Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 Read online

  “I don’t even look like—”

  “Nichevoh,” Eva repeated. “I can look slutty enough for both of us.”

  Natalia seemed to be calming down a little. “No one will probably even want a cripple like me.”

  Eva smiled. “Oh, you’ll be surprised at the fetishists you’ll drag out of the woodwork. But don’t worry, big sister’ll protect you. Now come on, we’re wasting time.”

  Over the next four hours they tried three different bars without finding what they needed. It didn’t matter that it was early morning; spacehands worked—and drank—on a round-the-clock schedule. But there didn’t seem to be any ships available. Or at least, none that were willing to go toward Earth given the current political uncertainty.

  The bars were all uniformly dark and dingy. They all reeked of alcohol, sweat, and a dozen different kinds of smoked substances. Eva moved around as though she’d been born in that environment. She moved with ease and a confident swagger, her body wiggling suggestively, her smile knowing, her eyes continually promising. Men’s hands pawed familiarly over her and she never discouraged them—but at the same time, the situation never became threatening.

  By contrast, Natalia felt increasingly claustrophobic and shrank away from everything. She tried not to let anything touch her body, lest the dirt and the smell rub off on her—and even so, she wanted desperately to take a shower and wash off the contamination.

  She was very surprised to find that Eva had been right—a lot of men were eying her, and more than a few tried to approach her. True to her word, Eva always headed them off, but Natalia felt increasingly confused. Eva was beautiful by any standards; why would so many men prefer to approach a plain-looking underage cripple instead? It made no sense to her.

  It was already midafternoon by the time they reached the fourth bar. Natalia was becoming very depressed. Not only were they no closer to gaining transport to Earth, but the dreary atmosphere of these places was dragging down her spirits. After nearly throwing up at the stench in one of the restrooms, the girl made a silent vow to hold everything in for the rest of her life, if need be, rather than visit another one.

  Eva, though, refused to give in to despair. “Each schmo we reject,” she said, “brings us that much closer to the one we want.”

  As Natalia looked around the fourth bar, she could still see no difference between it and any of the others. The clientèle were mostly men, though there were a few more women; not just prostitutes, but some who were actually spacehands. The lighting was every bit as dark, the walls were equally grimy, the noise was equally raucous, the smell was just as bad.

  But a quick inspection made Eva seem to perk up. She pointed to one man sitting alone at a table in a corner, with his back to a wall. He was eating a meal as well as drinking, but his eyes never stopped scanning the room. He saw Eva point to him, and gave her special notice.

  “I want to talk to him alone for a few minutes,” she told Natalia. “He reminds me of my uncle.”

  “The one with the artificial hand?”

  “Da. Doesn’t look a thing like him, but they’re exactly the same.”

  Eva went over to the man’s table and sat down before Natalia had a chance to ask what she meant. The girl didn’t like being left alone in a place like this. It felt as though all eyes were suddenly on her. She’d grown used to that after many public appearances—but these looks weren’t friendly ones. They were more … hungry,

  She sat down at a table by herself, but people were still glancing at her. One man started walking in her direction, so she stood up again and walked away. She kept glancing over at Eva, who was deep in conversation with the man she’d spotted. Once Eva looked up to see her and pointed at her. The man looked over and studied Natalia intently, then went back to talking with Eva.

  After an eternity and a half, Eva looked up at Natalia again and beckoned her over to the table. Natalia fought the impulse to run to Eva’s side, and instead walked with as dignified a limp as she could manage.

  As she approached she took a closer look at the man. Although he was sitting down, she could see he was short and wiry. His salt-and-pepper hair was close-cut and unkempt, his clothes were badly rumpled as though he’d lived and slept in them for a few months, and his skin was tough and leathery. He had a three-day growth of beard. In any dictionary, his pictured would be placed beside the word “grizzled.”

  “Nata, I’d like you to meet Captain Bill Fortier. Captain, this is my kid sister Nata.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Natalia said with very formal reserve.

  The captain just grunted. Even without opening his mouth, Natalia could smell alcohol on his breath.

  “The good captain specializes in the safe and rapid delivery of problematical cargo,” Eva continued. “He has graciously agreed to take us to Earth. He says he can get us there in time to see our dying mother.”

  “Don’t normally carry passengers,” the man said, scratching his cheek. “But you’ll be less trouble’n lots of other stuff I’ve hauled.”

  “And I promised him a nice bonus for safe delivery,” Eva added. “Provided we can leave right away.”

  “Just gotta call for new supplies,” Fortier said. He stood up and walked out of the bar, already looking to his wristcom.

  Natalia leaned forward to speak quietly with Eva. “Are you sure we can trust this man?” she asked. “My teachers always tell me a tsaritsa can’t afford to trust anyone.”

  “You can trust everybody,” Eva said. “It’s just a matter of ‘how far.’ Everyone balances risk versus reward. In his case, the reward is thirty thousand rublei.”

  “More of my jewelry?” Natalia sounded dismayed.

  “Relax. Your jewelry’s not worth that much on the open market today. I had to tap into my personal account, thank you very much. Lucky thing I’m a headliner.” She paused. “Although you’ll have to pay me back, plus chip in for the other forty thousand I promised him on safe delivery.”

  “Seventy thousand rublei?” All her life Natalia had never had to think about money. Now that she suddenly had none, the prospect of spending so much was frightening.

  “Relax. You’re the richest woman in the universe. It’ll be petty cash when we get you back on the throne. And if we don’t it won’t matter, will it?”

  A few moments later Fortier returned with the news that his suppliers had agreed to deliver his supplies to the ship at its “out of town” location. “Isn’t your ship at the spaceport?” Natalia asked.

  Fortier chuckled. “I don’t deal much with spaceports,” he said. “All them rules and forms and fees. I come and go more informally, as it were.”

  Fortier drove them well out of town to a small field surrounded by tall trees that hid it from casual view. The supplies hadn’t arrived yet, so the captain took them inside and showed them to their “quarters.”

  The ladies would be spending the trip living in the large, cavernous hold that would normally have been filled with crates of merchandise. Fortier had thrown in a couple of ratty old sleeping bags that smelled heavily of sweat. He had his own cramped sleeping quarters up by the control room; a one-person galley and a tiny head completed the facilities. The ship had a derrick that folded away into its hull for loading and unloading cargo. There was no other crew; Fortier handled all the duties himself.

  The women waited in contemplative silence as the captain bustled about, getting his ship ready for its flight. After a while the food, fuel and other supplies arrived, and Fortier spent more time getting it all stowed away. Eventually he announced they were ready for take-off, and the two passengers braced themselves for a rough time. The lift-off was surprisingly gentle and smooth, though; despite the gruff exterior, Fortier had a delicate touch with the controls. Within just a few minutes they were spaceborne, and on their way to Earth. The captain had even planned their ascent so well they weren’t noticed by the rebel craft circling the planet.

  Now they had nothing to do but await their arrival on
Earth. The women kept to themselves, and thee captain had plenty to do as a one-man crew to keep himself busy. With nothing to read and no other way of entertaining themselves, the two women spent a lot of time talking. “How long have you worked for ISIS?” Natalia asked.

  “Never,” Eva said honestly. “Technically I’m not even working for them now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, my parents and my uncles were top secret agents, and I got a lot of information from them. But Nkosi Wettig’s no longer commissar of ISIS, and I’m not being paid. I just volunteered out of duty to the throne. In ‘real life’ I’m just a lowly vaudevillian.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An entertainer. I work for Le Vaudeville Galactique, a traveling theater show. I’m a dancer.”

  Natalia’s eyes went wide and dreamy at the same time. “What kind? Ballet?”

  “Well, I’ve studied ballet of course, along with tap, ballroom and just about anything else you can think of. I tend to think of myself more as ‘expressive.’“

  “Ooh,” the girl said. “I’ve always wanted to be a dancer!”

  Of course, Eva thought. The little crippled girl dreams of being a dancer. What a surprise. “So what’s stopping you?”

  Natalia looked at her in astonishment. “Are you blind? Look at me!”

  “Ah. You’re one of the billions of people who’ve fallen for the Big Lie that dancing is all about the feet.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Eva shook her head. “A famous choreographer centuries ago staged an act where ten pairs of dance shoes were attached to a board, and ten dancers stepped into them. Their feet were essentially nailed to the floor. Then the music started and they danced, and ended with a round of applause. Dance is about movement. Legs aren’t the only things that move, you know.

  “Yes, I’ve looked at you. Your legs may never be graceful. But you’ve still got hips. You’ve got a torso. You’ve got shoulders, arms, hands, wrists and fingers. You’ve got a neck and a head. You’ve got a mouth that can smile or frown, and eyes that can sparkle or cry. Sure, legs are an important component. But they’re not the only component. Watch me.”

  She knelt in front of Natalia and started some music playing on her wristcom. Slowly her hips began to gyrate about. Then her torso began swaying gently left and right to the beat. Her arms began writhing with the music, as though they were snakes somehow independent of her body. Her fingers traced elaborate patterns in the air and her shoulders rotated as though on separate gimbals. Her neck did a slight, sinuous weaving as she smiled and winked suggestively at the girl.

  And her legs never moved.

  After a while Eva stopped dancing and turned off the music. Natalia’s mouth was agape, her eyes fixed and hypnotized by the older woman’s movements. If she could have moved she would have applauded, but she was frozen and speechless at the demonstration she’d witnessed.

  “How’d you like it?” Eva asked.

  “That was …” Natalia began, and stopped. Words failed her.

  “Breathtaking, fantastic, superlative, unparalleled, electrically-charged,” Eva suggested. “Those are all from some of my reviews. I think my personal favorite, though, is ‘awe-inspiring.’“

  “How … how …?”

  “The trick,” Eva said more seriously, “is to realize the music is alive and talking to you.. It may be singing of love and happiness, or it may be sad and dejected. Become the music. Let your body speak for it. Now you try.”

  Natalia blushed. “I couldn’t.”

  “Kittledung! I’ve already saved your life a dozen times. I’m not going to kill you for being a bad dancer.” She started another song on her wristcom. “Now dance, Nata.”

  The girl was frightened, but she tried, shyly, to move the way she’d seen Eva do. Eva watched wordlessly, stone-faced. When the music finished, Natalia stopped and looked toward her teacher, but her eyes were cast down, unable to meet Eva’s.

  Eva was silent for several seconds, then asked quietly, “Do you have epilepsy?”

  “No.”

  “Then that was terrible. Let’s try again.”

  For the next hour and a half Eva worked with the young girl, trying to loosen up the stiffness in her arms, hips and shoulders. Natalia had seen dancers, but never really studied them; she’d even been spared lessons in the courtly dances because of her leg. She had little sense of rhythm or feel for the music, and at times Eva wanted to write her off as hopeless—but the girl tried so hard and was so eager that Eva continued. She even spared the girl the sarcasm and insults a real dance teacher would have used to spur a student on. This was, after all, not just the future tsaritsa, but a scared little girl running in fear for her life.

  “I’m exhausted,” Natalia said at last. “I didn’t know I had so many muscles to get tired.”

  “We’re just getting warmed up,” Eva said. “But since you won’t have to make your living as a dancer, I’ll take it easy on you. Rest a while.”

  The two women talked, and the bond between them grew. Natalia wanted to know all about Eva’s background as a dancer and about life in the Ville. Eva gave her a modified account, omitting all the sex but telling her the stories of her family’s adventures as agents for ISIS. Natalia hung, fascinated, on every word.

  Once, while Natalia was visiting the head, the captain came by and nudged Eva. “How would you feel about sex with an older man?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eva replied evenly. “How would you feel about a knee to the balls?”

  The captain had probably been expecting rejection, but pretended to pout. “That’s not very friendly.”

  “Oh, it’s very friendly,” Eva replied. “If you even breathe in my sister’s direction, you’ll learn what ‘not very friendly’ is.”

  The captain went off grumbling to himself, but nothing further was said on the subject.

  Eva, not wanting to risk the captain’s idea of cooking, prepared meals for them in the tiny galley. More and more the captain got in the habit of coming down into the hold to share mealtime with the ladies. Natalia was totally unsure how to react to this; she spent some of the time avoiding even looking at him and the other times staring intently at him. He caught her at it once and asked her gruffly, “What’re you looking at?”

  Natalia blushed, but answered baldly, “What’s it like to be a smuggler?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. What’s it like to be a ….” He stopped, then looked from Natalia to Eva and back again. “A little girl?” he finished lamely.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that you’re breaking the law?”

  “Not particularly,” he said with a shrug. “The way I see it, there’s two kinds of laws. There’s the ones that keep you from hurtin’ someone else, like murder, and the arbitrary ones that don’t matter. Smuggling doesn’t hurt nobody.”

  “But you’re stealing from the crown,” the girl argued. “The Empire needs the money from the tariff duties to keep itself running.”

  He chuckled. “So you’re sayin’ it collects tariff duties so it can afford the manpower to keep collectin’ tariff duties? I just cut out the middle step and save everyone a bunch of trouble.”

  Natalia didn’t know how to answer, so she lapsed back into silence, while Eva watched the exchange with a slight smile. Later, after the captain had gone back to the controls, Natalia said, “I think he knows who I am.”

  “Probably,” Eva said. “He’s not stupid.”

  “But won’t he turn us in? There must be a reward.”

  “He might. In that case, we’ll learn the hard way how well I can pilot a spaceship—and he knows it. In his own way, I think he’s a man of honor. He’ll keep his word.”

  The ship made good time, uninterrupted on its journey until it reached the outermost edges of Earth’s solar system. Suddenly a loud bell started ringing. Natalia clapped her hands to her ears and yelled to Eva, “What’s happening? Are we in trouble?”

  “Not yet, but
we soon will be,” Eva replied. “Now we’ll see whether the good captain can live up to his word and our expectations.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Messages

  Judah was becoming very frustrated with his journey to Earth. The kavalergardy were crowded into the lowest portion of Kuznyetz’s yacht, down near the engines. The sounds of the ship’s motors and other machinery were not as loud as he might have expected, but the low droning and clanking were a constant source of irritation on people’s nerves. The air down there smelled heavily of sweat and machine oil; the yacht, though large, was not built to accommodate quite so many people crammed into such a small area so that the owners could have more luxurious room for themselves.

  The different ways to pass the time were very limited. There was only so much sleeping the guards could stand, and eating was limited by the number of provisions on board. Sports were limited in these close quarters; wrestling was the most popular, since it took up little room. But Judah didn’t bother with that, since it would be too easy for a Zionian to beat any unmodified human that way.

  The other major activity was card games. Judah was pretty good at that, since cards were a major backstage activity at the Ville itself. His physical prowess gave him no advantage here, but he still managed to win a little more than he lost.

  When he wasn’t playing cards he tried to explore the ship, but with little success. The kavalergardy were strictly prohibited from the family section of the ship; that was permitted only for members of household personal staff. The only good thing about this was that Kuznyetz’s family and staff didn’t wander down to the kavalergardy quarters, either, so his presence was not detected.

  He hoped to make it to the communication room on some pretext so he might smuggle a message out to Knyaz Nkosi, but his efforts in that direction were thwarted as well. He resigned himself to being unable to do anything until the ship reached Earth.