Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (4 page)

“And you are a prince, but tonight we both live in a hovel and need to eat. Come out from there and sit with me a while.”

She offered him her hand. Even if it was the middle of the night and she was exhausted, a
ro’haar
lived to protect her
il’haar
, and right now Corinth needed protection from his dreams. He finally edged out from under the bed, using her hand to pull himself up.

Night above, he’s so small.
He had barely grown at all in the five years since they’d escaped the overthrow on Ordoch. At thirteen years he looked more like ten. His head came no higher than her last rib, and his build was slender even for a male Wyrd.

“You need two bowls of soup, I think. Don’t you eat when I’m away? I purchased the food synthesizer for a reason, you know.”

Corinth wrapped both arms around her hips in a tight hug. ::I’m glad you’re home.::

Kayla ruffled his dye-blackened hair and soaked in the love. Though kin, they’d spent little time together growing up. She’d mostly been psi training with her twin or learning to fight under the guidance of her untwinned aunts. Corinth had been busy with his own twin and psi training. He and Kayla had practically been strangers when they escaped the Ordoch massacre together.

Now he was more precious to her than anything, and even if he looked so much like a younger version of her twin, Vayne, that it hurt to even glance at him, well, she could take it.

She synthesized two bowls of broth that provided more comfort than sustenance and wouldn’t tax their calorie pack reserves overmuch. They synthesized all their food from the matrix in the calorie packs, so even low-quality ones like these had to be rationed in their straitened circumstances.

::Did you win many credits tonight?::

“I did, it was a big night.”

He sipped the broth, his huge blue eyes on her. ::Why were you so late, honestly?::

“I told you—”

::Lumar never keeps you this late. Why didn’t you answer when I called?::

“I lost my comm.”

::You never lose anything.:: She’d known he wouldn’t buy it. ::Did something happen?::

“It was nothing. A man came to see me at the pit, wanted me to fight for him somewhere else.”

::He was looking for you specifically?:: His features remained blank but Kayla knew how to read the energies inherent in a mental voice. Corinth sounded tense, his question laced with trepidation.

“Only as Shadow Panthe. Why, what happened?” She set her soup bowl down.

::Probably nothing. When I woke in the middle of the night and you weren’t home, I thought I heard something. Outside.::

“Starfire, Corinth!”

::It could have been anything! The motion sensors hadn’t even tripped.::

“What are you supposed to do if you think you hear something—anything at all? Damnit Corinth, damnit.” Fear washed through her, making her furious. First the men at the Blood Pit, now this. What the void was going on? Had their true identities been discovered?

::I’m supposed to hide in the shielded hole and call for you until you come:: he recited.

“What did it sound like?” Her thoughts turned over almost too quickly to follow. The look in the stranger’s eye when he saw her in the pit, his ridiculous offer, his missing partner, someone all the way out here in the swamp, Corinth home alone, unprotected except for a ring of motion sensors and an antiquated pressure lock on the door. Frutt.

Corinth shrugged. ::It was a low hum, constant and steady. It seemed to pass close but not too near the house.::

He was right, it could be anything. A swarm of marsh insects, energy feedback in the sensor lines, even the residuals of his nightmare fading away when he woke. It could be anything, but she knew it was trouble. She saw again the determination of the stranger waiting for her in her dressing room.

Trouble.

“I’ll check it out in the morning, once the sun’s up.” She wanted to grip him by the shoulders and shake him. “You need to promise me that if you hear something again you’ll dive right for the hidey-hole.”

She studied his features, so pale, and looking tired despite the conversation. “Promise me.”

::I promise. I’m sorry, Kayla, I just don’t like it down there.::

“It could save you if anyone comes looking for us.”

::No one has in five years.::

“And hopefully they never will.” Or they might be on Altair Tri right now. “Come on, I’m tired and you look ready to drop. Finish that soup and we’ll go to bed.”

::Can I sleep with you tonight?::

She wanted to sprawl on her cot and rest her bones, not cling to the edge of it while Corinth hogged the rest. But she didn’t even hesitate.

“Of course you can.”

* * *

“Shadow Panthe.”

Kayla’s eyes flashed open. She lay in the darkness of her room, holding her breath, senses alert for the tiniest input. The voice came again, dragging her attention to the comm unit in the next room.

“Shadow?”

That bastard. Even if she didn’t recognize his voice, with her mobile comm swiped earlier in the evening she knew exactly who was ballsy enough to comm her now.

“Corinth.” She shook him awake.

::What’s going on?::

“The hidey-hole. Now.” Kayla pulled the antiquated blaster from under her pillow and lifted Corinth from the bed by one arm. “Quickly.” She hustled him into his room and stripped the blanket from his bed as he slid back a panel in the corner of his floor. He dropped into the hole and she tossed the blanket in with him. “Stay here until I come to get you. Do not
think
of climbing out on your own, understand?”

He nodded.

She clicked on the small electro-torch they left in the hole, then slid the panel into place. It snapped shut and the seam melted away, hidden by a minor holographic field.

“Shadow, I know you can hear me.” The comm buzzed, still switched on as if he considered his next words while leaving the channel open. “I’m sorry about swiping your comm, but… We need you. Let me make you another offer.”

Kayla checked the charge on her blaster—low. She cursed herself for not splurging on another ion cell.

“Meet with me. Any place of your choosing,” he said.

She waited in her night-darkened common room, gripping her pistol, listening to the stranger’s voice.

“Meet with me or I’m coming to you. Right now.”

Too late she realized her mistake. She slammed a hand on the comm system, deactivating it, but the damage had already been done. With the right equipment he could triangulate her position.

“Frutt!”

The lights on the sensor grid panel winked on and off at her, green all the way. Maybe he’d been bluffing.
And maybe he was already on his way here.

Kayla activated the light strip beside the door, leaving the rest of the room dark. She hunkered down in the deepest well of shadow, eyes on the sensor grid, and hoped the stranger decided she was more trouble than he could handle.

One hour later, she’d almost convinced herself the stranger’s threat had been a bluff when the first sensor went dark. She’d been drifting closer to sleep by the minute, but that single light switching from green to orange woke her like an electric shock.

SENSOR 7—OFFLINE, her console flashed.

Shit.

In rapid succession, the remaining lights turned orange, all without a single alarm going off. They hadn’t been tripped, they were simply offline.
Who in space is this guy?

She rose, blaster ready.

She’d built their home like a bunker with only the front door for access, so she didn’t have to worry about other entrances or windows to guard. With nothing more than twenty centimeters of organoplastic between her and whoever stood outside, that thought didn’t give her much comfort.

Kayla flicked off her blaster’s safety and the pistol hummed, drawing full charge.

Let’s see what you’ve got.

* * *

Malkor studied Shadow Panthe’s misshapen shanty. The woman provided surprise, he’d give her that. Fengar Swamp was the last place he would have looked if Hekkar hadn’t tailed her to its edge. Even then he might have assumed she ran clandestine errands to this wretched place if Rigger, his octet’s tech specialist, hadn’t tracked her comm unit to this copse.

What a dismal place.

He tried not to inhale the swamp gases too deeply while his people finished deactivating the sensors. So… she was more than a pit whore, but he’d known that already. No one in her situation should have rejected his offer. What was she hiding? Only mortal fear of discovery or irreconcilable xenophobia would compel a person to live here.

Hekkar approached him. “Trinan and Vid are finishing the last two sensors now, then it looks like there’s just the door to worry about. No other defenses.” He glanced back at the pressure lock on the door. “Who the void is this girl, Malk?”

“No idea. It’s too late to find someone else, though.” Hopefully her secrets wouldn’t catch up to her until after the Empress Game was won. “Ardin got confirmation an hour ago—someone ‘officially’ called the Game since we’ve been away. The first princesses have already arrived on Falanar to compete. We would have known sooner if news didn’t take an eternity to reach this voidhole.”

“Ardin himself didn’t call it, though.”

“The whole empire thinks he did. Someone crafted the speech from old holovids and it has been playing on every Sovereign and Protectorate Planet for three weeks. We need a fighter now and Shadow Panthe’s it, shady background or not.”

Preferably not, but he didn’t hold out hope.

Trinan and Vid came around the corner of the home, each giving Malkor a nod—the sensor grid was down. He motioned for them to spread out, flanking the door. He’d initially felt silly bringing four of his team to hunt down one woman, and had only let Trinan and Vid come because they needed some exercise. Now, staring at a makeshift bunker in the middle of Fengar Swamp, surrounded by motion sensor lines and staring dead-on at a pressure lock strong enough to keep out an angry bull, he wondered if it would have been smarter to bring his whole octet.

“Rigger, can you handle this?” Malkor pointed at the lock. His tech specialist, datapad in hand, was already approaching the door. She pulled a knife and pried the cover off of the control before interfacing directly with the system.

The lock hissed open, the sound loud in the pre-dawn air.

Malkor drew his ion pistol. “Let’s see what sort of trouble we’re in for.” He crept up to the door and Hekkar did the same on the hinge side. When they were in position, Hekkar gave the door a slight pull.

Blaster fire shot through the opening, singeing the air half a meter from Malkor’s head.

Looks like Little Miss Twin Kris has more than one trick in her bag.

Malkor pulled a stunner grenade from his vest pocket. No way would he risk entry with her conscious. He depressed the trip and knelt, nodding at Hekkar to crack the door again. He rolled the grenade through the nanosecond the opening was wide enough, then snatched his hand back as blaster fire answered his delivery.

A three-second count and the familiar hum of a sonic burst resonated through the walls. A thud, a noise that sounded like a boneless body crumpling to the floor, followed.

Hekkar grinned. “She is not going to be happy when she wakes up.”

* * *

The shanty was only slightly more inviting on the inside than on the exterior. The three small rooms could have easily fit into Malkor’s cabin aboard Ardin’s starcruiser. An outdated food synthesizer and a battered table furnished one corner of the common room, and an amalgam of electronic equipment was amassed in the other corner, probably the source of the sensor grid.

Two equally sparse bedrooms completed the place. Shadow shared the space with a child, judging by the size of the clothes in one dresser. She struck him as a solitary hunter—it never occurred to him that the female fighter he’d seen in the ring would have a child in her life. A complication he didn’t need.

The woman in question lay unconscious on her bed where he’d placed her, looking nothing like he’d remembered. Without her costume and body paint he couldn’t be certain it was her. The kris strapped to her thighs convinced him, though, as did the lean muscles of her arms and the way she curled her hands, as if gripping a dagger even in sleep. She was younger than he’d anticipated, mid-twenties by imperial standards.

“Are you sure that’s her?” Hekkar asked.

Rigger spoke up from the other room. “Are you questioning my tracking abilities? You told me to pinpoint her comm signal and this is where it ended.”

Malkor drew her kris from their sheaths, setting the daggers on the nearby dresser. “It’s her.” He called to his teammates in the other bedroom. “Vid, Trinan, set up outside. I don’t want to be surprised when the child arrives.” He reentered the common room in time to see Rigger smack the complink console. “Anything?”

“She hasn’t set up more defenses beyond the sensor grid. This piece of shit can barely maintain an open comm link from here to the Blood Pit, and does little else. It is generating some sort of EM field, though, in that room.” She pointed to the room Shadow didn’t occupy. “Not sure what it is, it barely registers on my scans. Designed to read as background sensor trash. I’ll let you know what I find.”

A scuffle sounded in the next room. “She’s awake,” Hekkar called, sounding muffled.

Malkor left Rigger abusing the ancient console and returned to the bedroom. He paused in the doorway, taking in the scene.

Shadow sat cross-legged on the bed, hands on her empty sheaths and a furious gleam in her eyes. Hekkar stood an arm’s distance away, hand clamped to his bleeding nose, ion pistol trained on her.

Malkor looked to Hekkar, who nodded that he was all right. “Go see if Rigger needs any help. And take those,” he motioned to Shadow’s daggers, “with you.” He waited until Hekkar had cleared out before taking up position in the doorway.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

She glared at him.

“I thought we’d finish that conversation we started earlier.”

“Believe me, we’re finished.”

“Let’s start off again, then. I’m Malkor.” He offered her an opening that she ignored. “And you are…?”