Adric had greeted Khan at the hatch personally, so he rose now, grabbing the man’s tea mug and swapping it for a clean one before walking to the hatch to see what other surprises the day held for him.
Kira Zaman, unacknowledged Imperial cousin and Penal Fleet Frigate-Captain, stood there a bit anxiously. But then, Khan’s departure had probably ruffled everyone’s feathers, as the man had been emotionally on the edge of being unraveled when he left.
Like him, she had gone for the less formal uniform today. Knickerbockers and horizontal stripes, lacking the sash she was entitled to. He wondered if she saw herself being called to account, especially after he had spoken with Khan.
“Come,” he said.
She walked past and Adric nodded to A.Q. in the hallway with all the various Security troopers on duty as always.
Adric closed the hatch and turned to watch. Kira had come to rest in the center of the large room, feet apart and hands crossed behind her back.
She wasn’t much shorter than Adham Khan, and almost as broad in the shoulders, but lacked that fierceness he brought. Most captains did. She might have a reason today, being last to tell her story.
“Sit,” he gestured. “The tea is still warm, I think.”
Adric returned to his chair and settled as she carefully poured herself a mug. He waited. She waited.
The woman could probably out-stubborn him. She had in the past, and he had things that he needed to do.
Kira Zaman really didn’t have much left in front of her, save continuing to serve however long he let her. And then retiring at some point.
What would the fleet be like without her in it? Not a thing he had considered before today. Previously Kira Zaman had been a problem to be solved, not a person to be acknowledged.
In those days, he could not acknowledge her. Whoever her father was, he had never spoken up, and her mother was no longer alive to ask. Genetic testing had placed her close to him by blood.
At the time, that had been enough for her to enlist. To serve. To thrive, as much as she could when her choices were so starkly limited.
Like she would let anything stop her.
Adric considered their age gap as he watched her. He was fifty-eight, and on the back side of his prime. She was a generation younger at thirty-four. Thankfully, he had never known her mother, so it was completely impossible that she was his daughter.
At least of the flesh. Of the spirit was a different thing. She had the Kerenski eyes, dark and full of power.
She sipped and outwaited him. Again.
“Adham Khan finds himself in an ethical dilemma,” Adric began, picking up this conversation in the middle. Like he had with Kira in the past.
Her eyes flared angrily, but she refrained from spitting on the floor.
Not that he would have begrudged her that today.
“He and I spoke of Aditi, and everything that Kosnett and Khan believe,” Adric said. “Plus Lau.”
Now, Kira’s eyes lit up in a different direction. Friendly, hopeful, something.
Command Centurion Lau. Possibly the most dangerous person in the Cluster, because Phil Kosnett wanted everyone to talk and trade and make nice.
Lau wanted people like Adham Khan to understand regret. And people like Kira Zaman to dream.
She refrained from commenting. He nodded anyway, as she was answering his questions in her own way.
“I have told Kosnett that I will be accompanying him when he goes to Aditi to confront the Consensus publicly,” Adric continued, still watching Kerenski eyes dance with inner emotion. “Khan practically demanded that I include your squadron with my fleet when we go.”
That got through to her. Even the normally unrufflable Kira Zaman could blink in surprise.
“Why?” she demanded before she could stop herself.
“He acknowledges a mistake he made previously,” Adric replied. “Seems to be haunted enough by it that he is willing to accept demotion by his Emperor and the dishonor that accompanies it, that he might make right that which he broke in the first place.”
Kerenski eyes got huge. There was really only one thing that touched on all three lives that he could be talking about.
“Artak Khan once told me personally that I should acknowledge you,” Adric told her. “That I should promote you out of where you have been trapped by circumstances, the rest of the Empire be damned in the process. Instead, I listened to his son, who made the louder and more compelling case at the time.”
“At the time?” Kira asked now, fidgety on the verge of nervous.
All this had been hashed out in public and private alike, several years ago. Settled and done.
Except that Adham Khan had found a template to understand what Kira Zaman could have become, in any other culture.
Command Centurion Heather Lau.
“Adham Khan has offered to metaphorically throw himself on his sword, Kira,” Adric told her. “He even told me that I should consider swapping the two of you as commanders before sailing off to challenge the Consensus, because that would better serve the Empire than a fool like him. His words.”
She gasped. Just like Adric would have liked to at the time. He’d had to hold it inside. To present the glorious and terrible Emperor of Gloran that Adham Khan seemed to be depending on.
It was not far wrong to say shit had gone entirely weird today.
She was blinking like she had something physically in her eye, instead of a twitch in her soul.
“But I wanted to talk about Aquitaine,” Adric said, drawing her back from recriminations and might-have-beens. At least for a moment.
“Sir?” she asked.
“In private council like this, call me Adric, cousin,” he said.
She gasped again. Like Khan, set down her mug before she spilled it all over herself.
At least Adric finally understood that Lau and Kosnett had already changed the Gloran Empire, even if they had hardly dealt with it directly. They had infected Adham and Kira both. The rest would come along eventually.
Change was coming. He could own it, or let it grind him under as he tried to stop it. Because he would fail.
“Khan would undo his denunciations,” Adric said. “Meekly accept demotion to the Penal Fleet, or even dismissal entirely, because he thinks you would be better in his place when we go to Aditi. Would he be correct?”
Another gasp.
Adric routinely sent the woman to do things, because she got shit done. Not many of his captains could reliably make that claim. She’d gone to Carinae II because he needed a force there to frighten off anyone coming back, while sorting out what had happened and how to save the colony. Or rebuild it, as had become necessary.
And he could never admit she had Kerenski eyes.
Until now.
“I don’t know,” Kira admitted. “He and I have never served in the same system until now. Even when Artak was my Frigate-Captain, Adham kept his distance, probably concerned that dishonor was contagious.”
Adric let her have that one. She was not far off the truth he had seen in Adham’s unguarded eyes.
“What would you do, if Khan could undo the past?” Adric asked her.
If she became an acknowledged cousin, her wrath on the man could be terrible. And likely correct, considering all the things she might have lost over the last five years.
Kira fell silent. Introspective.
“I had a meeting with Lady Kugosu, daughter of the Shogun,” she said, as though shifting entirely around to a different conversation, but Adric assumed it was all connected. That other woman was in the system right now.
“And?” he prompted.
“She and I spoke of trade,” Kira said. “That same treaty she had offered to Ewin, almost verbatim, with an additional expectation that Gloran and Dalou both needed to develop worlds near Vilahana that we claimed and had largely ignored. She is fourteen years old, and sounds ancient.”
Fourteen? Oh, that put an interesting spin on things. Kira had joined the fleet when she was fourteen. Had set herself on a path on the one thing she wanted that she was allowed.
Had she already served his Empire for twenty years? What would she do next?
“What do you want out of this, Kira?” he asked her delicately.
She could collect a pension and retire. Perhaps had already qualified. It would not be great, but she would not starve. And had an entire life ahead of her, as yet untapped.
“I serve the Empire,” Kira told him in a hard, sour voice that had decades of unpleasant memories she had overcome.
“What did Lady Kugosu teach you?” Adric prompted.
Every person Adric Kerenski had ever met had had some lesson to impart, even if nothing more than but for the Grace of the Creator go I.
He saw fear in her eyes, but only for the briefest flash before she crushed it.
“That the only limits on us are those we accept, Adric,” she replied.
It was his turn to gasp. Audibly. That was acceptable in here. She was family.
She would accept no limits. Not now. Not having met Lau and Kugosu.
Revolution, however tiny now, would only grow.
How long until half of his captains were women? Gloran allowed it, then went out of their way to make it harder, stationing women ashore when they became pregnant and not letting them into space again. The few he had were adamantly not going down that path, because they would accept no limits on themselves.
He nodded.
Even emperors could learn.
“You will be accompanying me to Aditi,” he announced quietly. “I’ll detach some of my own frigates to guard this system while we’re gone, though I doubt that it would be necessary. It is the survivors who need to be able to look up and see the fleet between them and the darkness.”
“How can I serve?” she asked.
“Continue to be excellent, cousin,” Adric said eliciting another gasp. “After the Consensus is put to rights, we’ll take Kosnett to Derragon and welcome everyone to our home as we should.”
Those Kerenski eyes grew huge as the implications of his words became clear. Our home. Not just his. Cousin of the blood, rather than outcast working her ass off to be better than any other captain under his command.
“And if Aditi resents the intrusion?” Kira asked.
“Let them try,” Adric assured her.