War Child E-Book

Scott Michael Decker

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Born in war. Yearning for revenge. Trained to kill.

After a near-term princess is betrayed in the battle to conquer the galactic core, her unborn daughter Serena is taken from her body, raised in a foreign empire, and trained to be a lethal weapon.

Twenty years later, attempts are made on Serena's life, but she will defy anyone who would use her toward their own ends.

Chased across the galaxy, she begins a deadly mission against her oppressors. But can she discover who she really is?

Leseprobe

War Child

Galactic Adventures Book 4

Scott Michael Decker

Copyright (C) 2014 Scott Michael Decker

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/

Typed by Joey Strainer

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

U.S. Copyright application #1-1623438411

Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage …

—Richard Lovelace, c1642

Prologue

The galactic core, the ultimate prize.

Princess Mariko Mitsubi stood on the bridge of the battlecruiser and Armada flagship Yamato, gazing upon the galactic core through thousands of multisensory receptors funneled into her neuralink.

Soon, my child, Mariko said to the near-term fetus inside her, soon, the galactic core shall be yours!

No more wars, no more retreats.

An end to constant bickering between Empires, to the tides of conquering and capitulating, to treacherous dealings in stealth and poison, to whole worlds denuded to stamp out rebellious populations, their skies littered with the orbital detritus of defeated navies, thousands of years of civilization ending abruptly in sudden annihilation.

An end to two centuries of constant war.

I will bring war to an end, my child, Mariko told her unborn, her first-born daughter, her heir. Third in line for the Mitsubi Throne.

Mariko stood to inherit nearly a quarter of the Milky Way, eldest daughter of Fumiko Mitsubi, the Matriarch of the Mitsubi clan and Empress to their domains. The Mitsubi Empire ballooned across the Delta Quadrant, straddling most of the Norman Arm, the lower Scutum-Crux Arm, and the mid Carina-Sagittarius Arm, the largest Empire in the Milky Way.

But we'll always be vulnerable to the Empire that captures the galactic core, unless we capture it ourselves.

Mariko signaled through her neuralink to the armada behind her. Above, below, port and starboard, phalanxes of fighters, destroyers, and battleships edged forward until they came abreast her ship's position.

Below them, the Iberia outpost Tarifa lay quiescent at the rim, the blazing core nearly swallowing the puny base in light. Berthed at Tarifa was the Fourth Fleet of the Iberia Navy. After that, just two more outposts to conquer before the Mitsubi juggernaut swept away all resistance and dominated the galactic core, the ultimate prize.

They and their rivals had fought each other over this and similar installations since before history began. The Mitsubis, an ancient peoples, had pursued the claim for the galactic throne numerous times, proclaiming for centuries the mandate of heaven to rule the reachable universe, as they had since their origins on old Earth, over three thousand years before, on a sword-shaped set of islands called Japan. Like the islands, the sword-shaped galactic arm had become too small for their ambitions.

She who controls the core, Mariko thought, controls the galaxy!

Tarifa appeared incognizant that it lay naked to evisceration, the talons of the Mitsubi Armada poised to rake it apart. Monitored communications from the base evinced no alarm, and nearby bases, although parsecs away, showed no evidence of scrambling their defenses.

On the bridge, Mariko ordered her fighters forward, two lines each leaving the Armada branches and hurtling from four different directions at Tarifa, followed by smaller contingents of destroyers, her battleship held at bay for now.

If we destroy the Fourth Fleet and take Tarifa, then the core is nearly ours, Mariko thought, the display a forty-five degree surround in all directions, the neuralink brightening the area where she brought her attention. Sitting at battlestations around the arc behind her, her lieutenants held tactical links with their squadrons in the field, taking their orders from her through the neuralink.

Fighters converged on Tarifa, and the first pinpricks of light flared on its surface, eight squadrons strafing the base.

Mariko launched the battleships, leaving a reserve to defend the flagship Yamato.

Activity spiked on the monitored Iberian comchannels, fighters trying to scramble and base-mounted turrets coming to life. Eight lines of fighters swung back to strafe again, plums of smoke now billowing from multiple points. The destroyers turned parallel in unison and launched a barrage of broadsides just after the fighters cleared a second strafing run, and a half-dozen Iberian ships able to launch were pummeled to pieces.

“Destroyer launch from Tarifa!” called a lookout over the neuralink.

At her command, a battleship hurtled after it, the remaining five battleships continuing to hover outside the destroyer-held perimeter. The pursuing battleship launched multiple missiles en route, staged alternately with decoy confetti and intercept-avoidance devices.

A lone fighter dove for the base command compound and five emplacements blew it out of the sky, revealing their locations, and the next strafing run took out those emplacements while a destroyer followed them in and obliterated the compound in its first pass.

A cheer rose at its destruction, the happy neuralink chatter heartening Mariko.

The sound of victory, my child, Mariko said in her mind, even though no neuralink connected her with her fetus, which some mothers chose to install. Knowing they weren't victorious yet, Mariko brought the fighters in for another strafing, and launched another destroyer barrage.

The surface of the asteroid looked like a torch, roiling in smoke and flame, the image before Mariko a thrill to see.

“What in Izanami's name are you doing?” The face of her mother the Empress filled the neural viewer.

Mariko's heart sank. “Buddha curse you, Mother, not now!” And she shoved with all her mental might to block out her mother's neural connection.

But the neuralink between mother and daughter could not easily be put asunder. “Disobedient child, I told you not to attack now, not with my grandchild in your belly!”

“How often must I say it? That's the time it's least expected. Now get out of my mind so I can finish these Iberian scum! Out!”

And to Mariko's surprise, the Empress Fumiko Mitsubi withdrew.

“Battleship down!”

Where the battleship had been was a fiery inferno.

Mariko found the Iberian destroyer that had bested the battleship, a midget-giant match-up it should never have won. It was now under full thrust right at the flagship Yamato, right at her.

Two battleships moved to intervene.

They dropped off the neuralink grid, their chatter silenced, their vid feeds dead.

“Com, what's happening?” she shouted.

“Signals disrupted, your Highness.”

Mariko wished they wouldn't call her that. “Why, blast it?!”

“I don't know, your Highness.”

“Analyze!”

The two battleships on screen erupted in flames, and the Iberian destroyer slid between them, its broadsides ripping chasms into their sides, the two battleships looking like helpless beached whales, the shark in between tearing them to pieces.

She committed her three remaining battleships and brought the destroyers to bear on the enemy ship. “Battlestations!” and klaxons sounded throughout the flagship, as did red alert signs, the alert superimposed on onto retinas. Mariko ordered the fighters into formation and launched her fighters into the fray.

The attacking fighters dropped off the neuralink grid, the Iberian destroyer beating back the fighter wave.

“Your Highness,” the First Mate Hideo Kobaya said, “Advise retreat.”

“Full reverse!” she shouted, and the flagship dropped backward while destroyers and battleships converged on the seemingly untouched enemy ship.

Mariko leaned against the acceleration, anxiety beginning to gnaw at her. A hundred and sixty fighters erupted in flames—minus a few who had already fallen. Mariko stared at the slaughter, aghast.

“Belay there!” she shouted. “All ships, cover retreat!”

Her navy as one changed course to converge instead on the flagship's path of retreat but, one by one, began to drop off the neuralink grid.

Another battleship, the fifth, erupted into a fireball, leaving one battleship and a handful of destroyers between the Iberian ship and the flagship Yamato.

Their retreat picked up speed. How are they doing that? Mariko wondered, sweat stinging her eyes.

“Your highness, they have some sort of—”

And the neuralink in her head went silent.

“—disruptor,” her science officer said, standing across the bridge over a display. Doctor Setsu Uruga looked at her. “And they've just disrupted our neuralink.”

Feeling suddenly vulnerable at having been reduced to tactile, visual, and auditory signals, Mariko yanked the plug from her head with a pop. “Everyone, pull out immediately. We'll run the ship manually.”

“Forgive me, highness, but how?”

“Electronic backup systems online. You've all trained to run the Yamato without a neuralink, so let's get to it, people!”

The forward displays showed a gaining destroyer with the flaming hulls of her armada in its wake.

“We're being hailed, Highness!”

Our flagship is a helpless babe without the armada that it commands, Mariko thought. Why haven't they destroyed us too? “On screen,” she said.

A face snapped into view. Sub-Commander Xavier Balleros smiled. “Surrender, your Majesty, or be destroyed.”

“Go suck on your Christian Devil's hind penis!”

“Now, now, your Majesty, mind your language. Such filth will surely cause you to be reborn as one such penis, now, won't it?”

“What do you want, Commander, eh? You're not going to blast us out of the sky no matter what I call you, because you'd have done so already. So what do you want, ball-less Balleros?”

The bridge crew behind Mariko chuckled.

A vein rippled on the Commander's forehead. “You bitch! I'll … Insult me if you must. Your crew—all that's left of your armada—you can still save your crew.”

“I'd gladly give my life that they might live, but their loyalty is to the Empress Fumiko. Even if I were to order it, they'd disobey me. They'll protect her daughter's life with theirs, whatever my orders.”

Sub-Commander Balleros threw his head back and laughed. “Your conceit exceeds your intelligence, always a suicidal combination. No, your Majesty, it isn't you I want.” He smiled to someone off the screen.

The Yamato slewed wildly, an explosion shaking her, alarms erupting, lights flickering. Mariko barely kept herself from falling. The vid skewed to one side, twisting the image.

Rhythmic pounding to aft alerted her to a barrage, repeated a moment later to starboard.

“You see, your Majesty,” Balleros said, “we don't need you alive to claim the prize we seek.”

She placed both her hands under her enlarged belly. “Never, Pendejo!”

“They're boarding us, Highness!”

The pounding continued around the bow.

Her first mate grabbed her. “This way, Highness!” He pulled her toward the lifepods.

“No!” Mariko yanked her arm from his grasp and pulled her phasegun from its holster. She shook her fist at Balleros. “You'll never capture me, Cabrón!” And she aimed the phasegun at her belly.

Stars exploded across her vision like the core across her neuralink. The floor twisted under her and slammed into the side of her head. Bewildered, she wondered why First Mate Kobaya hadn't fallen and why the butt of the phasegun in his hand was bloody.

When he aimed it at her head, Princess Mariko Mitsubi understood finally that the enemy hadn't possessed a disrupter to throw her ships off the neuralink. Her first mate Hideo Kobaya had betrayed her.

He fired, killing her.

Part I

Chapter 1

“Look at her,” Foreign Minister Xavier Balleros said.

Below, the young woman parried on the practice floor. Her ease made her two opponents look like sloths, as she deftly turned aside blade after blade without apparent effort or even sometimes motion.

“She'll be perfect, Amigo. She has the balance of a ballet dancer and the spirit of a tiger. You're to be congratulated. Where is she now in her studies?” Balleros asked the other, not taking his eyes off her. They stood in the observation booth, fifty feet above the arena, the seats empty but for others about to practice and the occasional vicarious observer. Of the latter, Balleros noted a greater number than might be expected at a university fencing practice.

“She graduates in six months from the aerospace engineering—”

“What about government? I told you to have her in government. She must be able to navigate the highest reaches of the Iberian Empire.”

“Of course, Lord Minister. She completed those studies two years ago. When she finished her political science and interstellar relations degrees, she begged her Padre to enroll in engineering, swore she'd complete it before her twenty-first birthday.”

“And?”

“She finishes in two months, Lord, summa cum laude. She was disappointed she couldn't attend the diplomatic mission to the Mitsubi Capitol, Lord—a rare opportunity for an intern of any caliber. The Lady Ambassador Xochitl Olin personally sent a com to express her disappointment that her protégé wasn't able to attend.”

Balleros smiled. “Ambassador Olin herself, eh? Ambitious, isn't she?” he nodded to indicate the supple, athletic woman dancing between two opponents below.

“Beyond all expectation. The engineering program is a six-year course of study and—”

“Why are all those people here?” Balleros wasn't interested in her prodigious academic ability.

“I wondered about that, Lord, and from what I can tell, they only gather when she's here to practice.”

The lithe form on the floor back-flipped from between a two-pronged attack, stepped in to one opponent's reach and thumped the back of the rapier hand, which emptied itself, then spun through the other opponent's guard with what looked like a pirouette and disarmed the other opponent similarly.

A round of applause erupted from the observers. She bowed to them, then to her opponents, and headed for the locker room.

“Does Minister Balleros wish to speak with her?”

He shook his head, seeing how his plans might be accelerated. “No, not necessary. Thank you, my friend. It's enthralling to see, truly impressive. I'm not sure the value of the engineering but it'll be useful at some point, I'm sure. Well done. I'll contact you soon.”

And Balleros strode from the observation deck and out of the arena.

* * *

“I can't believe Mother is still grieving that fool sister of ours,” Keiko Mitsubi said.

Yoshi Mitsubi looked around the room to see if anyone had overheard. The sisters were in an anteroom off the main audience hall, dressed in ceremonial silks spun from strands of Camelopardalis-spider silk, the strongest to be found, the fabric light, airy, and impenetrable.

Awaiting the arrival of the Nahuatl Empire Ambassador, Xochitl Olin.

“Hush, younger sister,” Yoshi said, “or Buddha may bring similar grief to you!” Seeing no one in earshot, Yoshi smiled placidly at Keiko, third of three daughters to Empress Fumiko. “No mother should endure seeing her daughter die before her, never mind that it was twenty years ago.” And never mind, Yoshi was thinking, that I'm Regent Empress because of it, and I'll order you to bite your tongue if I have to because I'm quite tired of your impertinence and backbiting, so unbecoming of a princess and the dutiful daughter you should be.

“But she should have—”

“I said hush, and if you won't mind me, your elder sister and Regent, perhaps a three-month vacation on an asteroid might help.” Yoshi kept her voice low and her stare fixed upon her sister even though they both knew it an empty threat, for their mother remained so stricken with grief that she would immediately rescind any such order, saying she couldn't bear to have either of her two remaining daughters away from her for a single moment. She makes me Regent, Yoshi was thinking, and then questions or countermands my every decision. Errrgh! I must have given someone conniption fits in my last life to have been born into such misery as this!

“Forgive me, Sister,” Keiko said, bowing slightly. “I meant not to be so vexatious.”

“Eh? What?” Yoshi hated it when she didn't understand what others were saying.

“Bothersome.”

“I knew what you meant,” Yoshi said, knowing she didn't. “Twenty years ago, it was. She'd be twenty years old, that girl, if she'd lived.”

The two sisters changed a guilty glance, both sad that their sister had died but glad it had been before she'd given birth. Had the near-term fetus survived, they both knew, the child would now be Regent, instead of Yoshi.

Keiko frowned. “Fool sister.”

Yoshi didn't remonstrate her, secretly agreeing.

“Your Highnesses,” the headservant said, clearing her throat and glancing toward the main audience hall to indicate that the Ambassador was now arriving.

“She can wait a little longer. How do you say her name again?”

“Show cheet, Highness.”

Yoshi repeated it. “Thank you.”

The servant retreated.

“You didn't say it right.”

“Of course I did.”

Keiko sighed and looked away. “She's here to negotiate the secession of the outer Carina-Sagittarius Arm to the Nahuatl Empire.”

“I know why she's here!”

Keiko looked unperturbed. “Perhaps 'negotiate' isn't the right word.”

“Demand might be more accurate,” Yoshi snarled.

“My thought as well.” Keiko's voice was light as a flower.

Flustered, Yoshi didn't know how to handle her sister when she became so nonchalant. As though my responses are unimportant! “Too many demands by these supposed allies. How dare they throw their lot with the Nahuatl.”

“Many have done so in the last twenty years.”

Yoshi shot Keiko a glance. Their Empire, once reaching to edges of the Delta Quadrant, had been whittled away, first one coalition falling apart, another alliance going sour, a treaty getting rescinded, little pieces at the edges coming unglued, until their Empire was less than half its size than when their sister died. The nibbling away at the edges of the Mitsubi Empire had become gobbling by the mouthful, this most recent “negotiation” likely to lose them nearly a quarter-length of that spiral arm. The Mitsubi holdings were shrinking nearly to the shape of that ancient sword-like country they had occupied on Earth so long ago.

“No less rebellious for others having done so. Let's dismiss this bitch and subjugate their territory with an invasion that will silence them and all else who would oppose us, forever!”

Keiko raised an eyebrow at her. “Venom I've not heard in years,” the younger sister said. “Who would lead them, Elder Sister?”

Yoshi frowned. “Indeed.” They both knew neither of them was capable. And they wouldn't trust anyone else for fear of rebellion should they demand that the Empire go to war.

* * *

Riyo Takagi slipped away from the anteroom doorway before anyone saw him, incensed that these bickering sisters were too incompetent to keep the Empire from coming apart.

As General to the Supreme Council, a small body of high-ranking politicians and officers who answered only to the Empress, General Takagi was responsible for the recruitment, training, and readiness of the armies. While the princesses and Empress all three maintained large armies, which Takagi commanded, the General also managed the troops allocated to the Empire by their allied and subject states, a conglomeration of over two hundred constellations and fiefdoms held in the Mitsubi federation either by blood relation, treaty, coalition, fealty, or downright threat of retaliation.

General Riyo Takagi only commanded the army, however. To get his troops deployed, he needed the Navy, and Admiral Nobu Nagano, to get them there. The two men disliked each other intensely. Each was an important daimyo in his own right. Each was bedecked with honors bestowed for their valor in combat. Each was renowned for his respective artistry. And each was fanatically opposed to the other.

If that fool first mate Hideo Kobaya my second cousin through my mother's marriage to his uncle hadn't flubbed the kidnapping of Princess Mariko, we'd have seized power from these Mitsu-bitches and retained control of the Norman Arm and by now would have claimed at least one end of the galactic core!

General Takagi strode the plush corridor carpet toward the Supreme Council chambers, fuming at the travesty about to transpire in the audience hall when the incompetent sisters caved to the demands of the Nahuatl and ceded the outer Carina Arm to their Gamma-Quadrant aggressors. Furious, General Takagi wondered if it were time to launch insurrection and take the Mitsubi Empire by force.

Seeded amongst the ancient clans throughout the Delta Quadrant, secret cells planted deep across the years stood poised to capture key installations, both military and civilian. These cells had been readied to strike twenty years ago when his second cousin First Mate Kobaya had attempted to kidnap Princess Mariko. General Takagi had had to issue emergency stand down orders to these cells lest they spontaneously strike after the kidnapping had failed. He had risked exposing his hand by issuing those orders, despite his having used secure subspace comchannels, since the widespread communiqué to thousands of recipients had alerted intelligence services to something unusual.

Is now the time to launch an insurrection? General Takagi wondered. Sighing, he reached the Council door, where a servant bowed deeply to him.

“Get me a neuralink,” he said, his voice gravelly. With a glance to the side, he checked his appearance. His reflection grinned at him, the thin, gray beard below the short-cut black hair striking. The brown, space-tanned skin was smooth, without wrinkle despite his sixty years.

The servant returned with the device.

Takagi set the neuralink to receive only, and then plugged it in to the back of his head. He hung the box on his collar, the wires running up to the socket. Stepping to his usual chair at the council table, the General signaled for a beverage.

Tea wafted steam toward him, his senses tuned to the audience down the corridor, the neuralink filling his awareness with the goings-on.

A few minutes passed before he realized he'd been joined in the Council Chambers by another observer.

Admiral Nobu Nagano nodded to him from across the table.

General Takagi saw by the neuralink at his lapel that he too was observing the diplomatic visit in receive-only mode. The General returned the Admiral's nod.

“Perhaps it is time, Lord General,” the grizzled Admiral said, “that we set aside our differences.”

General Takagi met the gaze of Admiral Nagano.

* * *

The servant Pearl Blossom withdrew from the Council Chambers but stayed near the door to await either man's command. Twenty-three years old and tiny for her age, she looked barely fourteen and often intercepted ripe tidbits rarely overheard by other servants.

I'm so very fortunate to look so young, Pearl Blossom thought, other servants often complaining of the constant groping and leering by her male and sometime female betters. Many of her fellow servants had been raped and sometimes killed by royalty, her position as servant holding no rights, giving her no legal recourse to abusive treatment, and only her owner having power to pursue redress if she were mistreated in any way.

Her actual owner was the Empress, of course, but Pearl Blossom doubted that her Highness Fumiko Mitsubi even knew who she was, or that she even existed. She was but one of ten thousand servants in the Imperial Palace, and her assigned location was the council chambers, where she and three other young female servants attended to the chambers of the Supreme Council and to the needs of whoever happened to be present.

When the Council was in full session, all four servants were so busy they could barely manage all the demands. And the Council members were very demanding. And although they often brought their own servants, these were usually attachés or aides, and were present only to assist their masters in the business of the Empire, and not to attend to their bodily whims.

Thus Pearl Blossom was grateful to the heavens that she looked so young and was rarely called upon to satisfy the more perverse of those whims.

Standing in the shadows just out of sight of the two men, Pearl Blossom heard one of them say. “Perhaps it is time, Lord General, that we set aside our differences.”

She caught her breath, awaiting the answer.

For a long time, silence, then the rustling of silk.

She dared to peek.

Unbelievably, the ancient enemies were sitting just two chairs apart, conversing in low tones, the Admiral intent upon the conversation while the General looked around the room. His gaze did not find her in the shadows.

Pearl Blossom wondered what deviltry they brewed between them.

* * *

Ambassador Xochitl Olin stepped forward, each step measured and timed to provide the greatest swagger and sway to the elaborate feathered headdress she wore.

Her nose a veritable beak, Xochitl struggled to keep her gaze on the empty thrones in front of her. She knew all these Mitsubi Empire officials who crowded the room were staring at her round eyes and oversized nose. This is a Nahuatl nose! she wanted to yell at them. This is a proud nose! A regal nose! A nose that commands respect! A nose that blares with disdain! These people don't have noses. Two holes in the front of their faces are all they have! How do they smell with such tiny noses?

Keeping her gaze forward, Xochitl marched slowly to the designated place, her face impassive, the procession behind her halting in unison with her, their feathered headdresses not quite as elaborate as hers, their beaded skirts and tasseled moccasins not quite as gilded, and their weapons not quite as bejeweled.

But they're equally sharp, she thought. They had foregone the traditional maquahuitl, wooden blades embedded with obsidian chucks, for modern steel.

She waited at attention, ramrod erect, for the Mitsubi Princesses to enter.

These people look exactly like my intern, Serena Zambrano! she thought, their noses tiny and their eyes mere slits. Why did Serena decline to come? Xochitl wondered. Why had her sponsor denied her the opportunity of a lifetime, coming to a foreign nation in the company of the highest-ranking ambassador amongst the Nahuatl?

At sixteen, Serena Zambrano had begun an apprenticeship under the auspices of the Nahuatl Foreign Service. Xochitl Olin had already known of the girl's promise, carrying herself with the grace and aplomb of someone twice her age. And to enter the top Nahuatl university as an exchange student from distant Iberia halfway across the galaxy at age sixteen bespoke a highly influential sponsor at the upper levels of the Iberian Empire. And who is that sponsor? Xochitl wondered, having found nothing in Serena's background but a humble upbringing on an obscure planet outside the Orion subsystem where at age three she had become renowned for mastering all five local languages and their variant dialects.

The other reason Xochitl had really wanted Serena to come.

The girl had learned the staccato tongue of these slanted-eyed foreigners in three months, then had proceeded to master its linguistic and idiomatic intricacies in another month.

The application for Tenochtitlan University by a thirteen-year-old graduate of the local college system had caused such a stir that Xochitl had sent an envoy to interview the girl. And although Xochitl insisted the girl wait until she was sixteen before immigrating halfway across the galaxy, the girl had put the time to good use, completing two more undergraduate degrees in seemingly unrelated fields, arriving at Tenochtitlan University with three baccalaureate degrees before the age of sixteen.

If only she were here, Xochitl thought, wondering why these ritual-obsessed Mitsubi Princesses were taking such a long time to make their appearance.

* * *

If we didn't observe the rituals, Keiko Mitsubi thought, we might to throw ourselves on the ground and kick our legs and pound our fists and rend our clothes and wail to the stars!

The double doors opened in front of them, and the two sisters swept into the audience hall to the rustle of fine silks, barely audible in the loud silence.

Keiko almost gawked at seeing the twenty or so feathered headdresses. Have they got peacocks on their heads? she wondered, stifling a giggle and hiding a smile.

She followed her sister to the dais. On the platform sat three chairs, the two side chairs facing inward at a slight angle, the largest chair in the center the most elaborate in design, having silken wings and a canopy. A blood-red rising sun on a bright white background would have framed the Empress Fumiko Mitsubi.

If she had been sitting there.

The chair in the middle would remain empty, a signal to everyone present as to who really ruled here.

Keiko stepped to the right hand of the three chairs, Yoshi stopping beside the left. Tucked into their kimono waistbands were the three-foot katana swords, the traditional two-handed battle sword of the samurai.

Yoshi as eldest gestured Keiko to sit. As befitted custom, Keiko demurred and bade Yoshi to sit. Three times, each sister bade the other, and finally, their eyes upon the other, they both sat in the same time.

Not until their rumps were in the chairs did anyone else take their places.

Burly guards in lacquered battlegear lined the walls, visible now that both noble and guest had seated themselves.

Alone, near the back, one figure had not sat.

Everyone's attention fixed on him, and a whisper rippled through the assemblage. The fire in the Regent Empress's gaze might have burned him to a crisp.

Yoshi pointed and two guards converged.

“I demand to be heard by samurai's right!”

“Hold!” Keiko said, and the guards froze, swords half out of scabbard. “Lady Sister-Regent, this man invokes samurai's right to be heard by his liege lord.”

“Then fetch him to his liege lord,” Yoshi said. “And bedone with us.”

“Forgive me, elder sister,” Keiko said. “You ultimately command this samurai and—”

“I know, younger sister, but now is not the time, here is not the place. With all due respect to your duty, Lord, please see your liege lord first.”

“My apologies, Lady Regent Empress,” the man said, “but I cannot. A foul deed takes place here now, and here now, it must be stopped. Forgive me if I behave brazenly.”

Flush crept up Yoshi's neck, Keiko saw, always a bad sign. “Lady Sister, if I may?”

Yoshi took her burning stare off the man, and turned it on Keiko.

Keiko knew she might also incur the Regent's wrath if the disturbance went badly. What else could go wrong? Keiko wondered. Already, the warrior had disrupted the ritual. “Lord Warrior, I am Princess Keiko. How may I be of assistance?”

“Lady Princess Keiko, forgive me, but is it not the samurai's duty to warn a superior of an ill-considered action?”

“Tell me your name, Lord.”

“Captain Tani Gahara, Lady Princess Keiko.”

“You are right, Lord Captain Gahara, indeed, it is the samurai's duty, that to warn. And is it not also the samurai's duty to obey?”

“Just so, Lady Princess Keiko, except when the duty to obey causes one to fail in his duty to warn.”

Keiko smiled. “Just so, Lord Captain Gahara. Therefore, continue if you must, for if you choose to warn, you will die for your failure to obey. If you choose to remain silent, you will die for your failure to warn. Is that not so?”

The Captain stared at her, sweat rolling off his chin. Slowly, he spoke. His voice did not quaver, his gaze did not avert. “It is so, Lady.”

“So it is said, Lord,” Keiko replied. “So it is done.”

“Speak or stay silent, Lord Captain Gahara,” Yoshi said. “Which do you choose?”

The Captain eyed the guards.

“You may speak freely, Lord Captain Gahara.”

“Yes, Lady Regent, thank you. The Lady Regent receives these foreign interlopers and intends to kowtow to their demand for the outer Carina-Sagittarius Arm, held now these five hundred years by the Mitsubi Empire. She intends to place the sovereignty of my home under the auspices of this beak-nose foreigner with the bird nesting on her head. I will die of shame if I have to bow to such a ridiculous—”

The head flew off the shoulders and a bright fountain of blood splattered spectators too slow to avoid the gusher. A warrior bowed toward the regent Empress. “Forgive me, Lady, but I could not tolerate the scoundrel's insulting our guests.” He wiped his sword clean and sheathed it, then knelt in the blood beside the corpse and bowed his head to the floor.

Yoshi grinned. “I can forgive your wanting to protect and preserve the honor of our guests. But I cannot forgive your not asking me first. I invite you to redeem yourself on the temple steps this evening at sunset. And you would honor me by awaiting my arrival, Lord Sergeant, that I may act as your second in your redemption.”

“You do me too much honor, Lady Regent. I don't deserve—”

“Of course you do,” Yoshi interrupted. “At sunset.”

“Yes, Lady, of course. At sunset.” The warrior bowed again, and servants swarmed through the nobles to clean up the mess.

In less than a minute, no trace of the killing remained.

No trace except in the minds of our guests, Keiko was thinking, as she brought her attention to the Nahuatl Ambassador.

As intended.