“Majesty, if you’d only look at our numbers—”

  Sykora pushes the disconnect button. Marquess Porim’s obnoxious face vanishes mid-wheedle.

  “We have no time for your tantrums, Princess.” Jalak’s voice is flat and gunmetal calm. “Reconnect that call.”

  Sykora stands atop her command deck chair and hops to the hexagonal table. “I will not be reconnecting the call, Brigadier.”

  “Majordomo,” Jalak says, calmly. “Reconnect that call.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Brigadier.”

  “Vora,” Jalak says calmly. “Be a good girl and do what I tell you.”

  Vora crosses her arms.

  Jalak snorts and turns to the chief engineer, loitering at the edge of the room with a smirk on her face and her flask in her hand. She catches sight, then, of the opening command deck door. Of the Marines entering, led by a stonefaced Lieutenant Hyax.

  “Brigadier Jalak, I declare you insubordinate,” Sykora says. “You are stripped of your title, effective immediately”

  “Hyax.” Jalak’s composure is teetering. “I order you—”

  “Order me what, citizen?” Hyax glares. “Take that half-cape off your shoulder.”

  “Brigadier Hyax.” Sykora leans forward. “Escort Jalak to her cell.”

  A heated moment of rage flashes across Jalak’s face. She forces it back into a stiff, formal smile. “You must understand, Majesty.” She unbuckles her gilded half-cape and holds it out to Hyax. “This was never personal. It was all for your benefit.”

  Miss Tala’s face superimposes over Jalak’s. That same closed-off, grown-up smile. Sykora returns it with a vicious smirk. “I am the Princess of the Black Pike. I decide when it is personal. And this is personal.”

  Jalak raises her chin. “Then let this be the final lesson you learn from me, Sykora. You cannot trust even your advisors. Always keep watch on what they are doing.”

  “That is not what I have learned from you.” Sykora steps from the table and settles onto her throne. Her arms still barely reach its rests, but already it’s feeling much more comfortable. “Not in the slightest. I have learned to surround myself with people worthy of my trust, and then reward them with it.”

  “Then you’re doomed,” Jalak says.

  “We’ll see,” Sykora says. “Without you.” She nods to Hyax, who returns her look with grim satisfaction. “Brigadier. Take her away and put her in the brig.”

  Hyax salutes. “As you command, Majesty.” With a gesture she summons the duo of marines who stood at the door.

  The ex-Brigadier snatches her arm away from a corralling hand. “No need for that, marine. I know the way.”

  “Chief Engineer.” Sykora beckons her one-armed mentor over as Jalak is escorted from the deck. “Set up a line directly to Chancellor Treivu. No more of this filtering through the Brigadier’s office. We’ll send her back and let the Core decide what to do with her.”

  Waian bows. “You bet, Majesty.”

  “Majordomo.”

  Vora stands at huddled attention, peering with owlish, bespectacled anxiety over the lid of her tablet. “Majesty?”

  “You said once that you would be content to be my friend.” Sykora tries to sit up straighter than her stature allows.

  Vora’s tablet lowers by a few centimeters.

  “If we are to be friends, I must order you to be more than content.” Sykora decides sitting up straight is less regal than an imperious slouch. She attempts it, to mixed success. “I order you, in fact, to be delighted.”

  The captive privateers are led by a squad of Pike marines into the hangar. Dantia beams and steps forward from her shuttle, opening her arms.

  “Here they are,” she croons, as Brigadier Hyax grimly unshackles the prisoners. “My brave warriors. My lost lambs. How deeply I have missed you both.”

  “Majesty.” Captain Toniak stumbles forward, nearly falling in her haste to reach the Princess of the Bright Covenant. “Please forgive your miserable minor servants. Please. Forgive me, and I swear I will redouble every effort.”

  Dantia tuts affectionately. “I know you will, Toniak. I came here all ready to be so stern, but I think I must forgive you. Come here.” She beams as Toniak hugs her around the waist, and pats the woman on the head. “There’s a good girl.” She snaps her long-nailed fingers. “Loriss. Attend.”

  Loriss approaches Dantia’s outstretched hand, a glower on her face. “Thank you, Majesty,” she mutters, eyes to the floor.

  Dantia’s fingertips cup Loriss’s jaw and draw her face up to the Princess’s probing eyes. “You lost so many, didn’t you?” she murmurs. “I see it on your face. So many who counted on you.”

  Loriss’s steely exterior goes brittle. She buries her face in Dantia’s shoulder and weeps, shoulders shaking. Dantia clicks her tongue and rubs the sobbing privateer’s back. “Shhhh. Hush, now. Your Princess is here.”

  “Please let me try again, Majesty,” Loriss sobs, dropping to her knees with Toniak. “Please. You can put more time on my sentence. Just let me try again.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Poor dear. Of course you can. I hear you tried to save the away team. I hear you obeyed Her Majesty excellently. Such a good, loyal girl. How could I ever turn your service away?” Dantia scratches Loriss behind one notched, bangled ear. “I have the loveliest cell ready for you two aboard the Covenant. You’ll recover there. Nothing’s been done that your obedience cannot fix.”

  “Thank you, Majesty.” Loriss kisses Dantia’s signet ring. “Thank you, thank you.”

  Sykora shares an aghast look with her husband and the Brigadier.

  “This dame is screwy,” Grantyde says, in English (they’ve been reading Dashiell Hammett lately, and they’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of dame).

  “Verily,” Hyax says.

  Sykora loudly clears her throat to bring Dantia’s attention back from fawning over her captives. The Princess of the Bright Covenant casts a dismal frown up at her. She still has a hand on both her privateers’ backs.

  “I have your word, then, Dantia,” Sykora says. “And I have it on record.”

  “You do, Black Pike.” Dantia has recovered her imperial coldness. “This Shoskia woman. I’ll meet her and deliver my offer.”

  “And she will strut into her doom.” Sykora feels a twinge in her stomach and chooses to interpret it as a kid punching the air in triumph. “You’ll send me the transcripts after.”

  Dantia huffs and removes her touch from her prisoner-captains. “Take them away,” she says, to her sharp-eyed Brigadier. “Be good, my dears.”

  The groveling privateers depart, loaded onto the sleek black-and-green transport bound back for the Bright Covenant.

  Dantia watches them depart with a fond smile. It dissolves as her attention returns to Sykora. She takes a step forward. So does Hyax, palm rested on her pistol stock. Sykora gestures her back and stiffens her spine as the Princess of the Bright Covenant leans into her ear.

  Sykora feels her breath on her cheek. “Damn you, Black Pike.”

  “You shouldn’t have intruded, Dantia. It’s that simple. If you want to damn someone—”

  “Not for that,” Dantia hisses. “That’s just more of our stupid, useless little quarrels. That’s not what you did to me. I was living in such comfortable hopelessness. My heart muzzled and my body bowed. You have ruined everything.”

  “Are you angry with me for giving you hope, Dantia?”

  Dantia scowls. “Why shouldn’t I be? I don’t want it. Hope is a treasonous thing.”

  “If you want to stay where you are, Dantia, you’re free to.”

  “That is what you’ve shown me,” Dantia whispers. “That’s why I hate you.”

  She turns away, then, with a swish of her tail and her long auburn braid, and follows her marines and her prisoners back to the Bright Covenant.

  Another jolt of sensation slams through Sykora’s brain and forces her breath out in a high yelp. She bites down on the pillow, trying so hard, and oh Gods of the Firmament it’s too much. It’s too much.

  “Lonesome,” Sykora gasps. “Wait, wait. Lonesome.”

  Grantyde’s weight is off her. His hold on her slackens from an immobilizing grip to a soft caress. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s too much.” She heaves a breath and shakes her head. An overstimulated aftershock tweaks her hips. “I can’t. You’re hitting that spot every time. I can’t. Forgive me.”

  “Don’t say that. C’mere.” The full, hot warmth of him leaves her; she whimpers and squirms at the empty sensation that replaces it. Then he’s holding her close, and that’s solace.

  She groans and buries her face in his chest. “That horrible little harlequin Axyna was right. I’ve gotten too shallow for you.”

  “It’s not a problem. We’ll adjust.” His wide, warm hand cradles her and scoots her closer into him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Oh, don’t say that, dove.” She kisses his clavicle. “It feels amazing for a few seconds. It does. I just can’t take it for much longer than that.” She pulls his hand onto her stomach.

  A kick, as if on cue. Probably Aurora. Sykora flinches, then laughs with her husband.

  “Someone’s impatient,” he says.

  “I’m impatient,” she says. “And even more impatient now that I can’t take your dick anymore.”

  He curls his hand to the inside of her thigh. “Let me make it up to you.”

  She sighs with gratitude, and does.

  And his hands are so big and beautiful, so roughly textured and so infinitely gentle, and when he holds her she feels so small and so cared for, even when he gives a solid, playful tug to her horn, the insufferable bastard.

  And his name—his true name, the name his alien people intended for him—is such a perfect name to say in the throes of ecstasy he sends her into so easily now, the feral Gr and then the high, singing Aaa, playing her like he plays his guitar, drawing helpless, joyous music from her.

  And as she comes down, he whispers “Attagirl,” into her ear, and then kisses it, and her tail wags so fast her sacrum aches.

  She takes care of him in turn, hot and warm and really truly amazingly close to the taste of kavak. Then they lie tangled in the sheets, his thumb drawing circles on her hip, talking in soft cozy whispers about silly little nothings, about her latest sewing project and his favorite Maekyonite restaurants and what kind of stuffed animals they should give their babies.

  “Not a kindek,” she says. “If we give them a stuffed kindek they’ll want a real one. I don’t want to make false promises. What about some Maekyonite ones?”

  “I had the rattiest little giraffe,” he says. “Its eyes were these hard beads and I would always chew on them. I swallowed one once. That’s maybe my first memory.”

  “No hard beads, I think. Yes to a giraffe. I am so jealous you got to grow up with them. I want to see one.”

  “I didn’t grow up with them,” he says. “They were in Africa.”

  “Oh.” She frowns. “And you never went?”

  “Nope. Not yet, anyway.” She feels his breath vent. That ambiguous tint comes to his words, the way it always does when he talks about Maekyon. “I guess I’ll get the chance when we’re back.”

  “Are you still afraid?” she whispers. She nuzzles into his palm. He doesn’t put his hands on her neck, lately, not with their children inside her, and she begrudgingly understands in the same way she’s been drinking zaikem juice instead of wine. But if she squirms just right, she can get him to rest it on her jaw, and she can feel its warmth radiate against her jugular. “Did I do well On Harok? Did I make you feel all right?”

  This breaks him smiling from his fugue. “You did fucking great, Batty.”

  “Is there… anything you might want to call me?”

  His chuckle warms her chest like a slug of whiskey (God, does she miss whiskey). “Good girl,” he says, and curse her stupid submissive brain, it makes her toes curl. She needs these babies out of her, so she can be lithe and lethal and gorgeous for him again. So she can kill someone for him. Or ride him. Or whatever else he requires of her. She wants him to be proud of her and love her, and when she remembers that he does, even in this teetering cantankerous era of her life, she feels a druggy bliss.

  And a chamber of her soul—a chamber with the Empire stamped on it, with everything in its proper place, with the Empress’s stern portrait hanging from its wall—loses another tiny little piece of itself, crumbling into the warm dark.

  It’s the first time she’s noticed it, the first moment she’s felt it consciously. But she looks inside herself, and so much of it has already gone while she wasn’t looking. In a moment of panicky vertigo, she tries to summon her love, her fealty, her loyalty. It came so easily, once. Such pure love for the Empress it made her chest ache.

  Where did it go? Where did it all go?

  She squints for the Empress in her trophy room, tries to find that stern gold-rimmed face. But the portrait of Zithra XIX is lost in the dark. She’d have to get up out of her husband’s arms to see it. And she doesn’t want to.

  Her breath trembles; her eyes sting. Grant shifts in the covers. His fingers fan out to hold her closer. “Was that not what you were looking for me to say?”

  So well. He knows me so, so well now. And when I have his babies in my arms, what will happen to me?

  Is this how it was for Paxea? When she looked at Thror, is this how she felt?

  Empress, is this you losing me?

  “It was,” she whispers. “It was exactly what I wanted you to say.”

  Resurrection Raid

  by Morgan Grindall

  Graves are not forever, and freedom has a price.

  Teddy is a dead woman. She wakes in the Resurrection Raid with a companion and goal - she can defeat the Nascent AI and be reborn, or die here and have her soul fed into the data stream. Except her companion isn't what he seems, and there's a tag in her profile: LIMITER.

  Cato will get out. He has failed once, and he will not do so again. The System, the Resurrection Raid itself, an endless stream of dead souls seeking rebirth; none of it will stop him. Certainly not his LIMITER.

  Teddy and Cato can work together or die divided, but the Raid always takes its due.