The False Admiral (17 page)

“You don't see what you're not looking for. I won't hide it.” I shrugged. “That's how we're going to survive.”

She looked confused. “I don't understand.”

“What's not to understand? I'm our ticket.”

“But the penalty for defection.” She spread her hands. “We'll be detained for planning your extraction. We'll be taken for spies.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded. Defection? Extraction? What was she even talking about?

Salmagard could see the way I was looking at her. We were both intensely confused, and looking to each other for answers.

I started to laugh. I covered my mouth and leaned back, closing my eyes. When I finally got myself under control, I grinned at her.

“You're serious,” I said.

Her mask of placid calm was back in place, and I realized I'd upset her.

“I'm sorry,” I said quickly. “That was rude, but you caught me off guard. Very off guard.”

She said nothing. She simply gazed at me. I didn't know what she was thinking. She was probably a little offended. She wasn't used to being laughed at. I sighed, then glanced back into the hold. It looked as if my laughter hadn't woken Deilani and Nils.

I took a deep breath and faced Salmagard.

“I think I've got it,” I said. “Just a little misunderstanding, that's all. Look, how can I say this? I'm not who you think I am. I'm not
what
you think I am. Nobody's talking about defection. Not the Ganraens, not the colonists. To have defection someone's loyalty has to change,” I said. “Right?”

She nodded slowly.

“I'm the same guy I've always been. I've had a little work done,” I admitted. “But you do what you have to, you know?”

Her eyes widened.
Now
she understood.

“By the Empress,” she said. “I don't believe it.”

“That's up to you. But don't worry about the colonists—even if I was what you thought, they can't connect me to anything. They're not going to be suspicious of
me
. We've got our cease-fire, but the capital was destroyed. As far as anyone's concerned at this point, I'm a simple refugee. You guys are just helping me out. We might
have to think of a cover story to explain how we got here, but I'll handle that side of things. Just let me do the talking. I'm good at it. Of course, I'll have to get into character again.” I sighed. “But there's no helping it.”

“Why didn't I see it?”

“You weren't looking. But isn't it better this way?”

“Infinitely,” she breathed. That was gratifying. “I feel rather foolish.”

“Don't. You were right about what mattered.” I paused, searching her face. “You were right to trust me.”

She nodded, still looking troubled. “Have I interpreted the situation aboard the freighter correctly?” she asked.

“You mean the sabotage?” She nodded. I sighed. “Probably.”

“And the capital?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“Who is responsible for the sabotage?”

I smiled. “Better if I don't speculate on that.”

Salmagard turned a shade paler. “It's monstrous,” she said, and there was a flash of anger in her eyes.

“Which part?”

“What they're doing to you.”

I wasn't pleased that she knew the truth, but it was better than her thinking that I was some kind of traitor. “Don't worry about me. Worry about all of us. We still have a long way to go.”

“I know.” She looked tired.

“You're doing well,” I told her. “I don't know what that's worth, but all three of you, you especially. You're trainees, but you're holding it together. I'm impressed, if that matters.”

“You think I'm suited to this?”

“I think you'd be suited to anything you put your mind to. You've got the genes and the drive. I can see you commanding a fleet.”

One corner of her mouth quirked upward. “Really?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Admirals and tetrarchs are just people too. Nobody doctored the Grand Duchess' genes. She wasn't the one they built for her job, but she got it anyway. Genes aren't everything. She was just a woman. Hell, she was just a girl. Remember everything she did.”

“How could I forget?”

I blanched. “Sorry.”

She shrugged. “I'd imagine that you can relate, can't you?”

“I suppose we do have that much in common. Neither one of us likes mirrors. Does it ever get to be a problem in day-to-day life?”

“Occasionally.”

I knew how she felt. “Look on the bright side. At least the Duchess wasn't ugly,” I said.

She laughed.

I cleared my throat. “And with that in mind—and the looming threat of death—do you think a high lady could, under these circumstances, overlook a small impropriety?”

She looked at me quizzically. “I'm not a high lady.”

“Compared to me.”

“Under these circumstances I think any lady could overlook just about anything.”

I leaned over and kissed her. I meant it to be a brief kiss, one without too much subtext
.

But it didn't stay brief. Salmagard was initially shocked, but she didn't resist, and when I finally let her go, I thought that for
the briefest second, she looked vaguely disappointed. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

Then the blush faded from her cheeks, and her mask of Evagardian calm slid back into place.

Unreadable.

WITHOUT the looming threat of a cold and lonely death on the surface of an alien planet, it might have been a pleasant flight. For me, at least.

With the taste of Salmagard's lips still fresh in my mind, Nils and I confronted the problem of getting oxygen from our tanks into the super-concentrated cartridges used with our EV suits. We had fully charged spares, and when they ran out we'd have to refill them. The obvious way was to fill them at normal pressure, which would result in a substantial loss of O
2
in the process.

We couldn't just cobble together the equipment needed to charge the cartridges, but perhaps we could refine the obvious route a little. By using the pressure from one tank to increase the pressure on a second, we could potentially force slightly more oxygen into a cartridge, though we'd also lose more. It would be a lot of work
for a small gain—ten or twenty percent at most was our estimate—but maybe even that one breath might make a difference.

We kept trying. Deilani did her best to make herself useful, but her technical knowledge was of a different sort. Between Nils' brilliance and training, and my experience with making technology do things it wasn't supposed to, we finalized our system with something like confidence. It wasn't a guarantee, but at least we knew we'd done all we could.

The flight would have been dull under different circumstances, but now it was over too quickly. As I switched off the critical emergency lights activated by the power cells being at their absolute end, I could see that the trainees were ready to leave the flyer. We were all handling this differently, but no one wanted to drag it out.

I didn't land the Avenger; the AI didn't need my help. The flyer set itself down on the surface without even a bump.

We stood in the passenger bay, enjoying what might be the last things we ever saw that weren't through the faceplates of our helmets. We divided the work of detaching the crawler, and breathed the last of the air that could be provided by the Avenger's recyclers, which would die when the power cells did.

“There was a time,” I told the trainees, “on Old Earth, when a drive in a ground crawler through the rural countryside was considered diverting. Even a luxury.”

“And the scenery here is so charming,” Deilani said, massaging her temples and taking long, steady breaths.

We activated our helmets, and Nils lowered the ramp, depressurizing the flyer. Thin tendrils of green mist began to curl up and around our ankles.

The surface of the planet was as inviting as ever. The black
mineral felt strange underfoot, and the shifting mist played tricks on the eyes. This deep in the mist, we couldn't even see the stars overhead.

We were on the clock. As we detached the binders that held the crawler to the top of the flyer, I used them to fasten the O
2
tanks to the chassis of the vehicle as Salmagard and Deilani tossed them up to me.

We worked efficiently, but it still felt tedious. We wanted to hurry, but exertion would demand more oxygen . . . It was better not to get mired in thoughts like those.

Soon the work was done, and the trainees had strapped in. Apparently I was driving. No pressure.

“How do we get it down?” Deilani asked over the com, and I glanced over at her, though all she could see was my helmet. I hit the throttle, simply dropping off the flyer. The crawler wasn't a heavy vehicle, but even this impact drove its wheels several centimeters into the planet's black surface, and created some alarming cracks. I got us away from that spot, adjusting to a more fuel-efficient cruising speed.

The trainees stood up in their seats, hanging on to the chassis as they turned to watch the Avenger, sitting alone, ramp down, fade into the mist.

The crawler was perfect. It was blind luck, but it was true. In the light gravity, we skimmed more than we rolled—the only problem was the mist. We wouldn't get much distance out of the crawler if I crashed it, and visibility was poor.

There were chasms that had to be avoided, but no mountains that I could see, unless you counted the spires.

In the Avenger we'd flown past them quickly. On the ground,
even cruising briskly, it took forever. The scope of the spires was never clear until you were close to one. We'd been lucky that the one to fall on Tremma's freighter had been merely staggeringly large—because some of the ones out here were so great that they would have simply smashed the ship flat, or buried it.

Gentle hills and small slopes occasionally brought us out of the mist, and we were steadily climbing. Soon we found ourselves above the green haze completely, rolling on smooth black ground that shone dully under bright starlight.

We could see valleys full of mist, some of them long and winding. I soon realized the mist wasn't really green—it was tinted that way by one of the dim suns in the sky. The effect was compounded by the reflected light from a dozen or so small moons that were scattered across the ceiling of stars.

Nils was beside me with Tremma's reader in his lap, keeping us pointed at our destination. There was no indicator of distance; at this point we could only guess, but Nils was keeping track somehow. He couldn't help it. It was a good thing he was there, because it was too easy for me to look up and get lost in the cosmos and forget our situation. It was something I hadn't done nearly often enough in the past.

“I thought the
Julian
would be an easy post,” Nils observed idly, taking his eyes off his screen to join me in admiring the stars.

“It would've been,” I assured him. “Not much for a tech to do on a ship like that but look good, and keep your quarters ready for inspection. You'd have to spend a lot of time training.”

“I think I could've managed,” he said wistfully.

“Which lab did they promise you?” I asked Deilani.

“Atmospheric sampling.”

“That's awful.”

“I'd still rather be there than here.”

“Yeah. What about you, Private?” I asked.

“The Empress,” Salmagard replied. “Honor guard.”

Of course. “Do you think she's really aboard?” Nils asked.

“Why wouldn't she be?” Deilani replied.

“Nobody's ever seen her. Everybody says she uses a double for this stuff.”

“Nobody's seen her without her mask. Doesn't mean it's not her under it,” I said.

“It could be anybody under there,” Nils said.

“But it's not—it's the Empress,” I told him. “Have a little faith.”

“What's her name? How old is she?”

“We don't need to know,” Deilani said. Her mind was elsewhere.

“She's got to be the thirteenth or fourteenth one by now,” Nils speculated.

“Sixteenth by common reckoning,” I told him.

“So where does the new Empress come from?”

“The bloodline, obviously. It's the direct bloodline of the Grand Duchess,” Deilani said.

“What about the fathers?” Nils asked.

“There are no fathers. They use the DNA of the Heir.”

Deilani was giving these answers as though they were facts. To many people, facts were exactly what they were—but in truth, it was speculation. Nobody knew the first thing about the Empress for certain. Not even me.

Was she really aboard the flagship? Excellent question. Another interesting point was that if the bloodline was intact, which seemed likely, then it was probable that under the mask, the Empress
looked quite a bit like Salmagard, who was modeled after the Grand Duchess herself, the first true Empress.

This discussion was using up valuable air, but it was also taking our minds off things. Besides, I didn't mind talking about the Empress. I decided to let it go.

“They say she's got a harem,” Nils said. “So they probably know what she looks like. I'm surprised nobody's leaked anything.”

“Nobody's seen the harem,” Deilani countered, probably on principle. “That's a rumor.”

“Well, you wouldn't, would you? I wonder if it's guys or girls. Or both.”

“The Empress of Evagard shouldn't need companionship. It spoils the aesthetic.”

“She's still human.”

“But is she really female?” I asked idly.

“How would we know?”

“She's supposed to be.”

“There'd be a son here and there, wouldn't there?” Nils said.

“No, she's totally lab-grown using genetic material from the Heir.” There was no doubt in Deilani's mind.

“That's impossible—if it was always material from the Heir, it would mean that every single Empress has the same father. It's incestuous.”

“It's all in a laboratory.”

“It's still un-Evagardian. I don't know how they do it, but it's not like that. I'll bet it's the genetic material of the best and brightest from one of the core bloodlines, rotating by generation,” Nils said.

“That would make more sense,” I agreed.

“But you never hear anything about the
father
of the Empress.”

“The father doesn't know he's the father; our genes are all on file. You could be the next one for all we know,” I said to him.

“No, I only share one marker with a family that only shares two with a distant removed old Rothschild, not even one of the important ones.”

“It could still be you if you distinguish yourself. A lot.”

“I'm not aiming that high. I just want a ship that can keep me away from my family. I want to get paid. I need citizenship.”

It sounded as if he meant it. I wondered what kind of situation he came from.

“Hear, hear,” Deilani said, sighing.

“I'll bet she's cute,” Nils said.

“The Empress? If she is, why's she wear the mask?” I was just trying to get a rise out of Deilani, but she didn't bite.

“The same reason we do. It's tradition. She's always worn it. The only pictures of the Grand Duchess are from when she was a teenager,” Deilani said.

“Even that's too much,” Nils said. “When we were in training on those Trigan mining ships, hands on—we stayed in a hotel on the station called the Grand Duchess. Supposed to be high class and exotic—I guess it seemed that way to galactics. Anyway, it's got this huge mural of her in the lobby. They had no idea how disrespectful that was. And most folks don't know better out there.” Nils shook his head in disgust. “I mean, I'm not one of these people who gets offended about stuff like that, but there's something vulgar about using her face that way. Especially since they were outsiders.”

“Were they happy to see you?” I asked.

“Real imperials? On their humble station? Yeah, but the officers escorting us got all the attention.”

“Naturally. My class went to Earth and to the Union,” Deilani said.

“To study disease?”

“Mostly. It was wretched.”

“What was the problem?” I was curious. Someone of Deilani's origins should've luxuriated in traveling abroad.

“Our lead specialist—the one in charge of the curriculum—took ill.”

“You're kidding,” I said.

“She was the only one with clearance to get us out of the embassy, and she was in stasis while they tried to figure out what was wrong with her.”

“Was it serious? How could they not know?”

“Well, that's the thing—she wasn't ill. She'd been poisoned.”

“You're joking.” Now I was really interested.

“I'm dead serious. The war was still on, and security for six bio students wasn't all that much. Somebody found a way to get to her.” Deilani shrugged.

“But you guys were a long way from the war.”

“They said it was probably a noncombatant sympathizer.”

“Did your teacher pull through?”

“She did, but only because she had medical training; she put herself in stasis the moment she realized something was seriously wrong. Anybody else would've died.”

“Stranding the rest of you,” I said.

“Yeah, but we'd have been stranded anyway because as soon as they realized it was poison, they locked down the embassy.”

“What was there to see?” Nils asked.

“On Earth? Everything. On the Union we couldn't have gone
anywhere. But on Earth . . . It was a disaster. You never saw six more furious people. And our element leader was
determined
to add an Earth girl to his collection, so he kept trying to break out. He didn't handle rejection well. I had to break his nose. Twice.”

“You're not an Earth girl,” Nils pointed out.

“When he realized he wasn't getting out, he decided not to be choosy. I could've had his commission for that. Probably should have, in retrospect—but I was worried about what it'd look like that I'd struck him.”

I couldn't see Nils' expression, but his faceplate was pointed at Deilani. “Is Cohengard as bad as they say?” he asked her.

“Worse,” I said.

“How do you know, Admiral?”

“Call it a hunch.”

“I didn't know officer training was so colorful.” Nils shifted the topic back, sounding impressed.

Deilani shook her head. “It was ridiculous. It was a joke. There was trouble every step of the way. The best bit was on the way back from Earth, just before she went into her sleeper, my roommate's implant malfunctioned.”

“Oh, no.”

“It nearly killed her. They're still trying to get her hormones back under control. And it happened because of a scan we had after the embassy—looking for dangerous implants.” Deilani sounded contemptuous.

“Well, that's the military. Get used to it.” I didn't have much sympathy for her.

“Incidentally, she was my main competition for this posting.”

“How convenient,” I said.

“I never really thought about it until now, though. I do feel badly for her. She'll lose her eligibility on medical grounds, but they'll give her full citizenship and preferential hiring for civilian work, I'm sure.”