Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 Page 15

  His other option was tactical retreat—abandon the outer reaches of the Empire and cede those areas to the rebel forces, while his own ships turned tail and raced to protect Earth and the center of government at all costs. This solution flew in the face of all his instincts as a loyal military officer, but he knew rationally that it was the only decision he could make to save the Empire as a whole. With utmost reluctance, he ordered as many of his ships as he could to fall back to positions around Earth.

  Once there, they found themselves in the unaccustomed position of having to break through the heavy rebel englobement of Earth. This was normally the fleet’s position, and it irked him to have the tables turned. But at least this was a well-known tactical problem, and Pozerian knew plenty of strategies for dealing with it.

  * * *

  Of course, not everyone was out to capture the throne itself. Others were quite content with less lofty ambitions.

  Knyaz Natombe of Libra sector knew he could never gather the support needed to be tsar. Too many important people detested him. But many of those same people detested one another as well, and Natombe had spent most of his life learning to play them off against each other.

  He was the master of the shifting alliance, the weather vane of imperial intrigue. If no one completely trusted him, no one could afford to ignore him, either. If he offered to be your ally, it was because he saw advantage in it—but you dared not count on it, because it could vanish again if the wind shifted. Because of his unique position, he heard many secrets. Some of them were even true. But that didn’t matter, because he made so many of them up himself. You weighed any information he gave you on ultra-sensitive scales, held it up to the light, shook it, then dissected it, looking for any kernels of truth it might contain.

  Kuznyetz hadn’t even bothered to recruit Natombe into his conspiracy. It would have been pointless, because Natombe would offer himself up anyway if the coup succeeded—and if not, he’d desert no matter what he’d promised. Kuznyetz could see no particular advantage in such an ally.

  Natombe didn’t care that he wasn’t invited to the party. With an intelligence system that rivaled ISIS’s, he knew pretty much what was going on, and viewed it as a superb opportunity. If he couldn’t become king, he could be kingmaker. When power shifted this broadly, plenty of niches appeared for a man who kept his eyes and his options open.

  * * *

  There were no sharp boundaries in the depths of interstellar space. As the Empire expanded, disputes were constantly occurring over what new planetary system belonged where. The Galactographic Institute investigated all such disputes and presided over territorial trials as they arose, then presented its findings to the tsar. The tsar had final decision over the settlement—but not all the tsar’s decisions were uniformly popular, particularly among the losing sides.

  One such example was the planet Romatia, whose yellow-green star burned brightly at the edge of the Circinus sector. Its solar system was first explored by survey teams from Circinus more than two hundred years ago. When it was found habitable, with a very moderate climate, it was opened up to settlement and most of its original inhabitants came from various worlds in Circinus sector. The discovery of three heavy-metal rich moons around other planets in the system made it a very desirable piece of real estate.

  The graf of Romatia, a man named Constantine, was a harsh, greedy tyrant whose citizens were most unhappy with his rule. They appealed for relief to Circinus’s knyaz—but he was Constantine’s uncle by marriage, and refused to listen to their complaints.

  Since Romatia’s star happened to be near the border with Ara sector, the Romatians sent a secret delegation to the knyaz of Ara, who agreed to back their efforts. With military support from Ara, the Romatians successfully rebelled while, simultaneously, Ara petitioned Tsar Andrei to annex Romatia into Ara sector. Circinus protested loudly and bitterly. Tsar Andrei, who hated making decisions, let the dispute linger for four years until he was near death, at which point he ruled in favor of Ara.

  The Circinians had brooded ever since. They had explored and colonized Romatia, and as far as they were concerned it still belonged to them. A small minority of Romatians, who maintained strong ties to their original home worlds, were constantly causing trouble, and Circinus was only too happy to help them.

  When the current crisis suddenly exploded on the scene, Circinus at last saw its long-awaited opportunity to reclaim its territory. Suddenly the tsar’s influence was gone from the region, and there was little to stop them. They issued ultimatums to Ara and Romatia. When the ultimatums were rejected, Circinus went to war.

  Ships from Circinus were spotted heading for Romatia, and Ara quickly scrambled its own fleet to intercept them. The move was a feint, however; a much larger fleet of Circinian ships, taking diverse routes coordinated to arrive at the same time, suddenly appeared in the skies of Devalo, Ara’s capital world. Death and destruction rained down on Devalo’s citizens and the fleet disappeared almost immediately, heading back to Romatia to reinforce the other Circinian ships. Another ultimatum was delivered to Romatia, and this time the people had little choice but to accept it.

  * * *

  In ways large and small, the sudden vacuum on the throne caused incalculable destruction to the Empire. In the six days between the reports of Natalia’s death and the convocation of the Sovyet Knyazey, tens of millions of lives were lost and the destruction of property ranged easily into the trillions of rublei. What was worse, everyone knew those numbers would increase by orders of magnitude if the meeting did not reach a quick and acceptable settlement. Any heir, even a ruthless one like Yevgheniy Kuznyetz, would seem preferable to the disintegration of the Empire.

  And that was what he was counting on.

  CHAPTER 13

  Illicit Cargo

  Natalia Ilyinishna Sokolova felt suddenly cold as Eva took off in the bus without her. The bus’s other passengers had run off down the street, glad to be free of their mad kidnapper. Natalia was very tempted to run after them; there might be safety in numbers. But they also might recognize her, and that posed almost as much risk as being alone.

  This section of town might have been industrial: large, squat buildings with darkened windows, few street lights, little traffic and no pedestrians other than the former passengers. Darkness closed around her like a cold fist, and the silence was smothering. A chilly wind made her shiver. She walked into the nearby alley, found a section of darker shadow and sat down on the ground with her back against a wall.

  With nothing else to occupy it, her mind turned to self-pity. This was not the world she was raised to, and the realization crept slowly in that it never would be again. The universe had suddenly changed, leaving her behind. She’d always known her great-uncle would die, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. She would be in the palace, surrounded by courtiers and servants, with teachers and guides laying out the protocols for her every step of the way. There would be a state funeral and processions, her coronation and investiture. The dvoryane were supposed to swear their allegiance, not send fleets out to battle in space and bomb innocent civilians.

  What kind of evil, nightmare empire had she inherited? Suddenly her short childhood seemed like all sunshine, bright colors and beautiful rolling meadows, being swallowed now by black, billowing storm clouds and flashes of lightning.

  After a while she heard footsteps. Her heart leapt, thinking it must be Eva. Then she realized there was more than one set of footsteps and several voices talking and laughing—male voices. She scrunched down deeper into herself, trying to be insignificant.

  She must have made some faint noise, because the footsteps suddenly stopped. She could just barely see a group of silhouettes—black against the slightly-less-black background—at the alley entrance. She couldn’t tell how many of them there were. “Who’s there?” asked a voice—a young adult male voice.

  Natalia couldn’t make herself shrink any smaller, no matter how hard she tried. Footsteps began walk
ing toward her. “Don’t be afraid,” the voice said. “We won’t hurt you.”

  Natalia did not feel reassured.

  As the footsteps came nearer she could make out the shapes of four men, but she couldn’t distinguish any more detail than that. They stopped a meter or so away, and a different voice said, “I think we’ve got a little mouse here.”

  “Is that right?” said a third voice. The man reached down and grabbed Natalia’s arm, yanking her to her feet. “Do you want to play with us, little mouse?”

  The girl’s throat felt paralyzed.

  From the entrance to the alley, Eva’s voice said calmly, “Nata, did you start a party without me?”

  The men turned, their concentration on Natalia broken.

  “You’ll have to forgive my sister, boys,” Eva continued evenly. “She doesn’t always invite me to parties. Something about my not playing well with others.” She reached out to the hand of the man grabbing Natalia’s arm, and squeezed it with Zionian strength. As he let go quickly, she grabbed one of his fingers, bending it back until she heard a satisfactory crack and the guy screamed.

  “We just wanted to make sure she was all right,” the first man said. “This neighborhood can be dangerous at night.”

  “It certainly can,” Eva agreed. “You boys should probably run on home before you find out just how dangerous.”

  The gang backed quickly out of the alley without further argument, the one man still moaning in pain.

  “How are you?” Eva asked Natalia when the others were gone.

  “S-smooth,” the girl said, shivering. Eva put an arm around her and held her tight for a few silent seconds. As Natalia stopped shaking, she continued, “How did you find me?”

  Eva tapped the girl’s wristcom. “I bought this for you, remember? Right now I’m the only person who can track your ID code. Come on, let’s get you in out of the cold.”

  “Do you know someplace safe?”

  Eva didn’t answer immediately. Instead she walked up and down the alley until she found a door next to a darkened window. The door was locked, but normal doors were seldom effective against a determined Zionian. As the door swung open from her kick, Eva said, “Now I do. Come on.”

  “Isn’t all this illegal?”

  “Not if you’re here, Your Majesty. You rule the Empire, you get to say what’s legal and what’s not.”

  Natalia followed her protector inside. Her voice was dripping with sarcasm as she said, “Yeah, I rule the Empire. Then why am I shivering in the dark?”

  “Because it’s cold and it’s nighttime—and the hotel option isn’t open to us any more. They’ll all be monitored.”

  Natalia sat down wearily with her back against a wall. Her voice matched her spirit of hopelessness. “So what do we do now?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Me?” Natalia said, startled.

  “Why not? You’re the one who’ll be ruling the universe. You’ll have to learn how to solve problems sometime.”

  “But … but I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “Well, neither have I,” Eva said.

  “What?” The shock was evident in the girl’s voice. “But you always know what to do. I thought—”

  “I don’t know what to do. But I know how to think and analyze. If you’re going to be tsaritsa, you’ll have to learn that too. You’re always going to have to solve problems you’ve never seen before, or this won’t be the last revolt you’ll see. You must have had teachers who taught you how to think, how to analyze problems.”

  “Yes, but … but that was all about politics.”

  “So is this. Think. Analyze. What do you think the problem is?”

  “People are trying to kill me.”

  “And what do you thin is the solution?”

  Natalia’s voice was more tentative. “Run away?”

  “Will that become the imperial motto? ‘Run away’?”

  The girl was becoming annoyed. “That’s what you’ve been doing!”

  “Is it?”

  “You ran away from the ship before it blew up. We ran away from Languor. We’re running away now.”

  “Surviving is important, sure. But don’t confuse tactics with strategy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s your long-term goal, your ultimate goal?”

  “Staying alive.”

  “You’re still thinking too narrowly. What do you need to do to make sure that happens?”

  Natalia stopped a moment. “I … I have to get my throne back.”

  “Good! Perfect! You’re thinking beyond the immediate problem of staying alive. If you let yourself get mired in the short term solution you risk losing sight of the main goal, getting back the power to stop these people. Now, how do you do that?”

  Natalia was catching onto the game. “By letting the Sovyet Knyazey know I’m still alive.”

  “Exactly. And how can you do that?”

  Natalia was suddenly hesitant again. “I don’t suppose I could radio a message—”

  “The bad guys would jam it,” Eva said. “We’re still too far away. And even if it got through they’d claim you’re an impostor—and they’d know where you are and kill you before you could prove your claim. Right now they suspect you’re here, but they don’t know it for certain; there might be other reasons we ran away from the spaceport. That’s our only advantage.”

  “Then I—I’ll have to go to Moscow and show them.”

  “YES!” Eva exclaimed, throwing her arms tightly around Natalia and kissing her. “We’re not running away from anything, we’re running toward it. Now you’re thinking like the tsaritsa I knew you were.”

  The startled girl sat in shock for a moment, startled by the sudden intimacy. “But I still don’t know how to make it happen,” she said weakly.

  “You don’t have to,” Eva said. There was a big smile on her face, even though Natalia couldn’t see it in the darkness. “You’re the tsaritsa. You analyze the problem. You settle on the solution and set the policies and priorities. You have plenty of other people—me, in this case—to handle the details.”

  “But you knew all this already,” Natalia protested. “Why did you make me go through it?”

  “Why do math teachers ask kids what two times two is? They know the answer themselves. But you’re the tsaritsa. You have to know the answer yourself. You can’t just let people tell you what the answers are. You have to know it in your bones, or you can’t be a leader.”

  The young girl was silent for many minutes. “We need to have a ship,” she said at last. “That’s the only way to get from here to Earth. And we can’t just buy tickets this time, because they’ll be monitored. Can you pilot a ship?”

  “Sorry. I was sick the day they covered that in class.”

  “Then we’ll have to charter one.” Natalia gave a big yawn. “But I’m not sure—”

  “You don’t have to be. I’m the schlepper. That’s my job.” She paused. “Your job, right now, is to get some sleep. We’ve got a lot to do, and you’re the Big Brain. We need you sharp. Get some rest.”

  Natalia didn’t argue. She stretched out on the floor and rested her head in Eva’s lap. Within two minutes she was snoring. Eva looked down at her enviously and sighed. She needed some sleep desperately, too, after all the excitement—but she had a lot of thinking and planning to do before she dared fall asleep.

  * * *

  As soon as the dawn light began peeking through the alley window, Eva shook Natalia’s shoulder. “Rise and shine, Your Majesty. Time to get started.”

  Natalia yawned and stretched, then sat up. Even a couple hours’ sleep had done her worlds of good. “Today we find a ship, right?”

  Eva smiled and nodded. “Today we find a ship,” she agreed.

  * * *

  They walked down the street in the early morning sunshine. Without her artificial leg, Natalia’s gait was somewhere between a shamble and a lurch, like some mad sc
ientist’s deformed sidekick. The girl was obviously very self-conscious about it, but Eva paid it no attention, not even pressing the young woman to move faster even though time was growing short. Once she asked whether Natalia was cold in the chilly breeze, but the girl commented that this was a spring day compared to the Moscow winters she was used to.

  “What we need to find,” Eva said as they walked along, “is someone who can get us through the blockade around Earth.”

  “Are you sure there is one?” Natalia asked.

  “Definitely. If the rebels haven’t put one up, the Navy certainly will. Maybe both. We need someone who can find his way through the holes—a smuggler, preferably, but I’ll settle for a pirate if we have to. Smugglers are probably more trustworthy.”

  “Where will you find one?”

  “Well, they sure don’t advertise on the local web. You might think they’d be at spaceport bars, but these guys don’t usually use official landing fields. I checked the local grid while you slept, and there seems to be an area on the west side of the city just full of shady dives. We’ll try there.”

  “I can’t go into bars,” Natalia said. “I’m too young.”

  Eva smiled. “The places we’re going won’t rigidly enforce the age limits. I doubt they’ll rigidly enforce anything.”

  “Won’t two ladies stand out in places like that?”

  “Two ladies might,” Eva said. “But that’s not us. We’re just a pair of hookers.”

  Natalia stopped dead in her tracks. Her face was suddenly brick red. “I don’t … I can’t—”

  “Of course you don’t, and you won’t,” Eva said soothingly, stopping and turning to face her. “We’re a sister act; we only work together—and if anyone asks, our price is way higher than they can afford. If anyone approaches you, just hand them off to your big sister who handles all the arrangements.”