(TGG) The Cardinal Files: An Inside Job.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Chapter Twenty-one: The only mercy left.

authored by Marina and Christopher Purnell.

Pavel Yeremeyev’s Yacht,
In deep space.


For Isabella Sanchez, consciousness resolved only slowly, and when it did it showed her the familiar form of Sophia… But now dressed, not undressed, and in the dull black and sharply modest clothes which were, indeed, the stereotypical style of female Evidenzburo agents. She had been dragged up onto the bed in the master bedroom before waking, and Sophia sat on the edge, a plasma pistol in her lap with her right hand resting on it.

The situation slowly settled on Isabella, and a wave of anger and revulsion swept over her. The agent hardly needed to be a telepath to see her tense up, or spear Sophia with a look that combined shock, betrayal, and outrage. But before she spoke she thought better, and shook her head sadly. "So stupid... I let myself be led around by you because you slept with me, just like a man would. You used me the way you used Pavel." She smiled thinly, an edge of grim humor coming to her. "I feel sorry for the old pirate. Are you going to kill me the way you killed him?"

"No," Sophia laughed. "Because I haven't killed Pavel Yeremeyev. I carried him up to the Grom Pobedy in the yacht’s escape pod," she gestured to the hatch. "Since I did, after all, need a suitable distraction to keep your strike team from blowing the yacht out of the stars when we escaped. And yes, we’re in hyper and well beyond pursuit now, Isabella, and Pavel Yeremeyev is free to return home… And stop the invasion of Vladimir. So as you can see he was worth much more to me alive than dead."

"Nearly killed myself dragging him here from the banya, though. Would have, except I've already blown my heart up with drugs in the service of His Majesty, so the artificial one is rather tougher than the original. Sorry, Isabella. For what it's worth I genuinely wish you'd just chosen to be another quietly happy belter sapphist, instead of making it all political."

"Repressed my behavior and beliefs to fit in with the sour old men and priests who rule over us, you mean." Isabella shook her head, marvelling in some ways at the brilliance and cunning of the woman across from her, who could have been so much… And had instead been subordinated into an agent of oppression. "Why should we belters be ruled over by people who don't understand us, never will, and actively consider us all deviants and perverts? Why should we have to kowtow to their stupid mores and medieval codes of behavior, that they flout anyway? The Empire is an empire of hypocrisy draining out the life of its people, and I couldn't sit idly by why it does that to the people I love. Better an honest revolutionary than a hypocritical police agent. You enjoyed every minute of it… Sophia."

“I'm not hypocritical," Sophia answered with an amused snort. "Because I'm not a belter. I was born on a Bogumil world and adopted by a sergeant in the force that liberated us from their tyranny. I was raised on a humble Croat farming colony by my adoptive family, we didn't even get a computer until I was nearly a teenager. I still make the most on my rather modest civil service salary out of that of the entire family, and we've never even had a commissioned officer in our family line. I'm just... Good at giving empathy to peoples of deviant sexuality, I suppose."

Isabella stuck out her tongue and made a lewd wriggling motion with it. "Deviant, hah. You took to it as naturally as a fish to freefall. And how many Imperial nobles keep a mistress on the side, while their wives keep close to each other, and how many officers are fucking their comrades? We belters are just honest about biology, and there is no objective standard to call me wrong in how I live my life. And if the Empire does truly, truly believe that everyone who doesn't fit their one man, one woman, in marriage standard is going to burn in hell, how can it ask you to go out and endanger your soul, and entrap other people?" She laughed, bitterly. 'It can because it wants to retain power, to maintain the privilege of the aristocracy. All the religious cloaking just hides that fact."

Sophia’s eyes wavered for a sad moment, and she indulged the impulse to continue the debate. What was coming, afer all, was if it worked going to keep Isabella from holding a coherent debate ever again. "Isabella, I wear goat hair shirts and rocks in my shoes when I return from missions. My penance is to medieval levels, because I am a sincere believer in the Lord God. I simply have the unique talent to... Enjoy everything that anyone else would enjoy. I have put it to good use, so that my nieces and nephews will always be safe and free from fear to live the lives they deserve."

"So what does it say about your superiors that they sanction your sins?" She shook her head, sadly. "And suppose your niece wants to be more than a broodmare, or one of your nephews is a homosexual? Where's the room for safety and happiness for them in the society you defend? Or would they deserve to be stricken down by God for the so-called flaws they were born with?"

“I don't presume to question the divine mysteries of God," Sophia answered as her eyes hardened again, but only for a moment. "As doubtless strange as this is for you to swallow out of an Imperial agent, I try to go through life hurting as few people as I can, and making as many happy as I can. I don't like to leave strife and suffering in my wake, if it can be avoided in the service of His Majesty. As it happens, for you, I would seek to keep you from the gallow’s if I may."

“There’s no way you could stop me,” Isabella answered sharply. “I’ll at least be a martyr for my cause.”

“A martyr with no afterlife…” Sophia turned away for a moment and shrugged. “I will not give up so easily.”

“If you truly care about me,” Isabella thought better of lunging, realizing the true capabilities of the woman before her were likely barely pressed if she’d managed to actually carry Yeremeyev at twice her weight through the snow. “Then sleep with me again before we arrive in Imperial space. The priests can just wash the sin away from you, and…”

Sophia flushed and smiled almost fondly. “Tempting, but even I don’t have that long of a leash. And what I definitely have none of, is a cavalier attitude about confession. The Devil may have tempted greater people than I, but lesser than I have resisted him, too.”

Isabella laughed dismissively at the religious words. “You’re educated, and you know at heart, I’m sure, how much nonsense that is. And it seems you can't deny that we belters are right about sex, can you? That it is wonderful and healthy, nothing mystical about it, positive feelings and personal bonding. And from that you can see the Empire isn't suited to ruling over us. That it's stifling and pays no attention to the realities of our people. That's why I'm justified. Please... see reason. You can still cast off those superiors who are using you this way. You can join us, for real, and we can make a change for the better."

"I lived with a girl for a year in the Alliance," Sophia answered rather quietly, "And we were engaged to be married when I disappeared, carrying with me about every single bit of de-classified information on their society which I could manage, when the Empire first contacted them. Her name is Contessa, and, in this strange way, I do hope she's found someone else, and doesn't wonder what's happened to me anymore. But it isn't becaue I am like you," Sophia answered. "Emotions are just energy produced by our bodies. You should be able to resist it ably enough.. But I understand not wanting to. Thus the offer. I understand happiness, for all that I admire the strength of the monks and nuns I can never match. Sex does seem to please most people, but, ah, I've never been interested in it, myself. It’s just easy for me to pretend.”

"You don't have anything that makes your life worth living for its own sake, do you?" Isabella laughed, sharply. "Religion, that's the ultimate expression of just living by someone else's rules, justified because they say so. Blind defense of the society you were raised in. Unfortunately we belters don't have your chameleon skills." She gave Sophia a smoldering look. "For someone so puritanical I've never had anyone eat me out as well as you did, and I loved it, and you orgasmed rather nicely yourself…”

"Let's see if you're still interested after I tell you why," Sophia answered, and turned back to levelly face Isabella, with the plasma pistol still easily in her lap. "I'm a telempath, and a P-5. One of the most powerful telepaths in the Empire, certainly; but also, as a telempath, someone who is locked in a permanent feedback cycle of emotions. I live for the emotions of other people; I barely have any of my own. Do you understand, Isabella, how you were deceived? I picked up your emotions, and by doing so, they became my emotions. I picked up Yeremeyev's emotions, and they became my emotions. I am simply a blank slate in which every person who interacts with me draws whatever they please. That is why I am such a fine intelligence agent; you were scarcely fucking me, Isabella, you were fucking yourself. I naturally try to please people, to the point of sin, because their pleasure is, by definition, my pleasure. I have like any good Christian learned to resist this, but of course in my service to the Empire I am much more successful by not doing so. I'm scarcely a real person, Isabella--more a tableau rasa for your own emotions and desires. And that is why I'm such a good spy."

Isabella took in the revelation her lover and betrayer had made. It was a lot to digest and she was quiet, deathly quiet as she considered it. She looked at Sophia with a sadness and pity in her eyes as she did so. "You poor dear," she finally began. "Is that what you believe? That being a telempath means you have no nature of your own, no desires... that you're just a tool for other people to leech off of. I can see why the Evidenzburo would value you so much." She sighed, not sure how to say what she wanted to.

"Sophia, you can choose to be whatever you want to be. And you can feel and have emotions like any other human being. Surely, you've felt joy and pleasure and happiness before, and if it's because you're intimately connected to someone else..." She shrugged her shoulders. "That's how we all are. Everyone tries to please the people around them. You've just got an advantage at that. And why do you want to use that for people who will look down on you, call you a whore or inhuman because of your nature, who can never understand you? Why not choose happiness with someone else over this thankless existence as a tool for a state that despises you? Why heed a Bronze Age tribal mythology when it tells you what you feel is wrong? That Contessa... she wasn't a terrible person, was she? Why did you value some priest over her?"

"Because I didn't really love her," Sophia answered simply. "I simply knew how to mimic it perfectly. If God hadn't made me useful to the security of the Empire with my talents, you realize, I'd have entered a religious life myself and taken up the vows of a nun. You misestimate me, Isabella Sanchez. But I suppose that is par for the course with Desrolinists. You've forgotten the magical in the world, and the grandeur of symbolism. It was the philosopher from the Alliance histories, Schopenhauer, who said that for the common person about the only way they could experience aesthetic absolute Truth was through art; and that is why the Church is a crazy tangle of traditions piled on top of each other. Because the aesthetic, even those who are not believers have acknowledged, brings us closer to God. And you've forgotten that, and forgotten the supreme comfort it gives to the common person. I, however, do indeed know that the Lord God is my saviour and that my sins are not without redemption. And I do sin, for the Empire didn't force me into this. I volunteered, because I love to feed on the emotions of others. I am a parasite, but one who has found a way to perform a useful social function."

"The claims the Church makes are false, provably false." Isabella tried to keep from snapping, or rolling her eyes, but it was a hard fight. Sophia had seemed so intelligent, so enlightened. "Aesthetics doesn't change reality, and using it to justify your actions by appealing to transcendence is obscurantist cant. People exist, God doesn't. And forcing them, forcing us, to deny our basic natures because an obsolete power structure rests on fairy tales about an omnipotent deity is immoral. For that matter the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, they all have beautiful temples too, and so did the Canaanites and Aztecs and Inca. This surety, this... fanaticism, is based on your blind acceptance of the propaganda of the ruling elite, nothing rational."

Sophia offered that faint gallic shrug again. "I've seen that ruling elite and their efforts to make society seem better than it is. I don't care. I've also spent most of my life among the poor--I wish I could take you to my penthouse in the worst district in Prague--trying to help them. The intellectual sophistry of the Desrolinist and the grand and high ideals of the nobility and the Church are both irrelevant to them in the end; what matters is the charity of the village or borough priests, the compassion of the orders, the touches where, in the end, Christendom exists to make their lives bearable. And I've seen the results of the programmes like Desrolinism--and they all end in a bankruptcy of the human spirit and accomplishment, a replacement of all the high ideals of both religion and your own ideology, with base materialism. Yet I recognize that I cannot convert you; so I will offer you the only comfort I can give to a condemned soul who rejects religion."

Isabella thought about continuing the argument but it was going nowhere. She pondered a lunge at the shorter woman but Sophia’s claimed mental abilities, even if a considerable exagerration, would make that absolutely hopeless. At last she settled for another thought on Sophia’s telempathy. “Well, if you can't develop a genuine bond with other human beings, then I truly pity you."

"Oh, I say that I do pretty good for myself, all things said," Sophia smiled secretly.

Isabella walked back over to sit on the bed, deciding that she was going to be comfortable if she was going to spend any more time arguing with the Evidenzburo agent. "I don't regret anything I've done, except trusting you. I stood up for my people, to win their freedom to be who they are. It's ridiculous to demand we lash ourselves to accord with some archaic system of values, and however beautiful the church can wrap up its absurdities it's still nothing but fantasy. A pretty fantasy to twist the thinking of people, to beat them down with guilt until they accept what they're told without questioning."

"You have your reasons for complaint," Sophia agreed. "You should be allowed your differences as much as the Delphinians are, I suppose; we are all spirits, so why distinguish one group from another on account of form? Why forbid one group from sin and allow another on account of different biology? Perhaps that’s a valid argument though Christendom remains the cultural base of the vast bulk of the Empire, and that cannot be denied, nor should it." She paused and looked levelly across the bed to Isabella. Her effort to keep things going as long as she could, had run its course, and what she must now do filled her stomach with self-loathing.

"I suppose, then, all that remains is the necessary task I find utterly disgusting. I am not an interrogator, yet in these circumstances the job is mine, however-much it pains me. We are outside of Imperial space; not even the review of the State of Siege exists here." She swallowed visibly, and sighed. "We'll see what you think of me after I've raped your mind more thoroughly than anyone could manage of the body." In the end even that was a false comfort to Isabella.

Isabella smiled sadly as she laid herself out on the bed. "I knew this was coming, when you made your confession. Well, you can only rape my mind if I choose to view it that way. It's not my fault and regardless, I don't have anything in my life to be ashamed of. You can't violate me just by peering into my mind." And then she began clearing her thoughts. "But I'm not going to give you anything easily..."

"If only you knew quite what I meant when I said I was a P-5." With that reluctant comment, she pulled her knees into herself, turning to stare at Isabella... And hit her, telepathically, with a level of force she knew was highly damaging. Not high enough to destroy her mind outright, but easily enough to cause psychosis, while still leaving information intact for future interrogations. The range of the Habsburg scale was much greater than for others, and she had less than half a dozen equals in power.

In a strange way, though, it was the highest mercy she could offer the belter. Since the initial detention of Isabella into Imperial custody would now be taking place outside the sector of the State of Siege, she would be subject to a regular civilian trial... And being mentally incompetent to stand trial was the only way she'd avoid the gallows. Sophia even did her best to try and limit the damage to the minimal necessary to render her unfit for trial. It was rather sinful to hurt her that much, and slightly disingenuous toward doubtless what her superiours would have wanted, but Sophia’s innate compassion forced her to it: The Church held out hope for the mentally incognizant in the supreme mercy of God, and so Sophia made Isabella one of their number. And if not that, then at least she’d avoid Hell for another few more centuries, more than a short and gallant trip of mad Desrolinist fantasy straight to the gallows could ever offer.

Isabella's calm facade and meditation technique shattered under the blow of raw power Sophia sent her way. She wailed aloud as the psychic brushed aside her mind's rudimentary efforts to defend itself, and the alien presence seemed to fill every corner of her psyche. Her very sense of self was under assault, her ego fragmenting and reuniting and threatening to leech uncontrollably into Sophia's mind. The P5's mental shields were too good to allow that kind of disaster, but it demonstrated the difference between a merely mundane human and a high level telepath no longer concerned with being gentle.

With a grim and deathless expression on her face, Sophia reached out to Lida, who clearly feel the raw energy of it, for a centering focus, and then plunged into Isabella's mind. There'd be a high toll for the hangman on account of this information, she was sure, and there was not time to be wasted, even as she did spend a considerable degree of her energy on making sure she didn’t go too far, indeed, as short of a distance into the destruction of Isabella Sanchez’s mind as she could without putting her back on a couse for the gallows.


Mathersburg Colony, a few days later.


They'd had to restrain Isabella in the master stateroom after her interrogation, which Sophia didn't really want to sleep in after sharing it with Pavel and tearing apart Isabella's mind there. No, no, she had no interest in ever sleeping there again. She’d instead slept in one of the crew cabins, and slept a lot as her battered body tried to recover from both the intensity of her interrogation effort and the damaging power of the adrenaline and other stimulant drugs she’d used. When alert, she had focused single-mindedly on the ship's course while Lida guarded Isabella. And so it had gone through days of travel until they arrived at the planet in the neighbouring sector, Mathersburg, which had been listed as having a small military listening post on the surface which would have the necessary comms gear. The population of the planet was less than fourty million and Sophia had no idea what kind of reception they'd get coming in the yacht or what sort of defences there might be, lacking the necessary records to check.

So rather than attempt to assume anything in advance, when the yacht jumped out of hyper, she held position and immediately radioed to the surface, with a tense glance to Lida beside her before she started talking. There was plenty of urgency to getting a warning to Vladimir and Dvonomir in case the attack went ahead anyway, after all, which had necessitated the stop instead of going straight back to Dvonomir. Miscommunications would be unacceptable in the circumstances. "Mathersburg control, Mathersburg control, I am requesting a secured approach vector with very urgent priority." She intentionally didn’t initially identify herself, though.

A response came from the planet's orbital station, a shared military/civilian installation hosting a squadron of patrol corvettes. The arrival of the unidentified yacht was certainly out of routine, but not a cause for panic. The bored voice of an orbital controller answered. "Unidentified private starship, this is Mathersburg orbital station. Provide identification credentials and state your purpose, over."

"Name is Red Falcon identification code EXS-98989806." Evidenzburo agents with reason to believe they might need to identify themselves from a private vessel in an official capacity were issued a random name and EXS--Evidenzburo Unclassified Ship--number designator which was randomly generated and would last in the computers for a specificed set of time before becoming invalid, lest it be used by an enemy force in the future. Sophia was certainly highly placed enough, and reliable enough, to have been issued one and it was used with some relish, as she added much more authoritatively: "Clear me an approach vector to the naval station immediately, Mathersburg control."

The operator had entered the registry code as it came in, and gaped at his screen. He sent a flash alert to the station commander before entering in a projected course for the yacht. Fortunately the system was mostly empty, but clearing away an orbital approach to the naval station required moving several merchant freighters out of the way. "Red Falcon, this Mathersburg control. Am sending you a secured approach vector. Do you request military escort?"

"I'm coming in under a full burn, Mathersburg control, but scramble them anyway," Sophia answered. "Also I expect the station commander to be alerted that I need to use the hyperlight transmitters/receivers for the border listening post on a maximal priority level the moment I arrive."

The operator repressed a groan. Scrambling the corvettes would take even more time and attention, but under standing orders the request had to be granted with alacrity. "Will notify station command immediately, Red Falcon. I am sending you an updated vector including the projected rendezvous with the system defense patrol."

It took fifteen minutes for the first corvette to decouple from the military side of the station and began a burn toward the yacht. It was accompanied by a second that had been policing civilian traffic in orbit. The relatively small vessels, barely massing over 100,000 metric tons, were useful only for such minor tasks but still had enough firepower to handily destroy any civilian vessel. The approach vector established a turnover for the ships after a full burn of twenty minutes, joining a standard escort formation with the two ships flanking Red Falcon. They would proceed with her until the yacht reached orbit and began maneuvering for docking with an already-cleared slip.

Sophia waited with growing tension until they had arrived at the station, and then used her abilities as a smallship pilot and DNI to safely navigate in to dock. Virtually the moment they were secured, she was already jacking out and turning to her partner. "Stay with our prisoner, Lida--I'm going to notify Dvonomir immediately and then we'll replenish and rope in two of those corvettes as an escort on our journey back." She flashed a jaunty wave to the woman, who slumped back to luxuriate in very considerable relief before rising to head down to the stateroom where they were holding the now rather psychotic Isabella.

Lida rose to follow her, part way, down to the stateroom where the Desrolinist was kept. The exhausting feeling of completion at the end of such a mission seemed nearly incredible, and she was deeply relieved to feel it, and privately wondered how she’d stay awake to guard Isabella until they had more personnel aboard.

Sophia for her part keyed her way straight through the airlock into whatever sort of welcoming committee they had for her; she was already rolling up her sleeve, though, as the only way they could reliably prove who she was was with a genetic sample coming back like this, but they'd have to send that sample back to Dvonomir at the same time as the hyperlight communications link was established. There was another way to do it, but that would actually be up to Markus. Sophia was smiling at that prospect, her memory having finally clued her in as to when she’d last met the Unteranalytiker, and influenced her mood as, with a faint flourish, she stepped out on the other side....

Two marines in light shipboard armor waited on her, both wearing the obscuring combat helmets and toting plasma carbines at the ready. A lieutenant in the field-grey duty uniform stood by, and doffed his peaked cap in welcome. "Kapitan Loesch sends his regards. We are to escort you immediately to the communications facility and remain available for as long as you require."

"Good. If Kapitan Loesch could meet me there, I'd greatly appreciate it. I am Inspektor Sophia Vuletic of the Evidenzburo, on detached surface from central headquarters in Wien," she crisply answered as she turned to lead them onwards, wondering how much they'd press on further security and identity checks. "I have a prisoner aboard the ship, as well as my assistant Unterinspektor Alilova, but we will be taking the prisoner directly to Dvonomir from here, though I will probably prefer to continue with a guard detachment aboard my ship."

"I'm sure that can be arranged." The junior officer placed his cap back on his head, and swept an arm down the corridor leading away from the airlock. "Follow me, ma'am. We'll need to take a lift up to the command deck to the communication room."

"Thank you kindly," she answered with a soft smile, walking rather briskly to keep up with him considering her short stature, though she didn't mind it. The danger of being undercover was gone, for all that they still had the same urgency.

He led her down the corridor, with the armed escort following behind them. They passed by curious looking naval personnel, though few enough in the corridors before the main lift. The ride up was awkwardly silent, the marines evidently having been sternly warned against any attempt to pry into her purpose or business. The lift itself was well-maintained, though with older aesthetic stylings and archaic push button controls it hinted at the age of the station, possibly still the first orbital built by the colony. It admitted them into another central hub with corridors leading off in six directions, and the lieutenant taking her past the one marked "Secured Area - Authorized Personnel Only" in big, bright red letters.

The door to the communications room was guarded by a biometrics scanner regulating access. The lieutenant used his own hand to open the door, before chivalrously extending an arm to allow her to enter first. The marines took up guard positions outside.

Sophia smiled and stepped graciously past him and into the room, her eyes glancing around as alertly as ever. The trip to Mathersburg had served to give her enough time to largely rest and recuperate from the use of so many high-end adrenaline and stimulant drugs, and she was even feeling rather healthy. Still, no time to waste in trivialities.

It was a smaller, less high-tech version of the room used for secure communications at the Vladimir Evidenzburo facility. A large holotank dominated the room, with individual seats arrayed in a half-ring around and consoles for controlling both the transmission and reception located behind. There were two jumpsuited technicians operating the console, with a tall, well proportioned man in tailored dark-blue naval dress standing between them, hunched over at the console. He looked up as Sophia entered and stood upright, allowing her to confirm the rank insignia on his collar tabs. "Inspektor, Kapitan Johann Loesch at your service. The code you provided indicated serious urgency in your mission. Is there anything more you need beside the use of the facility here?"

"Yes, Kapitan: I'll require escort by half your squadron as I continue to Dvonomir with a high value detainee. High value enough that completely denuding Mathersburg of defences would be a suitable response to the need for security in transport," Sophia answered levelly. "To elaborate, Kapitan, I am in posession of information which raises the serious possibility of a surprise attack on the world of Vladimir with a force consisting of at least four battle divisions in strength taking place within the fortnight, and this does not even pertain to the information my detainee possesses, and that I now possess, about which I cannot explain anything to you."

"I'll make the arrangements." He stepped back from the console, passing by the holotank. "In the meantime, the facility is yours. The technicians are cleared for secret work and will remove themselves after setting up the transmission and verifying your credentials with the Evidenzburo facility on Dvonomir."

"Of course. Well, thank you very much, Kapitan. If you can prep the corvette flight I'd deeply appreciate it. I only want to remain here long enough to refuel the yacht." There was a faint twinkle in her eye as she added, rather offhand, "and just between the two of us in a secured room, that is Pavel Yeremeyev's private yacht I arrived on."

That perked the officer's ears right up. "Sounds like you've had a damned interesting adventure," he said, shaking his head. "I'm not sure if I'm dying to know, or will be very happy to never know. But it certainly suggests you need my corvettes more than Mathersburg does. I'll make sure the seamen are giving your refuelling a full priority and kick their... them into action if they aren't."

"Well, I can't claim to have Yeremeyev aboard, but I'm going to have to look up if prize law applies to the Evidenzburo," Sophia answered as she waited for the connection to go through now. "As I sort of want to keep the yacht."

The technicians finished adjusting the communications system for compatibility with Evidenzburo encryption standards, and established the initial connection with Dvonomir branch. The holotank sprang to life, though without a holovid transmission signal it remained in the default green-outline orb. Loesch gave a tip of his own cap to Sophia before leaving the room to see to his own duties.

"We are receiving instructions to have you plug into the system to allow a verification of your implant codes," the senior tech alerted. Each set of DNI implants carried a unique signature, with Evidenzburo sets augmented by specialized codes and programs to prevent them from being hacked and to provide an alternative means of identification. Dvonomir control evidently had faith that she had not lost her head, figuratively or literally.

"Not a problem," Sophia answered, having expected as much as she slipped over to the nearest DNI and jacked herself into the system to the respond to the prompt. The implants were set to display her actual identity, which means the Unteranalytiker would be in for a bit of a surprise; about four bouts of bone reconstruction surgery and twenty-five years in the past, Sophia had remembered that she'd taught him classes in computer security cracking on one of her desk assignments she rotated through between missions. Short of an encounter like this, the agents in advanced training at Evidenzburo headquarters would never know of the potential actual jobs of their instructors, and especially so "Instructor Vuletic".

As she plugged in, the two technicians left. There was a brief query/response exchange, purely automated, and over within seconds. With the other end satisfied by the response, the green orb expanded outward and filled in, displaying a white sterile room laid out more or less the same way, if much larger, than the station communications room. Markus Eindrecht stood alone before her, this time in a well-maintained civilian business suit and sporting a new, cavalier style haircut. His eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the form before him, leaving him speechless for a moment before he began to laugh.

"You're Cardinal?" It seemed absurd, almost. The restrained, puritanical, fussily precise instructor he had known briefly on Terra was really the most glamorous and celebrated agent in the service. But then she had always clinically precise and utterly devoted, so perhaps... but it was still an enormous surprise. Especially because of the lack of immediate similarity in facial structure, but then… the devotion would well explain that, too, and a few surgeries.

"And you managed to leave your name off an assignment," she answered jauntily. "Still gave you an A for it, though. I hadn't had all the mercy squeezed out of me, back then. Sorry about not remembering sooner, not like I could have precisely told you before now, though." She stretched. "Anyway, Unteranalytiker, I'll give you the bad news first. There is a chance, unknown probability, of the Rus fleet, which is at least sixteen of the wall, attacking Vladimir within the next fortnight. The mission I participated in on the behalf of the CFL was to bring about this attack... Silly Desrolinists, stabbing their allies in the back. But it gave me a chance to escape, and I, ah, currently have someone working to stop that attack for me, though he doesn't realize he's serving my interests as well as his own. So I'm hoping it doesn't materialize, but it might and the appropriate warnings need to be issued."

Eindrecht nodded, deciding to forgo a request for more details right away. "I have to notify the Viceroy and sector headquarters immediately. They'd have to concentrate nearly the entire sector fleet's wall to handle that kind of massed attack, and that could take days if we're lucky. This isn't coordinated with any exterauniversal threat, is it?"

"No. The CFL was bluffing with their allies. We do however have a smuggling ring and conspiracy in some of the highest echelons of the civil service and government, Unteranalytiker. I'm proceeding from this point in Yeremeyev's captured yacht and with the escort of four of the station corvettes here. I have a high value prisoner aboard, you should prepare for receipt but I'd prefer for the news not to spread. She's a member of the inner circle of the CFL--I cracked her and retrieved more valuable information than I think you can even imagine, Unteranalytiker, and managed to keep her mind intact enough that she can be easily probed to confirm the details by other telepaths. Well, easily in a mechanical sense; it will be a very unpleasant business, because the damage I had to inflict to break through her defences like that necessarily entailed turning her into a psychotic."

"Well, there goes prosecution. Although much of this will probably remain in the black for some time." The colloquialism referred to the covert operations required to break up a large and entrenched cell. In practice it might mean foregoing trials to eliminate the threat permanently. "We have facilities for handling prisoners who have gone through that, but I expect headquarters will want her bundled on a fast transport to Earth as soon as possible. No doubt they'll want you to accompany the prisoner in person as well. I'll send a preliminary report as soon as I've spoken with Earl Stephens, and Vienna will be very relieved."

"Very well. I think I should make the greatest haste in returning to Dvonomir then, basically leaving as soon as the yacht's refueled," Sophia answered cheerfully. "That said, Unteranalytiker, while you're at it--a personal favour to me--I would like you to look up what kind of legal precedent there is for Evidenzburo agents being able to make claims in prize court, since a state of siege involving a foreign power qualifies under the laws of war. I suspect my hopes will be cruelly dashed, but, you see, I want to keep the yacht."

That took Markus by surprise, another rare event twice in the same transmission, but he nodded and smiled gaily. "Alright, Inspektor Vuletic. I'll have our staff lawyers work on that. I think I can even recall a similar incident back in the sector's history, during the consolidation of Imperial authority. A group of agents using a merchant freighter from the state run lines to escape. Don't recall what happened to the freighter. But if there's a way to twist precedent and statutes to your favor, I'm sure the agency will oblige."

"Just got attached to it while undercover, that's all," Sophia answered with an equally amused look. "See you soon, Unteranalytiker."

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Chapter Twenty-Two: Pavel Yeremeyev’s property.

authored by Marina and Christopher Purnell.

Approaching New Kiev,
On the Grom Pobedy.


Pavel Yeremeyev hovered by the brig door, pacing like a rabid wolf as the last surviving commando of the CFL raid wrestled with his restraints. The tightly wound rope was too strong to break and his shoulders had already been dislocated by the pirates to prevent that possible trick. That was just a foretaste of the pain that the murderous Rus planned to mete out.

"I will flay you alive, so help me god, and roll your open skin in salt," Yeremeyev snarled. This particular commando had probably killed someone in the crew, and the losses sustained had not made him a happy man. The risks of piracy were one thing, and treacherous assault was another. "Not before I have cut out your tongue and fed it to my dogs, and taken your balls as fishing bait. You will beg for death, you little backstabbing pizda, before I give it to you. Do you begin to understand why it was a bad idea to set foot on my ship now?"

The CFL commando—and their “commandos” were not much to write home about--nodded furiously, trying to communicate his regret despite being gagged with rope. The old pirate had no intention of allowing him to bite down on his own tongue and bleed out. The sight merely made the privateer laugh, and it was a dark, unpleasant sound that issued forth.

"You think you have, but you will." Pavel walked up against the iron bars of the cell. "It occurs to me that while I need your body to prove the CFL attacked my ship, I do not need your arms. Or legs. Perhaps I will welcome the opportunity to make you a more compact bundle. Yes, I will consider how much easier that will make things. I will be back." It was a chilling smile the privateer gave his prisoner before walking out of the brig.

Once the doors were safely closed Yeremeyev's face resumed the frown he had held for most of the day since waking up in the escape hatch. Oh, venting a little bloodthirst on their sole captive was a relief of sorts, though the threats were mostly empty. He'd kill, and he'd torture, but he had limits that mostly stopped at a serious beating. And if he'd started kicking that scum's ass he would have been too worked up to handle things later. But scaring the bastard good would make him more cooperative later, and that was a benefit that justified the bit of indulgence.

Now they were on approach to the New Kiev system, and he had a challenge ahead. How to convince the government that he was still alive, and that their so-called allies had tried to lure them into a trap. The shock of his appearance should aid both, but he'd see shortly.

His return to the bridge was greeted by three crewmen who stood for his arrival. Pavel waved them back into their seats as he took his own command chair. All three of the men were very junior, and he barely recognized them, but the commandos had killed most of his real bridge crew. Especially Kliment. The CFL was going to pay tenfold and more for their treachery, he vowed.

"Exiting hyperspace in one minute, captain." The navigation aide, the real navigator's assistant, notified Pavel of their impending arrival in New Kiev. He sounded nervous, as well he might; the last thing the authorities in the system knew, Grom Pobedy had been taken by the Empire.

"Steady, prepare for translation, and be certain our identification signal is being transmitted at full power." Not that it would be enough by itself, precisely, since New Kiev thought the ship was under Imperial control, but it would hopefully provide enough of a pause for him to sort things out further. "Take us in on toward New Kiev my usual approach vector. That will be a signal no Imperial spy would bother to learn."

There was an acknowledgement, and then the countdown began. One moment they were in the upper dimensional realm of hyperspace, and the next they were in the far different physical realm of real space. There was always a slight unease at the transition, but Pavel fought it down and came back to his senses far more quickly than most people. He drew his eyes to the holotank, now being fed with data from his ship's sensors and developing a coherent picture of his reception.

Just as he had feared, the Rus admiralty was working in an overdrive to clear the orbitals of New Kiev as they mobilized the obsolete battleships that made up most of their striking power. Patrols through the inner system by lighter vessels were stepped up more than twenty-fold over normal, placing a frigate less than one light-minute from his location and closing fast. The squadron of small cruisers based around the primary moon were also mobilized and looked to be heading in his location. Well, hopefully, he could keep from getting blown up.

"Open an immediate signal to orbital control, tell them we have taken the ship back from a surprise attack." Pavel barked out the order, and one of the crewmen leapt to obey. It took them a few seconds, and once again he cursed the loss of his more experienced hands. "Now, turn on holo transmission."

The orbital controller who greeted him obviously didn't expect to see Pavel's intimidating form before him, and hesitated before stammering out a response. "Gospodin Yeremeyev... you're supposed to be dead!"

He snorted in response. "Better people have tried to see off and failed. Now, quickly, inform your superiors that Grom Pobedy is not, repeat not, under hostile control. As you can see our defenses and weapons are offline, and I am very much among the living. Once you have insured we are not shot out of space," and Yeremeyev spared the controller a wintry smile, "forward my signal to Admiral Poebedsontov at the Admiralty headquarters. Tell the switchboard there that Pavel wants his hundred rubles."


That seemed to confuse the technician but he nodded anyway. It was the Rus hero in the flesh, and woe to anyone who delayed him. "Right away, sir. I'm, I'm doing what I can."

The holovid transmission cut out, though the signals remained connected. It was several tense moments as the frigate closed to weapons range, but instead of opening fire it performed a visual inspection passby before falling into escort formation. The cruisers slacked off in their approach and preparations as well.

Finally, after nearly half an hour, the holovid turned on. Giorgii Poebedsontsov, Admiral of the Rus Navy, greeted him from the ornate office reserved to the head of the Rus military. He seemed to stare at Pavel for a moment, before gruffly shaking his head. "I should have expected I wouldn't get out of that debt so easily. Alright, you're alive. So what happened, Pavel?"

"What happened is those asslicking vermin Leaguers betrayed me!" The vehemence of Pavel's outburst shook even his bridge crew, who winced even as he continued on. "They tried to kill me and take my ship, and make it look like the Empire did it, so we'd throw ourselves on a sword for those swine. I barely escaped and I was able to take back my ship, though half my caretaking crew and most of my good officers are dead. I've got one of them here in the bridge if you need any evidence, but damn it, Giorgii, we were played. There was never an Alliance support to our activities, and at best the fuckers were hoping to use us as conveniently dead martyrs."

“There was a lot of evidence implicating an Evidenzburo agent who had taken your yacht. Your servants reported..." He stopped, and slammed a palm into his forehead. "What kind of bloody agent would announce themselves as such? I can't believe we were that stupid. Your whore claimed she was an Imperial before driving off your servants and we took it at face value, as they expected."

"Well, Theophania had a change of heart and saved my life, stowing me aboard the ship," Pavel explained. And he was irked, just a bit, at having her called a whore, but it was irrational and fruitless to consider. If they met again, well, they'd see. Yet he couldn’t, at least, keep himself from offering her a bit of praise where it was due. "We parted ways but she helped me deal with their control over my computer systems, which let my men take down those cowardly pukes. The ship can be repaired quickly, but the important thing is there was no Imperial attack. They don't have the location of the system, and the push to attack Vladimir is treachery."

Poebedsontsov scowled darkly. "Get yourself and your prisoner down here to Novo Vladimir at once, Pavel. I'm sending the second cruiser squadron for escort. It seems we have a lot to discuss."

"That we do, Giorgii. That we do." Like whether or not to hang or impale most of the CFL leadership. Pavel smiled with anticipation, bringing to mind more wolf comparisons. "Now, about that hundred rubles..."

“You’re sounding like a devil-fucking zhid, Pavel!”

But it only made Pavel Yeremeyev laugh.


Dvonomir Evidenzburo Headquarters.


Sophia had landed the yacht by herself, right on the surface at the spaceport, not wanting to wait for a trip down and certainly having the authority, and there'd been a limo waiting for her and Lida and an armoured military ambulance for Isabella. A last mournful look had been offered on Sophia's part, though Lida knew that the psychosis was probably an intentional result on Sophia's part and had some idea of why she'd done it, at that.

But that was not for the here-and-now as the Unteranalytiker's ever-efficient secretary welcomed them and directed them to his officer, after they'd swept into a considerably calmer Evidenzburo headquarters, now that the in the past month the revolts had been entirely dealt with, though everyone was still on extremely high alert about the prospects for a resumption of violence and seditious conspiracy.

"Unteranalytiker," Sophia offered with a polite degree of deference as she arrived, dressed as she usually did, with Lida in more of the simple peasant's dress of New Kiev, not having had any other clothes to change into that fit her, since Yeremeyev had never offered to fund her nearly so large and eclectic of a wardrobe as Sophia had easily manipulated herself into. "A pleasure to meet you again in person, now that this mess is mostly concluded in the sector, except, I suppose, for the Navy's job in it."

"I'm very happy to have you both back here." Eindrecht had met them at his door, and ushered them into comfortable plush leather seats. His suit was neatly pressed and his fluid movements suggested someone who was once more getting enough sleep. During the worst of it he had slept in his office overnight, and though massage had worked out the kinks in his shoulders it was a welcome relief to have everything back to normal. The return of Cardinal with Lida was just a final confirmation of the end of the immediate emergency.

"You've both done an exceptional job handling the mission to New Kiev and I'm sure medals and commendations are in the work. Since you left we're fairly confident we have rolled up all the remaining CFL people in the sector and most of the real hardcore Rus supporters. The Great Rus have some well-established sleeper cells and even special forces teams on Vladimir that we caught wind of and are still trying to root out, but our awareness and your warning has let us improve security at critical locations on that world. If this Ms. Sanchez has any information about covert Rus military deployments in the sector that would make my job a lot easier..."

"She did have some, though the Rus were always less than forthcoming with their allies," Sophia answered. "I got more out of Yeremeyev, anyway, I've compiled it all into a data record," she handed over the metal bar, "As well as lists of names and positions I got from interrogating her and general information about the development of the CFL, which is now a century-old conspiracy though it originally started as more or less a secret society for disaffected academics before morphing into something more odious."

Markus took the record, and looked it over as if he could divine secrets from examination alone. Finally, he put it on his desk, sighing as he did so. "And results like these are why you're a legend, Sophia. Vienna will be most interested in that sort of information. Even the historical background is always useful stuff, and before you rooted them out we didn't even have an idea the CFL still existed on that scale. Probably just lost in the focus on the Bogumils, and then the extra-universals, but I expect someone's head will roll for it."

"Well, plenty of heads are going to roll for it literally. The list of conspirators is fairly substantial, though hardly the whole of the organization, certainly. Isabella was highly placed, but they're still quite compartmentalized. Security at the gate's got quite lax, by the way. That's one thing that we need to clamp down hard on right now. They do have sympathizers in the Alliance who helped them smuggle in the replicators they used to produce those weapons, Unteranalytiker... But I darkly allow for the possibility that Alliance intelligence, scarcely incompetent under that Bronson, might be running those symps to send them supplies without actually aiding them as such... So that they can identify weaknesses in our gate security. It is an outside prospect, but regardless we do need to tighten security there again as rapidly as possible, and make examples of those who are incompetent--and hang the outright treacherous."

"Without a doubt," Markus agreed. "I imagine we'll be rethinking portal security extensively and making a complete overhaul. The tangle of bureaucracies involved in it... navy, army, gendarmes, the Finance Ministry, the Foreign Ministry... well, the Hofkriegsrat can cut through that if the Director recommends it strongly enough. Probably too much to hope for them to turn it over to the intelligence services entirely, but giving us a much bigger role covering the gate will be a major improvement on things."

Sophia smiled brilliantly. "And that, is why you are going to go very far and I'm going to stay a field agent until they make me quit."

"I think you'd be wasted anywhere else, no offense to your term as my instructor," Markus replied. "In any case, with the sector fleet mobilizing Earl Stephens is in a mood to go to New Kiev, if the Rus don't come to us. With reinforcements from the outer rim fleets he can launch an offensive without leaving the sector uncovered so he probably will. Helping to establish control over New Kiev will tax the agency's resources here, but in the long run it will clear up most of our problems. The spark of hope will finally go out on Vladimir and maybe we can go a decade without some new subversive threat on the old Rus worlds."

"It would be nice," Sophia agreed. "Though never doubt the sheer bloodymindedness of these people. I at any rate have barely had a year between my last undercover work and this one... Only got to teach one semester," she smiled a bit thinly. "And of course I wouldn't ask for any other role in the service. Speaking of which, Unteranalytiker, I'm taking Lida with me. They'll want to debrief her, in part because it's the first time I've ever operated undercover with a partner rather than on lone assignment, and also because she's certainly due to be considered for promotion and further infiltration training in the Sol System."

Eindrecht smiled at his soon to be former subordinate. "Well, by all means, I'll arrange the indefinite leave from my command. I'm sure you'll enjoy what you can see of Earth, if you have any time at all. You certainly deserve everything Cardinal would have for you."

"Thank you, Unteranayltiker," Lida replied, once more subdued and professional. "It was a challenge for me and I am... gratified the results have been so important to the Empire. I will fondly remember my service under you."

"She certainly does deserve all of it I can press for," Sophia added, still smiling. "Ah, well, if there's any further documentation you need us for, I can provide it since I don't think we'll be leaving until tomorrow, Unteranalytiker, while the transportation arrangements get worked out. Though I should return fairly soon; I expect to make my way back after the taking of New Kiev for the trials, there's a few cases where I want to lodge statements and testimony with the magistrates."

"Naturally. Well, your after-action report was quite thorough and we have our own people interrogating your prisoner. I suppose you can have the day to make preparations for departure to Earth. Speaking of which..." He pulled out a file folder, and smiled thinly as he opened it up and pulled out a flimsy copy of a message to hand over to Sophia. "Once I contacted Evidenzburo headquarters about your mission, including Pavel Yeremeyev's yacht, they sent this to be delivered to you."
The sheet was post-dated to the day before her departure to New Kiev. She was told, in blandly bureaucratic terms, that her reserve commission as an officer in naval intelligence was being reactivated. The sheet was signed by Generalmajor Schulhauser, the director of the Evidenzburo, and countersigned by Grossadmiraal Milan Korbel.

"If you had any doubts about how important your work for the Empire was, you may be relieved," Markus said, dryly.

Sophia started giggling. There was nothing more to it. She started giggling, until she started outright laughing, staring down at the sheet and shaking her head in amused delight. "A ten thousand, four hundred tonnes empty hyper-capable star yacht. Oh God..." She looked back up to Markus with brilliantly amused eyes, and for the first time, Lida would see Sophia expressing vibrant, and pleased emotion, separate from the mission. And she certainly should, seeing as how the vessel was only twenty years old and had once been a high-end model that would still cost a couple of million florin on the civilian market, and had been maintained excellently, to put it mildly.

Then she peered more closely at the paper, this time more in surprise. "Wait, when did they make me a Kapitan zur Raum?!"

"Seniority promotions, I suspect. How long has it been since you paid attention to your status in the reserve?" He chuckled; she had a reputation for being a bit absent minded in some things, as Instructor Vuletic. "You may have jumped a rank a minute after I made my preliminary report to Earth, though."

"No, couldn't be backdated as Kapitan zur Raum then. Was probably after the mission before this one," she answered, a bit distracted as though she were trying to figure out the exact details of it, and then seeming to satisfy herself. "The downside of this is that a reserve officer with a private yacht is in serious danger of being invited to lots of very boring parties if she wanders within hailing distance of a naval base."

"...But I'd deserve to go straight to Hell if I complained about that." She looked up and smiled again.

Lida and Markus both laughed at the joke. "I doubt the agency will be leaving you enough free time to have to worry about fending off the invitations," Eindrecht replied. "At least a reserve officer's stipend ought to let you handle the operations cost of that yacht, and I suspect the Navy will be more than happy to provide informal support when you do go jaunting about space."

"Probably won't be just me, actually," Sophia glanced up. "Well, most of the time. My youngest brother's daughter has always wanted to be go into piloting. After this mission I... Well, I have a very strong desire to make sure she can. She's managed the basic courses with my funding since the family can't afford college, but now I've got a chance to use my vacations productively by giving her spacecraft operations hours to make her more employable. Ultimately, maybe let her work as a charter pilot using the yacht in her own right."

"A fine use of the ship," Eindrecht conceded. "In any event, I don't want to detain either of you any longer. It's a long trip to Earth and you have been travelling extensively. I'll handle the rest of the paperwork, freeing you both to have the day off to prepare. Or just relax in a civilized city."

"I don't know, New Vladimir had sort of a rustic charm..." Sophia trailed off when she saw from Lida's look that the sentiment was not returned by the native of Dvonomir. "Well, I'll let Lida show me where the best of the coffee shops are, at any rate," she added with a smile. "And take you up on that hotel, for tonight. Thank you, Unteranalytiker Eindrecht. And if you ever want to call on your poor old prof," she smiled, "I live in the Penthouse of the apartment bloc at Strasse 28 Dolni on the corner with Na Jezerce."

"Still Prague, of course,” she added as it abruptly occurred to her it might not be so obvious to anyone else, “Actually the same flat as when I was teaching that bloody class."

"I'll welcome the opportunity to call on you, if we're ever on Terra at the same time." Which was, admittedly, rather unlikely anytime in the next decade. "Do enjoy our fair city. Lida won't lead you wrong with the coffee shops. And there's a good massage parlor and therapeutic spa in the hotel we've booked for you. Included with the price of the rooms, so take full advantage of that too."

"You were thinking ahead." Sophia sighed softly, her look a tad wry. "Thank you kindly. I wouldn't normally allow such extravagance for myself, but since the government's already been charged for it, I won't turn it down now." Her smile cut a trace impishly, again, which only reinforced the incredible youthfulness of her face. "But I suppose I should leave you to your paperwork, Unteranalytiker."

"Staggering amounts of it, as usual. I think perhaps I know the real reason you've refused promotion," he said, sitting back down to address the pile of paper on his desk. His face grew more serious as he tacitly dismissed them. "My congratulations and admiration again, both of you. You deserve everything you're going to get for your actions."

"Thank you again, Unteranalytiker," Sophia answered as she rose, and Lida followed suit. She smiled softly, and added, as she stepped out, "Godbless, Markus," as she had a quarter-century before.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Wages of Playing God.


Mars, Evidenzburo Operational Headquarters.


"Hi, daddy!" The brilliantly chipper voice came from a yet relatively exhausted Sophia, the trip over having been rushed in the extreme with Isabella aboard, and a considerable degree of interest to it. She was leading Lida in the midst of the Evidenzburo facility deep on Mars to which they had been summoned for their high-value debriefings and the evaluation of Isabella before a final determination was made on her status, though Sophia already knew what that would be with a considerable degree of certainty.

The man being addressed was of course Leonidas von Pleven, and Sophia hadn't bothered to warn Lida about this eccentricity of her personality: "I know you weren't able to see me off to school today but I made this awesome new friend while I was there! This, father, is Lida Alilova, and I want you to promote her. She deserves it." There was a faint grin. "Down to business, though, I suppose." It was unlikely that Lida's debriefing would be allowed in the same room; someone would certainly be interested in double-checking her mission reports with a direct and reliable eye-witness for once, not out of some lack of faith in her but simple curiousity. Nonetheless, she simply hadn't been able to help the introduction before her and Lida parted ways… Assuming they did. If they really trust me…

The yacht was still being processed by the prize court back on Dvonomir, but Sophia had already settled on her name, and had been planning to go back after the taking of New Kiev to provide testimony anyway. That, and then return in the yacht to her family home. The prospect filled her with very genuine excitement, most of it at the thought of the surprise she could show to her niece.

Leonidas chuchkled openly, thanking the darker complexion that helped hide any sign of a blush. Sophia's eccentricities were well-known, but their meeting was being recorded. The holographic interrogation room would capture everything for later review. That he had set it to resemble an Albertine drawing room, complete with roaring fire, dim candle-lighting, shelves and curio cabinets with the high-backed, heavy built furniture of the area contributed a certain familial intimacy. There was a time and a place for severity and rigid formality, and usually with enemies of the Empire; agents should be made to feel at ease and welcome. Long practice had shown reports delivered in emotionally relaxing surroundings were ultimately more reliable than the supposedly focusing effects of a coldly sterile environment.

"Well, I can spare a welcome back for my finest agent," Leonidas started, tipping his head politely to Sophia. His eyes alighted on Lida, and he took her hand in the limpid courtly fashion approved for business between unrelated and unacquainted men and women. "And you have the gratitude of the Empire as well, Inspektor Alilova. Meeting a partner that Cardinal is enthusiastic about is something I confess I thought would never happen."

"It's a fairly intimate matter," Sophia elaborated with her abrupt reversion to the deathly serious. "Something between telepaths which is usually the reason why I detest other telepaths. But Lida was quick on her feet, and fearless about trusting me. She might as well be my younger sister, at this point."

"Welcome to the family," Leonidas replied, making light of Sophia’s affectation to him and giving Lida a friendly smile. "Well, please, take a seat. And feel free to order up any refreshments you want. The holo-replication facilities here are probably in the top five most advanced in the Empire."

"Thank you." Sophia moved to slip into one of the chairs with a faint yawn. "Some tea, I think, would definitely be preferred," she glanced around, wondering if it would actually materialize out of thin air like in the federation. "So, this was a really interesting mission, as missions go."

Refreshments materialized as they were ordered. The replication technology was ancient but rarely used, and the forcefields that allowed holograms to have substance allowed for the glasses to brought over as though riding on a carpet of air were the main unique part of the system. It was far from the finest coffee in existence, but it was warm and caffeine-filled which is what counted the most.

Lida watched with interest as a china cup materialized on the table in front of Lida. "Coffee, black with cream and sugar, please." She was delighted when the drink appeared suddenly, and she tasted it as Sophia and Leonidas bantered. It wasn't freshly brewed artisan coffee, but it was better than quite a few cups she had once had.

"Well, it's probably best to start from the beginning," Leonidas noted, initiating the formal debriefing of Cardinal and her partner. "Your assignment, Inspektor Vuletic, was to determine the extent to which Alliance intelligence was involved in subversive activities in the Wladimyr sector. We have corroborated the evidence you were able to supply proving that AID had no role in events there. From our interrogations of Colonial Freedom League subversives and officials it appears clear their contacts with even informal Alliance bodies was highly limited. Nevertheless if we had not been able to nip them in the bud those contacts may have grown into something more threatening. Your actions, and those of Ms. Alilova, have contributed substantially to the security and well-being of the Empire and as such are commended in your personnel files."

Sopha sipped her coffee, nodding and shrugging lightly. "Roughly about what I expected, Sir. It's a relief to have formal confirmation, anyway, but I was quite happy when I discovered on Vladimir from the CFL initially that they didn't have those contacts. I of course pursued the entire mission up to that point on the assumption of the worst case, and acted with the urgency and celerity that case seemed to demand, perhaps sometimes to the detriment of the local sector security efforts."

"The sector authorities have nothing but praise for your actions," Leonidas said, offhandedly. Eindrecht in particular had been highly impressed by the speed with which she had broken one of his most troublesome suspects. "Which brings us to New Kiev. Infiltrating there was necessary to be absolutely certain of the leads you had developed on Dvonomir and Vladimir, but it also has allowed us to locate that system. Your warning about an attack on Vladimir never materialized, but concentrating the fleet to meet it has given the Viceroy the opportunity to put an end to the threat the Rus exiles represents. Permission for a conquest expedition has been approved by the Hofkriegsrat, which should substantially reduce the overall threat level in that sector. Both of you have earned an additional commendation for that, and since you hadn't been awarded it yet, Unterinspektor Alilova, your file is to be decorated with the Distinguished Service Award, second class."

Lida nodded, and felt a fair bit more excited for the praise than Sophia had. "Thank you, sir. I was just following Inspektor Vuletic's orders..." But humility aside it was still deeply impressive to be awarded the second-class distinction so early in her career.

Sophia giggled softly at the way that Leonidas had put it, and then turned to Lida with a smile. "Well, yes, but knowing when initiative is inappropriate is just as useful of a skill as exercising it when it is." She turned back to Leonidas. "Are there any specific points that need to be covered in our reported conduct while outside of Imperial territory, Sir?"

"There are usual cautions about the sort of seductions you relied on, but I think you have heard them enough to recite them from memory. Not that they are really necessary in your case, Cardinal." He shook his head, apologetically. "But for the sake of Unterinspektor Alilova here, the service condones using whatever means are required to gain the trust of targets. It does however recognize the possibility of losing detachment when such methods are pursued, and the potential to become overly sympathetic to a suspect or target when intimately involved with them. So they should ideally be used only as a reluctant resort by experienced agents, and with proper perspective. It does not appear that there were any problems arising from that in this instance, however."

"I was rather strict about keeping Unterinspektor Alilova out of that game," Sophia noted rather fastidiously. "It's my talent, and I'd like to reinforce the point." A sip of her coffee, then. "Messy business, though."

"The reports make clear how responsible you were on that point," Leonidas conceded. "There is however one more serious issue. Your interrogation of Isabella Sanchez led to her mental infirmity. We're still able to retrieve information from her mind, but the damage done to her psyche is essentially unrepairable. There are questions about whether or not this was necessary, especially in light of the potential for later interrogation by specialists on Dvonomir."

"I'm not trained in interrogation as a primary specialty, Sir, and you know that my abilities make me extremely susceptible to the emotions of those undergoing interrogation. I felt it necessary to have coherent answers that had been validated when making my initial report, and to break her to reduce the risk in transit. There were, after all, only two of us and Isabella was highly skilled in ships' systems." Sophia was silent for a moment. "I screwed it up, of course. Though I am quite convinced my reasons for conducting the interrogation itself were valid, my own inexperience and emotional difficulties led me to use an unnecessary bludgeon. The feedback cycle influences me rather badly during interrogation and my judgement can be--and was--clouded by it."

Leonidas nodded, and decided against giving voice to the doubts expressed by other officials who had reviewed the reports. Doubts he knew were probably justified. "Very well then. The review panel found no reason to doubt that your actions there were justifiable, though not the most reasonable course of action given your inexperience. It has been decided that you are to receive a verbal reprimand for the use of excessive force in the interrogation, as a consequence of being unfamiliar and untrained with the techniques you attempted on Ms. Sanchez."

Sophia closed her eyes and nodded, silent. She drained the rest of her coffee in one fairly convulsive motion, and looked back to Leonidas, coming off slightly like a hurt teenage girl, perhaps being called to the carpet for being out too late at night. "Understood, Sir," she finally, and simply replied. It was a strangely emotional reaction for Sophia and she finally elaborated: "I am not particularly pleased with the incident myself. It was unquestionably a failing."

Leonidas nodded, accepting her contrition if not the excuse she presented. "I'm sure it won't happen again. But unless it is a true emergency you are to leave psychic interrogation to controlled circumstances or delegate it entirely to specialists." That much was for the review panel, and the records. "Now that you have been reprimanded that is the end of that. Both of you are owed the thanks of the Empire for your accomplishments. I know you won't accept a promotion, and you seem to have found your own fine reward over the course of the mission, Sophia. But for you, Lida, I have orders transferring you to Earth for additional training at our educational facilities in the capital. You have not completed the requirements for promotion to Inspektor... yet."

Lida's excitement was contagious. That was more than she had ever thought to achieve. The second-class Service Award, a transfer to Earth, even the possibility of early promotion. "Thank you again, Sir. It's an honor to be selected for further training on the homeworld. I won't let the Empire down."

Sophia smiled softly at her partner's enthusiasm, and quietly ordered herself another cup of coffee, slumped back in the chair with a distinctly thoughtful look on her face. Then she spoke again. "The Titicaca, Sir. What do you think?"

Leonidas chuckled at the suggestion. "Yes, that should be a fine name for what appears to be quite a fine vessel. The Navy will register it as a reserve auxiliary vessel to go with your reserve commission, and you'll have access to their facilities for repair, refuelling, and so on. I just hope it doesn't tempt Naval Intelligence to try and poach you away from us in the agency proper."

"Taloran dreadnoughts do have rather excellent steam baths," Sophia answered back with a faint yawn and a softly threatening tease of a smile. “And they’re a favourite and easy subject for NavInt to go spying off on…”

He feigned shock before shaking his head and laughing with her. "Well, I think I can promise your next assignment will be somewhere outside the home universe. In the meantime you've got the mandatory two weeks of leave, and that goes for you as well, Lida. In your case we've made arrangements for you to stay over at Waidhoften for the term of your training here on Earth, and that'll begin as soon as your two weeks leave has expired."

"Actually, Sir, I'd like to take some of my extended vacation time. Quite a lot of it, actually, if that can be arranged. I think after this mission," Sophia continued, "I need it to regain my health and sense of balance. I need to be able to reflect on precisely what happened with the interrogation of Isabella out of my own personal sense of responsibility, and have some time to consider my responsibilities and how I might avoid such a situation in the future. I also have a family matter in regards to my niece I wish to take care of, a positive thing rather than a negative one fortunately, and also I wish to be available to provide testimony at several trials doubtless to result from the imminent taking of New Kiev. In short I'd like to use some of that accrued vacation time to take an extended leave of absence to let me travel within the Empire."

The request took Leonidas by surprise, but he gratefully agreed. "There is nothing pressing now, thanks to your success. And you certainly have the vacation time to use. I'll gladly expedite the paperwork for your leave."

"You told me I needed to be mindful of my health," Sophia had easily caught on his surprise, of course. "So I took the events of the mission as a general sign that I needed a serious hiatus from my work. That and, for once, there's something I actually feel like doing. My niece Jelica always wanted to work in space navigation, and I paid for her technical education--first in the family other than me to go to school--but she's been having trouble finding work without much experience. I'll take her for a cruise on the Titicaca so she can build her operating hours up."

"Well, I have been pushing for you to take more time off. It is a worthy enough cause, as well. And familiarizing yourself with more sectors of the Empire will be useful." He grimaced. "I doubt we can keep ourselves free of Alliance and other interuniversal interference forever, so you may yet find yourself spending more time here. But yes, certainly, I'll have that request forwarded through as soon as possible and I hope you enjoy the time you spend with your family."

"Thank you, Sir," she glanced to Lida. "And, thank you, Unteranalytiker, for the support you provided me on this mission. We'll doubtless run into each other again at Waidhoften, but for the moment, I hope you enjoy a very well deserved exploration of the capital and the surface of Earth. You're always welcome to call on me in Prague as well, of course."

"I will call on you before you leave," Lida promised. "I will have to explore Vienna, of course. My parents will be so proud to get a message from me there." She smiled gaily at the thought of perhaps crossing the path of some Court figures. "Prague sounds nice too and it's not far away, so maybe I can spend some days there too."

A few further pleasantries were exchange, and finally Leonidas brought the debriefing to a close with a final formulaic admonition to keep the details of their mission secret. Lida left first, eager to arrange the first possible transport to Earth. As Sophia headed out, von Pleven held her back. "Sophia, the recorders are off. Now tell me, what really happened with Isabella? I know you too well to believe you just lost control of your powers that grossly, much less to imagine that you did out as some kind of revenge." That was the main consensus of rumor going around informed circles, but he had dismissed it out of hand.

"Because the catechism of the Catholic Church explains that we may hold out hope of salvation to those who are not of sound mind regardless of their sins," Sophia answered without a trace of hesitation, "that a state of grace might be extended to those who no longer have ability to be redeemed by the Church. I let myself get to close to people on this mission, it's true and that's why I'm taking the vacation. But of course not in a way that would ever compromise my integrity to the Empire. You see how I have resolved this issue. I cared about her, so I gave her the highest gift I could: The chance for eternal life. She was an atheist, and a desrolinist, and completely given over a martyr's complex for their cause. She would have been shot, and gone straight to Hell. And I knew I could never convert her, so, I committed her to the infinite grace of God, you might say."

Leonidas sighed. This was exactly what he had expected. "I'll leave it to your priest to handle the theological implications of what you did. I don't believe the Church has ever favored lobotomizing non-believers in the hopes they would then be saved, though." He looked at her, sympathetically but exasperated. "Don't make this a habit, Sophia. It will call into your question your professionalism and objectivity, and is far outside regulations about handling prisoners. Your superiors will forgive much, but their patience has limits with even the finest agent."

"I won't do it again, Sir. I haven't done it before. If I may say it simply, she brought it on herself. First time I've been in a position where I've been encouraged to defect by a senior leader of an organization hostile to the Empire. And she debates hard. She tried to convince me that I'd be happier as her lover, able to live the life I was naturally suited for, and that my powers didn't change my own desires, at heart." A breath. "She's wrong, of course, but that wasn't the point; she was trying to convert me, and so, naturally... I was trying to convert her. I rode that to its natural conclusion with the emotions brought on by her desire to 'save' me."

"That much is in the report..." Leonidas nodded, satisfied with the explanation and her assurances. "So she did. Alright. But in the future, and I do not doubt you would know it, if you find yourself drawn into such a cycle... just render the prisoner unconscious."

"Yes, I understand, Sir. It wouldn't have been that hard, had I been prepared to do so. I wll be, next time."

"No doubt so." Leonidas nodded, decisively. "Well, I will head out to process that paperwork for you. You should have leave authorization in a couple of days, no later. I hope you enjoy your grand tour. And do send word to me now and then, if you will."

"I will," she smiled, the concern and seriousness seemed to wisp away again, in the mercurial world of Cardinal.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Chapter Twenty-Four: Ending a Winter Night's Dream.


New Kiev System.


The emergence of the grosslinienschiffe SMS Marschal van Voerwerde into the outer system of New Kiev was a breathless moment for Admiraal zer Raum Villem Pajukivi. Every transition was a potential ambush, and formation-keeping across the hyperspace-realspace boundary was a challenge for even well-drilled crews, nevermind a sector fleet. There were a great many, too many ways for even a small mistake to lead to serious damage, but he sighed with relief as his flag-bridge holotank popped appropriate blue-colored tags into the right emergence zones.

The Imperial commander’s relief was a nightmare for the New Kiev system defense command, on the barren moon Czernobog. Tachyon sensors had detected the sudden emergence of a comparatively vast amount of mass into realspace, and further signals identified the unknowns as warships. The Marschal van Voerwerde massed at empty displacement nearly forty million metric tons, and fully loaded out and prepared for battle over one hundred million metric tons. It was just one of eighteen Kaiser Ferdinand class dreadnoughts that instantiated into the system, and those were surrounded by another eighteen Siegreich class linienschiffen that were almost as massive. Swarms of lighter cruisers and destroyers established the further reality of a war-fleet that had come to New Kiev to stay.

Alarms were sent to Admiralty headquarters in New Vladimir, and every ship in the Great Rus fleet was put on immediate alert. The Great Rus fleet that had limped to New Kiev following a final defeat around Novo Apraxin had boasted twenty-four relatively modern battleships, but that had been over a century ago and the resources of the system were just not up to maintaining them. The decision was made to gather all the vessels still fit for service to fight it out around the fortress-moon Czernobog, with support from the cruder strike-fighters based on New Kiev proper. It would let the Rus put up the stiffest fight they could.

Back aboard the Marschal van Voerwerde Pajukivi was receiving the first of his own FTL scans of the system. He stood up from his command chair slash acceleration seatto track the plot on the holotank, and as he did so graced the flag-bridge with a towering presence. Pajukivi was beanpole tall and wiry, with the fair hair and pale complexion of his German and Estonian ancestors, which lent him a gaunt, almost scarecrow appearance. The spare grey jumpsuits favored by the navy for practical applications aboard ship did nothing to mitigate that impression with fancy braid and brighter colors as the service uniform did.

“For once our colleagues in naval intelligence seem to have known what they were doing,” he said, acerbically, as the picture of Rus ships became clearer. Three decades as commander of the Wladimyr sector fleet had worn down his faith that the spies knew what they were doing. But at long last, the most notorious haven of pirates and rebels was within his grasp.

His flag-captain was out on the main deck of the bridge, overseeing the operations of the specialists manning computer banks. Fortunately Kapitän Vernado Niarkhos had not yet jacked in with his DNI, so he caught his commander’s underplayed comment. Swarthy and somewhat squat looking, thanks to adaptations for the higher-gee colony of Olympos, he made a marked physical contrast to the admiral. “Count twenty-four hulks fitting the mass and signals signature of Boyar class battleship. A division of Koschei class cruisers based around Moon A, local name Bielobog, and eight Vozhd class light cruisers around Moon B, Czernobog. Picking up signals for destroyers in orbit of New Kiev, and it looks like Pavel Yeremeyev’s cruiser in an eccentric orbit. We’ve certainly got enough sensor readings on Grom Pobedy to know it when we see it.”

“And we have total surprise. They are bustling like a turned-over hive of nottermites.” His grin gave his face a certain corpse-like, death’s head quality. “We’ll go with tactical engagement variant Beta. We shouldn’t need the Torby’s battle-squadron to handle those ancient vessels, and the assault carriers will need an escort just in case. We’ll take the linienkreuzer squadron instead. The new Leopard class ships have almost as much firepower as the Seigreich and this will be their first engagement in the Wladymir sector. We may as well blood them while we have the chance.”

“Tactical variant Beta, aye aye sir,” Niarkhos confirmed.

Then he did plug in, and felt his mind expand as it was enhanced by the powerful capabilities of a dreadnought’s computer core. The dumb-AI cursorily acknowledged his presence as a new addition to the pool of operators with a miniscule fraction of a percent of its processing power. He could feel another presence in his mind, touching his consciousness, not with the upfront brute power of the AI but with the subtle hint of a psychic. Even the ship’s XO was not exempt from the scrutiny of the DNI watchdog corps of telepaths, though they were busy enough it was a momentary feeling and he adjuted quickly.

Communications lasers beamed out from the flagship, to the nearby vessels of the lead battle-squadron. Each vessel in turn beamed off a laser to another squadron flagship, and the process was repeated until the orders had passed down the chain of command. It was an elaborate lattice-work hierarchy of communication, and rather inefficient but most important undetectable by the enemy. There would be no signals to intercept, no intelligence to gain by simple volume analysis. Though there were other options.

“Perhaps we should consider using a telepathic command circuit after all, sir.” Vernado spoke a little hesitantly, but there was much to recommend. Using the ship telepaths to relay orders directly to DNI operators who would input them into the computer cores was close to instantaneous and allowed the highest degree of precision in keeping formation and executing flag signals. It had given the Imperial Navy a much-needed edge against the technologically advanced Ssi Rissan. It had also become a serious vulnerability against the Bogumils, who had more powerful telepaths, and so the practice had been abandoned but it remained in the drill manuals as an option.

But Admiraal Pajukivi shook his head, shooting down the suggestion. “Intelligence suggests that the Rus have few telepaths, but we hardly have confirmation and I would rather not find out the hard way. No, we’ll use the standard communications in this engagement. It should be over quickly enough once we close to range.”

That much was surely true. The Rus capital scale missiles were two generation behind those of the Empire and the greater the scale of action, the greater the disadvantage that would be. Their computers were less capable, which meant that their ECM and ECCM functions were much less powerful than those of Imperial vessels of the same tonnage. That would allow the Empire to inflict greater damage in the long-range missile duel closing in from one light-minute, while making the Rus attacks much easier to handle. The advantage would diminish, but still remain important in point-defense, as they closed into short-range engagements. At under ten light-seconds the fleets would be dueling at ten paces with machetes; the nature of energy weapons had not changed at all in centuries, but the bigger fleet invariably got the advantage of their short-lived brutality.

There were also the carriers. New Kiev had a large number of strikefighters based on the planet. They were much easier to produce and upgrade than warships, but the Rus were still far behind the technological and industrial curve. And Lord Stephens had called in favors from the beginning of the crisis, bringing in an elite carrier strike flotilla from maneuvers in the neighboring Kaset Wisai sector. The group included a detachment of thousands of Delphinian auxiliaries being introduced to service in the far rimward border. Now the preternaturally efficient cephalopod spacers and their advanced interceptors would come as a nasty surprise to the Great Rus strikefighters.

The burn in-system at least provided plenty of time for the defenders to collect themselves. The fleet could pick up frantic broad range signals, including an unencrypted system-wide alert ordering civilian vessels into New Kiev orbit for “defensive services to the state.” That caused Niarkhos to break out of his DNI-focused concentration and clap his hands triumphantly.

“Yes, they won’t scatter,” Pajukivi said dryly. “It appears we need not worry about their evacuation starting this cycle over again. But I expect a certain decorum on my flag bridge, Kapitän.”

“Aye, sir,” the flag captain replied, hiding his flash of resentment. He would be quite happy to take up his reward as a linienschiff commander once this tour of staff duty was over. Villem Pajukivi had what might charitably be called an efficient manner, but few subordinates liked him. The oppressive sense of the bridge wore on as the fleet cropped closer to New Kiev and the enemy vessels gathering over Czernobog. The Admiraal zur Raum seemed quite satisfied with the quiet attention to duty, and oblivious to the undercurrents of disquiet.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, as the engagement countdown had already gone into the red showing combat envelope immanent, one Rus ship broke off from New Kiev orbit and headed at full military acceleration straight above the system’s plane. It was unusual enough for Pajukivi to note it on the holotank immediately, and demand as much information on the vessel as possible. “Contract holotank display around that ship and filter all extraneous data!”

The three-dee projection zoomed in, showing the wire-frame orb of New Kiev and one enlarged notational symbol for the analogue to a heavy cruiser. There was a name attached to it. Grom Pobedy.

“Damn it,” Vernado said, quietly enough but with explosive volume on the almost-silent bridge, well above the steady hum of machines. After a moment of shock he bluffed through. “Killing or capturing Pavel Yeremeyev was almost as important as taking New Kiev in quieting down the Wladimyr sector. We can’t intercept with our present course and velocity, or even dispatch a cruiser division to chase the ship down. We’ve already failed half our mission objectives.”

“And due to circumstances beyond our control,” the Admiraal responded serenely. “Decorum, Kapitän Niarkhos. I should not remind you further. In any case it is merely one man, whose homeland now falls under our dominion. The Wilhelm Tell of Wladimyr sector will be hunted down like that prototypical rebel without this secure base to fall back on.” There was supreme confidence in his voice. “The ruling dynasty has cultivated a valued patience, on the bedrock assurance that God will always favor the Empire in the end. In twenty years Yeremeyev will be remembered as a Barbarossa, perhaps, but he will exist only in memory.”

“Picking up launches from the surface of New Kiev, total strikefighter content in excess of twenty-thousand!” The holotank immediately shifted at the alarm of the sensor operator, expanding outward to show the defensive network around the planet, including Czernobog. The swarm of tiny notational figures broke orbit with contemptuous ease and began accelerating at over thousand gees, trying to gain velocity to catch up with another group of fighters launching from Czernobog. The Rus fleet and its core of battleships was, too, beginning to move from orbit to build up a decent inertia before the combat commenced.

“Launch a full strike of interceptors as we enter two-light-minutes range, one magnum pass on the fighter swarm, ignoring the missiles the coordinated missile salvo. Our own strikefighters will launch after the enemy swarm has been rendered a non-factor” There would be time only for one magnum strike by the Great Rus fleet, which he hoped to blunt with his elite interceptors. If each Delphinian killed only two enemy strikefighters it would leave a paltry shield to distract his point defense from the missiles following them. And in turn Pajukivi’s own strikefighter contingent would face no attrition before hitting the point-defense zone of the Rus fleet.

“Aye aye, sir. Passing on orders for the engagement to the fleet. Carriers launching in one minute, thirty seconds.” A telepathic link would have shaved the minute off, Niarkhos thought with the portion of his mind not occupied in relaying orders to the fleet. But it was only a small part of his attention, and with the release of the tactical commands it would be smaller still. Battle had begun, and every synapse and neuron would be strained in the fight. There was no more time for second-guessing.

The Rus strikefighters barreled in as one mass, well ahead of the first missile launches from their old battleships. Those came on, a hundred long-range attack munitions from each functioning ship in a single strike massing over 2000 strong. Each missile boasted a heavy gigaton-yield warhead, as well as tons upon tons of targeting computer, electronic countermeasures, and maneuvering drives. From the concentration of ECW efforts it was apparent the Rus had targeted them all on the lead Imperial squadron, where the Marschal van Voerwerde was located.

Pajukivi took the development in stride. It was either a very good guess, or very good luck on their part, though it would be fleeting. His own battle-line would toss out nearly twice as many missiles of superior quality, against a smaller number of ships. But first, his pilots had their jobs to do.

The launch of dozens of missile-sized fighters from the internal bays of a carrier, repeated every thirty seconds, was an impressive sight in and of itself. Practical considerations meant that outward design of strikefighters and interceptors was nearly identical even across racial boundaries. Sleek, long weapons-buses more than nimble planes, they could accelerate at thousands of gravities with more highly efficient inertial compensators, strict crew training, and matter/antimatter reaction engines. Their shape was in some sense a harbinger of their utility, as well. Ultimately they were delivery platforms for powerful but short-range warheads and if the delivery vehicle returned, well and good, but if not their expenditure was regretted only slightly more than that of an unmanned missile.

And the Imperial fighter corps knew it, but defied the grim logic of material warfare with accustomed flair. The human fighters barreling out into space were decorated with artwork, and some boasted kill-marks establishing the pilots as veterans. The Delphinians did not use such elaborate artistry, but every one of their ships was painted with the off-orange flesh color the pseudocephalopods associated with aggression and threat displays. Those who had toured with human formations before had painted on bronze beaks at the nosecone of their interceptors.

Once in space such details were rapidly obscured. On the flag-bridge of the Marschal van Voerwerde they were just light blue symbols on a holographic display with some notional data on fields below. Color alone distinguished them from their foes as they screamed into the deeper system. Soon the two masses began to merge, and many read blips, and fewer blue blips, began dropping off the screen.

Space did not allow for dogfights as much holographic fiction depicted. There were no barrel rolls or daring acrobatics, no ability to loop behind an enemy. Inertia at the accelerations allowed by fighters made that quite impossible. The standard tactic for interceptors was one quick slash head-on, and then a rotation of the interceptor itself to take Parthian shots at the enemy fighter-swarm as they passed through. They would then try to dump their speed and reverse course back toward their carriers, but there was no possibility of another intercept pass before the strikefighters delivered their munitions. There was the possibility of intercepting the enemy on their retreat back to their own bases, but the interceptors would have used up most of their combat missiles and would be limited to lasers instead. It was still a discouraging prospect to a strike group that had already faced the massed point-defense of a battlefleet.

The action was distinctly anti-climactic. The Rus fighter swarm was gutted in a matter of minutes as the two forces passed into combat range and through a furball. On the holotank display aboard the Imperial flagship, the blue and red fighter symbols interpenetrated, and when they separated the red mass was a fraction of the size it had been. That represented thousands of deaths, and more were yet to come.

“Execute our own combined missile and strikefighter launch, now.” Pajukivi barked the order as he gripped on to his command seat. Now the Rus would see how a real navy carried out such an attack.




Pavel Yeremeyev watched from the plot on his own bridge as the Imperial fighters devastated the Rus strike. His brows narrowed in what any veteran of the crew would recognize as a serious warning sign.

There were fewer of those veterans around now. Kliment was gone, and the chief engineer had been hospitalized with nearly mortal wounds in the fighting to retake the ship. There weren’t enough replacements for all those who had died, and those he did get were green as grass from the navy’s academy. His decision to run appeared well-founded by the way the Rus crews and fighter command had been unable to coordinate an overwhelming strike against the Imperialists. That made it no more palatable.

“Bloody damn fools!” He roared out suddenly, bitterly, and sent a massive fist crashing into the armrest of his command chair.

The more skittish green replacements looked up, alarmed. Pavel dismissed them with an angry wave of his hand. The veterans shushed them down before they could ask questions or exacerbate the captain’s rage further.

The remains of the Rus strikefighter mass met the point-defense envelope of the Imperial fleet and seemed to disintegrate. The symbols for the friendly craft just disappeared, blipped off squadron by squadron by defense missiles and laser clusters as they barreled in to deliver short-range munitions. Several Imperial picket vessels were still overwhelmed, destroyers blinking out as they were smothered in antimatter munitions, but it was clear that the strike did no serious damage to the core of the Imperial Fleet. As The lone few Rus groups swung through the Imperial fleet and began reversing their acceleration, it was clear there would be no strong second strike. There were too few strikefighters and even fewer escorts to run the gauntlet of those supremely efficient Imperial interceptors.

“Twenty thousand dead, at least,” Yeremeyev said disgustedly. “For nothing. I told them a stand up fight would end this way. Who faces the Imperialists every year? Who knows what he is talking about?” The old battles in the Rus Admiralty came back to him. “The damn fools threw away those lives for nothing, not even time to evacuate!”

That had been the crux of his disputes with the Rus government and factions of the Navy. They were so damned complacent, so convinced the Empire would never find them. There was no effort expended on further colonization, to establish another fallback world. There were no plans to take the further remains of the Rus state out of the clutches of the Empire if the coordinates of New Kiev were ever revealed. The civilian vessels dragooned by the Admiralty could have saved hundreds of thousands of Rus subjects, maybe millions, allowed an escape through other friendly Outsider polities, kept the dream of freedom alive.

It would have been something other than a pointless lost battle that would spell the end of the Great Rus.

He brooded as the Rus missile strike came nipping on the heels of the disastrous strikefighter sortie. They too came on in a mass and passed through the same point defense envelope their manned cousins had already faced. If the missiles and fighters had been carefully coordinated they might have managed to overwhelm local defenses and sneak through the resulting vulnerabilities to direct attacks on the battle-line. Instead the destroyer and cruiser screening divisions were ready to shift their target profile and put up an effective fire against the attack.

Even though two thousand missiles was a relatively small salvo, even though the Rus were technologically inferior by over a century, they still did damage. The Grom Pobedy’s crew erupted in cheers as one of the Imperial cruisers disappeared off the plot, and Yeremeyev bit down the impulse to upbraid them. They had in the system alone four dozen more where that one had come from. Nor had the Imperialists strike back yet arrived, but it would shortly.

He gazed a baleful eye on the holotank display as he switched to show the status of the Rus fleet. On it, the red symbols of a massive fighter-strike and a missile swarm twice as large as that offered by the Rus, closed in together. Rus interceptors were less effective, few in number thanks to the decision to send everything at the enemy. They did little attrition as the waves hit the point defense envelope of the fleet.

Batteries of high-acceleration countermissiles on Czernobog at least added to the protection of the fleet even after it had pulled away. But it wasn’t enough. The Imperial strikecraft dove in on the much too light screen of the Rus, savaging the destroyers and cruisers that might have intercepted the ship-missiles. Nearly three thousand gigaton-yield missiles survived to break through into the teeth of the old Rus battleships. They mobbed the First Battle Squadron led by the mighty Bogatyr, the flagship of the navy.

The plot displayed a calm stream of updated information underneath the symbols of the vessels in question. It was an antiseptic way of depicting the carnage of combat that he was only too familiar with. The eight vessels of the First Battle Division were attracting four hundred missiles each, after a further whittling down through the point defense fire of the combined squadrons of the wall. Individual laser clusters skewed about on the ship hulls, but all too rapidly the warheads began slamming home and the Alderson Fields began heating up. Put enough energy onto a small enough area, and there would be burn-through damage and the bloody mangling of crew members.

One of the hapless green crewmembers shouted out in alarm. “Bogyatr is in the red already!”

Pavel speared him with a glance that left the young boy quaking. But it was true, they were absorbing dozens of hits already. There were more missiles screeching in, and there would be more strikefighter attacks. Before they even closed to the twenty light-seconds of real combat range the battle was already going badly for the Rus.

He watched in unexpressed agony for hours as the situation developed. The Imperials kept hammering home on the First Battle Squadron as they closed the range, with those damned steady four-thousand missile strong salvoes pouring into the defensive gaps created by the strikefighters. The Alderson fields on the old battleships expanded, burning ever brighter until they finally flashed brilliant-white and shut down. Their destruction would follow shortly, since an overloaded field generator was so much useless slag. It was a damned hard struggle to maintain his composure as he saw the flagship destroyed and with it, the link to the last exodus of the Rus state.

They were almost to the gravity limit where they could engage their hyperspace engines when the battle ended. The fleets had closed in like boxers leading with a hard right. At twenty, then ten light seconds separation between them, the missile salvoes had come too fast and too furious for Grom Pobedy’s sensors to track accurately. The technological advantages of the Rus fleet mattered less at such a range, but the Imperials had more ships, larger ships, and were in much better shape from the long-range duel. It was not a fair fight.

The Rus navy struck their fields before entering energy range. It was to be expected, and Yeremeyev did not begrudge the Navy their submission. When two fleets closed to energy range, only one would emerge. The weaker opponent was strongly encouraged to surrender before that point since the pointless destruction would see vast casualties on both sides. If the decision to push the fight to that point served no real tactical purpose, the winning side could be... vindictive about treating prisoners. Or rather, not taking them.

“Sir, there is a signal of surrender!”

Yeremeyev looked over at his comms chair, another new green officer. “I know,” he said, resignedly. “I saw on the display when the navy struck.”

“I mean from New Kiev, sir,” the midshipman corrected with silken care. “The Grand Duke! He’s surrendering to the Imperialists!”

Yeremeyev felt ready to explode. He bolted out of his command chair, and started pacing with the dangerous energy of a predator just waiting to strike at whatever prey was foolish enough to come into reach. The senile old fool had undoubtedly been nudged by those callow boyar bastards. They had wasted New Kiev’s existence enjoying their wealth and status, never once truly exercising any leadership, always taking the easy course... it was why he despised them. And now they were finally taking a course of action that would secure them their benefits once and for all.

He sank back down into his chair after biting off a rage. A sustained resistance on the ground would have been possible, might have restored some honor to the boyars. The end result would be the same, the Imperials ruling New Kiev. That was a necessary culmination of them ever learning of the system’s location, a fact that Yeremeyev had long appreciated. And now his dacha, his woods, his villages and towns and birthplace were all lost. He could never set foot on New Kiev again. And who was responsible for that?

As they shifted into hyperspace, Yeremeyev startled the bridge with a snarl. “That bitch, I’ll kill her!” Neither the crew nor the captain himself knew which bitch he was referring to.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Last Chapter: Homeward Bound.


The trials of Colonial Freedom League participants from Vladimir took place in the Supreme Court in the capital of Rzehv. An imposing, solid baroque structure, it was part of the "historic" downtown government center that formed an oasis of traditional architecture amid the towering skyscrapers that dominated the rest of the city. Gendarmes in modern personal armor shouldering assault rifles patrolled around the entrance, where sophisticated electronic sensors scanned everyone entering. The trials were being down in batches, which led to serious crowding of the courtroom once the families of the accused were accommodated. They were also a target for the few agitators who dared to show their faces, and rumors of surviving cells plotting breakout attacks were rife in the city. No chances were being taken by the planetary government, which had already resolved to use later supplementary trials of the higher leadership to make an example for the rest of the population.

But the batched trials were at least a way of dealing with the tens of thousands of lower-level activists and members quickly. Membership in the CFL had been criminalized centuries ago, when the organization had first been banned under the First Empire. It was simply a matter of establishing that the accused had been involved in the organization to justify a guilty verdict, and the court could move on to the more involved process of sentencing. Sentences had to be passed down individually and with due attention by the magistrate to the circumstances of involvement, as well as prior records and other mitigating conditions, before punishment could be handed down.

Tamara Beletskaya had been found guilty in the first trial, months ago. Only lately had the court docket cleared enough to allow them to go back and hand down sentence on her. Magistrate Ivan Federov had her case, and has listened attentively while Inquisitor Panacilk had made the argument for the relatively harsh penalty of forty years imprisonment and exile from Vladimir. She had run away to New Kiev and therefore given a more affirmative measure of allegiance to His Majesty's enemies, compounding merely subversive criminality with state treason. Her privileged background meant that she had no excuse of ignorance or want to drive her into the ranks of a criminal conspiracy. The Inquisitor did his job as well as possible, and Federov had taken notes throughout the presentation.

Her Advocate was the locally famous Emil Getyko, the foremost pleading expert on Vladimir. He gave a presentation of his own, presenting Tamara as the naive victim of a treacherous lover, seduced into a conspiracy whose consequences and gravity she didn't comprehend. He disputed the charge that Tamara's flight was premeditated treason but rather presented it as a panicked response to circumstances beyond her control, and subject to peer influence that made refusing personally dangerous.

Federov quizzed both the Inquisitor and the Advocate after their presentation, taking more notes as he did so. Once that was done, he called for the character witnesses to take the stand and have their say. As per the usual protocol now they would be asked questions by the Magistrate, and by the Inquisitor and Advocate as appropriate. Aside from the sentencing presentations it was expected that both lawyers would be neutral and even-handed in their approach, with a goal of recovering fact rather than strengthening their cases. The Magistrate would then deliberate and announce a decision that took into account all of the outstanding circumstances, the gravity of the offense, the propensity of the guilty party to reoffend, and prospects for rehabilitation. Emotion ideally had no role in the process.

In a court of law, an Evidenzburo agent was necessarily required to shed a certain degree of identity and approach the court honestly, even if operationally aliases could be used in legal settings, not so much for this private affair--which was not even required of her, technically: She could have refused the court under needs of the service easily enough, and had instead volunteered. Nonetheless, she dressed as she was, in long black skirt with light black fringes, a silver buttoned blouse, and long black duster with her hair firmly pulled back. But she still came off more as a teenaged girl at a funeral than a serious agent of His Majesty the Emperor, especially with her gloves respectfully removed in the courtroom. The name was read off as 'Inspektor Sophia Vuletic' by the court recorder and she rose and stepped forward to the witness stand and waited for permission to sit, her face schooled and expressionless.

"Do you, Sophia Vuletic, affirm that you will answer honestly and completely all questions posed to you by officers of this court, under penalty of imprisonment and fine for dishonesty or evasion?" The courts had had to deal with diverse enough religions and cultures even back in the pre-spaceflight era that the old oaths before God had been long dropped. A rationalist ethos held the threat of temporal punishment more efficacious for deterring perjury anyway, and that truth-telling was obvious enough of a virtue that all decent peoples regardless of religion would practice it. That last assumption had been spurred by, and played a role in, the process of Jewish assimilation with the abolition of separate Jew Oaths in the Empire and the other Habsburg lands.

"I so affirm, Your Honour," Sophia replied, answering and suppressing a faint smile that would have otherwise shown forth at the words, since Your Honour was the title of address for most Taloran military officers, not law officials. So strange, all I've seen. But Tamara needs me now, the stupid, foolish girl. She straightened herself slightly, and still seemed utterly innocuous in the court, perhaps to the point that some of them might not yet have gotten over that very explicit rank of Inspektor and the cold black garb she wore.

Federov nodded, and flipped a page of his notes to start over with a fresh slate. "How are you acquainted with Ms. Belatskaya, Inspektor Vuletic?" It was a standard, rather broad opening question that would allow the witness considerable leeway in telling her story, or when dealing with a spy, to not tell a lot.

"She was the initial contact in the cells that I made on Vladimir, Your Honour. I approached her by asking for shelter, identifying myself and my subordinate as other individuals, tourists from Dvonomir, who had been caught up in the Imperial dragnets. She offered us a place to stay to avoid being detained again during the curfew and we went home with her, her lover, and his friend. She treated us very well for a hostess, behaving like any other spoiled college girl I've met in my life, Your Honour, with no real apparent revolutionary ambition. But of course after relating various details--for example a finger I'd broken was attributed to the security services--it was ultimately let out that they were united together in a cell associated with the Rus revanchists. We then claimed to be members of the Colonial Freedom League, and asserted the severity of the situation and the need to flee--we directly begged to be taken off planet, and encouraged it to take place.

" Tamara had no real conception of the seriousness of her actions by that point, and took us shopping and other various and normal activities before her boyfriend managed to get the resources together to evacuate us through a network of traitorous, schismatic priests. It was only when we were changing in nuns' habits to escape the planetary surface that she realized the severity of her situation and broke down crying at the prospect of never seeing her family again. I comforted her and encouraged her to be strong then, and we ended up bunking together on both the escaping freighter and the Grom Pobedy when Pavel Yeremeyev picked us up. She was a friendly girl, basically innocent of moral failings except for her sexual weakness and susceptibility to influence on the account of others, both myself and her boyfriend alike. She settled into life on New Kiev with no revolutionary ambitions whatsoever and only regret at ending up so impoverished, as she intimated at our last meeting.

"I would note that she was released from detention initially on my explicit order so that we could take advantage of her cell to infiltrate the Rus State, and her flight from Vladimir was directly the result of my orders and my lobbying to their cell as well."

"A question, your Honor?" Getyko rose up from his seat at the defendant's table. Tamara herself was still in detention, and would not be brought before the court except for a final interview and to hear the sentence passed on her. Federov nodded his indulgence. "Inspektor Vuletic, then, it is your belief that Ms. Beletskaya would not have fled to New Kiev absent your own encouragement, done in your capacity as an agent of the Imperial intelligence services? I wish to establish this indisputably for the record."

"Yes. She would have never had the courage without my presence to stiffen her." Sophia knew better than to elaborate extensively; the Inquisitor's grilling would be a chance for her to explain with more nuance without compromising the statement.

The Inquisitor duly rose to the challenge, after a request to the judge for time. Joseph Panacilk had a reputation as an aggressive examiner, and he would not pull punches on an Imperial agent. "Inspektor Vuletic, the nature of conspiracy is such that many may be convinced by their peers to attempt some thing that they themselves, alone, would not dare to. You have already alluded to the moral weakness displayed by Ms. Beletskaya in the case of her boyfriend, one Genrikh Trefilov. Do you deny the possibility that he could have exercised the same role in directing Ms. Beletskaya's actions that you claim for yourself?" And, by implication, that someone else could step in with the same influence, casting doubt on the ability of Tamara to be successfully rehabilitated.

“No, I do not deny it and indeed readily acknowledge it, though I find such moral weakness and the attendant influence it leaves them susceptible to common among women of a certain class of which Miss Beletskaya was a part. Genrikh might however have been far less effective at overcoming her fears." She had to be careful when testifying, not to err to much on the side of a desire for explanation and exposition. The legal world, ironically, was not well suited for her, but she regarded the chore as an ethical one.

The magistrate looked up from his notes. "From your acquaintance, limited though it was, you are certain that Ms. Beletskaya was not motivated by treasonous or subversive intentions in her membership with the CFL? And that it was an exclusive consequence of her intimate relationship with another member of the group?"

"She found the idea of the revolt as told to her by her lover to be romantic," Sophia clarified, "But readily confessed to a completely nonexistant understanding of any of the ideology of the CFL or the Rus revanchists. She impressed me as really being mostly in it for the men from first to last. To say that she had intentions, Your Honour, would be to gift Miss Beletskaya with entirely too much intelligence."

“Then her behavior was a result of bad influences and acquaintances, and not malicious as such?" Getyko sensed an opening here, and took it. "Not from any desire to be a threat to the Empire?"

"Correct. Miss Beletskaya showed no malicious or outraged tendencies toward even blatant moral ills. She always appeared more incomprehending than not, and never capable of any kind of strong sentiment."

He nodded his concurrence. "Was she involved with anything at all more serious than a notional membership in a banned organization? Indeed, in your professional judgment, is she even capable of doing serious harm to the security of the Empire?"

"Only if being used as a completely ignorant dupe by the sinister and malevolent, Your Honour."

"I think that will be enough questions," Federov said, after the rapid exchange. They seemed to have extracted all relevant testimony from the agent, and time was a factor. There were a number of other witnesses to get through, and he wanted the sentencing wrapped up today. "Do you have any further observations on the conduct of Ms. Beletskaya that you wish to appraise the court of?"

"I believe firmly that if she can find even a halfway ethical husband the moment she's released, she will not again trouble His Majesty's courts for even the smallest of infractions," Sophia concluded in a simple and blunt summarization of exactly what she thought Tamara Beletskaya to be good for. Poor thing.

"Thank you for your testimony, Inspektor Vuletic." Magistrate Federov finished a final note, then put down his fountain pen and struck the judge's dais with a gavel. "We will take your observations into due account in our further considerations. You are henceforth dismissed from this court."

"Thank you, Your Honour." Sophia pushed herself up and politely stepped down, heading out to leave the court-room... So she could get to the spaceport and file her flight-plan. She'd been living on the Titicaca since arriving to avoid paying money for a hotel, and it was scarcely like the yacht could be matched by any hotel in her budget.

She was met at the exit by a well-dressed couple. The man was short and squat, rough-looking despite the expensive suit he had on, while the woman looked like a sister of Tamara's. They maneuvered around a bored looking bailiff to intercept Sophia before she got out of earshot. "Thank you for testifying for Tamara," the woman began. "She was never a bad girl, she just got mixed up with those CFL hooligans..."

"No, she was never a bad girl," Sophia agreed simply, watching the couple with rather studious eyes. It had been obvious where the defence counsel came from even beforehand, of course. "Quite the contrary, she was always affiable and nice and I do feel rather bad for her."

"Thank you for saying so. Your words will count for a lot with the judge." Tamara's father nodded, agreeing with himself. "I don't think we'll have to fear exile now."

"No, you won't. They might even let her out in fifteen years. She's had prolong, it won' t be a waste of a life, and she might learn responsibility in a serious prison like that. Perhaps. It won't be one of isolation, certainly. Or you may have to unmake bad habits she learns; I cannot say. But take care of her moral education while she is confined." Sophia turned away. "On Earth, Mister Beletskaya, I spend my time between my duties to the Empire in the service of the cause of the reform of prostitutes. Universally they are not bad people; just poor, and given no direction in life, and still might be redeemed by Christ.

“Well, Tamara has never had to want for the former, but if you wish for your daughter to have a life that isn' t one of but more misadventure and shame, consider carefully how you'll give her that direction. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have not seen my own family in several years, and need to be off to rectify that." Sophia gave them no chance to make a reply, certainly not in the decorum of an extremely heavily policed courthouse.


*********************************************


The field at Glina was a tiny little thing, 4,000 meters in length for the single runway and that was it, with numerous landing pads circling out from it. The incredible thing, then, was the long and lean yacht with its stub wings and high fuselage, overhead mounted engine room, which settled down on a heavy quad-set landing gear, one under each stub and one fore and aft, off to the side on one of the parking strips.

“Well, someone rich must be up hiking in the mountains or something, right, da’?” Jelica Vuletic informally asked her father as the man brought his old van, a simple wheeled all-terrain model with loading bay in the rear for cargoes, up into the Glina field vehicle park, staring at the ship which, though it wasn’t really that big, still looked like a superdreadnought from this close up, and must have been several thousand tons at least. Empty.

“It’s the size of an assault lander, Jelly,” Gradimir Vuletic answered with a bit of amused fondness. “So the person must be very rich indeed, or connected. C’mon, dear,” he addressed to his wife, who watched the interplay between the two with some faint irritation. Jelica’s sky-high dreams had mostly served to drain money from her distant sister in law without any result, to date, after all, and it was time her husband stopped coddling his eldest daughter.

His younger brother Tvrtko laughed at the nickname and followed them out. His wife, two daughters—the oldest one catching furtive glances at her engagement ring—and three sons followed. Gradimir had only Jelica and his two sons. And of their oldest brother, Vatroslav, there was nothing at all except for the gravestone which Sophia still visited every time she came home, and cried, every time she came home. It had been fourty years, and yet for their strange older sister, it had never slipped away. Nor had the bittersweet nature of her meetings with her cloistered sister Marija who she had slipped away from as they grew up at the same age, before the three brothers, as her psychic powers had manifest.

“Hmm!” Tvrtko exclaimed as they walked over together, all twelve of them, toward the terminal. “She’s got Imperial Auxiliary markings and a pretty hefty armament for a yacht. Might be a Count, bringing His Worshipfulness down to the planet to hunt or whatnot. But why Glina? It’s all claimed land, not like down in the south at Varazdin.” Where Tvrtko Vuletic and his family lived on a farm Sophia had helped them buy… The trip up to Glina to meet both his older brother and his sister was trivial in light of that. Particularly when she usually ended up paying for everything, including the lunch she’d suggested for them all in the terminal when they came to pick her up. It did have a good restaurant…

…Of course, recognizing her face was often hard, these days. But the figure remained mostly the same, and as they entered the restaurant the waitress waiting for them seemed well aware they must be the Vuletic party, and with a smiled greeting led them toward a section of the dining room laid out with a bunch of tables pushed together in a long set. And at the end was Sophia. Looking a bit worse for wear, truth be told, but without any hints of cosmetic surgery on her face since the last visit when she’d appeared with her latest look. That much, at least, was reassuring in some sense.

She had been looking through the menu, but leapt to her feet when she saw them with an outburst of emotion… “Gradimir! Tvrtko! God be praised that I see you again… Jelica, little Marija, Zvonimira… And, yes, my nephews—Slavco, Petar, Velimir, Mihovil, Dubravko, God, but it’s good to see you all!” The black clad woman, shorter than many of the addressed children, went down the line, hugging them and kissing their cheeks with inordinate fondness, pausing for a moment at Jelica to grin a bit dangerously as she did.

And then, warmly and more quietly, embracing her brothers in turn and offering polite greetings to their wives Emilija and Jagoda. Then she returned to her position at the head of the table—she was the eldest left, after all—smiling with intense brilliance. “I’m so glad you’re all here to meet me. It’s never a more heartening sight in all the world than to see my family together,” she offered with a quiet sincerity.

“And it’s never a better sight than to see you still breathing, big sister,” Tvrtko answered with amusement. Especially at the emphasis on big, since Sophia, dark, latin little Sophia with her legacy of Bogumil blood, who never quite fit in with the rest, had always been the smallest of the lot. But though she had not fit in to the slavic stock of the Vuletic family, the place they all occupied in each other’s hearts was the same without the slightest bit of difference, and nobody doubted first and foremost that Sophia Dragomira was every bit a Vuletic, even when she had turned out to be a telepath of terrifying power.

“Still breathing, but I don’t have a heartbeat,” Sophia answered in dry amusement… But from her tone, it also left her brothers with the chill of the idea that she wasn’t joking.

“Sophia…?” Gradimir queried more cautiously.

“Got banged up on a mission. Fortunately there was this stasis tube nearby. Can’t really say anymore, except that the artificial heart is manufactured by the same company on reserve to make them for the Imperial family, so don’t worry about the reliability!” The declaration sparked some giggles and laughs, some nervous and many sincere, from her nieces and nephews. Everyone knew as a matter of course that Auntie Mira, as she was most fondly known, was completely invincible in whatever she did for the Empire. Except for the adults, to whom Vatroslav’s gravestone provided all the contrary evidence necessary, including to Sophia herself.

So there was a moment of nervous silence, and Sophia managed to delicately avoid its lingering by correctly guessing that her nieces and nephews wanted a vegetarian manestra—correctly guessing in the sense that it was a game they’d long made of her invariably ‘guessing’ correctly with her powers. Well, it wasn’t perhaps their first choice, but Sophia had arrived on a Friday and they knew their auntie Mira, for all her kindness, was a stickler about religious observation. The day’s meal would be excellent, but they’d have to settle for seafood.

“Will you ever retire, Sophia?” Emilija asked from her seat beside Gradimir. “Surely you’ve found some fine officer willing to marry you, and settle down by the capital, by now… And with a wound like that…”

Sophia shrugged idly. “I like my job, Emilija, and I don’t see much reason to leave it. Nor have any men really stood out to me. Marija and I were always like that, you know. I might have followed her into the religious life if it weren’t for my talents, and the call to Imperial service. I still feel it, for that matter, which is a good enough reason not to retire. Anyway, I just picked up a major perk…” She looked next down the line to Jelica, and Emilija followed the eyes and frowned a bit at her daughter.

“So, Jelica, since I’m going to try and ignore the stereotypical ‘God help me, but you’ve grown so much since I last saw you’,”she exagerrated the voice to giggles, seeing as Jelica was the oldest of the lot at nearly twenty-five and all were now entering their teen years, “I’ve been hearing from your father that you’ve had real trouble certifying the hours you need for your sub-twenty-k-ton piloting license. Can’t get any apprentice work, usual encouragement not to be a spacer from silly men who don’t get the point of our society, und so weiter, und so weiter, she finished in amused German. “How would you like to pick them all up?”

“Mother will never let me join the Navy,” Jelica answered instantly, which got a vigorous agreeing nod from Emilija.

“Oh, you don’t have to. You can get them with me, Jelly,” Sophia answered with a grin, and gestured outside. To the view of the enormous interstellar yacht.

Gradually as people got the meaning, a hushed silence fell over the family.

“God above, Sophia, who did you….” The comment from Gradimir, who like Vatroslav had been in the army, was cut off just in the nick of time as the small telepath giggled softly to her younger brother and shook her head.

“Oh no. Don’t you remember how I’m a commissioned officer in the reserves? That fancy part about getting a civil service and a military paycheck at the same time. Well, as it happened, for one of my recent missions they put me to active duty for some inane bureaucratic reason. This paid off incredibly, because as it happens on that mission I,” another wave toward the yacht, “stole that from enemies of the Empire. The prize court awarded her to me. I’ve named her the Titicaca, and the auxiliary status means we can siphon fuel off from Navy bases, pretty much. So, Jelica, I’ve accrued more vacation time than I know what to do with while I’ve been in the service, and I’ve come to take you out for quite some time, cruising the Empire, making connections, and getting your hours. And then, I’ll let you use her whenever I’m busy, which as you know is, heh, quite often. Consider it our shared venture, and I think a worthy substitute for a gift.”

“Auntie Mira I….” Jelica’s eyes were wide as she stared across the table at Sophia.

“I already paid to send you to the training academy, so why should I stop now?” Sophia smiled brilliantly, and settled back to enjoy in a motherly way the look of shock on Jelica’s face as the soup was served.

“Thank you, sis,” Gradimir said with a quiet and intense enthusiasm, which his wife did not really share.

So much for her finally growing up and settling down with someone, Emilija shook her head, but did smile wryly. “I admit I approve more of this than I did of someday finding out you’d procured a commission for her.”

“Well, I had thought about that, and though I’m sure Leonidas could do something, there’s no guarantee that poor Jelica wouldn’t end up filing forms in the lowest level basement of some office in Vienna, which would kinda of not exactly be a spacer’s life,” Sophia answered cheerfully.

“Leonidas?” Tvrtko asked.

“My manager. We have those in the civil service too, you know,” Sophia answered as coyly as ever. They all had long figured out, considering growing up around her telempathic powers had been a fact, that she was in the Evidenzburo, but it was still not something discussed in public, or really at all. Sometimes Tvrtko and Gradimir would muse on her existence and safety in privacy over a few beers, but that was that, and so the point was quietly accepted.

Gradimir laughed softly. “Well, I’ll leave it at that. But thank you, sister. To say you’ve made all of Jelica’s dreams come true is a minor understatement.”

Sophia smiled brilliantly from the far end of the table, emphasizing the fine curve of her cheekbones and ever-youthful face. Though they’d all had the highest end prolong, unlike many others on their hardscrabble homeworld, and would be around for quite some time… All due to Sophia. But it had been too late for her parents, and she missed their steady presence at these gatherings. Yet there was much new life ahead, and the farm awaited. And so did a chance to finally establish a real relationship with at least one of her nieces and nephews, whose presence reminded her all the more of how she’d almost certainly never have children, and definitely never be able to raise them on her own. Her life had carried her much too far from that course.

“Thank you so much, Auntie Mira,” Jelica replied, almost trembling, as the waitresses came around again, getting somewhat distracted, so that Sophia went ahead and ordered her a gin and tonic.

That got a very reproving glance from Emilija. “If you’re going to teach her responsibility…”

“Well, I’m going to make her into a good spacer. But I think in her line of work being able to handle liquor is a job requirement,” Sophia answered with brilliant jovialty. “So, Jelica, steady your nerves a bit, though of course we’re not taking her up any time soon—I intend to stay here quite some time, this visit. Among other things, I need to distribute all the gifts I got from the capital, let’s see, there’s a new hunting rifle for Mihilov, a..”

A voice from the other end of the table, the twenty-three year old ‘little’ Marija—to distinguish her from her cloistered aunt—piped up at once. “Wait, what, you’ll stay? Thank God! I can actually invite you to my wedding and actually have my auntie Mira there, since grandmama didn’t live long enough… Oh, Auntie Mira, you must come, won’t you?”

“You’re getting married?!” This time Sophia did squawk.

“Yes, yes, and he’s a wonderful fellow—a lieutenant in the local gendarmes!—even if it isn’t as grand or fancy as a thing as taking Jelica off to go gallivanting through the Empire, auntie. I’m so happy and we’re to have a proper Christian wedding and everything, the first one for one of the family’s girls in quite some time…”

Sophia and Jelica exchanged a sheepish glance at that. “Well, of course I’ll go,” Sophia answered with a decisive shrug. “When is it?”

“Two months, three days!”

“Well, excellent, my little Marija. We’ll stay that long, take everyone on the cruiser through the system before that, and then… Well, Jelica and I will be spending close to a year on our cruie. I have a LOT of vacation time built up.” Sophia grinned. “So, how would you like to go on a honeymoon to Earth?”

The squeal was the happiest sound that Sophia had heard in quite some time, and she ducked her head down and shook it faintly. It might never really be the life that Sophia could have in the long run, but she was indeed happy these times she spent with her family. No, Isabella, you just never did understand. And I’m sorry.