wear a regent’s crown, but went bareheaded.

Vincent paused at his father’s side, then Francis’s.

The prince stood next to Remi’s shoulders, then knelt beside him.

“I’m sorry, brother,” Vincent said. “I wasn’t there when you needed me. I failed you. I failed you trying to save my father, the palace. I got to Cosima in time, finished the battle you’d won with your final strike. You are a good man, the best I’ve ever known. Forgive me, brother, I did all I could.” He stood and touched his metal hand against Remi’s forehead.

Vincent straightened his uniform and pressed his flesh and blood forearm against his face. Cosima watched as grief left his face, replaced by a regal manner.

“You can return to your space station at your convenience. The Chaebol Corporation is leaving. There’s no treaty, no reason anyone would hurt you now,” Vincent spun on his heels and walked away.

“Wait. If there’s no treaty, what will happen when the Aquitaine fleet gets here?”

Vincent stopped and half looked over his shoulder. “As king, I can surrender or fight and doom Sidonia to defeat.”

Cosima looked at Remi, the man who’d sacrificed his life for her, for Sidonia’s freedom. She couldn’t let his death be in vain.

“Vincent, take me up to the Chaebol ship. Now.”

****

The conference center of the Seoul could accommodate hundreds of business men and women with ease, but was almost empty. Everything was stowed for the translation back to New Chosun. The crew had little time to prepare a proper reception for Vincent and Cosima’s sudden visit, placing an ornate carved table with seats for the three ambassadors and the Sidonians was the best they could do.  A long pane of transparent diamond looked out over Sidonia, Styria station hung just over the horizon. The three corporate executives waited at the table, untouched coffee cups steaming in front of them.

Cosima, still in her mourning black, barged into the conference room. Vincent was right behind her, but he didn’t bother to keep pace with her as she lifted the hem of her dress and ran across the empty room. The executives stood and bowed.

Cosima stopped and slammed her palms against the table, jittering the coffee.

“Fools,” she said. “Only fools would leave money on the table.”

The ambassadors didn’t react. “We are sorry for your loss,” the one on the left said.

“Let me talk to you about real loss in terms you might appreciate,” Cosima jabbed a finger toward the window. “Your corporation spent over a trillion won, more than a decade’s earnings for my entire planet to bring this ship to Sidonia. Now you’re going to double that expense and leave without a jump gate? With no claim on whatever alien tech is waiting for you in the Gaia system?”

“Princess Cosima,” middle said, “your political situation is untenable. We require a long term partner for a long term project. To take such a risk on a world such as yours is bad business.”

“The coup failed. Vincent lives. I live. We will honor the treaty you negotiated with Francis and my father,” Cosima said. Vincent stopped next to her, his face unreadable. “Isn’t that right?” Cosima asked Vincent.

“Sidonia remains whole. Every noble house has pledged their loyalty to me as the new king,” Vincent said.

“The terms were negotiated and approved by the CEOs themselves,” middle said. “We could not modify the treaty without their consent.”

“What if…what if we adjust the negotiated toll rates?” Cosima asked “Sidonia will absorb the cost of your transit to and from New Chosun and compensate you for your flexibility.”

The executives spoke at once, each saying something different. Their look of shock was identical. The three men glanced at each other in panic. One held up a finger and the three retreated to the back of the room where they huddled together.

“Cosima, what are you doing?” Vincent asked quietly.

“Business, Vincent. You were raised to be a leader, an officer. I was raised to be a businesswoman and an engineer. You look at this problem as a matter of honor but it is a matter of profit and loss. Now remain quiet and don’t screw this up,” she said.

A panel in the floor slid open and a tray full of walnut cakes floated before them. Cosima took one and nibbled at it. She nudged Vincent’s arm.

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

“Be. Polite.”

Vincent ate a cake, nodded in approval and reached for another.

The Chaebol men exited their huddle and returned to the table, their pace in lock step.

“If you will agree to a three percent reduction to your toll rate for seven years, we can modify the contract on a provisional basis until such time as our expenses are covered,” Lee said.

“Two and a half percent and full terms,” Cosima said.

“What are you—” Vincent’s protest ended when Cosima stomped her foot against his.

The executives exhaled as one and rocked their heads from side to side. “Full terms for so little,” Kim said.

“I’ll not have you pack up and leave on a whim,” Cosima said.

“Three percent, full terms,” Park said.

“Agreed,” Cosima said the word like it caused her pain.

The executive in the middle pulled out a sheaf of paper from the desk and flipped it open. He pulled a cap off a fountain pen and made an annotation. He flipped the treaty to the final page and crossed through two names. He handed the pen to Vincent.

“Please sign,” he said. The two crossed out names were Francis and Cosima’s father. Vincent hesitated, then signed with trembling fingers. Cosima added her name with more emphasis.

“Full terms requires a dedicated business partner. You two will marry soon?” Lee asked.

“Yes,” Cosima looked at Vincent and bit her lip. “For the greater good of Sidonia. We will marry. Won’t we?”

Vincent swallowed hard and gave her a half smile, the best his damaged face could manage.

“We will,” he said.

“Very well,” Kim said. “We will begin construction of the wormhole gate immediately.”

“And the orbital defenses,” Vincent said.

“Yes, of course. Now, excuse us. There is much work to be done.” The executives turned and left the room.

Vincent went to the window and pressed his metal hand against the glass. He hung his head.

“What? What’s wrong?” Cosima asked.

“Cosima, what are you doing? You didn’t want to marry my brother. I don’t think you want to be with me either,” Vincent said. He turned around and tapped his metal fingers against the prosthetics on his face. “You don’t want this.”

“I’ve seen what you’ve done, what you’ve sacrificed for Sidonia,” she grabbed his hands and held them tight. “You are a good man, Vincent. I will be your queen for the sake of Sidonia. Be my king.” She smiled at him and squeezed his hands.

“I’m not the man you loved. I know that. Why are you doing this?”

“There’s more at stake than what I want. Remi didn’t die so I could run back to my space station. He died so I might live…for Sidonia. Take a chance on me, save the planet.”

“A chance? I ran out of luck years ago.” Half of Vincent’s face smiled.

“Why don’t we get back dirt side and show our people they have a king and queen?”

THE END

From the Author

Thank you for reading The Queen of Sidonia. I hope you enjoyed it! It would mean a lot to me for you to leave a review on Amazon. If you want to go above and beyond, tell two friends about the book.

Would you like to read more about Cosima and Vincent? Spotted a typo that I should hunt down and kill with fire? Let me know at richard.r.fox@outlook.com.

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