Princess of the Void-5.24. Stupid and Evil

Princess of the Void-5.24. Stupid and Evil

Sykora’s tail slaps onto the table and pauses the recording.
“I should like to set her on fire,” she remarks. “I’ve never seen someone die that way outside of the sims. Shoskia would make the perfect subject.”
“I was trying not to laugh the entire time,” Grant says. “I was picturing your reactions.”
“You should have made up a crazy paraphilia or something,” Waian says. “Like she enjoys pretending to be your little kindek.”
Sykora blushes furiously and adjusts her uniform collar. Grant catches the quickest flash of her choker beneath it. “You
are
a lazy old loon and I
am
having you replaced.”
“First missive from Shoskia is in to our friend Nobody Important.” Vora taps her tablet and a message populates beneath the recording waveform in blocky script:
A friend of a friend pointed me your way… greetings from the Black Pike Sector.
I believe we can help each other.
“You were right, Prince.” Hyax’s HAK armor clatters as she crosses her arms. “She’s trying to get in touch with Dantia.”
“We’ve snared the bitch,” Sykora says. “Now we club her to death.”
“She’s offering a prospectus. Files and financials for her venture.” Vora pushes her glasses up her nose and indicates her tablet. “It appears, Majesty, that your first major competitor is here.”
Grant’s lips press tightly together as he takes this in. “She’s spinning up a Qarnaq exo business, then?”
“Indeed,” Vora says. “At a guess, it’ll be run like her Ptolek operations.”
“What way is that?”
“Traditional,” Vora says. “Regressive regulations, ill-paid and imported workforce. We’ll certainly want to keep a strict schedule of inspections.”
“That’s if we even allow her to lease space on the Qarnaq ring,” Waian adds.
Sykora barks a laugh, choked with fury. “Over my void-frozen corpse.”
“No,” Grant says. “Let her.”
Sykora sputters. “
Let
her?”
“Yeah.” His eyes trail along the rocky-mountain waveform. “If we wall Qarnaq off from everyone but me, that’s special treatment, right?”
The command group nods their agreement.
“She definitely has a contingency for when you turn her down,” Grant says. “Maybe she even hopes for it. She considers Korak Refinery a nepotistic trinket. She’ll whip her allies into a frenzy and paint you as hornchoked and compromised.”
“I don’t give a damn what she thinks,” Sykora says.
“You have enough battles to fight without fighting mine,” Grant says. “This was always how I prove myself. So let me prove it. Let her try and compete. If she wants to step into the ring with me and Wenzai, onto it, whatever, I say bring it on. She’ll leap at the shadows we’ve cast over her, and I’ll knock her the fuck out.”
A silence across the table. Sykora stares at Grant with her mouth half-open.
A rasping chuckle from the Brigadier. “I’ll be damned.” She’s got a grin bigger than Grant’s ever seen on her face, lopsided as it is. “While we weren’t looking, our Prince went and became a Prince.”
“Very well,” Vora says. “I’ll see how much I can extract from her.”
“Hell yeah.” Waian’s artificial fist shines in the light as she raises it. “Grantyde versus Shoskia. Kick her tail inverted, boss.”
Sykora tugs on his belt loop. He crouches and meets her wide, confused eyes.
“We need to discuss this in private,” she says.
He brushes a knuckle along her chin. “Cabin?”
“Yes, please.”
Grant stands up. “Stay in contact with Shoskia, majordomo. Get as much as you can.”
Vora’s neck twitches downward and hitches momentarily. Then she completes her bow. “As you wish, Majesty.”
“Waian, see if you can link Shoskia to our ring collapse incident. Right now all the proof we have is wrapped up in compulsion bullshit. Maybe there's a way to nail her on it publicly.”
Waian bows without hesitation. “On it, boss.”
Grant follows Sykora off the deck. Her boots make muted thumps on the carpet-lined hall to the lift. “You’re prepared?” she murmurs. “If this turns into some public spectacle or tiff?”
“I am,” Grant says. “She’s a good talker. I’m not as much of a politician as she is. But she doesn’t say what she believes, and I do. I might need to lean on Vora and Wenzai sometimes to spot-check what I say before I say it, but you can keep your focus on the new sector.”
Sykora watches the wide span of the Pike swim past the lift’s glass doors. “And what if she keeps these attempts at sabotage going? Would you be ready to punish her?”
“I was ready to
shoot
her, Batty,” he says. “I was ready to give Corska compound seventy. I’ve been asking myself why. Why I’m willing to go low on this, why it feels… uh.”
“Easy,” Sykora prompts.
“Yeah.”
“And what have you concluded?”
“That it’s mine,” he says. “The thing being threatened. It’s not a difference between how I work and how you do, like I sorta thought it was. Just that this is the first time it’s really mine. I didn’t realize how much easier that makes it. It’s mine. And I want to protect it.”
Sykora lets out a long sigh.
“Are you—you’re not upset, are you?”
Every time Sykora jumps from the floor into his arms, he’s shocked at how high she can go. The Taiikari are light and agile; now and then he’s seen other Taiikari achieve the impressive airtime she does. But the sheer predatory grace with which Sykora can mount her husband—the legs springing from a standstill into a powerful vertical leap and then shooting forward to lock around his waist, the fluid lassoing motion of her tail up around his shoulder or around his hips, the craving hands caging the back of his head—makes him feel like a prey animal getting pounced. It pushes a surprised grunt out of his mouth before her lips lock around it with feverish urgency.
“My fucking
man
,” she gasps between kisses. “My big,
strong
man.” Her hips undulate against him.
He backs into the lift doors just in time for them to open and deposit the two of them in the hallway to their cabin. He laughs as he stumbles to the door, his gait made unsteady by the counterweight of his wife’s madly wagging tail. “So not upset, then.”
“
It’s mine and I want to protect it
.” She takes a deep breath of his chest. “Gods of the fucking firmament. You’re the Prince of the fucking Black Pike. The father of my children.”
The cabin doors slide open and he maneuvers his panting wife through the curtain. He twists her away from her trophy cabinet before her wagging can knock one of her various murder weapons off the wall. “Careful with that thing.”
She snakes her tail around his waist instead. It pulls his waist greedily closer into the compass of her legs. “You know what I’d do, if I were you?”
“What’s that?”
“You know what I’d be feeling? I think I’d be feeling
aggressive
right now.”
He chuckles. “Aggressive, huh?”
“I’d be feeling
mean
.”
“Mean to who?”
“I think if I’d had to sit across from an evil bitch like Shoskia, and grin and fleer at her useless flashing, I’d want to take the next Taiikari who thought she could compel me.” Her stubbly little tongue paints his throat. “And
take
her, and teach her a hard, firm,
long
lesson about what a Maekyonite—what a
human
can do to a smug little alien harlot with a false sense of superiority.”
He hums. His hand cups the back of her neck. “Good point.”
She rests her face against his. Their noses touch. Her eyes flash.
“Put me down,” she whispers.
“No.”
Her legs fold tighter around his waist. Her eyes flash again. “Let me go.”
“No.”
“Take me to bed and sexually obliterate me.”
“Okay.” His hands slide down and anchor themselves on her butt. He pivots with her toward the bed. “But not cause you told me to.”
***
Grant strolls from the bathroom with a pair of water glasses. He sees his pants on the floor and for a moment, his endorphin-charged brain thinks
I’ll just grab those with my tail
. He catches up to reality, snorts to himself, hooks his foot around his discarded pants with his communicator in its pocket, and flicks them into the pile with the rest of his clothes.
His wife is lying sprawled across the sheets, dazed and drooling, surrounded by the hastily discarded pieces of her uniform.
“I wish I had a tail sometimes,” he says.
Sykora’s legs twitch. She makes a flagging
Guh
noise.
He puts a glass on her nightstand and hops into bed with the other. “I see all of you triple-tasking. Sorta jealous.”
She rolls into his lap and continues her attempt to catch her breath. He bends forward and kisses her shiny forehead.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” he asks.
“Mmm. Uh. Okay.” Sykora gulps a lungful of air and quivers beneath Grant’s hands. “What—what did you say? About a tail?”
He chuckles. “Nothing important. You good?”
She arches, sending her subtly growing stomach skyward and digging her head into his lap. “I’m
great
,” she purrs. “What’s your favor?”
“Doesn’t have to happen right now,” he says. “But later this evening, I’m hoping I can have the cabin for a private conversation.”
Sykora’s brow furrows. “Who?”
“I just encountered possibly the most regressive noblewoman I’ve ever met,” Grant says. “And she’s in league with the last person I’d expect to support this sort of behavior.”
The corners of her mouth twist down. “You need to speak with Narika.”
“I do.” He rubs her stomach and feels its incubator heat. “Alone.”
***
Grant’s sister-in-law gives him a chilly smile from the cabin’s main screen. “Hello, Majesty,” she says. “A genuine pleasure to see you.”
Grant nods, hands clasped behind his back. “Narika,” he says. “I want to discuss Marquess Shoskia.”
“Ah,” she says. “You’ve found out, then.”
“So you’re not even going to bother denying it?”
“No point,” Narika says. “She came to me requesting funding and I gave her some.”
He scoffs. “What the hell, Narika?”
Narika tilts her head. “What do you mean
what the hell
?”
“You know what she is, right? The kind of woman she is.”
“I have an idea of her reputation, yes.”
“You’ve seen her business plan, then,” Grant says. “The ways she’s going backwards. My methods of working with the Eqtoran Council and the union. She wants to tear them up and keep things prehistoric.”
“That’s not her goal,” Narika says.
“What is?”
“She wants you back in your chains, Grantyde,” Narika says.
Grant’s heart skips.
“Your parole citizenship is nearly at an end,” the Princess of the Glory Banner continues. “It’s come to her attention. She is organizing a case to the Empress and to the sector that you are unready, and your freedom is a dangerous folly of Sykora’s. Your failure at Qarnaq will be the cupola on her argument’s citadel. Do you know, Prince, that should your wife be incapacitated, by disease, or an accident, or some other incident… going into labor, for example.”
She smirks at her own words.
“Do you know
you
will be the
first alien in recorded history
in undisputed command of a ZKZ? The first ever. That is what my sister has caused you to represent to these people. The seizure or destruction of the Empire. That is what the Marquess is fighting.”
“That’s insane.”
“Mmm.” Narika picks a piece of lint from her seat arm. “Not insane, I think. Just evil and stupid.”
“And yet you’re funding her.”
“That’s right.”
“That really disappoints me, Narika.” Grant puts his hands on his hips. “I thought you were more virtuous than that.”
Narika brushes her epaulette straight and grins. “Good angle, Majesty.”
“I’m serious,” he says.
“Here’s my thinking,” Narika says. “I’m calculating that you’ll be able to fend this evil, stupid woman off—and not only that, you’ll lay her out. She’s underestimating you, and overstepping, because she’s a misandrist and a xenochauvinist. So, I’ve set up a preoccupation that will operate autonomously and occupy you and Sykora, with only a modest expenditure of funds on my part. I’ve
also
encouraged Shoskia further into a confrontation that will ultimately prove disastrous for her rather toxic ideology. And I’m abetting a good first crisis for you. You’ll learn a lot.”
He snorts. “You’re really going to tell me you’re doing this for my benefit?”
“I don’t mean to insult you by suggesting that.” Narika leans forward. “But I am glad to see this metal in you. The more Shoskia beats you, the more of my investment I recoup. The more you beat her back, the stronger you become. Either way, I’m satisfied. You have it in you to be a
splendid
Prince, Grantyde. You have entered the Empire at the
perfect
time for a man like yourself, with the goals you have. A time of change. You are a catalyst. Sykora will try to protect you, but there is only so much she can do. And she loves you, but there is only so much she is willing to change. Some of what you hope to accomplish, you must do on your own.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“In my defense, Grantyde, you don’t either. If you
do
still hate the Empire, you’re doing a good job hiding it.”
“You presume a lot about me.”
Narika snorts. “You came in as a kidnapped sex slave, Grantyde. You either hated the Empire or you were a lobotomite. I imagine you remember how it was when all this began and you were not free. Much has changed. You have developed a certain imperial ambition. I’d like to nurture it.”
“Still sounds like an excuse to me,” he says. “Just being honest.”
“You’ve wondered at times why Sykora and I don’t get along,” Narika says. “This is why. Ask her about the things that she does to me, when you get the chance. Ask about the Prgiot protestation I’m wrestling at the moment and the nonsense she put into Marquess Owiaxa’s head about me.”
Grant tries not to make it obvious that he’s filing those names away. “She’s
pissed
about this.”
“Of course she is,” Narika says. “If I was speaking to her, I’d feel no need to explain myself. But I like you.”
Grant doesn’t want this to please him, and blunt his anger, but it kinda does. “What if I expose your hand in this?” he says. “Make it known to the peerage that another sector’s moving on our turf.”
“Now, that would be
satisfying
.” Narika holds up a finger. “But would it be
productive
? You need to balance your response. Let’s game this out. What happens if you make our tiff over this planet public?”
“You’re trying to manipulate me here.”
“I’m trying to convince you of something, I’ll give you that. Take me with a grain of salt. But humor me. You broadcast that I have a hand in the Countess’s maneuvering. What’s the benefit?”
“I show outside influences are at play,” Grant says. “If she’s really opening a competitor on Qarnaq, it’s Pike versus Glory Banner now.”
Narika hums. “The problem there is that it isn’t as populist a message as you’re making it out to be. Sykora and I care a
lot
about who’s running what. Your citizens mostly just want to feel looked after. And I have as fine a reputation on that score as she does. It wouldn’t damage me among the coterie, or even particularly chip the paint with the plebeians—I’m acting in the expected ways Void Princesses act against one another, especially when it comes to Sykora and I. And you know I already have communications with your unions. They don’t hate me enough. Anything else?”
“I garner support from the peerage?”
“Mmm. From some corners, but, again, they were likely to support you regardless. These people you’re hoping to activate are activated already. You don’t need to turn them twice. Now what are the drawbacks?”
“You’re eager to tell me, I imagine.”
“I am. But see if you can come up with some.”
“This feels patronizing. Uh—matronizing.”
“I don’t mean to be,” Narika says. “Indulge me.”
“They’re going to think I’m a whiner,” he says. “Stamping my foot at the first sign of unfairness. They’ll think I’m unready, and running to mommy.”
Narika’s chin-tapping pauses. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she says. “I hadn’t thought of it, but you’re right.”
“What was yours?”
“This is an attack of opportunity I’ve been given,” Narika says. “
She
came to
me
. I found that quite brazen. If you let it be known that my money is going against your Qarnaq operations, you’ve given your opposition legitimacy, and you end up sending more of them to my doorstep.”
“And you’ll finance them.”
“I will,” Narika says. “For the fire-and-forget funds they’re looking for, it’s a no-brainer.”
Grant sighs. “So it’s me against you, huh?”
“If you want to look at it that way,” Narika says.
“I really wanted to avoid this.”
She shrugs. “It was not avoidable. But if you don’t take it personally, I won’t either when you stab me back.”
“When that happens, call me again,” Grant says. “I’ll remind you of what you just told me.”
She chuckles. “I will.”
And despite himself, Grant grins along with her.
“How’s the expectant mother?” Narika asks.
“She’s good,” Grant says. “Showing, a little. And everything’s good with the kids. The Empress is sending someone to do a checkup in a tenday or so. Lieutenant-Gefreiter Axyna. Does the name ring a bell?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“She’s sort of nuts,” he says. “But she’s the one who re-encoded me, so I assume she knows what she’s doing with the pregnancy stuff.”
“Quite likely, Majesty. Do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you feel prepared?” Narika asks. “To be a father.”
“I do,” Grant says, and he’s pleased with the surety of those words. “At some point when we’re closer maybe I’ll freak out and second-guess myself. But right now I’m feeling good.”
“When that happens, call me again,” Narika says. “I’ll remind you of what you just told me.”
“Until then,” he says. “Or until I beat your puppet Marquess’s ass.”
“I’d say I’ll be watching with interest,” Narika says. “But I’m busy snapping up all the good planets from our dead colleague’s sector before your wife gets any of them.”
He throws her the horns. She gasps and giggles, and it throws him for a loop how much it sounds like his wife. She throws the horns back.
“Good luck, brother,” she says.
Then the screen flickers out as she disconnects the call.

5.24. Stupid and Evil