II
The Study
In eons past, the Vanished Sea had rolled its waves on the world Raylicon. Now only a desert remained where those great breakers had once crashed on the shore. The empty sea basin stretched out in a mottled red and blue expanse to the horizon. The City of Cries stood on the shore of that long-vanished ocean. I knew that desert. I knew that city. I had grown up in Cries and lived here later as an adult.
I had never intended to return.
The Sleeker hummed through the night, banking over Cries, a chrome and crystal city that glinted in the desert. I could just make out the ruins of the ancient city farther along the shore, the original Cries, which my ancestors had built five thousand years ago. Beyond them, the pitted ruins of ancient starships hulked on the shore of the Vanished Sea, their hulls dulled over the millennia. They were shrines, enigmatic reminders that humanity hadn’t originated here on Raylicon, but on a blue-green world across the galaxy.
Earth.
It was the home we never knew, a legend grown misty with time until my ancestors called it a myth. Six thousand years ago, an unknown race of beings had kidnapped humans from Earth, left them on Raylicon, and disappeared with no explanation. Had a disaster killed them before they completed whatever they began with their captive humans? We never knew. They left my ancestors here with nothing.
Primitive, terrified, and confused, those lost humans had struggled to survive. Their kidnappers left behind only those ruined starships. However, those ships contained the library of a starfaring race, and desperation drove my ancestors to learn those records. The library contained no history of the ships, but they detailed eerie sciences unlike anything we used today. Although it took centuries, my ancestors learned enough to develop star travel and went in search of their lost home. They never found the birthplace of the humanity, but they built the Ruby Empire, an interstellar civilization that spread its colonies across the stars.
That was five thousand years ago. Built on poorly understood technology and plagued by volatile politics, the empire soon collapsed. The ensuing Dark Age lasted four millennia, but we did finally regain the stars. We split into two empires then: the Eubian Traders, who based their economy on the sale of human beings, and my people, the Skolian Imperialate. Eventually our siblings on Earth also developed space travel. They had a real shock when they reached the stars and found us already here, building gargantuan and bellicose empires.
I had left all that history behind when I left Raylicon. Yet here I was, back home. The flyer soared into the mountains. We landed on the roof of a solitary building high among the peaks. The crenellations bordering the roof were carved into mythical beasts, their fangs and horns sharp. Onion towers topped with golden spires loomed above the flycar, reaching into a sky brilliant with stars. I took a good long look through my portal, and sweat trickled down my neck despite the climate-controlled cabin.
As I released my webbing, the pilot left the cockpit. I wished I could place his background. He had the black hair, smooth skin, and the tilted eyes of Raylican nobility, but that made no sense. A nobleman wouldn’t work as a private pilot no matter how upscale the transportation.
The noble Houses traced their heritage back to the Ruby Empire. In this modern age, an elected Assembly ruled the Imperialate, and the Houses no longer held the power they wielded five millennia ago. The days when warlike matriarchs had kept their men in seclusion were gone; now both women and men held positions of authority. The Houses kept to themselves in their rarified universe and would never bring in a stranger to deal with their problems, especially not a commoner. Especially not me. So who else could afford this place? A crime boss. No wonder she had been cagey about her identity. She wouldn’t be the first underworld mogul to cover her operation with a phony aristocratic sheen.
As I disembarked, warm breezes ruffled my hair around my shoulders, sending black strands across my cheeks. When I worked, I pulled back my hair, but in Selei City I had become used to letting it fall free. Not here. I clicked a band around the tresses, keeping them away from my face.
Seven years had passed since I breathed the parched air of Raylicon. All that time in the gentle atmosphere of Selei City had spoiled me; the air here felt hot and astringent. It smelled dusty. Fortunately, the nanomeds in my body could deal with the differences. They also gave me the health and appearance of a woman in my late twenties, though I was well into my forties.
“This way,” the pilot said behind me.
Ho! My reflexes took over and I spun around, ready to strike. Although I stopped in time, the pilot had already raised his fists. He was unnaturally fast, another indication he carried biomech inside his body. Its system would include high-pressure bio-hydraulics, modifications to his skeleton and muscles, and a microfusion reactor for energy. It could give him two or three times the strength and speed of an unaugmented human. Given how quickly he had responded, he obviously carried a top-quality system.
Mine was better.
“My apologies.” The pilot lowered his hands. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No harm done.” My thoughts hummed with warnings. Biomech webs cost as much as Jag star fighters and weren’t available to civilians. I’d received mine when I served in the Pharaoh’s Army. Either this pilot had been a military officer or else he worked for someone with more access to military technology than even some branches of the military. Illegal access. I was beginning to wonder if this job was worth even the huge cut of cream it put in my bank account.
We crossed the roof and entered an onion tower through an elegant archway. Inside, stairs spiraled down, nothing mechanical, no modern touches, just a beautifully designed staircase. Lights came on as we descended, however, golden and warm. Tessellated mosaics inlaid the ceiling in gold, silver, and platinum. The place reeked of wealth.
At the bottom, we reached a gallery of horseshoe arches. Our footsteps echoed as we walked through a forest of columns tiled in precious metals. I saw no sign of tech-mech, but golden light poured around us, and it had to come from somewhere. We left the gallery through another large archway and followed halls wide enough to accommodate ten people side-by-side. Mosaics patterned the walls, blue and purple near the floor, shading up through lighter hues, and blending into a scalloped border at the ceiling far overhead.
The low gravity, sharp air, and exotic decor saturated my mind. As we forged deep into the maze of halls, my spinal node created a map. We walked in silence. I tried to talk with the pilot, but he never responded. Finally we climbed a staircase that swept up to a balcony. At the top, we passed two archways and went through the third. The door swung on ancient hinges that should have creaked but in this unreal place were so well oiled, they didn’t even whisper. In the study beyond, bookshelves lined three of the walls. And they held real books. Not holobooks, mesh cards, or VR disks, but tomes with paper pages, the type usually found only in museums. One lay open on a table. Calligraphy in glimmering inks covered its pages, which were edged in gold. I had never seen even one such book, let alone a room packed with them from floor to ceiling.
A dark-haired woman stood across the study gazing out an arched window with her back to us. She turned as we entered, and her presence filled the room. She stood two meters tall and had a military bearing. Dark hair swept back from her forehead with gray dusting the temples, and her chiseled features could have been on a classic statue with her high cheekbones, straight nose, and tilted black eyes. The elegant cut of her dark tunic and trousers showed no hint of flamboyance. She could have been any age from forty to one hundred and forty; I had no doubt she could afford the best treatments available to delay aging.
The woman inclined her head to the pilot. “Thank you, Captain. You may go.” She spoke in Skolian Flag, a language adopted by dignitaries who interacted with many different peoples. However, she had an Iotic accent. It almost sounded authentic. Almost. No one spoke Iotic anymore except scholars, noble Houses, and pretenders who wanted to sound cultured.
The pilot bowed and left the study. I wondered if my host expected me to bow. I didn’t move.
The woman considered me. “My greetings, Major Bhaajan.”
I nodded to her. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, Lady.” I didn’t know if she truly carried that title of nobility, but it was more tactful than, Who the hell are you?
“Matriarch,” she murmured. “Not Lady.”
I froze. Hell and damnation.
I quit hoping she was a crime boss. Her Iotic accent wasn’t “almost” authentic, it was genuine. This was no phony palace. I had come to the real thing.
“Which House?” I asked. Blunt maybe, but finesse had never been one of my strong points.
Her gaze never wavered. “Majda.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Majda. Wrong again. I wasn’t facing nobility.
This was royalty. Genuine, bonechilling royalty.