Princess of the Void

“All right, gals.” Wenzai’s voice emerges from the command deck's surround sound. She’s doing that weird metal-hand connection thing she does, her prosthetic shoved into her console to the wrist to better control the Pike's subsystems; her fleshy body’s mouth doesn’t move. “Meet the Eqtorans.”

The holoprojector on the command deck’s table flares to light.

In the flickering holofield, a humanoid shape forms from the base up. A woman, Grant realizes, sleek and muscular. Or shaped like a woman, at least, in a way that brings a bit of heat to his face. The Eqtoran has a thick blubbery tail and a blunt snout like a shark’s. A frilly crest rises from her head like a punk’s mohawk. Even discounting it, she’s pushing six-and-a-half feet.

“Is that life size?” Vora asks, eyes widening.

“Yep,” Waian says. A male and female Taiikari shape in wireframe appear in neutral stances. About three feet and five feet tall, respectively. The heights that Grant has gotten used to, more or less (although outside the Pike he still needs to watch his head on door frames).

“Oop.” Waian’s mechanical hand buzzes. “Let me put up the Grantyde size comparison, too.” A wireframe human appears at the end of the lineup. His head barely clears the Eqtoran’s shoulder.

Grant’s brow furrows. “You gals programmed a size comparison for me?”

“Sure.” Waian tugs her hand from her console and reanimates. “Had it for a bit, actually.” She jerks her metal thumb down to the floor, where a glass-bottom hexagon gives them a view of the bridge. “The ladies are all curious how far up they measure. More than a few gents, too.”

“Chief Engineer.” Sykora’s face twists. “Let’s not let the crew stand next to the Grantyde size comparison any more.”

Waian chuckles. “Why not?”

“Because the Void Princess said so.” Sykora crosses her arms.

Grant examines the silhouettes. “Hellfire,” he says. It’s a very satisfying word to say in Taiikari; lots of plosives. “I was getting used to being the tallest guy in the room.”

“Yes.” Hyax cranes her neck. “They are…quite large. That’s for sure.” The Brigadier looks intrigued as she stares at the Eqtoran female facsimile. “Take me to the system map, Waian.”

“Aye.” Waian plugs back into the display. The size comparison menagerie fades out and is replaced by a solar system. Seven planets orbiting an orange dwarf. The fourth planet out flashes gold. “Here’s the Paas system. And that there’s Eqtora.”

“The homeworld of a theocratic republic,” Hyax says. “Divided into two hundred sections called temples, each of which elects a quarter-score ecclesiasts and one councillor, or so our translators have called them. That council of two hundred, as far as we can tell, governs unchallenged, and has for roughly five kilocycles now. It’s under their guiding hand that the Eqtorans achieved homeworld unification and struck out across their solar system.”

Lines arc from Eqtora and populate its neighboring worlds.

“A pre-light religious schism of some kind slowed them down,” Hyax continues. “Our monitor equipment wasn’t good enough yet to tell us exactly how that went. But after a decacycle of conflict, they’ve been enjoying a lengthy period of stability, and working toward the sweep. Which they’ve finally managed. First in secret and now in limited public displays.”

“That’s Harok and Taiqan. Settled pre-sweep.” Vora points to the golden planets that neighbor Eqtora itself. “Each has a population in the low millions. They’re terraforming, but their methods are rather rudimentary and their baking biospheres will take a kilocycle to finish, at least. The rest of the worlds in the solar system have limited colonies. Mostly resource extraction and science outposts.”

Sykora paces through the holographic worlds. Their amber grids shine across her face and her svelte shoulders. She's still in her workout clothes, her slouchy joggers and tank top. But there's something in her stride, her bearing, that makes her royalty unmistakeable.

“What do you think, Majesty?” Vora says. “It’s between us and Glory Banner, so if we don’t take it, Princess Narika will. And its tranche comes with a good number of additional systems. It’d be a tantalizing parcel for further exploration.”

“What I think,” Sykora says, “is that we’ll let Glory Banner have it.”

Vora blinks. “We will?”

Sykora folds her hands behind her back. “Narika can handle this one. Right of first contact and ownership of the surrounding territory goes to Glory Banner. I’m content to make this her problem.”

Waian frowns as she and Hyax exchange a glance. “You sure about that, Majesty? Do you want some time to think about it?”

“No,” Sykora says. “No, I’m decided. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate your quick action. But you may return to your posts. Vora, Hyax, I’ll see you at nineteen hundred for our tributary review.”

She turns on her heel. Her tail hooks gently around Grant’s wrist.

He follows her uncertainly off the command deck.

***

Evening comes, borne on the back of the many meetings and debriefs and working groups that take up most of Sykora’s day. Grant’s taken to attending most of these; he wants to learn what he can about the Black Pike, and he enjoys touching his wife, and he’s given plenty of opportunities to do both.

He goes with her to the munitions deck for a demonstration of their gunnery team’s proposed deterrence load-out and watches her confer with her engineers on the formations that might minimize ambient overheat. He stands by her side in the conference room to hear a blistering disagreement between the executives of the sector’s two foremost cereal brands. He follows her to a pastel-colored kindergarten in the hab level, where she patiently answers questions from a gobsmacked class of multicolored preschoolers about what their parents do aboard her warship.

He rubs her back in zero-G as the lift takes them back to the crown of the vessel. “Big day,” he says.

She sighs under his kneading touch. “They’re all big. At least I took the biggest problem off my plate.”

They return to their silk-hung cabin and get as cozy as possible. For Grant, that means a set of silk drawstring PJs. For Sykora, that means one of the t-shirts that Grant had in his go-bag the night she abducted him. A Jeff Rosenstock tour shirt with a list of cities on it that Grant will never see again. It fits his tiny wife like a calf length dress. She has never, to Grant’s recollection, laundered it.

Grant pulls his guitar out from its alcove in the trophy room and Sykora plops on the floor in the middle of a sea of fabric patterns. These she carefully lays across bolts of cloth, cutting and stitching with the help of a bulky handheld tool that reminds Grant of a Nintendo super scope.

He watches her work while he plays. It’s the first Taiikari song he’s ever tried to learn, an intricately laid-out tune by a band called Tremorlocc. The music’s an interesting combination of foot-stomper and operatic. Dark and propulsive. Not exactly major, not exactly minor. Dorian, maybe? He doesn’t know his modes well enough to recognize them without the internet. He likes it. Judging by his wife’s tail tapping rhythmically on the floor as she crawls around working on her project, she does too.

He simplifies the verse into blocky chords so he can talk and play at the same time. “What are you making?”

“I am making my husband a tunic,” she says.

“What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion is I like my husband’s face when I give him things.” She traces a stitch across two panels. “And I like his tummy in tight clothes.”

He grins. She looks over her shoulder and grins back. Her spine arches. Her tail lifts; the hem of her stolen shirt tents on it and rises to show off the lower curve of her butt. “Hi, Grant,” she says.

“Hi, Batty,” he says, and puts his guitar aside.

They take an energetic break from their hobbies, which takes them from the floor to the nearby table to lying in one another’s arms in the bed. Grant fumbles around with the cabin’s remote control until he figures out how to put on the actual song he’s been chopping away at.

Sykora takes up her preferred position as the little spoon. “I like your version better, you know.”

“It’s so intricate.” He drapes his arm across her curled-up body. “I’m having trouble with the chorus.”

“There are four musicians playing that chorus, dove,” Sykora says. “You and that guitar are doing their work by yourself.”

“Well, that’s not anything special in me. Just the difference between monophonic and polyphonic instruments.”

“I am taking it on faith,” she says, “that the translator is working fine. And I just don’t know what those words mean.”

She purrs contentedly as his palm rests on her heart. He feels its triple-part beat. His wife has relaxed, he decides. He can bring this up. “Do you want to talk about it, baby?”

Her ear flickers. “Talk about what? How you fucked my patterns up?” She glances out at the floor, where the carefully laid fabrics have been tossed and crumpled. “I can reprint the torn bit, dove. Don’t fret. I was only acting mad so you’d shut me up.”

He laughs softly, but they both know she’s being evasive. “Not that.”

She sighs. “The Eqtora thing.”

“If it’s just a casual decision, or if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. But I’m here if you do.”

“I appreciate your concern, Grantyde. But I really am all right.” Sykora turns over so they’re face to face. “Plenty of things calling for my attention besides these new aliens. Much to be done.”

“Sure. But you hate Narika.”

“I do.”

“So why are you willing to give this thing up to her?”

Sykora chews her lip. “It’s a republic, Grant. You lived in a republic, yes?”

“I did. I mean…” Grant hesitates. “Depending on who you asked. It had its issues. But we voted.”

“So does Eqtora,” Sykora says. “And I’d be taking it apart in front of you, dove. Putting it back together as a vassal for my Empress. Without offering an alternative.”

The hairs on Grant’s neck tingle. “Not just a first contact, then. A conquest.”

“Yes. We’d arrive, and welcome them to the wider firmament, and introduce them to their brand new Princess and their brand new Empress. And if—when—they have a problem with that…” Her shrug does lovely things to her chest. “We’d remove the problem.”

Her tail tuft draws figure eights on his thigh.

“And the worst part,” she says, “is that I’ll think it’s the right thing to do. I think becoming subjects of the Empress is what’s best for their civilization. I think her dominance and our obedience are virtues. And you don’t. I will not make you take part in it. Not yet, anyway.”

He absentmindedly strokes her head and looks at his reflection in her wide scarlet eyes.

“I am a conqueror,” she says. “And a villainess, I suppose, by the Maekyonite definition. I love you, but that’s who I am. We need more time to find the places we can meet between us to stay happy. And you’re owed a longer period to get used to the chilly waters of Imperial control, step-by-step. This would be a cannonball.”

“I’d hate to think of you passing this up because of me, baby.” He tucks her unruly hair behind her pointy ear. “You looked excited at Vora’s.”

“It’s not just because of you, dove. I swear. First contacts often end up more trouble than they’re worth. The Kovikans were the last major uplift, and it only took them days to welcome us with open arms. Shaky, fearful open arms. But open nonetheless. And even in that case, there was so much friction it nearly sank the Void Princess who did it.”

She tips him gently onto his back and lays her chin on his chest.

“These people? The Eqtorans? I’m presuming they would be doubly zealous—for their representative government and for their deities. It bears all the hallmarks of a long, painful integration.” She shakes her head. The pivoting point of her chin kneads his pec. “I’m all right leaving this to Narika. Really, I am. Your first First Contact can be some kind of autocracy. Plenty of those to go around. We can have a blast knocking over some solar dictator’s sandcastle.”

“All right. If you’re sure.”

“I’m quite sure. And besides.” Her tone sweetens. “It’s about time we took a little vacation. A—what did you call it?” She bounces her brows. “Honey Moon, right?”

“Correct.”

She sighs happily as he scratches her scalp. “Maekyonites have such a fixation on honey. I should ask Kymai to start slathering it on everything.”

“Well. If we’re talking about slathering.” Grant puts his hands under Sykora’s armpits and pulls her the rest of the way onto him. “There’s a few things I’d enjoy licking honey off.”

“Grant.” She giggles and squirms as his palms cup her butt. “We’d get so sticky.”

“We always get sticky.”

Her tail wags little question mark shapes in the air. “Maybe I can—”

The same insistent tri-tone that rang in Vora’s cabin now sounds again, muting the music Grant was playing.

“Argh. One moment.” Sykora rolls off of her husband. “Audio only. Answer.”

“Majesty.” Vora’s voice, treble with anxiety, fills the cabin. “We were about to send word to Glory Banner that you recuse yourself from the Eqtora situation, but, uh—a problem has come up.”

“What kind of problem?” Sykora’s tail straightens out across the bedspread.

“Is the Prince Consort in residence?”

His wife glances back at him. “Of course he is.”

“Would you be all right taking this call… privately?”

“No,” Sykora says. “Proceed.”

Vora’s sigh crackles the connection. “Okay. We’ve been reviewing the boundaries of the Eqtora tranche. And, uh—Maekyon is within it.”

Sykora’s ears flatten. “What?”

“Outer edge of the parcel.” That’s Hyax’s gruff voice. “Vora checked and re-checked. Whoever gets Eqtora gets Maekyon. If you leave this first contact to the Glory Banner, then the Prince Consort’s entire species will be the subjects of Void Princess Narika.”