Princess of the Void
3.14. The Message

“It’s some kind of misreading. It has to be.” Sqorvik stares at the readouts beside the stellar map. “Some sort of stellar interference showing electrostat where there shouldn’t be.”

“It’s accelerating, Sqor.” His partner is dialing a number on the observatory tower’s bulky cadmium-orange radiovox. “It’s fucking steering. Don’t play anything right now. All right? I got a call to make.”

“Not even quiet?” Sqorvik looks up from his console. Yqar’s hands are shaking. Her fringe is bleached with fear; he’s never seen that before. “Help to calm you down, maybe?”

Yqar shakes her head. “It’s not a moment for calm.”

“Who are you calling?”

She pulls the receiver from the vox and holds it to her ear. “I’m calling the goddamn Highhall.”

“Do you reckon—is this it?”

“What else could it be?” Her fists bunch and release. Her eyes stare past him and his console and the tower window, out to the sky beyond them. “They’re here.”

***

A scythe-blade shaped hole in the sky, like an iridescent fingernail shaving, opens. And then the aliens are above Highstep.

It looks smaller than you’d think, the ship that brings the end of the Eqtoran United Republic. It doesn’t blot out the sun or dwarf the moon. It doesn’t hover in its immensity over the Highhall. From the ground, it’s no bigger than an ant. You could miss it easily if it weren’t pointed out to you. If the city hadn’t frozen like a prey animal in a floodlight. If Highstep’s auto traffic hadn’t ground to a halt and if the streets hadn’t flooded and if people weren’t screaming or praying or just staring in silent awe at the thing in the sky, the thing that everyone said well, surely they exist, surely we’ll see one some day, and never truly believed their words.

And now it’s here. The end of everything they knew, and the start of everything else.

“Sykora, Void Princess of the Black Pike and servant of Empress Zithra XIX, greets the Highhall Council.”

The voice rings out in the Chamber of the Two Hundred, frightening the dorsals off the two humming custodians who were in the middle of polishing the ivory altar. The theater-sized viewscreen above the obsidian altar on the other end of the room has activated. An alien, red-eyed and fanged and massively broadcast, speaks in smooth, accented Eqtorish.

“We request the presence of High Councilor Qilik-mek-Eqtor and any councilors or ecclesiasts she wishes to accompany her. The telecommunication device in her office has been repurposed to serve as a direct link to the Taiikari vessel in low orbit over your world. When she is ready to speak, she need only switch it on. This message will repeat.”

***

Grant itches his neck beneath his high, brocaded collar. He feels like a total dork in this outfit. Its onyx fasteners, its gold brocade, its sleek scarlet longcoat with the Black Pike’s sigil on the breast. And the crown. It’s just a little silver circlet but it’s hard to ignore. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, they say on Maekyon, but they never mention how tight it is.

Sykora stands next to him in similarly grandiose clothes. She doesn’t look like a dork. She looks like the warlord she is, like an age-of-sail admiral crossed with a starfleet captain. Intricate plaits lay upon the great dark waterfall of her hair. Her head is held high. Her eyes and lips are lined in deep maroon. Her tail swishes back and forth behind her; otherwise she is still as a monument.

“They’ve activated, Majesty.” Waian calls from the bridge below. “We’re ready to patch you through.”

Sykora’s hand snakes into Grant’s. Her fingers wiggle playfully against his palm. “You look stunning,” she whispers. “Big debut. You’re ready. Be bold.”

He closes his fist around her fingers in a quick squeeze. They pull away from one another as the holoprojector cameras rise from the deck around them like a high-tech henge.

“You ready, Havnai?” Grant glances at their translator, a supermodel-gaunt violet woman named Havnai.

“Uh.” She bows. “Yes, Majesties.” Her voice, when it’s not the granite-firm burr required for Eqtorish, is unexpectedly gentle and soft.

“Right.” Sykora shakes herself out one last time. She cracks her back and plants her feet. “Connect.”

The monitor displaying the great span of Eqtora blanks out for a moment. It’s replaced by a huddling group of Eqtorans in richly dyed linen, beneath fur-fringed black-and-white robes. Their jolting reaction comes, no doubt, from the holographic projections that have appeared opposite them in the room, beamed down from the distant Pike above them. Sykora waits patiently as they reconfigure themselves and divert their attentions from the screen they’d expected her to appear on.

“Councilors of the Eqtoran system,” she says.

Havnai’s stentorian voice follows along beneath Sykora’s in propulsive, stone-hewn syllables.

“My name is Sykora, Princess of the ZKZ Black Pike. Beside me is my husband and Prince, Grantyde of the Black Pike. We greet you as envoys of Zithra XIX, Empress of Taiikar.”

One Eqtoran’s robe is open more than the rest, revealing more of the gold-colored suit she wears beneath it. She steps forward. Her amphibious skin is scaly and marred by scars in places along her cheek and neck. Her fringe is pierced; golden loops hang from it, attached to intricate ivory charms. She speaks, in guttural Eqtorish.

“This councilor before you is Qilik-mek-Eqtor,” Havnai says, leaning away from her microphone and talking in an impassive undercurrent to the councilor’s grand declamation. “With me are three of my temple’s ecclesiasts and Councilor Prana Makqi. We welcome you to Eqtora.”

Prana Makqi must be the other Eqtoran in gold. She’s a petite ocean-colored keeper with deep-set, suspicious eyes.

“We welcome you, as well,” Grant says, “We’re here to open the way for you to the firmament. You’re ready to join the great concord of worlds that prosper within the Taiikari Empire. Yours is a strong people to have made it this far. So many civilizations die in their cradle, never escaping their homeworlds. As much as we have to teach you, we look forward to learning from you in turn. With the discovery of the sweep, you stand upon the threshold of a firmament more wide and wondrous than you’d ever dreamt of. One final step remains.”

“The Empire will gladly accept you into its protection, as citizen-vassals,” Sykora says. “You’ll be given our technology and our advancements. Your lifespans will triple, your shortages will vanish, and the breadth of the Empire will open to your exploration. All we require in return is your loyalty, which you will give to its rightful recipient, Empress Zithra XIX.”

Grant watches as his wife’s words land and ripple through the pond of councilors and ecclesiasts. Eyes widen or narrow. Postures shift. High Councilor Qilik-mek-Eqtor whispers to Councilor Prana, then a man by her arm, then replies.

Havnai’s eyes dart to Sykora and back as she translates. “I will interpret your words. You have come here with a battleship to force us to kneel to your Empress.”

“To our Empress, Councilor. She was yours before you knew her. She has kept your system secure and safe from any who would think to harm it. She’s allowed you to grow and flourish without fear of outlaws or invaders, free from alien interference. And you have proven yourselves ready to join the rest of her subjects in the vaunted place she has prepared for you.”

“At her feet,” Havnai says.

“By her side,” Sykora says. “Behind her great bulwark.”

“We’ll uplift your people,” Grant says. “We’ll expand their horizons and keep them safe and prosperous. And our clerics will gladly work with yours in analyzing the scriptures and discovering how your faith might join and live harmoniously with those of the larger firmament. Our ways of worship are open and permissive. There are many roads to the divine. Many faces. We—” He pauses as a burst of guttural Eqtorish rises from Councilor Prana.

“The song of the gods is self-determination. The recognition that every person is equally blessed and cursed, and in their own doing may forge their fates in the eyes of the Holy Ones. How can an Empress claim to speak for them? An Empress is—” Havnai halts, her eyes dilating. “Majesty—”

“Continue.” Sykora is terse and clipped.

“An Empress is an abomination,” Havnai says.

Sykora takes a moment for a deep inhale and exhale. She clears her throat. “Grantyde?”

“Join with us now,” Grant says, “under your own power, and you will have the freedom to forge yourselves in whatever shape you want. Your government has to recognize the ultimate authority of the Empress. But provided you open your borders to the Taiikari and share your wealth and resources, as we share ours with you, it may remain in place. And as the friendship and trust grow between us, so will your autonomy and the rewards you reap from your new Empire.”

Qilik folds her arms. “You mean to take our freedom, then, Prince,” Havnai reports.

“No.” Sykora steps forward. “That is what I will do, if you deny our offer and refuse our friendship. If I must assimilate your civilization by force, I will take you not as a vassal state, but as an indentured system.”

“What’s the difference, when we’re enslaved either way?”

“There is a great and terrible difference,” Sykora says. “You will have a brief invasion and many cycles of sorrow and mourning to understand the difference, and contemplate it. And then you, or your children and survivors, will realize your mistake and make sufficient recompense to scrub the stain of disloyalty, and become the truehearted, proud Imperial citizens you were always meant to be.”

Grant inches aside to give her more room. His time in the spotlight, he reckons with no small relief, is finished.

“A kilocycle from now,” Sykora says, “you will be citizens of the Empire amid its golden age. You will have journeyed further than you could ever imagine. You will have witnessed wonders. You will be free of disease and famine. You will know the mercy and protection of the Empress’s invincible bulwark. Your daughter, Wyqen—yes, councilor, I know about Wyqen—will have grown up as an Imperial subject, will have a child of her own, a child who will be born a citizen of the Empire. A proud citizen.”

Qilik has begun a burst of infuriated reproof. Sykora gazes with icewall patience. “Tell her I am not finished speaking.”

Havnai leans into the microphone, her voice lower-register and firm.

“Your art will hang in Taiikari halls,” Sykora continues. “Your language will be taught in Taiikari academies. Your ecclesiasts will sing your hymns in the halls of the Omnidivine, alongside the priests of scores of civilizations. And this hatred you feel today—the rage that shakes you when you look at me—it will be gone from your descendents, gone as though it was never there. Cured, like the pernicious little disease it is.”

Her hands behind her back are fidgeting, Grant sees. Her thumb turns a ring on her index. The camera doesn’t catch it.

“Your grandchild will come home from school, having saluted the picture of the Empress that hangs in their classroom. Having learned with Taiikari children, having befriended Taiikari children. Maybe even having held hands with one. And you, at an age you never thought it possible, will have the strength to pick them up and lift them into your lap. And they will look up at you and ask you.” Sykora leans forward. “Grandmother, is it true we once imagined ourselves at war with the rest of the Empire?”

She allows Havnai’s translation time to catch up.

“There is no war, madame councilor. There is no rebellion, there is no resistance. There is one outcome. The only choice is how you arrive there: through joyful union, or through unspeakable calamity heretofore unknown to your civilization. Bring what I have told you to your council. Treat this decision with the gravity it deserves. It’s the turning point of your entire species.”

The keeper by Qilik’s teeth are bared. Her fringe ripples as she spits out a string of syllables like they’re burning coals.

Havnai’s ears twitch. “The councilor says—”

Sykora holds up a hand. “I don’t need to know what the councilor says in the passion of this moment, Citizen Havnai. And I suspect if I did, she’d look back on it later with heart-shaking regret.” She smiles at the venomous glare. “So let’s allow her time to think, and to choose her words.”

The Eqtorans are frantically murmuring among themselves, their whispers full of the grit that comes with the urge to raise your voice.

One of them is humming, Grant realizes. Humming some tune under their argument. A prayer, maybe.

Hyax steps forward to the edge of the circle of cameras. “Will we provide the ultimatum now, Majesty?”

“Not yet,” Sykora says. “Citizen Havnai.”

Their translator bows. “Majesty.”

“Inform the councilors that this telecom is now an open channel. They might want to move it out of the High Councilor’s office. I will expect their acquiescence by tomorrow morning at 0900, and we can begin to negotiate their integration with the Empire. If we’re refused…” She nods to Hyax. “The ultimatum.”

Havnai’s bold-type translation snares the fractious attention of the Eqtorans. Qilik steps forward to speak.

Sykora turns from the screen. The crossed pikes on her back flash, like the forbidding gesture of storybook throne guards. “Terminate the call.” She strides from the circle. The main screen fuzzes and the view is replaced by the glacier-blue planetary span of Eqtora once again. “Well done, Citizen Havnai.”

Havnai blushes, and goes back to her breathy Taiikari voice. “I only hope I was able to broadcast your intent as you wished it.”

Sykora tilts her head. “I do believe they got the message. You may return to the listening post. My marines will escort you.”

“That went about as well as we’d presumed,” Vora says, as the translator bows from the command deck.

Sykora huffs a humorless laugh. “Let’s give them a chance. I don’t imagine they’ll accept.” Her tail wraps around Grant’s leg and gives it a pulsing squeeze. “But miracles happen.”

She releases her hold on her husband and steps to the command deck’s balustrade. “At ease, bridge,” she calls. “You’ve all done well. Take a half day and rest. We’re about to have an interesting tenday.”

A chorus of Yes, Majesty and a field of bows.

“Take us up, Waian.” Sykora nods to her Chief Engineer. “Hyax—are you ready to present our timeline?”

Hyax’s eyes beam grim anticipation through her mask of scars. “Yes, Majesty.”

The command deck rumbles as it lifts from the bridge. Its shadow elongates, sharpening like a spearhead pointed at the planet below.

Grant crouches to Sykora’s ear. “Excellent villainous monologue, babe.”

Sykora smirks. “A little harsh, but I believe I made my point. They’ll answer us with a no or an orbital bombardment, and they’ll see how quickly we shrug both off.”

“Do you truly believe all that? What you said about the future?”

“I do.” She gazes at the Eqtoran horizon off the Pike’s massive prow. Her voice drops to a whisper. “I want this one to be like the Kovikan one. I want to have dinner one day with a happy Eqtoran Baron and his Taiikari wife and their adorable re-encoded children. I want my Brigadier to get screwed out of her mind by a big sexy fish woman. When we have babies I want them to grow up with Eqtoran friends, a favorite Eqtoran meal. I want them to be mystified at the idea of a Black Pike sector without its Eqtoran citizens. And if that means scaring the ovipositor off a nattering noble, I’ll do it.”

“Councilor.”

She snorts. “Same difference.”

“What’s this timeline Hyax is about to present?”

Sykora’s lips press thinly together before she speaks. “This timeline,” she says, “is what the Taiikari do to worlds that tell us no.”

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