The Empress

  The ship continued forward, shaking harder. Tyrus ordered the ship to pull back . . . and it still didn’t stop. He surged to his feet, stepped toward the window, rubbing his hand over his chin, thinking quickly, pondering those glowing ribbons of light.

  Then he froze.

  “Nova blast me,” he breathed. “Stars. Nemesis, these are stars!”

  “What? Stars . . . ?”

  “They’ve been torn apart. These are burning streams of hydrogen. It’s this gravity. The gravity . . . And we’re going right into this. We have to turn around!” He threw himself back to the navigation console, faster than I’d ever seen him move, even at full sprint. My heart thumped wildly as he pounded at the console, ordering the Hera to apply its full power to driving us backward.

  But the starship wasn’t responding as it should. The jolting mounted until I could hear it, could hear the strain of stone tempted to fissure.

  Ice filled my stomach.

  Tearing away from this will kill us, came a cold and terrible voice in my head.

  Tyrus had taken navigational control from the ship now. And I fought for my balance as I stared at his back where he was leaning over the console. The ship hadn’t done as he ordered it on his own, so he was circumventing it. . . . Those commands written into the computer long before many of his ancestors had been born, by people with more understanding of space and technology and science than anyone alive.

  Tyrus was so incredibly sharp and inventive and perhaps that was also his weakness—because he had too much faith in his own competence at times. Like right now. And through the rattling, straining chaos about us as the ship hurtled forward and he tried to steer us back, I knew we were about to be destroyed. He couldn’t drag us out of this, but this ship was a magnificently clever machine and we had to trust it.

  So I didn’t think on it further. I didn’t explain myself.

  I charged forward, seized him, and ripped him away from the console, knocking him back. I slammed my hand on the autonavigation, then whipped around and blocked him when he shot back toward the panel. A jostle of the ship and we both plunged to the floor, and I couldn’t hear what he was shouting at me, but I pinned him there in the heaving, dimming light. . . .

  Outside the window a brilliant twine of burning light was whipping toward us, and just as it was about to hit, Tyrus abruptly stopped struggling and suddenly rolled himself atop me. . . . Then the deafening roaring about us receded and the jostling became vibration, and his blue eyes opened, fixed upon mine.

  See? I thought, reaching up to stroke his cheek, seeing the beads of sweat on his forehead.

  All we could do was leave this to fate and technology. There’d been no time to explain, and I knew it would be anathema to Tyrus to do such a thing . . . to take a backseat. Then he would have killed us both.

  For a while, we remained there gripping each other and waiting for the moment my decision backfired terribly. But the Hera adjusted itself as the currents of the gravity buffeted us this way, weaving among the ribbons of obliterated stars, but never straight into the heart of the vast clouds of burning hydrogen, stringing the system like entrails.

  “This must be what happens,” Tyrus murmured. “This is why so many don’t return. A weaker ship than this one, manned by one less decisive than you are . . .”

  It would already be in pieces. The Tigris in all its beauty, opulence, would be fragments of debris in this system.

  “How did you think to do that?” he said to me.

  “You don’t tense your muscles to receive a punch,” I said. “You roll with the momentum.”

  A strangeness settled between us. We gazed at each other amid the rattling starship. There were certain things I’d come to understand about Tyrus without ever consciously thinking on it, and one was this: he needed a sense of power over a situation. I knew it could be termed a neurosis—only natural in someone inclined to be a control freak, trapped in a life where survival depended upon adjusting to the whims of his dangerous relatives.

  That was simply Tyrus.

  I was far and away his physical superior and capable of taking decisions out of his hands at will. . . . It was something that only grew glaringly obvious when we were in danger, and usually we didn’t have a quiet moment immediately afterward. But I’d just made this decision for him, and now the moment was over. He pulled himself up, gripping the back of a chair.

  “There was no time to explain,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You saved our lives, Nemesis. Excellent thinking.”

  And like that, any potential strangeness was simply gone. We turned our attention to the window and gazed out at space for the hours as we buffeted through the hydrogen currents. Then at last we were delivered beyond the currents of light. We saw what was so ferociously causing those gravity eddies in the Transaturnine System: a curve of pitch black. The light all about it was made of stars, or the remains of stars, and they were being twisted into an unending darkness.

  A deep shiver from within my soul. I knew what I was seeing.

  “It’s a black hole,” said Tyrus.

  A chill raced down my spine. A black hole had such intense gravity, light could not even escape its event horizon. That’s what accounted for the stars all so close to one another. The black hole was drawing them in.

  Tyrus splayed his palm over the window. The rounded, unfathomable black grew larger and larger.

  “Tyrus, are we being pulled into it?”

  “We’re nowhere near the event horizon. We seem to be entering a wide orbit.” His gaze flickered toward me. “That’s where Amon died.”

  I looked at his profile. “After his excommunication?”

  Tyrus nodded. “That’s the penalty. One is cast alive into a black hole to be torn apart.”

  A proper Helionic death meant disposal in a star. The dead were thus reunited with the pulse of the Living Cosmos and would assume a new form as the Cosmos willed it. A black hole, though, was very different.

  Tyrus drummed his fingers one-by-one on the window. “If Amon was launched into this black hole, then someone launched him. The Interdict. I think we have found our answer. The Sacred City is real.”

  A flash drew my eye. A bright, vibrant light pulsed over our view, and again. Tyrus leaned against the window to stare with some wonder as it illuminated his pale lashes, his burnished red hair, and then he leaned back so I could see. “I think . . . I think that’s called a pulsar? One of the stars being drawn into the black hole is giving it off. . . .” He fell silent.

  For the pulsar’s light caught upon an asteroid, which then cast lights all about it like netting, and the closer we drew, the more we saw that it formed a vast webbing through space, an artificial webbing. And the asteroids were not pure asteroids, but shards of glittering diamond, and on them perched machines like scorpions poised to sting.

  I grew rigid, and Tyrus drew a sharp breath. . . . Yet no weapons were unleashed on us.

  “We must be close,” he managed, as we moved through the gauntlet of so many weapons, they outnumbered the Chrysanthemum’s, that webbing of light continually flaring between them. . . . A power source, I realized.

  Suddenly, a sharp lurch.

  My heart bounded into a frantic beat, but Tyrus just stroked my arm, gazing upward. “Towing cables?”

  I listened, heard the familiar thump of them, and smiled at him. “Yes.”’

  Excitement, terror leaped into his eyes, and he gripped my shoulders soundlessly, just staring at me intently as though to say, We made it! And I reached up and squeezed his hands so tightly in my excitement that he winced, and then I loosened my grip.

  “So we’re not going to be able to blackmail the vicars with this.”

  “No. We can do something better,” Tyrus said, his gaze snapping with anticipation. “We can go over their heads and appeal directly to the Interdict.”

  I grinned at him.

  And in that moment, I knew we were about to forge our destinies. Tyrus haule
d me up and pulled me into a searing kiss, like a man who’d just surfaced from drowning, drawing in life. I returned it with the same frantic energy, for in that moment, I was certain: nothing lay beyond our reach.

  15

  I FELT as though I’d passed into a dream as the towing cables drew us toward the body that had to be the Sacred City: a massive, moon-size gathering of pure diamond interspersed with the marks of deliberate crafting where the formation had been transformed into a habitat. Through the glazed crystalline surface, we saw swirls of different self-contained atmospheres, enclosures for plants and livestock. Water and other liquids seethed in veins through the diamond’s natural fissures. . . . Some windows were opaque, and in some, I could see silhouettes moving against the light.

  The pulsar flared again and again, and the receiving rods of the Sacred City absorbed the energy. Fragmented rainbows pulsed off the rods into the halo of stardust all about this system.

  The Hera was pulled down toward a gleaming bay of jagged purple gems. A door of granite slid closed behind us.

  Minutes passed in agonized suspense as we waited for the exterior bay to pressurize. Then, a shrill beep outside the ship that we could hear inside—telling us it was safe to exit.

  For a moment, we both hesitated. We’d prepped space sheaths just in case. Inwardly, I debated whether I’d be safer bringing a weapon, or whether it would be a dangerous provocation of people who outnumbered me, people whose goodwill I wished to win. . . .

  But then an alarm chirped, warning of external airlock access. Tyrus and I exchanged a glance, then hurried down the corridor to meet the intruder.

  A jovial voice rang down the hallway. “Hullo there, friends.”

  Tyrus and I rounded a corner to see a short, stocky man who was examining the walls about him with interest. He was bald like an Excess.

  “Are you . . . the Interdict?” Tyrus said uncertainly.

  The man laughed. “Of course not. No. And I know, I know quarantine protocols, but I haven’t seen a ship like this one before. Thought I’d look inside, but . . .” He glanced about as we just stared at him. “Looks like it’s a standard brigadier ship just enclosed in an asteroid. Lovely build, though. Very impressive.”

  Tyrus and I looked at each other.

  “I am standing next to the Emperor of your galaxy,” I told the man.

  Tyrus belatedly remembered to fish the scepter out of its sheath at his waist, and flashed it up for the guy to see. Then he shot me a look that told me I needn’t be indignant on his behalf. The man gave a start.

  “You’re the Domitrian? Oh. Forgive me. I thought—she—”

  Yes, I did have the symmetrical look of someone who made use of beauty bots; Tyrus did not. “I’m Tyrus von Domitrian,” Tyrus said. “Our tribute is waiting just within our cargo bay.”

  “It will be collected, I assure you. I’m a vicar, so I can guide your way.” He looked us over again. “Well, come on, Your Supremacy.”

  We followed him in a daze, passing Exalteds who waited outside.

  “They have tribute,” said the vicar, pointing behind him.

  The Exalteds scrambled past us. Then Tyrus’s hand clutched mine tightly as we reached a circlet of metal spanning the corridor leading to the rest of the Sacred City. A green light bloomed from the circlet, subjecting us to a pathogen scan.

  The vicar was squirming, fidgeting, and finally his self-control broke. “Now, I am sure you are here on serious business. The last time, when it was Amon, well, I used a bit of tact. I can’t resist.”

  “What?” Tyrus said.

  He broke into a grin. “How are the Gorgon’s Arm Wayfarers doing? Just a rundown. Any idea you have.”

  Tyrus stared at him.

  “I don’t need a year-by-year account. That would take ages.”

  “The . . . Wayfarers?” Tyrus echoed.

  The vicar’s smile faded. “In Astroclash. Surely there’s still a team for Gorgon’s Arm?”

  Tyrus sputtered a moment.

  “There’s no Gorgon’s Arm team?”

  “There’s no league,” Tyrus said. “There hasn’t been an Astroclash league since Gannex ordered the losing team put to death after every match. Vicar, we’ve not had a sports league of that scale in three hundred years.”

  The vicar’s face fell. He grew somber suddenly, as though he’d just been told his home world had been obliterated. “That’s . . . that’s so disappointing to hear. I was looking forward to catching up on that someday.”

  The scan ceased, and doors parted to give us access to the general environment.

  “Off you go now,” said the vicar.

  He touched a button, and the floor beneath us rose, a panel detaching and soaring up into air. Tyrus and I caught each other as we began to sail through corridors that gleamed and winked with flashes of the outside pulsar.

  “Nemesis,” Tyrus said to me quietly, “that man is over three hundred years old.”

  “How is that possible?” I wondered.

  He bore no trace of false-youth. Even with total organ replacement and regrowth, no one lived that long. People simply expired at some point.

  Tyrus shook his head. His gaze was trained now on the floor panel beneath us, intent and careful, because the drop beneath us was far enough, our speed fast enough, that we might both break our necks if we somehow did tumble.

  But instead, the panel alighted outside a door, and Tyrus stepped off on shaky legs, though he was reaching back to help balance me. I was steadier, but I let him make the gesture. I also made sure to step through the door before he did just in case some danger awaited us. It was a viewing box. It overlooked a vast crystal-and-diamond chamber that resembled a ball dome.

  There was perfect gravity in the box, but when I experimentally stuck my hand out, my fingers felt light, as though they were floating upward. I snatched my hand back. “That’s zero gravity.”

  “We aren’t here for entertainment,” Tyrus said, looking about us.

  But a low zzz sound filled the air, and a long, flat, disc-shaped service bot soared into our box. “Please state your refreshment preference.”

  “We wish to speak with the Interdict,” Tyrus answered it.

  “I do not understand that request. Please state your refreshment preference.”

  “Water,” Tyrus snapped.

  “We’ve come this far,” I told him. “We can sit through a performance.”

  He sighed. Nodded. Then he flung himself down into a seat.

  There was no ease in his posture as I took the other. The bot returned with water and a surprisingly sparse selection of fruits. At least, that was what I assumed, until Tyrus bit into his apple, then pulled his head back.

  “It’s infused with something. I don’t recognize the narcotic,” he said.

  I held out my palm. It wouldn’t be polite to toss it away, but I knew he wanted a clear head. It would pass right through my system. Tyrus smiled at me lovingly and let me take it. So I ate the apple myself. In the meanwhile, one of the boxes across from ours bloomed with light. It was like a screen of starlight behind the silhouette of a single man.

  I could see no details, but I sensed he was watching us.

  “That must be him,” Tyrus murmured.

  We ignored the other service bots buzzing in with us, carrying various substances, elaborate dishes, and more drugged fruits, no longer willing to trust any of them.

  Tyrus looked at the Interdict, and I knew the Interdict was gazing back at us, and then performers glided into the center of the ball dome. They were decked in ultraviolet feathers, and the lights dimmed to bring out the sharp glow. The feathered men and women launched into their dance, a classic fable set on old Earth.

  “Are those vicars? Exalteds?” I whispered.

  “Devout Helionics devote their lives to this dance,” Tyrus said, clearly recognizing the first strains of music. “This is the King’s Immolate.”

  I recognized the name. It was a performance that used to be show
cased at every coronation. Tyrus banned it over the objections of his grandmother. It was a tale of the importance of obedience to authority, for it featured birds learning that the king was going to hold a feast, and then flying to the castle to offer themselves for his pie.

  All but one bird, a rebellious, sulky one that escapes. Of course, the twist is that the king is so moved that the birds offer themselves to him that he rewards them with crumbs from the feast, rather than killing them.

  The rebellious bird, on the other hand, is hunted by predators in the forest, and at last killed by them—in an actual sacrifice where the dancer playing the Immolate is butchered for the pleasure of the Emperor. Condemned prisoners sometimes served as the Immolate, with automated gravity rings strapped to their limbs to manipulate them through the dance. Oftentimes, though, a very pious Helionic willingly served as the sacrifice after years of training for the part.

  “I banned this for a reason. I won’t watch it now,” Tyrus said quietly. His gaze fixed on the screen of sunlight where the Interdict himself was sitting. “Shall we go introduce ourselves?”

  He rose to his feet, and when I understood his intention, I followed. We climbed onto the ledge of our box and hurled ourselves forward. The sense of gravity disappearing made my every cell feel like it was light. We soared right past the astonished dancers.

  The music halted, and the dancers were so shocked, they stopped frolicking. That was the last I saw of them before we slammed through the screen of warm sunlight, into a chamber with standard gravity, and hit the ground.

  A man was already on his feet, a vicar by the reflective garb he wore, and then my eyes caught his and I realized I was looking at the Interdict.

  The Interdict—as in the very man depicted in that crystalline statue.

  And the shock of it froze me, and Tyrus recovered first, pulling me to my knees with him.

  “Most Ascendant One.” He kept looking up at the Interdict, though he should have been looking at the floor, for he clearly saw it, too. The resemblance.

  That vicar had to be over three hundred years old.

  This man? This was Orthanion. He was over five hundred. Five. Hundred. Years. Old.