Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (6 page)

“I’m your man,” Judah said confidently.

“Perhaps,” Wettig said, still weighing his
options. “Whoever it is, I can arrange false background for him as
a military officer with good credentials who’s fallen on hard
times. With the rapid expansion of his security forces, Kuznyetz
always needs people.”

“You mentioned a second mission,” Eva said
carefully.

“Imperial bodyguard. The Velikaya Knyaghinya
has been kept safe on Earth since her parents’ deaths, and
especially guarded since Tsar Vasiliy’s stroke. Now that she’s
turned fourteen, the Sovyet Knyazey has decided it’s time for her
to go out into her future realm and ‘show the flag,’ let the people
get to know her. Her first scheduled visit will be to the planet
Languor.”

“Which, by some marvelous coincidence, is
right in the heart of Kuznyetz’s Scorpio sector,” Eva interrupted
again. “Or perhaps not so marvelous a coincidence, given that
Kuznyetz is active on the Sovyet Knyazey.”

“You keep yourself very well informed, young
lady,” Wettig said grudgingly.

“I told you she was smart,” Avram
chuckled.

“What you may not know,” Wettig continued,
“is that Languor has been the center of some of the fiercest
separatist riots in recent months. Kuznyetz is undoubtedly funding
this activity, though I lack the resources for discovering exactly
how.

“I think there will be an assassination
attempt against the Knyaghinya while she’s on Languor. With Vasiliy
in a coma and no direct line of descent beyond Natalia, succession
will be in turmoil. This will be exactly the trigger Kuznyetz needs
to set his fleet into motion. In the chaos, he and his allies will
have the strongest voice.”

“But can he prove a legitimate claim to the
throne?” Judah asked.

“Things get murky there. His current title
was not his by birth; he got it by marrying Knyaghinya Teodora
almost thirty years ago. Since then he’s pushed her into the
background and taken over almost completely. But what his own
heritage is, I’ve never been able to discover.

“Admittedly, someone with marital or blood
ties to the throne would be accepted by both the dvoryane and the
kuptsy more easily—but such things aren’t strictly necessary. With
enough power—which he’s on his way to acquiring—he can stage a coup
and start a new line.”

“And if he controls the timing of the
Velikaya Knyaghinya’s assassination, he’ll already have his forces
in the most advantageous position to stage this coup,” Eva
said.

“Precisely. Which is why I must get someone I
can trust on her security detail. I still have one or two strings I
can pull within ISIS to get someone appointed to that assignment.
Your uncle has praised you highly, Gospozha Bar Nahum. Are you
willing to accept the assignment?”

All eyes in the room were on Eva. She took a
deep breath before speaking.

“Both my parents died working for you. I’m
told it was a noble death, I’m told they made a huge contribution
to the security of the Empire. I’ve got the posthumous secret
medals you gave them. I take them out of the velvet box every once
in a while and look at them. They’re just bits of metal and ribbon.
That’s cold comfort when I want a hug from my father, a smile from
my mother.”

She paused before continuing. “I’ve dreaded
this day ever since they died. I knew it would come, I knew you—or
someone like you—would ask me to step into their shoes. And I
didn’t want to die, not like that, in the prime of life. There are
too many things I like doing, too many pleasures I enjoy. I don’t
want to give them up.”

“So you’re refusing,” Hasina said.

“But I have to face the fact,” Eva continued,
totally ignoring the interruption, “that they chose that life. Just
like Uncle Avram and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Mikkel, they knew it was
dangerous and they knew it was necessary. They did it for me, so
the Empire I lived in would be a better, safer place. They knew the
job could kill them, just like Benny—uh, he’s a wirewalker—knows
his act could kill him someday. But he does it anyway, because the
show must go on. Ultimately, that’s what I have to look at. That’s
what I have to live by. The show must go on.”

She paused again. “Besides, Judah wants this
more than anything, and I’d have to be a heartless bitch to keep
him from it—and if he leaves I don’t have an act. I’d look pretty
silly prancing around as just half a dance team.”

“You could do a solo act,” Judah said
quietly, “or find another partner.”

“
Nu
, after I took all this time to get
you broken in?
You
are my partner,
bubbe
. We know
each other’s moves, we’ve got our timing down perfectly. We are a
team. We can’t break up.”

“You will not be working as a team on these
missions,” Wettig reminded her sternly. “You will not be working
anywhere near one another.”

Eva shook her head, even though the knyaz
wouldn’t see it over the Q-line. “It doesn’t matter. We could be
parsecs apart, we’ll still feel each other’s rhythm. I’ll still
know to raise my left arm when he holds out his right. I can’t
explain it, but there’s a synchronicity between us. We
are
a
team, Your Grace, whether we’re together or apart.”

“Then I assume you are accepting the
assignment. I will arrange—”

“Hold on, Your Grace,” Eva interrupted. “I’ll
do it, but I’ll have to do it my way.”

There was a very long pause, and when Wettig
spoke it was in a voice calculated to chill the room by ten
degrees. “And that way would be …?”

“As an oprichnikya on security detail, I’ll
have to follow the orders of the team leader. He could have me
stationed far away from the action when the problems start—and in
fact, since he won’t know me, he’ll probably resent me for being
foisted off on him and give me the least important assignments. If
you want me to protect the Velikaya Knyaghinya, I’ll need much
greater freedom of movement.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I was thinking along the lines of a
freilina. That would give me personal access to the Knyaghinya, and
I couldn’t be arbitrarily banished to some peripheral post. Plus,”
Eva added with a shrewd smile, “I’d get to wear prettier clothing.
Those ISIS uniforms are crappy.”

“I’m afraid I cannot shift my plans to
accommodate your sense of fashion,” Wettig said coldly. “There are
good reasons why—”

“You were just condemning Commissar Foundry,”
Eva interrupted sharply, “for being too hidebound, too by-the-book,
for firing people who showed too much initiative and originality.
Do you want to repeat his mistakes? One thing I can definitely
promise you—I have a lot more imagination than a brick.”

“I can personally swear to that,” Judah
chimed in.

Still another pause. This was a very unusual
day for Wettig. “Even if I wanted to, I doubt I could accommodate
you. What contacts I have left are in the intelligence services.
The Velikaya Knyaghinya’s attendants are handled by other
departments altogether. I couldn’t—”

“But I could,” Hasina spoke up
unexpectedly.

“Explain yourself,” her father demanded.

“When I served my tour—” she began, then
looked around the room. “I should explain for the Bar Nahums’
benefit that serving as a freilina to the Velikaya Knyaghinya is
considered a great privilege, and it’s usually rotated among young
ladies of the dvoryane. I served three years ago, when the
Knyaghinya was just eleven. Lady Elena is in charge of the rotation
list, and she’s always been a good friend of mine. If I told her
you were a cousin of mine—”

Eva couldn’t quite contain her snort of
laughter.

“Well, a much
paler
cousin of mine,”
Hasina continued, “a boyarynya who really earned a reward like
this, I think she’d slip you into the current rotation as a favor
to me. Especially if I tell her it’s not for a full term, just a
limited time—say a month or two. Do you think that’s an adequate
period, Father?”

“At the rate the developments are
accelerating,” Wettig said, “I’d be very surprised if Kuznyetz
doesn’t make his move before then. A war like this can’t be staged
on the spur of the moment, it has to be coordinated. It has a
momentum all its own. Either his attempted coup will take place
within that time frame or something extraordinary will have
happened to stop it.”

“With any luck,” Judah said, “
we’ll
be
that something extraordinary.”

Wettig made no comment over the Q-line.

“I guess it’s settled, then,” Eva said. “I’m
on board for this merry little jaunt.”

“I will leave Hasina to coordinate the
details with you, then,” Wettig said. “Good lu—oh, I’m sorry. It’s
been so long since I dealt with Avram I nearly forgot. I don’t want
to jinx you. Break a leg.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Eva said. “I have a
feeling we’re going to need all the breaks we can get before this
mishegas
is over.”

Unfamiliar cities and new worlds didn’t faze
Judah Bar Nahum. At age 23 he’d already seen more of both than most
people see in a lifetime. Bustling metropolises and provincial
settlements were all transient phenomena to him. The only thing
real, the only thing solid, the only community that mattered, was
the Ville. For everything else, he was just passing through.

Garrimoor was the capital city of Kyrby
which, in turn, was the capital planet of Scorpio sector. As such
it was a thriving cosmopolitan center, with tall buildings, busy
streets and even huvver lanes. It was noisy, crowded and dirty, the
hallmarks of civilization. The people seemed prosperous—and, if
they weren’t happy all the time, it was only because they had too
much going on in their lives to distract them.

As much as he wanted to get started on his
assignment right away, Judah took his time to get oriented. “Always
get the lay of the land,” Ilya Uzi had said. “You never know when
you might have to disappear into it.” It sounded like good advice
to Judah, so he decided to invest a day or so checking out the
city.

There were the posh, sophisticated areas
where dvoryane and other important personages lived. Judah didn’t
bother with them. Outsiders were too noticeable there. Instead, he
concentrated on the rougher, poorer sections of the city where the
buildings were lower and grimier and the citizens were kuptsy and
krepostnye. A man could vanish into the crowds here and, if he knew
what he was doing, go undetected for days, or even weeks.

Downtown was largely office buildings, but
there were rings of housing and neighborhoods surrounding this. And
interspersed with local restaurants and shops were the ever-present
kuptsy bars. From the news reports, the civil unrest was being
fomented at this level, rather than in the slums. No one
particularly cared if the krepostnye rioted; they could be put down
brutally and no one would much notice or care. The respectable
kuptsy were harder to contain and deal with.

Judah checked the online news reports and saw
that there were a handful of separatist groups listed publicly.
There was nothing illegal about this; earlier tsary had decided it
was wiser to leave openings to relieve pressure than to suppress it
all and risk a catastrophic explosion. The few tsary who crushed
free expression usually paid the penalty eventually.

One of the groups, Sons of Kyrby, was holding
a rally tonight, open to all (donations accepted). Judah decided it
would be profitable to attend and gauge the tenor of the local
opposition.

The meeting took place in a small public hall
along the fringes of the kuptsy area. The hall could hold perhaps a
hundred people and was three-quarters full when Judah entered. The
lights were somewhat dim; Judah guessed this was probably
deliberate, so no one in the audience would be too recognizable.
There was a speaker on stage taking questions from the house, and
the room was already buzzing with conversations as Judah
entered.

“But she’s only a little girl,” one man was
saying.

“That’s my point exactly,” the speaker said.
“The tsar’s in a coma and she’s a little girl who’s hundreds of
parsecs away. She’s a little girl who’s never done a day’s work in
her life. She’s a little girl who knows nothing about the problems
real people face. Why should she get all the power over our lives
when she doesn’t know anything about us?”

Judah sat down at an empty seat not too close
to anyone else. He was only here to listen, not interact with
anyone. So, apparently, were most of the other people in the
audience.

“But we have the dvoryane to take care of
local things. The tsar’s job is to run the whole Empire.”

“But why do we need the Empire?” the speaker
persisted. “What do we care what somebody way out on Altoora is
doing? And why should someone on Altoora care at all about us? Why
should we pay taxes for something we don’t even need?”

“We need a central government to keep
everything going,” another man chimed in from the right-hand side
of the hall. “Without that, we’d be looking at wars and chaos.”

“Yeah, right,” said the speaker with a sneer.
“You must’ve had the same Civics teacher I did. That’s just
propaganda, that’s all that is. Who tells the schools what to
teach? The Empire, that’s who.”

“Yeah, when you think about it there’ve been
some pretty rotten tsary since the Empire started,” another man
said, adding to the gripe session. “Look at Kyril II and Alexandra.
They both killed thousands of people. Maybe millions.”

“Alexandra killed mostly dvoryane,” said a
royalist defender. “And Kyril was a madman. That can happen
anywhere. But things have been pretty good recently.”

“Sure—because the tsar’s unconscious and the
Duma’s been running things. They can’t agree on anything, so
nothing important gets done. But the tsar could die any minute, and
then the Velikaya Knyaghinya becomes tsaritsa and takes over all
the power herself. Maybe she’ll be smooth, but maybe she’ll be
another Alexandra. Is that what you want?”