Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 Read online

  This conflict became known as the Knyazya Rebellion. Millions of people died on hundreds of worlds. Bloodshed and cruelty were the order of the day, but the major fighting ended after fifteen months, when Nikolai himself was captured and executed in a very public fashion. His wife, Anastasia Alexeyevna, managed to elude capture with their son, however, and escaped into anonymity somewhere within the vast empire. Even ISIS’s most thorough searches couldn’t turn up anything more than wispy leads that went nowhere.

  “And you think the woman who came here thirty years ago was Anastasia Alexeyevna?” Judah asked.

  “Her face was in the news a lot when I was a girl,” Sadye said with a nod. “She was much aged twenty years after the rebellion and she disguised herself as well, but I recognized her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell ISIS?”

  “Anastasia Alexeyevna was a ruthless woman, even more than her husband. If I’d even hinted I recognized her, she’d have killed me.”

  Sadye continued her story. After Nikolai’s death, the rebellion tapered off and the last fighting was over in another year. Meanwhile the son of Kyril and Roxanna was born and named Ilya. But he was still a baby, incompetent to rule the Empire. So, after much deliberation and argument, the Duma devised what was called the Great Compromise. Vasiliy would continue as tsar for the remainder of his life, after which the crown would go to Ilya and his heirs. Other paths to succession, even more distant from the direct Sokolov bloodline, were established in case of emergency. Even Ilya, as he grew to manhood, accepted these terms with equanimity. Of course, no one really foresaw Vasiliy’s reign lasting fifty years.

  Fourteen years ago, Ilya and his wife had a daughter, Natalia, and a great sigh of relief went up throughout the Empire. While a son would have been preferred, there was ample precedent for women inheriting the throne. The direct line of succession now seemed iron-clad.

  Five years after Natalia’s birth, Ilya and his wife were both killed in a tragic spaceship mishap that may or may not have been an assassination, and suddenly there were exactly two members of the imperial Sokolov family left—one old and frail, the other a five-year-old girl. People started getting nervous again about more wars of succession, so the Duma invoked the Sovyet Knyazey, a council of regents drawn from the ranks of the knyazya and empowered to act if the tsar was somehow unable to govern. Such a council had historically been convened at times of instability or crisis.

  That step proved more than prudent when, four years after Ilya’s death, Tsar Vasiliy suffered a stroke. For the past five years, he’d lain in a permanent vegetative state. The Sovyet Knyazey ran the day-to-day affairs of the Empire and everybody held their breath, hoping Natalia could attain her majority at age twenty before Vasiliy at last expired.

  Meanwhile, back on Kyrby in comparative obscurity, the mysterious woman had met with the knyaz and made a deal for her son Yevgheniy to marry his daughter Teodora. It was a bit abrupt, for Teodora had already had several suitors among the dvoryane and Yevgheniy was a kupets with a relatively obscure background; but it was neither illegal nor unusual for commoners to marry dvoryane and—after some strong initial doubts by Teodora—she acceded to her father’s demands and married the mysterious young man.

  From the very start, Yevgheniy had undermined Teodora’s well-being. He encouraged her to drink way too much and he had her doctors dope her up with medications until she became addicted. Sadye was disgusted to watch what was happening to the once-vivacious lady she cared for, but she was powerless to stand up to Kuznyetz—and she refused to abandon her mistress. She could only do what little she could to mitigate the damage and grow sadder as she watched Teodora’s mind slip away.

  After Yevgheniy married Teodora, his mother disappeared again and Sadye had never seen her since. There was no telling whether she’d had any later contact with her son. She might even be dead by now; Sadye guessed the woman would be in her late eighties, at least.

  “And you suspect Yevgheniy is really Pyotr Nikolayevich?” Judah asked her.

  “I’m positive,” Sadye confirmed. “He has all the cruelty both his parents were famous for.”

  Judah’s brain was racing as he left Sadye’s room a short while later. This was it, the missing piece of the puzzle! He’d wondered how Yevgheniy expected to be declared tsar; the dvoryane would never crown an upstart kupets, no matter how strong his forces were. But as someone with an indisputable bloodline—backed by DNA evidence—his claim stood an excellent chance of moving him to the front of the line. This must have been his plan all along, a plan he’d patiently waited thirty years to bring to fruition.

  Judah was so lost in thought that he barely noticed the commotion in the halls all around him, until a colleague from the B.O.Q. bumped into him and said, “Have you heard the news? Tsar Vasiliy just died!”

  Judah’s blood ran cold. It’s starting, he thought. This must be the trigger to action. Everything changes from now on.

  He had to find some way to reach Wettig at once. The former commissar had to know this important information, or he’d be completely blindsided from a direction he didn’t even suspect!

  CHAPTER 9

  Fugitives

  Eva and Natalia lay in the tubeway as though swaddled in thick wool. They could see and hear nothing. They could feel the trickling of dust like a fine mist from the ceiling and the rough surface of the conveyor belt beneath them, but that was all.

  After a long moment, Natalia managed to say, “Wh-what was that?”

  “That, my dear, was the Argosy, if I’m not mistaken. The late Argosy, to be more precise. It’s now just heaps of debris scattered all over Languor Field.”

  “What happened?”

  “The rebels used some kind of cannon to blow it up. It was just standing in the middle of the field screaming, ‘Shoot me, shoot me!’“

  “But why would they do that?”

  Eva began to seriously question the intelligence of the Empire’s future ruler and was about to make a sharp retort, but stopped herself. This is a very sheltered fourteen-year-old girl in a deep state of shock. “My best guess?” she said more gently. “They were trying to kill you.”

  “Why—?”

  “Why does anyone kill a tsaritsa? Someone else wants the throne and you’re in the way.”

  “But who—?”

  “Look, can you move and talk at the same time? The sooner we’re out of this narrow little tube and free to move around, the safer I’ll feel.”

  Eva could feel the young girl stiffen. “Who are you to be giving me orders?”

  “I’m the woman who got you out of an exploding spaceship, and your best chance of staying alive more than another hour or two.”

  “You’re just a freilina!”

  Eva forced herself to take a deep breath and count to five. “That’s not my real job. I’m the woman Nkosi Wettig trusted to keep you safe. You know him, right?”

  “A little,” Natalia admitted grudgingly. “I know Hasina better. She was my freilina a couple of years ago.”

  “You’d trust her, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.” The word came hesitantly to Natalia’s mouth.

  “Well, she trusts me,” Eva said, stretching the truth a little. “She personally brought me to Lady Elena to be your freilina so I could keep an eye on you.”

  The long silence from the tsaritsa seemed to indicate at least grudging acceptance.

  “So if it pleases Your Imperial Majesty,” Eva continued at last, “would you kindly crawl down the rest of the tunnel so we can get the drap out of here before the bad guys decide to search it?”

  “It’s filthy!”

  “There wasn’t time to send a gornichnaya down to clean it first. And if you don’t start moving now you’re going to get your tuchis kicked.”

  “My what?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough if you don’t start moving.”

  After a moment, Eva could hear the rustling sound of the tsaritsa crawling ahead down the tubeway. Painf
ully slowly, but it was still forward motion. At first Natalia was quiet, but eventually she said, “What happened to all the people on the ship?”

  “I can only assume they’re dead,” Eva answered. “But there’ll be plenty of time to think about them once we’re out of this tunnel. Keep moving.”

  They crept on in sullen silence until suddenly Natalia cried, “Ow!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I bumped my head,” the girl whined.

  “Great! That means we’re at the end of the tunnel.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Can’t be much. You weren’t moving very fast.”

  “I think it may be bleeding.”

  “Can you open the hatch?”

  “I … I don’t know how.”

  “Here, let me squeeze past you.”

  There was an awkward moment in the cramped tube as Eva edged her way alongside Natalia and began feeling around the hatch for the release mechanism.

  “Do you know what’s out there?” Natalia asked, worried.

  “Probably some sort of baggage terminal would be my guess.”

  “But … but what if some of the rioters are out there?”

  “Then they’re smarter than they’ve acted so far. Quieter, too. Ah, there we are.”

  With a slight sigh of air pressure, the door unlocked and Eva opened it just a crack. Immediately the two women had to shut their eyes tight. Even though the room beyond was not too brightly lit, it seemed like searchlights after so long in the total blackness of the tube.

  Eva’d been a little better prepared for the light, so she recovered a little faster. She opened the door a sliver wider and looked around. All was quiet out there, with no signs of anyone waiting for them. Most likely, workers had scattered at the sound of the explosion and they were all out on the field, trying to sort out the debris. Baggage would have a very low priority at a time like this.

  Eva squeezed out of the tunnel and got to her feet beside it. Her legs were a little stiff from their long confinement in the narrow tube, but a few quick stretches got them back into shape. She then helped Natalia out of the tubeway and supported the girl until she could straighten her legs out, too.

  “Come on,” Eva said. “We’ve got to get out of here before someone spots us.”

  “Yes,” Natalia said, more confident now that she was in the light and open air. “We’ve got to get to an ISIS office. They’ll protect me.”

  “Hold on there, young lady. The universe as you knew it doesn’t exist any more. You can’t count on ISIS now for anything.”

  “You don’t think they could handle a few rioters?”

  “The rioters were just a smokescreen. This is an organized and well-planned coup, probably just waiting for the tsar’s death to set it off. Knyaz Nkosi figured it out; that’s why he sent me along to protect you.”

  “A coup?” She sounded unconvinced. “That’s impossible!”

  “As impossible as blowing up your ship? Trust me, this is very, very real. That was a deliberate attempt to kill you.”

  Natalia opened her mouth a couple of times and closed it again as quickly. Finally she said, “Who would dare do such a thing?”

  “Obviously Graf Federico here on Languor. Wettig suspects Knyaz Yevgheniy of Scorpio sector is the mastermind behind it all. Probably lots of other dvoryane and boyare involved, too. And any ISIS agents on Languor who were loyal to the throne are almost certainly dead by now.”

  “How dare they!” the girl said, and Eva wondered briefly whether the girl was remarking on the brazenness of the conspirators or the lack of consideration the ISIS agents showed by dying. She decided to give the girl the benefit of the doubt.

  “That’s how a coup works,” she said. “The first thing they have to do is neutralize the opposition. They may even have killed the agents before they blew up the ship.”

  The tsaritsa seemed to have trouble assimilating that information. “No ISIS?”

  “None we dare trust,” Eva said, shaking her head. “All you’ve got is me, I’m afraid.”

  Natalia was silent for a long time. Clearly she was unhappy, and clearly she was still in shock. Eva couldn’t afford to give her time to think about things too much.

  There were a number of doors around the perimeter of the large terminal. She ran to the nearest one, but it was locked. The next one, though, was open and she peeked out to see a long, brightly lit corridor with doors on either side, leading off to another corridor about a hundred meters away. The hallway was empty at the moment.

  “Come on,” she said, motioning for Natalia to join her. “We’ll go this way.”

  The girl came over to her—much too slowly, in Eva’s opinion, but she didn’t dare push her too hard. “Do you know where we’re going?” Natalia asked.

  “Perfectly,” Eva said. “Away from here. Please save all your questions until we’re somewhere safe where we can talk.” She grasped the girl’s hand and led her through the door down to the end of the hallway. She made the random choice to go right.

  Because of the explosion, this area of what would normally be a busy spaceport was deserted. After fifteen minutes of walking, when Eva judged they were far enough away to be relatively safe, she found a small empty room they could hide in. “We’ll rest here and regroup,” she said.

  While Natalia sat on a wooden chair and stared blankly ahead, regaining both her breath and her thoughts, Eva stripped off the freilina dress she’d been wearing and looked at it critically. It was a courtly dress, very beautiful and totally inappropriate for wearing on the street. She’d stand out like a giraffe in a kindergarten class.

  The first thing she did was rip off the sleeves. One she threw away, the other she folded over and wrapped across her forehead as a head band. She tore at the neckline, wishing she had some scissors, and turned the high-collared gown into a low-necked dress. “Good thing I’ve got great cleavage,” she muttered. “An awful lot of it’s going to show.” For good measure she tore off a strip around the hemline, turning a full length gown into a calf-length dress.

  She put it on again and modeled it for Natalia. “How does it look?” she asked.

  The girl, who’d been sitting almost trance-like, snapped out of it enough to look Eva over. “It’s hideous!”

  “Thanks.” There was no mirror in the room, but Eva looked down at herself appraisingly. The fabric’s still too rich, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I could have picked it up at a second-hand store. It’ll at least do as improv until I can get something better.

  “Smooth,” she said aloud. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Well, you can’t go outside looking like that.”

  “I know,” Natalia said with great sadness. “My dress is all wrinkled and dirty from crawling through that tube, my hands are filthy, probably my face, too—”

  “Filthy is fine,” Eva said. “No one expects a filthy tsaritsa. But that dress is way too distinctive. And all black, too—”

  Natalia’s eyes widened. “You’re not going to take my clothes off!”

  “I can redesign them while they’re on your body if you like.”

  The girl stood up and backed away, horrified. “Don’t you dare lay hands on me!”

  If the situation weren’t so serious, Eva would have laughed. “Or what? You’ll have your kavalergardy take me away? Look, Your Majesty, I’ve already punched you and pushed you through a baggage tube. When we get back to Earth you can have me executed or banished to Gulag for my treason. But I’m going to make sure you do get back to Earth. I’m stronger than you and faster than you, and this is going to get done.”

  Natalia had backed away as far as she could, and was now in a corner, but still looking dubious. Then she looked at her arm. “My wristcom’s gone!”

  “Yeah, I took it off you before we left Argosy.”

  “Why?”

  “So no one can follow us. If they try to track you through that
, they’ll think you’re out on the field instead of in here. I’ll get you a new one. Now hold still.” Eva got down on her knees, reached forward slowly and grasped the hem of the dress, then delicately began ripping at it.

  “This dress belonged to my mother!”

  “And I’m sure she’d happily see it sacrificed to save your life. I remember she seemed to be a very practical woman.”

  Gently, as though conducting delicate surgery, Eva tore away at the material, doing as much as she could with her bare hands to alter the dress’s appearance. Then she stood up again and backed a step away to evaluate her handiwork.

  “Still too noble,” she muttered. “I’m sure your teachers would be proud to see how regal you look, even under these circumstances. But I’ve got to turn you into a sow’s ear somehow.”

  She paused a moment to contemplate. “Okay, let down your hair.”

  Natalia’s hands instinctively rose to protect her head. Her hair was braided in a crown, the signature look for women of the imperial family. She’d worn her hair like that since she was seven, and never let it down in public.

  Eva advanced again and reached out to very gently stroke Natalia’s temple a few times. The girl shut her eyes tightly, bracing for the worst, as Eva reached in and slowly removed the combs that held the braids in place. She ran her fingers through it to undo the arrangement, and the hair fell raggedly down Natalia’s back.

  Natalia fussed with it as Eva stepped back once more to check the effect. The change was dramatic. With the hair in a crown, it made Natalia’s face look stern and almost mature—almost like a young matron. With the hair down, she looked more her true age—a girl in her mid teens, slightly gangly and a little unsure of herself. The clothes were still a jarring touch, but no one would look at her and instantly think royalty.

  Eva picked up some of the torn-off fabric and wrapped it around the girl’s throat like a scarf. “There. Keep your head down and your chin tucked in and no one’s likely to recognize you.” She stopped and thought for another second. “Take off the jewelry.”