Vashti let temper carry her through the twists and turns that made up Nemesis’ hallways. It wasn’t often that she lost it these days; she’d long ago learned the value in controlling her emotions. She’d taught herself to be patient and listen, especially as Lilith had aged and become more unpredictable.
But Dem had pushed her today. Pushed at trigger points that had been sensitive since the night she nearly died.
Everyone meant well. Mercy, Cannon, Cage, her nephew Max, twenty other concerned people she could name. They were all fascinated by what had happened to her, of course. Fascinated, awed, envious, afraid…this ‘miracle’ elicited a variety of emotions in people.
But Dem was right. Vashti only felt one emotion: anger. She hadn’t asked for a second life. She damn well hadn’t wanted one. She’d rather been looking forward to leaving this mess of a galaxy in someone else’s hands, truth be told.
Life had been a long series of heartaches, constant pressures, and loss. Why would she want more of it?
But over the years Vashti had found temper became increasingly difficult to hold on to. Halfway to her quarters, her mood had cooled enough that her usual awareness kicked in and something buzzed at the edge of her perception.
She'd picked up a shadow. Not unusual these days.
Vashti bit back a sigh.
Max had decided she needed someone to take care of her, and since she'd lost Griffin and dismissed Cage, he'd taken it upon himself to spend his spare time checking up on her. She'd done her best to dissuade him. For all the good it did.
The simple truth was, she'd never needed the help. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, even a year ago when she’d had limited mobility and increasing health issues. Talent wasn't hampered by things like arthritis, after all. She'd employed Griffin and Cage to cast the illusion to others that she needed the help. Now, in her Talent-renewed body, she could no longer reap the benefits of that illusion. Neither could she present as some innocent young thing to be dismissed. No one here forgot her real age, even if they sometimes treated her like they did.
It was annoying, really. She'd profited greatly in recent years from others judging her too old or infirm to be a real threat. Even Mercy had been easy to manipulate when she'd first arrived. Now, of course, she'd become wise to Vashti's ways.
Pride made her smile. Mercy was shaping up to be everything Vashti had hoped for in a niece and a queen. All of that potential from the moment of her birth was coming to fruition now, in the decisions she made and the way she had stepped up to the burden of leading.
Despite Lilith's many children, only Pallas had been natural born. Lilith had feared too much having a young Queen, and what that would mean. She'd lied, stolen, used genetic tweaking, and Vashti suspected worse things, to pretend to the world that her children were her own. Pallas had been a mistake, one that had almost broken Lilith. Vashti still remembered finding her in her rooms, the place all but destroyed. Furniture in pieces, broken dishes scattered, bedding ripped, and Lilith in the middle of it all, weeping for the baby she'd conceived and could not bear to destroy.
Many people thought her sister a tyrannical monster capable of the worst atrocities, but even at her worst, Lilith couldn't kill her own child. Years later, when Pallas took Mercy and ran, Lilith would have done horrific things to try and control how Mercy grew up, but she couldn't have murdered them. It was a line she was incapable of crossing, whatever people thought. No one had known her sister the way Vashti did. The two of them had shared an unbreakable bond. A survivor’s bond.
Now, murdering other people? Lilith had done plenty of that. Vashti still felt a sense of loss at what her sister had become. Anger at what she suspected she had done to Vashti’s own Consorts, and her own fertility. Vashti should have had children five times over, but despite the very best medical care, had continued to miscarry baby after baby, until finally the doctors said if she continued to try, she risked her own life.
Lilith, she was sure, had had a hand in that. Queens could be born from either of them, after all, and her own children weren’t the only ones Lilith had feared.
If only their mother hadn't died, if only the Alpha Queen hadn't murdered her in front of Lily, if only fear hadn't twisted her. So much potential, but the weight of what they fought against had proven too much.
Vashti hoped with everything that she was, that Mercy would prove stronger.
On that sobering thought, she finally made the corridor to her quarters. Pausing outside, she sent a questing tendril of Talent spiraling out.
Aha, there he was.
Max was getting better at moving unseen, but she'd had a lot more practice.
She opened the door, pausing for a moment before stepping inside. "You might as well come in, Maximum," she said, using his full name so he'd be sure to detect the admonishment in her dry tone.
She walked inside without a backward glance, and sure enough, but the time she was standing in her tiny kitchen area making tea, Max was slinking through the doorway, shoulders hunched in guilt and defeat.
"Good morning," she said to him, as she heated the water and prepared her favorite blend. "Shouldn't you be…” she trailed off. He was finished with school, wasn't he? Very nearly a man. “…somewhere else? Surely, you have better things to do than follow me around." She gave him a stern look, just in case he was going to pretend to be so dense as to not understand.
He wasn’t, of course.
Max was incredibly smart. She understood he excelled at ship mechanics and engineering, but that was not all. He had a gift for memorizing anything he read, devoured data crystals and books and articles like most children inhaled sweets, and he never forgot something once he read it.
He’d taken after his grandfather in that regard. Cyrus had always been brilliant. When they were children, her brother had used his incredible intellect to his advantage, showing up the rest of them in their studies. It had driven Lily crazy.
Max looked a lot like him.
Vashti had always wondered if Lilith used their long dead brother as her model when she’d tinkered with her adopted children. No one outside the family even suspected they weren’t all from the same genetic tree, which had been her goal, of course. Max looked like his grandfather, but he also looked like Cannon, the pirate King. Everyone thought Cannon was Lilith’s grandson, when in reality, he looked the part, but was not a direct relation to the family.
Max ducked his head, a stubborn light in his green eyes. It made him look even more like Cannon. There was something of the masculine rogue in the square lines of his chin, and while he'd spent the past few years growing like a weed, he was now beginning to fill out. His broad shoulders would be useful when he had to muscle around large ship parts, she was sure. His dark hair was shorn short, but often stood up at odd angles, as though he swept his hands through it a lot. And while the shortage of Talented women was an ongoing and persistent issue the pirates faced, she rather doubted that her handsome great-nephew would find it difficult to cultivate relationships.
His jaw tightened in a stubborn look that matched his eyes, something that was also like Cannon, and that he’d no doubt picked up from him. He clearly planned to ignore her question.
Vashti sighed. "For Mother's sake, sit down," she told him. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded testy.
She spent a moment pouring the hot water over tea leaves and let the silence grow as Max slid his lanky frame into a chair and the tea steeped. Vashti set a timer and sat back, waiting.
Finally, Max couldn't take it any longer. The young often sought to fill silence if you let them. Vashti found most people did.
"Just because your circumstances have changed, doesn't mean you don't need someone to watch your back," he said.
Vashti retrieved two cups and placed them beside the teapot. When it became clear she wasn't going to say anything, Max continued.
"I could be a huge help to you. I'm observant, and still young enough that people ignore me a lot of the time."
Vashti poured two cups, the fragrant aroma filling her senses. Some part of her relaxed, just smelling the tea. She still longed for a few minutes in her dry sauna, but tea was the next best thing.
She slid one of the cups across the counter to Max. "Oh?" she said. "So you're offering yourself to me as a spy? Do you think I am lacking in that area?"
He hesitated, clearly sensing the trap in her words and debating how to respond. Vashti was widely understood to know things almost before they happened. People often credited that to her Talent, but it was no secret that she employed a vast network of contacts as well.
"No," he said finally. "But I'm also good with all kinds of tech. I've got a new drone, and it's totally undetectable..."
She lifted a hand. Max stopped speaking.
“Max, Mercy is your sponsor. She should be helping you with whatever your future goals are.”
“She is. I’ve spent time studying the Archives, I get a budget for my special projects, and I’m interning with R&D.”
Vashti raised one eyebrow. “Then why are you slinking in the shadows, following me around every chance you get?”
He fiddled with his tea cup. “It’s just…Sebastian worked for you.”
Ah. Now it became clear. Max had added to his hero worship of Cannon, and picked a new idol. His father had died when he was very young. Max had a lot of powerful male figures in the family he could look up to, and he’d chosen well for those he wished to emulate. “That was a long time ago,” she said.
“I know. He went from that to working for the King. To being Captain of Nemesis.”
A look she recognized all too well shone in his eyes. Ambition.
“It wasn’t quite as quick as you make it seem,” she said.
Not to be denied, Max continued, like a dog with a bone. “I asked him who his greatest teachers were. He said Lilith. And you.”
Lilith, of course, was dead. At least, as far as most people knew. Only a very select number of people understood that part of her lived on in the blade Mercy wore.
“You wouldn’t have wanted Lilith for a teacher,” Vashti said. “By the time you were born, she was unstable and dangerous to everyone around her.”
The pirates’ former queen had been under a lot of pressure to keep her people safe. She’d known the future they faced, and that knowledge had slowly crushed her. Over time, she crossed lines no one should in her attempts to hold that future at bay. People started distrusting her, whispering about her state of mind. The deterioration of trust between Lilith and her people only made her condition worse. She became erratic, mercurial, and deadly. By the end, even Vashti had feared her and what she might do.
“But you’re a good teacher,” Max said.
Vashti sipped her tea, thinking. Max was not going to let this go. She knew him well, and like his idols, he had a stubborn streak. Seeming to sense an opening, Max pulled something out of his pocket.
“I can be useful,” he said.
“Am I supposed to ask what that is?” She couldn’t see much, whatever it was fit in his hand, shrouded by his fingers.
He revealed the tiny mechanism with a flourish. It looked like a rough approximation of a mechanical insect, if that insect had been drawn by someone putting sticks together, and if the sticks were made of data crystals and computer chipboards. It might be a fly if you squinted a lot and looked through an unfocused lens.
“I call it the Spy Fly,” he said.
Of course he did. The alliteration must have proven too much for the child that still lurked within.
Vashti raised an eyebrow, drinking more of her tea. It was a citrus blend with a hint of spice. Perfect.
Max wilted a little at her lack of response.
“I thought it was a perfect name,” he muttered. But he rallied as he explained what it did. “I got the idea from watching Ghost,” he said, referring to one of the dogs, highly specialized soldiers who worked for the most powerful pirates. Ghost was a scout — his Talent allowed him to project his mind across distances to a level almost as effective as if he were physically there. Better, in many ways, because the projection was far harder to detect. He made an excellent scout and spy. “Spy Fly can project a recorder anywhere within a one hundred meter radius of itself. Through walls, even through shielding. It records whatever it sees and hears, and uploads it simultaneously to remote storage, secure and encrypted by a randomly changing algorithm.”
“Hmm,” Vashti said. She kept her response noncommittal. What he was describing was impressive, because he’d built it apparently from scratch in his workshop, but she owned dozens of similar devices already. They were manufactured by several companies and not difficult to come by. Bypassing shielding was more expensive to obtain, but not impossible. If Max had done even a little research, he’d know that.
The little mechanism suddenly lit up and began to move. It stood up on spindly stick legs, and then two thin membranes detached from its back and lifted up. It made a little clicking noise and they stiffened, and began to whirl in a circular pattern. The device lifted off the counter to hover at eye level. It was very nearly silent. She could detect a faint buzz of noise, but only because the berth was silent and she was listening for it.
She opened her mouth to congratulate him on what looked like a fairly advanced engineering project. Perhaps he could submit it to his internship—
The device vanished before her eyes. One moment she was staring at it as it hovered before her, and the next, she blinked and it was gone.
Vashti looked around for it. Had it moved so quickly she simply hadn’t seen it?
Max wore a smug smile. “You won’t find it,” he said. “I gave it cloaking capabilities.”
Vashti stared at him. “You made a cloaking surveillance drone,” she said, just to be sure she understood.
“Yep.”
“How long can it cloak for?”
“As long as its charge is good. About fifteen hours fully charged, and if you only record sound. About half that if you record a visual as well. It’s programmed to return to home base before it loses power, and if it does lose power before it reaches me, it will find the nearest spot to either blend in or disappear before shutting down, and then ping a location to me so I can find and retrieve it.”
“That’s…impressive, Max.”
His smile widened at the praise, but Vashti always complimented good work, and he’d earned it.
“That’s not all I have for you,” he said.
“There’s more?” She might just apprentice him, after all. He’d be wasted as a ship’s Captain like Sebastian, though. Max’s talents lay elsewhere.
The Spy Fly reappeared and landed gently on her countertop once more. It sat back on what would be its haunches, and a recording began to play.
“…we need something better than the Archives.” That was Cannon speaking, his voice as clear as if he’d been standing in the room with them. His voice rang with authority as the man who had led the pirates for the past decade or more. “This doesn’t tell us enough. It doesn’t tell us anything. I don’t understand why they would make data files on the creation of Talent, the creation of Queens, but only leave vague files on the soul blades.”
“Because the smith who created them wouldn’t share his secrets.” That was a male voice she didn’t immediately recognize. It sounded farther away, with the brassy undertone that said he was speaking via deep space ansible, with crypto-coding. A secure channel. “He didn’t trust the powers-that-be not to abuse his creations and mass produce inferior versions for their own purposes — to sell, to try and outfit null troops, you name it.”
Vashti was betting on Casamir. Who else would speak of a time long gone with such authority and personal knowledge? His tone said he was making a statement, not guessing.
“So that’s it.” That was Mercy’s voice. Strange, how much it reminded her of Lilith’s when hearing it like this, over a recording. “We’re dead in space.”
“Not necessarily,” Casamir said. “I might know someone.”
There was a small silence. Vashti imagined Cannon and Mercy exchanging a look. Cannon had led their people as King since Lilith’s death, but since Mercy had returned to them, he’d been taking steps to move aside. The Talented needed their queen to survive. They needed the mind to mind connection unique to a queen, or they would eventually turn on themselves and wipe each other out. Cannon had spent years staving off that fate by using his empathic Talent, but as powerful as he was, even he couldn’t maintain that degree of influence forever. He was tired. Vashti could see it every time she was in the same room with him.
Mercy, having spent the bulk of her life convinced the pirates wanted nothing more than to murder her, was slow to trust. Slow to want to take up that mantle of leadership. Cannon was patient, but he couldn’t wait forever. Vashti thought they’d reached some kind of compromise, because lately Mercy had been taking on more and more responsibility, and Cannon had been stepping back. Still, the two of them effectively ruled the pirates together currently, and though the Talented had never had a King before Cannon, no one was questioning his right to continue his authority beside Mercy.
Yet. No one was questioning it yet. Vashti was certain it would only be a matter of time. Pirates were disciplined, but as a whole ambitious bastards, jealous of anyone who stood over them. They only tolerated the Queen, and only then because they needed her.
“You might know someone?” Mercy said on the recording. “Someone who just happens to be an expert on soul blades that haven’t been widely used since the Ascension Wars? Soul blades that were created hundreds of years ago?”
“He’s devoted his life to studying them,” Casamir said. “But he’s a something of a recluse. Doesn’t trust easily, and really doesn’t like sharing his research.”
“Does he trust you?” Cannon asked.
“Well…not exactly, no. We had a bit of a misunderstanding.”
“So, you’re telling us the expert we need is in hiding somewhere, won’t want to talk to us — really won’t want to talk to you — and that’s the best we’ve got?” Vashti could hear the sarcasm in her niece’s voice.
“That’s pretty much what I’m saying, yeah. Look, this is the only guy with any chance of figuring out what the hell is going on. Either you figure out a way to convince him to help you, or you wait and see how long it takes before all of your special Talent-infused super weapons die.”
Another long silence punctuated this statement. A sick feeling moved through Vashti’s gut. They couldn’t wait. If Mercy’s soul blade failed, they lost Lilith. Not even Sebastian fully understood how he’d moved her to it in the first place. There was no way he could safely replicate what he’d done, even if they had something else to move Lilith to.
And, they needed the soul blades. They had precious few advantages against the Alpha Queen. She was here, and she wasn’t going to stop until she’d subjugated them all.
“I wouldn’t suggest force,” Casamir continued, after the silence had stretched on. “You need Adir’s cooperation.”
“Give us the coordinates,” Mercy said. “We’ll have to figure out our approach. Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything at all?”
“He hates most researchers and scientists. The last time he worked on a major research project, others tried to steal his work. He seems to hate people, but he’s got a soft spot for kids. Oh, and don’t turn your back on him. If he thinks you’re a threat, he won’t think twice about killing you and disappearing.”
“I thought you said he was a researcher.”
“He researches weapons, Mercy. I originally met him when he was a soldier. He didn’t particularly like being a soldier, but that doesn’t mean he forgot how to be one.”
“Lovely.”
“I just sent you the last location I have for him. Hopefully he’s still there.”
“Hopefully?” Cannon asked.
“You are not filling us with confidence,” Mercy said.
Casamir chuckled. “Good luck.”
The recording stopped.
Vashti stared at Max’s creation, her mind whirling. Cannon and Mercy would put together some kind of plan. It might even be a good one, with the two of them working on it together. Who would they send? Neither of them was likely to be able to go themselves. They needed someone who could negotiate, someone who would not come across as threatening, someone who could, maybe, predict how this Adir was going to react in the moment and adjust accordingly.
Something tugged at her, a feeling she wasn’t familiar with.
They needed to send Vashti.
She looked up, and met Max’s guarded, hopeful gaze. He seems to hate people, but he’s got a soft spot for kids. Max was almost too old. Almost. But he had the makings of a decent spy, if she could train him properly. And he never forgot anything he read.
If she couldn’t convince this Adir to help, maybe they could at least get a look at his research.
“We need those coordinates,” she said.
“That’s the best part.”
“Don’t tell me this thing can intercept a coded transmission.”
“No. But after Casamir sent it, they pulled it up on the holo at Cannon’s desk.”
Vashti could have hugged him. “Did you get a visual?”
Slowly, Max smiled.