CHAPTER 5

The Seersa was paying for a cup of hot chocolate when the chime sounded in her ear: in her ear, not outside it, because the implant was hidden on the inside of her eardrum. The emitter’s location gave the sound a shocking immediacy, as if she was hearing it with her spine as well as her pointed ears, and her twitch almost slopped some of the hot chocolate out of the mug she’d just accepted. She’d known the summons might come at any time, but she was frustrated nonetheless... and not just because she’d come to enjoy the café’s snug little tables, cozy ambiance, and amazing drinks. “Could I have that in a portable cup, please? I’m sorry, I just remembered I have an appointment I can’t miss.”

The human behind the counter smiled at her and said, “Sure thing, Carol.”

A few minutes later, the Seersa trotted out of the bakery and started down the crowded street, her cup trailing steam in the brisk autumn air. She’d picked up some possessions while pretending to be a girl out of luck on the hunt for a job, but she would have to abandon them in her rented room. If her compatriots had wanted her to remain they would have contacted her through a normal channel. Using the emitter meant something was up, something important; they’d want her to answer the summons immediately. There was a Pad station nearby she could use to step up to the major orbital station serving the bustling colony world of Akana Ris. Her pick-up would be waiting there, and traveling without luggage would make her less noticeable, particularly once she picked up the courier service’s sash that would be waiting in one of the lockers. She would leave much as she’d arrived… with nothing.

Lieutenant Laniis Baker, formerly Fleet Proper and now on loan to Fleet Intelligence, hadn’t imagined she would one day end up drinking some of the worlds’ best hot chocolate on one of the Alliance’s most lawless colonies while trying without success to find some information that would let her help refugees flee the Chatcaavan Empire. But then, she hadn’t imagined she would lose a year of her life in the imperial harem, either, and that had happened… had happened, and changed her forever. Not for the worse, either, despite what the Fleet psychiatrists seemed to think.

No, her experiences on the throneworld had given her purpose, and that purpose had led her to request her current mission. She suspected the only reason she’d been allowed the transfer was written on one of her mental health reports somewhere: “needs to work through survivor’s guilt,” maybe, or “is obsessed with Chatcaava and needs to rescue others as a substitute for rescuing herself.” Laniis was grateful for whatever had led them to say yes, and maybe some part of those evaluations was true. But the larger part of it was that she’d begged Lisinthir Nase Galare to get her out of the Empire and he had. She had a debt to repay. Not just to him, but to the Slave Queen who’d made her escape possible, and who had understood so little and yet tried so hard to keep her strange alien possession sane.

Laniis had chosen her codename to honor the only female in the Chatcaavan Empire who’d dared to attempt to empathize with an alien. The Slave Queen had called her Khaska, after the child-like bell-ringers of the old Chatcaavan religion. Carol had suited.

Reaching the Dusted Fleet ship was more tedious than difficult. Everyone on Akana Ris was busy failing to notice the system’s constant infractions of law and protocol, venial or major. “Stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours” was the prevalent attitude even among the inoffensive residents, who lived with the pirates and outlaws and thieves by doing a lot of looking in the other direction. Seeing Laniis with her sash, people assumed she was either one of the criminals or working with them, and left her to her errand.

Had they known the truth they would have found her far more threatening, which grimly amused Laniis. She’d known intellectually that worlds like this existed on the fringes of the Alliance. Colonization was responsible for stretching the borders, and not all colonies throve; what happened to the ones that failed wasn’t always as simple as ‘everyone goes back home.’ But abstract knowledge shared very little with experiential, and if nothing else her brief stop here had illuminated just how porous the border was, and how easy it must be for the Chatcaava—and every other sort of pirate—to prey on the vulnerable populations clinging to these settlements.

Half a day’s travel across various connecting flights brought her to one of the solar system’s ill-maintained outposts, and there in a bar was an Aera in a grimy jumpsuit, sucking down something tar-colored like he had problems. His long ears were slicked down beneath a vac-suit hood, and somehow he’d managed to get grease streaked on the edge of his dark gray muzzle. Laniis suppressed her smile and slid onto the stool next to him. “Hi, wrenchboy.”

“Hi, sailor girl. Wanna see my ship?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

They linked arms—with some difficulty, because Na’er was a good foot taller and it was mostly leg—and headed for the nearest shuttle. He grumbled all the way there about life never going his way, a patter she listened to with genuine enjoyment when she wasn’t staring in unalloyed awe. Meryl’s field op specialist had a flair for this sort of roleplay, and the fact that he could improvise convincing backstory and sell it with a change of clothes was nothing short of astonishing. She’d never met anyone as good at impersonations, either, and it was on Meryl’s ship, watching Na’er do a flawless stream of Fleet notables complete with accents, facial tics, turns of phrase, even vocal tone, that she finally found her ability to laugh again. Really laugh, until her sides hurt.

He was handsome too. She was glad that she could still notice after serial rape and abuse.

Na’er-as-taciturn-wrenchboy escorted her all the way to his “love shuttle”, which was as filthy and battered as anything else in distant orbit around Akana Ris’s sun. It was only after they’d been cleared for departure and launched that he shook off the hood, peeled himself out of the smutty jumpsuit, and offered her a hug. She took it, bemused.

“That was more for me than you, you understand,” he said with a grin. He dusted off the plain undersuit and dropped into the pilot’s seat. “Hope you don’t mind we’ve got a long haul back.”

“I don’t. Will anyone care that Miner Na’er’s about to go missing?”

He snorted. “No. I could die out here and eventually someone would think about investigating in the hopes of claiming salvage rights on what’s presumably left of my broken ship. They’ll enforce airspace around the outpost just to keep people from ramming one another, but they couldn’t care less once you’re out of their ambit.”

“That sounds about right for Akana Ris,” Laniis admitted. She perched on the co-pilot’s chair, which no longer swiveled all the way—at least it was broken in the direction that allowed her to face him—and folded her legs under her. “So why’d you recall me?”

“So early?” The long muzzle exaggerated Na’er’s crooked smile. Among the Pelted with their mostly flat faces, the Aera were exotic that way... or she’d thought it before she’d spent a year among the Chatcaava with their draconic noses. “You won’t believe it. We almost didn’t.”

“You’d be surprised what I won’t believe.”

“I bet.” He flicked his long ears back. “We stopped at one of our message buoys and there were a couple of things waiting for us. One was a formal recall.”

Laniis straightened. “Back to Fleet Central?”

“For re-assignment, yes.”

“But I thought this part of the border was your permanent area of responsibility? Meryl’s, I mean.”

“It is. We’re going to come straight back... with a specialist.” Laniis felt her ears sagging, along with her jaw, and the Aera chuckled. He reached over and gently nudged her chin back up until her teeth clicked. “Yes. Your insane Ambassador wants another round in the ring with the Empire, and we’re his ride.”

“Speaker-singer!” Laniis breathed. “But I thought... I thought he came back half-dead!”

“For a half-dead man, then, he’s awfully spry.” The Aera grinned, and she found herself grinning back.

“What else, then?” she said. “Though honestly, that’s the best news I’ve heard since they let it leak that he lived through surgery.”

The Aera had very long ears. Elegant ones, they said. Far more lovely than a rabbit’s. What they weren’t, though, was subtle. Na’er’s flattened as abruptly as pricked balloons. “The other reason we’re collecting you is so we can get you to a safe place you can use a secure real-time connection.”

“A secur—what? Why?”

“Because,” the Aera said, eyes unwavering, “someone’s been using your real-time commtag... and the request is coming from somewhere in the Empire.”

After that they couldn’t reach the UAV Silhouette fast enough. Na’er did everything he could to distract her, but all she could think of was the one person in the Empire she’d given her commtag to, and the promise she’d made with it. By the time they mated the shuttle with the larger vessel she was almost dancing with impatience, standing at the airlock and shifting her weight from foot to foot while her tail swung in agitated counterbalance. Shanelle, the hold’s human technician, was waiting on the other side, and her greeting faded at the sight of them. “I see he told you?”

“He did. Is she—”

“On the bridge and waiting for you.” Shanelle grinned, all bright teeth against dark skin and wild magenta hair. “I think I’ll tag along. This should be good.”

Laniis nodded and went to greet her temporary commanding officer.

Fleet Intelligence Hold 22’s commander, and captain of the UAV Silhouette, was a woman named Meryl Osgood. Even for a Hinichi she was tall, almost as tall as Na’er and the Aera usually topped any of the other first and second generation Pelted. Meryl liked to say most of her genes had been borrowed from maned wolves, and from the reference images Laniis could see the resemblance: Meryl certainly had the rangy build and long limbs. But unlike Terran maned wolves with their striking red and black coloring, the captain was a sorrel gold-gray that was only going grayer with age. No one noticed that over the incisive green eyes, though. Laniis had the feeling nothing got past her, which was probably why the wolfine had been tapped to gather intelligence in one of the more dangerous regions in known space.

“Laniis! Sorry we stole you from your work so quickly. Na’er’s briefed you?”

From the swerving of the starfield in the viewport, they were already underway. The urgency suited Laniis, who spared a glance for Shanelle and Na’er as they moved from behind her to find their stations before she returned her attention to the captain. “He did, yes. Someone’s been calling me.”

“You have any idea who that might be?”

“There’s really only one possibility I can think of.” She squared her shoulders. “I gave the Chatcaavan Slave Queen my commtag.”

“The Slave Queen,” Meryl repeated, ears dipping. “The Emperor’s chief consort.”

The Emperor’s chief consort… as if the Slave Queen was… what? His full partner? Could she call the Chatcaavan that? The female who’d arranged for a collar for the new Seersan slave could not possibly be the same person as the female who’d willingly colluded with an alien national to free that slave and all the others in the imperial harem. And the Ambassador had remained in the Empire for several months afterwards. Could she count on that evolution continuing? Did it even matter, given the Emperor’s absolute power? “That, yes. Such as the Chatcaava have consorts.”

“Well, this is an interesting development,” Na’er drawled, and in such a good rendition of a famous 3deo star known for portraying brave, chisel-jawed Fleet soldiers in ridiculous action dramas that everyone laughed.

Meryl said, “Yes. A very interesting development. I take it you’re not averse to answering this call? From the logs, this person’s been trying to reach you every two days for a week now. If we haul tail, we can make it to a secure comm station before they try again.”

“I’m willing,” Laniis said. “More than willing.”

“Then let’s see what the lady—if it really is your Slave Queen—has in mind.”

“All ahead full!” Na’er added, mouth curled into an exaggerated grimace. “Man action stations! Beat to quarters!”

“That was three different movies!” Shanelle complained from the engineering station.

“Could have fooled me,” Meryl said, amused. “They all sound alike after a while. Lieutenant Baker, feel free to check into your quarters. I’m sure you want a shower and a nap after the ride here.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you, sir.”

After spending weeks in the company of the FIA hold, Laniis had become accustomed enough to their deliberate, covert movements that Meryl’s idea of hauling tail struck her as alarmingly precipitous. They were deep in the lawless space unclaimed by anyone when they departed Akana Ris; within two days they were back on the border, gliding into hailing distance of a secure outpost manned by Fleet personnel and serviced by Well repeaters leading back into the Core and out again, toward the colonies in the border.

She’d asked if she could take her call alone. She’d also asked them to monitor it, because if it wasn’t the Slave Queen… if instead it was someone threatening her, or someone in trouble… then they needed to hear it. But Laniis knew it wouldn’t be, in her heart where the Speaker-Singer whispered songs again after months of silence in the imperial harem. When the comm chimed its request and she sat in front of the emitter to take the call, the sight that awaited her when the encrypted stream completed its handshakes rang in her like the chime that had summoned her, like the bells of a forgotten religion. And that was before she looked into those alien orange eyes and saw just how much they’d changed. Chatcaavan body language was different enough from Pelted that someone else might have been fooled, but Khaska the slave had been bodyservant to this woman for months. The transformation might have been subtle to others, but it was a banner to Laniis.

“Oh, Mistress!” she whispered in Chatcaavan, awed and helplessly glad.

…and in Universal, the Slave Queen said, “Laniis. You answered.”

“I said I would, and I have. I am so sorry I wasn’t here to take your first calls. Please tell me it wasn’t urgent!”

“It isn’t, no.” A hesitation. “Yet.”

Laniis’s heart skipped several beats. “If there’s something I can do….”

The Slave Queen… nodded. The motion was so natural anyone else might not have realized that Chatcaava didn’t nod. Even the Queen’s wings dipped slightly when she did it, as if the species had evolved tipping their heads on the ends of their long necks. In that one gesture, Laniis read months of the Ambassador’s influence. “I may ask more than you can give me, I am afraid.”

“Tell me.”

“This… this may sound strange.” The Chatcaavan’s tone was bemused. “But I have been having a discussion with my new chief of harem security—” She paused because Laniis had started laughing, and ducked her head with a sheepish expression. “I know how it sounds, but he… the Emperor. The Emperor gave me one to ensure my safety.”

“He did what?” Laniis asked carefully.

“He’s not what he was,” the Queen said. “And that is a discussion for another day. My Knife tells me I dare not stay long on these channels even though they are folded in layers of obfuscation. Laniis, we may need to send the children and the females away from the palace. I may need to flee with them. The Ambassador arranged the flight of the slaves. Is that avenue still open? Is there some way?”

“Is something likely to happen, Mistress?” Laniis asked, ears sagging.

“The Emperor is not what he was,” the Slave Queen said again, meeting her eyes directly.

So much in those words. In that look. If the Emperor was not what he was...

“Can it be done?” the Slave Queen asked. “The Knife says security has increased in our solar system. We might be able to escape the palace, but... from there... we need help. We would need it, if you can give it.”

“How much time do I have to find out what we can do for you, Mistress?”

“I don’t know that either,” the Chatcaavan confessed. “But sooner is better, I think. Can I call you again?”

The emitter was now floating a tag over the corner of the transmission; it read: ARRANGE CALLBACK IN FIVE DAYS –MERYL

“In five days, Mistress,” Laniis said. “I’ll have an answer.”

“Then I’ll go,” the Slave Queen said. “Before we’re noticed.” A hesitation. “Laniis. I… I am glad to see you so well.”

“Oh Mistress,” Laniis said, feeling the prick of tears in her eyes. “You are too, aren’t you.”

“More than I could tell you now. Fair winds, alet.”

The termination of the transmission left her shaking. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and choked on her sob. She was overcome, yes. But not by the memory of trauma. The sight of the Slave Queen with her forthright gaze and lifted chin, with her alien gestures so smoothly integrated with her native ones… it was irrevocable proof that things had changed. That her past was truly the past, because even the place that had enslaved her was showing signs of transformation.

The pressure under her breast, the heat that was making her eyes well… it was elation. Elation. The Empire had seemed so implacable a foe, so impregnable a fortress. While its prisoner she’d been unable to conceive of fighting it and winning. But she’d been wrong, and not only that, she had helped, in some measure, to catalyze its downfall.

Na’er poked his head in the room, and his voice was his own, and subdued. “Hey, arii. You all right?”

“Better than all right.” Laniis wiped her eyes and rose, and if her smile was watery she meant it with all her fiber. “So Meryl thinks I’ll have something to tell the Slave Queen in five days?”

“She does, yeah. But if we’re going to do that, we need to get back on the ship and haul some more tail.”

Padding out of the room to join him, Laniis said, “More? We’re not going to have a tail left at the rate we’re burning it.”

Na’er chuckled. “It’ll be worth it. You think you’ve seen everything! If we’re going where I think we’re going…”

She waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, she scowled at him. “Yes?”

“…we’re going to be late reporting back for duty,” Na’er finished, and swayed away from the elbow jab that should have landed if he’d held still for it as he so justly deserved.

For months, Laniis had been struggling to find a way for refugees to flee the Empire. If the Slave Queen and her new security captain were willing to help them from the inside…

“Let’s not keep the captain waiting,” Laniis said.