Stars of Blood and Glory (11 page)

“
This sword represents the spirit
of our people,” he said softly, his voice echoing in the silence.
“Legend holds that it was fashioned on Earth and taken by our
forefathers in their exodus across the stars. For generations, we
have kept it as a priceless treasure, a symbol of all that we hold
dear.”

He drew the blade from its scabbard, making
it ring in the way that only the purest steel could. His men’s eyes
widened, and their faces stiffened with resolve.

“
Let it be witnessed today that
this blade shall not be sheathed until our enemies have been
vanquished and our people are safe once again!”

Katsuichi held the blade high over his head,
and a resounding cry erupted from all of his men, filling the room
and sending chills down his spine. Tears streamed down their faces,
and many of them drew their own swords to answer in salute, leaving
the men of the Federation utterly bewildered.

Let them gawk, then,
Katsuichi thought to
himself.
This is our hour—this is when we shall redeem our
honor.

But even as his blood boiled with
anticipation, he could not stop his thoughts from drifting to his
sister.

* * * * *

Abaqa stepped briskly through
the open doorway and onto the bridge of his brother’s ship,
the
Conquering Flame.
Jahan stood on the raised platform at the center,
overseeing his pilot and gunnery commander—both of whom were little
older than him.

“
Ah, Abie,” he said, turning
around and smiling. The two brothers came together and
embraced.

“
I heard you have a mission for
me,” said Abaqa. He glanced out the wide but narrow forward window
at the brilliant star-filled vista of deep space.

Jahan’s expression darkened. “I do, but it’s
from Gazan, not from me. Frankly, it’s a little high-risk for an
inexperienced gunboat pilot. If I were you, I wouldn’t—”

“
What’s the mission?”

Jahan sighed and shook his head, but he
reached over and switched on the main display screen, just below
the forward window. “This is Princess Hikaru of the star known as
‘New Rigel’ among the planetborn.” An image of a gorgeous young
woman flashed onto the display, wearing an ornate gown the likes of
which Abaqa had never seen. “She is the sister to one of the
Federation commanders, a young man by the name of Katsuichi.”

Abaqa nodded. “For a planetborn wench, she’s
not too ugly.”

“
She’s supposed to be some sort
of queen. Our spies tell us that she’s recently gone missing. The
palace guard thinks she’s run away to New Vela under a stolen
name.” The display flashed again, and a number of documents flashed
across the screen, written in a script that Abaqa’s mother hadn’t
taught him. “It’s all in the database—if you crack their networks,
your AI should be able to hack in and find her.”

“
So Gazan wants me to kidnap
her?”

“
Or assassinate, whichever is
easier.”

Abaqa glanced back at the screen, which had
reverted to the image of the girl. She stood at the head of a
beautiful garden, with a glass ceiling and blue sky overhead. She
was leaning forward slightly and smiling at someone outside of the
frame, as if they had made a joke and she was struggling to hold
back her laughter. From her slender build and the youthful dimples
on her cheeks, she couldn’t have been three or four standard
planetborn years older than him.

“
I’m in,” he said, turning back
to Jahan. “How soon can I leave?”

“
Hold on, Brother—hear me out.
New Vela is a long way from any of our support fleets, and the
Federation forces are massing not far from here. The only way to
New Vela lies through the rift—an area peppered with Federation
forces.”

“
I know. My gunboat has dual jump
drives—I can handle it.”

Jahan frowned. “Can you, though? Normally,
we’d send a triple-platoon of empath soldiers, or a cruiser
equipped for a standard hit-and-run mission. The fact that Gazan is
only sending you tells me that he’s just looking for a way to get
you killed.”

“
So?” said Abaqa, his cheeks
reddening. “You don’t think I can do it?”

“
Honestly? No.”

Abaqa clenched his fists and
snarled. “Then I
have
to take this mission—if nothing else, to prove to you both
that I’m not just a boy.”

“
Even the best gunboat pilots
have died on missions easier than this. I’m telling you, it’s just
not worth it.”

“
But these are Gazan’s orders,
aren’t they? How can I refuse?”

Jahan looked over his shoulder at the
officers on the bridge. They nodded meaningfully and left the room.
After the doors had hissed shut, Jahan turned back to him.

“
I don’t think he’s too serious
about this. If you want another mission, I can tell him that the
transmission was garbled, or that the intelligence is too outdated.
I’m close enough to him that I could probably talk him
down.”

Abaqa glanced back at the image of the girl.
It would certainly make Gazan jealous to see him with such a
gorgeous slave girl—a concubine taken from planetborn royalty. No
matter that she was older than him—once she was his slave, things
like that wouldn’t matter.

“
I’m not going to back down from
this,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t try to stop
me.”

Jahan sighed. “Very well, Brother. Get to
your gunboat and I’ll send you the data you’ll need to find her.
But don’t say I didn’t try to dissuade you.”

Abaqa nodded and turned to leave. His heart
raced as he stepped through the door, his fingers twitching with
excitement. Just a little while now, and he’d be out in his
gunboat, out among the stars of glory.

Chapter 7

So this is New Vela,
Hikaru thought to
herself as she stared out the spaceport window at the purplish orb
of the seventh planet. It looked so strange to her—so alien. She
didn’t know whether it was clouds she was looking at, or a giant
purple world-ocean like the one back home.

“
Excuse me,” she said, turning to
a uniformed woman behind a nearby desk. “Where are the flights down
to the surface?”

The woman looked at her funny for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”

“
The surface,” said Hikaru,
enunciating her words carefully in case the attendant didn’t speak
fluent Gaian. “How do I get to the surface?”

“
There are no flights to the
surface,” said the attendant. “No one lives down there—it’s not a
habitable world.”

Ah,
Hikaru thought to herself, blushing a
little. She thanked the woman and walked off quickly, more annoyed
than embarrassed.

The people in the spaceport all looked so
different from what she was used to. The men kept their hair short,
and most of the women were bald—it was all she could do to keep
from laughing at the sight. A few, like the attendant back at the
desk, wore colorful shawls to cover their heads, but plenty of
others seemed to flaunt their baldness, with extravagant tattoos
that ran around their ears and down their long, hairless necks.
Several people stared at her, probably because she was one of the
only women in the place with a full head of hair. Then again, the
maid’s outfit might have something to do with it, too, but there
wasn’t much that she could do about that—at least, not until she
found a proper tailor.

At the main concourse, her eyes
wandered until she caught sight of a gathering place of sorts.
Inside, people sat around a counter with several drinks in glass
bottles sitting on shelves against the wall.
That would be a bar,
she thought,
a place where
commoners gather to drink.
She walked towards it, bumping into a few
shoulders but otherwise making it through all right.

“
Hello,” she said to the
bartender, taking a seat at the first empty booth. “I’ll take a
shot of Tajji Vodka.”

“
Tajji Vodka?” he said. “What do
I look like, a Hameji general?”

The men around her chuckled, while Hikaru
frowned. What was he talking about? All the starship captains on
the old adventure holos drank Tajji Vodka—it was the stiffest drink
she knew of. But if they weren’t going to give it to her—

“
I’ll just, ah, take a beer
then.”

“
Local or specialty?”

“
Uh, local.”
I guess.

The bartender filled up a glass mug and set
it out in front of her. Before lifting it to her lips, she glanced
at the people around her. Several of them were staring at her, just
like they had in the terminal. Here, though, it felt a little
unnerving.

A holoscreen on the far wall displayed a
local news program, with headlines scrolling silently across the
bottom. She took a sip of her beer and recoiled at the sharp,
bitter taste. So different than the palace—she loved it.

“
Hey,” said the man next to her,
tapping her on the shoulder. He nearly made her drop her glass, but
she recovered quickly.

“
Yes?” she said, turning to face
him.

“
Do I know you?”

She frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“
Where are you from? You’re not
from around here, are you?”

Her heart started beating a little faster, as
she realized that the people around her were starting to take
notice.

“
I, ah, just came in about an
hour ago,” she lied. “Got to catch an inbound transport—just a
couple of hours.”

“
You look like you’re from New
Rigel,” said another man, leaning in. “What do they call the main
planet? Shinihon, right?”

“
Right,” she said without
thinking. The word no sooner escaped her lips than she realized her
mistake.

“
That’s where!” said the first
man. “I swear, you look just like the princess. Doesn’t
she?”

“
Yeah, she does.”

They know who I am.

Her face paled, and her stomach sank through
the floor. She rose to her feet, but the man put a hand on her
arm.

“
No, don’t be shy. Here, let me
buy you a drink.”

“
I—I’ve got to go,” she said,
shrugging him off. Before he could object, she turned to
leave.

“
Hey!” shouted the bartender. “I
hope you’re going to pay for that!”

Heads were turning now—heads were turning
everywhere. She fumbled in her pocket and tossed out a cash
datachip behind her, then broke into a run down the nearest
terminal.

I’m such a fool,
she thought to
herself, heart pounding in her chest.
I’ve got to get out of this
place.

Overhead, she saw some signs for private
shuttlecraft. She followed them down the terminal, to a wide
doorway just before a large observation window. People all around
her were staring, but fortunately the corridor inside was mostly
empty.

A long row of kiosks and airlocks stretched
to the other side, where the corridor opened to another terminal.
She went up to the nearest kiosk that was still on and hit PURCHASE
SHUTTLE. The screen asked for her destination, and she hit the
buttons at random, choosing the secondary lunar L6 point. The price
flashed onto the screen, almost a hundred thousand credits, but
that wasn’t a problem—she jammed another datachip into the kiosk
and hit PAY.

A message flashed onto the
screen:
P
lease insert passport.

“
Come on,” she muttered, fumbling
through her pockets. She thought she heard voices out in the
terminal.

She took the first passport that
came to her hand and jammed it into one of the kiosk slots at
random. The screen went blank for a moment or two, and then to her
relief the airlock door hissed open.
Enjoy your ride,
the screen flashed as she hastily
recovered her datachips. Moments later, she was inside.

That was a close one,
she thought,
collapsing on one of the couches that ringed the circular room.
Silk drapes hung from the ceiling, while the adjustable windows
rose to the top of the domed ceiling, just like a miniature version
of one of the island-cities of her homeworld. She lay back on the
couch and took a deep breath of the perfumed air.

At the head of the room, a wall screen
flashed on, revealing a map of the local sector with its planet and
moons. STAND BY FOR LAUNCH, said a message beneath the screen, and
the floor trembled ever so slightly as the automated shuttlecraft
undocked. Overhead, the view of the station and planet spun, but
she hardly felt a thing.

ESTIMATED TIME TO STATION 2L6a: 20.5
HOURS.

“
Dammit,” she said aloud, quickly
covering her mouth as she caught herself. She glanced around her,
then giggled a little as she realized she was alone.

“
Go fuck yourself, bitch!” she
screamed, just because she could. She opened her mouth to swear
again, but fell to the floor in a fit of hysterical giggles. She
had no idea where she was or where she was going, or even what
she’d do once she got there, but none of that was going to keep her
from enjoying her newfound freedom.

* * * * *

Roman pressed his metal
prosthetic hand to the access panel on the wall and held it there.
It took a second, but the door to the
Tajji Flame’s
officer mess slid open with a low
groan. The sound was not unlike the creaking in his joints when
several weeks had passed without a checkup.