15

The sun rose over the horizon as I sat curled up on one of the chairs in my room, blessedly alone for the first time in what felt like forever. I’d followed Mother’s edict about not leaving my room since the flame ceremony, but it hadn’t prevented me from having an endless parade of visitors to my room for the past four days. Admiral Hassan had been by to see me twice and Matriarch Desai had caught me up on the council meetings I was barred from. There had been a dozen other meetings with various people in the palace and two short interviews with carefully selected members of the media.

The remains of my breakfast were on the coffee table, and a fresh cup of blue chai threw steam up into the air. The fire Stasia had thoughtfully built up before she left roared in the grate.

I wrapped my hands around the mug, inhaling the sharp spice until it brought tears to my eyes. The sweet scent of clove reminded me of better days; of trips to the far North, where there were snowdrifts deep enough to bury myself in, of long days playing with my sisters in the snow and coming back inside to warm ourselves by the fire.

I put my cup down on the delicate glass table to my right, noting in a kind of detached amusement that my hand was shaking. Fiendishly difficult didn’t even begin to describe this situation. Death trap might be more accurate in the long run, and I still had no way to get free of it.

The burst of clarity in my room last week and my mother’s desperate plea continued to haunt me. I’d pored over Dr. Satir’s reports, trying to find something that would explain my nagging doubt. I didn’t have a reason for it, which was the messed-up part.

Between my conversations with Clara and the admiral, plus all the information Alba was feeding me on a daily basis, it was clear the empire was in trouble. There’d been riots and unrest before my sisters’ deaths, and they had only gotten worse since then. Things seemed to have died down somewhat with my arrival and the approaching holiday. It was almost as if the whole empire was holding its breath and waiting to see what I would do.

My standoff with Mother over the baby wasn’t helping matters. Despite Clara’s best attempts, she’d continued to insist Ganda be the official liaison with the heads of the three councils. Until we got this sorted out, I couldn’t meet formally with the Matriarch Council and receive their confirmation of my position. This meant that even though my public stock had risen after the assassination attempt, within the palace I had less power than Mother’s cats.

They got to go out whenever they felt like it.

Unless I fixed that, consolidating my position was going to prove difficult. Of course, I could just walk into a meeting and see what happened, but I wasn’t certain going head-to-head with Mother was the wisest idea. I had learned a thing or two about diplomacy in the intervening years, no matter what anyone thought.

My hiss of frustration echoed over the crackling fire, and I shoved myself to my feet to pace. I wasn’t going to challenge Mother outright for the throne; things were bad enough without adding that to the mix. We had to wait for her to come around to the idea of abdicating again.

But I wasn’t going to get married either. I’d loved Portis too much, and even though we’d never gotten married, I couldn’t just up and marry a total stranger. The very idea of it made me ill. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my heart.

Because that was the crux of the issue, I realized. I didn’t want to forget Portis. I didn’t want to marry someone else and have their baby like a gods-damned holy cow.

Even if I could.

The idea sprang into my head, awful and perfect all at once. I pressed a hand to my stomach, sinking to the ground with a silent gasping apology to a dead man for using his love as an excuse.

I didn’t stay down long. One of my BodyGuards would notice the spike in my readings and come to investigate. It was better to move, better to be on the offensive. Grabbing my gold skirts in my hands, I scrambled to my feet and marched out the door.

“Let’s go, boys. I need to speak with Mother.”

Zin was already on his feet, had probably been on his way to check on me, but even he had trouble keeping up as I headed out of my rooms and up the hall to Mother’s.

I dropped into a curtsy in front of the door Guards. “Princess Hailimi requesting an audience with Her Majesty.”

There was a beat and then another as requests were issued and orders shot back over the smati comm lines.

“Granted, Your Highness. Please go in.”

I nodded my thanks, sure that this was going to be the subject of a hell of a lot of gossip in the thirty seconds it took me to get to the door of Mother’s bedroom.

Bial stood just outside, a frown marring his handsome face. “Highness?”

“I need to speak to my mother about the wedding,” I said. “How is she?”

Zin didn’t quite suck in a breath, but I saw him stiffen. Bial raised an eyebrow, opened the door, and started to precede me through.

“Alone, please, Bial.” I didn’t have to force my awkward smile. “It’s family business.”

“Of course, Highness.”

I was glad only my BodyGuards had access to my vitals so Bial couldn’t see how hard my heart was hammering as I passed by him and pushed the door shut behind me.

“What is it, Hailimi?” Mother was still in her dressing gown, her skin paper thin in the morning light.

“Mama?” It was with cold deliberation that the little girl quaver wafted through the room. I was counting on Mother’s instability to smooth the way for my lies.

Her haughty look melted and I felt doubly damned for the deception when she smiled. Swallowing back the guilt and my pride, I dropped to my knees at her feet. The tears that leaked out were real and my mother tilted her head to the side with a frown.

“Child, what is it?”

“Mama, I can’t get married yet,” I whispered, continuing in a rush when her face started to harden. “I can’t, because I was already married—to Portis.”

Mother blinked. “Oh, Hailimi, you didn’t.”

“I didn’t know who he was!” I dropped my voice with a wince. “We were in love, Mama. I just—”

“You have been mourning. You went to temple. You offered prayers for your sisters.” There was a dangerous flash of fire in Mother’s black eyes and the cup in her hand rattled oddly as she set it down in its saucer. “All the while sullied with a marriage to a commoner!”

I scrambled to keep things on a sympathetic level. “I know. But I didn’t think you’d want anyone to know so I had to play along. I was afraid it would embarrass the family.” I wrapped both my hands around hers. “That’s why I can’t get married, Mama. Why I have to wait to have a child. You know it wouldn’t—”

“Yes, I know.” She pulled her hands out of my grasp, waving them in the air. The ring on her trembling finger winked and flashed in the sunlight. “Stupid child,” she muttered. “The lighting of the sacred flame was permissible even with the mourning for your sisters, but if anyone found out you were mourning a husband—and a commoner at that.” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Shiva help the condemnation that would rain down on our heads.”

My brief moment of sympathy was lost and I’ve never had to fight so hard not to punch someone in my whole life. Mother was relatively coherent this morning, but so deep in her role as empress that all she could see was how this would affect her rule. I wasn’t even going to press her on just why she thought people would condemn me for something like that in this day and age.

I tried to tell myself that was fine, it was what I’d hoped for, and it didn’t cut me to the bone. It didn’t matter that Portis and I had never actually married—anyone who knew that was dead.

“Fine.” Mother was lost in her own political world, unaware of my misery. “You may have your four months, but you are not to mention a word of this to anyone else. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mama.” I folded my hands together and pressed them to my forehead. “Do I have your permission to involve myself at Court?” I asked formally.

“Yes, now go on so I can eat my breakfast in peace.” She waved an irritable hand at me, so I got up without another word.

I curtsied low, then left the room, giving Bial a sharp nod on my way. I’d gotten what I wanted. Four months was the traditional mourning period. Hopefully by that time I could figure out what to do about this whole heir business. I’d gotten her approval to participate in Court—which I took to mean I could involve myself in anything I wanted.

And I’d fucking trade it all just to see Portis smiling at me again.

Halfway back to my rooms, the doubt that had been assailing me over Mother’s dementia slammed into me with the same force as one of Johar’s side thrusts. I spit curses into the air, grabbing for Zin when my knees gave out and I stumbled toward the wall.

“Highness!”

“I’m all right,” I gasped, even though it was a lie. I wasn’t all right. I’d never be all right again.

“Cas, find Dr. Satir.” Zin didn’t listen to me, scooping me up and striding down the hallway to my rooms.

“Zin, put me down.”

My struggles almost earned me a broken nose, when Zin nearly dropped me on my face. He recovered enough to set me on my feet and I staggered for my bedroom, slamming the door when he tried to follow.

The awful thing I’d just witnessed replayed in front of my eyes, overlaid on a memory. Mother’s ring, flashing in the sun, the sparkle trembling in a distinctive rhythm. The way her cup had rattled in the saucer—once, twice, a third time.

“Well, this ended badly. I really thought we had something special.” I raised my hands carefully, keeping them well away from my guns.

“Give me the money, Hao.”

“You shoot her and I will peel the flesh off your body one centimeter at a time. After Portis is finished with you.” Hao sounded pissed more than anything. I couldn’t blame him. This piece of trash was messing with our already tight timetable.

The gun pointed at my right eye shook. Once, twice, a third time—the quick, rhythmic fluttering of an AVI-junkie.

“You’re angel touched, Jones,” I said, clicking my tongue. “How much longer do you have?”

“Shut up. Shut up!” His hand steadied, then repeated the distinctive tic that gave the drug its street name—Angel Wings.

Through the hazy memory, I heard Emmory just outside my door. “You left her alone?”

“She shut the door in my face,” Zin replied.

“Next time kick it in.”

I reached up and twisted the knob, opening the door before Emmory could do just that.

“Highness?”

I gestured at him to turn on his jamming device. “You’ll be pleased to know Mother has agreed to a postponement of my duty to provide the empire with a daughter and has given me permission to involve myself at Court once more.”

“We’re alone,” Zin said.

“She’s got flutters.” I got to my feet and pressed the back of my free hand to my mouth. “Oh, holy—Emmory, Mother doesn’t have dementia. She’s addicted to AVI.” The flutters appeared in long-term users, when rapid degeneration of the nerves set in and their bodies started failing.

“You saw it?”

A jerky nod was my only answer as terror crawled over my skin. She couldn’t possibly be using intentionally. Someone had to have been dosing my mother with AVI for long enough that she was now in the end stages of addiction. Someone had to still be dosing her, or she’d be suffering from major withdrawal.

Amanita virosa indus. A fungus found on the planets in our home system similar to a poisonous strain found on Earth, but small doses only caused hallucinations rather than death.

Some enterprising soul had discovered that concentrating the mushroom concentrated the mind-altering effects of the drug. Mixing it with a counteragent removed the immediate deadly ramifications, but long-term exposure still resulted in death.

“Highness, sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I want to kill someone. She’s not a junkie, Emmory. This is my mother. The Empress of Indrana. Someone is dosing her. It’s the only explanation.” I grabbed on to my anger, using the heat to burn away my frozen fear.

I got the Look in reply then Emmory sighed and pulled a SColt 45 from under his jacket.

I had a heartbeat to panic and another to feel utterly foolish when Emmory flipped it around and handed me the gun.

“I saw the recording of the attack. You’re right, Highness, you’re safer armed. There’re ammunition packs in the other room.”

“That cost you a lot to admit, huh?” I took it. “I just said I wanted to kill someone, Emmory. Giving me a gun probably isn’t the best of ideas.”

“I second that.”

Emmory shot Zin a look. “I trust you, Highness. Don’t shoot anyone who’s not trying to kill you, and for gods’ sake, just kill them. Don’t shoot pieces off them.”

“Zheng Quen was fibbing, Emmy. I didn’t shoot his toes off one at a time because he insulted me.”

“True. I believe the reason for it was because he tried to kill you, ma’am.”

I tucked my tongue into my cheek and dipped my head in acknowledgment. That actually wasn’t the whole truth either. Quen had tried to kill Portis because I’d snaked a deal out from under him. We’d just left Po-Sin’s employ, and I knew that without a reputation for violence, we’d be space junk before the year was out.

When I’d found out about the hit on Portis, I’d visited the man Quen had paid to kill him first, and then I paid Quen a visit.

Civilized people gasp and shake their heads at the story, but I don’t regret it one bit. Gunrunning is as far from civilized as you can get—short of maybe the SpaceBoxing League. I could have killed Quen for what he’d tried to do, but live people spread your reputation around a hell of a lot faster. It bought us the space we needed to build our own business up without looking over our shoulders all the time.

After that incident, only the truly idiotic tried to cross us.

The gun Emmory had given me was a magnificent piece, matte black and compact enough I could hide it under a decent sari. I’d always liked the weight of the SColts but they were more appropriate for land use. Firing one on a spaceship could cause all kinds of problems, and not just for the person who got shot.

“You’re being surprisingly sanguine about Mother.” The weight of the gun in my hand calmed me down.

“The idea that someone would try to kill your empress-mother wasn’t completely discarded,” Emmory said.

“The fact that whoever’s behind this actually managed to start with her is worrisome,” Zin admitted with a grimace. “Ven was right to be paranoid.”

“He’d heard some unsettling rumors, Highness,” Emmory supplied before I could ask the question. “The kind of things a BodyGuard hates hearing. It worried him enough to send Ofa and Tefiz to meet with us.”

“Speaking of BodyGuards, do we have to tell Bial?”

Emmory nodded his head. “I can’t keep it from him. Dr. Satir will insist, and even if she didn’t—”

“He could be part of the plot. How else could they have drugged her, Emmory?” I dragged a hand through my hair and hissed in frustration.

“If Dr. Satir didn’t catch it on any of her scans, Bial might have missed it also,” Emmory said. “It doesn’t show up on normal tests. That’s why it’s such a popular drug. No one would think to check for something that common.”

“Which is why they picked it. It’s a perfect plan.” Zin muttered a curse, winced when Emmory smacked him, and apologized. “This is getting worse by the minute. I don’t like it.”

“Right there with you,” I said.

“Agreed,” Emmory said at the same time.

The three of us shared a grim smile.

All it took was a simple test to prove me right. Dr. Satir’s horrified look told me the answer before the words left her mouth.

“I don’t understand, Your Highness, I didn’t—”

“You didn’t have a reason to look for it. Either of you.”

Bial shook his head. “Very kind of you, Highness, but this is my job. I should have thought—” He broke off and rubbed a hand over his face. “How long has it been going on?”

“It’s going to be impossible to pinpoint when she started ingesting it. I would need to know what kind of a dose she’s been getting to even guess at a timeline.”

“How bad is the damage?” I asked.

Translation: When is my mother going to die?

Dr. Satir paled. “Highness, as you noted, the shaking is a sign of nerve degeneration. Her liver is failing and so are her kidneys. The paranoia will only get worse.”

“A Farian?” It was a stupid question to even voice. The last desperate gasp of a grieving daughter.

“You know they can’t heal things like this,” Emmory said.

He was right. Farians weren’t magicians. Their powers encouraged the body’s natural healing ability, speeding it up, nothing more. They couldn’t reanimate dead tissue, repair dead nerves, or stop my mother’s brain from slowly unraveling.

Bial cleared his throat. “Highness, we will need to convince your mother to abdicate the throne as soon as possible. We cannot risk having her—”

“You”—I whirled on Bial and the man actually backpedaled—“will not convince my mother to do anything! You are her BodyGuard. A task which you have failed at, I’ll add.

“My mother is the Empress of Indrana, sick or not. I will speak to her and she will make the decision to abdicate the throne herself. I will not bully her like a child. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.” Bial bowed his head.

“Dr. Satir, come with me.” I waved a hand at her as I headed for the door to Mother’s bedroom.

“I take it you’re done talking about me?” Mother was propped up in her massive bed, looking like a ghost against the mound of purplish pillows. Her hair was down, silver-black curls falling around her shoulders. “You look like someone’s killed your dog.”

“If I had one, that would cap things off nicely.”

Mother laughed, but it quickly dissolved into coughing. I fumbled at her bedside table, pouring her a glass of water. Now that I was looking for it, I spotted the patterned flutter of her left hand with ease and it broke my heart into pieces.

“I swear sometimes it’s like your father is talking out of your mouth, child. He was such a smart-ass.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hush, Haili. Now, what’s going on?”

“Majesty, you’ve been quite ill for some time now—”

“You’re being poisoned, Mother.” I shot Dr. Satir an apologetic look. We were lucky that Mother was coherent right now; I didn’t want to run the risk of that changing with a long explanation.

Besides, I’d want this kind of news straight without a lot of dithering and I knew she would, too.

“We don’t know how and we don’t know how long,” I continued. “We do know it’s AVI.”

“That awful drug the commoners poison themselves with every day?” Mother rolled her eyes. “Apparently my enemies have a sense of humor.”

“Dr. Satir can tell you the specifics if you want. It’s not good, Mother.”

“Of course it isn’t. I expect I will get worse?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dr. Satir whispered.

“Well then, I will meet with the Matriarch Council and announce my abdication. You will be there, Hail. I’ve just sent Tye a message to fill her in on what’s going on. We will announce it immediately to quell any rumors. Tonight would be best. We’ll plan for your coronation after Pratimas, though. I don’t want to interfere with the holiday.”

I exhaled a shaky breath and Mother smiled.

Then, just like a veil had been pulled over her face, her smile faded and she frowned at me.

“Haili, how many times have I told you and your sisters not to play dress-up in my clothes? You’ve made a mess of my closet and your father will be back any moment.”

Oh, bugger me. My heart crashed into the floor.

“I’m sorry. I’ll get it cleaned up.”

“You do that. Quietly. I’m exhausted and I want to rest my eyes before your father gets home.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I backed out the door, nearly running into Tye in the process.

“The empress called me. Her message said she was going to abdicate the throne?”

I shook my head, unable to say anything without the tears coloring my voice. Thankfully Dr. Satir stepped in, explaining in a hushed voice what had just happened. Tye was equally on the ball. She had been with my mother for almost five years, and it seemed that little could shake her.

“Highness, the empress was supposed to sit in on a military briefing in half an hour. That will obviously be impossible.”

“I’ll do it.”

Tye nodded sharply. “I will get together with Alba and figure out what to shuffle out of your schedule so you can meet with the Matriarch Council. I can have Admiral Hassan get you up to speed before the briefing starts.”

“I’ve been following discussions somewhat, but I’d appreciate that.” I glanced down at the relatively plain blue dress I’d talked Stasia into this morning and sighed. “I’m going to need to change. Please tell the admiral I’ll meet her…” I fumbled. “Wherever we’re supposed to be.”

Tye didn’t even crack a smile. “I’ll send you the location, Your Highness.”

“Thank you.” I left Mother’s rooms, my BodyGuards trailing behind me.

“Ma’am, you will want to breathe or you risk passing out,” Emmory murmured. “Your heart rate is through the roof.”

“I am panicking, Emmy. You’ll just have to deal with whatever alarms are screaming in your head.”

Not that anyone except my BodyGuards could have guessed my state of mind. My face didn’t show the slightest evidence of my fear as Stasia helped me change. I was back out the door and striding across the palace to the conference rooms in under ten minutes, which had to be a record of some kind.

It was a good thing I didn’t have a chance to think. That the little girl in me couldn’t stop and mourn, wail over the loss of her mother. It was a good thing I was a gunrunner, trained not to show any fear.

If I stopped for a second, I was going to lose it.

“Your Highness.” Admiral Hassan met me at the door. “Thank you for stepping in on such short notice. Chamberlain Tye informed me the empress is indisposed and asked if I would give you a quick briefing.” She cracked a tiny smile and shrugged one slender shoulder. “Before the briefing as it were.”

If the admiral was at all curious about my sudden appearance or my attire, she didn’t show it. My dress was white, the three-quarter-length sleeves tight with no frills or lace to speak of, and my sari was the same blood-red one I’d worn to temple.

It was the sort of thing my mother would wear. The sort of thing an empress would wear.

“Today’s meeting concerns some recent developments with the Saxons and our shared border. There have been some difficulties of late.”

By difficulties, she meant the Saxons were chipping away at our border worlds while we sat by and did nothing about it. I didn’t mention that and instead accepted the file the admiral sent me.

“I’m going to wander over here and read this,” I said, waving to the corner of the room. “You can introduce everyone when we get the briefing started.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do you think, Emmy?” I murmured as I skimmed over the file. “Should I announce the news and see what kind of reaction we get?”

“Unwise, ma’am. You still need approval from the matriarchs to take the throne.”

“I’m her blood.” Even as I protested, I knew he was right. It was a simple formality for the Matriarch Council to acknowledge my mother’s abdication and approve of me as the empress, but that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t object.

Especially given that until I returned, Ganda had been dealing with them as though she would take the throne. I swallowed the curse. Tough luck for her. I wasn’t leaving my people in Ganda’s spoiled, selfish hands.

“They would need a concrete reason to deny you, Highness. The rules of succession are in your favor.”

“I need to know what the atmosphere is before I go into that meeting. Alba?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Gather what you can. I won’t need you while I’m here. There’s a two-hour gap between this meeting and the one with the council. Luck hasn’t been with me lately, but maybe we could figure out an angle of attack in that time. Maybe Ganda won’t protest at all, if—”

I snorted back a laugh, drawing several looks from the military members filing into the room. I ignored them and sat down in my mother’s seat.

If. Fires of Naraka, I was still so fucked.

“Go on, Alba, I’ll see you after the meeting.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I glanced quickly around the table so my smati could log the faces as people took their seats. The admirals in charge of 2nd and 3rd Fleets were only faces on holo-screens, their presence at the meeting beamed in from thousands of light-years away.

The other men and women around the table were dressed either in the black-on-black of the Imperial Guard or the dark blue of the Imperial Navy. Dressed in white, I blazed like a star amid the unrelenting backdrop of space.

“I have been informed that Her Majesty is indisposed and she asked if the heir would sit in on this meeting. Caspel, if you’ll start off the introductions?”

The hawk-faced man in civilian dress to Hassan’s right nodded sharply. “Director Caspel Ganej, Highness. Head of Galactic Imperial Security.”

I nodded in reply and the introductions continued around the table.

“The Saxon Alliance has been pushing at the borders. Nothing overt enough to break truce, so long as their government keeps their peaceful-coexistence rhetoric pumping on the media lines,” Hassan continued after the introductions were concluded. There was bitter laughter around the table. “They’ve ‘convinced’”—there was no mistaking the sarcasm in the word—“three border worlds in the last two months to join the alliance.”

“Why haven’t we taken them back?” I could have bitten off my damn tongue when the question slid out.

Every single pair of eyes flipped in my direction—some filled with poorly concealed contempt, others with sympathetic agreement.

“Because, Your Highness,” Admiral Shul, head of the 2nd Fleet, said slowly, speaking as if I were a child, “as long as the Sax claim to be sticking to the treaty, so must we. There’s no obvious military involvement. The planets voted. At least according to the Saxons.”

“Surely there are ways to get those planets back without overt military involvement on our part then?” I was already hip deep in it, so I figured I should just keep going.

“Don’t you think we’ve discussed that already?” Shul replied, and the sharp bite of his voice over the speaker had several people at the table sucking in surprised breaths.

“Admiral Shul, you will modify your tone when speaking to the Crown Princess,” Hassan snapped. “Highness, I realize you’ve…”

“Been out of the loop?” I supplied when she fumbled, and was relieved by the flash of humor in the admiral’s brown eyes.

“If you wish, ma’am. I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but the media lines have not been kind to us lately. With the economic problems in some of our outlying planets and the troubles here at home, one could make a case we’ve gotten a little too big for our own good. The whole galaxy pushed for the peace treaty with the Saxon Alliance, and it has held for longer than we could have hoped.”

I remembered hearing the news of the peace treaty. Even as I’d tried to avoid information from the empire, the end to the seventeen-year war was enough to make the headlines across the stars. We’d been in a little bar on some backwater planet, working hard at getting drunk.

“There’s a sight I never thought I’d see,” Portis said.

I turned my head toward the screen by the bar, blinking several times until the words shaped themselves into some semblance of order. “Peace treaty?”

“Yup, looks like those Earthies finally got their way. The Saxes and the Indys have signed a treaty.” He grinned at me and lifted his drink in a salute. “Maybe we should expand our territory.”

“No!” It came out sharp, but I was too drunk to care much about the look flashing over my Portis’s face. “Those Saxon Alliance types get worked up about gunrunners. Besides, dumbass, they just signed a peace treaty. Not our market.” I waved at the bartender for another shot and turned away from the screen before I could get a good look at the image of my sisters.

“Highness?”

“Sorry.” I forced a smile out. “Please continue, Admiral.”

“Caspel can probably tell us more,” the admiral replied, looking at the hawk-faced man on my left. “What’s the word on the ground?”

“Not good,” he replied, rubbing a lean hand over the stubble of gray hair on his head. “We’ve lost contact with our assets on Primatoria IV. Could be dead, could be captured, could just not be able to answer their smati.” There was a chuckle around the table at the dry humor.

“Reports from the Shiva System are unpleasant. It looks like the SA incited riots on the twin planets. It proved to be enough of a distraction for them to move troops in.

“What this means for us, Highness, is that as far as public opinion goes—those planets chose to leave the empire.” He kept his brown eyes locked on me as he shrugged. “We could take them back by force, but—”

“There’s no way for us to prove those planets didn’t change allegiance willingly,” I finished.

Caspel nodded. “Until we can, we are honor-bound to hold to the treaty or look the villain to the rest of the galaxy.”

I nodded back, swallowing down the suggestion that we send in stealth teams of our own. A roomful of military minds probably wasn’t the best place to suggest gunrunner tactics. I made a note in my smati to speak with the GIS officer later. Out of all the people present, he could be most receptive to my suggestions.

That is, if he wasn’t part of the plot to kill me.

The conversation resumed around me, and I struggled to keep up with the myriad of names, dates, and systems flying through the air. By the time the meeting had ended, I had a file filled with information tucked away in my smati and a pounding headache.