NOVEL NEXT 2.28. Glory to the Pike
Two cycles later
"Crew of the Black Pike."
Sykora stands at the command deck's balustraded edge. Her voice booms out across the sweep-lit bridge. "Once again, we've been tasked with driving the Yellow Comets from above Ramex. Once again, we are en route in the Empress's name to defend her subjects. But our remit has changed. As have our methods."
A nearly palpable shift in the air as a hunter's anticipation ripples through the assembled Taiikari officers. Grant feels it rising in him, too, loathe as he is to admit it.
"No hailing," Sykora says. Her topcoat's ebony fasteners glisten in the red-and-blue combat lighting. Her hair drifts about her—they're pre-emptively zero G. "No warning, no chances to flee. From this moment on, any fool who still flies the Yellow Comet flag is to be destroyed on sight. If we need to task salvage crews to pick the shrapnel from orbit, so be it. The Empire is finished with the Comets. We have been entrusted to finish them. Glory to the Pike."
"Glory to the Pike!" The cry returns to her as one.
Her chin is high. "Glory to the Empress."
"Glory to the Empress!"
"Signatures in focus, Majesty." The reedy voice of the navigatrix. "Three corvettes."
"Combat trajectory," Sykora says. "The lead ship." Her eyes burn beneath the brim of her tricorne. "Ram it."
The Pike screams from the tear it's rent in reality and plows into the frontmost corvette, like a spear striking a sparrow. A great pale flash fills the monitor; when it abates, the first corvette has been obliterated. Nothing remains but a cloud of whizzing shrapnel and combusting gas.
Sykora sweeps her arm toward the two remaining corvettes, which are already flaring orange on Waian's infrared screen. "Fire at will."
Grant beholds the full power of the ZKZ Black Pike.
A storm of flame and magnetized steel. The vessel rumbles below his magnetized boots. The corvettes' membranes fizz and burst into scintillating shards. The metal beneath boils away into slag and smoke.
Bare seconds. Dozens of pirates are reduced to charred meat.
Brigadier Hyax's stentorian voice rings out. "All targets eliminated."
The bridge erupts in cheers and applause. "Sweep outta that one, bitches," an ensign yells, to a chorus of laughter.
Sykora isn't watching the spreading cloud of shrapnel and vapor. She's watching Grant. Her expression isn't celebratory—it's anxious.
He remembers the line of bodies. The workers marching back into the factory to boil.
He gets to his feet and joins in the applause. "Let's fucking go," he cries.
Sykora smiles, big as the horizon.
"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me." The spindly clerk adjusts his anticomps as he places his folio of papers on the command deck table. "And thank you, Majesty, for furnishing the Pike as our meeting place."
Sykora nods. "It is an honor, Clerk Raelix."
"A great honor," Governess Garuna adds.
Sykora's annoyed huff is quiet enough that only Grant, standing at her shoulder, can hear it.
This is the third time Sykora's met with the clerk handling Garuna's protestation against her since it began last cycle. With Grant's grinning help, she spun up a long, stuffy thread about operations over Ramex, to force them to come to her this time.
Their confidence was high, when the protestation came from Garuna and not Narika, that this would be a quick and easy dismissal. But with every plodding meeting, Sykora's nerves have grown and Garuna's confidence has asserted itself further. With no links to Trimond's wrongdoing, Sykora's been denied her clearest attack on Garuna. The Ptolek coterie is recalcitrant. Things are dragging out.
"I hope today we might be able to conclude all this," Sykora says. "My management of the sector is under threat by these interruptions. The extermination of the Yellow Comets is only halfway complete, by my Brigadier's estimates."
"You needn't worry too much, I'd think, Majesty." Garuna side-eyes her. "You'll have less sector to manage soon."
Sykora's frown is deeply cut. Garuna's been sneaking these jabs in as her morale has grown.
"I will not be passing judgment on this case today," Raelix says. "That's not why I've called this meeting, I'm afraid."
Garuna huffs. "Do we need to wait longer?"
"No." Raelix steps to one side and presses a button on his tablet. The table holoprojector lights up and displays a two-dimensional camera feed. The distance renders the figure within grainy. But even with the low detail, he recognizes her.
He recognizes her from his wife's wall.
Empress Zithra XIX looks like the portrait. Only with more pronounced crow's feet and less sleep. A pair of glasses rests on her nose.
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Sykora and Garuna simultaneously go as pale as paper.
"—some cream in that," the Empress is saying, to someone offscreen. "Thank you. Okay." She sits the rest of the way down and adjusts the camera facing her. "Greetings, clerk…?"
"Raelix, High Majesty." Clerk Raelix bows low enough his face nearly touches the table.
"Case number, Clerk Raelix?"
"Sureph 3886, High Majesty."
"Uhhhhhh huh." Empress Zithra XIX clicks her tongue. "Here we are. The exo assassinations."
"Yes, High Majesty."
"Just a moment…" The sound of a keyboard clacking off-camera. "Okay. The matter of the dispute between the Princess of the Black Pike and the Governess of Ptolek. I've read the brief, and reviewed the arguments from each side, and skimmed the letters of support—Cousin Garuna certainly has plenty of those—but it occurs to me that this has all been rather complicated by the events of Marquess Paxea's execution and the bringing of protestation by a Governess in Narika's name, without a co-signature by Narika herself. Ultimately, I've decided that it needs a bit of further elucidation. Some messy business, eh? Greetings, cousins. I believe I had the chance to speak with you both at the last Void Convocation."
Sykora bows at the waist. "Yes, High Majesty."
Garuna joins her. "You did, High Majesty."
"Splendid." The Empress sits back. "Let's hear from Cousin Garuna first, and then Cousin Sykora will have her turn."
"High Majesty. I, ah. I." Garuna looks like a fawn beholding a tractor trailer coming her way. In her defense, Grant's warrior wife barely looks better.
The Empress blinks placidly. "Take your time, cousin."
"High Majesty," Garuna says. "The actions of the Void Princess have been materially damaging to the operations of Ptolek. In her investigations, she took power that oughtn't have been hers. She repeatedly refused the counsel of the planetside nobility, and she illegally took control of the holdings of one of my exo baronesses, which—"
"This would be Tri-something," the Empress prompts. "Trimond."
"Yes, High Majesty."
"Who's under trial herself, at the moment."
"Under trial, High Majesty, but still in process. And I would note that she has a petition to censure the Void Princess currently routing through the clerk's office."
The Empress folds her hands. "So noted. Continue."
"High Majesty, the refineries on Ptolek have been processing more and more every cycle. I've sent you our numbers. The Void Princess's insistence on micromanagement has coincided with a refusal to properly control the unionists who constantly threaten the growth of our industry." Garuna points a shaky but accusatory finger at Sykora. "The result is our first decacycle since records began of negative growth."
"Because of the work stoppage," the Empress supplies. "And the attack, I suppose."
"Just so, High Majesty. Sykora failed to prevent either. Narika has volunteered to resume control of the system in case of protestation, and it is the recommendation of myself and my peerage that she does so."
The Empress leans on her armrest. "All right. Cousin Sykora?"
"High Majesty." Sykora's bow rises back up with her little shoulders square and her expression of command back on. "Garuna doesn't know what she's talking about and is grossly unfit to run her world."
Garuna's eyes bug.
"It's become too personal," Sykora says. "This unionist talk has been a steady stream throughout my investigation, even once the idea of their involvement became farcical. It's moved from stewardship to vendetta. I've reviewed her security measures. She's spending more resources on covering the inefficiencies created by her discontent workers than it would take to keep them willingly obedient."
"The more we give, the more they'll demand. Empress, her husband was an energy refiner on Maekyon," Garuna says. "If anyone's getting too personal—"
"If their demands outstrip the losses incurred through security and disobedience, we'll confer and change course. Not before. Your campaign against the union has proven shortsighted and self-serving." Sykora angles herself to speak to Garuna. "We're not keeping order for the sake of your ego. We're keeping order to maximize exo refinement, minimize expenses, and provide safe, comfortable lives to our subjects. The workers are not a hostile nation to conquer. They are your utilities and citizens. And there are real culprits. Trimond is surely not the only exo baroness engaged in this smuggling while you've been squabbling with your workers. I need a Governess in place who I can trust to ferret these people out." She bows once more to the Empress. "I regret that I have no further comment, High Majesty. But the conclusion to be drawn seems clear to my eyes."
The Empress stares.
She glances downward and types something out on her unseen keyboard. "All right. Sykora carries it. Hew to the void princess in all matters related to this case. Protestation is denied. The Governess is to be reassigned. I'll accept a shortlist of proposed replacements, Cousin Sykora, if you care to provide one."
"But—" Garuna's tail bristles. "But High Majesty, the protestations of my fellow noblewomen—by sheer volume, surely—"
"Final decision, Cousin Garuna. It seems to me you've done a splendid job getting Ptolek's exo industry set up, but we'll need someone else for day-to-day maintenance. The best thing would be to move you to another promising extraction site and have you break ground there. Cousin Sykora, kindly send the Governess these survey records of unoccupied resource worlds I'm looking at, if you judge them up-to-date. Cousin Garuna, ranked choice of reassignment preference within the next cycle, please. File it with your Void Princess."
"High Majesty, you can't—"
Zithra XIX removes her glasses. The transformation is instantaneous. It's as though the Empress's face has been pulled off along with them, revealing the titanic steel edifice of autocracy beneath the flesh.
Grant thought his wife had a scary Icy Royalty face. It's a snowflake compared to the glacier that now bears down on Garuna.
"I can," the Empress says.
"I am sorry," Garuna whispers.
The Empress hologram's fist-sized eyes blink. She slides her spectacles back on. "Apology accepted, Cousin Garuna. Chin up, yes? I'm seeing some very promising reports outer-spinwise. You might check on this Crassus-613 one." She taps something on her desk. "This mineral survey puts a great deal of Neodymium there. Can never have too much Neodymium. I think you'll fit nicely. Get it producing on a level near Ptolek and we'll call this mismanagement here an honest mistake." She steeples her hands and rests her chin on them. "That's all, I should think. Thank you, cousins. Glory to—"
"High Majesty." Sykora steps forward. "I apologize deeply for the interruption and for taking more of your time. But I must petition you about a related matter; it cannot wait."
The Empress's hand twitches to her glasses. She purses her lips. She adjusts them up her nose. "Very well, Cousin Sykora. Your judiciousness has earned you that."
"High Majesty, this is my husband Grantyde, Prince Consort of the Black Pike." Sykora indicates Grant. His heart stops for a few beats.
"I noticed him. Difficult not to. You've found a tall one." The Empress leans forward. "Well met, Prince Consort."
"Bow," Sykora hisses. "Bow deep."
He does. "High Majesty."
"Grantyde has been my most stalwart companion, who has inspired me and kept faith in me, who has been indispensable as I've, uh, as I've gone about this case, and…" Sykora's shaking like a leaf. "And the judiciousness is at least halfway his. He saved my life on Ptolek II. He killed the traitor Thror of Entmok. He…"
Sykora takes a deep, shivering breath. She looks up at Grant. He sees the terror in her eyes. Her blink hammers it into determination. She turns back to the screen. He realizes what she's about to do, and his throat closes up on a half-formed protest.
"He has earned his place and proven his loyalty." She forces the tremor from her voice. "And I beg of you, with great humility, that he be liberated from my ownership and made a free citizen."