Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 Read online

  Col. Groenwald briefly outlined the security arrangements he felt these girls should know. Eva found the information sketchy at best, but she could infer more details beyond what the officer said and agreed that these measures would be sufficient to cover everyday situations. She was here to cover the extraordinary ones.

  Their luggage had already been packed, and was loaded by servants into a special car that took it all to Tsar Gregoriy Spaceport. The imperial family and staff had special secure facilities there so they wouldn’t have to mix with the general populace. The luggage was sent through the underground tubeways to be loaded aboard the ship. The ship’s crew boarded through the passenger tube. Only after everyone else was aboard did the Velikaya Knyaghinya herself board through the private underground tube, so no one could see her.

  The imperial space yacht Argosy was a tall, beautiful structure. In size it compared favorably with one of the small luxury liners that were such popular interstellar transports for the dvoryane. Inside, however, it was even more luxurious. It didn’t have to allow room for expensive boutiques, casinos and other diversions to distract paying customers from the long boredom of interstellar flight. Instead, the interior was designed to provide the maximum in comfort to the royal inhabitants. The living quarters and public rooms were large and fancy, with a well-stocked library, tridee shows and other diversions. The meals were all banquets; even though she didn’t eat at the Velikaya Knyaghinya’s table herself, Eva had to admit she’d never eaten so consistently well in all her life. It’ll really be hard to adjust to ordinary food again when this assignment’s over, she thought.

  The Argosy took off without incident, and the four-day journey to Languor proved totally uneventful. The other girls took great advantage of Eva’s presence to divest themselves of any chores they felt were beneath them. Eva didn’t mind. She was right where she needed to be. She might not be at the Velikaya Knyaghinya’s right hand—but if any trouble started, she would be right in the thick of it.

  CHAPTER 6

  Marya

  When Judah was assigned to his new post inside the palace, it turned out to be less than he’d hoped for. He was on the graveyard shift, standing in a long corridor with a door at the end. His job was to guard the door. He had to check the identification of every person who wanted to go through the door and make sure only authorized people went in. He was to check the identification of every person who came through from the other side to make sure they were who they claimed to be. Other than that, he stood his watches in the dead of night for seven hours out of every twenty-one hour Kyrby day, until he was relieved.

  If the hallway were busy, it might have relieved the monotony. But with only one or two people an hour, the task rapidly sank to the depths of tedium. He itched to see his first action, but it never came. He had to take comfort in what Ilya Uzi had once said: “Ninety-five percent of being a spy is waiting. You start hoping someone will try to kill you, just for a change of pace.”

  In his off-hours, though, he had plenty of time to wander around and explore the palace. There were areas where a junior lieutenant was not permitted, but not as many as he’d feared. The B.O.Q., of course, was where he stowed his meager gear, and the mess hall served meals to both the kavalergardy and regular militsia. There was a natural rivalry between these two groups, of course, and not entirely on a friendly level. Each considered itself superior to the other; the militsia protected the peace and the kavalergardy protected the palace.

  Bedrooms of the occupants were some of the places that were off-limits, but there were libraries, meeting rooms, game rooms and other public areas where people could gather. The palace also had extensive grounds, but Judah wasn’t particularly interested in them. They weren’t likely to give him clues to what Kuznyetz was planning.

  He talked with his fellow kavalergardy in the B.O.Q., which were separate from those of the troops. The kavalergardy knew there was something afoot; there were an increasing number of strangers coming and going from the palace at all hours., many of whom seemed to be kuptsy of different levels. But aside from making them show appropriate ID, the guards had very little interaction with them.

  It was pretty clear that the kavalergardy wouldn’t take part in whatever insurrection might occur; they would stay here and guard the palace. It was the militsia and the navy crews who would be seeing the action first-hand. If there was any scuttlebutt to be learned, it would be from them.

  Technically, of course, individual dvoryane—particularly knyazya, who ranked just below the imperial family—were forbidden to have private navies. There’d been too many rebellions by people who thought they might have a better claim to the throne. The Imperial Navy was the only military force charged with preserving order in the vast distances between the stars.

  But those distances were vast indeed, and knyazya held dominion over broad volumes of space, often with thirty or more planetary systems under their control. Pirates constantly prowled the space lanes looking for victims. Smugglers continually challenged authority to deliver contraband from one planet to another. There were legitimate reasons why knyazya needed armed patrol ships to deal with local threats the Imperial Navy couldn’t always be spared to handle.

  Technically these were “militsia” vessels, authorized to use their weapons to take on pirate ships and shields to protect themselves from attack. The weapons were strictly the ship-to-ship variety. Bombs and other space-to-ground weaponry were utterly prohibited. No one wanted a repeat of the early interplanetary wars that were fought at the very beginnings of the Empire; to this day, too many worlds bore the horrific scars of those pitched battles.

  Of course, sophisticated space-to-ground weapons were hardly necessary. A space-going vessel could just as easily lob rocks down the gravity well to wreak incalculable havoc. But civilized society operated on a wink-and-a-nod basis to ignore this simple fact of physics; “if I ignore this, you will too and it won’t exist” was a rule that had worked for centuries.

  Cargo and passenger ships also routinely traveled armed through space. This was a gray area of interstellar law, but it was generally acknowledged that no one wanted to leave these ships defenseless against pirate attacks.

  In the mess hall, Judah could see lots of people in the uniform of Kuznyetz’s space militsia. He finally commented on it to a fellow kavalergard.

  “You should’ve seen it a year ago,” the other man replied. “The place was so crowded with militsia you practically had to eat standing up.”

  “Is the knyaz reducing his troop strength, then?” Judah asked.

  “Not hardly. If anything, he’s laying on more militsia.”

  “Then where are they all?”

  “Shipping out as fast as they can,” another kavalergard said, joining the conversation. “The shipyard’s working to capacity building more and more ships. My cousin works there and she told me so.”

  “And not just on Kyrby,” chimed in yet another kavalergard. “I hear all the shipyards in the sector are working overtime.”

  “Wow! What’s he need all those ships for?”

  “Maybe there’s been a big surge in piracy,” the first guard said, shrugging his shoulders. “Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Actually, Judah’s guess was far better than his comrade’s. As Wettig had surmised, Kuznyetz was building up his fleet as fast as he could. And Judah could think of only one reasonable explanation for that: insurrection. And soon.

  But how soon, that was the big question. So far he hadn’t learned anything new, just confirmed a guess. Wettig wasn’t Commissar of ISIS any more; he needed hard evidence before he could take action—and even then he didn’t have the authority to take unilateral steps. And the Imperial Navy was scattered all across the Empire; if the other kavalergardy were any indication, even it would have trouble standing against Kuznyetz’s fleet.

  And if Kuznyetz did make a play for the throne, could he expect to win? Tsar Vasiliy had been lying in a coma for five years, an
d doctors said he could hang on for a lot longer without regaining consciousness. And if he did pass on, there was a legitimate heir already waiting—and Eva was protecting the Velikaya Knyaghinya, so he knew she’d be safe.

  There were lots of people who owed their allegiance to the throne. How could Kuznyetz ever hope to win them over? Sure, he was a knyaz—but only by marriage. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of other people who had closer blood ties to the throne, even if there were a lot of mysterious accidents as Wettig claimed—and lots of them had private fleets, too. Maybe not big enough to completely counter Kuznyetz’s—but if some of them allied together, they could present a significant challenge.

  The Empire would fracture. With different sides staking claims to the throne, all of them stronger than Kuznyetz’s, the galaxy would be politically ripped apart. Different navies would be staking out claims to different portions, whatever they could control. It would make the Knyazya Rebellion of fifty years ago seem like a tea party. You’d have to go all the way back to the establishment of the Empire itself to find a bloodier, more chaotic period. And the chaos could last for decades, perhaps much longer, before any form of stability could be restored.

  And all the deaths! At first it would be fleet against fleet in the depths of space, but as angers and animosities built up, it would be inevitable for the bombardments to begin. Millions upon millions of civilian casualties would destroy worlds and cultures.

  The Empire was far from perfect, and far from universally just—but it held people together by a common bond, a common history. Remove that, destroy the unity, and you’d have people suffering in numbers that would stagger the imagination.

  It must not be allowed to happen.

  But how to get the information Wettig needed? This was the question that haunted his thoughts as he stood each day, guarding a door in a lightly traveled, unimportant corridor. He conceived and discarded dozens of ideas on his long, boring shifts—and to make matters worse he had to stand at his post. He couldn’t even pace the hallway—and Judah Bar Nahum thought best when he paced.

  One thing was clear: the answer would not come to him standing in this empty hallway. The information doesn’t come to the spy, Ilya Uzi had said. The spy goes to the information.

  So where would the information be? Well, one certain spot would be Kuznyetz’s computer, which would undoubtedly be well-guarded. That would have to be a target of last resort, when he had to risk blowing his identity because there was no other way.

  There had to be more than one copy of the battle plans; Kuznyetz’s officers would need copies in advance so they could implement it on a moment’s notice. The full plan would probably only be known to a handful of top officers; fleet leaders and ship’s captains would have instructions for their individual roles in the plan, but those pieces might be easier to steal. If he got enough of the pieces, that might let Wettig deduce the rest.

  As he stood at his post trying to decide which commanders might make the best targets, a woman turned the corner at the far end of the hall and began walking toward him. Judah recognized her at once from his research: Marya Kuznyetza, the knyaz’s daughter. He stood up especially straight.

  She walked casually down the hall, not even looking at him. She started to walk past, but he stepped in front of her. “Excuse me, Your Ladyship, but I’m required to ask for your identification.”

  She looked at him as though seeing him for the first time, the way she’d look after inadvertently stepping in a slimy puddle. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Judah stood even straighter. “Junior Lieutenant Ivan Borodin, Your Ladyship.”

  “I see.” She studied him like a microbe under a microscope. “Junior Lieutenant Ivan Borodin, do you know who I am?”

  “No, Your Ladyship.”

  “Then why do you call me ‘Your Ladyship’? Is that how you address gornichnie and krepostnye?”

  “I call you that because you bear a striking resemblance to Her Ladyship Marya Yevghenyevna,” Judah replied. “But until you show me your identification, I can’t know for certain.”

  The woman gave him an even closer inspection. “You’d prohibit even the knyaz’s daughter from going through that door without identification?”

  “Those are the rules, Your Ladyship.”

  “Who made up such stupid rules?”

  “Presumably, your father.”

  She stood silently. So did he. The duel of wills continued for half a minute before she finally said, “Smooth, use the damn scope.”

  Judah raised the iriscope to her eyes and checked the pattern. It confirmed that she was, indeed, Marya Kuznyetza. “You may pass, Your Ladyship,” he said politely.

  “I’m so relieved,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. She started through the door, then paused at the threshold and looked back at him. This time she looked like a hungry diner choosing her dinner lobster from a tank. Judah could just see the edge of her tongue licking her lips.

  “What time do you get off duty?” she asked.

  The question startled him momentarily. “Uh, 0900 hours.”

  “Fine. Meet me at 10 at the west entrance to the gardens.” Then she turned and went on her way, with no looking back to see whether he’d heard. She walked as though the incident had been totally forgotten. Marya Kuznyetza was obviously a woman who was used to being obeyed without having to say things a second time.

  It was a good thing Judah’s job was not more demanding, because he was in a state of mild shock for a while after the encounter. He knew Lady Kuznyetza was predatory, but he hadn’t expected her to come after him—particularly not after such a hostile beginning to their meeting. But the more he thought, the better this opportunity looked. There was a good possibility she’d know more details of her father’s plans. And even if she didn’t, being on her arm might gain him access to the parts of the palace that were normally closed to him

  As Ilya Uzi had said, beautiful women had more uses besides the obvious.

  * * *

  When his shift was over, he raced to the B.O.Q., put on a clean uniform and generally made himself presentable to be seen in the company of a dvoryanka. He had no idea what the specific occasion might be—a simple stroll or a fancy dress ball (in mid-morning?)—but a basic uniform would be correct for all but the most formal events.

  At 10, as requested, he was waiting at the west entrance to the palace gardens, still curious where this latest development might take him. He stood with his back to the palace, so it wouldn’t appear as though he was specifically watching for Marya. The young lady had enough self-confidence already; no need to bolster it.

  At 1013, Her Ladyship walked up to him from behind. “Junior Lieutenant Ivan Borodin,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Your Grace, it’s delightful to see you again.”

  “Call me Marya,” she said—but not in a “let’s be friends” tone. More like “here’s a favor you can repay later.”

  “It’s certainly a beautiful morning.”

  “Is it? I usually reserve judgment on mornings. It’s only the nights before that make them bearable.”

  “Then how was last night?”

  “Boring,” she said with slight irritation. “But there are prospects for today.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to make it a better day, Your … Marya, just let me know.”

  “I may do that,” she said, just the wisp of a carnivorous smile tickling the corners of her mouth. “But for now… Have you seen Daddy’s zoo?”

  “I didn’t know he had one.”

  “You are new, aren’t you?” She gave a long, new appraisal. “It’s considered one of the greatest private zoos in the Empire. Animals from all over Scorpio sector. You must let me show it to you.” Coming from her, the “must” was a direct order. “It’s this way. Come.”

  She took his arm before he offered it and led him on a path to the right. He let her take the lead, wondering exactly how far she would take him, but having fewer doub
ts every second.

  They came to the first row of exhibits, and he looked down the path curiously. “Cages?” he asked. “I thought most modern zoos used force fields to hold the animals in.”

  “Force fields can fail in a power outage. That can get messy.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Besides,” Marya added offhandedly, “Daddy likes cages. He says force fields give the animals a false sense of freedom. He wants the animals caged up, so they know they’re prisoners and at his mercy.”

  Sounds like a wonderful chap, Judah thought. I hope I can get a front-row seat at his execution for treason.

  They continued through the zoo, with Marya keeping up a stream of narrative about different creatures. They stopped in front of the cages of the fiercest predators, and Marya seemed to take particular delight in describing what they did to their prey. Judah said little, but Marya hardly seemed to notice.

  “What kind of future do you want?” she asked abruptly as they left one particular area.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you intend to be a junior lieutenant all your life? Do you have any higher aspirations?”

  Judah shrugged. “I haven’t thought about it much. Maybe I’ll rise through the ranks. What about you? What aspirations does the daughter of a knyaz have? I suppose you’ll be knyaghinya after your parents die.”

  “I intend to be tsaritsa,” she said boastfully.

  Judah pretended not to hear her correctly. “That’s certainly aiming high,” he said with a small laugh. “But Vasiliy won’t be marrying anybody, and I don’t think you’re Natalia’s type. There’s a few too many people in line ahead of you.”

  “Who knows what may happen?” she said somberly. Then, realizing the conversation had perhaps gotten a little too intense, she dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Well, a girl can dream, can’t she? Oh, you’ve got to see the stone-cats. It’s feeding time. Come on.”