The Emperor's New Clothes (Royce Ree #1) (5 page)

The transition to artificial gravity was
gradual as the station’s mass-gradient exerted itself. Royce came
to rest against the station’s nadir-surface, the “floor”, and
allowed himself a space of four heartbeats to scan his immediate
surroundings.

The corridor opened out into a large
semi-circular waiting-area. Six other shuttle-birthing corridors
disgorged a continuous stream of passengers that fought for space
with the lush blue foliage of numerous potted air-exchangers. Here
and there he could see the black uniforms of Kovan security forces
amongst the crowd and, rarer, the blue stripes of Baldasshi’s own
security.

Then he saw what he had been looking
for—a woman, pushing a hover-cart, coming down a shuttle-berthing
corridor to his left.

Royce smoothly pushed off from the
“floor”, emerging from his corridor to make zig-zag progress at the
edges of the waiting-room. The fact that he had an unconscious man
slung over his shoulder attracted no little attention from the
people he passed around; the crowd-cover, useful in these first few
moments to shield them from the guards’ views, would rapidly become
a problem.

Royce aimed the last leg of his
momentum-aided travel to intercept the woman’s path before she
emerged from her corridor.

“Cousin, this is an emergency. Will you
sell me your cart?” Royce said as he alighted near her, partially
shielded from view of the main waiting-room by the bulk of the
hover-cart.

Only then did he notice the man sitting
on a tow-float attached to the cart. Dressed in a Baldasshi
Peacekeeper’s uniform, with medals pinned to his chest.

Royce’s adrenalin spiked till he noticed
the man’s condition—sunken and frail, his head bobbing on a neck
whose muscles were too weak to hold it fully upright. A mottled
grey-and-black crow was perched on the cart’s handle, its head
tucked under its wing.

Tow-carts were generally used to
transport the disabled. The marine was retired, obviously, and
helpless. Senile, too, if their luck held.

Royce relaxed. “Cousin? I need your
cart,” he said again.

“What? No!”

“I’m willing to pay you anything you
want.”

“My dada needs the cart. Call the
medics.” The woman was getting annoyed.

“I….”

The old man raised a feeble hand,
beckoned Royce closer. Royce crouched, meeting the man’s rheumy
gaze—and was surprised by the amount of intelligence lurking there.
The retired soldier’s frailty did not, obviously, extend to his
mind.

Shit.

Suddenly, he felt his collar being
grabbed. With surprising strength, the ex-Peacekeeper drew Royce’s
face close to him. Royce didn’t fight it—for one, that might break
the old man. For the other, anything that looked more like
family-drama and less like fugitive-drama, he was willing to go
along with.

“Da!” said the woman, coming around to
their side and crouching down. “Da, let him go!”

The old man shook his head.
“
Offworlder
,” he whispered, and paused to take a breath.
“Are you in trouble with the Kova?”

Royce glanced up at the woman; her eyes
were frightened—she’d caught her father’s whispered accusation. The
crow was awake now, taking the scene in with its beady
crow-eyes.

Royce went with his instinct.

“Yes,” he said. “And probably with your
High Command too.”

“Black,
black
sheep,” wheezed the
old marine. “Sold us out to the Kova. Child, give him the
cart.”

“Da!”

“
My
cart,” snapped the man.
“Empty it.”

“But Da, how will I—”

“If I may make a suggestion,” said
Royce, as he reached into his belt-pocket, “a porter will be more
than happy to transport you and the—” he glanced at the old man’s
shoulder-tabs, “lieutenant, for a small fee.” He then pressed a
couple of hard plastic rectangles—two of his untraceable
credit-chips—into the woman’s hand.

She looked down, saw the number
displayed on the readouts. Her eyes grew wide. “Um. Alright. Yes. A
porter.”

It took a few minutes to unload
everything from the hover-cart, strap Les’s still-unconscious frame
to the tow-pallet. Once the transfer was complete, the lieutenant’s
daughter made a call to the transportation service.

Royce thanked the two, and left them
sitting on their luggage, as he began to push the cart towards the
mouth of the corridor.

“Give ‘em hell!” called old man after
them.

“Squaak!” That was the crow, obviously
in agreement.

Despite his mounting panic over Les’s
condition, Royce grinned to himself, and gave the Peacekeeper a
half-salute.

“
The near-religious zeal with which
each civilization protects its FTL-variant makes any kind of
comparative study impossible. The whole thing might as well be
magic.”

-Introduction to Spaceflight
Mechanics

193rd Edition

“Hush, hush now, you’re safe,” whispered
Royce as Les slowly came to with a groan. His body was propped up
against Royce’s chest, his legs trapped under Royce’s to stop the
thrashing. Royce knew it would take his ex a few moments to adjust
to the surroundings.

Once he did, “Another ventilation duct?”
asked Les. “Where the hell
are
we, Royce?”

“In deep shit.”

Les struggled in his grasp, tried to sit
up.

“Stop!” commanded Royce. “I’ve got three
probes stuck into that thing in your skull. If you pull any of them
loose….”

Les’s struggles ceased immediately.
“What happened?”

“Your drive-core was a fake,” said
Royce. “The chip didn’t see a Baldasshi FTL field once it got to
zero-gee. And as far as I can tell, that triggered a
failure-condition.”

“The Kova were
leaving
,” said
Les. “Told you it was important.” The last came out as a whisper.
“They can’t legally take the core, but they took it anyway,
switched it out for a fake.”

“So it seems,” said Royce.

“I should be dead.” Les’s voice was
calm. A false calm, Royce knew, born of shock and an operative’s
training.

“Yeah well the drive’s not the only
thing that’s fake,” said Royce. “Chip’s software is a hack-job. I
reset it with jerry-rigged probes. But we need to get out of
null-gee before it recalibrates. In…um…Maybe forty-five
minutes?”

“Can you deactivate it?” asked Les.

“Not without better equipment.”

Seemingly oblivious—or uncaring—of their
awkward positions, Les moved his body to a slightly more
comfortable orientation, careful to keep his head still. In doing
so, his hand brushed lightly against Royce’s leg. Royce bit back a
groan at the sudden contact.
Why is it that you can manhandle
him three ways to Trinity to get him in here, prop him up between
your goddamn legs and touch him everywhere when he’s unconscious
without twitching, but you react like a virgin schoolgirl when he
touches you accidentally?

And reacting he was. There was no way
Les was not feeling Royce pressing against his hip. Royce squirmed
in embarrassment, pulling away slightly from Les’s body.

Les cleared his throat. “Um. Where are
we? Besides ‘in deep shit in a ventilation duct’?”

So they were both going to ignore
it.

“Above the starboard hull of the
space-station,” said Royce, taking care to keep his tone even.
“Right where the Imperial cruiser should be.”

“We missed the ship?”

“Yup.”

“Kova have taken the station?”

“Yup.”

“We need to get back to the planet,
within the hour, or my head explodes?”

“Yup.”

“We can’t get through Kovan security
like this?”

“Nope.”

Les sighed. “I’m fucked.”

“
We’re
fucked,” corrected Royce.
He could feel Les twitching against his chest; the man would have
twisted around to confront Royce, eyes flashing, had it not been
for the probes stuck into his head. Royce smiled ruefully.

“I’m not leaving you,” said Royce.

“I-”

“No.
Think
, Les. What would you
do if you discovered than an Imperial Agent was being
set-up—fatally—to steal tech that will start a war? Could you turn
your back on a brother-agent, continue onwards with your mission,
in such a circumstance?”

Les relaxed. Then, surprisingly, he
chuckled. “You’re right, of course, but I might not have been quite
so…touchy-feely, full-body-contact, with a
brother
agent.”

So they were going to talk about it
after all.

“I can’t…,” Royce trailed off. Then he
cleared his throat. “You were having mini-seizures by the time I
dragged you in here. I had to restrain you while I dealt with the
chip. But I didn’t
touchy-feely
you, if that’s any
help.”

Les clucked his tongue. “You passed up a
perfectly good opportunity to grope me? That doesn’t sound like the
Royce Ree I knew.”

And just like that, Royce’s good mood
evaporated. “The Royce Ree you knew was married to you.”

Les was silent for a time. When he spoke
again, his tone was absolutely neutral. “You were right. As always.
The Emperor does not assign missions directly to covert-ops,
regardless of whose mother he dines with. I assume you have a
plan?”

Royce sighed. “Sort of. I need more
information. From you, to start.”

Les settled back against Royce’s chest,
careful to keep his hands to himself. “I’d been driving a desk for
months at HQ. It was getting old. I put my name on the field-ops
roster again. Got assigned a watch-and-report on Baldasshi…about a
standard-year ago. Then, six months in, a deep-cover courier showed
up. Had all the right authentication, the passphrases—I ran all the
checks. I’m not gullible, Royce.” The last was a plea.

“No, you’re not. This whole thing stinks
of something way above our pay-grade. The programming on the chip’s
shit. The hardware’s real. So what happened next?”

“We met in my rented apartment for the
implant-surgery. A quick nanobot job. Not
quite
professional, but I was out of it for most of the time. After the
op, the courier handed over my cover ID at the research lab, then
left. I started ‘work’ a week after.”

“If you’re caught or killed,” said
Royce, frowning, “there’s no plausible deniability in the
situation. The Spymaster couldn’t simply claim you went rogue.”

Just the mere suggestion that the
Emperor had ordered a drive stolen…half the Houses would turn on
him. Civil war was a very real possibility, and once Trinity
started fracturing from within…

Les was shivering. Not surprising. The
vent was getting cooler as the station gradually transitioned to a
simulated Baldessh night.

Abruptly, Royce made a decision.
“Alright. We revert back to my mission’s cover—Imperial couturiers
answering the Princess’s summons. We go down to the planet, reset
your chip. You then steal a ship with a real FTL drive so you can
get off the surface safely.”

Meanwhile, I hunt down the fucker that
put that thing in you, and castrate him with a rusty spoon—

“While giving fashion advice to the
Princess of Baldessh?” asked Les.

“Um…yes,” said Royce. “There’s something
you should know about the…timing….”

“Yes?”

“I was supposed to meet the Princess
three days ago.”

“
His Imperial Majesty will not send
a task-force into what is soon to become a Kovan warzone, not to
rescue an AWOL Agent, regardless of His personal fondness
for you and your family.”

-Response to Letter of Petition from
House Anther

Bedlam ruled the space-station customs
office, despite the best efforts of the Kovan guards assigned to
keep order. All FTL ships had just been banned from operating in
Baldasshi space.

“Idiots,” Les muttered. “If they think
they can fuck with the trade Cartels—”

Royce snorted.

“Sure you don’t want to play the
Master?” Les asked. “You don’t do very well in subordinate
roles.”

“Nope,” said Royce. “I’m the apprentice,
Master, I wouldn’t know a
dholag
from a whore if it bit me
on the ass.”

“Such language!” Privately, Les quite
agree with Royce’s assessment; his ex’s skills lay in a different
arena. Those same skills, combined with Royce’s react—Les groped
for a better word. Royce’s
words
earlier, absolved him of
being a pawn in the game of Drivepolitik.

The fake Imperial Command fully absolved
the Emperor. Which left Les at square one, only now the
chip-imposed deadline had been moved up.

Les dragged his attention back to the
issue at hand. Master Roza’nal Ter-Versha, Imperial Couturier, was
three days late. He had somehow acquired an “apprentice” not
mentioned in the Royal Invitation. He was missing the basic
wardrobe and tools required for his role.

Also, Master Ter-Versha’s head was going
to explode in exactly twenty-two minutes, unless he made it back
down to the surface.

At least half of Les’s problems could be
solved by the Baldasshi Immigration and Visa official, sitting five
meters away. But there was another person in line, ahead of him. A
Baldasshi woman, with a screaming infant in her lap. She’d burned
up six minutes arguing with the official.

“No! I want it changed! I won’t have my
daughter sharing a name with a traitor!”

The official, meanwhile, kept stating
some “policy”, and casting half-frightened glances at the Kova
guard standing behind him.

The woman looked ready to cry. “But my
brother said all I needed was the form! You’re a Kova
lackey
, you sniveling—”

The Kova guard, standing behind the
official, straightened from his bored slouch.