”The woman plotting our downfall followed the protocol and procedure set before her to the letter.” Sykora hops from her throne. “She trusted in precedent, and when precedent failed she trusted in her sense of fealty and duty to protect her sanity from the unspeakable task that was set before it. But she trusted in vain.”

She paces the table, her tail switching back and forth with each step. Grant watches her and realizes this must be how it felt to kneel in fealty to Joan of Arc or Hatshepsut. He is not sure his wife has ever looked quite so beautiful.

“She murdered millions and broke her own mind into pieces.” Sykora reaches past Waian and plucks the bag of nuts off the table. “Now she sees the servants of the Empress as the same genocidal automata she proved to be. I will show her that the strength of the Taiikari Empire rests not merely in our fealty to Zithra XIX, but in Zithra’s faith in her servants, and the power she has vested into our hands.” She roots around in the bag and produces a handful. “I will demonstrate to her that she did not fail on Malkest because of the Empire, but because of her own weakness.”

“But she followed the Empress’s order.” Vora’s puzzlement is fermenting into unease. None of them have realized quite what Sykora is saying.

“She did,” Grant says, as his wife chews and swallows. “But the Empress ordered her wrong.”

A stunned silence around the command table. Vora breaks it again, her voice high and tight with uncertainty. “That’s… that’s a dangerous thing to say, Majesty.”

“Do you presume Her High Majesty would disagree?” Sykora returns the bag to its place by her paralyzed chief engineer. “Do you think she considers Malkest a victory?”

“No, of course not, but…”

“She has been working for kilocycles now to bring the great bulwark of the Empire into a new era,” Sykora says. “She has done so through deeply unorthodox means. It is time for us to square our shoulders to the great glacier and help her push. I would sooner risk her displeasure at the venture’s onset than bring her despair at its conclusion.”

Waian’s lips are tightly pulled, into the anticipatory beginning of a grin or a grimace. “Kora,” she says. “Grantyde. Kids. What are you saying?”

“Grantyde and I are moving to cancel the annexation of Maekyon,” Sykora says. “The Black Pike sector will recognize it as a Mandate system and we will stand as its protector until its people integrate fully into the Imperial firmament of their own volition.”

“Gods of the fucking firmament.” Behind the cherry-red frames of her glasses, Vora’s eyes dilate. “You—this—we can’t.”

Sykora takes her heiress’s hand. “We can, Vora. We must be brave. But we can.”

“This is tantamount to treason, Majesty.” Lomanza’s emotionless countenance remains on, but something in her body language makes it clear how threadbare the mask is becoming. “By many metrics it is indivisible from treason. Our duty is to annex Maekyon.”

“Our duty is to turn Maekyon imperial, and we will,” Grant says. “Eventually. But we aren’t here to take what they won’t give.”

“Majesty.” Lomanza rotates to him with machinist precision. “With all the considerable respect you are due, this closeness you have to the situation—of your homeworld, after all—”

“It was my idea, Majordomo,” Sykora says. “My husband had to be convinced. Convinced to save his world. This is my point. This is why I am sure. Who is the only true rival to a dutiful servant in devotion?”

“A hunk?” Waian ventures.

“A lover,” Sykora says. “We will win Maekyon the way I won my Maekyonite. We will show them the glory of our people and the wonders that we offer; we will place our faith in their hands and our oath of stewardship at their feet; we will open our arms wide.”

“We’ll steal them a really expensive guitar.” Waian’s the only member of the command group with a smile on.

“And we will hope.” Sykora approaches Grant and stands beside him. “With the desperate courage of a love’s confession. And when they choose us, our bond will be stronger than any coerced shackle could ever be. We will make them fall in love with us.”

She radiates confidence. But her tail is wrapped so tightly around Grant’s wrist that it’s leaving a mark.

“Now take that to the Empress, if you wish, Majordomo,” she says. “I know she’s awaiting your next report on me. I don’t care.”

“Majesty, I’m—”

“I don’t care,” Sykora repeats. “I bear you no ill will. I fully intend to present my plan within the tenday, regardless. We must have it in-hand before we arrive in Maekyon’s orbit for our grand reveal. You are sworn to obey her, so obey her. Spy on me. Warn her. But you are sworn to obey me, too. And I command you to aid me in the venture I decree. Find me the legal backing for a Mandate.”

“This will be a significant challenge.” Rare emotion is on Lomanza’s face. Grant’s never seen her this distressed. “All the files are older than the dataframes on which they’d sit. I’d have to search museums.”

“Then search them.” Sykora’s ironclad stare reminds Grant of the Empress, whenever she removes her glasses and shows her true face. “I’ll not be deterred. Hyax, Waian, Vora. You will reorganize your working groups into a tricameral committee and deliver me a blueprint for a modern Mandate stewardship. I refuse to bring the Empress some archaic scheme from the pre-membranal days. We don’t need razor fidelity, but I want this path to take us forward, not back. Presume, at the drafting stage, ready cooperation from Maekyon’s governments in the facilitation of citizenship for any Maekyonite who seeks a place in the Empire.”

Hyax snorts. “Not fucking likely.”

“I know it’s not,” Sykora says. “But we have a tenday until we’re in Maekyon’s orbit, and I need to put this up in front of Her High Majesty with enough time to revise all my bloody speeches and get my hair done up. We need something that can stand on its feet and sing for its supper. We’ll bolster it later, once the waters are rising. That crotchety Egon individual can help, perhaps.”

“The UN is kinda…” Grant wiggles his hand. “I mean… it’s better to have them than not have them, of course, but—”

“What do you mean?” Waian asks.

“We should focus on the superpowers for this,” Grant says. “Egon there onscreen is sure to be useful, but he’s not, like, the leader of the free world. I don’t think.” He rubs his chin. “I mean—I could be entirely wrong about the way my planet’s governments work. That was a common enough anxiety we all had. Have. A lot of conspiracy theories about the UN. We—”

“Boss.” Waian interrupts. “Boss, what I’m asking is what does UN stand for?”

“United Nations.”

“Ohhh.” She gives her forehead a light tap. “Cause it’s in Maekyonite. Had me confused for a second.”

“I’ve gotten used to ZKZ. You’ll catch on.”

“Right.” Sykora claps once. “We’ll take thirty minutes for hydration, recalibration, and making what calls can be made. Address the exigencies and pause the rest. We’ll reconvene on a working lunch, because all I’ve had in the last few hours is Waian’s nuts.”

The command group disperses. Hyax has a look of monastic concentration on her face as she approaches the vectors of whatever weighty tragedy presses on her mind. Waian’s maintained her genuine grin. She intercepts Vora and falls into whispering with her, perhaps in an attempt at comforting the poor Princess-in-Waiting, who shakes like a lapdog.

Lomanza’s just sitting, staring at her hands. The one member of the command group whose loyalty remains in proper Taiikari alignment. Cycles of being an interloper, and as soon as the group accepted her, now she’s back on the outside. It’s hard not to feel bad for her. Grant hopes that she is as comfortable with isolation as she professes.

Behind her, the screen they watched the UN address on has returned to its default diagnostic view of the thin, elegant spire of the Pike. In the screen’s corner, a hexagonal panel is flashing the cool blue of an Imperial advisory alert. Someone is outside the command deck.

Grant recognizes who. He grabs his wife’s tail before it can fully unwrap and leans to her ear. With him sitting and her standing atop the table they’re in ideal alignment.

“Batty,” he murmurs. “Do you mind if I’m a little late to that kickoff?”

“Hmm? Why?” She follows the tilt of his head, to the video feed by the doors. “Ohhh. No, not at all.” Her ears fan outward. “Did it work?”

Grant put a finger to his lips. “I told him you didn’t know. Easier for him that way, I think.”

“You’re probably right. Take your time, dove. Take the day, even. I imagine we’ll begin with more reproachment and flightiness, anyway. Nothing you have to deal with.” She kisses him on the tip of the nose. “We’re doing it, my love,” she whispers. “The Mandate of Maekyon. Our fourth child.”

“Let’s just hope it’s as beautiful and well-behaved as the others.”

“Oh, it’ll be a mongrel, I’m sure. We’ll love it regardless. Give Ajax as much of my love as you deem operationally important.”

“You got it, hon.” Grant returns Sykora’s nose-kiss, or tries to; with the speed and precision of her lethal Princess training she jerks her chin up at the last second and catches his lips with hers instead. Her tail thwaps him on the butt as he straightens out; then she scurries back onto her throne.

“Quick revision,” she announces, with imperious formality. The scattered command group turn attentively. “Grantyde has other business to attend to. We will begin with the initial outreach strategy, and bring him in tomorrow to provide feedback from a Maekyonite perspective.”

“We did the initial outreach,” Hyax says. “We told them we were planting a flag on their faces. A rather disastrous thing to walk back.”

“There’ll be plenty of far worse problems to throw that disastrous word at, Brigadier.” Sykora eases with feline liquidity into her usual Princess Slouch atop her throne. “Keep a few rounds in the magazine, won’t you.” She blows him a kiss. “Go on, Grantyde.”

“I won’t be long.”

“Be long. Be away from this for a while. The children have their caregiver and the command group does, too. I’ll keep them from venting themselves.”

Waian snorts and catches another roasted nut in her mouth.

Grant knows he ought to be frightened by this crazy-ass leap into the unknown. But Sykora is so full of heady hope that he can’t help but smile at the onrushing freight train.

Master Sergeant Ajax waits in parade rest on the other side of the command deck door, shooting the breeze somewhat one-sidedly with the duty guards.

“They could make this hallway sexier, though,” he says. “I get that nobody but the command group sees the privacy-hall entrance that much but they don’t see the strategos center down in the marine wing, either, and it has those badass polearms on the walls.”

“There’s plants,” Private Cyndor says.

“They’re just mox-ferns,” Ajax says. “Ought to get orchids, but I suppose they’d have to get the watering bots up here for that. Majesty.”

That last word electroshocks both the on-duty guards into stiff salutes. Ajax mirrors them, but Grant’s learned to tell the difference of minor degrees between a salute with formal oomph and something friendlier and more casual. Odd thing to read into a salute; his is an odd life.

“Walk with me, Master Sergeant,” he says.

“Yes, Majesty.”

Grant leads Ajax to the lift and hits the button for the hab ring. “You watch the tape?”

“I watched the tape,” Ajax says.

“You like how I edited it?”

Ajax’s grin is as welcome a return as the sunrise on Grant’s long-lost homeworld. “Blew my goddamn eardrums out with your bullshit, Majesty, but it got the job done.”

“And you’re not at all curious?”

“Nope,” Ajax says. “Not about whatever secret bullshit you told me, anyway. Where are we going?”

“We are going to the only place on this ZKZ with alcohol that can get me drunk,” Grant says.

“I’ll just have water.”

“Don’t make me order you, man. Just because we’re friends again doesn’t mean I won’t order you.”

Ajax is stonefaced, but in classic Ajax fashion. None of the recent iron bars over his face. “We’re friends again?”

“I so order it,” Grant says.

The silvery lozenge of the lift descends in its vacuum tube through a hole in the artificial violet sky, down to the hab level. Grant departs into an instantaneous foot-traffic jam, as the crimson-clad crew of the Black Pike stop what they are doing to bombard their Prince with bows and salutes. He returns as many of them as he could be expected to, crossing the ferned thoroughfares and looking for the hab block with the pair of harpoons over its door.

The amber call button on the door is lit. Someone is home. Grant pushes his thumb into it and it hums a smooth intercom-on greeting.

“Hey, folks,” he says. “It’s the ruler of the world. And Ajax. Can we come in?”

The cabin door hisses open and issues forth a cold blast of air conditioning. Grant remembers belatedly how low the Eqtorans like to crank it. Ipqen-mek-Taqa stands in her doorway, wearing the standard off-duty Ipqen gear of slouchy drop-crotch leggings and a heavy-quilted sleeveless trench. “Majesty.” Her eyes go from Grant, to Ajax, to the service pistol at Ajax’s belt. “Is this… is anything wrong?”

“Is Ruaq around?” Grant asks.

“Nosir. She’s working. Harvest day for the mak-pears on the agro level.”

“I need a drink,” Grant says.

“Uh.” Ipqen darts a look over her shoulder at the cozy clutter of her and Ruaq’s cabin. “Here?”

“They took all the Eqtoran beer out of the taphouse after Ensign Kamen got drunk and called me a dildo,” Grant says. “And I don’t know about Master Sergeant Ajax, but I just got my best friend on the Pike back, and I think you’re probably in the running to be my other best friend on the Pike, and you’ll seal the deal if you have any drinks that drink like a drink.”

“I take that as a personal challenge to the honor of the Eqtoran Protectorate.” Ipqen steps to one side. “Get your slim asses in here.”