The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Princess of the Void

Sykora’s voice is emerging from the comm link in strident speakerphone.

“I want the square locked down,” she says. “Nobody in or out. I want everyone questioned. I want Shoskia taken in and questioned. She knew today was happening.”

Grant gestures to the comm.

“I want that little serpent Ecclesiast Multraq muzzled and interned,” Sykora continues, as the comms officer hands her over. “If qe wants to spout all that hatred about my people and then pretend at innocence—”

Grant turns the speaker off and raises the comm to his ear. “Hi, baby. You’re off the speaker.”

“Grantyde?” Sykora goes high and squeaky. “Oh, dove. Thank the Gods of the Firmament you’re okay. Are you somewhere safe? You’re not outside, are you?”

“Everything’s under control.” Grant hunkers away from the marines, who watch him warily. “Listen: I won’t openly countermand you again, but I need you to rescind those orders.”

“What—but—they could have killed you,” she whispers furiously.

“But they didn’t,” he says. “Because we had guards to keep me safe, and they did their jobs. The woman who killed the attacker and leapt on his grenade was an Eqtoran.”

“Dove—”

Please, mercy.

“I can see the faces down here. These people are freaking out from the attack and they’re terrified you’ll come down on them hard over it. Multraq is already a quarter of a way through coming up with some kind of bullshit public statement about the violence that the Taiikari import with them, I guarantee it. A little bit of restraint, a little bit of care, and we prove something to them. I believe that.”

And you prove something to me, he thinks.

A note of uncertainty in Sykora’s trim reply. “We need to know who he was working with, Grantyde. We need to keep as many of those people there as we can while we investigate.”

“Maybe it was an agent provocateur from Shoskia.” Grant continues to pace away from the marines, who keep a nervous eye on him. He steps through a cordon to the site of the detonation. past the techs swabbing the residue and running imaging wands across the crater. “Or maybe it was the Penitent, or some other lurking enemy. Maybe he was hired or compelled. Or maybe it was one of the billions of people we conquered. Maybe there’s rage here, and it’s real.”

He ignores all the living pairs of eyes that track his every move, and focuses on the graying, vacant gaze of the man his marines killed, half-zipped into an orange body bag. Sergeant Qiva’s rifle reduced the guy’s chest to shredded meat. The corpse looks focused, not enraged. But there’s only so much you can read into a dead face.

“But we stopped them,” he says. “And we’re on high alert now. And I’m going to be honest with you—if we don’t get our answer today, I can live with that, if it means we’re not brutalizing or incarcerating these people. I get we need to understand what happened. But I can’t sit by and watch our people come down as heavy as you’ve instructed.”

“You have children to raise, Grant.” Sykora goes whispery and pleading. “You have a family. They’re almost here. I need to—I’d burn that entire planet to keep you safe.”

“I know you would. I know. And I love you for it.” He brings the communicator close. “But it scares me.”

Her deep breath crackles the line.

“I need to see this work without blood or bad will,” he says. “I need to see us enact a measured, careful, coolheaded response. I need all that because if we don’t, I think we’re playing into the hands of whoever did this. And because I’ve been kind of freaking out lately about what I said to you, about what we’re going to do to Maekyon. I was able to hand my planet to you because of what you and I did on Eqtora. And I can’t watch it fall apart. I need to prove to myself that it can work, that we can be kind and just and prudent even when our first response is righteous anger. So please, Batty. Please, please, please. I petition you as a subject, and I beg you as your husband. Please, mercy.”

The Song of Resilience keeps its steady synthesized drumbeat going over Sykora’s silence, for a few slow seconds.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too,” he says.

“We need to take Multraq in, at least,” she says. “I’ll let the Eqtorans handle the security, but we need to keep that ecclesiast locked down awhile. For qer own safety as much as anything.”

“Sure. As long as we don’t disappear qer entirely.”

“And I won’t move against Shoskia openly, but privately, between us, I’m considering this an escalation on her part.”

“That makes sense.”

“I want you to be as excited as I am, Grantyde.” She sounds so small in contrast to how she was when she was giving orders. “For Maekyon, I mean. To think of you afraid—it would break my heart.”

“I’m trying. I swear I am.”

“Then I owe it to you to try, too.” Grant can visualize her straightening her spine; her voice gets its Princess poise back. “Give me back to the Lieutenant. We’ll clear the square and disperse the citizens. No arrests today. Not without a big, bald-faced reason.”

“Thank you, Sykora.” He nearly kisses the comm and remembers it’s not his. “Thank you so fucking much. Really.”

“Thank me by coming back to me, Grant,” she says. “As soon as you possibly can. Steal an interceptor if you have to.”

He laughs. “That’s the thing about being a Prince, babe. I own all the interceptors.”

He hears her smile. “I own all the interceptors, insufferable little Prince. No scratching the paint.”

They keep their inane little patter up as Grant jogs the communicator back to the marines, and despite the blackened patch on the ground—and on the day—his stomach unknots itself with every step that brings him closer to the Princess of the Black Pike.

https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2190201/
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