Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (20 page)

Natombe didn’t care that he wasn’t invited to
the party. With an intelligence system that rivaled ISIS’s, he knew
pretty much what was going on, and viewed it as a superb
opportunity. If he couldn’t become king, he could be kingmaker.
When power shifted this broadly, plenty of niches appeared for a
man who kept his eyes and his options open.

* * *

There were no sharp boundaries in the depths
of interstellar space. As the Empire expanded, disputes were
constantly occurring over what new planetary system belonged where.
The Galactographic Institute investigated all such disputes and
presided over territorial trials as they arose, then presented its
findings to the tsar. The tsar had final decision over the
settlement—but not all the tsar’s decisions were uniformly popular,
particularly among the losing sides.

One such example was the planet Romatia,
whose yellow-green star burned brightly at the edge of the Circinus
sector. Its solar system was first explored by survey teams from
Circinus more than two hundred years ago. When it was found
habitable, with a very moderate climate, it was opened up to
settlement and most of its original inhabitants came from various
worlds in Circinus sector. The discovery of three heavy-metal rich
moons around other planets in the system made it a very desirable
piece of real estate.

The graf of Romatia, a man named Constantine,
was a harsh, greedy tyrant whose citizens were most unhappy with
his rule. They appealed for relief to Circinus’s knyaz—but he was
Constantine’s uncle by marriage, and refused to listen to their
complaints.

Since Romatia’s star happened to be near the
border with Ara sector, the Romatians sent a secret delegation to
the knyaz of Ara, who agreed to back their efforts. With military
support from Ara, the Romatians successfully rebelled while,
simultaneously, Ara petitioned Tsar Andrei to annex Romatia into
Ara sector. Circinus protested loudly and bitterly. Tsar Andrei,
who hated making decisions, let the dispute linger for four years
until he was near death, at which point he ruled in favor of
Ara.

The Circinians had brooded ever since. They
had explored and colonized Romatia, and as far as they were
concerned it still belonged to them. A small minority of Romatians,
who maintained strong ties to their original home worlds, were
constantly causing trouble, and Circinus was only too happy to help
them.

When the current crisis suddenly exploded on
the scene, Circinus at last saw its long-awaited opportunity to
reclaim its territory. Suddenly the tsar’s influence was gone from
the region, and there was little to stop them. They issued
ultimatums to Ara and Romatia. When the ultimatums were rejected,
Circinus went to war.

Ships from Circinus were spotted heading for
Romatia, and Ara quickly scrambled its own fleet to intercept them.
The move was a feint, however; a much larger fleet of Circinian
ships, taking diverse routes coordinated to arrive at the same
time, suddenly appeared in the skies of Devalo, Ara’s capital
world. Death and destruction rained down on Devalo’s citizens and
the fleet disappeared almost immediately, heading back to Romatia
to reinforce the other Circinian ships. Another ultimatum was
delivered to Romatia, and this time the people had little choice
but to accept it.

* * *

In ways large and small, the sudden vacuum on
the throne caused incalculable destruction to the Empire. In the
six days between the reports of Natalia’s death and the convocation
of the Sovyet Knyazey, tens of millions of lives were lost and the
destruction of property ranged easily into the trillions of rublei.
What was worse, everyone knew those numbers would increase by
orders of magnitude if the meeting did not reach a quick and
acceptable settlement. Any heir, even a ruthless one like Yevgheniy
Kuznyetz, would seem preferable to the disintegration of the
Empire.

And that was what he was counting on.

Natalia Ilyinishna Sokolova felt suddenly
cold as Eva took off in the bus without her. The bus’s other
passengers had run off down the street, glad to be free of their
mad kidnapper. Natalia was very tempted to run after them; there
might be safety in numbers. But they also might recognize her, and
that posed almost as much risk as being alone.

This section of town might have been
industrial: large, squat buildings with darkened windows, few
street lights, little traffic and no pedestrians other than the
former passengers. Darkness closed around her like a cold fist, and
the silence was smothering. A chilly wind made her shiver. She
walked into the nearby alley, found a section of darker shadow and
sat down on the ground with her back against a wall.

With nothing else to occupy it, her mind
turned to self-pity. This was not the world she was raised to, and
the realization crept slowly in that it never would be again. The
universe had suddenly changed, leaving her behind. She’d always
known her great-uncle would die, but it wasn’t supposed to be like
this. She would be in the palace, surrounded by courtiers and
servants, with teachers and guides laying out the protocols for her
every step of the way. There would be a state funeral and
processions, her coronation and investiture. The dvoryane were
supposed to swear their allegiance, not send fleets out to battle
in space and bomb innocent civilians.

What kind of evil, nightmare empire had she
inherited? Suddenly her short childhood seemed like all sunshine,
bright colors and beautiful rolling meadows, being swallowed now by
black, billowing storm clouds and flashes of lightning.

After a while she heard footsteps. Her heart
leapt, thinking it must be Eva. Then she realized there was more
than one set of footsteps and several voices talking and
laughing—male voices. She scrunched down deeper into herself,
trying to be insignificant.

She must have made some faint noise, because
the footsteps suddenly stopped. She could just barely see a group
of silhouettes—black against the slightly-less-black background—at
the alley entrance. She couldn’t tell how many of them there were.
“Who’s there?” asked a voice—a young adult male voice.

Natalia couldn’t make herself shrink any
smaller, no matter how hard she tried. Footsteps began walking
toward her. “Don’t be afraid,” the voice said. “We won’t hurt
you.”

Natalia did not feel reassured.

As the footsteps came nearer she could make
out the shapes of four men, but she couldn’t distinguish any more
detail than that. They stopped a meter or so away, and a different
voice said, “I think we’ve got a little mouse here.”

“Is that right?” said a third voice. The man
reached down and grabbed Natalia’s arm, yanking her to her feet.
“Do you want to play with us, little mouse?”

The girl’s throat felt paralyzed.

From the entrance to the alley, Eva’s voice
said calmly, “Nata, did you start a party without me?”

The men turned, their concentration on
Natalia broken.

“You’ll have to forgive my sister, boys,” Eva
continued evenly. “She doesn’t always invite me to parties.
Something about my not playing well with others.” She reached out
to the hand of the man grabbing Natalia’s arm, and squeezed it with
Zionian strength. As he let go quickly, she grabbed one of his
fingers, bending it back until she heard a satisfactory crack and
the guy screamed.

“We just wanted to make sure she was all
right,” the first man said. “This neighborhood can be dangerous at
night.”

“It certainly can,” Eva agreed. “You boys
should probably run on home before you find out just
how
dangerous.”

The gang backed quickly out of the alley
without further argument, the one man still moaning in pain.

“How are you?” Eva asked Natalia when the
others were gone.

“S-smooth,” the girl said, shivering. Eva put
an arm around her and held her tight for a few silent seconds. As
Natalia stopped shaking, she continued, “How did you find me?”

Eva tapped the girl’s wristcom. “I bought
this for you, remember? Right now I’m the only person who can track
your ID code. Come on, let’s get you in out of the cold.”

“Do you know someplace safe?”

Eva didn’t answer immediately. Instead she
walked up and down the alley until she found a door next to a
darkened window. The door was locked, but normal doors were seldom
effective against a determined Zionian. As the door swung open from
her kick, Eva said, “Now I do. Come on.”

“Isn’t all this illegal?”

“Not if
you’re
here, Your Majesty. You
rule the Empire, you get to say what’s legal and what’s not.”

Natalia followed her protector inside. Her
voice was dripping with sarcasm as she said, “Yeah,
I
rule
the Empire. Then why am I shivering in the dark?”

“Because it’s cold and it’s nighttime—and the
hotel option isn’t open to us any more. They’ll all be
monitored.”

Natalia sat down wearily with her back
against a wall. Her voice matched her spirit of hopelessness. “So
what do we do now?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Me?” Natalia said, startled.

“Why not? You’re the one who’ll be ruling the
universe. You’ll have to learn how to solve problems sometime.”

“But … but I’ve never done anything like this
before.”

“Well, neither have I,” Eva said.

“What?” The shock was evident in the girl’s
voice. “But you always know what to do. I thought—”

“I don’t know what to do. But I know how to
think and analyze. If you’re going to be tsaritsa, you’ll have to
learn that too. You’re always going to have to solve problems
you’ve never seen before, or this won’t be the last revolt you’ll
see. You must have had teachers who taught you how to think, how to
analyze problems.”

“Yes, but … but that was all about
politics.”

“So is this. Think. Analyze. What do you
think the problem is?”

“People are trying to kill me.”

“And what do you thin is the solution?”

Natalia’s voice was more tentative. “Run
away?”

“Will that become the imperial motto? ‘Run
away’?”

The girl was becoming annoyed. “That’s what
you’ve
been doing!”

“Is it?”

“You ran away from the ship before it blew
up. We ran away from Languor. We’re running away now.”

“Surviving is important, sure. But don’t
confuse tactics with strategy.”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s your long-term goal, your ultimate
goal?”

“Staying alive.”

“You’re still thinking too narrowly. What do
you need to do to make sure that happens?”

Natalia stopped a moment. “I … I have to get
my throne back.”

“Good! Perfect! You’re thinking beyond the
immediate problem of staying alive. If you let yourself get mired
in the short term solution you risk losing sight of the main goal,
getting back the power to stop these people. Now, how do you do
that?”

Natalia was catching onto the game. “By
letting the Sovyet Knyazey know I’m still alive.”

“Exactly. And how can you do that?”

Natalia was suddenly hesitant again. “I don’t
suppose I could radio a message—”

“The bad guys would jam it,” Eva said. “We’re
still too far away. And even if it got through they’d claim you’re
an impostor—and they’d know where you are and kill you before you
could prove your claim. Right now they
suspect
you’re here,
but they don’t know it for certain; there might be other reasons we
ran away from the spaceport. That’s our only advantage.”

“Then I—I’ll have to go to Moscow and show
them.”

“
YES!”
Eva exclaimed, throwing her
arms tightly around Natalia and kissing her. “We’re not running
away
from anything, we’re running toward it. Now you’re
thinking like the tsaritsa I knew you were.”

The startled girl sat in shock for a moment,
startled by the sudden intimacy. “But I still don’t know how to
make it happen,” she said weakly.

“You don’t have to,” Eva said. There was a
big smile on her face, even though Natalia couldn’t see it in the
darkness. “You’re the tsaritsa. You analyze the problem. You settle
on the solution and set the policies and priorities. You have
plenty of other people—me, in this case—to handle the details.”

“But you knew all this already,” Natalia
protested. “Why did you make me go through it?”

“Why do math teachers ask kids what two times
two is? They know the answer themselves. But you’re the tsaritsa.
You have to know the answer yourself. You can’t just let people
tell you what the answers are. You have to know it in your bones,
or you can’t be a leader.”

The young girl was silent for many minutes.
“We need to have a ship,” she said at last. “That’s the only way to
get from here to Earth. And we can’t just buy tickets this time,
because they’ll be monitored. Can you pilot a ship?”

“Sorry. I was sick the day they covered that
in class.”

“Then we’ll have to charter one.” Natalia
gave a big yawn. “But I’m not sure—”

“You don’t have to be. I’m the
schlepper
. That’s my job.” She paused. “Your job, right now,
is to get some sleep. We’ve got a lot to do, and you’re the Big
Brain. We need you sharp. Get some rest.”

Natalia didn’t argue. She stretched out on
the floor and rested her head in Eva’s lap. Within two minutes she
was snoring. Eva looked down at her enviously and sighed. She
needed some sleep desperately, too, after all the excitement—but
she had a lot of thinking and planning to do before she dared fall
asleep.

* * *

As soon as the dawn light began peeking
through the alley window, Eva shook Natalia’s shoulder. “Rise and
shine, Your Majesty. Time to get started.”