Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 Page 18

  Finally Eva chose a small area about fifty kilometers southwest of the city limits. It had large plots of open farmlands and a few wooded sections around—not the forest she might ideally have hoped for, but not heavily populated and with enough trees to give them modest cover.

  She pointed at the screen. “That might do. What do you think, Your Majesty?”

  “That looks smooth to me,” the girl said. “But how do we get from there into the city? It’s much too far to walk.”

  “One step at a time. Right now I’ve just got more a scheme than a plan. Once we’re there, some solution will undoubtedly present itself. It looks like late afternoon there. We’ll wait till nightfall to land.”

  As they sat around waiting, Eva said, “I know my circumstances are much different than yours, but you might want to consider getting out more. Once this contretemps is over, of course. Some of my most wonderful experiences have come when I went out adventuring on my own. And I wasn’t too much older than you are when I first started.”

  “And you didn’t have people around you planning your every step, worrying about your every sniffle,” Natalia countered. “You think I haven’t felt imprisoned? But if I go off on my own, there’s a general panic in the palace. Then they clamp down worse than ever.”

  “There’s got to be some middle ground,” Eva said. “Tell them you want to go to the theater, or a soccer game, or a department store or a park. Someplace ordinary people go. Who’s the tsaritsa, you or them?”

  “Sometimes I wonder.”

  The two women lapsed into contemplative silence until Eva finally declared it was dark enough for planetfall. “Land,” she ordered the ship-, and gave the coordinates she’d chosen. Obediently the ship accelerated out of orbit and down to Earth.

  It didn’t go straight in, however. Always wary of possible detection, Captain Fortier had programmed the lifeship to take circuitous routes. They zigged and zagged, looped and swooped in a sometimes crazy fall designed to throw off any pursuit and avoid easy tracking. The ground loomed larger and larger in the scope until they came in skimming the treetops so close they could almost hear the branches scraping the ship’s side. Then they touched down as gently as a butterfly lighting on a flower petal.

  They opened the hatch and stepped out into the darkness. The air had the crisp bite of late autumn, and smelled intoxicating after the stale recycled air of the lifeship. They both breathed in a couple of deep lungsful, and then Natalia said, “Where do we go now?”

  Eva looked up at the waning crescent moon near the horizon. “That’ll be west,” she said. “I remember seeing some farm buildings over in this direction a couple kilometers. Nice night for a walk, don’t you think?”

  They started through the widely spaced trees. Eva, always impatient to get where she was going, had to deliberately slow her pace so she wouldn’t completely outdistance Natalia’s crooked walk. The girl was young and healthy, though, and refused to complain so they made steady if slow progress. At first their way was lit by the setting crescent moon, but after half an hour bright artificial lights appeared on the horizon. The fugitives walked toward them warily.

  The buildings Eva had spotted as they came down were not a simple family farm, but a large dairy processing plant. It was a complex of eight large buildings, fully illuminated even at night. The women stopped at the top of a small hill a hundred meters away and observed it. No one seemed to be moving around at night. Natalia wanted to simply walk in and announce herself; this close to home, she reasoned, they could expect people to recognize her and obey her, and they’d provide transportation into Moscow itself.

  Eva was more cautious. She didn’t know how thorough the rebellion’s forces had been at spreading their net, even on Earth. There might be a sizable reward out for any “royal pretender” who showed her face. In the end, she convinced Natalia to wait on the hilltop while she reconnoitered the grounds.

  She returned about an hour later with a mixed report. The workers were stationed in a large bunkhouse at one side of the complex. There might be as many as fifty people there altogether; while most of them probably were loyal citizens, it would only take one informer to betray them. She still wanted to proceed cautiously and not reveal themselves.

  Natalia was very unhappy at this report, but then Eva said, “The farm might give us a chance to steal some faster transportation.”

  “Of course,” Natalia said happily. “They must have some cars!”

  “Well, they do, but I wouldn’t take them. The instant they’re reported stolen, the GPS will give our position away. I was thinking something a little more basic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a stable with some horses and gear. Do you know how to ride?”

  Natalia’s voice was dramatically indignant. “I have the finest stables on Earth. I’ve been riding since I was four.”

  “Good,” Eva said. “Then you can teach me.”

  * * *

  Judah returned to his post on the perimeter of the Scorpio hall of state without incident. He was of conflicting emotions about that. On the positive side, it was a tribute to his stealth and would mean there would be no complications integrating himself back into the kavalergardy. On the negative side, it meant he was so unimportant that he could disappear for long periods without even being missed.

  His return was timely, though, because not fifteen minutes later Cdr, Aab summoned the kavalergardy back inside. “I need volunteers for a secret assignment,” he said. “We’ve heard rumor that an impostor to the throne may have landed on Earth in a small ship. This pretender would cause total anarchy at the Sovyet if she showed up. All the knyazya have been consulted, and they’ve authorized us to hunt her down.”

  “Why us?” someone asked. “Why not local militsia?”

  “Because we’re not local. If news of the impostor got out on Earth, there’d be all sorts of chaos. We can’t go blabbing to anyone because we don’t have any local contacts to blab to.”

  “You want us to capture her and bring her in, then?” Judah asked.

  Aab set his jaw. “No. Our orders are to kill her on sight. She could cause too much trouble otherwise. Now, any volunteers?”

  Half a dozen hands went up, Judah’s among them. He had to be a member of this party to keep the tsaritsa safe. Many of the others, though, seemed to feel a little squeamish about cold-bloodedly assassinating an innocent young girl.

  The officer looked them over and nodded. “Good. You’ll be issued stingers. Set them on high. You’ll also have an unmarked huvver with unrestricted diplomatic access and directions about where the impostor came down. If you call in, use the code word ‘Phoenix’; it will get you through instantly. Good hunting.”

  A setting of high, of course, was instantly lethal, frying the target’s nervous system beyond any hope of recovery. Kuznyetz was really serious about eliminating the threat from a fourteen-year-old girl. Even if her body was later found, she’d be beyond challenging his rule.

  They left Moscow in darkness, keeping the car on the road until they were well past the crowded city’s borders. Then they got Traffic Control’s permission to take off into the air and flew toward the coordinates they’d been given. Their sensors were extended to full range, looking for any traces of their prey.

  Moscow’s urban sprawl meant there were still plenty of houses and people this far out, giving any fugitives plenty of cover for hiding. The team leader had the markers for the tsaritsa’s wristcom, but it wasn’t registering anywhere; she’d probably been smart enough to get rid of it somewhere along the way. Judah was beginning to think their search would be hopeless; Kuznyetz would have other teams of guards watching the palace in case Natalia showed up there. But the land became more and more pastoral, and any people would certainly stand out from the background.

  “There!” Someone pointed at the screen. “Two figures.” His brow wrinkled. “They’re not on a road and they’re not moving fast enough for a car, but they�
�re way too fast for people.” The car swooped silently downward for a closer look.

  “Horses!” someone cried in astonishment. “They’re on horseback.”

  Judah couldn’t help but smile, and was glad it was dark enough his comrades wouldn’t notice. That’d be Eva, all right; leave it to her to find the dramatic way of making an entrance. Just her style.

  “Well, they won’t be for long,” said the team leader, lowering the huvver further so they could get better shots.

  Judah decided this was the time to act. He turned the setting on his stinger down to low and shot his companions one by one. There seemed to be an agonizingly long time between each shot—it took nearly a second for a stinger to recharge each time—but he was still fast enough to incapacitate the other kavalergardy before they could react.

  Then he suddenly found himself in a huvver plunging out of control. He had to reach awkwardly across two unconscious bodies to reach the car’s controls. The vehicle lurched and swerved violently, but it had already been close enough to the ground that it didn’t burst apart when it came down. It was even still drivable, which Judah decided was due to his expert handling.

  The huvver’s sensors showed two shapes in the darkness not far ahead. They had stopped moving and were probably watching the car cautiously from a safe distance. Judah clambered clumsily over the tangle of limp bodies to open the door and step out of the car. “Hey, Eva,” he called out as he waved to the darkness. “It’s just me. I brought you some transportation.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then a wave of relief flooded over him as his cousin’s voice called back. “I know it’s you,” Eva said. “No one else is that bad a driver.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The Sovyet Knyazey

  Eva and Natalia dismounted as Judah walked up to them. “Nata, this is my cousin and dance partner, Judah Bar Nahum,” Eva said. “Judah, may I present Her Imperial Majesty, Tsaritsa Natalia Ilyinishna Sokolova. Or should I say Tsaritsa Presumptive?”

  Judah knelt before her and bowed his head. Natalia gave a quick nod of acknowledgment and said, “Right now I’m nothing until the Sovyet Knyazey says otherwise.”

  “You heard her, boychik,” Eva said. “Get up. We’ve got work to do.”

  Judah rose and led the two women over to the car. While he couldn’t see the deformity of her right leg in the darkness, he could see she had an awkward limp. He decided to be a gentleman and ignore it.

  “Who are they?” Natalia asked as she spotted the unconscious bodies.

  “They’re members of Kuznyetz’s kavalergardy,” Judah said. “They came out here to stop you. I stopped them first. What should we do with them?”

  Natalia’s voice was calm and level. “Kill them.”

  Judah was shocked to hear such a harsh sentence come out of such a young girl. Even Eva’s eyes widened a trifle. “In cold blood?” Judah asked.

  “They were going to kill me. That is a treasonable offense, punishable by death.”

  Judah still had trouble wrapping his mind around this. “Well, to be fair, they didn’t think it was really you. They thought you were a pretender to the throne.”

  “They were willing to kill innocent people without a trial. Do they deserve to live?”

  “How can you be so …?”

  “Heartless? Cold-blooded?” Natalia suggested. “What do you know about my family’s history? The real story, not what we print in the books.”

  When Judah didn’t reply, she continued, “My family didn’t become rulers of an interstellar empire by being genteel and polite. Gregoriy I led a criminal gang known as the most ruthless cutthroats on Earth. They were called the Russkaya Mafiya, and they were so tough even the other gangs like the Colombians and the Yakuza were afraid of them. When the old nations crumbled in the face of so-called globalization, we branched out and took over political power too. No one could stand up to us.” She smiled grimly. “Ruthless runs in my genes. I’m not squeamish about killing traitors.”

  Eva laid a hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder. “Of course you’re not. But just consider: There’ll be hundreds, if not thousands, of executions in the next few months after we round up all the key players. Kuznyetz and his tovarishchi are responsible for millions of deaths. Save the most serious punishment for the most serious offenders. Low level oprichniki should get lower level punishments. Isn’t that what Gulag’s for?”

  Natalia was silent as she reconsidered. “I suppose you’re right,” she said grudgingly, not wanting to let go of the chance to vent her rage at the horrors of the past few days. “But we’ve got to do something to keep them from raising an alarm about us.”

  In the end, the three took the men’s weapons, wristcoms and boots. Eva would have stripped them completely naked, but Judah talked her out of it on the very practical grounds that they were in a hurry, and undressing unconscious bodies takes far too much labor and time to make it worthwhile. “Without their boots it’ll take them hours to get anywhere,” he said. Eva had to agree, but she still enjoyed the mental image of the men walking naked through the Russian countryside.

  The huvver was still operable despite Judah’s hard landing. “What’s the plan now?” he asked as they started back toward Moscow.

  “We go straight to the palace,” Natalia said without hesitation.

  “Not a good idea,” Eva said. “If even one person on your staff is a turncoat, they’ll give us away before we’re ready.”

  “If I’m going to appear at the Sovyet Knyazey, I must have the proper clothes,” Natalia insisted. “That much is essential. I can’t just show up like this.”

  “A good entrance is always important,” Judah agreed.

  “I also need a proper leg,” Natalia said more quietly to Eva, who had to concede the point.

  “We can’t let it be common knowledge, though,” Judah continued. “Until you show up safely at the Sovyet Knyazey, there’s still a chance Kuznyetz might get to you quietly before anyone else knows about you. Is there one person at the palace who could sneak you in and out, one person you’d trust your life to?”

  “Yes,” Natalia said without a second’s hesitation. “Lady Elena.”

  Eva nodded. “If she can’t be trusted, no one can,” she said, confirming the girl’s choice.

  Natalia promptly sent a high-priority encoded text message to Lady Elena’s private number, telling her to be alone at a seldom-used back door of the palace in an hour. The message was unsigned and Elena wouldn’t recognize the sender’s wristcom ID, but knowing the lady’s diligence she wouldn’t ignore a coded message like that. If nothing else, she’d be curious.

  Their huvver, with its diplomatic registry, passed without incident into the city and into the Kremlin. Natalia guided Judah around to the back of the palace, and entered the security code to get them through the gates. The huvver glided up to the chosen door without anyone in the palace being the wiser. Eva and Natalia went to the door, while Judah waited with the car in case of trouble.

  Lady Elena opened at their knock. She stared uncomprehendingly for a few moments when she saw the two women before her. Then she fainted. Or she would have, if Eva’s reflexes hadn’t been fast enough to catch her before she hit the ground.

  She recovered quickly, but continued staring. “Your … Your Highness. I … I never expected to seed you again. I thought—”

  “I know what you must have thought,” Natalia said. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again, either. But here I am, thanks to this very resourceful freilina you found for me.”

  Lady Elena looked at Eva, as though noticing her for the first time. Her expression was puzzled, wondering exactly what had happened, but Eva gave her no time to think. “Explanations later,” she said. “Right now we’ve got to get the tsaritsa over to the Sovyet Knyazey. She’ll need suitable clothes.”

  “And a spare leg,” Natalia added.

  “Can you get us in and out without anyone seeing us?” Eva asked.

  Natalia lau
ghed. “Lady Elena knows the palace better than the original architects.”

  The chamberlain began leading them up some snaking back passageways, pausing occasionally to wait for other people to pass. Once they had to backtrack down one whole floor to avoid being seen. Lady Elena was fairly bursting with a thousand questions, but she knew how to do her job without asking them and trusted the tsaritsa to explain in her own time.

  “Where’s the meeting being held?” Natalia asked as they walked.

  “Novaya Duma.”

  Natalia nodded. The rebuilt hall where the Duma sat was the normal site for such convocations. “I’ve been there a couple of times for opening sessions, but only in the gallery. I don’t really know my way around inside.”

  “Nu? So we’ll improvise,” Eva said. “It’ll hardly be the first time.”

  They reached Natalia’s suite without incident. No one was there since the rooms were currently not being used. Natalia and the chamberlain went back into the closets to make some quick wardrobe decisions and to fasten on the girl’s spare leg. Eva sat down on one of the fancy chairs in the salon, taking a deep breath. She might not get another moment to relax for several hours, and she wanted to be ready for the action to follow.

  Sooner than she expected, Elena and Natalia re-emerged. Natalia looked both modest and regal at the same time. She was still officially in mourning for the late tsar, of course, so her black dress with the wide skirt was adorned with just a simple pearl necklace. The bodice, though, had slits to reveal an under-layer of powder blue, giving it just the right amount of color and life. They’d found a wig to mask where Eva had cut the girl’s hair, and arranged it the way people were used to seeing it, as a braided crown atop her head. Natalia was ready to appear in public as the undisputed ruler of the Empire.