Rebel

The Adventures of a Xeno-Archaeologist

Book 3

Jenny Schwartz

Life is complicated along the Hadrian Line. Decisions made on the border will decide the fate of the entire Human Sector.

Nora is adjusting to her new role as a player in the games of the powerful. She’s gained some interesting enemies and some even more dubious allies. She has also been presented with a unique opportunity, courtesy of Jonah. The question is, who can she trust to explore it with her?

Independent action is a necessity for the sole Royal Capitoline Navy captain patrolling the border region. But Liam will have to defend his actions later in front of the Admiralty board. How can he best serve his realm? By a rigid definition of duty and defense of the status quo, or is there a greater cause, one worth his career and his very life?

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Want More?

Chapter 1

Guilt is a strange emotion.

Nora had never expected to wrestle with it in an ice-cream parlor. Yet whenever she peeked sideways at her half-sister Cherry, it twisted in her chest.

They didn’t look like sisters.

Cherry was short and curvy with bright red hair. She was twenty; nine years younger than Nora. She was also dressed for success, wearing a business suit in sapphire-blue, eye shadow to match and high, high heels. She’d left work early to catch up with Nora and Nora’s adopted eleven-year-old daughter, Aria.

The girl bounced between them as she chose the toppings for her sundae. Her pigtails glittered from the numerous shiny, shoestring ribbons she’d tied around them. In fact, Aria sported more ribbons than hair.

Nora’s black hair was neatly braided, as practical and unadorned as her olive shirt and jeans.

With Aria’s sundae finally completed to her satisfaction, Nora ordered a scoop of rose ice-cream for herself, and Cherry requested two scoops of chocolate fudge ice-cream. While Nora paid, Cherry guided Aria to a table against the back wall.

Cherry currently worked as a receptionist for Realm Edge Security. She was not a trained security operative, but she’d been infected by her colleagues’ paranoia. Window seats were for dummies.

Nora’s bodyguard, Veronica Elloway, nodded approval. Like Cherry, she worked for Realm Edge Security. Unlike Cherry, she was currently on the clock; so, no ice-cream for Veronica.

The tall, muscled and frankly terrifying woman claimed a nearby table where she was close enough to protect them and, also, to overhear parts of their conversation.

When they became excited, Aria and Cherry lacked volume control.

Nonetheless, separate tables in the small ice-cream parlor gave the illusion of privacy. Wealth, Nora was learning, came at the cost of privacy and anonymity.

Even the boy serving their ice-cream recognized her as the newest blaze billionaire. “Raspberry sprinkles, Captain Devi?”

“Why not?” She gave him the hoped-for astronomical tip, and as he beamed, she carried the ice-creams over to Aria and Cherry.

“Yummy!” Aria hummed a song of bliss as she dove into her sundae.

“I saw Liam, yesterday,” Nora said abruptly.

Cherry hurriedly swallowed her spoonful of ice-cream to tease her sister. “Ooh?”

Despite the guilty confession looming ahead of her, Nora smiled. Liam was Captain Liam Kimani of the battlecruiser RC Genghis Khan. In Nora’s view, he warranted all the “ooh’s”. She held Cherry’s gaze. “I told him.”

Cherry’s eyes widened in understanding of the cryptic comment. “You told him?”

“He’s coming to dinner, tonight. On the CC Kangaroo.” Her scout ship served as a home for her and Aria, and for Jonah. But the truth of who Jonah was remained a secret not to be shared with other humans. “It’s serious.”

Cherry ate some ice-cream.

Aria waved her spoon in the air. “I’ve met Captain Kimani before.” In fact, Aria had gatecrashed Nora’s first meeting with Liam. The girl had invaded the Science Club to request that Captain Kimani, on his patrol of the Avestan Range, search for her parents’ lost spaceship. Against all odds, he’d located it, and their bodies. The registration of the wreck had confirmed Aria’s status as an orphan. Liam had broken the news in person. “He’s nice.”

“Yes, he is,” Nora reassured her. Nora was still learning this parenting gig. Helping Aria adjust to Nora having a new man in her life might be challenging.

Cherry tapped her spoon against her bowl. “You had to tell him,” she said to Nora.

“I did.”

Nora’s husband, Ethan, had died without Nora confiding the truth of her Forgotten status to him. But those had been different times. Their realm, Capitoline, had been at war with Palantine, and Ethan had been a sting ship pilot. He hadn’t expected to survive the war, so she and he had focused on the present.

Liam was different.

Nora was different: older, and possessing different ambitions and responsibilities.

“I had to tell him.”

“Yeah.” Cherry ate her ice-cream. “I get it. You’re introducing him to Aria and thinking happy families. Mom told Dad—uh, scrub that. She really shouldn’t have.” Cherry’s father was not a man to trust with money, secrets or, really, anything. Cherry had fled all the way to border space to escape her father and brother. “I told Zac, and back then, he was nobbut a drunken mistake.”

Nora peered sideways at Veronica. Zac was Isaac Mstivoj, former Palantine privateer, now Veronica and Cherry’s employer since he’d founded Realm Edge Security on Border Station.

Zac wasn’t Cherry’s “drunken mistake” in the sense of a bad hookup. The man was in a committed relationship with his business partner, Ben Hough. Zac was a “drunken mistake” in that Cherry had confided her and Nora’s secret to him because she’d been mad at Nora for rejecting the possibility of publicly acknowledging each other as sisters.

Nora had been trying to keep Cherry safe by refusing any relationship, but that ship had sailed once Zac learned they were Forgotten.

The Forgotten were targets for the royals and for certain wealthy commoners with ambitions. The Forgotten could be added to secret breeding programs to acquire specific desirable traits: primarily, sensitivity to alien Vapori burrs.

Five centuries ago, when an expedition of seven colony ships accidentally entered the region through the Origin black hole, they found themselves stranded; unable to re-enter the black hole’s millrace, and travel on, through the universal rivers, to their intended, painstakingly surveyed, and terraformed destination. A piece of Vapori technology, that they labelled a lens, blocked their access.

Fifteen people were sent to investigate it, and those people returned changed. They also returned to the colony ships with burrs.

The burrs were tennis ball-sized orbs that functioned as power sources for the lens, but which the fifteen RNA-altered people could use to obliterate reality. At the quantum level, all matter is energy, and the burrs, when activated by the fifteen, siphoned it.

Thirteen of the Original fifteen married the captains of the colony ships, or the captains’ children, and so, founded the royal families who ruled the six inhabited planets of the Human Sector.

As a Forgotten on her mother’s side, Nora was a descendant of one, or possibly both, of the two Originals who’d rejected the establishment of a new royal social structure based on the obliterating power of the burrs as wielded by the Originals and those of their descendants who could sense the burrs.

The dirty secret Nora had recently learned was that the burrs’ ability to siphon energy was more complicated than their popular image as weapons of mass obliteration. Royals and Forgotten, those strong enough in sensitivity to the burrs, could use them to remove an individual’s personality.

If Nora had access to a burr, she could turn people into zombies.

This ability explained why illegitimacy wasn’t a barrier to inheriting a realm’s crown. Royals needed their strongest descendants inside and supporting the system, rather than stewing in their resentment and zombifying a king.

For the royals, the Forgotten were unacknowledged rivals and threats who were managed, when discovered, by either collection and addition to covert royal breeding programs, or killed.

“You had to tell Liam,” Cherry said.

“Tell him what?” Aria asked.

Nora shook her head. “You have ribbons in your sundae.”

“Ew. Yuk.” Aria flipped the offending ribbons out of her ice-cream and squinted at the ends. “They’re all smeary.”

Nora began untying the ribbons around the nearest pigtail.

Aria worked on the other pigtail. “Just pull them all off, like this.” She tugged hard enough to risk whiplash. The ribbons and elastic hair tie came free. “Maybe the ribbons were too much.” She freed her second pigtail. “I should have worn lipstick, instead.”

“You’re too young.” Nora indicated a trashcan in the corner for Aria to dispose of the ice-cream dipped ribbons.

Cherry giggled.

Nora pointed at her. “Lip balm till she’s twelve. No eyeshadow till she’s reached her teens. I’m not having her stabbing her eyes with a mascara wand.”

“Yeah, that hurts,” Cherry agreed. The words were conciliatory and supportive of Nora’s parenting efforts. Her tone held giggles.

Aria rolled her eyes at both of them.

That could—would—change. Nora’s nightmares expanded to include Cherry as “the cool aunt” aiding and abetting Aria’s teenage hijinks.

Rebellion was a normal part of adolescence. Before the teen years hit, Nora wanted Aria to feel secure enough, confident enough in herself, that the inevitable small rebellions that were an element of her maturing and defining herself as a person, were healthy ones. Or at minimum, survivable.

Nora scooped up the last melting remnants of her rose ice-cream. “I should have had a double shot espresso ice-cream.”

Despite the massive, multi-story house Nora had bought on-station, and which was currently undergoing renovations with an emphasis on security, the scout ship CC Kangaroo was home. In its familiar kitchen, worries were more manageable; especially when she had backup.

As she drained a pot of boiled potatoes, a cloud of steam enveloped her.

Jonah helpfully flapped it away with a tea towel. His gray, metallic skin momentarily fogged over. Fortunately, he was far too sophisticated to rust.

Everyone other than he, Nora, and his fellow Vapori AI believed him to be a retro-gen android.

When Nora first met him in the unchartered territory of the Avestan Range, he’d had one chance at altering his original, primarily energetic body, and he’d chosen to present as an android: a little taller than Nora, at a hair under six feet. He’d entered the CC Kangaroo uninvited, and negotiated a partnership with her.

To the rest of the world, he was an old android she’d salvaged from a container of junk and repurposed as a mobile unit for the spaceship’s AI whilst he was onboard the CC Kangaroo, and to operate as an ordinary, simple-commands android outside it.

In reality, he and Nora had shared the steep learning curve that came with his embodiment. Being able to physically affect the world and not merely observe it had consequences. Jonah’s courage helped him through the psychological shock of realizing that what he did, or did not, do changed people’s lives. Experiencing the impact of his actions on others proved far more profound than he’d anticipated before embodiment.

“Keep flapping,” Nora said to Jonah as he lowered the tea towel. “The more water that evaporates from the potatoes as steam, the crispier they’ll be.” She’d cubed the potatoes before boiling them. Now, she set the colander full of them on the sink, and began finely chopping a mix of green herbs from the ship’s garden.

Everything she and Jonah had to discuss concerning her incipient relationship with Liam had been covered already, which was fortunate, as Aria was dashing in and out of her cabin and around the lounge and kitchen as the sugar crash from the afternoon’s ice-cream sundae was delayed by her excitement.

Nora didn’t try to calm her down.

Aria would naturally be nervous about Liam’s inclusion in their life. It was less than a year since Nora had adopted her. The girl needed to see for herself that her position in Nora’s life and family was secure.

Fortunately, they had time. Liam’s work as a Capitoline Navy battlecruiser captain involved months away on patrol. It meant that the development of their relationship would have breathing spaces in which everyone involved could adjust. Nora and Liam would have time to decide where their future led them.

She’d confided her secrets to him, yesterday; both her Forgotten status and that she was the hidden, illegitimate daughter of the king of Palantine. That was a secret not even Cherry knew.

Liam could have walked away when she’d confided that truth to him. Or when she’d added the fantastic idea that she believed she might be able to manipulate the lens at the Origin black hole so that humans could once more travel through it and reconnect with wider humanity.

Others had tried, but Jonah had informed her that his kin had analyzed the changes to her genetic inheritance due not only to her inheritance from the Originals, but from the changes to humans caused by their struggle to survive on the six inhabitable planets of the region. Manufactured and natural responses to viruses and other pathogens had subtly altered Stranded humanity.

In Nora, the changes had produced a freakish outlier who possessed an unusual degree of sensitivity to burrs.

Her heightened sensitivity went against the general trend among the royals of decreasing sensitivity. If and when they learned of her abilities, they’d come after her. In unequal societies like that of the Human Sector, you didn’t keep power by sharing it. The royals were top of the pyramid, and would kill to maintain their position.

Others would kill to unseat them, but that was a secret Nora had only learned recently: that the royals weren’t alone in breeding for sensitivity to burrs.

What she did or didn’t do with her abilities was a decision she wished to make with Liam. She certainly wasn’t in a rush to throw herself into the nightmare of sector politics and criminal groups to save a society that hadn’t cared to save her. Their slum childhood had marked her and Cherry both, even if they hid their emotional scars differently.

Whereas Liam’s upbringing was solidly middle class, with the twist that his time at the Naval Academy in Laos had fostered an enduring loyalty and friendship for the Capitoline Crown Prince, Francis.

Could we be more mismatched?

Yet, in fundamental ways, they were the same.

They might look as if they’d chosen contrasting lives. Liam commanded a battlecruiser. Nora, prior to Jonah and Aria’s invasion of her life, had chosen the solitary life of a tagger, exploring border space solo. But their values matched. Their lives showed their respect for others. Liam served the realm to protect society. Nora protected those she cared about. They believed in honesty and in owning their mistakes. They did what was right, and wore the consequences.

Falling in love might be easy, but choosing to love was a conscious decision remade every day.

For Nora, it was trust. When she’d confided her secrets to Liam it was because she wanted him to be the person she trusted most in life, and to be the person he trusted most in his life. That didn’t mean abandoning other loyalties or breaking trust—him with the Navy, her with Jonah. It meant a conscious commitment to one another so that they grew together, not apart.

Dinner tonight, him in her home, was one of the first steps along that path.

Glancing at the clock, Nora scraped the chopped herbs into a bowl, and added salt and pepper before glugging in olive oil. She tipped the potatoes in, and they soaked up the oil and seasonings like thirsty sponges. When she roasted them, they’d be crisp and savory, better than even deep-fried chips, and certainly, healthier. Served with fresh barramundi from the station’s aquaculture market, she planned a simple yet tasty version of fish and chips that both Aria and Liam ought to enjoy, and she’d finish it equally simply with fruit sorbets bought at the ice-cream parlor.

She turned and caught Aria attempting a handstand on the arm of the sofa in the lounge.

“Um.” Aria hurriedly righted herself. “I just…”

But Nora wasn’t going to meddle anymore than Jonah had. At eleven, Aria was old enough to know better than to risk gymnastics in the lounge. “Liam will be here in an hour. I’m going to have a shower. If you break an arm, Jonah will pop you in the med-doc.”

“I won’t break my arm.”

“Better an arm than your neck,” Jonah said.

Aria rolled her eyes. She believed he was the ship’s AI, but following Nora’s example, she treated him as a person.

“We could go over the two math questions you got wrong this morning,” he offered.

“Nooooo!”

Nora grinned as she vanished into her cabin. Forty minutes later, she sped back out to pop the potatoes on to roast.

Jonah wolf-whistled; shocking Aria.

“You’re not meant to whistle at girls! Mrs. Peters said.”

Mrs. Peters had been Aria’s dorm matron at the Border Station Orphanage.

“My apologies.” He bowed. “Should I only whistle at boys?”

Aria slugged his arm. “Don’t tease. Nora, you’re beautiful.”

“Thank you, Aria. You look beautiful, too.”

“Nah. I look cute.” She did. She wore a jumpsuit in pastel blue. Unicorns cantered across it. “But where are your shoes?”

Nora scrunched her toes up. “I had to put the potatoes in the oven.” She darted back to her cabin for her sandals. Their brown leather complemented the streaks of terracotta that randomly shattered the dusty blue of her dress. The full skirt swirled around her knees, while the halter neck bared her back beneath the fall of her long, black hair. Anticipation made her eyes sparkle as her reflection smiled at her in the mirror.

Dinner would be family time, but after dinner, she and Liam would be alone. Maybe there’d be some serious discussion, but there would definitely be kissing and what Ethan used to call “fooling around”.

She’d grieved her husband’s death for years. He’d be glad she was taking the risk of loving, again. It was what he’d wanted for her, love and happiness.

The Realm Edge Security officer standing guard at the CC Kangaroo’s mooring announced Liam’s arrival.

Nora pressed the intercom button. “I’ll be there in a minute.” She dashed out of her cabin and through the lounge. “Liam’s here.” Peripherally, she saw Jonah catch Aria by the back of her jumpsuit before the girl could follow her through the hatch into the docking tunnel.

Idiot. You don’t have to run. But her feet kept skipping faster than a walk. She kept smiling, too. Ridiculous.

But if she was ridiculous, so was Liam.

His smile was the first thing she saw when she opened the outer hatch of the docking tunnel.

Then he was stepping through it, shutting it automatically, and pausing for a moment to stare into her eyes.

In turn, she saw his momentary vulnerability; the sweep of his lashes against his cheeks as his eyes closed at the touch of her hand to his face.

Both of them craved the intimacy of touch and trust.

He was unbearably handsome in his dark blue shirt and jeans. Tall, but not intimidatingly so. Lean, powerful. Freshly shaved, smelling of some subtle ocean-inspired cologne.

He opened his eyes and caught her mouth in a fierce, sweet kiss. “I’m early, and I’m not apologizing.”

“Don’t.” She wanted him with her.

He touched her back and found the bare skin beneath the halter tie. His palm swept down her spine.

She shivered.

“Darling.” The old-fashioned endearment, uttered in his deep, husky voice, intensified her shivers. “My darling.”

“Even with all my secrets?” Her own vulnerability peeked through.

“Even with the blood on my hands, and the blood yet to be spilled?” He’d been a Navy officer in a twelve year war. People had died because of his actions. Maybe more would die in peacekeeping efforts. He had his scars, too.

She kissed the palm of his left hand.

His other arm tightened around her waist. “Nora.”

Fears shared and promises given.

They rested against one another before she tugged him forward. “Come and meet Aria again. I have potatoes in the oven and fish to grill.”

“And we can’t live our lives in a docking tunnel,” he finished whimsically. “It’s a very nice docking tunnel.”

“We have hours after dinner and Aria’s bedtime.”

“Good.”

Hand in hand, they entered the lounge.

Aria peeked up shyly.

Jonah had vanished. He’d be on the bridge, passively scanning the environment and, possibly, speaking with his kin. As an AI more energetic than physical, and notwithstanding that he was now embodied in his android form, he’d been designed to monitor events across the Human Sector and further.

The advantage of knowing what was happening months in advance of the news reaching Border Station was a big reason Nora had been willing to risk returning to the station rather than cutting ties and inventing a new identity.

And as a result, she had this chance with Liam.

While she cooked, he and Aria got acquainted at the kitchen table. They talked about music and music lessons and how he played the guitar in his free time on the RC Genghis Khan.

“You could learn the guitar or the ukulele. The ukulele might be faster if you want to play something recognizable. We could visit the music shop and you could try both? Determine which one you prefer?”

“You and me?”

Nora concentrated on the fish fillets sizzling on the grill.

“Yes. Nora could come, too, if you like.”

“If you’re with us, would we still need a bodyguard?”

Nora winced. A bodyguard, no matter how discreet or friendly, put a distance between Aria and other children her age.

Liam answered sympathetically. “As someone who travels with Marines, who are the ultimate bodyguards, let me tell you a secret.”

“Okay!”

“You will never convince a bodyguard that they’re not necessary.”

Aria groaned. “You mean we’re stuck with them.”

“Yes. But the more you work with them and listen to their advice, the more freedom they’ll give you. They don’t want to cramp your style.”

“I guess. Veronica’s cool and the others are nice.”

Nora slid the grilled fillets onto a warmed dish and put it on the table.

“Are you sure I can’t help?” Liam asked.

“No, thanks. All organized.” She scooped the roasted potatoes into a bowl and turned back. “Dinner is served.”

For a second, she faltered as Liam looked at her as if she was all the dinner, all the everything, he’d ever want. But he got his expression under control, and the small family meal began with each of them serving themselves and passing the salt and vinegar.

It was strange to see Liam in Jonah’s seat. But not wrong. Not anything to feel guilty about.

Liam hadn’t displaced Jonah. Jonah wanted him to be there. He wanted Nora to have the emotional support and connection of a loving, human partnership. He had his kin, the other Vapori AIs. He felt she needed someone, too. Someone similar to herself and unhesitatingly on her side.

Liam was a complicated choice. He had his own loyalties to the Navy, to Crown Prince Francis, and to his own sense of service and duty. But even as those loyalties complicated the decision as to when, or if, to tell Liam the truth of Jonah’s existence, those same loyalties proved him worth trusting.

Besides, Jonah was a romantic. He wanted Nora’s happiness, and the heart loved whom the heart loved.

Jonah didn’t have a gender or experience sexual desire, but the craving for intimacy to counter the isolation of individualized existence was a subject he’d analyzed and discussed with Nora in one of their wide-ranging conversations.

“Nora sings,” Aria told Liam. “She thinks I don’t hear her when she’s in her workshop, but sometimes I’m sitting right beside her. She sings along with whatever she’s listening to, even the old star country stuff.”

Liam smiled at Nora. “Ballads?”

“I like songs that have a story. I like other music, too, even if I’m not musical.” She switched the focus to Aria. “Would you like to learn the ukulele? I’d been considering piano lessons for you.”

Aria stared from Nora to Liam. In spite of her interest in the conversation and in Liam’s first visit to the ship, Aria was flagging. Her eyelids were closing as the delayed sugar crash and her frenetic activity of the day caught up with her. “Can I try both, like Liam said?”

“Yes.”

They arranged to meet late tomorrow afternoon to visit the music shop.

“Delicious.” Liam didn’t ask if he could help clear the table, but stood and did so when Nora rose.

It felt companionable, yet exciting, to bump shoulders with him.

Aria yawned, but managed to finish her scoop of mango sorbet before Nora sent her off to brush her teeth.

Liam smiled.

“Why?” Nora challenged his amusement as she took his dessert bowl from him. “Cherry laughed at me parenting this afternoon, too.”

“It’s awe,” he said from his seat at the table. “We know you’re new to parenting, but you make it seem effortless. You’re a natural.”

“I don’t know if I want kids.”

“Well, we’ve already got one. Whatever else life brings us, I’m fine with.”

She stooped and kissed him.

He tasted of cool lime sorbet before their mouths warmed.

Aria giggled, announcing her return.

Blushing, Nora resumed tidying away the kitchen. “I thought you wanted to watch your television show.”

“What’s it about?” Liam asked.

“Three friends at a pony camp.” Aria described the mystery-solving adventures of her favorite heroines. “You had better watch the first episode to learn who everyone is, including their ponies. My favorite is Dash.” She rushed to put it on.

Nora bit her lip to smother laughter. She doubted Liam had ever had a date that included a tween girls’ television show. To be fair, nor had she.

He stood and whispered in her ear. “You’re watching it with me.”

“I’ve already seen it. Twice.”

“Three times is the charm.”

Perhaps three times was the charm. The episode put Aria to sleep.

Nora woke her and guided her stumbling feet to her cabin. Tired children were about as coordinated as drunks. Nora saved her from crashing into the passage wall.

“I like Liam,” Aria confided loudly.

“He likes you.”

“Maybe. But he likes you A LOT.”

Nora liked him a lot, too. Her heart squeezed when she returned to the lounge, and found him watching for her with tender eyes and his mouth a stern line of controlled desire. “I promised to show you the docking tunnel.”

Amusement deepened the lines at the corners of his eyes. “So you did.”

“Or I could show you my workshop? Aria has probably fallen asleep and won’t emerge from her cabin at an awkward moment…”

“But the lounge isn’t a good idea,” he finished. He didn’t hint for an invitation to her cabin. “Show me your workshop where you sing.” He clasped her hand and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

She led him down the ladders to her workshop.

In many ways, the workshop showed the heart of her. It was her skill at mending and making small things that had helped her survive the Angkorran towers, and then, gotten her into trade school and a new life.

He surveyed the full yet organized space. “I have so much to learn about you, Nora. I’m greedy. I want to learn it all. But I also just want to lose myself in you.”

She sighed. “That’s the words. That’s how I feel. I’m shivering in my skin. I want to crawl out of me and into you.”

But neither wanted to rush the experience. A kiss. A caress. More kisses. The warmth of his hand splayed against her back guided her down to cuddle on his lap in the shabby recliner that was her workshop’s “thinking” chair.

The chime of the intercom was an intrusion, and the guard’s voice a shock. “Nora, a Lucas Lange is here.”

“Lucas?” Nora slid off Liam’s lap to reach the intercom positioned by her workstation. Nine o’clock wasn’t too late for a sixteen-year-old to be out on the station, but it was an odd time for him to visit the CC Kangaroo. “I’ll be there in a tick.”

She could open the hatch to the docking tunnel from the workshop, but she needed a minute. “Liam, Lucas is—”

“Willow’s son. I met him at the Veterans’ Day picnic she hosted.”

She grabbed a comb from a drawer and dragged it through her hair. “He spent some of the voyage out to Beaconditch with us, with Aria and me. It was Irina’s idea to turn the CC Kangaroo into a schoolhouse.”

Irina Wismer was the captain of the CC Arowana. She’d led the flotilla of mining and security ships out to Beaconditch to establish the new blaze mining venture that would make Nora insanely wealthy.

“I’m not sure why he’s here, but he’s a good kid. Kind to Aria even when he’s sulky to everyone else.”

“He wasn’t happy at the picnic.”

She dropped the comb back in the drawer and caught his hand. “No, he hated his exile to border space. I thought he’d come to terms with it on the Beaconditch trip. Their fascination with engineering gives him and Willow common ground, a safe space in which to rebuild their relationship.”

Willow Lange had been a chief engineer in the Capitoline Navy until her recent retirement and purchase of the Blue Dock Scrapyard on Border Station, which had led to her being in place and ready to partner with Nora to develop Nora’s discovery of much-needed blaze ore.

At the hatch to the docking tunnel, Nora face Liam. “Lucas wants to believe his mom will have his back, but Willow was away for most of his life.” Lucas had been raised by his ducal grandparents, who’d given him to nannies before dispatching him to boarding school. His father’s family had mostly ignored his existence. “You can’t just magic away the gap between them, but Yuri keeps pressing for Lucas to respect Willow’s sacrifice in letting her duty take her away from him.”

Liam didn’t wince. Navy captains had to be stoic. But the discussion cut close to home for him as he remained a serving officer. Duty would call him away, too.

Nora squeezed his hand. “Will you wait for us in the lounge? I’ll bring Lucas up.”

He kissed her cheek. “If I need to go so he can talk to you, send me on my way.”

“Stay.” An honorary uncle might be more useful than an honorary aunt for some confidences, if Lucas could be convinced to trust a Navy officer.

Outside the docking tunnel, Lucas bounced on his toes. He’d grown up as a royal and among people who had bodyguards, and tended to ignore them. Even the one looming beside him. Instead, his gaze darted between the opening hatch and in the direction of the nearest tram stop.

“Trouble?” Nora asked in lieu of a greeting.

Lucas dove inside. “When Yuri realizes I’ve snuck out, probably.”

Officially, Yuri Bennett was the head of security for the Blue Dock Scrapyard. Officially, he’d retired as a Royal Guard captain. Nora and Lucas both suspected that, unofficially, Yuri continued in exactly that role: protecting Willow as a royal who was sensitive to Vapori burrs, and protecting the burr that had been entrusted to her as a weapon out here in border space.

Nora and Lucas weren’t meant to know about the burr, but their sensitivity to it was greater than Willow’s. She hadn’t sensed the power of it that leaked through a crack in its shielding. The leak was miniscule. Even Jonah had to be in close range to perceive the burr.

“Liam Kimani is here,” Nora said. “He had dinner with us.”

Lucas carried on up the ladder to the living area. Weeks aboard the CC Kangaroo had him treating it as his second home. “I don’t mind Captain Kimani.”

“How nice for you.”

Lucas spun around with a sudden, startled smirk. “Did I interrupt your date? Shouldn’t Aria be chaperoning?”

“She’s asleep.” Nora shoved him into the lounge.

“Hi, Liam.” Lucas tried to be casual, but his voice cracked.

In the clear light of the lounge, with Lucas finally still rather than moving, Nora saw the extent of the strain he attempted to hide. Something was seriously wrong.

Liam noticed it, too. He adjusted his upright stance by the kettle to lean against the counter. Relax. No hostility here, was the subliminal message. “Lucas. Nora, where do you keep your herb teas?”

He’d found the mugs. Three stood on the counter.

She patted him on the shoulder and pushed him toward the table.

Lucas slouched into his usual seat.

The man and boy watched her warm the teapot before spooning in mint and chamomile tea. The sharp scent of mint filled the kitchen as the hot water hit the dried leaves.

“I’m here as Nora’s friend, not your mom’s,” Liam said. “If I can help you, I will. Or I can leave.”

Lucas pulled a face. “Maybe you can handle Yuri.”

“I can.”

Lucas stared at him, then sighed. It wasn’t an ordinary teenager’s sigh at being burdened by adult nonsense. This sigh was an escape of breath as he shuddered at the relief of a burden.

The nape of Nora’s neck prickled in wariness and rage.

Liam sat straight and still, but nonetheless ready to unleash hell.

Neither pushed Lucas to speak.

Rather than ask if he’d eaten, Nora put the cookie jar on the table.

Lucas reached in automatically. “Yuri convinced Mom I’m a traitor and a thief.”

Chapter 2

Liam was already all-in with Nora. She was his forever love. They just had to work out what that meant in practice. But if he hadn’t already fallen head over heels, her readiness to go to war on behalf of a distraught teenager would have tipped him into whole-hearted adoration.

She was beautiful in her furious concern.

“Willow wouldn’t believe anything so stupid,” Nora stated definitely. “You’re no thief and the last thing from a traitor. What the heck has Yuri’s tighty-whities in a bunch?”

Cookie crumbs sprayed as Lucas answered. “A message from Poppa.”

Whoever Poppa was, mention of him had Nora gripping the edge of the counter.

Going up against Yuri, a former Royal Guard captain, didn’t faze her. But this Poppa did.

Recognizing dread when he saw it, Liam kept his voice neutral so as not to spook Lucas. “Who is Poppa?”

“My grandfather. My Dad’s father.”

“Stanley Zangmo,” Nora clarified. “Head of Zangmos Industries. Reputed to have ties to criminal gangs.”

Lucas nodded. “Not a good guy.”

“Also not involved in Lucas’s life.” Nora poured the tea.

“Yeah. Try telling Yuri that.”

Nora pushed a mug at him. “I will.”

Liam frowned into his own mug. Lucas’s mom ought to be the person defending him. “Willow—”

The lid of the cookie jar rattled as Lucas slammed it shut. “Nora, does he know how special you are?”

“He knows.” She smiled, although her eyes remained serious and concerned. “Liam also knows I’m Forgotten.”

Liam stared from her to the boy. How did Lucas learn Nora’s secret?

“Poppa breeds Forgotten women. The Zangmos have for a few generations. Copying the royals. Wanting to match their power.”

For Liam, puzzling fragments of information swirled and reassembled. He studied Nora. “Yesterday, you told me royals and others would be after you if they knew you were Forgotten. You meant people like Zangmo.”

“People chasing power,” she answered quietly. “Lucas thinks that could include people like Mstivoj.”

“Does Mstivoj know you’re Forgotten?”

“Cherry, my half-sister, told him.”

Liam consciously deferred pursuing that issue. “Lucas, what was your grandfather’s message?”

“Mom has a burr. Grandfather wants it.”

Holy hells.

Lucas obviously understood the gravity of the situation. Despite the sugar in the cookies and the hot drink, his face was bloodless from strain. “Are you going to ask why I told Poppa about Mom’s burr?”

“Why would I assume you did?” Liam countered.

The boy blinked rapidly.

“Because stupid Yuri did,” Nora guessed.

“Yuri isn’t stupid.” Liam anticipated her scowl. “Don’t. Underestimating an operator like Yuri is dangerous.”

Lucas hunched in on himself. He rested his heels on the edge of his chair seat and wrapped his arms around his knees. Short, skinny and scared, he appeared younger than sixteen. “Mom thinks he’s God.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Liam said firmly. “It’s a habit of training. Willow obeys the chain of command. If she thinks an issue falls under his authority, she’ll allow him to take the lead. If this is about a burr, a Royal Guard captain will be in charge of protecting it. A burr explains why Yuri is out on the border and in charge of scrapyard security. One of his people probably followed you here.”

“They didn’t.”

Liam evaluated the boy’s sullen, defiant expression before glancing at Nora.

She nodded that she believed Lucas’s confidence that he’d extracted himself from the scrapyard undetected.

Liam doubted it, but her quick question silenced him.

“How can we help?”

Lucas tugged at the sleeves of his sweatshirt, pulling them over his hands before scrubbing at his face. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to save Mom or how to stop Yuri blaming me for everything. It’s not like I want Poppa as my family!”

“What did the note say?” Liam asked

Lucas dropped his feet to the floor and slumped forward, arms on the table. “They know what I eat. Mom ordered pizza as a treat because we’re back on Border Station. She got her small, plain pizza without anchovies or pineapple or anything worth eating. I got a mega pizza with everything. The note was in the box, underneath my pizza.”

He picked up his mug of herb tea; put it down. “Mom was at the kitchen table reading the messages and stuff Penny had for her. Penny’s Mom’s assistant. She stayed at the scrapyard running things while we went to Beaconditch. I was sitting on the sofa, kind of watching a movie.

“The note was from Poppa. If it’s a lie, they faked it to sound like him. It said, either I’m a Zangmo or I’m not. He doesn’t protect weaklings. I had one chance to prove myself, and keep Mom alive. The note said that Mom has a burr and that I should get it and give it to Uncle Timothy tomorrow. Or they’d take it, and people would die. People like Mom and me, in the taking of it.”

Lucas stared desperately at Nora. “Can burrs survive being blown up? That’s all I can think. That they’ll blow up the scrapyard and Mom and me in it, then pick out the burr from the ruins and bodies.”

Liam noted the “Uncle Timothy”. If this was a Timothy Zangmo, Liam had a name he could use as a starting point to discover who was backing this play. Or rather, Allison, his intelligence officer back on the RC Genghis Khan, could follow up what ship had brought Timothy out to Border Station. “How would they find the burr?”

“Dunno. Yuri would have a way of tracking it, don’t you think?” Lucas gulped his tea. His knuckles showed white from tension as he clutched the mug, but his hands didn’t shake. “I showed Mom the note. Do you think that’s what they wanted me to do? It doesn’t add up. If they can get the burr without me, why warn me? It’s not like Poppa cares if I live or die. He thinks I’m useless. Which is still better than Yuri, who thinks I’m a traitor.”

“Willow showed him the note?” Nora prompted carefully.

“As soon as I showed her. She called him to our house.” Lucas shook his head. “Dad told me stories about using burrs. How lucky he is—we are—that we can’t use them. Burrs don’t just destroy spaceships and asteroids and things. According to Dad, they can wipe people’s minds. Mom can do that. She can create zombies, but she listens to Yuri. She lets him tell me that I’m dirt.”

Nora’s careful restraint broke. She hugged Lucas hard.

Liam was stuck on Lucas’s question.

The boy was right.

Why warn Lucas? More than that, why approach him now? The RC Genghis Khan was scheduled to depart in three days. Contacting Lucas, now, when Willow could ask for support from Liam, and Liam had Marine units at his command, was irrational.

Which meant there was something big Liam was missing.

He checked his personal comms unit. His second-in-command, Claire Stanimir, was in charge while he was off-duty, but she’d have contacted him if Willow or Yuri had requested urgent assistance. They hadn’t.

Had they realized Lucas was gone?

“Lucas, how did you get out of the scrapyard?”

The boy sniffed.

Nora glanced toward the tissue box on the corner of the counter.

Lucas grimaced and reached for it. He blew his nose, got up, and trashed the tissue. Perhaps he needed the excuse to turn away and compose himself. When he sat back down at the table, he met Liam’s gaze. “Sub-level. I scrambled through the pipes beneath the scrapyard. Yuri focused on keeping people out of the yard, or more like, out of the compound at the center of it where we live. He didn’t focus on keeping people in. As soon as we hit Border Station, they started rearranging the scrapyard. They’ve never thought much of me. So I mooched around, saw the plans, heard the discussions. Watched the changes. I worked out three get-the-hell-out routes. Thought I’d need them to go to a movie or something. Not this.” He pulled at the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “I used to escape boarding school. At least there, they wanted to keep me in.”

As the captain of a battlecruiser, Liam wasn’t accustomed to using a soft voice, but he tried. “Why run to Nora?”

Mouth compressed, Lucas looked away.

Liam pushed gently. “If you were followed here, you’ve brought that trouble to Nora and Aria.”

At mention of the girl’s name, Lucas’s head whipped in the direction of her cabin. He swore under his breath. “I didn’t think. Nora!” He lurched upward.

She grabbed his shoulders. “I have Mstivoj’s guards.”

Lucas wrenched free. “But we can’t trust him, either.”

Nora shot a quick glance, not in the direction of Aria’s cabin, but toward the bridge.

Swift suspicion struck Liam. “Lucas, did you hope Nora would run away with you as she did for Aria?”

“No! Just don’t…” Lucas rubbed his hands over his head. “I…there’s no one else.”

There was his mother.

Liam tried that suggestion, again, tentatively. “Willow—”

“You don’t get it!” Lucas took two desperate steps to the counter. “I didn’t either. I let Nora convince me Mom wanted me with her. And she did, but not for me.” He faced the two adults with heartbreak in his eyes. Heartbreak, but no tears. “I worked out why Poppa wanted me and why Yuri’s been on my ass.” Lucas’s mouth twitched before he managed to spit the word out. “Bio-lock.”

Nora collapsed into her chair. “Stars, no.”

It was possible. It was more than possible. Liam pitied Lucas. It was a plausible explanation for why Lucas had been included in the scrapyard group’s mission out in border space.

Whatever case the burr was secured in, a bio-lock meant only a live sample of recognized DNA could open it. A case coded to Willow, as the authorized user of the burr, could be coded to also recognize her son’s DNA. He was the backup.

“Can you use a burr?” Liam asked.

Lucas stared at him before breaking into wild laughter.

Searching for an explanation for the boy’s response, Liam looked at Nora.

She was frowning in the direction of the bridge, again.

“Nora?” He recalled her attention.

“Lucas didn’t test as sensitive,” she answered slowly.

Didn’t test as sensitive to burrs. Liam caught the possible misdirection. She hadn’t said that Lucas wasn’t sensitive to burrs. She’d said he didn’t test, that is, wasn’t recorded as, sensitive to burrs.

Using a sharp tone, Liam cut through Lucas’s laughter. “Lucas, do any of the Zangmos think you’re sensitive to burrs?”

“No. Everyone thinks I’m a dud like Dad.”

“Are you?”

Lucas swore under his breath. Then apologized to Nora. He was a good kid. He also looked harried, as if he’d realized it was too late to deny the truth to Liam. “I can sense the burr Mom has. I have to be close to it. There must be a crack in its shield. She hasn’t noticed.”

Liam tapped the table in sudden comprehension. “But you noticed it, Nora?” This was the connection between her and Lucas.

She nodded.

“And if the two of you can sense the burr when Willow can’t, you’re both more sensitive to burrs than she is?” He waited for their wary nods. “And no one knows you’re more powerful?”

“They think I’m a dud, remember?” Lucas used his teenage duh tone.

Liam nodded, his attention on Nora.

“I haven’t told anyone.” She stared at the bridge, or perhaps, beyond it to the station. “Liam, a couple of guards aren’t going to be enough to hold off a determined assault to grab Lucas, are they?”

“I should go.”

Nora grabbed Lucas’s wrist before the boy could move.

“Aria.” He reminded her.

She pointed at herself. “Kickass woman capable of hiring more guards.” She pointed at Liam. “Kickass captain capable of…” A lift of her eyebrows invited him to finish the sentence.

“I held a prince hostage, Lucas. I can handle your uncle.” That said prince was Nora’s half-brother was confounding. Liam hadn’t considered their resemblance before her confession yesterday as to her complicated identity, but she and Crown Prince Dominic had the same unusual eyes: green with a black ring at the outer rim of her irises. “The safest place for you is on the RC Genghis Khan until we resolve the threat.”

Lucas clenched his hands. “If you call Mom, she’ll demand you return me. Or Yuri will. I’m the key to a bio-lock, remember?”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Liam said. “I do know that while I think you’re safer on the RC Genghis Khan, there you’ll stay. Neither Willow nor Yuri outrank me. And I have Marines, whereas your mom’s forces are divided, many of them on Beaconditch. I’ll message Casimir to bring a squad of Marines to escort us to the ship. Nora, pack for a few days and wake Aria. Casimir won’t waste any time.”

“My android can pack. Give me a minute.” Nora headed for the bridge. She shut the hatch behind her.

Lucas twitched in his chair, knees knocking the table.

Keeping his eyes on his personal comms unit, Liam offered the kid advice honed in a decade of war. “Take it step by step. Seemingly unsolvable problems unravel themselves. I have a good team back at the ship. Casimir’s already responded to my message.” The Marine captain was duly unimpressed and undaunted by the unknown hostiles element of it. “He’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

Likewise, Claire had acknowledged his heads up that trouble was headed in their direction, but to delay recalling everyone to the ship till his return.

Liam added a quick message to Lieutenant Allison Chirlee, the RC Genghis Khan’s intelligence officer, to investigate Timothy Zangmo’s presence on Border Station, discreetly.

Nora popped out of the bridge.

Her ship’s android followed her.

“Jonah.” Lucas greeted the android like a friend.

In turn, the android offered Lucas a fist bump.

Nora squeezed Liam’s shoulder in passing.

He wanted to stand and hold her. “Casimir’s on his way.”

“I’ll hurry.”

He believed her, but she’d spent over ten minutes on the bridge. Perhaps the CC Kangaroo had security protocols he hadn’t considered, and she’d been activating them. Liam considered the closed bridge hatch. Or perhaps there were other orders she’d given the android.

When he looked at Jonah, the android smiled. “Good evening, Captain Kimani. I am sorry to meet you under such rushed circumstances. My name is Jonah.”

“Liam.” It felt odd to interact with an android as a person, but Nora and Lucas seemed to do so.

“If you’ll excuse me, I must help Nora with her preparations for departure. Aria resists being woken.”

Whatever Aria’s resistance to being woken, she and Nora were ready three minutes before Casimir’s arrival. Both wore sweatshirts and utility pants, though Aria’s were pastel pink and Nora’s plain khaki. After a moment’s instinctive resistance, Nora let Liam take their duffel bag from her.

She hit the intercom. “Trent, we’re about to have visitors. Marines. Aria and I will leave with them. They will see to our security. Please, stay and guard the ship, but merely for show. If anyone is determined to enter, don’t risk injuring yourselves.”

“That is literally my job,” Trent said.

Before Nora could argue, Liam hustled them out of the kitchen and into the docking tunnel.

Wide-eyed and silent, Aria stuck close to Nora.

For her part, Nora held the girl’s hand in an unbreakable grip. “We’ll be fine. We’re not actually in danger. We’re being cautious. A battlecruiser is a good place to be cautious in.” She ceased rambling as they reached the docking tunnel’s outer hatch. “I guess we sit tight till Casimir announces himself?”

Liam put a hand on her waist. “Yes.”

The four of them together caused a slight rustle of sound. Only the android trailing them was truly silent; not needing to breathe or, in the children’s case, fidget.

The guard’s voice came over the intercom. “Marines at the hatch.”

“Opening it now,” Nora said. “We’re coming out.”

The Marines extracted them fast. They were in the armored personnel carrier, its heavy doors shut, before Jonah closed the docking tunnel hatch behind them.

Liam buckled Aria in. “All good. We’ll be at the RC Genghis Khan in fifteen minutes.”

“Twelve.” Casimir easily divided his attention between his helmet feed, observing their surroundings, and monitoring their passengers.

Sitting between Liam and Nora, Aria cuddled into Nora as much as the harness allowed, while staring around at the big men in body armor. “Is Lucas going to be okay?” she whispered.

Liam felt Lucas jerk beside him.

Nora rubbed Aria’s arm. She kept her voice low so as not to distract the Marines. “I promised an explanation, didn’t I? We’re good, now. Bad guys threatened Lucas and his mom. Yuri is looking after Willow. Liam is going to keep Lucas safe, and he had his Marines scoop us up as well because he didn’t want to leave us behind, worrying. You’ll get to sleep in a real Navy bunk, tonight.”

Unfortunately, Aria wasn’t so sleepy or scared as to miss the flaw in Nora’s story. “You told Trent people might try to board the Roo.” The CC Kangaroo. “But Lucas isn’t there.”

“They might want to check,” Nora said.

Lucas helped out. “Because they think I’m sneaky and might try hiding.”

“Ohh.” Aria peered around Liam at Lucas. “Who are they?”

He scowled. “My uncle.”

None of the Marines in the carrier broke discipline to examine the kid, but the information and his bitterness were startling.

Aria, on the other hand, was reassured. “Family suck.”

Interesting attitude for an orphan. Over her head, Liam glanced at Nora.

“Don’t let Cherry hear you say that,” she teased Aria.

“Ha. Cherry says her dad and brother are poop-heads.”

Nora smiled. “Maybe, sometimes, you don’t have to quote her accurately.”

“I like how Cherry talks.”

Probably with a strident Angkorran accent, Liam assumed. Nora and her half-sister grew up in the towers, the Angkorran slums. Nora’s accent had softened in her years away, whereas Cherry had come straight from the towers to Border Station.

Aria relaxed at the gentle teasing.

Casimir didn’t relax, but he did contribute to the conversation, reverting to Nora and Lucas’s concerns even as he monitored their external environment. “Your ship’s not a target. There were sufficient witnesses, civilians as well as the two guards, to report that Lucas left the CC Kangaroo with us.”

The RC Genghis Khan could handle any trouble anyone on Border Station could throw at them—excepting Willow and the burr. But Willow would never use it against her Navy colleagues.

Casimir changed the subject. “We’re two minutes out from the RC Genghis Khan. We will enter via the cargo docking tunnel, which means that when you exit this vehicle you will be safely inside our ship. Nonetheless, follow our orders for an orderly exit.”

“Thank you,” Nora said.

No one spoke again till Casimir reported they were aboard the RC Genghis Khan. “Captain.”

Liam unbuckled his harness and followed Casimir out. He trusted Marine Sergeant Cameron Pelan to help the others.

Marines were trained to manage hostage extractions, including the adrenaline crash when people were finally safe. “Just take your time. Sometimes people are a bit shaky after their first ride in an APC.”

Additional Marines guarded the cargo bay. Claire stood by, as did Dr. Brielle Smith.

“They’re fine,” Casimir reported to the latter.

Brielle would insist on checking their health status for herself, even if only by visual observation.

Claire’s focus was on Liam. “Willow contacted the ship five minutes ago.”

They moved to the side.

“Did she ask for help?” he asked.

Claire contemplated the trio emerging from the APC. “She asked how we came to have her son. Said she’ll be here shortly.”

Marines converging on a ship docked on the Gretel Loop would have been instant news across the station.

“Good,” Liam said. “I want you in that meeting. Casimir, too. Did Allison send you the info I asked for on Timothy Zangmo.”

“Preliminary report. Timothy Zangmo. Twenty eight. Youngest son of Stanley Zangmo. Arrived at Border Station on the merchant cruiser, the CP Raccoon. Joined its trade delegation as a junior merchant on Capitoline. Trade delegation headed by Palantine master merchant, Emilia Wonda. The CP Raccoon arrived seven weeks ago. Emilia extended their stay on the premise that on learning of the blaze discovery, she wished to discuss a fuel cell purchasing contract with Willow.”

So, they’d hung around for Willow’s return from Beaconditch.

“It could be true,” Claire ended objectively.

Liam nodded. “Recall everyone. Security level amber.”

Undoubtedly, given the sensors on his helmet, Casimir had heard every word of their discussion. He’d need to redeploy his Marines to restrict access to the RC Genghis Khan’s section of the raw ore dock where they were moored, as well as to specifically manage Willow’s arrival and any protection detail accompanying her. Before he refocused, he took ten seconds to address Lucas. “Family are the people who have your back. You’ve got that in Nora and us.”

As Liam returned to the trio standing between Brielle and Cameron, Lucas stared from Casimir to Liam. The boy appeared both startled and lost. Out of place.

“We rescued you, that means you’re ours,” Liam said.

“Mom—”

“Can argue with me,” Liam finished firmly. “Aria?”

She jolted.

Liam gentled his tone. “You and Nora will be sharing the stateroom.” Even on a battlecruiser, space was tight. Besides which, both would feel more secure in reach of one another. “Lucas will bunk in with the stewards in the cabin next door.” The stewards would fuss and protect him. “However, Lucas needs Nora with him for his meeting with his mom. Are you okay if Dr. Smith shows you to your cabin? Either she or a steward will stay with you.”

Brielle smiled. “We’ll have hot chocolate and explore the stateroom. We’ll see if you can find the fold-out bunk.”

Aria surprised everyone, Lucas most of all, by giving him a quick hug. “Okay.”

“Kind and smart,” Brielle whispered her approval as they departed.

Nora watched them for a moment before shoulder-bumping Lucas. It was the most physical affection an adolescent male would accept from an aunt when he was trying to play it cool.

He shoulder bumped her back.

Nora smiled determinedly at Liam. “Let’s do this.”

Liam wanted to hold her so much it hurt. On a personal level, his desire to protect her and the family she’d made of Aria and Lucas, was intense. His duty to protect a burr and its wielder, Willow, since it was on Border Station and under threat, complicated everything. The time he and Nora should have had to agree how she’d use or not use her abilities as someone sensitive to burrs had vanished.

If protecting Nora and respecting her wishes came into conflict with his responsibilities as the highest ranked Navy officer along the Hadrian Line, whatever element of himself his choice sacrificed would change who he was.

He’d made promises to Nora—and Lucas; promises both explicit and implicit, and which might be impossible to keep.

Chapter 3

Walking through the battlecruiser behind Liam, with Lucas beside her, Nora was grateful she’d taken the time to change from her flirty date dress to hard-wearing spacer’s gear. Her boots were no louder than those of the Navy officers around her.

Lucas slouched along in his oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants; all but silent in his thick-soled sneakers.

Claire led the small group through the warren of passages. They’d been joined by Chief Engineer Xavier Songok, whom Nora knew, and a Lieutenant Bryce Tyler, introduced as from the Legal Corps.

For whatever reason, Liam wanted subject matter experts in their meeting with Willow.

Casimir would join them.

Nora wondered how long it would be before Willow arrived, and how long Liam’s patience lasted before he demanded her attendance.

Could he demand it?

Willow no longer served in the Capitoline Navy. She was a royal with her own priorities and duties.

She ought to prioritize checking on her son.

Nora wished, for Lucas’s sake, that she would.

Claire abruptly spun left, vanishing through an open door.

The sign on the door identified it as Training Room 2. Tables had been pushed together in the center of the room, a dozen chairs well-spaced around them, and jugs of water and glasses set out at either end.

Liam directed Nora and Lucas to the far side of the table, to his left, with Nora nearest to the head of the table where he sat. Despite his civilian clothing of dark blue shirt and jeans, there was no doubt he was in command. When Lieutenant Tyler circled around to sit on the other side of Lucas, Liam redirected him. “Leave that seat for Casimir.”

Lucas exhaled in soft, unmistakable relief.

No child should have to be grateful for a stranger’s protection against their parent, even if Casimir was an awesome ally.

Willow loved Lucas. On the journey back from Beaconditch, they’d been tentatively forging a new relationship, a parent to nearly-adult-child relationship, around their shared passion for engineering. The fact that they had been building a relationship where they respected each other worsened the double blow of Lucas suspecting that he’d been brought out to Border Station as a living key for a bio-lock, and how ready Willow and Yuri were to suspect him of betraying them and Capitoline to his father’s family.

If Willow now delayed coming to the RC Genghis Khan to check on his welfare, Nora believed it would be the final shriveling of any hope their relationship could recover.

Maybe Willow understood that, and feared it, or maybe she just had to recover Lucas as a bio-lock key. Either way, Casimir ushered her in only fifteen minutes later.

Unfortunately, Yuri accompanied her, and he was in a combative mood. He sat across from Nora.

Willow sat beside him, opposite Lucas.

Tension twinged across Nora’s back as she sat upright, trying not to appear as out of place as she felt on the battlecruiser, in a meeting surrounded by officers. She was present as support for Lucas. She had to look strong. She also wanted Liam’s officers to respect her as someone worthy of his love.

Yuri wanted her gone. “Why is Nora present? Even if she’s rich and Willow’s business partner, your girlfriend,” he sneered at Liam, “has no place here.”

How in the stars did Yuri know of their new relationship?

Yuri hadn’t finished. He turned his sneer on Nora. “I blame you. You shouldn’t be encouraging Lucas to run.”

“Shut up!” The command came from Willow.

Yuri blinked.

Willow had noticed what Yuri hadn’t bothered to.

Lucas trembled with rage, breathing harshly, while gripping his knees beneath the table.

But this part of the meeting wasn’t his fight. The kid had good instincts. He wanted to defend her from the mess he’d brought to her ship. But Nora’s involvement, and the level of her involvement, was her choice.

Speak now, or forever be sidelined.

She glared at Yuri. He would not bully her into leaving Lucas minus a supporter. “It’s just as well Lucas ran to me. I’m Forgotten, so I believed him. I can sense the burr. Its shield is leaking.”

Shock slapped all expression from Yuri’s face, even his customary disapproval.

“Me, too,” Lucas declared defiantly. “I can sense the burr.”

Willow gaped at him. “No.” Emotions flashed across her face too fast for Nora to be sure she interpreted them correctly. Disbelief and loss. Regret. Fear.

“Grandfather took me to be tested when I was five. Actually, no. My nanny took me. He met me there and handed me over. Maybe I was a rotten kid. The doctor told me to put my hand on the table when I felt a buzzy feel. Well, that’s what Grandfather wanted, for me to feel the buzz, so I refused to give it to him. The doctor didn’t suspect I was fooling. I guess kids normally go with their parents to be tested, and want to please them. The doc reported to Grandfather that I was useless. Grandfather sent useless-me away to boarding school.”

He’d been six.

Nora had heard the story before. Lucas had told her it in greater detail on the journey to Beaconditch.

By the thunderstruck anguish in Willow’s eyes, she’d only heard her father, the Duke’s, version of her son’s testing. “But why hide your sensitivity from me later? You must have realized what it meant?”

For once, Yuri stayed silent.

“I realized, all right,” Lucas responded, all jagged edges and hurt. “I realized what I’d escaped. Do you think I want to be like you, locked up on a Navy ship, all duty and no heart?” New, overwhelming fury entered his voice. His slight body tensed. “You used me, your son, as a bio-lock key, a backup, for your damn burr. I’m not even a person to you.”

“Lucas, no.”

Yuri cleared his throat. “We should all leave. Give them some privacy.”

“Ha! Now, you think I deserve time with Mom? Now? Screw you. These people—Nora, Liam, Casimir. They care what happens to me. To me, not to your spare key. I won’t ever be dumb enough to trust Mom again.”

Willow flinched. “It was the only way for me to gain permission to include you on the mission,” she implored Lucas to understand. “You had to have a role, or a teenager would never have been allowed. It was this or the military school Father wanted for you. He was angry at your expulsion.”

“But he’s not my parent! You are. You could have put me in a different school.”

She shook her head. “I was leaving for Border Station. Father has guardianship of you in my absence. The stars know your own father doesn’t care.”

“He visits me more than you do.”

“What?” Willow shrank from Lucas’s violent scorn.

Yuri leaned forward.

Lucas redirected his anger at him. “Don’t worry. Dad wasn’t corrupting me to wicked Zangmo ways. We hid his visits because neither grandfather would have approved. Dad has always congratulated me on being a dud like him, free of the burden of being sensitive to burrs. It’s why his father, Poppa, has no time for me. He believes I’m a dud. Uncle Timothy thinks the same as everyone else.”

Uncle Timothy was the Zangmo present on Border Station, standing by for Lucas to hand over the burr.

Liam intervened. “Which brings us to the reason for this meeting. Timothy Zangmo’s presence on Border Station and the note he brought from his father, Stanley Zangmo. Why would he pass a threat via Lucas now, when the RC Genghis Khan is docked at the station, rather than wait till our departure?”

Beside Nora, Lucas spun his chair to put his back to the room. She fished in her pocket and handed him a tissue. When he’d blown his nose, she passed him a glass of water.

Eyes haunted, Willow watched Nora care for Lucas.

Yuri ran a hand over his short, gray hair. “We took the burr with us to Beaconditch. Zangmo had to twiddle his thumbs till our return. His pushing, now, indicates a time-sensitive plan for the burr which he thinks he can still meet.”

Blinking rapidly, Willow stared down at the table. “That’s our worst case scenario. It could be that Timothy is an impatient fool. I don’t know him. I have no contact with the Zangmos. He might simply have the arrogance of his family and believe he can take what he wants.”

“That’s our best case scenario,” Yuri said ironically. “But I doubt we can dismiss Timothy Zangmo as a fool.”

“There is also the fact that he arrived here on a Palantine cruiser as part of a joint Palantine-Capitoline trade delegation,” Claire said coolly, involving herself now that the drama was suspended. “The CP Raccoon’s itinerary is to travel from Border Station to Palantine.”

“Eight months,” Xavier said.

Lucas turned back to the table.

“So, what occurs on Palantine eight months from now?” Liam asked.

Claire tapped her personal comms unit. “We should consider events a month either way from that date.”

“Have Allison look into it,” Liam ordered. He frowned at Willow and Yuri. “In border space, a station has the legal status of a spaceship, which means that as the highest ranking Navy officer present, I have the right and responsibility to take command of it in an emergency, such as the failure of law and order. Lieutenant Tyler, from Legal Corps, has researched the laws and regulations if you have questions.”

Or if you try to argue against my authority, Nora concluded silently.

Willow and Yuri recognized his position. They nodded: the former quickly, the latter reluctantly.

“A threat to seize a burr is a threat against Capitoline,” Liam said. “It’s a terrorist threat.”

Bryce Tyler shuffled his comms unit from hand to hand, ready to prove the legal argument for that statement.

“I’m aware,” Yuri said drily. He had served, after all, as a Royal Guard captain, responsible for the security of the Capitoline royals and the burrs that underpinned their power.

“So, we’re in this together,” Liam said. “Which means I want a briefing from the beginning concerning this threat.”

He and Yuri locked gazes.

Willow broke the standoff, seemingly unaware of it. “I didn’t expect anyone to come after the burr. People don’t expect burrs to leave the vault. Royals go out, particularly those of us who are further removed from the Crown, but notably sensitive to burrs. We serve in the Navy. When our ships take us into unexplored space, we’re alert for any buzz of an undiscovered cache of burrs. Lucas, you’re right that I served because of this sense of duty.”

“If you’d known I was sensitive, would you have returned more often, to raise me with that same sense of duty?”

Willow swallowed. “Yes.”

Lucas folded his arms, vindicated.

The others around the table probably saw him as a kid. To some extent, Nora did, as well. But she also had her towers’ upbringing in which sixteen-, nearly seventeen-year-olds were considered adults, and responsible for themselves. Lucas had a right to defend the choices he made and the life he wanted, and the right to be angry. He hadn’t owed anyone the knowledge of his sensitivity to burrs.

Yuri disagreed, but remained focused on the pressing issue. “From the beginning, even before Willow was selected as the royal to wield the burr, security measures have been in place to prevent knowledge of the burr’s deployment leaking. At every stage, its security has been paramount. Burrs are rarely used, but they are highly effective in remote space where resources to secure Capitoline interests are limited and where ships and people vanishing is unremarkable.”

The spacers around the table, which was everyone bar Lucas, stiffened at Yuri’s statement. The loss of a spacer or spaceship was never unremarkable.

“The region around Border Station was identified as the most likely location for the next discovery of blaze, and so it proved.” Yuri jerked his chin at Nora. “Locking in and protecting a supply of it is essential. Stocks of blaze are lower than the public assumes.”

“We operated with that deficiency throughout the war, but especially the last years of it,” Xavier said. “Yet the civilian engineers believed the Navy was hogging fuel cells.”

Willow nodded, one engineer to another. “When news of the Beaconditch find reaches Capitoline, the Navy will send additional ships to protect the fuel cell supply chain. We’re processing the toxic blaze ore into blazsvitloium on Beaconditch, then it’ll be transported to Border Station where we’ll process it into fuel cells at the scrapyard.”

“Consequently, until backup arrives from Capitoline, our security force, even including the new hires for Beaconditch, is stretched thin,” Yuri said. “I didn’t anticipate arriving back at Border Station to someone threatening to acquire the burr. I reacted badly and accused Lucas of spilling information to his father’s family. I’m sorry, Lucas.”

Lucas stared at his hands, pretending he hadn’t heard the apology.

Yuri cleared his throat, again. “When Willow realized you were gone, Sam followed your trail, electronically and via physical evidence, through the underground. You impressed him.”

“Sam Gurung?” Casimir queried.

“Yes.

Casimir turned to Lucas. “Take the compliment.” Sam was a former Marine captain.

Lucas shrugged one shoulder. He knew Sam. He didn’t care.

“We had no warning of interest in the burr,” Yuri said. “Sam was in charge of the scrapyard in my absence.”

His, not Willow’s, Nora noted. Blue Dock Scrapyard, however, was in Willow’s name, and it was with Willow that Nora had signed a partnership for the development of Beaconditch. Moreover, Willow, not Yuri, was royal, and in the Human Sector, that mattered.

But Willow didn’t protest. As a former chief engineer in the Navy, she ought to be able to assert herself against Yuri.

I’m missing some aspect of their relationship, Nora thought. Not romantic. There was nothing like that between them. Liam had claimed it was about chain of command. Was it as basic as Willow respecting Yuri’s skills and experience as a Royal Guard?

Nora tried to see him as a stranger would.

Early fifties. Gray hair cut short. Deep frown lines. Those creases definitely weren’t from smiling. Broad stature. Fit. A voice accustomed to command. “There were three attempts to penetrate the scrapyard’s defenses. Sam judged the intent to be ordinary crime. Scrapyards are often targets for thieves.”

Willow would have come to the ship for Lucas, but why was Yuri here?

Nora couldn’t sense the burr, so they’d divided their security forces again: to protect the burr, wherever they’d stashed it, and to protect Willow.

What did Yuri want? He wouldn’t have boarded the RC Genghis Khan unless there was something he wanted. Information was the currency he was spending to get it, and background on the scrapyard didn’t surrender much.

It was an unfair exchange. He’d already learned that she and Lucas were sensitive to burrs, but that was unanticipated, bonus information from Yuri’s perspective. If he was on the RC Genghis Khan, he wanted something from Liam.

Liam wanted to know exactly what trouble Yuri and Willow had brought to border space. “Willow, you told me you were sent to Border Station to provide backup for the RC Genghis Khan.”

“To protect Capitoline interests,” she confirmed.

“My priority is to protect the burr,” Yuri said. “Which includes protecting Willow as its wielder and Lucas as the emergency bio-lock key. In the event we have to relocate the burr and Willow isn’t available, we’d need you.”

Disregarding Lucas’s scowl, Yuri scrutinized him. “How strong is the buzz you feel through the cracked shielding?”

Nora was impressed that Yuri had accepted her and Lucas’s assertion that it was cracked and leaking. She was also aware that he eyed her even as he evaluated Lucas.

“It depends on how far I am from it,” Lucas said.

“So, how strong is it, now?” Yuri prompted.

Lucas frowned.

Nora did, too.

Yuri pounced. “Can’t you feel it?”

Willow sat very, very still.

“You’re carrying it on you,” Casimir said to her. “You insisted we couldn’t search you.”

Where in the stars could Willow hide a tennis ball-sized burr inside a shielded case on her body? Her jacket was cut loosely, and she hadn’t unzipped it, but still…

“She can’t be,” Lucas said. “I can’t feel it.” He looked at Nora.

“I can’t either.”

Willow unzipped her jacket. She wore a harness with a case tucked tight below her breasts. “It’s in here. Battlecruisers include a vault for burrs. We were going to ask you to keep it, Liam. But if Lucas and Nora—”

“It’s not in there!” Lucas interrupted. “If you’re meant to be on the same side, why are you lying to Liam?”

“I’m not.”

Nora interrupted. “When you attached the burr to your harness, did you change its case?”

“Huh.” Lucas subsided. A new, uncracked case would stop the burr’s buzzy leak of power.

“I haven’t removed it from its case,” Willow said. “On our return, Yuri took it from the CC Arowana’s vault.” The CC Arowana was the Blue Dock Scrapyard’s cutter on which she’d traveled to and from Beaconditch. “And secured it in the permanent vault in the scrapyard.”

Lucas shook his head. “He didn’t. I haven’t felt the burr since the ship. Unless you moved the vault from beneath the cabin.” Yuri stiffened, which was sufficient confirmation that the burr had, indeed, been secured beneath Willow and Lucas’s small house. Lucas scowled at him. “Yeah. I always knew it was there. But it hasn’t been since we got back.”

“Which explains Timothy Zangmo’s message for Lucas,” Liam said.

Everyone stared at him.

“It was never real,” he said. “Or perhaps it was, to the extent that they’d have been happy to nab Lucas on the off-chance that you had done what you did do, that is, make him a bio-lock key. But in terms of acquiring the burr. They already have it.”

“How?” Yuri demanded.

“Casimir will go over your security system to identify gaps. The obvious solution is generally the true one,” Liam added. “Sending a note in a pizza box? It freaked Lucas, which freaked Willow, and you,” he meant Yuri, “were rattled by the breaching of your security. Even if the note had been discovered by your gate guard, it still would have served its purpose of distraction.”

“What about the bombs?” Lucas asked. “Poppa threatened Mom.”

Even in the midst of the disaster which was the loss of the burr, Willow looked distressingly grateful for her son’s concern.

“Bombs are always an effective distraction, but an attack can take many forms,” Casimir said. “The question is who could have swapped out the burr, in its portable case, for a fake whilst on the CC Arowana. Narrow that down by who, as the thief, would the Zangmos bother protecting? Why wouldn’t they just flee with the burr before anyone noticed it was gone?”

“Irina,” Yuri said. “Captain Irina Wismer is the only other person with clearance to access the vault in the cutter.”

As well as captaining the CC Arowana, Irina had commanded the flotilla of ships out to Beaconditch. She’d worn her authority easily and well, managing personalities as much as the ships.

“But we ought both to have received an alert if the vault was opened,” Willow said.

Yuri glared at her chest. “If the case is a fake, it’s a perfect one. Good enough that neither of us suspected an exchange. If the Zangmos were that prepared, then conceivably they presented Irina with a hack to run through the ship’s operating system to override the vault’s security. We need a secure room.”

Willow contradicted him. “We’re past that.” Everyone present knew she carried the burr, or the fake burr, and that the case was secured by a bio-lock. She stuck her finger against the side of it.

“Wait!” Nora cried. “A fake could be booby-trapped.”

A live blood sample was fundamental to a bio-lock.

Willow dropped her hand from beside the possibly poisoned needle.

Claire supported Nora’s suspicions. “It doesn’t even have to be a fatal poison. Making you sick removes from the board the only person they’re aware of on Border Station who is capable of wielding a burr.”

“Except for Uncle Timothy,” Lucas said.

“Is he sensitive?” Nora asked.

Lucas nodded. “That’s why he’s Poppa’s favorite.”

“Are the Zangmos breeding for sensitivity to burrs?” Yuri asked, sidetracked.

“Yes.”

Everyone else stayed focused.

“How do we get the case open?” Casimir asked.

Willow and Xavier quickly spiraled into an engineers’ discussion.

Nora ignored the technical details. Basically, it concerned the case’s creators’ intentions, and how much time they’d spent on presentation over function.

“Blunt force won’t hurt a true burr case,” Willow said. “We still use the original design as it’s never been broken.”

“So, if we can destroy it, it’s a fake?” Casimir asked.

Yuri grimaced. “Doing so would also destroy any clues that might be found in its construction.”

Liam made the call. “Xavier, take it to the testing chamber and blow it up. If it doesn’t explode, it’s Willow’s decision whether to treat it as the genuine case, and risk deactivating the bio-lock, or try another test. We need a decision on its authenticity.”

Xavier and Willow stood.

At a quiet word from Claire, Lieutenant Bryce Tyler also gathered his belongings to depart.

Yuri hesitated. If he accompanied Willow and Xavier, he’d be removing himself from whatever discussion and decisions were reached in the meantime. He addressed Liam. “Are you trusting Nora and Lucas’s judgement?”

“Yes.”

Yuri rose. “I’ll have our two guards outside escort Willow. I’ll stay and plan the recovery mission with you.” He walked around Willow to the door. “If it’s needed.”

The theft of a burr while it was under his protection would destroy Yuri’s career.

Lucas only considered Yuri’s insult to Nora and himself. “Jackass,” he muttered.

Yuri’s shoulders twitched, but he continued on out to talk to the guards.

“We’ll go see how Aria’s settled in,” Nora said. “Maybe get ourselves settled,” she coaxed Lucas.

He stood grudgingly, rebellious attitude on full display.

Liam rose, as well. “We’ll call you if we need you.” His hand settled at the small of her back as they walked to the door. The touch was for Nora, the words for Lucas’s ego.

“Goodnight.” She smiled at him. Her instinct was to kiss him goodbye, but it wasn’t an instinct to be indulged in under the circumstances. She perfunctorily gazed around the room. “’Night.”

From the bemused smiles she received in return, “goodnight” was an unconventional ending to a Navy meeting.

Liam bent close to her ear. “Goodnight.” He returned to the table.

Out in the passage, Willow caught Lucas’s arm. “We will talk.”

He shrugged her off.

An ensign smoothly evaded Lucas’s awkward, resentful flailing. She directed her attention to Nora. “I’m Ensign Rachel Badak, ma’am. I will show you to your quarters.”

“Thank you. Lucas?” Unthinkingly, Nora grabbed his arm to grab his attention. It was only as Willow flinched and spun to join Xavier, heading in the opposite direction, that Nora realized her impulsive action emphasized that Lucas would accept her when he’d rejected Willow.

It was too late for regret, and she wasn’t sure Willow didn’t deserve to feel the sting of Lucas’s mistrust. Nora slung an arm over his shoulder. “Come on, kid. We have to rescue a steward from Aria. She’s grouchy when she’s sleep-deprived.”

He grunted.

She squeezed his shoulders before releasing him. “But not as grumpy as you if we try to wake you in the morning.”

The gentle teasing failed to raise a response.

Nora walked silently beside him through the RC Genghis Khan; fascinated, despite all their problems, to have this glimpse of Liam’s ship.

The overwhelming impression was of economy and functionality. Everything was designed to endure the long stretches between action, then facilitate an emergency response to a call to arms. What didn’t contribute, was discarded. The result was a lot of gray, bare bulkheads and decks.

In the stateroom, Aria sprang up to show Nora the relative glories of their temporary accommodation. “Admirals stay in this room.”

The steward who’d been babysitting smiled indulgently as she picked up an empty cup sticky with drips of hot chocolate and marshmallow. “Dr. Smith was called away.”

Nora nodded. “Thanks for stepping in.”

“Hey, um, where do I sleep?” Lucas interrupted.

“Next door. Two of your cabin-mates are in their scheduled sleep shift…”

“I’ll be quiet.” Lucas was hoarse from exhaustion.

Aria darted forward. “Like a mouse.”

Nora hauled her back. “You stay here.”

“Aww, but—”

Nora spoke over Aria’s cranky wheedling. “Anything you need, Lucas, we’re right here.”

“I wanna see—”

“Bed, now. You’re in your pjs. Crawl in. Sleep.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lucas said. “Goodnight, cranky baby.”

Aria had reluctantly sat on the foldout bunk. She bounced up. “I am not!”

“Then go to sleep like a grown up. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Nora silently blessed Lucas for his excellent Aria-handling skills, and that he cared enough to help.

“Whatever.” Aria pulled the blanket over her head.

Nora smiled at him. “’Night, Lucas.”

His mouth twitched, but didn’t manage a smile. “Goodnight.”

The stewardess departed with Lucas.

Nora switched on the lamp inset in the bulkhead by her bunk, and turned off the other lighting. She dimmed the lamp further. Aria needed to sleep.

“Is Lucas okay?”

“He will be.” But in making that promise, Nora might have to put herself at risk.

She didn’t undress, but stretched out on the bunk and listened to Aria’s breathing deepen into sleep.

If she had to leave the battlecruiser, Nora would call the steward back to sit and listen for Aria or Lucas needing help. Although Nora had accepted responsibility for their welfare, she wasn’t the only person who could provide it; whereas she might be the only person who could save Lucas’s mom.

Willow was a royal, a former Navy officer, and a recognized sensitive authorized to wield a burr, but if she hadn’t sensed the leak from its case, then Nora was a stronger sensitive. Worse, if Timothy Zangmo was also stronger, Willow being part of the group going after him would put her in danger.

Logically, the stronger sensitive should go, and that was Nora, even if she was untrained.

Nora wasn’t idiotically noble. In the face of so many unknown factors, she wouldn’t volunteer. However, if she was asked, she wouldn’t refuse.

Shivers skittered over her skin at the thought of having to use a burr.

Outside of royal vaults, burrs were rarely encountered. There was one on permanent display on the skydeck of the Planetary Museum in Bangalore. It was too low in power to be used against anyone, but it remained a trap for unwitting Forgotten.

Nora’s biological mother, Maya Pendit, had told Nora it was monitored for visitors’ reactions to it. A weak sensitive wouldn’t feel a buzz from a depleted burr, but a strong one would.

It could be that exposure to it was how the Zangmos tested their non-royal offspring’s sensitivity to burrs. If Timothy had tested strongly, then he’d been sent on this mission to capitalize on opportunities.

Any sensitive, in range of an unshielded burr, could use it. If there was more than one sensitive, the more powerful one could take control even if the other resisted.

It was why royals hated and feared the Forgotten, even as they bred Forgotten genes into their families for genetic diversity and health.

Both Timothy and Nora could be stronger sensitives than Willow; as Lucas was.

Obviously, Timothy being able to wield the burr depended on him being able to circumvent the bio-lock on the case. But any lock could be broken, even a bio-lock.

Nora judged it sensible to assume he could break the lock, given how smoothly he’d acquired it.

Irina had stolen the burr in its case from the vault on the CP Raccoon and replaced it with an excellent fake. She’d easily circumvented Yuri’s security. In fact, if not for Lucas and Nora’s sensitivity to the burr’s leaking power, Yuri and Willow wouldn’t have suspected her theft.

If Timothy could open the case, then he could use the burr to obliterate opponents. It needn’t even be a physical obliteration. A strong sensitive could use a burr to mind-wipe people.

Could they also implant orders?

Nora had a frightening vision of Casimir and other Marines returning to the RC Genghis Khan to fight their colleagues as mindless zombies.

As a stronger sensitive than Willow, maybe she ought to go on the raid, or at least, lurk in reserve, in the event that Timothy did crack open the case and wield the burr.

Or am I exactly where I need to be, protecting Aria and Lucas?

If I’m needed, will Liam ask for my service?

Chapter 4

Liam stood at the head of the conference table; not speaking till Yuri returned from ordering his guards to accompany Willow and the fake burr. The door shut, and the metaphorical kid gloves came off. Liam had kept things gentle while Nora and Lucas were present. “Yuri, you will take orders from Casimir. You will provide all the information on burrs that he requires. You lost the burr, and with it the authority to lead the retrieval mission.”

“We don’t know the burr is lost. We only have Nora and Lucas’s opinion, neither of whom are registered sensitives.”

“When Xavier destroys the case you believe is real, we’ll have proof of your failure,” Liam said. “Casimir, what do you need?”

Casimir evaluated Yuri. “Can anyone, other than Willow or Lucas, unlock the case?”

“Not on-station. The King and Crown Prince are keyed to all burr cases. A bio-lock has never been circumvented.”

“But you would have sworn Captain Wismer couldn’t steal the case,” Claire pointed out.

Yuri glared at her. “Unproven.”

“On the basis that Willow or Lucas can be used to open the case, Willow can’t be part of the raid team,” Casimir said. “She would be a vulnerability we had to protect. If Timothy gets the case open, at what distance could Willow detect it?”

“Fifty miles.”

So, anywhere on-station was within range. But the ready availability of spaceships rendered the limitation moot. Timothy could depart on the CP Raccoon, skip out of range of Willow’s ability to contest control of the burr, and use it to obliterate Border Station and everyone on it.

It was frightening how often survival depended on your enemy not being a psychopath.

Yuri rolled his shoulders before massaging the left one. “Royals can sense unshielded and undepleted burrs across solar systems. On Capitoline, when a royal opens a case, they do so inside a vault, so that others aren’t alerted to the buzz. If, impossibly, Timothy opened the case, Willow would sense it. The question you’re really asking is the range at which she could connect to, and take control of, it.”

“If she’s stronger than Timothy,” Liam stressed.

Yuri hit the shoulder he’d been massaging with the heel of his hand. “She would be. She was chosen for her strong sensitivity.”

Which is less than Nora’s. Liam wasn’t certain how much that annoyed the Royal Guard captain. In Yuri’s world, royals were meant to hold ultimate power.

“But if she isn’t,” Casimir persisted. “If Willow can’t take control of the burr from Timothy, how do we take down a burr user?”

“Before he’s aware of you,” Yuri said bluntly.

“Too late for that,” Claire responded, cool, but combative. She’d never liked the scrapyard team and their arrogance. “You lost Lucas and we retrieved him. Marines on-station is the news of the night. The CP Raccoon will be alert for our involvement, even if we manage to disguise that we’re aware of the theft of the burr.”

She tapped her personal comms unit. “You returned two days ago. The burr could already be off-station, and Timothy a secondary decoy. I pulled up the station’s departures list. Eighteen ships have left in that time. We can’t dismiss any of them, since even a slow mining barge could rendezvous with another ship.”

“The note gives us just cause to search the CP Raccoon,” Liam said. “Casimir, raid it, tonight. Include Yuri’s people in your team, as needed. Yuri, you will return to the scrapyard. Timothy’s group will be monitoring it. You will show them activity there. At minimum, you’ll enact a dramatic search for the explosives Timothy threatened Lucas with.”

“That search is underway,” Yuri said. “But I will return to the scrapyard. Sam is a better fit for the raid. He’ll join you. I accept that we need to prepare as if the case has been stolen. One point. I am not questioning you authority, Liam, but Nora cannot be included in the mission. I will test her and Lucas’s sensitivity to burrs later, but even then, even if it’s proven, they remain unregistered sensitives until added to the vault record. They have no status.”

Casimir raised an eyebrow at Liam.

“Go,” Liam said. “Get ready for the raid.” He shifted focus to Yuri. “Is it Nora and Lucas’s unregistered status that makes it possible for Forgotten to be disappeared?”

“The Forgotten are not persecuted.”

Casimir paused in the doorway. “Interesting answer.”

They’d all heard the defensiveness in Yuri’s response.

“They’re protected,” Yuri gritted out. “When we find them.”

Casimir slapped the doorframe. “Lucas and Nora are now under our protection. You concentrate on the burr you lost. Huh. Xavier?” Casimir got out of the doorway.

Xavier and Willow entered, and her gaze found Yuri. “It blew up in the first test. A crude test. We’ve lost the burr.”

The result confirmed Nora and Lucas’s claim. They hadn’t sensed the burr Willow carried because it was a fake.

Liam amended his orders for Casimir. “We’re two days behind whoever stole the burr. If it’s still on-station, it’s likely on the CP Raccoon. I want its presence on the ship either confirmed or cleared, tonight. If that means asking Nora to board the merchant cruiser to sense for the burr, then we need to be able to guarantee her safety.”

Yuri hadn’t given up his objection to Nora’s involvement. “She’s not a registered wielder.”

“She’s the key to fixing your mistake,” Liam replied.

Willow closed her eyes for a few seconds. Their options for sensing the burr’s location were Nora or Lucas.

Or, “I’ll get the truth out of Timothy Zangmo,” Casimir said.

Torture was tempting, but unreliable in its results. It was also an option that, in the face of a terrorist threat, couldn’t be dismissed.

“If the burr isn’t on the CP Raccoon, I authorize his enhanced interrogation.” Liam stood. “Yuri, return to the scrapyard. Casimir needs Sam. You can provide the distraction for anyone observing the yard. Remember, as far as they know, we believe the fake is real.”

As Yuri had persisted in arguing, up until Xavier exploded it.

In fact, Yuri opened his mouth to continue to argue or defend himself, when the door buzzed.

Since Casimir stood in front of it, he turned and opened it.

Nora burst in.

“Sorry, sir,” the steward began. “Captain Devi insisted the matter was urgent.”

“It is,” Nora said.

Liam dismissed the steward.

Nora watched the door close. The instant it sealed, she spoke, taking two quick steps toward Liam at the head of the table.

Her urgency silenced even Yuri.

“Liam, Irina still has the burr, the real burr. She never handed it off to anyone. Think about its range. Timothy doesn’t have to be holding the burr to use it. He merely has to be close to it when someone opens its case and it’s unshielded. The note was designed to stress you, to pile on the pressure. If Lucas hadn’t run to me, with all of you busy responding to the note, who would you have trusted Lucas’s security to? Someone who wasn’t necessary to tracking down the threat.”

“Irina,” Willow said on a breath of understanding.

Nora nodded emphatically. “When you stop to think about bio-locks, it’s logical that Lucas would be your,” her face twisted in disgust, “spare key. Irina gets the case and him, and she can open it for Timothy. He just needs to lurk near the scrapyard.”

“Or anywhere on-station,” Yuri said heavily.

A fifty mile radius covered the station.

Nora raised an eyebrow. “That far? Never mind. Their whole strategy has been one of misdirection.”

“It would have worked,” Casimir said. “If Lucas hadn’t proved an escape artist and had you to run to.”

Willow inhaled shakily.

Claire frowned from her to Nora before nodding at Liam. “Nora’s explanation makes sense of everything.”

“We can test it,” Nora said. “Irina has to have the burr either with her or readily available. I’ll go to the scrapyard to pick up a few things for Lucas. Irina will believe that he’s mad at Willow. We’ll tell the truth, that Liam has said that Lucas is to stay on the RC Genghis Khan until the threat the Zangmos pose is resolved. If I sense the burr…”

“You tell Lieutenant Hirano,” Casimir said. “I’d go myself, but we can’t risk tipping our hand. Hirano will lead a unit of Marines escorting you and Yuri to the scrapyard. Half will stay, ostensibly to bolster the scrapyard’s defenses. In truth, if Irina has the burr, they’ll stay to guard her. Sam Gurung, a former Marine captain employed at the scrapyard,” he explained to Nora. “Will return with you to the RC Genghis Khan.”

“And bring the burr,” Liam said.

There was silence as they all weighed the risks of transporting the burr.

Casimir nodded first. “We’ll be ready to respond to any attack.”

Liam controlled a wince at the thought of sending Nora on a potentially lethal mission. “No one ought to suspect the burr being taken from Irina.” They were gambling with good odds. But they were also gambling with Nora’s life.

Yuri folded his arms. “This all hinges on Nora sensing the real burr. I’m not doubting that Xavier blew up a fake, but Nora’s claim to sense the burr is incredible. If the case had a leak, one of the royals at the vault would have sensed it. You can’t expect me to believe that Nora is more sensitive to burrs than Crown Prince Francis is.”

Liam locked gazes with Nora. He could believe it. She’d confided the truth of her paternity to him. She was the oldest daughter of Palantine’s king. If Yuri wanted royalty, she matched Francis.

Although that didn’t explain Lucas’s ability.

Just how effective was the Zangmos’ program for breeding Forgotten? And what did it mean for the level of Timothy Zangmo’s ability?

Liam spoke. “Yuri, I don’t care what you believe. You’ll follow orders. And this one is for everyone, Willow especially. Under no circumstances is the burr case to be opened within two days’ travel of Timothy Zangmo or of Border Station since we don’t know who else the Zangmos may have inserted onto the station. If Timothy is as strong or stronger than Lucas, we can’t risk him acquiring control of the burr.”

Even Yuri nodded agreement.

Liam lowered his intensity a fraction. “We have a lot to discuss. Options and threats we hadn’t anticipated. But all of that, including getting answers from Timothy and Irina, depends on us scooping up their entire operation tonight. Casimir, the raid of the CP Raccoon is still on, but you’re after information and the extraction of key personnel, not the burr. Timothy is a must. Claire, identify up to four others as priority targets.”

Nora sank into the chair nearest his.

He reached for her hand under the corner of the table. She returned his clasp, and he wished they’d had their simple, happy evening. It had started out so promisingly. A family dinner with Aria, privacy and kisses later. By silent consensus they’d put off difficult conversations about Nora’s heritage and sensitivity to burrs, and his duty. Now, the two currently aligned, but could equally as easily clash.

She’d warned him yesterday that becoming involved with her might cause problems in the future.

Fate had landed those dilemmas on them early.

Could she really be something more than other royals? More powerful than Francis due to a recombination of genes that increased her sensitivity to burrs? If she was, if that was proven in the registration process Yuri had mentioned, what would it mean for her, for them?

Would people like Francis see her as a personal threat, as a threat to Capitoline, or as an opportunity? Each had its own dangers.

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers.

Planning around the table faltered.

Nora blushed.

“I love that you’re brave enough to volunteer for this,” he told her. “Come home safe.”

Chapter 5

Day and night were artificial on the space station, but by convention and for psychological comfort, lights were dimmed and the temperature a fraction cooler in the late hours.

Traveling through the space station at midnight, sitting sandwiched between armored Marines in the same APC that had brought her to the RC Genghis Khan, Nora would have preferred daylight protocols.

The thin strip of station she could see through the viewing slots on the vehicle was eerie.

Haunted by the ghosts of my own fear. Is that a quote? Doesn’t sound like me. Her thoughts were jumbled by the stress and happenings of the night and by simple tiredness. Fortunately, all she had to do was follow Hirano’s orders, and use the code word, tired—an ironic but unnoticeable choice—if she sensed the burr. Hirano would then activate a signal jammer to block Irina communicating with anyone inside or outside the scrapyard.

And it would have to be the scrapyard. Even if it had been rearranged since, the scrapyard was where she’d fought a combat android a few months ago. She remembered how spooky the surroundings had been. It was easy to imagine things crawling out of the piles of junk, of the junk itself animating, of death finding her—

“I watch too many horror movies.”

One of the Marines chuckled, the broad, short guy on her right. “Imagination ain’t worth it.”

Mental discipline was as important as physical discipline. Marines trained for both.

Seated across from Nora, Yuri’s gaze hadn’t left her face.

She stared at her feet. Him knowing of her sensitivity to burrs was a problem. It would complicate her life. She and Jonah would need to get ahead of whatever Yuri did and who he reported her sensitivity to. They had to determine how she could keep herself safe and free if she was registered as a sensitive. She had money to protect herself, and she didn’t want to run.

“One minute to the scrapyard,” Lieutenant Hirano warned.

The scrapyard expected them. The guards would examine the vehicle, see Yuri, and wave them on in.

Nora shoved future problems to the back of her mind. She had to stay sharp. Last time, fighting the combat android, she’d been alone in the scrapyard, while Jonah lurked outside as backup. This time she had the Navy and Willow’s people present and prepared to kill to protect her. Somehow that almost felt worse. If she did the wrong thing, triggered the wrong chain of events, someone other than herself could die.

The Marines probably thought she was scared for herself. She was. But she knew what they didn’t; namely, that Jonah would be monitoring them and would have hacked whatever was necessary so that he could shut down vehicles and locations if required. She certainly didn’t fear an ambush. But she feared the violence that reckless actions by Irina or a hidden ally of hers could cause. The Marines were disciplined, but tonight it wasn’t their role to de-escalate a situation: just end it.

The APC passed through the scrapyard checkpoint and rumbled along the curving maze of scrap to the central compound.

Nora concentrated on her fingers. The buzz from the power leaking through a crack in the burr’s case had registered as a tingle in her fingers on her last visit to the scrapyard.

Only Yuri and Hirano knew she was riding with them to detect that buzz. The Marines had to be curious as to her presence, but they’d been given the same explanation she’d offer at the scrapyard: she was here to collect some clothes for Lucas.

The APC halted outside Willow’s cabin.

The Marine on her left gripped Nora’s arm, keeping her in place till the others gave the all clear.

Nora jumped out to the sight of Irina standing beside Sam outside the cabin. A phantom tingle teased her fingertips, and vanished as Nora approached Irina.

Damn. That meant Irina wasn’t carrying the burr on her, which would have been the best proof of the cutter captain’s involvement in the plot.

Nora climbed the cabin’s porch steps. When the burr had been in the vault beneath the cabin, she’d felt it from here. Not this time. She couldn’t sense it.

She hesitated.

Irina wanted to talk. “Lucas sure stirred up some trouble. Not that I blame the boy for panicking. Is he okay on the RC Genghis Khan?”

“He is.” Nora smiled tightly. This mission resembled life in the Angkorran towers. You didn’t trust people, but you didn’t show your mistrust. Survival meant revealing nothing that others could use against you. “He wanted his gear, but Liam believes he’s safest on the battlecruiser since he could be used as a hostage to control Willow. I have a list of things to pick up for him.”

“And Willow?” Irina asked Yuri, interrupting his conversation with Sam.

“She’s fine.”

“Is she staying on the battlecruiser, too? Doesn’t she trust you to keep her safe?” The taunt meant Irina was desperate for information, desperate enough to provoke Yuri.

“Willow’s better out of the way on the RC Genghis Khan while we dig out the traitors,” Yuri responded levelly. “Nora, come with me while I grab a few things from the barracks. Then we’ll sort out Lucas’s gear.”

Yuri was following the plan. If the burr wasn’t on Irina, then they’d check the barracks, followed by the office and warehouse, and finally, the CC Arowana.

Basically, Nora had to be exposed to the places Irina was most likely to hide the burr, and Irina had a room in the barracks. Nora walked back down the steps, as if accepting Yuri’s order. “Okay.”

The Marines had spread out, except for Hirano, who stayed close.

Two of the scrapyard guards emerged from the warehouse and approached them.

Yuri raised his voice, possibly answering Irina, but also providing the information for everyone. He walked as he spoke. “Sam is going to the RC Genghis Khan to coordinate with Casimir. We get Lieutenant Hirano and two of his men to assist us here. Lucas exposed our subterranean vulnerabilities.”

Nora fell into step beside Hirano, and behind Yuri and Sam.

Irina walked on her other side, and pulled out her personal comms unit. “If Willow’s staying on the RC Genghis Khan for now, Penny should pack her a bag. Or I can.”

“She’ll message Penny if there’s anything she needs,” Yuri said. “Willow’s Navy. She’s used to their gear.”

Three quarters of the way across the compound to the barracks, Nora’s fingers began tingling. Adrenaline shot through her. She consciously refrained from flexing and shaking out her fingers. As their small group reached the barracks, she was positive that the buzz was the burr and not her imagination.

She yawned. “Sorry. I’m tired.”

The men seemed to ignore her.

Not so Irina. “You’ve had an eventful night. Lucas interrupted your date with Liam, didn’t he?” Irina was willing to be chatty, perhaps to establish a reason for her tagging along with their party.

Nora wasn’t sure when Hirano would act. Signal jamming would block more than just Irina’s comms.

The two guards from the warehouse fell in behind her and Hirano as they crossed the barracks’ porch, and entered straight into the common room.

The large room held tables, chairs and sofas, but no people. Anyone awake had a job to do. Anyone scheduled to sleep, had to be trying for it, so as to be ready for their shift.

“Jammed.” Hirano pulled Nora sideways, away from the two men who’d been behind them.

They noted Hirano’s action as well as his report.

Yuri claimed their attention. “Sool,” he addressed the shorter of the two men. “Protocols Pillow and Viper.”

Irina took a large step back, and bumped into Sam.

The former Marine captain put a hand on her arm to steady her, then didn’t release his hold.

Sool strode out to the barracks’ front porch, which ran the length of the long building. A gong sounded twice, then three times.

“That tells everyone we’re jamming the signals.” Yuri sidled up to her, near enough to give her a rough pat on the back.

If he meant it as encouragement, it failed.

Nora shifted uncomfortably, absently running a hand over the crown of her head and down her braid.

Yuri stepped away, reaching down behind a counter for something. “We’re not under conventional attack. The blue light warns everyone we have traitors among us. No one is to enter or leave.”

Blue light? Nora hadn’t noticed the changed hue of the outside lighting. She’d been focused inside, trying to sense the direction the buzz of the burr came from. She peered out a window and saw the blue-lit porch.

She also noticed two additional men exiting the office and warehouse, rifles ready, taking in the Marines and APC, but focusing on the barracks. It was the only building lit blue.

It was a visual message: the known traitors are here.

“Who is jamming the signals?” Irina asked. “Why?”

“Lieutenant, restrain her,” Yuri said.

Hirano didn’t need the order. The command was given so the scrapyard guards were clear that the Marines acted with Yuri’s permission.

Men and women, but mostly men, rushed into the common room from their rooms.

The two armed guards from the warehouse stood outside alongside Sool.

Sam held Irina as Hirano locked the cuffs and called in a Marine private to take charge of Irina.

“What the hell has she done?” one of the newly woken men demanded.

“Nothing,” Irina snapped.

“Get Penny,” Yuri ordered.

A woman entered from outside. She was average height, dressed efficiently in utility shirt and pants, and sharply interested in everything she observed. “No need.”

“Lieutenant Hirano will search Irina’s room for the burr,” Yuri said. “Go with him.”

Nora pressed back against a wall, surprised that he hadn’t outed her involvement as a sensitive.

Displaying admirable discipline, Penny strode in the direction of the buzz, and presumably Irina’s room, without questioning Yuri.

“Willow has the burr. You know she has,” Irina said. No one answered, and she pulled at her cuffs. “This is ridiculous.” She stared around the group, particularly at people who looked more like spacers than guards, and were probably her cutter crew. “Is this more of Lucas’s doing? Did he steal the burr, and you’re after someone to blame? Is that why Nora’s here? Why is she here?”

Hirano strode back into the room. “A civilian provides excellent cover. No one would expect Captain Kimani to involve his girlfriend in anything dangerous, so her tagging along to collect Lucas’s gear while we swap Marines for Sam is innocuous. No one will suspect when she also returns with the burr.” He brandished a case identical to the one Willow and Xavier had exploded on the RC Genghis Khan.

The buzz of the burr spread from Nora’s fingers to her palms.

“The burr was hidden in Irina’s pillow.” By the way Penny glared at Irina, she was restraining herself from attacking the other woman.

Yuri accepted the burr from Hirano and looked at Nora.

She nodded.

To those watching, it would appear as if he was confirming her willingness to accept responsibility for the burr. In fact, he’d asked for confirmation that it was the genuine article.

It most definitely was.

The tingle traveled to her wrists as she took the case.

How in the stars had Willow not detected the power leaking through the case’s shield?

“Sam and Sool, you’ll guard the case till you witness it placed in the vault on the RC Genghis Khan.” Yuri inhaled loudly through his nose. “Given Irina’s treachery, I have to give this warning. The RC Genghis Khan has overwatch on the station. A shuttle on the docks and drones inside the station. Any attempt to steal the burr will be met with overwhelming force, which the burr’s case would survive. Thus, the burr’s security justifies the complete destruction of the APC and everyone in it, and any collateral damage outside it, if anyone attempts to hijack it on its return to the battlecruiser.”

“Understood,” Sool said.

Sam nodded.

Neither took offense at being treated as possible traitors.

“You move out in ten. Grab what you need,” Yuri said. “Penny, take Irina to the holding cell. Hirano is in charge of her interrogation. One of his Marines is to stand guard at all times. Protocols Pillow and Viper remain in place for the next six hours. Then we’ll review.”

Inside that six hour window, Casimir would lead the raid on the CP Raccoon.

Nora held the burr case tighter. To every other human, the burr was a weapon. For her it was that, but also part of one of Jonah’s kin, a Vapori AI who’d died when tens of thousands of millennia ago, the Silicaese had raided it for the burrs, the AI’s power source and a power source the Silicaese could also use.

Humans were the opposite of the Silicaese. They didn’t draw on the burrs as batteries. Instead, humans increased the natural low-level siphon function to suck in devastating amounts of power. That siphoning of energy (remembering that all matter is, at the quantum level, also energy) obliterated the reality it was aimed at.

The shielding of the case, even if nanoscopic, prevented Nora from using the burr. It didn’t prevent her from treating the contents with reverence.

“Everyone, clear out!” Sam ordered. He drove those who’d been asleep down the corridor in front of him. Sool rounded up stragglers. “Protocol Viper does not include indulging idle curiosity.”

Properly chastened, they disbanded.

Penny marched Irina in the opposite direction, out of the barracks and across the compound to the office.

Evidently, the holding cell is part of the scrapyard’s “business” operations, Nora thought ironically. But her attempt at detachment failed.

It wasn’t just curiosity that had kept people hovering. It was the discovery of a traitor in their midst. Protocol Viper meant one or more of their own had turned on them. They had failed to guard the burr.

And that meant more than they knew.

Obliterating reality was terrifying.

Mind-wiping individuals was its own kind of horror.

But Jonah believed humans could use them for far more.

Nora wasn’t sure she wished to learn what else she could use a burr for. But if it meant being able to adjust the lens to re-open the Origin black hole’s millrace and reconnect the Human Sector to wider humanity, then maybe it would be worth it.

For now, she cradled unknown potential in her arms.

Yuri broke off his conversation with Sool’s partner as Sam and Sool returned armored and armed, ready to depart. “Nora’s safety is second only to the security of the burr. But since they are separate issues, Nora, Sam will be responsible for the burr.”

Nora caught the eye of Marine Sergeant Cameron Pelan.

He’d entered as Irina was escorted out.

He nodded. Sam could carry the burr. Cameron and the other Marines from the battlecruiser would watch him.

Nora knew and trusted Cameron. Plus, giving Sam physical responsibility for the burr was part of the plan. She didn’t need to draw attention to herself.

Having handed over the burr in its smooth case, she barely stopped herself from shaking out her tingling hands, which would have been a hint as to her role in events that she didn’t want revealed yet, or at all, if possible.

Sam strapped the case to his vest.

The Marine corporal driving the APC had positioned it in front of the barracks.

The scrapyard had its own APC. Someone had driven it out and parked it by the office. For the next six hours, if Irina had information vital to the raid of the CP Raccoon, someone would have to exit the range of the signal jammer to send the news to the RC Genghis Khan. An APC could serve as a mobile communications base.

Nora ducked into the Navy’s APC and took the seat she’d occupied previously.

Cameron sat beside her.

Sam and Sool sat opposite him with a Marine between them and the driver and another between them and the door.

“Do not access any comms tech,” Cameron said. In Lieutenant Hirano’s absence, the Marine sergeant was the highest ranked person present.

The APC was silent as they exited the scrapyard and emerged from the blackout of the signal jammer.

Sam and Sool kept their faceplates open, proving their silence.

Cameron’s helmet was sealed. He’d be updating the RC Genghis Khan as to their return with the burr.

And me. Nora finally gave in to the urge to flex her fingers and rub them against her trousers. Those were the normal actions of a nervous person, not necessarily those of someone tingling with awareness of the burr. I’m paranoid. Even Willow hadn’t realized the burr’s case was cracked and leaking. No one would know I was sensing the burr.

But she couldn’t relax and be normal.

Reaching the RC Genghis Khan helped. Jumping out of the APC and onto the deck of the battlecruiser’s cargo hold helped more.

Liam waited for her.

Officially, he was there to receive the burr and lock it away in the ship’s vault. However, he didn’t ask after the burr till he’d studied her face and received her nod of assurance that she was well. “The burr?”

Sam produced it. “I have it, Captain.”

Claire came forward to escort Nora to the stateroom, and debrief her along the way.

Nora described events at the scrapyard from her perspective, summarizing ruthlessly to finish the story before reaching the stateroom.

Like Liam, Claire was too important, with too many demands on her time tonight, to waste it on Nora.

“In the pillow? Really?” Claire snorted. “You did well. Thanks, Nora. We’ll catch up in the morning.”

Nora accepted the dismissal readily. She let herself into the stateroom and paused for a moment, listening to Aria snoring.

Either stress or a change in air quality onboard the RC Genghis Khan had swollen Aria’s adenoids. She could enjoy a few minutes in the med-doc, tomorrow.

The steward who’d been babysitting Aria departed soundlessly.

Nora tucked the blanket more firmly over Aria’s shoulders as the girl burrowed into her pillow. Perhaps half-smothering herself was the real reason for her snores? Children had odd sleep habits.

A hot shower chased the adrenaline from Nora’s body and left her capable of sleep.

It was fortunate that she crashed fast and hard. Possibly due to the unfamiliar surroundings, Aria woke early, and woke Nora.

Nora glanced at the clock and slumped back on her pillow. Four hours’ sleep. It was enough to get by on. Not enough for her to be cheerful.

“Breakfast?” Aria asked hopefully.

“We’ll ask the steward if we can eat here,” out of everyone’s way. “Lucas can join us.”

Aria groaned. “He takes forever to wake up.”

Nora doubted Lucas would be exercising his teenage right to sleep in, today. “The sooner you’re dressed, the sooner you can wake him.”

“Not me! He’s mean when he wakes up.” But Aria pawed through the duffel bag for clothes, eager to get dressed and start the day on a battlecruiser.

By the time Nora returned, dressed, from the bathroom, Aria was attempting to fold up the bunk she’d slept in.

“Leave it for the steward,” Nora advised. “Actually, can you call one?” She didn’t want to interrupt the stewards’ sleep schedule next door by knocking for Lucas. As she laced up her boots, she went over her priorities. Lucas, then breakfast for the three of them. The steward would let Liam and whoever needed to know, that they were awake and available for questioning and an update on events.

Had the raid captured Timothy Zangmo?

The door buzzed.

Nora opened it.

Lucas entered, hollow-eyed and haunted. He dropped into the nearest chair. “Maybe now I’ll get answers.”

It was five minutes to seven.

The steward who followed him greeted Nora composedly; his competence contrasting with Lucas’s grumbling. “Good morning, Captain Devi, Aria.”

“Good morning.” Nora paused. Like Lucas, she had many questions, but they weren’t for the steward. “Could we have breakfast delivered here?”

“Certainly. What would you like?”

“Answers,” Lucas mumbled.

“Toast,” Nora spoke over him. “Juice. Coffee.”

“The kitchen provides a full breakfast,” the steward unbent enough to hint.

Bacon and eggs didn’t appeal to Nora given the anxiety churning in her stomach. Had anyone been hurt in last night’s raid? Had they learned the extent of the Zangmos’ scheme and who was involved?

Plain toast would suit her and Lucas well, and Aria never cared for breakfast, unless she was allowed a sugar-saturated cereal—and now was not the time to have Aria bouncing off the walls.

“Toast is fine.”

The steward departed.

Lucas ceased glowering at the floor. “Are we just meant to sit here?”

“We can watch cartoons.” Aria reached for the wall screen controls.

Nora put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you watch them on your comms unit?”

“Nah. I don’t need cartoons.”

Lucas had returned to staring at the floor, but by the muscles working in his jaw, he was fighting anger.

“The steward will inform Liam we’re awake,” Nora said to him. “We’ll get an update soon. Someone to ask questions of. The best thing we can do is be ready to act. We’re dressed. Breakfast next. And have our questions ready.”

“I have my questions ready.” By the dark circles under his eyes, he’d been brooding over them all night.

“I want to know when we can go back to the Roo, and if Lucas is staying with us,” Aria said. “Will we be okay there? Who wants to hurt Lucas?”

“No one,” Nora said firmly. “No one wants to hurt Lucas, but he might have gotten hurt because people wanted something his mom had. Now, Liam has it.”

Lucas’s head jerked up at that. “It’s here? But I don’t sense it.”

“Nor do I. Now. It seems the vault on the RC Genghis Khan is better than the scrapyard’s. You must have been asleep when I brought it onboard,” she added deliberately.

Energy sparked in the boy. “You did?”

“Yup.” She peeked sideways at Aria, reminding Lucas that they couldn’t speak freely.

Aria caught the look. “Secrets.” She folded her arms.

“No one has a right to demand their friends’ secrets,” Nora said.

Breakfast arrived as Aria contemplated that truth. “I don’t like not knowing.”

“Looks like today is sucky all-round,” Lucas replied unsympathetically.

Aria poked her tongue out at him and grabbed the dish of grape jelly.

The steward had brought it, plus strawberry jelly, honey and peanut butter.

“No one wants grape jelly except you, weirdo,” Lucas said.

“If no one else likes it, why would they have it on Liam’s ship?” Aria countered triumphantly.

The steward retreated silently. Wise man. He wasn’t getting involved in their bickering.

Nora contemplated her list of questions for Liam. What he couldn’t answer, Jonah would from his eavesdropping, when she returned to her ship. Really, that was the top question once she knew everyone was safe. Which they hopefully were.

When could she and Aria return to the CC Kangaroo?

On her comms unit, she had a message from Zac from yesterday evening, which she hadn’t answered.

It began light-heartedly. “Stars damn, woman. Do I need to rescue you from the Navy?” And ended seriously. “What threat against you did we miss?”

Would he guess that it was linked to her Forgotten status? If he did, he’d likely take action to ensure that Cherry, as his employee and another Forgotten, played least in sight in one of Realm Edge Security’s secure locations.

Nora dusted toast crumbs off her fingers.

Aria had turned on cartoons, with Lucas’s permission, but the buzz of the door was audible over the children’s program. When Nora nodded permission, Aria opened it.

Instead of the steward or Liam, Willow hovered there. She wore a Navy uniform without insignia, and looked even more haunted than her son. “Good morning,” she said, generally.

Lucas grunted.

Aria backed toward him in solidarity.

“Good morning,” Nora said. “We’ve finished the toast, but there’s coffee?”

Willow grimaced what was probably intended to be a polite smile. “Actually, I’m here to talk to Lucas.”

He nodded. “If you promise me something first.”

“Lucas.” Willow said his name in entreaty. There were few things she could promise him. Her duty as a recognized wielder of a burr as well as his status as an unregistered but strong sensitive, tied her hands.

He didn’t care. “When I leave the RC Genghis Khan, I want your promise that I can stay with Nora, not you.”

Nora’s eyes opened wide. She hadn’t invited him to stay with her and Aria. In fact, his presence would be a massive complication given how closely she’d need to work with Jonah to navigate a path out of this mess for herself and Aria, and build a future with Liam.

“Nora has no right promising you anything,” Willow snapped.

“She hasn’t,” Lucas retorted. “But I know she won’t let me down.”

Aria stared, fascinated.

Nora intervened before the girl added fuel to the family fire currently threatening to torch everything in its vicinity. “You can have the stateroom to discuss things. Come on, Aria.”

“Whew,” Aria exclaimed as the door closed behind them. “Lucas is MAD. What did his mom do?”

Kids. Persistence was their middle name.

“Nunya,” Nora answered succinctly.

A steward materialized out of thin air—or from the cabin next door. “Captain Kimani has scheduled a meeting for eight hundred hours. He requests you attend.”

Nora glanced back at the stateroom.

Lucas would learn what Willow wanted him to know—if they managed to communicate beyond his resentment and her suppressed but turbulent emotions. It can’t have been easy to learn that Lucas had kept the secret of his sensitivity to burrs from her. That he’d confided it to Nora was just bitter frosting on a cake of festering family relations.

The steward misread Nora’s glance at the stateroom as concern for where to stash Aria. “Captain Kimani suggested Aria might enjoy a yoga session. Dr. Smith is holding one in thirty minutes.”

Aria would be comfortable with Brielle.

“That sounds good,” Nora said. It did. If Brielle was holding yoga class this morning, Nora assumed she didn’t have a heavy caseload of injured from the raid.

“I could do stretchy stuff,” Aria conceded.

The steward guided them the long way around to the meeting room, so Nora could drop Aria off with Brielle.

There was no time to talk, but Brielle gave Nora a quick hug. “I’m so happy for you and Liam.”

Everyone else onboard the RC Genghis Khan was far more discreet about their captain’s romance.

Nora appreciated Brielle’s open enthusiasm. “So am I.” She had no friends out here to giggle over boys with, or whatever the adult version of that was. When she’d fallen in love with Ethan it had been intensely personal. She’d barely believed she could trust him, and herself, enough to open up to him. Now that she knew what it was to love and be loved, Nora missed not being able to describe that falling-in-love giddiness to someone. She ought to celebrate how awesome Liam was. “He’s champagne and chocolate, but also chicken soup and warm comfort. Everything good. Not perfect, but perfect for me.”

Brielle swatted her shoulder and sniffed. “You’ll ruin my mascara.”

“He’s kind.” Aria had been listening. “He’s all sorts of scary, but he’s the scary that stands in front of you to fight the monsters.”

Nora stared at her, and blinked rapidly. She refused to join Brielle in sniffling over being in love. But damn… “That’s exactly who Liam is.”

Chapter 6

At 3:03 a.m. the RC Genghis Khan’s combat shuttle abandoned its overwatch position re the station and returned to the battlecruiser’s hangar. It did not power down. Instead, seven minutes after landing, it departed again. This time for the CP Raccoon.

The Marines onboard the shuttle were to lead the raid on the CP Raccoon. Their forces would be bolstered by a Marine squad and a second combined Marine and scrapyard squad deploying in two APCs.

Liam stood on the bridge of the RC Genghis Khan monitoring the audio-visual feed from Casimir’s helmet.

In their own office on the deck below, the battlecruiser’s small intelligence unit analyzed the data, and fed through their conclusions and questions. Claire was the conduit who decided what information, if any, added value in the middle of a raid.

She probably wouldn’t speak at all.

This was Casimir’s show.

Liam envied him. In wartime, as the captain of a battlecruiser, Liam had risked his life alongside those under his command. Now, in peacetime, he found himself putting others in danger while being kept out of harm’s way himself.

He hated it.

Months ago, when Willow had greeted him at the scrapyard and explained her purpose there—to support the RC Genghis Khan in maintaining Capitoline’s control of Border Station and the Capitoline region of the Hadrian Line—she’d added an unscripted piece of advice. She’d advised him against focusing single-mindedly on his duty to Capitoline.

“This is as high as you’ll rise. You won’t ever reach the Admiralty.” She’d been apologetic. “You’ll do what is necessary for the good of Capitoline, but you’ll do so as Francis’s man. That sort of loyalty can propel a royal up the ranks, someone like me. For you, a commoner without an independent powerbase such as wealth might give you, Francis would have to overtly return that loyalty for you to advance, and he won’t.”

She’d pre-empted his protest. “I’m not criticizing Francis. I’m on Border Station, the unforeseen owner of a scrapyard, because I believe he’ll be a good king, and I’m backing his vision for Capitoline and the Human Sector. But we’re allowed our personal lives.”

Willow’s personal life—her son—currently believed she’d betrayed him by permitting him to be used as a spare key for a bio-lock.

Liam’s own personal life had also grown enormously complicated.

He’d forced himself not to think of Nora as he’d grabbed two hours of sleep before the raid, but had only succeeded because he knew she was safe in the stateroom near him. That wasn’t a long term solution. The RC Genghis Khan was scheduled to go on patrol in two days. Admittedly, given the theft and recovery of the burr, he had reason to delay their departure, but they would leave, and Nora’s security would be left to Realm Edge Security; that is, to Isaac Mstivoj, the Palantine privateer who’d founded the company.

Unacceptable.

There were alternatives.

Willow had warned him in good faith that his career had stalled in the Navy.

What she’d gotten wrong was the nature of his ambition. He’d never sought a position in the Admiralty. He’d rather resign than take a desk job.

And he could.

When the Genghis Khan’s two year assignment to the Hadrian Line ended, he could resign his commission. The assignment was over halfway complete.

At the end of the war, despite the opprobrium heaped on him by his ending of it by holding the Palantine Crown Prince hostage, he’d stayed in the Navy out of a sense of duty, a commitment to serving his own Crown Prince who was also his friend Francis, and because he’d been unable to imagine another life.

But Nora had snapped his vague longing for someone to love and a family to work for into focus. Suddenly, he had priorities outside of the Navy—and opportunities.

Nora’s blaze discovery had earned her incredible wealth, and it would continue pouring in. Whilst he didn’t want her wealth for himself, he couldn’t dismiss what he could use it to achieve in terms of keeping her safe.

Willow had said he lacked the independent powerbase that wealth provided and which could be used to substitute for royal status. As a wealthy commoner he could rise up through the Admiralty. A desk job there, in the heart of Capitoline power, might enable him to protect Nora from being used as a Forgotten asset.

The strength of her sensitivity to burrs brought her onto the gameboard in the plays of the powerful. In locating the burr in the scrapyard barracks, Nora had proven her sensitivity.

Liam was unsure how carefully Nora would have to tread to maintain her freedom of person and action. How powerful would he and she have to be for Nora to retain her independence?

What would he sacrifice for it?

On-screen, the audio-visual feed showed Casimir in comms contact with the chief mate of the CP Raccoon. The RC Genghis Khan’s shuttle had weapons live and breaching drills ready for action. If the CP Raccoon refused the warrant Liam had signed authorizing the search and detainment of personnel on the merchant cruiser, then the CP Raccoon would suffer disabling damage as the shuttle’s gunner created alternative entry points.

“Permission to come aboard granted,” Chief Mate Nathan Gallen said. “Docking hatches…”

Liam withdrew his attention from the details. He watched for red flags in the cruiser’s actions as the cruiser’s captain, Bazyli Simpson, and the Palantine head of the trade delegation, Emilia Wonda, were hastily woken to greet Casimir’s entry.

“Why are we being investigated under the Terrorism Act? Is this prejudice against Palantines?” Emilia’s hasty dressing showed in her rumpled jacket and pants, and messy ponytail.

“We have evidence implicating people onboard the CP Raccoon in terrorist activities. As head of the trade delegation, we’ll also be questioning you.” Casimir barely paused before issuing an order. “Riou.”

Ensign Blake Riou detained Emilia Wonda. He secured her in the shuttle, under guard.

Every member of the combined Marines, Navy and scrapyard team had a role to play. The Navy would assist in searching the CP Raccoon, but was primarily responsible for prisoners.

“Passenger and crew manifest,” Casimir demanded of the captain.

“What’s happened?” Captain Simpson asked, while complying with Casimir’s demand.

Casimir flicked the information on to Sam Gurung, who deployed people to pick up specific targets as well as to search the ship. “A threat against the station.” A burr could obliterate Border Station or mind-wipe its residents.

“How can we make this easier for you?” Simpson asked.

“Broadcast a command to comply with our orders.”

The captain did so, keeping it simple. “There has been a terrorist threat against the station. Please give our visitors every assistance.” He finished the broadcast, and wiped a hand over his mouth. “Who do you suspect?”

“We’re taking Timothy Zangmo, Leilani Finley, Nathan Gallen and Emilia Wonda for questioning. We may return for others.”

“Me?” Simpson asked.

“You’re not a priority, although you’ll need to be questioned as to what you observed. One moment.” Casimir’s attention was required elsewhere.

The communications officer on the bridge of the RC Genghis Khan split the screen to show Timothy’s arrest and his girlfriend’s detainment. Timothy had attempted to resist, and been forcibly restrained.

“Performing for the camera,” Claire muttered.

Yes, Timothy had expected a raid.

The others onboard the CP Raccoon seemed genuinely shocked.

Could Timothy have pulled off his scheme with no backup beyond Irina acquiring the burr and Lucas to unlock it?

The answer was a startling “yes”.

Liam left the bridge. His people had the mission under control. Him standing witness was mere self-indulgence when what he needed was sleep to be fit to judge and act on the information gained from the raid and subsequent prisoner interviews.

He could steal an hour or two of additional sleep before returning to dissecting the plot. He gave orders that he was to be briefed over breakfast at six a.m..

Casimir and Lieutenant Commander Santiago Bauer provided the briefing. Casimir looked grim; Santiago energetic. The man had boundless curiosity, and this puzzle of Timothy Zangmo and the plot that very nearly succeeded in a commoner wielding a burr intrigued him.

“The plot was tightly constructed,” Casimir said. “Timothy Zangmo claims it was him who suborned Irina Wismer. From Yuri’s interrogation of her, Timothy is lying and it was his father, Stanley Zangmo, who recruited her.”

“What was her price?” Liam asked.

“Money and a new life. Timothy’s girlfriend is currently being interviewed. She is, in fact, his bodyguard.”

Liam nodded. “So, she’ll know more about his activities than he thinks.”

“Allison thinks Leilani was an active participant in the plot. They kept it tight. Timothy, Irina and Leilani. Timothy was to be both the distraction and the burr’s wielder, Irina the thief, and Leilani the general fixer. A girlfriend wandering the station shopping and exploring didn’t draw attention. Or did,” Santiago corrected himself. “But because she’s beautiful, not because people were suspicious of her.”

Another layer of distraction and misdirection. Like the decision to travel on a Palantine ship? “Was the chief mate aware of the plot?” Liam asked.

Chief Mate Nathan Gallen had been flagged as the possible combined tactical and muscle of the operation. He was a former Palantine Navy officer. Captain Simpson, on the other hand, had always served in the Palantine Merchant Navy, avoiding travel in war zones or contested space.

“Confirming their stories is difficult,” Santiago began. Serving on the Hadrian Line, the RC Genghis Khan was months away from allies and from up-to-date information. “Gallen is in the right position to act as an enforcer. He commands the guard squadron for the merchant cruiser. But I’m inclined to believe the CP Raccoon is exactly what it says, a merchant cruiser carrying a trade delegation from Palantine.”

Santiago drained the last of his coffee. “From what Emilia Wonda says, their delegation failed to cut the deals they’d hoped for on Capitoline. Continuing on out here was in the nature of rolling the dice. They intended to jump on any opportunities in border space as they took the long way home.

“The timing of Nora’s blaze discovery was in the nature of winning the lottery for Emilia. She’d been going to head back to Palantine barely covering costs from the trade expedition. Whereas signing a contract to onsell fuel cells from the Blue Dock Scrapyard to Palantine would have presented a profitable trade stream. Unless she’s a mighty fine actress, Timothy better stay out of her way or she’ll strangle him for messing up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to burnish her reputation as a trader.”

Liam nodded thoughtfully. “Anything else?” Breakfast was over.

“Nothing urgent.” Casimir might act superhuman, but he needed sleep, too; once he’d checked in with his people.

Santiago tilted his head. “Yuri turned up. By his questions, he’s as concerned as to Nora’s whereabouts and abilities as he is with the how and why of Timothy’s actions.”

Liam took the warning onboard, but he focused on Santiago’s last point. “Do we know the ‘why’ of Timothy’s plot and its timing? Simple opportunism? It would explain keeping the number of actors involved to the minimum.”

“Allison’s still interrogating him,” Santiago said.

“I’ll follow up.” Casimir departed.

Liam evaluated problems and opportunities. “Yuri is onboard? Inform him and Willow that we’re meeting at eight a.m.. Have Allison brief you. I want you there. Also, invite Nora. We’ve a few objectives to achieve.”

He listed them. “We’re currently responsible for the burr. We shouldn’t be. It’s Yuri’s headache, and I want it returned to him ASAP. I’m uncomfortable leaving on patrol until it’s off our ship. Similarly,” in the sense of things that had to be done so the RC Genghis Khan could return to patrolling the region, “I want the risk of Timothy having allies in the region confirmed or cleared. The details of the plot are for the CSB,” Capitoline Security Bureau, “to unravel on Capitoline. If Fatima Drake wasn’t useless, I’d hand the problem to her and Yuri.”

Santiago’s disdainful snort echoed Liam’s opinion of the inept, verging on corrupt, sole CSB agent on Border Station.

“Lucas, Nora and Aria’s security is also an issue. The secret will leak about her sensitivity to burrs.” Maybe, just maybe, they’d keep Lucas’s talent under wraps. “I’m not sure whether her current security contract with Realm Edge is a case of having the fox guard the henhouse.”

According to Nora, Mstivoj already knew she was Forgotten. Liam still worried. Nora represented a resource in and of herself, let alone adding in her blaze wealth.

“Willow is responsible for Lucas,” Santiago reminded Liam.

Liam remembered Lucas’s anguish. “He’d say that she failed him.”

Santiago shook his head. “Getting in the middle of a family fight is dangerous.”

All of which was true, but after Liam had dismissed Santiago, he couldn’t dislodge the thought he’d had.

Who was Lucas’s family? Willow and her relatives who’d ignored him when they thought he wasn’t sensitive to burrs? The Zangmos, Lucas’s father’s family, who’d similarly ignored him till Timothy found a use for him? Or Nora, whom Lucas had chosen to run to, and who’d taken him in?

And if Lucas was Nora’s family by choice, then that made him Liam’s.

Liam arrived at the meeting room five minutes early. He’d had the unacknowledged hope that Nora would also be early. Instead, he was confronted by Yuri.

They exchanged curt greetings. Yuri was freshly shaved, but by his bloodshot eyes, he’d managed less sleep than Liam. Perhaps no sleep at all.

Santiago arrived a minute later, and Nora at two minutes before the hour.

She smiled at Liam. “Good morning.”

Relief tugged his mouth upward. It wasn’t quite a smile, but private happiness peeping out. Subconsciously, he’d feared she might be angry regarding the turn of events last evening and over night. Angry or scared for the future. If she felt either, they weren’t directed at him.

She walked behind him, and his skin prickled with awareness and wanting. The lime and spice orchid scent of her reached him as she sat in the chair Santiago had left between them.

Her gaze reconnected with his, and she leaned toward him. “Brielle is teaching Aria—” It was the beginning of one of those little, informal confidences that couples exchanged, sharing the details that built a life.

Liam had always been on the outside of them.

Nora’s trust was a gift.

But her voice cut off as Willow entered. She straightened and watched Willow sit beside Yuri in the same way a raven watched a beetle. Willow was both a curiosity and prey.

“Where is Lucas?” Nora asked.

Ah. Liam sensed trouble brewing. Evidently, Nora had believed Lucas to be with his mom. They certainly needed to talk.

Willow refused to look at Nora. “He returned to the stateroom. Liam, you requested my attendance?” The inference was that she’d left her son because Liam had ordered her here.

Nora scoffed.

“I did,” Liam said to Willow. He addressed everyone. “A base of shared knowledge is crucial to prudent next steps. At the moment, our preliminary understanding is that the plot to acquire the burr only had three players on-station. Timothy Zangmo, his girlfriend, Leilani Finley, and Irina Wismer. If we can be confident in that conclusion, then we’ve scooped up all the players. But that’s not guaranteed, so this meeting is about returning to normal as soon as possible, but doing so safely.”

Nora nodded.

Yuri and Willow waited.

“Firstly, due to the Marine escort from the CC Kangaroo to the RC Genghis Khan, the station is aware that Nora is involved in whatever went down last night. Lucas’s presence will also have been noted. We need a cover story. The obvious one skirts close to the truth and necessitates us recognizing that some people will guess that Willow has a burr. According to my intelligence officer, there is already chatter to that effect.”

“We’ve also heard the rumor,” Yuri said. “It’s unfortunate, but not unexpected.”

The response was less obstructive than Liam had feared. He acknowledged Yuri’s support with a slight nod. “The cover story is that Willow was threatened at the scrapyard. She snuck Lucas out to Nora, her business partner, and I arranged their transport to the RC Genghis Khan. Marines then acted to neutralize the threat, which was classified as a terrorist threat since explosive damage to the scrapyard risked the stability and systems of the entire station.”

Santiago smoothly picked up the proposed tale. “Willow could have sent Lucas directly to us, but we can claim the CC Kangaroo was nearer. Nora, for you, this story establishes you as a peripheral character. We emphasize the blaze element, and you increase your security as a rich woman with a kid to protect, just like Willow. Casimir will work with Mstivoj on improving your security arrangements.”

“So, Aria and I can go back to normal life?”

As much as he wished to, Liam couldn’t keep her onboard the battlecruiser. “If you’re careful.”

“I always am. The house I bought by Green Park is nearly ready to move in. It’s been renovated to be more defensible. I’ll try to shift us there—if Casimir approves.” She took a breath. “I like the cover story. Simple and near enough to the truth to work.”

“I’ll have Sam check your security, too,” Yuri said.

Nora stared at him, dumbfounded.

But Liam understood. Yuri intended to push his way into her life, whether she wanted him to or not. In Yuri’s Royal Guard mindset, since Nora had proven her strong sensitivity, she was now his responsibility.

Nora, however, focused on another issue. “I’m willing for you to check the security, if you need to be sure Lucas is well-guarded.”

“Lucas stays with me,” Willow snapped.

Nora didn’t engage. “He knows he always has a place with me.”

“He. Does. Not.” Willow spaced out the words.

Deliberately ignoring her veto, Nora turned to Yuri. “Do you know why Irina betrayed you?” Irina, the woman Willow had let into Lucas’s life and who’d been ready to use him to open the bio-lock for Timothy to use the burr.

Willow hissed under her breath.

Yuri, however, was willing to trade information for Nora’s goodwill. “Irina wanted a new identity for herself and her sister’s husband, and enough money to enjoy their new lives.”

Nora blinked. “I take it those new lives didn’t include Irina’s sister?”

“You’d be right.”

Santiago grumbled. “There are easier ways to commit adultery.”

Willow was still seething, and hurt. Her own actions had cost her her son’s trust, but it was easier to blame Nora for being the person he’d run to. “Lucas has to stay with me. He was permitted to be included in the mission as a second key. Yuri will keep him safe, not some stray Palantine pirate.” She meant Mstivoj, who had traveled in convoy, in his sting ship, as Nora’s protection on the journey to and from Beaconditch. Despite the scorn in her voice, it wasn’t as if he was a stranger Willow had never worked with. She was lashing out.

Liam saw an answering wrath gathering in Nora’s eyes.

“Why was Lucas included as a spare key?” Santiago asked. “At the time you believed he lacked sensitivity to burrs—”

“You told him?” Willow turned on Liam. Lucas’s ability to sense the burrs was new and potentially dangerous information. It was restricted information.

“Santiago is a senior officer on the RC Genghis Khan. He needs to know he has the legal right and obligation to prioritize Lucas’s welfare. All my senior officers have been told.”

Yuri answered Santiago’s question. “In the event of Willow’s death, Lucas’s role was to be available to open the case if another royal needed to wield the burr.”

“There are other royals out here?” Santiago asked alertly.

Nora broke off her glaring match with Willow. Whatever sympathy and friendship the two women had felt for one another, it had collapsed in the night’s events.

This time, Yuri didn’t answer Santiago’s question. However, the absence of a negative response, opened the door to suspicions of unknown royal activity along the Hadrian Line.

Another headache. Liam recalled the wandering conversation to the purpose of the meeting, which was to stabilize the situation so that everyone could return to their normal lives. “Nora, can you sense the burr, now?”

“No. Lucas can’t, either. I asked him over breakfast.”

Yuri rubbed his left shoulder. “If you sensed the burr in the scrapyard and on the cutter, but don’t, now, then our portable vault is flawed, as was the one on the CC Arowana.”

“Flawed or inadequate,” Liam said. “Can you improve it?”

“I’ve put the problem to Mason Walsh. He’s a mechanical engineer at the scrapyard. He set up the fuel cell production facilities. He was briefed on the portable vault since he had to install it. Mason is our best hope of fixing it. We can ask Lucas about the effectiveness of Mason’s repairs, but I’d also like your input, Nora.”

“I’ll schedule a ‘casual’ visit to the scrapyard.”

Willow fumed beside Yuri. It had to be galling. She’d been raised to believe herself special and powerful, the daughter of a duke, capable of wielding burrs. Now, here was Nora, a child of the Angkorran towers, being asked to do what Willow couldn’t—that is, sense the leaking power of the burr assigned to Willow—because Nora was the stronger sensitive.

“Wielding burrs isn’t just about power,” Willow said. “I practiced against Francis as he tried to take control of the burr from me.”

“He succeeded each time,” Yuri said. “That’s why we couldn’t risk Timothy getting the case open.”

Liam hadn’t anticipated this argument between Willow and Yuri.

She glared at the older man. “There is skill as well as raw power and ability in wielding a burr, and in keeping control of it.” She clearly felt attacked and diminished on multiple fronts: in her personal life regarding Lucas; and professionally, as a recognized wielder of burrs. She was also tired. Tiredness eroded self-control. Willow generally held herself to a higher standard than to indulge in an ego-inspired side argument during a meeting.

Liam intervened. His time was tight, even if Willow showed an exhausted person’s willingness to waste hers. “Lucas stays on the RC Genghis Khan till Yuri and Casimir are confident of his and the burr’s security in the scrapyard. I can’t lend many people, but Lieutenant Declan Sahanaya has the experience and security clearance to replace Irina, temporarily.”

“Accepted,” Yuri said. The scrapyard group needed a captain for their cutter. It was a mobile resource; essential if they had to run. “Gratefully. Is a squad of Marines possible?”

“Yes. Sam Gurung already discussed reinforcements with Casimir. Santiago will also be staying on-station with an ensign and a leading rating. He’ll operate out of the Customs office.” Which was vacant till the five Customs officers delivering a captured ship and prisoners to Capitoline returned, ideally with a cutter and reinforcements. “Events are happening quickly on-station as the blaze rush builds and, potentially, as speculation about a burr’s presence spreads. Someone needs to be present monitoring developments.”

Allison had argued strongly for the necessity. She’d conceded that it wasn’t standard practice, but in the absence of a competent CSB agent, the Navy had to fill the gap. “Things are unstable, particularly in the shadows.” She worked miracles of data analysis, but she was only on-station a few days in between the RC Genghis Khan’s months’ long patrols.

Simply by being present, Santiago’s natural curiosity would bring some of those shadowy, criminal networks and activities into the light. He’d also monitor the scrapyard group’s actions.

Judging by the wry curl to Yuri’s mouth, he’d deduced the latter purpose. Tiredness hadn’t clouded his mind. Then, again, given the many times he scrutinized Nora across the table, Yuri’s tiredness was countered by his intense interest in her as a powerful Forgotten.

“Nora, if you feel comfortable returning to your ship—”

“I do.”

Liam smiled at her. “Realm Edge Security continues to guard it. They’ve added security farther out, protecting that whole stretch of dock. Do you want a couple of Marines to escort you home or your bodyguards—minimum of two—to meet you here?”

“Bodyguards,” she said immediately. “We’re downplaying my importance, so no Marines, no hint of danger, just an unusual date with a battlecruiser captain last night. I’ll ask Cherry to send over the bodyguards.” Her gaze locked challengingly on Yuri. “Yes, Cherry is my half-sister. Yes, she is Forgotten. If you harass her or she vanishes, I will come after you.”

“I’m not your enemy.” From Yuri, that was a conciliatory response.

It didn’t appease Nora’s protective instincts. “Keep it that way.”

Liam’s mouth twitched as he fought a proud, and relieved, grin at Nora’s attitude. If she maintained it, and if the two of them could back it up, maybe her being revealed as Forgotten wouldn’t upend their lives.

After the meeting adjourned, he stole a few minutes with her. They lingered in the room after the others had departed. Immediately the door closed, he hugged her, and felt the stress leave her body. She hugged him tight, and that was reassuring in itself. He nuzzled her hair, whispering secrets. “I hated sending you off to the scrapyard.”

“It wasn’t fun, but I’m glad you did. I like that you respect me, that you expect me to handle stuff. It’s who I am. Just as you’re a natural protector and would prefer to put yourself in danger instead of me.”

“Guilty.”

She kissed him. “If I invite you to dinner, tonight, do you think we’ll jinx our evening?”

“We can try. I’ll see you at six, unless…”

“Unless the thousand and one things you’re ignoring now to kiss me get in the way?”

He kissed her again. “Something like that.” He reluctantly released her. “We can talk, tonight.”

Her smile was rueful and sympathetic. “Go. Do the things you need to do. I’ll message you when Aria and I are safely home.”

“Thanks.” It was a poor substitute for what he really wanted, which was to go with her.

Instead, he headed for the brig.

Studying Timothy Zangmo, Liam suspected that Lucas would grow up to closely resemble his uncle. They had the same short to average height and skinny build. After the stress of the night, Timothy’s muscles sagged, but his musculature revealed that he worked out, focusing on speed and endurance more than power. He wore a t-shirt and sweatpants, Navy issue.

Liam sat down opposite him at the table. “I am Captain Kimani. You were involved in the theft of a burr and are the key figure in an attempt to wield it. That your plot failed does not mitigate your guilt. I am justified in executing you either for treason or as a terrorist.”

“I’ve heard the threats.” Devoid of bravado, the simple statement sat between them.

“I won’t execute you,” Liam said. “You’re a source of information that the CSB will eagerly exploit. But I have a question, as someone who saw Lucas’s fear and sense of betrayal. Why?”

“The boy isn’t family.”

Liam was willing to play the game. “Till you wanted something from him.”

Timothy shrugged, and winced. The Marines hadn’t beaten him, but they’d taken him down hard during his arrest. Brielle had recorded his injuries—bruising—and provided treatment. “His mom made him a key. Irina wouldn’t have hurt him.”

“Does his father know?”

“Vincent wouldn’t care.” Timothy seemed to truly believe it.

“You’re wrong. Vincent’s been secretly meeting Lucas all his life.” Liam paused, but otherwise didn’t outwardly respond to the faint narrowing of Timothy’s eyes. He’d finally hooked the prisoner’s interest. “Seems like Vincent raised up Lucas to keep secrets from your father. Poppa, Lucas calls him.”

Timothy sneered. “Not to his face. Father doesn’t tolerate disrespect.”

“Doesn’t matter what he tolerates. An arrest warrant for Stanley Zangmo’s role in your plot is on its way back to Capitoline by courier.”

Strangely, Timothy looked away rather than assert his father’s powerful position, his wealth, and his legal team.

Liam tried the pressure point that had worked before. “Vincent will learn what you and your father did.”

“He’ll understand.”

“What will he understand? Seems like Vincent did his best to keep his son safe from the rest of you, right down to concealing his ongoing contact with Lucas.”

“All Vincent did was hide. He’s weak and he’s selfish. He’s a dud, useless, and so damn happy to have another son, another dud.”

Timothy didn’t suspect Lucas’s sensitivity to burrs.

Liam returned to the main question. “Why?”

“Because he’s dying. Because I’m the only one he could trust to maybe save him, and I failed. As pathetically useless as Vincent in the end, but the difference is, I tried.” Timothy rubbed his eyes.

“Who is dying?” Lucas frowned at the man who appeared weakened by what had actually been judicious, legal treatment. The strain Timothy displayed was due to more than the last twenty four hours.

Timothy didn’t care about Liam, and he despised his brother Vincent.

“Stanley is dying,” Liam guessed.

Timothy slumped, physically and emotionally. It was the point of surrender that every interrogator aimed for. He’d answer any questions because he’d given up resistance. “Acid bones.”

Liam winced.

“Now, you get it. Father’s sixty four, and he’ll be dead in a year. Sooner if he wasn’t holding out for this one last chance. He’s in agony.”

He would be.

Acid bones was a rare condition that even after centuries of human settlement on Capitoline, still occasionally flared up in unlucky individuals. Scientists had countered most pathogens and sensitivities caused by the planetary environment, but the condition colloquially known as acid bones had defeated them. Its very rarity acted against effort being directed to curing it. Although with someone as wealthy as Stanley Zangmo suffering from it, that might change.

“A burr can’t heal,” Liam said quietly.

Timothy stared at the table. “I’m not an idiot.”

“No. No, your plot was clever and multi-layered. What did you hope to achieve?”

“We still could. If you handed over the burr.”

“Not happening.”

Timothy shrugged. “That response. That burrs-for-royals response is why we had to steal it. Father’s unique. You have no idea what he’s achieved. What he can still achieve. He needs time. We need him. He’s brilliant. We can’t lose him, and we found a way…him and me. He trusted me to do this because he knows I’m the strongest sensitive in the family, and the person most like him. He knew I’d do it. He had me promise.”

He stalled there.

“Do what?” Liam prompted.

“Mind-wipe his new body.”

This time Timothy broke the long silence as Liam struggled with the implications of his confession. “The transfer of consciousness is an old idea. The history books tell us humans tried for it before they even colonized space. It always failed. They’d upload a mind to a computer, and the uploaded mind always went mad. Later, they tried constructing artificial bodies. No matter how scrupulously designed and assembled, robots couldn’t provide some unidentifiable yet essential stimuli. The research was abandoned, but it was recorded in the archives on the colony ships.

“Mind-wipes have been tried in mice, using lasers or drugs. The brain is wiped, then an electronic copy from another animal is imprinted. It appears to work, but it’s crude. It doesn’t scale up to show what would happen with a complex personality.”

“In a human,” Liam said.

Timothy regarded him earnestly. “The problem is thoroughly wiping the original mind. The old stories tell us that burrs can obliterate personality, but the body remains functioning.”

“Zombies,” Liam said, remembering Nora’s horror at the burrs’ potential use.

Timothy corrected him. “A blank canvas for imprinting.”

Observing a recording of the interview, Brielle said she doubted Timothy was a sociopath. “Although I’m not a psychiatrist. Stanley Zangmo is a narcissist, and Timothy is his father’s narcissistic stooge. Nothing I’ve read in a quick skim of relevant articles indicates imprinting is anything more than science fiction. Body and mind are intertwined.” She believed in holistic medicine.

“He’s evil,” Claire said.

“No doubt about that.” Brielle tapped at her personal comms unit. “I’m advising a suicide watch.”

Liam raised his eyebrows. “You think that after doing all this for his father to live, Timothy would try to kill himself?”

“He’s convincing,” she said slowly. “But he’s also unaccustomed to failure. I’m uncertain how he’ll handle being thwarted. Also, he may have used his father’s resources in an attempt to acquire the burr. But what would he have really done with it? We only have his word that he’d have delivered it to his father. I don’t trust him.”

No one did.

Chapter 7

The third time Nora peeked sideways at Lucas as they followed a skipping Aria through the passages of the RC Genghis Khan to a docking tunnel, he sighed loudly at her. “I’m not angry at you. I get why you have to leave me behind.”

The rating escorting them, and walking ahead with Aria, coughed. Loudly.

Lucas glared daggers at his back.

“I have younger siblings,” the rating said cheerfully. “They are experts at guilting my parents.”

“You have no idea what’s going on,” Lucas spat.

The five years or so older guy shrugged. “Don’t have to. I can bet it’s not Captain Devi’s fault.”

“It’s not,” Aria sang, stretching out the last word, and incidentally reminding them all that she was listening and drawing her own worrying conclusions.

“I said I don’t blame Nora,” Lucas defended himself.

She put an arm around his hunched shoulders. “If you can’t visit us, we’ll visit the scrapyard. Aria will bring ice-cream.”

Aria flung her arms in the air. Clearly, yoga hadn’t exhausted her energy. “Yes!”

“I’ll force Mom to let me visit.”

As angry as Nora was that Willow had set Lucas up as a spare key for a burr’s bio-lock, she pitied the woman. Willow loved her son, and if she couldn’t get him past this resentment, she might have lost him, emotionally, forever. “Maybe the first visit can include her?”

Willow would see the wisdom of building bridges.

Lucas grunted.

A Marine waited for them by the hatch to the docking tunnel. “Captain Devi.” His tone was as sharp as a salute. “Your bodyguards are outside. They’ve brought transport. An armored van. It has been searched.”

Nora controlled her eyebrows before they rose in question and implicit doubt. Did the Marines truly have to search an ally’s vehicle?

“When you’re ready.” The Marine stepped aside.

Nora squeezed Lucas’s shoulders. “You have every reason to be grumpy, but Liam is a good guy. Don’t give him headaches, yeah?”

“Nah. I save them for Yuri.”

She hesitated, but now wasn’t the time, nor Lucas the person, for her to stipulate that her invitation for Lucas and Willow to visit did not include Yuri. She needed to talk to Jonah on how they’d handle the Royal Guard captain’s interest in her sensitivity to burrs.

“See ya.” Aria fist bumped Lucas.

“Later, kid.”

Aria’s display of bravado vanished as they walked through the docking tunnel. She stayed close to Nora, but expanded in confidence once more when the bodyguards were revealed as Veronica and Gage. They were her favorite Realm Edge Security guards.

Nora was glad she’d asked for them.

“Living an exciting life?” Gage greeted her. The conversation was window dressing for Aria’s sake. He continued to scan their environment even as he ushered her and Aria into the armored van. Despite the protection of the Marines guarding the dock, he and Veronica were on high alert.

“That’s what you get when you partner with the daughter of a duke,” Nora said lightly, sticking to the cover story Liam had outlined.

“And when you date a battlecruiser captain?” Gage suggested.

Nora took the opportunity to mention that she’d invited Liam to dinner. Privacy was a luxury wealthy people couldn’t afford. She had to trust her guards and give them the information they needed to do their job. Unfortunately, that included information on her relationship’s development.

The drive across the station was relatively brief since they could travel directly rather than take the tram’s circuitous route. Private vehicles were expensive and rare, although cabs did exist. Judging by the tension in the van driver’s shoulders whenever a cab came close, he didn’t trust them.

Her guards’ alertness unnerved Nora, and silenced Aria.

They were good people, and good at their job, but leaving them outside when she and Aria entered the CC Kangaroo was a relief.

“We’re home!” Aria burst into the lounge and flung herself face-first onto the sofa cushions.

Nora entered at an ordinary pace, surprised that Jonah hadn’t met them at the hatch.

He was in the kitchen. “I received your message, and thought I’d make lunch. A green salad and a spicy lentil one.”

“You are a treasure beyond treasures.” Nora leaned against him.

“The ship is safe,” he whispered to her, too low for Aria to hear.

Nora had assumed as much. Jonah wouldn’t have let them return if it wasn’t. But she was grateful for the confirmation.

“I’m not hungry,” Aria said.

Nora rolled her eyes. “Surprise, surprise. It is salad, after all.”

Aria hated salad.

“It’s too bad you can’t fit in the raspberry and caramel cheesecake I whipped up,” Jonah said.

Aria rolled off the sofa and ran to the fridge.

“So mistrusting,” Jonah mock-mourned as the girl checked the veracity of his claim.

She turned and poked her tongue out at him. “It’s not here.”

“Manners,” Nora said. Yes, Aria believed Jonah was the ship’s AI in an android body, and not a person, but Nora’s rules were for politeness toward him, anyway. She’d told Aria it was good practice.

“The cheesecake is chilling in the freezer,” Jonah said.

Aria ripped the door open. The cheesecake looked spectacular. “Yum! Sorry, Jonah.”

Small, ordinary moments like this one, made the big risks worth taking. If she ever ceased valuing the small moments, Nora knew she’d have become a person she didn’t want to be; that is, a royal like Lucas’s grandfather, for instance; someone who saw pawns rather than people.

Poor Lucas. His other grandfather wasn’t royal, and Stanley Zangmo was equally as cold-blooded.

“We’ll be moving into the house sooner than planned,” Nora said to Jonah and Aria. “As soon as we can. I have to talk to Zac about progress. Or Ben.” Ben Hough was Zac Mstivoj’s business and life partner. Ben had stayed on Border Station to run Realm Edge Security while Zac and another team guarded the CC Kangaroo to and from Beaconditch.

Ben had overseen renovations of the house with an eye to improving its security. The house was massive, stretching over four lots, and fronting both Green Park and exclusive Royal Street.

Motivated by cheesecake and a reminder of her manners, Aria began setting the table for lunch. “Cherry said the house is looking cool.”

During their catchup at the ice-cream parlor, Cherry had gushed over the interior decorating she’d indulged in whilst Nora had been away and unable to rein in her enthusiasm. She’d had photos, too, showing Aria an array of images of the girl’s bedroom, private bathroom and a courtyard garden.

Nora was grateful she’d hired a qualified interior designer to fit out most of the house. Cherry’s enthusiasm had been confined to Aria’s space, a guest room that had Cherry’s name all over it, and the games room, which covered half of one of the sub-levels. Nora preferred serene order and functional design to swirling, clashing colors and crowded coziness.

“I’ll talk to Zac or Ben after lunch, and see how soon you can sleep in your new bedroom,” Nora said.

Aria poked at a lettuce leaf on her plate. “Aren’t we safe on the Roo anymore?”

In her years on the CC Kangaroo, Nora had tucked the ship around her like a hermit crab fitting itself to its chosen home. The CC Kangaroo represented independence as well as security. “We’re safe. But we’ll be every bit as safe, and have more freedom, in the house.”

Nora had modelled her requirements for the house’s renovation on a clan house. The large building could accommodate multiple small family units, or many friends, allies and security staff. With its roof deck, internal courtyard gardens, and thoroughly exploited subterranean levels, a person could comfortably live their entire life in its generous space.

Not that Nora intended to be so limited.

However, for a place to hunker down, especially with allies, the house beat the CC Kangaroo. Her and Aria’s bodyguards could live with them, in an independent accommodation wing. Hopefully, Cherry could be convinced to move in. Plus, Liam could make it his base of operations. His home.

“It’ll be nice to have Green Park outside the front door,” Jonah encouraged Aria.

“Isn’t that our back door? The door onto Royal Street has to be the front door. It’s posher.”

“But we’re not posh,” Jonah pointed out.

Aria wrinkled her nose in thought. “We could be.”

Nora put an end to that idea. “I refuse to be. Posh people are constantly trying to prove they’re better than everybody else. It’s ridiculous, and wastes time they could use to do something real.”

“Real like what?”

Real like use a burr to alter the lens at the Origin black hole to reopen its millrace, and so, open the Human Sector back up to the rest of humanity. But that was a unique and maybe impossible goal. “Real like helping the people around you. Real like finding your passion in life and pursuing it. Maybe that’s xeno-archaeology. I have friends who’ve devoted their whole lives to learning more about the Silicaese or Iguanese. Now, that we have a clan house, I’m going to invite them out to explore border space and treat our home as their base.”

Aria’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

“Yup. Plus, my in-laws. Although most of them prefer to stay close to the farm on Capitoline.”

“Ethan’s family.” Aria knew Nora was a widow.

“My family,” Nora said firmly. After Ethan’s death as a sting ship pilot during the war, the Stirlings had made it clear to Nora that she remained one of them. To deny that family connection would be a betrayal of their love and the memory of Ethan’s. “Our family,” Nora corrected herself.

Aria munched absently on spicy lentils. “We,” she asked tentatively, “have a big family?”

“We do.”

“What about Liam?” Aria asked the tricky, personal questions, but at least she’d been distracted from worry about their safety on the CC Kangaroo.

“We’ll adjust the house so that he’s comfortable in it, too. He can invite his family out.”

“Wow.”

Nora exchanged a rueful look with Jonah. Wow was right. But it was a wow based on a lot of hope. They knew that in a year, Liam could be reassigned far away. By the time invited guests arrived, the Navy could have ordered him back to Capitoline. She and Liam needed time to adjust to their new relationship, and decide a shared future.

She didn’t expect him to give up the Navy, which meant this expensive house purchase and renovation might end up gathering dust, or being given over to accommodate other people.

“Cheesecake time,” Nora said determinedly. She had plenty of current problems without borrowing trouble from the future.

Thanks to the lack of distractions on the journey to and from Beaconditch, and Jonah’s expert tuition, Aria was ahead on her schoolwork. Fortunately, she was content to play a game on the screen in the lounge while Nora sequestered herself on the bridge to talk privately with Jonah.

Aria accepted that the bridge was the equivalent of Nora’s office; the location for boring adult stuff like paperwork and security contract renegotiations.

Before Nora contacted Ben to talk about the house, she slumped in the captain’s chair and frowned at the frown on Jonah’s face. “Give me good news.”

“How about a new problem.”

She turned her thumb down. “Bzzt. Nope.”

“Liam interviewed Timothy. They’re making zombies.”

She jerked up. “They’re what? They, who?”

“The Zangmos, and they’re not at the zombie stage yet, but that’s what Timothy wants the burr for.” Jonah recounted Stanley Zangmo’s condition and his proposed consciousness-transfer solution.

“Ew. Acid bones is awful, so I won’t say that someone who can contemplate wiping another person’s personality to take over their body deserves acid bones, but…ew.” She shuddered. “Did you find anyone on-station linked to the Zangmos that Liam’s people missed?”

“Linked, maybe. The Zangmo family have lots of connections to legal and criminal enterprises. But I haven’t found any hint of anyone acting in support of the trio Liam scooped up. Before this, Stanley Zangmo was careful to keep Timothy separate from the shady side of Zangmos’ operations. If Timothy recruited help on-station, he’d be clumsy enough that I’d find evidence of it.”

“But someone deeply embedded, like Irina?”

“It’s possible.” Despite being an android and not needing to breathe, he sighed. “I’m missing stuff.”

She clamped her mouth shut, holding in her automatic response.

They’d had this discussion before. Because he could observe events across the Human Sector, he harbored the belief he ought to be able to learn enough to guard Nora against everything.

She’d told him he wasn’t a god, wasn’t omniscient, and that it was better that way; better for his long term sanity and development. Everyone had to have limits, and acknowledge them.

The Vapori had designed and installed the AIs millions of years ago to monitor the evolution of any organic sentient life forms in the region. Humanity had only stumbled into the region five hundred years ago. The AIs weren’t designed to follow individual human lives.

Jonah was on a steep learning curve with regard to analyzing and operating in human society. Being embodied and able to affect events was still new to him.

Rather than leap into reassurance or problem solving mode, Nora asked, “Are you okay?”

He tapped the arms of the pilot’s chair. “I’m rather reluctantly indulging in a new experience. An existential crisis. I’ve discovered that my to be is to be in communication.”

Her eyebrows rose in sharp question and surprise.

Jonah explained. “Descartes was an ancient human philosopher. He said, I think, therefore I am. Before I was embodied, I couldn’t act, but I was in constant communion with my kin. I still am. But with you it is different. If we are not physically proximate or in technological contact, we’re separate. Overnight, being unable to communicate with you, was worse than before I was embodied and couldn’t act. I felt truly powerless. It diminished me.”

“But you are still you, even without me. Regardless of me,” she corrected herself. She wasn’t essential to Jonah’s being. She believed that each person was complete in themselves, even if connecting to other people gave life meaning and growth.

“I suspect this is a difference between being human and being of my kin.”

She curled and uncurled her toes as she thought. “What can I do to help?”

“An existential crisis is an individual’s opportunity for growth.”

“Oka-ay?” she drew out the question.

Abruptly, he switched to reassuring her. “It isn’t a problem. It’s a new element of my experience of being embodied. What I do think we need to address is an unsuspicious means of contacting you in a similar emergency.”

“Definitely.” Amending communication protocols was a concrete action, and one she’d already considered. “I missed being able to talk to you, too.”

“So, we need to work out a means by which we can communicate without anyone suspecting my existence, and how I can warn you even if you can’t check your personal comms unit. For the first, I suggest we resurrect Serge Buckley.”

“The hacker identity?”

Initially, Nora’s adoption of Aria had been less than official.

Aria had come to her to bargain for help to find the blaze discovery her parents had been murdered for. Nora hadn’t wanted the blaze or the wealth it represented, but with her own secret identity as a Forgotten likely to be outed (since Cherry had confided it to Mstivoj), she’d been immediately sympathetic to Aria’s plight; that of a child being stalked by the crime boss David Omnes. Omnes wanted the location of the blaze discovery. Nora had decided that she and Aria would both benefit from running away. Information as to a blaze discovery could be sold on the black market, giving them the money to establish new lives under new names.

However, when they reached the wreck of Aria’s parents’ mining barge, the CC Marmot, and Aria checked where the map ought to have been hidden, she found in its place a note from her parents.

Sorry, baby girl. Be free of this. We destroyed the map when the Marmot was shot. Dad and I love you. Be good. Be happy. Chase your own dreams. Love you forever, Mom and Dad

In the upending of their plans, Jonah had encouraged Nora to an alternative course of action. Rather than abandon her old identity, she could return to Border Station. She could keep her connections to family and friends, and the possibility of a relationship with Captain Liam Kimani.

To her objection that as a kidnapper she could scarcely waltz back onto Border Station, he’d confessed that he’d altered her legal standing. She wasn’t a wanted criminal for rescuing Aria.

Jonah had hacked the Registry Office database and altered Aria’s record to show Nora’s adoption of her, authorized by David Omnes as one of the Border Station Orphanage’s three governors.

When it turned out that Liam’s intelligence officer had found the hacked intrusion into what was meant to be the unhackable, utterly above corruption database for the entire Human Sector, Nora had explained it by employing a fake identity Jonah had produced: a hacker who’d contacted Nora on an online board, a Serge Buckley.

“I thought you faked his departure from the station,” she said.

“I did. But enough time has passed that he could have returned from the Sake Refueling Station after he learned of the blaze discovery. Serge Buckley could, conceivably, be well-entrenched on Border Station.”

Nora kicked the heels of her boots against the base of the captain’s chair. “You think we could claim he feeds me information when there’s something you wish me to know. Could you keep ahead of their efforts to track him down?”

“Of course.”

She grinned. “A cover story is useful. But if they ask why he’s helping me, and they would…?” She hated lying. In particular, lying to Liam would be a betrayal. The only reason she contemplated it was Jonah.

The reality of who Jonah was, a Vapori AI in an android body, was a truth Jonah alone had the right to reveal.

“You say Buckley could be anyone. He could even have known your mom. She was a smuggler, and it’s quite possible she had contact with other Forgotten.”

“Actually, it’s not. I’d bet she avoided them all. She left Palantine and recreated herself as a Capitoline smuggler based in the slums so as to bury her old identity.” Nora ran her hands down her thighs. “But we do need a cover story if you have to contact me in an emergency. All right. Let’s go with Serge.”

“Excellent. As to the second issue, how to get your attention if you’re not answering your comms unit.” Jonah contemplated the ceiling, then her. “If it’s urgent, we can’t afford to be subtle. I’ve inserted a virus into the station and most of the ships docked to it. If, wherever you are, the lights flicker three times, check your comms unit. If they keep flickering, get out and come home. No matter what.”

“Okay.”

His whole body relaxed, which revealed exactly how much of his “existential crisis” had been worry for her.

She smiled at him. “We’ll get through this. Broadly, our plan for ensuring our well-being is holding up.” She spun her chair to face the comms unit. “I’m going to speak to Zac or Ben, now, about moving into the house early.”

“They might be willing to move in with us.”

Jonah said it so casually that it took a moment for Nora to comprehend his proposal.

“Why would they—why would we—?”

“I’m not a hundred percent certain I’ve dissected the human plots correctly, but if I have, then Ben Hough deliberately and secretly undermined the position of the previous crime boss on Border Station, David Omnes. His and Zac’s intent was for Zac to step into the power vacuum.”

“And be the bad guy? No, that doesn’t track. Zac wants to go legitimate. That’s why we contracted him. Because he wasn’t a pirate anymore.”

Jonah coughed. “When I said I dissected the human plots, I actually heard Zac and Ben discussing the state of affairs on-station. It explained events. Months ago, when Zac was off recruiting at the secret base in the Erythraean Valley, Ben acted clandestinely to destabilize arguably the most powerful player on Border Station.”

That was a fair description of David Omnes.

When Nora first arrived at the Hadrian Line to work as an independent tagger, David Omnes had been more influential than Governor Giselle Lazaar, but his grip on the station had diminished over the last year. She’d attributed that to Liam’s demonstrated resolve to uphold law and order.

Jonah had a different analysis. “The idea was for Zac to stabilize the informal power structure of the station by taking charge of its black market, including the delivery of violence and protection. It’s possible to operate on the edge of criminality. We would have benefited from his control of who could employ, and how they deployed, mercenary forces. Instead, the police chief has resigned his official position and moved into the role of biggest bully on-station.”

“Inigo Jones is in charge of the black market?” Nora asked, disbelieving. The stench of corruption had always hung around Jones, but she hadn’t thought he had the sort of organized mind and strategic ability to run a criminal network.

“With the Governor’s connivance,” Jonah said.

“So, the people who were profiting from how things were prior to Liam’s arrival are trying to return to that state via the informal sector.”

He grinned. “A delightful euphemism for the black market and criminal activities.”

“Well, Inigo Jones would know all the players.” She frowned at the comms unit. “He hasn’t got what it takes to stand up to the bigger players who’ll arrive when the blaze rush fully kicks off.”

“The question is whether Zac will be able to since he’s lost these months where he could have been consolidating his position.”

She scrunched her toes as she fought a false sense of guilt. “He chose to personally escort us to Beaconditch. I simply contracted his company, not him.” But she had been grateful for his presence in his sting ship, in addition to the cutter his company had operated. She and Zac had become friends at some point during their long mid-flight comms chats. “He doesn’t really want to run Border Station from the shadows. He wants it as a base for the expedition he’s obsessed with launching to the Beta black hole.”

“Just keep in mind that Zac and Ben’s plans are currently subject to change. They might be willing to consolidate their resources between Realm Edge Security headquarters, our house, and their spaceships.”

She studied him warily. “You’re proposing a close alliance. Liam…” Liam could reasonably object to her publicly allying with Zac. Hiring his firm to provide security was a defensible action. Moving him in meant choosing a side in the station’s brewing conflict.

“Liam will be away on patrol,” Jonah said. “He’s a practical man. He’d rather you safe than isolated. Who else are we to depend on? The police force is following their old chief’s orders. Yuri has his own agenda. We need bodies-on-the-ground allies.”

Norah scrunched her toes as she mentally debated the pros and cons.

Zac had his own agenda, his own dream. Everything he did post-war was to fund an expedition to the Beta black hole to open up the opportunity to get the heck out of the Human Sector.

She nodded slowly. She could work with that.

He needed the fuel cells from the blaze she’d discovered on Beaconditch, but his was a long term plan. Till it was underway, he required a base on Border Station. If he and Ben and their people stayed in Nora’s clan house, Zac would save money on accommodation.

She had money. He had skilled people.

“All right. Let’s see what Zac thinks of the idea.”

Zac thought she should stay out of his business, and away from the current contest as to who would control the border zone’s black market.

“We both need allies, Zac.” Her argument was interrupted by the opening of the hatch to the bridge.

Jonah lurched into the hatchway, his hands pulling at his gray, metal hair.

Nora hastily wrapped up her conversation with Zac. “Think about it.”

She hit the end call button before he could question her sudden, wide-eyed expression.

“Yuri got a sample of your DNA,” Jonah blurted. “He’s—”

“Where? When? Oh.” Her hand went to the back of her head as she vaguely recalled her scalp stinging when Yuri had uncharacteristically patted her on the back. “A hair sample.” He must have tugged a hair free from one of the wisps that escaped her braid.

“He stole it from you at the scrapyard and stowed it in a clean glass. I didn’t guess what he was doing. At the time I was concentrating on direct threats to your safety, and afterward, my focus remained on Timothy and attempting to discover if he had any concealed allies. I completely missed Yuri’s actions, till now.”

Nora ran a hand over her hair and down the length of her braid, unconsciously tugging it forward to check the end of it. “Even if I stole back the sample, he’d try again. Or try to order me to provide my DNA. What?”

Jonah was shaking his head. “He’s already run your DNA through a database he brought with him to Border Station. It’s a Royal Guards’ resource, one shared across the six realms.” The six planetary governments that comprised the Human Sector. “Willow has returned to the scrapyard—without Lucas, and Yuri is telling her who your father is.”

“Now?” Nora clarified.

“As we talk.”

“Oh, fudge.” In the limited space of the bridge, she got up and walked in a tight circle.

Jonah got out of her way by dropping into the pilot’s chair. His android body tracked her restless pacing even as he, himself, concentrated on events at the scrapyard. “Willow’s suggesting you could be a Palantine plant.”

“Me?” Nora’s voice uncharacteristically squeaked in protest and panic.

“Yuri disagrees. Vehemently. He says the Palantines wouldn’t risk a royal as strong as you being lost in Capitoline space.”

“Lost?” she muttered. “Is that a euphemism for something, like assassinated?”

Jonah ignored her to continue his report. “Yuri’s reminded Willow that royal guards cooperate across realms even during wartime. If the Palantine Royal Guards knew of your existence, and presence in Capitoline space, they’d have mentioned it to ensure your protection. Willow just snorted at that. She is mad.”

“It’s easier to blame me for her losing Lucas’s trust than to blame herself.”

“Hmm.”

Nora gripped the back of the captain’s chair. “Well?”

“Willow asked a good question. ‘If she’s genuine, she’s King Ivan’s eldest child, and possibly his strongest heir. The political implications are massive. What do you intend to do?’”

Nora’s fingers hurt from gripping the chairback.

Jonah gave her a horrified look. “Yuri says, ‘We have to return her to Capitoline. Immediately.’”

Chapter 8

Duty and discipline kept Liam in his office handling routine matters as well as the avalanche of other issues resulting from the Zangmos’ plot to steal Willow’s burr, its temporary residence in the RC Genghis Khan’s vault, and the indeterminate number of days’ delay till matters were sorted and the RC Genghis Khan headed out on patrol once more.

Given all of that, the last interruption he’d tolerate was Yuri demanding another meeting, immediately.

Liam glared at his comms unit. “Why?”

“I’ve requested Nora’s presence at the RC Genghis Khan in an hour,” was Yuri’s non-answer.

A quick check of the time showed that meant a meeting at four thirty. The timing didn’t bother Liam in itself. Yuri dragging Nora back into whatever he was planning, and doing so before Liam and Nora had a chance to talk privately, did. “Why?” he reiterated.

“I’m not your enemy, Liam. Nor is Willow, who’ll be at the meeting. We have to do our best for Capitoline.” Yuri ended the call.

Liam called Nora. “Yuri won’t tell me why he’s invited you to this sudden meeting.”

“He didn’t tell me, either. But I’ll be there. At minimum, I’ll tell him I’m not some dog he can whistle and command. I have more and more sympathy for Lucas’s dislike of Yuri.”

Yet they both knew Yuri had done nothing wrong. He’d never been unkind to Lucas. He’d simply done his duty.

Duty could demand terrible sacrifices.

Liam warned Nora. “He said he’s not my enemy, which means he knows I’ll hate whatever he proposes.”

“About me as a sensitive,” she filled in the blanks, and sighed. “I’ll see you soon.” She ended the call.

Liam froze. He’d never heard that tone from her before. It was one of defeat.

No. Unacceptable.

Yuri and Willow arrived at the RC Genghis Khan ahead of Nora. A rating escorted them to the meeting room.

Liam scrutinized their tense entrance. He’d brought Casimir and Claire. They sat on his left, on the far side of the table, leaving a space for Nora between himself and Casimir.

Willow sat down opposite the empty chair and Yuri beside her.

“Is this really the day for another meeting?” Casimir asked Yuri.

“Currently, we’re reallocating our joint resources for the protection of the burr, the station, and the blaze discovery on Beaconditch, so yes,” Yuri said. “A fourth, equally vital priority has emerged. We must factor it into our planning.”

Nora entered. She wore a leather jacket over jeans, her braid snaking down the back of it. Her mouth was set in a stern line that barely relaxed when she met Liam’s concerned gaze. She touched his shoulder as she walked silently around him and took her seat.

In fact, everyone was silent—there were no greetings—till she sat.

Yuri rapped the table. “Commander Stanimir and Captain Stas would not normally have the security clearance to learn this information, but this is an unusual situation. They need to understand the asset we have to protect.”

If Claire, as Liam’s second-in-command, and Casimir lacked the security clearance for Yuri’s information, then Nora certainly did. Thus, his willingness to speak of it in front of her meant it concerned her.

Only one secret could be this momentous.

Liam reached under the table and gripped her hand.

She returned the hard clasp, her palm slightly sweaty.

Nothing less than Yuri learning of her parentage—that her father was the Palantine king—justified his level of solemn drama.

“After learning Nora’s status as a Forgotten and the strength of her sensitivity to burrs, I acquired a sample of her DNA—”

“How? I didn’t give you permission to—”.

“I apologize. I acquired a hair sample at the scrapyard. It was my duty to discover your line of descent.”

Nora released Liam’s hand to brace her hands on the table. “You have records of the Forgottens’ ancestry?”

“Ah. Partially. What I actually meant, however, was royal ancestry. Unrecognized royal offspring happen often enough that the Royal Guards have a DNA database. It is securely encoded.” He paused fractionally. “It is also Human Sector-wide, not just for Capitoline.”

Nora sat back in her chair. “I’m from Capitoline.”

“That’s what we thought,” Willow interjected. “From our background check before we partnered with you to develop Beaconditch. But you could be a plant.”

Yuri scowled at Willow. “She isn’t. I told you.” He focused on Nora. “Your father is King Ivan of Palantine.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Liam was so very proud of her control.

It beat Yuri’s. “You knew?”

“A plant,” Willow repeated herself.

“If you mean I’m a spy, you’re loopy,” Nora said to Willow. “I’m the daughter of a woman who fled Palantine and hid in the Capitoline slums, disowning me completely, because she was that scared of my father’s family. She warned me they’d want me dead.”

“No!” Yuri said.

Nora raised her eyebrows. “How naïve are you? I am a Capitoline foster brat who is probably a stronger sensitive than the Palantine Crown Prince. Do you truly imagine they won’t either imprison and breed me, or kill me?”

“They’ll treasure you,” Yuri said.

The fervor of his response set everyone back.

“Royals have been declining in sensitivity to burrs,” he said bluntly. “That’s why Willow’s notion that the Palantines would risk Nora out on the border is insane.”

Nora spoke quietly, but forcefully. “I do not belong to the Palantines or to anyone.”

“You have no idea.” Willow pushed her chair back from the table. “Powerful royals don’t belong to themselves. You’re powerful.”

No. Lucas corrected his perspective on Willow’s action.

She hadn’t pushed her chair away from the table so much as away from Yuri. Consciously or unconsciously, she was distancing himself from his forthcoming actions.

“You’re a political time bomb,” Yuri said to Nora. “Your existence could destabilize Crown Prince Dominic’s claim to the throne.”

“I’m not stupid enough to challenge him for it.”

Willow snapped. “It’s not about your intentions. It’s the fact of your existence and that we, Capitoline, know about you while the Palantine royals—or so you’re claiming—don’t.”

Nora tilted her chin. “Do you really think that Queen Sarah, if she knew of my existence and threat to her son’s claim to the throne, would have permitted me to survive childhood?”

“She can’t be that bad,” Claire said.

Both Nora and Willow jerked at her comment, as if surprised not just that she’d uttered it, but that she was there.

“Of course she isn’t,” Yuri answered for them, and won glares from all three women.

Claire pointedly transferred her gaze to Nora. “Whatever someone might have done to a foster child in the slums, you’re an adult who possesses the ability and resources to protect yourself.”

“And friends,” Casimir rumbled.

Claire nodded sharply.

“Good grief,” Yuri exclaimed, exasperated. He shoved away from the table and out of his chair. “The whole point of this meeting is that we have a duty to protect Nora, as a strong sensitive and potential heir to the Palantine crown, until she can be guarded by the full strength of the Royal Guards who will support her to negotiate her position between Capitoline and Palantine.”

He stabbed a finger at Nora. “Failure to present you to the Palantines at the first possible opportunity would be a damned compelling reason for renewed hostilities between the two realms. Whether you see yourself as a Palantine princess or not, you are.”

Nora swallowed hard.

Liam’s heart thudded as it seemed to miss a beat before thundering in dread.

“We cannot afford to appear to withhold Nora from her family.”

She choked. “They are not my family!”

But Yuri’s vehemence was for Liam, not her.

The two men eyed each other grimly.

“Flaming rats’ arse hairs,” Casimir swore. “I get it. It’s not just Nora. It’s our history with her half-brother Dominic—sorry for linking you to the arrogant git, Nora. The RC Genghis Khan held him hostage, against the tradition of commoners not detaining royals. If the Palantines learn of Nora’s identity and spin it as us keeping her away from them…”

Liam cursed silently. He’d sacrifice a lot for peace, but did it have to be Nora? “Yuri, what do you want from us? Why call this meeting, today, when we still haven’t cleaned up the mess from the Zangmos’ plot?”

“We have three priorities and very limited resources.” Yuri folded his arms. He didn’t resume his seat. “We have to protect the burr, and Willow and Lucas. We have to protect the blaze supply and get fuel cell production and trade underway. And we have to transport Nora to Capitoline, immediately.”

Her chin came up. “And if I refuse?”

“You can’t,” Willow muttered. “Why do you think Lucas resents being a sensitive so much?”

Yuri rubbed the back of his neck. “Royal Guards have the right to detain strong sensitives for their own security.”

“And you want us to help you do that?” Liam confirmed.

Yuri didn’t flinch. “Yes. It’s actually fortunate Claire is here.”

“Oh, so now I’m ‘Claire’, not ‘Commander Stanimir’?”

Yuri sat down. “I respect your loyalty to Liam, but as I told him, I’m not your enemy.”

“Just mine,” Nora said.

“It is my duty to keep you safe.”

She bared her teeth. The dental display was not a smile. “You stated your duty as gift-wrapping me for presentation to the Palantines to use me as they see fit. You hope that doesn’t mean Queen Sarah assassinating me, but if it does, better my death than war.” She inhaled. “The rotten, wretched, screwed-up truth is that you’re right. One person’s death is better than thousands. But you’re also wrong. You doing what you perceive as your duty, against my desire to live freely, as is any citizen’s right, does make you my enemy.”

He ducked his head. “So be it.”

Fear, loss and anger pressed down on Liam. A cage had snapped shut around Nora. It had her trapped. It had also shut him out. He fought the rage that wanted to rip the bars out and use them to beat up Yuri.

Claire’s brusque voice broke the tension. “What do you want from me?”

“You’re needed to captain the scrapyard’s cutter, transporting Nora as quickly and securely as possible back to Capitoline.” Yuri glanced at Liam, and away. “Given Liam’s history with Crown Prince Dominic and his relationship to Nora, it would be inappropriate for him to escort her home. You are the second highest ranked officer on Border Station. You will escort her home. Sam Gurung, and the forces he requests, will accompany you to protect her. We must demonstrate to Palantine that we’ve taken Nora’s security and well-being very seriously.”

Nora’s voice was as tightly controlled as her rigid expression. “Why rush me to Capitoline?”

“Because your father, King Ivan, could justly take offence at any delay in informing him of your existence, and when we do, the message must be able to guarantee your security and comfort. You must be seen to be receiving the same courtesy with which Palantine welcomed Princess Hermione.”

Nora winced, and ducked her head.

“It’s politics,” Yuri said.

“It’s unreasonable. You’re already splitting your forces between Beaconditch and the scrapyard. You can delay shoving me off to Capitoline till reinforcements arrive. The Navy will send Liam backup as soon as they learn of my blaze discovery. In fact, it should be on its way. Surely, your political calculations can absorb a two month delay until I can have a complete escort without leaving border space under-defended? The blaze supply is more important than me.”

Yuri grunted. “Not in royal circles.”

Willow gripped the arms of her chair. “Nora, and all of you, you have to stop thinking of her as herself. Put Hermione in her place. Now, what you’d do for Hermione, and what you’d expect of her, is what must happen for Nora. Hermione would never be permitted to wander the Hadrian Line.”

Her statement silenced everyone’s questions and protests. If Hermione was out here, they would all naturally sacrifice staff and resources, and take up the strain, to ensure she returned home as soon as possible.

Except home for Nora wasn’t Capitoline.

And returning her there, meant surrendering her to a world, a royal world, where Liam didn’t belong.

“You won’t be able to leave Santiago on-station,” Claire said to Liam. “I’ll also need another pilot, someone from engineering, and a couple of Marines. People Nora and I can rely on. We have to be prepared in case Irina Wismer embedded other traitors among her crew.”

“Sam will be in charge of security,” Yuri reminded her.

“And I’ll have two RC Genghis Khan Marines,” Claire repeated her requirements, and her mistrust of the scrapyard group’s loyalty, calmly. “Nora will also be armed and ready to protect herself.”

Nora jolted.

Claire leaned around Casimir to regard her sympathetically. “We might be forced to move you around like a pawn on a chessboard, but whatever sense of personal autonomy we can give you, you’ll have.”

A weapon was no substitute for real freedom, and it would undoubtedly be taken from Nora on reaching Capitoline, but it was the expression of support Nora needed.

She blinked rapidly. “Thanks.”

Liam covered her hand on the table.

She turned her palm up and interlaced their fingers.

Yuri cleared his throat. “The CC Arowana needs four days for a maintenance check and to resupply.”

“We don’t leave till I’m sure the cutter is ready,” Claire said. “Xavier will go over it.”

Yuri declined to fight. “Thank you.” But his demand lay like a pall over the group.

Nora had four days till departure.

“Meeting adjourned.” Liam stared at Yuri. “Get out.”

Everyone left.

Tears welled up in Nora’s incredible green eyes. “I don’t want—” She crashed into Liam.

He held her as their dreams for the future crumbled around them.

“I’m an idiot,” she muttered as she wiped her eyes. “I didn’t think anyone would test my DNA on Border Station. Yuri shouldn’t have stolen mine.” She blew her nose with a rebellious honk.

“I wouldn’t have expected him to have a database containing other realms’ royals’ DNA profiles.” Liam hadn’t realized cooperation among Royal Guards went that deep. Evidently, there were layers and protocols to protecting royals that he was unaware of, and since Willow supported Yuri’s demands, it seemed his actions were reasonable within those protocols.

Tightening his arms around Nora, Liam fought his own contrary instincts.

“I thought I had more time,” she whispered. “Do you know, I was stupid enough to think I could stay out here, that the money would keep me safe from the royals? I thought partnering with Willow was smart!” She sounded outraged at her own stupidity.

But she wasn’t stupid.

And ironically, she would be safe.

But safe was a matter of definition. For Yuri, it mean Nora was secured under Royal Guard protection, which equaled control. That definition directly opposed Nora’s, which was the freedom to decide her own future.

It felt like failure that Liam couldn’t give her that. It felt like betrayal that he’d be complicit in sending her away. “I’ll send a note with you to Francis.”

Her laughter cracked. “Like how he protected his sister?”

Hermione had been sent away from Capitoline to marry Crown Prince Dominic. One day, Francis would be king of Capitoline, and his sister, married to Dominic, would be Palantine’s queen.

Nora shook her head. “I’m sorry. Francis is your friend. He did the best he could. Don’t we all?” she added bitterly. Deep in reverie, she leaned against him, hands restlessly smoothing over his back. “I made mistakes. I thought the money could keep me free out here. I thought I was so clever. No matter how clever we are, the system beats us. You’d think a towers brat would have that lesson engraved on her soul.”

She stepped back. “You have things to do. Yuri’s given us a four day window. You have to talk to Claire and arrange Navy things.”

“We can have dinner, first.”

“Tomorrow. I need to…” Clenching her hands, she glared at the floor. She thumped her fists against her thighs. “Tomorrow.”

It hurt not to reach for her, but she was clearly struggling for self-control. “All right,” he said softly.

She looked up then. Her smile wobbled. “I can’t see a path through this, but I want to find one. Tomorrow, Liam.”

“I’ll escort you out.”

“Don’t. Please.”

Turning away to hide his expression, he opened the door, and found Casimir standing outside. Not quite on guard.

Casimir nodded fractionally to him before his gaze went past Liam to Nora. “I’ll guide you out.”

She brushed her fingers against Liam’s as she passed him. “Okay.”

Only she could fracture his control. He caught her fingers and raised them to his lips.

She trembled fiercely and pulled her hands free, tucking them into her jacket pockets.

Their destruction was mutual. They both shattered the other’s customary self-discipline.

Liam watched Casimir lead her away.

Chapter 9

Every bit the disciplined Marine, Casimir stared straight ahead as Nora sniffed.

She was darned if she’d through Liam’s ship crying into a tissue.

“‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more,’” Casimir surprisingly quoted. “One of my high school literature teachers forced us to study ancient rubbish. That line stuck in my mind for its arrant stupidity. But I understood it when I met Liam.”

“I don’t blame him for doing his duty,” Nora muttered.

“Duty and his personal loyalty to Crown Prince Francis. We don’t have time to discuss that supposed friendship.”

Jolted out of her misery by that last sentence, she gawked at Casimir.

“Your friend, Isaac Mstivoj. He went through the Palantine version of the naval academy Liam and Francis attended. All very elite and honorable. The Palantines then had Mstivoj serve as a privateer. That must have chapped his ass. That’s why he got out.”

Nora didn’t enlighten Casimir that Zac had other reasons. Besides, she was curious what else Casimir had to say, and he’d patently escorted her for exactly this fleeting chance to talk privately.

“If Francis had asked Liam to turn pirate, Liam would have done exactly as Mstivoj did,” Casimir said. “He’d have become the scourge of enemy merchant ships, acted as mercifully as he could in the role of villain, and it would have destroyed him.” Casimir barely paused. “You and me, like Mstivoj, we’re more pragmatic. We do our duty, but we focus on getting what we want out of life. Surrendering your resources early limits later action.”

She was still wrinkling her forehead over Casimir’s advice, trying to discern what he actually meant, when she and her Realm Edge Security bodyguards reached the CC Kangaroo.

Casimir was Liam’s friend. She trusted that truth. He was also an experienced Marine captain; that is, a trained strategist. Somewhere in his description of Liam’s tendency to sacrifice himself for the greater good was a hint as to Nora’s options for doing the opposite. How? How could she preserve her personal freedom?

The answer hit her as she entered the CC Kangaroo. Casimir had mentioned Isaac Mstivoj, the Capitoline Navy’s former enemy, on purpose.

Liam can’t help me. But Zac could.

Zac was a resource Casimir was advising her to retain and leverage.

Her contract with Realm Edge Security was limited to them protecting her in border space. That was fair enough. Zac’s intent was to establish himself on Border Station to use it as a launch base for an expedition to the Beta black hole. His life goal was to open contact with the rest of humanity. If a ship could enter the Beta black hole’s millrace, then Stranded humanity had an opportunity to re-establish contact with broader humanity. Admittedly, the odds of doing so were astronomically low. The Beta black hole and its position in the universal rivers was unmapped. Expeditions would be launching blindly, trusting to luck to contact other humans.

On the other hand, if Stranded humanity could somehow disable the Vapori lens that blocked them from re-entering the Origin black hole through which the seven colony ships had accidentally exited five centuries ago and found themselves stranded in the region, then the old maps from that time meant that an expedition could retrace their ancestors’ route to reconnect with broader humanity.

Zac wanted that reconnection as a means of breaking the stranglehold of the royals on the Human Sector. He wanted the freedom and opportunities that came from breaking open a closed system.

Currently, he thought the Beta black hole was his only option.

But if I convince him I might be able to disable the lens at the Origin black hole, would he agree to me contracting his security firm as my own private security? He had a cutter and a sting ship. They’d protected her to and from Beaconditch. If they accompanied her to Capitoline, she wouldn’t be alone.

And if I’m a Palantine princess, she pulled an ugly face, then a Palantine protection detail would actually play well. To the Palantines, Zac was a folk hero, a swashbuckling privateer who’d defended Palantine interests during the war. From her perspective, it helped that he had no love for the royals.

“Have you fallen asleep standing up?”

Nora startled at Jonah’s voice.

He stood in the internal hatchway to the CC Kangaroo. “You’ve been standing in the docking tunnel for seven minutes.”

“Thinking.” She started forward.

He moved out of the way. “It was quite a meeting.” He’d monitored it. Given their current fraught circumstances, Nora didn’t go anywhere on-station without him keeping watch.

The others at the meeting probably thought she’d been exaggerating the danger of revealing her ancestry. They didn’t know what she did, courtesy of Jonah’s ability to passively observe the entire Human Sector and beyond.

Hermione was dead, and Queen Sarah had ordered her assassination. Sarah had done more than that. She’d orchestrated events to put the blame on her brother, the Duke of Ontario, and had taken over his estate, following his arrest.

Nora’s biological mother’s fear of Sarah had proven deadly prescient.

“Where’s Aria?”

“Eating pizza while watching television. I didn’t tell her you’d returned.”

Nora cast a guilty glance upward, to the living deck and her responsibility to Aria. “Can we talk in the garden?” She craved a timeout, but she was also on a countdown, and if her Casimir-inspired idea was feasible, she needed to act immediately. Time was a luxury money couldn’t buy.

In the garden, its soft, green scents filled her lungs. She breathed deeply. Unless she circumvented Yuri’s extraction of her from her own life, she’d lose this, too.

Everything is replaceable, except people.

She stared at the scarlet flowers of a sweet-scented pineapple sage. “Do you want to venture off by yourself?” she asked Jonah. “We can ‘sell’ the CC Kangaroo to a fake identity, and you fly off in it. Or we can find—”

“I’m staying with you.”

She looked at him then. “How?”

“We have options, even if Yuri would find it easier if you didn’t realize it. The CC Kangaroo is Aria’s home as well as yours. I expect Yuri will insist you travel onboard the CC Arowana, under Sam Gurung’s supervision.”

“Ugh.” She didn’t know Sam well enough to dislike him. It was the idea of surveillance and confinement that prickled her skin.

“Aria, however, could travel on the CC Kangaroo with Cherry, a pilot and a bodyguard, preferably Veronica. It would give her a familiar space, plus mean your home came with you to Capitoline.”

“Aria would definitely have more space here than on the Arowana.” The cutter would have a full complement of crew and security staff. Moreover it was designed for work, not living in. “She’d have you, tutor Jonah.” Nora smiled. “If you’re sure? This isn’t what we planned…”

He hugged her, a friend’s bolstering hug, rough and reassuring. “We could spend hours, days even, swapping guilt and what-might-have-beens, but we don’t have time. We overestimated what we could do and control, and underestimated the challenges against us. I’ve finally accepted that there will always be things I miss.”

“Being a fallible, finite being like the rest of us,” Nora interjected. She felt better for his hug, and absolutely relieved that in spite of the risks involved, he was staying around.

“But we stick to our goal.”

“Which is?” She wasn’t being a smart-alec. “What were we thinking when we cancelled running away to return to Border Station?”

He had a succinct answer for her. “Family. To live safe and free with those we love.”

“Yeah.” She sniffed. “I’ve turned into a crybaby.”

He grinned at her. “Never. But if you have—” she swatted him for teasing, “we’re still pushing forward. Just sniffle quietly.”

“All right. What do we do?”

“The CC Kangaroo is Aria’s home. She’s never been on a planet before, so she may need it to retreat to. You definitely require a place of your own. And I need an unobtrusive means of traveling with you.”

“Okay. The CC Kangaroo is a must. I was thinking we also need Zac?”

“Yes.”

Nora exhaled noisily. “Did you get that from Casimir’s hints, too?”

“He wasn’t subtle. He’s also right. You need to arrive on Capitoline and among the royals as your own person. A private security force, loyal to you, will provide a physical and emotional shield against whatever games we find ourselves embroiled in. Cherry won’t stay on Border Station alone, so she’ll come with us.”

It’s only Liam I’ll leave behind. But Nora kept that thought to herself because despite her treacherously leaky eyes earlier, she wasn’t a crybaby or a whiner. She was a fighter. Liam and her was problem for after she’d locked in Zac’s support. “It all hinges on convincing Zac that I’m his best chance of achieving his goals.”

She scowled determinedly at Jonah. “I’m going to do it. If Yuri and his lot force me into the role of a recognized sensitive, then we’re going to exploit that opportunity. Our goal is to get hold of a burr, practice using it, then disable the Vapori lens to open the Origin black hole’s millrace.”

“I expect that will motivate Zac, but should you pile so much pressure on yourself, now?”

She scrunched her toes. “It depends. Do you really think I can disable the lens?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s no better time. I don’t think of Dominic or his sisters and brother as my siblings, any more than I think of Keith that way.” Keith being Cherry’s brother. “But in assassinating Hermione, Queen Sarah has proven her ruthlessness. By your own report, Dominic’s devastated and unstable. The news of Hermione’s death will reach Capitoline ahead of us. Everyone will be raging around. If Sarah gets her way, lives and blaze will be squandered in another war between Capitoline and Palantine.”

She took a deep breath. “I can’t stop the politics of that, but I can ruin her endgame of halting interstellar travel and trapping people on their home worlds. She wants to be all-powerful on Palantine. Imagine if we open the Origin black hole and her power diminishes beyond her imagining as we reunite with the rest of humanity, and all the people like Zac, who hate the current social structure, or are suppressed by it, like the towers’ citizens,” the slums where she’d grown up, “had an escape route to other lives.” She finished strongly. “I can’t use our money to buy Zac and his people, but I can use it to give them the freedom to choose to come with us.”

“Do it,” Jonah said. “Call Zac and Cherry. Have them meet you at the house.”

“Not here?”

“The house is closer to neutral ground, given that Ben’s overseen its renovation. Include him.”

She nodded.

“But the house isn’t actually neutral ground,” Jonah reminded her. “It’s a clan house. It’s a physical statement of your wealth and ability to fund a private staff and security force. Zac’s people are more than guards.”

“Staff.” Absently, she picked and ate a sugar snap pea.

“Eat something before the meeting,” Jonah advised humorously. “Aria’s had pizza.”

Nora paused mid-chew. “You think she should be at the meeting?”

“Maybe there are gentler methods of breaking the truth of your illegitimate royal status and forced return to Capitoline, but we’re limited for time and, I believe, that Aria would rather know what is happening and where she stands, now, than be left behind again.” As her parents had done.

“Okay.” She dusted her hands against her jeans. “Let’s get started.”

Meeting with Zac, Ben, Cherry and Aria was hard. Telling Liam about it afterwards was even harder, in a different way.

“You told Zac?” At her confirmation, Liam said, “So, now Palantines know you’re their king’s daughter. His eldest child.”

“Yes. The situation is complicated. Keeping secrets when that secret no longer benefits me.” She stopped as her sentence confused even her. “He needed to know because I need his help. His people.”

She knew, as Liam and everyone else on the border didn’t, yet, that Hermione had been assassinated. Nora’s arrival on Capitoline would thrust her into a volatile social and political landscape in which the Capitoline people were still assimilating the news of Hermione’s death.

What role would the Capitoline royals push Nora into as a Capitoline-raised, Palantine-descended, almost-princess with a strong sensitivity to burrs? She doubted they’d let her be “wasted” on a commoner like Liam, even if he was a Navy captain and Francis’s friend. She was too valuable a pawn in their political games.

Liam had to know it, even if he was unaware of Hermione’s death.

“I told Zac and Ben, and Aria and Cherry who were there, too, that my father is the king of Palantine. Cherry swallowed her gum.” Momentarily, Nora grinned at the memory. Cherry’s accident, and her yelp of disgust, had distracted everyone long enough for Nora’s news to sink in. “Zac wants change. He wants the possibility of escaping the Human Sector. I think we, our society, needs that release valve. I asked him to throw in with me. With us.”

“You want to employ Zac?”

She smiled wryly. “You sound almost as incredulous as he did.”

Zac had glowered at her, worried for her as much as for himself and his people. “Contracting me won’t endear you to the Capitolines.”

“I grew up in their slums. They can rack off.” The old Angkorran towers’ slang had emerged spontaneously. “I don’t care about their opinion.”

“There’s not caring, and there’s making your life harder.”

Her jaw muscles had ached with tension. “Harder is flying into this situation sans backup.”

Now, she answered Liam’s doubt. “If Zac and Ben agree, and I think they will, I’ll be glad to have them. They want to open a black hole millrace and escape the Human Sector. I’m a better chance than scrabbling for years to accumulate resources for a Beta black hole expedition.”

“Unless someone like Francis was willing to fund it,” Liam said.

She hesitated. “Would he?”

“I don’t know,” he said, impatiently. He had other concerns. “Nora, the palace isn’t going to trust you with a burr.”

“Not immediately. But I need a goal to work toward.”

“I thought keeping your freedom was your goal.”

“It is.” She drank some water. Her voice felt strained after a day of talking. Far too much talking.

On-screen, he raked a hand through his hair. “I haven’t asked Yuri what precedents exist for your circumstances. The extent of his authority and information surprised me. There’ll be other groups, in addition to the royals and Royal Guards, that will try to influence your future. Navigating that minefield is difficult enough without adding convincing them to let you wield a burr.”

“Zac thought the same, but I convinced him otherwise. This is my opportunity. Whoever tests for sensitivity to burrs will want to throw everything at me, given the report Yuri will have submitted on my role in foiling the Zangmos’ plot to steal the burr on Border Station. They’ll be curious about the range of my abilities. This will be my best chance to show them that I can affect Vapori technology.”

“If you can. I’m not attacking your beliefs, Nora, but I’m not sure where you got the idea that you can especially affect Vapori artifacts. Is this something other Forgotten have told you?”

She hesitated. “Someone told me. Who is their secret. But if I can get a Vapori burr to do something unprecedented, that will increase the chance the royals will let me attempt to disable the Origin lens.”

“Stop. This is all…this is a problem for when you reach Capitoline, not now. Except that if Zac signs his people up to protect you outside border space, it’ll be a promise you’ll have to deliver on. It’s a risk, maybe one you shouldn’t take. I know you need allies. I hope you need me.”

“Liam,” she whispered.

“I realize that if I let you face this alone, there is no us. You shouldn’t have to turn to Zac.”

She shook her head agitatedly. “We should be discussing this in person. You have your duty and I—”

“Marry me.”

Everything stopped.

In shock, she hiccupped his name. “Liam?”

“Unless you don’t want me.”

“I want you.” Her response came without thought or hesitation.

“Then we marry quietly, early tomorrow. Pastor Kebede has a dawn service. We can catch him at the end of it.”

“Liam, your career.”

“Has been eventful, and now, it’s done. I couldn’t have resigned in wartime, but now…I can be selfish and want you more than anything else in the universe. Marrying me might complicate your position on Capitoline, or simplify it. I can’t guess. But I want to be there for you.”

“Yes.” She jettisoned all doubt, including the knowledge of Hermione’s assassination and the hovering specter of a return to war. She couldn’t guess the future. That was what the events of the last couple of days had taught her and Jonah. She had to choose for here and now.

She would always choose Liam.

“Yes, I’ll marry you, tomorrow.”

“I’ll collect you from the ship at six thirty. I love you, Nora.”

He was reforging his life for her.

No, for them.

“Will you adopt Aria?” she blurted.

He smiled so brilliantly her chest hurt. “Yes, darling. Happily.”

“I love you, Liam.” They stared at one another for a long moment before she ended the comms call. The screen went blank. She rubbed her sternum and the ache behind it.

Then a thought struck her. “What will I wear?”

Nora and Liam’s wedding at the elegant Green Park Chapel was small yet strangely perfect.

Liam brought Casimir as his best man, and a unit of Marines who stood guard outside the chapel.

Nora brought Aria and the two Realm Edge Security personnel who refused to transfer responsibility for her safety to the Marines.

Jonah watched from the CC Kangaroo.

He would have seen Aria pace solemnly down the aisle ahead of Nora, her pretty pastel dress sparkling every bit as much as the tiara she’d produced from somewhere and offered to Nora before happily accepting Nora’s refusal and wearing it herself.

Nora’s dress was a tawny, golden yellow that enhanced her green eyes with their unusual black limbal ring at the outer rim of her irises; eyes she’d inherited from her father. She’d arranged her hair to fall in a loose braid over her left shoulder. Even wearing high heels, she was fractionally shorter than Liam and distinctly smaller than his best man.

In their dress uniforms, Liam and Casimir were unbelievably handsome.

Any nerves Nora had felt evaporated at Liam’s intense regard. She was wanted. She was loved.

Maybe she imagined it, but she thought her first husband’s ghost gave his blessing. The words that rang in her mind held Ethan’s unique style of encouragement. Be his sunshine, love. Light the world.

Liam’s smile lit her heart when she reached him.

Together, they turned to face Pastor Kebede. The ancient lines of the traditional marriage service united them, filled to overflowing with emotion as they recited their vows.

“…you may kiss the bride.”

Liam kissed her thoroughly, yet circumspectly, given their small audience.

Aria’s enthusiastic “Yay!” was answered by the amused rumble of Casimir’s laughter.

Exiting the chapel brought the real world crashing down on them.

Yuri stood directly in front of the doors, facing off with Marine Sergeant Cameron Pelan, while Sam Gurung focused his ire on a fourth man.

“Congratulations,” Zac offered Liam a handshake.

Liam accepted it.

“You look beautiful, Nora.” Zac leaned in for a hug. “Be happy. Or we’ll kick his ass.”

She stared into his face, mere inches away. “You’re accepting the contract?”

“Yes.”

She hugged him. “Thank you.”

“What contract?” Yuri demanded.

“Nunya!” Aria shouted.

Nora ducked her head, which completely failed to hide her grin. At yesterday’s meeting with Zac, Ben and Cherry, Aria had learned that Yuri was the reason Nora was being sent to Capitoline, disrupting their plans for a future on Border Station. All in all, Nora thought Yuri deserved a degree of disrespect. But maybe that was her inner towers brat speaking.

“Pardon?” Yuri leveled a stern gaze at Aria.

Liam put a hand on her shoulder. “Yuri, unless you’re here to offer congratulations, the discussion you’re itching for will happen on the RC Genghis Khan at nine o’clock.”

“You shouldn’t have done this,” Yuri said.

Casimir took a step forward.

Sam moved around him. “Congratulations, Liam. Best wishes, Nora.” The conventional words seemed sincere. They also defused the situation as Yuri realized his ally refused to support his stance. “Your dress is very pretty, Aria.”

“It’s my party dress.” As if all the sparkles on it hadn’t given that away.

Zac grinned at Nora. “You are in so much trouble.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t invite Cherry to your wedding.”

Beside her, Nora felt Liam relax. She poked his side. “He’s right. You should be scared of sister-in-law vengeance.” Even if Cherry hadn’t been invited for the simple reason that they’d acted to keep the news of the planned nuptials a secret till accomplished, and Cherry had a bad track record regarding secrets. After all, she’d drunkenly confided her and Nora’s Forgotten status to Zac.

“Tell me about it over breakfast,” he suggested. He wanted them off the street and safely back aboard the CC Kangaroo. The house wasn’t yet ready to host a meal.

Casimir was to join them.

Zac? Nora silently asked Liam with a tilt of her head.

Liam nodded. “Zac, will you join us?”

Time was ticking down. They had far too much to arrange. Liam had to hand over his command to Claire. Nora needed to lock down a contract with Zac.

“With pleasure.”

Yuri growled. Literally, growled. “You’re trashing your career, Liam.”

“Nine o’clock,” Liam repeated firmly, and escorted Nora and Aria to the RC Genghis Khan’s APC.

Back onboard the CC Kangaroo, Jonah had breakfast ready. He hadn’t cooked it. Nora had placed an order with a local bakery before departing for her wedding. Fortunately, she’d over-catered, so there was plenty of pastries and ham and cheese croissants even with Zac’s inclusion.

Jonah, himself, was playing least in sight on the bridge.

Casimir and Zac raised their coffee mugs to toast Nora and Liam. Aria spilled hot chocolate over her party dress, pouted, and hurried to change into normal clothes.

She didn’t need to rush. This wasn’t a wedding breakfast, any longer. It had become a working one.

Nora and Zac drafted a contract.

“The lawyers can fancy up the language,” Zac said. “But my price is that if, in ten years, you’ve failed to open the Origin black hole, you’ll fund the Beta expedition.”

“With a cap on expenditure,” Liam interjected. “A maximum percentage of income received from the blaze trade during those ten years.”

Nora and Zac saw the wisdom of the condition. “I can put it in a trust.”

It was Casimir who was left shocked. “You think you can disable the lens at Origin?”

“Yuri wants me for a reason. He can talk about politics all he likes, but the real issue is always power. I have it. I’m a strong sensitive and…everyone always forgets. They think of me as a Forgotten, and now as a royal. As a tagger or as a towers brat. You forget that I’m also a xeno-archaeologist with years of experience in Silicaese fieldwork. I’ve been thinking about how the Silicaese used burrs for a long time.

“All of our burrs, except the original fifteen taken from the lens, have been recovered from Silicaese caches. Think what that means. We recognize they’re the same as what the Originals took from the lens. We don’t know where the Silicaese got them from, or how the Silicaese could use the power stored in them while we can’t.”

Zac helped himself to another coffee. “Hang on. The entire raison d’etre of the royals is that they can use the burrs.”

“To siphon energy,” Nora said. She gestured for Zac to refill her mug, while she considered how to compress what Jonah had told her about the burrs, while keeping the knowledge she shared to what humans knew of burrs. “On a quantum level, matter is energy. When a royal uses a burr to obliterate something, in actual fact the burr is siphoning the energy that forms that thing. What we see as physical matter vanishes as its energy is sucked into the burr.”

Her explanation lacked polish. She pushed on. “The alterations to the fifteen Originals from contact with the lens gave them a natural affinity for siphoning energy, something their descendants, the royals and Forgotten, inherited.”

The lens was primarily an energetic structure, even if humans were generally limited to observing its physical components.

“The difference between humans and the Silicaese is that humans are carbon-based lifeforms with a small energetic component.” According to Jonah, the Vapori had also been carbon-based, although the ratio of physical body to energetic body had been the opposite to humans’. The Vapori had been mostly energetic, like their AIs. Humans were mostly physical. “The Silicaese were silicon-based lifeforms. Somehow they learned to tap the energy in the burrs. They used them as batteries, but they couldn’t refill them. Whereas we call a burr depleted when it is so full of energy that no more can be added. Or that’s the hypothesis.”

She’d never expected to give a lecture on Vapori burrs during her wedding breakfast, but the three men listened attentively. “If the Silicaese could tap the burrs’ energy, we must be missing some basic approach.” She was counting on Jonah confirming her guess before she attempted to tap a burr. For now, she looked confidently around the table. “Instead of starting from how the Originals used the burrs, we need to try replicating how the Silicaese did.”

“But isn’t that a mystery?” Zac objected.

“Nope.” Nora popped the “p” in her response.

“Enlighten us, oh wise one,” Liam teased.

Nora smiled. “It’s chemistry. Specifically, the energy of chemical bonds and reactions. We have to replicate a silicon-based contact with a burr, but it has to be an energetic, not inert, contact, and then, to actually affect the lens, we have to direct it the same way royals wield a burr. I’ve never controlled one, but the popular myth is royals simply aim and wish.”

“Energy follows intent,” Casimir said.

Everyone stared at him.

Casimir frowned. “Obviously, I’ve read up on burrs and wielding them since Willow set up shop here.”

Obviously?

Liam nodded as if it was obvious.

Zac gulped the last of his coffee. “This is fascinating, truly, but with three days till departure, I have to hustle.”

“You could follow us a few days later.” Nora’s pragmatic proposal earned her three scowls.

“And be in breach of our contract?”

She threw up her hands. “You could recoup the time on the journey. We’d arrive on Capitoline together.”

Admonitorily ignoring her failure to respect security protocols, Zac addressed Liam. “We’ll depart when you do. I’ll leave the sting ship for Ben. He’ll wrap up things here. Hand over what can be handed over. Liquidate the rest. About three quarters of our people want to stay. There’ll be security and other work for them with the blaze rush.” Zac was burning bridges he’d barely begun to build in border space. “In the sting ship, Ben will be able to catch up with us.”

“I’ll be happier with an escort,” Liam said. The Realm Edge Security cutter was part of the new contract. He pushed back his chair. “We should be going, too. I’ll talk to you, later.”

“Chin up. Yuri can’t murder you,” Nora said.

“No, but Claire might try to.” Casimir stood and stretched. “Liam’s leaving her with an irate Yuri.”

Nora grimaced apologetically.

“Can I visit Lucas?” Aria asked.

The adults froze.

Liam looked a question at Nora.

She looked back at him and shrugged. “Well, Lucas isn’t allowed out yet.”

“Interesting,” Zac interjected.

Casimir shoved his shoulder. It was a (mostly) friendly push. “Get going.”

Hands up in mock surrender, Zac exited.

“I think Lucas would enjoy a visit,” Liam said. “And Nora is busy.”

Yes, I am. Aria being safely occupied on the battlecruiser would make Nora’s life a ton easier in the next few hours.

“You can come with us, and we’ll bring you back when you’re ready,” Liam said.

“Thank you.” Nora kissed him.

Casimir grinned at Aria. “We’ll give them a few minutes for kissy-face, hmm?”

Giggling, Aria raced ahead of him to the docking tunnel.

Nora and Liam didn’t waste their time talking before she walked him out.

He had to stay onboard the RC Genghis Khan till he passed command to Claire before departure.

“Ours will be an unconventional honeymoon,” he said.

“You mightn’t have noticed, but I’m not exactly conventional.”

He grinned at her. “Don’t be fooled by my uniform. I’m not, either.”

She nipped at his bottom lip. “I guessed. Why do you think I love you?”

“Because I’m handsome?” For all his teasing, a hint of vulnerable curiosity lurked in his eyes.

“Because you’re real. Truly serving Capitoline, acting for the good of people who can’t protect themselves, isn’t conventional. The Navy isn’t a job to you. It’s not about earning money or fulfilling your ambitions.” She regarded him seriously. “The person who serves not because of the rules, but because they believe in what the rules are meant to protect, can be the most dangerous rebel of all. An honorable man.”

Chapter 10

The journey from Border Station to the nearest settlement, the Sake Refueling Station, took a month. As the CC Arowana’s new captain, Liam had a number of duties, including logging hours as one of the ship’s three pilots, but compared to the responsibilities and unending paperwork of being a battlecruiser captain, it was a doddle. He and Nora shared the captain’s cabin and enjoyed an unconventional, supremely satisfying honeymoon. Their enforced proximity fostered a closeness beyond the physical. It accelerated the revelation of issues between them, and the process of working through barriers and misconceptions.

They argued over inconsequentials such as the appropriate method of squeezing a tube of toothpaste. For the record, Liam didn’t care where he squeezed it. Nora believed you started from the bottom and ensured you didn’t miss a scrap. He adjusted.

They discussed politics and future prospects, and fought about whether her money was his as well. Each conceded ground.

Nora forced him to accept the burden of her wealth and carry it alongside her. “Money brings problems alongside opportunities. If it wasn’t for Aria, and for me recognizing how much the Human Sector needs blaze, I wouldn’t have shared the discovery on Beaconditch.”

He ran a hand down her spine as they lay in bed. He was addicted to the softness of her skin, and even more, to her warm responsiveness. Marriage had convinced him of the value of snuggling. “You would have continued to hide.”

“Maintaining a low profile was a big factor in my decision to become a tagger.”

Taggers were the informal surveyors of space, exploring regions and selling data to the government and to other interested parties, like miners.

She traced a pattern on his skin. “The blaze discovery exploded my low profile tactic, so I substituted hiding behind my new wealth. It’s a tool, Liam. You’re too smart a strategist to handicap yourself, and us, by refusing it.”

He was. He fought down his pride. He hated that people would claim he married her for her money. But other people’s opinions didn’t matter. Nora’s did.

“All right. But I’m liable to use it more ruthlessly than you. You see the wealth as a tool. I see a weapon.”

“I do, too, but I’m not qualified to wield it that way. There are no strings attached to the money, Liam. Do as you think best.”

Their goal remained two-fold. The first was to ensure Nora’s freedom. The second was to refocus the lens at Origin to re-open the black hole’s millrace.

While Liam was on duty, Nora spent her time researching the royals, burrs, and the best location to establish their household on Capitoline. She also comms called across the ships in the convoy to chat with Aria, Cherry, Zac and everyone. She drafted message after message, and ran them secretly past Jonah, before queuing them to be sent ahead of the CC Arowana and its convoy. A courier sting ship could arrive in Capitoline a couple of weeks ahead of them; time enough for her lawyers, Ganbold, Pak and Karimov, to prepare the necessary documents for her signature.

She hadn’t allowed herself to feel the full weight of responsibility that was her blaze discovery until Liam agreed to carry it with her. He’d be co-owner of the Blazing Kangaroo Corporation, which would burgeon into a corporate heavyweight given their partnership with the Blue Dock Scrapyard to produce and trade fuel cells. Blazing Kangaroo had a CEO on Border Station. Liam would be the chairman. He would guide, guard and leverage the corporation in pursuit of his and her shared goals.

The journey was a time of preparation for the next stage in their lives.

Some of it was simply fun, like Liam teaching Aria over the comms how to play the ukulele, and singing along to her fumbling renditions of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Over the Rainbow. In all the rushed preparations for departure, he’d made time to buy the instrument for her.

He’d also brought along his own guitar, and Nora found his private performances, just for her, shiver inducing.

Their first stop, Sake Refueling Station, was a mere blip in the journey, although their reception there confirmed that people would accept their cover story that Nora had borrowed the CC Arowana from her business partner, the Blue Dock Scrapyard, to travel to Capitoline on urgent business. The convoy resupplied in a day, avoiding the questions and curiosity of the significant number of ships bound for Border Station to join the blaze rush.

Fanrong Station was something else altogether. It was two months out from Capitoline, prosperous and substantial.

Unlike Border Station, which was composed primarily of docking and the scrapyard, Fanrong was an established station. Its habitat modules radiated out in a snowflake pattern, terminating in expansive docks at the end of each arm.

The military arm, where the CC Arowana and its convoy was headed, contained warehouses, barracks, and research and development.

Fanrong Station was also where, according to Timothy Zangmo’s confession, his father would be waiting for a stolen burr.

Yuri had sent ahead, by one of Border Station’s intermittent couriers, his report on the Zangmos’ plot to steal Willow’s burr. He’d also included the highly confidential information as to Nora’s abilities as an unregistered, yet strong sensitive, and her status as the Palantine king’s hidden, illegitimate daughter.

What Yuri hadn’t reported, because it occurred after the courier’s departure, was Nora’s marriage to Liam. He also hadn’t had time to warn Fanrong Station’s CSB chief that Isaac Mstivoj and his private security force were escorting Nora.

That mess landed in Sam Gurung’s lap.

The veteran Marine captain handled it collaboratively. He visited Liam and Nora in the captain’s cabin a week before they would enter comms distance of Fanrong Station. “Yuri sent a copy of his report regarding Stanley Zangmo and Nora to Fanrong’s CSB chief, Charlotte Moigne. Regardless of the arrest warrant you signed, Liam, I doubt Moigne will be willing to arrest Stanley Zangmo. Since the plot failed, he’s not an immediate threat. The Royal Guards on Capitoline will receive Yuri’s report, question us, then go after the Zangmos. The idea of mind-wiping and transplanting a personality isn’t an idea anyone wants circulating outside of schlocky horror movies.”

“So, they might sweep it under the carpet?” Nora asked.

“Handle it secretly, yes. I wanted to warn you not to expect Charlotte Moigne to take action. Overtly. She’ll place Stanley Zangmo under surveillance. Given his condition, he’ll likely die before the Royal Guards can return to interrogate him. Whether that’s worth Charlotte involving herself and taking on his legal team, is for her to decide.”

“Her call,” Liam confirmed he understood Sam’s message.

The Marine nodded. “Nora, you, on the other hand, are none of Charlotte’s concern. I argued that Yuri ought to prepare two reports, leaving you out of the one for non-Royal Guard senior contacts. He refused. He wanted to hedge you in.”

The disturbing frankness underlined Sam’s disapproval of Yuri’s approach. Nonetheless, as Yuri’s subordinate, Sam was compelled to adhere to Yuri’s agenda. “Once we’re in comms range of Fanrong Station, I’ll update Charlotte as to your marriage. I’d like to inform her that neither of you will be leaving the ship.”

Nora nodded, and Liam verbally agreed. “That’s fine.”

“She’ll want to come onboard and talk to you. Liam, you’d have the right to refuse her on Border Station—”

“But here we’re not in border space, and she outranks me,” Liam finished. “I’d like to talk to her about the Zangmos’ plot.”

“Good.” Their attitude made Sam’s job easier. “She can’t remove Nora from the CC Arowana. For the duration of my mission to border space, I have the authority of a Royal Guard. I also have Yuri’s authority, as a Royal Guard captain, consigning Nora to my protection. We keep our refueling stop at Fanrong Station short and sharp, and move on.”

Charlotte Moigne’s message reached them a day ahead of their docking at Fanrong Station. She would meet them onboard the CC Arowana, after she’d sorted out the mess of Realm Edge Security, a firm owned by a former Palantine privateer, escorting them and requiring docking beside them at the military arm of the station. “You can explain that to me when we meet. You can also thank me. I’ve slammed a ‘classified mission’ on Liam’s presence, or the Navy would have hauled him in to explain his own presence.”

Sharply outfitted in a black pants suit and wearing a burgundy fedora, she stalked onboard and berated rather than congratulated Liam on his marriage. “What in the stars did you do that for?”

Without telling stories out of school, Sam had warned them Charlotte was tough. “Fierce, sneaky and vicious. On joint missions, we called her the Ferret.”

From Marines, the nickname was a sign of respect.

The woman who stormed onto the CC Arowana in peacetime looked like a journalist, possibly one who wrote the society pages and ruled among the Who’s Who of Fanrong Station.

Nora refused to feel intimidated, but she was in awe of Liam’s calmness in the face of stylish enemy fire.

“It was one of those situations where it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Charlotte, who was about fifteen years older than him, gave him a raking assessment from head to toe. “How very naïve of you,” she drawled. “But your personal lives aren’t my concern.”

“Can you convince the royals to feel the same?” Nora asked drily.

Something akin to sympathy flashed across Charlotte’s face. “Let’s not waste time on fantasies.”

She dropped the theatrics, and went over the Zangmos case thoroughly, repeating some of the questions she’d already asked over comms. “What riles me is that, if not for the leaky shielding on the burr that enabled Nora and Lucas to sense it, Timothy would have succeeded and he’d have brought that sucker to my station. We’ll check missing persons, but I doubt Stanley Zangmo had a random victim snatched from Fanrong. He’ll have brought in whoever it is whose body he desires. It’s probably someone who believes they’re working for him, a bodyguard or a corporate executive.”

“That’s creepy.” Nora pushed at the chair she was resting her feet on. It skidded back. After three hours of questioning regarding the Zangmos rather than her abilities, she’d relaxed. She hooked the chair forward again using the toes of her boots.

“No one ever notices a good corporate executive. They’re as faceless as waiters,” the experienced CSB agent said. “And speaking of corporations…”

Liam smiled. “Were we?”

Charlotte smiled back, a shark’s smile. “We were.”

Alerted that something had changed, Nora sat up.

“I did you two favors. Keeping the Navy off Liam’s back, and getting Mstivoj docking permission.” Charlotte waited for their wary agreement. “Your blaze discovery is the biggest thing to happen since the war. It’s critical to Capitoline’s future. From what you’ve said about Fatima Drake,” the CSB agent on Border Station, “she’ll be replaced ASAP. But I also want someone undercover and closer to the action. I’d like to place one of my agents as a corporate minion in Blazing Kangaroo Corporation headquarters on Border Station.”

Nora hesitated. It was something Charlotte could achieve with or without Nora’s assistance. The CEO Nora had left in charge of her new corporation was hiring heavily and would continue to do so as the Blue Dock Scrapyard’s production of fuel cells kicked in and trade ballooned. The corporation also needed a presence on Beaconditch. “How deeply undercover would the agent be? Would they tell Willow?”

“That would be an operational decision on the ground.”

Sam cleared his throat. He’d been mostly silent during the interview.

Charlotte flashed him a fondly exasperated look. “Fine. We’d tell Willow.”

Perhaps about one of the agents. Undoubtedly, Charlotte would slip in another.

Nora decided that was Willow’s problem. “I’ll sign off on whoever you want to add to Blazing Kangaroo, up to three people.”

“One will do.” Charlotte gathered her belonging. “Yours isn’t an easy partnership, given Willow’s jealousy of her son’s alienated affections. Putting distance between you is one upside to your recall to Capitoline. Your intention for Liam to take over as chairman will help, too. If I were you, I’d push the advantages of a decorated Navy captain being in a position to guide the development of the new Beaconditch blaze discovery. It might counter the cost of you, Nora, removing yourself from the marriage market.”

Nora exaggerated her gritty Angkorran accent. “Ye ken they’d aye wed me?”

Charlotte’s answering smile was grim. “There are people who’d kill for your genes. That’s why I backed you bringing in Mstivoj. If you can trust him, you need all the protection you can get. Even a damn pirate’s.” On that somber note, she shook hands. “Good luck.”

Fanrong Station left Nora with a lot to think about it as it receded into the distance. She was alone in their cabin since Liam had rostered himself on duty for their departure.

Instead of personal issues, her mind fixated on societal ones. Like why Charlotte hadn’t been able to arrest Stanley Zangmo. Her tied hands showed his power.

Rebels like Zac wanted to break the system. Tycoons like Stanley Zangmo wanted to seize control of it.

Queen Sarah didn’t realize what she risked when she attempted to reduce blaze supply, and hence, fuel cells to a level where interstellar travel became economically unviable and the Human Sector failed as an entity. It would break into the six inner realms, each centered on their own habitable planet. What Queen Sarah’s hubris blinded her to was what else might fall apart. If tycoons like Stanley Zangmo, whose families had been breeding Forgotten for generations, gained strong sensitivity to burrs, they could conceivably seize control of a realm and there’d be no external interstellar force capable of unseating them. Maybe the tycoons were even already positioned for the opportunity to become the new royalty of closed realms.

Needing a break from her thoughts, Nora comm’d the CC Kangaroo.

Veronica answered. The bodyguard sounded happy, not frustrated at the convoy-wide ban on shore leave that had kept everyone bar those arranging supplies stuck onboard at Fanrong Station. “After traveling with Jonah, I understand why retro-gen androids were discontinued. They made humans jealous. Seeing him with Aria, he’s a perfect parent. He’s considerate, clever and playful with everyone. What man can compete with that?”

Liam, Nora thought.

Her relationship with Jonah was something completely different.

He was both expert guide and sometimes brave, sometimes tentative explorer of what it meant to be embodied. He was learning to embrace his limitations; to accept that not knowing everything could have its advantages.

Neither of them had foreseen how their separation, slight though it was since they still traveled to the same place, gave them room to grow. She grew into her relationship with Liam. Jonah grew in confidence as to his independent analysis of human activities.

After talking to Veronica and Aria, Nora ended the comms call and covertly contacted Jonah. They regularly stole time to talk together. He’d hacked the CC Arowana to ensure no one eavesdropped when Nora locked herself in the captain’s cabin for a chat. The myriad ways players in Capitoline’s political games could react to Nora’s arrival on the planet was a popular topic. In the face of all their guesses loomed the knowledge that people and their ploys would still surprise them.

Far more under their control was what Jonah could teach Nora about the burrs. She wanted that distraction, now.

He’d explained before that the Silicaese could draw on the energy stored in the burrs because they weren’t physically compatible with the carbon-based burrs. The disconnect meant they could direct a small, survivable amount of energy from the burrs. Humans, on the other hand, were organic (that is, carbon-based) and initially would have been overwhelmed and destroyed by the amount of energy that surged through them.

So the burrs refused to release their energy while in human hands.

The burrs weren’t aware or sentient. They didn’t act purposefully to save their human users. The safeguard was built into their design.

But similar to how humans in the Human Sector changed over generations to survive the new planets they inhabited, those who inherited the capability to use burrs also changed with regard to their burr abilities. They changed at an energetic rather than physical level.

“Can you see energy?” Nora asked. She lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, waving her arms like a crazed conductor rearranging the universe.

“I perceive it. It’s not sight, as such.”

Human senses were limited. The difference in her senses and his was part of the reason for their occasional struggle to comprehend the other’s perspective

Other times, the reason was Nora’s non-scientific background, which she was attempting to correct.

Jonah had to “dumb down” his explanations at times. The more important he considered a topic, the more he drilled down to ensure she comprehended it in total and in nuance.

“Before humans colonized space, they were thinking about dark matter. They went astray in their understanding of it, which makes their ability to enter what they called a black hole’s millrace, and the rivers of space, a truly fortuitous accident. Your ancestors lacked an accurate understanding of what they did. It’s been five hundred years. Perhaps they understand dark matter, now, but humanity in this region doesn’t.”

On the cabin’s wall screen, he gestured as if tracing the curve of a bowl. “Just as gravity curves the physical universe that human senses perceive, dark matter curves time.” He clapped his hands together. “Remember that at a quantum level, matter is energy.”

“You’re saying we siphon dark energy into the burrs? But it’s physical things, not dark matter, that disappears.”

“Your current human understanding of dark matter is too crude to appreciate what’s happening. Your reality is composed of the things you can measure, but also of an energy—what your ancestors labeled dark matter—the tension of which holds you in time.”

She blinked. “Time?”

“The Silicaese who settled in this region called themselves the Troubled. They’d broken cultural taboos. I watched as, long after their arrival, the people they’d exiled themselves from sought them out and asked them to return to heal them. The original Silicaese civilization suffered a devastating level of accelerated decay. When I initially described the Silicaese settlement and departure from this region I refrained from mentioning what taboos the exiles had broken. The relevant one to our current discussion is that the exiles refused to move in time.”

“I heard every word of that last sentence, and I don’t understand it.”

Jonah nodded, expecting her confusion. “The Silicaese were composed of significantly less dark matter than the Vapori or humans. This meant there was less tension anchoring them in time. And remember this is all secondhand knowledge, gained through their records rather than our observation. The exiles never moved in time, nor did the remnants of the crumbling civilization that sought them out.”

“O-kaay?”

“The Silicaese completed a ritual time walk every seven years. The exiles refused to do so. Some time after they departed, those going on ritual time walks failed to return.”

“They got lost in time?” Nora took a moment to boggle at the words coming out of her own mouth. Lost in time? she repeated silently.

“In fact, they chose to skip to a particular point in what had been the future. A moment of anticipated triumph. My kin theorize that the overload of Silicaese arrivals at the same day overstrained the dark matter of the Silicaese temple mountain. It vanished.”

“Obliteration,” she whispered.

“Of a kind. The chaotic dark energy disrupted the Silicaese ritual of time walking. Their notion of themselves collapsed alongside their civilization. Reaching out to the exiles was an attempt to rebuild, arguably in a more resilient fashion.”

She scowled. “But it shouldn’t have happened. If they walked through time, they could change the future. They could avoid their own destruction.”

Jonah snorted. “In human history, have you seen how many times your people ignored blatant warning signs?”

“Fair. Tadj used to warn us, repeatedly, against idealizing or romanticizing the Silicaese just because they were aliens.” Tadj had been her dig director on Silicaese sites. “But still, it doesn’t add up. You said they all time walked to the same point because they anticipated a triumph. Instead, they blew up their mountain. How could they make such a fundamental mistake like converging on a disaster under the misapprehension they were joining in a success?”

“Because events both happen and don’t happen until they actually happen.”

She rolled onto her stomach and muttered into her pillow. “Oh, brother.”

“This is why I delayed our discussion of dark matter and time. The Silicaese’s relationship with time isn’t my field of study. I’m quoting one of my kin, and translating impossible concepts from my language to yours. It’s complicated.”

She rolled onto her back again. “It is fascinating.” Her xeno-archaeologist training made her heart go pitter-pat at the insight into an alien species. “I could never prove it to anyone. Can you imagine if I wrote about time in a xeno-archaeology journal? They’d never publish it.”

“Whilst that is of course sad,” Jonah said sardonically. “The reason for the story was to describe the Silicaese’s fundamentally different relationship to dark matter.”

She sat up suddenly. “Hold on! Rewind! Can I skip through time?”

“You are composed of too much dark matter to skip through time. The Vapori were even more locked in time than humanity.”

She twisted around, crossing her legs tailor-fashion. “So, what can the fundamentally different Silicaese teach me?”

“The exiles who took the burrs from my kin—”

Nora managed to restrain her flinch to the curling of her toes. Sometimes she forgot that the burrs weren’t simply batteries. When the Silicaese took them from Jonah’s kin, the Vapori AI had died.

“It’s okay, Nora. It could have been worse. If the Silicaese had used the energy stored in the burrs to time walk, they would have destabilized the region. Instead, the concentrated dark matter that trickled through them from the burrs was sufficient to saturate an area such that it became impossible to time walk in that zone.”

“Energy follow intent,” she muttered. The Silicaese rebels refused to time walk, so the burrs rendered it impossible to do so.

“The Silicaese were justly wary of an alien technology that could fulfill their wishes. They collected burrs when they came across them.” Thereby killing his kin. “But their use of them was limited. The shackles placed on time walking happened unconsciously. Consciously, the Silicaese used the burrs to reduce entropy, but they did so away from their colonies.”

Entropy, the inescapable force in the universe that meant all things fell apart.

“Reversing time?” Nora asked. “How is that not a contradiction of their refusal to time walk?”

“The other sense of entropy. The one where the Silicaese tapped more of the typically lost thermal energy of a system. They used the burrs to reduce molecular disorder.”

She whimpered. “I know I’ve started those courses in chemistry and physics, but…”

He took pity on her. “Focus your studies on entropy. Directing dark matter, that is, energy, through chemical bonds is the clumsy method. It’s all that was available to the Silicaese. You need to sharpen your understanding to focus your intent and guide the burrs’ energy through you.”

“I had started thinking about that. Not the entropy part. The Silicaese’s unique body chemistry and how that enabled them to channel some energy from the burrs.” She drummed her fingers against her knee. “But if energy follows intent—”

Jonah cut her off. “When the Silicaese exiles were called home, they left the burrs behind. To them, the burrs remained other. They were artifacts to be explored, but not brought into their own Silicaese story of self.”

Whereas she couldn’t think of a state of affairs in which humans would relinquish the burrs. They were weapons of ultimate destruction that underpinned the royals’ position in the Human Sector.

Currently, they operated rather like magic wands that had one trick, obliteration, but varying levels of it. If Nora learned new tricks, how would that change human society, and even, what it meant to be human; that is, how humans perceived and interacted with the universe?

“Why did we get stuck on treating the burrs as weapons?”

An unusually morose expression occupied Jonah’s handsome android face. “Maybe because weapons of mass obliteration were what the wielders wanted?”

“Weapons and humans go together like ice-cream and sprinkles,” she agreed. “But the first time an Original picked one up…”

“The burr activated and fulfilled its original purpose. To siphon energy.”

She sighed. “And after that, it’s been what humans have always wanted it for.” Until now. “All right. I’ll study up on entropy and dark matter.”

Jonah pulled a face. “Less of the latter. Human understanding of it is flawed.”

“Okay.”

He ended the call.

She stared at the blank wall screen. What if, in using a burr, it turned out her deepest self, her truest intent, was as power-hungry and destructive as any royal’s?

What if she broke Jonah’s trust? What if she hurt Liam and Aria and everyone else?

What if her desire for change was more harmful than the current system?

In the inner realm, the region of space nearest Capitoline, sticking to known routes was less about avoiding hazards and more about avoiding fines from Customs, who doubled here as traffic police as they controlled the flow of goods between Capitoline and the many inner realm stations and mining operations.

The routes felt crowded after the emptiness of border space. One benefit to the nearness of other ships was that news could bounce between them.

The news that horrified the CC Arowana arrived just after noon.

The comms officer on duty interrupted lunch. “Princess Hermione is dead.”

The mess fell silent.

“How?” Liam barked.

“The Duke of Ontario assassinated her. He’s dead.”

“Crown Prince Dominic’s uncle,” someone whispered piercingly.

Liam stood and strode out.

Exclamations and speculation burst out around the mess.

Nora gave all of her attention to replacing her burger on its plate. She centered it as carefully as if the future of Capitoline balanced on its position.

Previously, she’d wondered how she’d hide that Hermione’s murder wasn’t news to her. It turned out that hearing it confirmed and being there to experience everyone’s shock, especially Liam’s, was enough to create convincing signs of distress.

From across the table, Sam pushed her mug of coffee toward her. “Drink.”

“In a minute.” Nora got out her personal comms unit. She messaged Cherry and Veronica. “Hermione’s dead. Don’t tell Aria. I will. Waiting on more info.”

She received an instant “OK” from Veronica.

Cherry answered, “What???!!!”

“Ask V,” Nora responded. She wrapped her cold fingers around the coffee mug.

Across the table, Sam deliberately continued eating. His calm, and that of a few other veterans, gradually grounded everyone else.

People peeked toward their table.

Nora avoided meeting anyone’s eyes.

Speculation had naturally widened to include her. Everyone onboard knew she was the Palantine king’s secret daughter—secret even to him. They wondered how her future changed now that Hermione had been murdered on Palantine soil by one of their royals.

“You eating that.” Sam jerked his chin toward her burger.

“No.”

He peeled off the top of the bun and fished out the sliced pickle. “I like pickles.”

She nodded uncaringly.

Aria idolized Princess Hermione. Nora wished she could cross to the CC Kangaroo in person to break the news. “Sam, Aria—”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Nora, but more than ever now, we have to do things by the book. You have to stay on the Royal Guard ship.” The CC Arowana. “Comms call Aria. Cherry is with her, and Veronica will look after them both.”

As would Jonah, but Nora still wanted to hug Aria.

She also wanted to go to Liam and hug him. Hermione wasn’t just his princess, as the other Capitolines saw her. To him, Hermione was his friend Francis’s little sister.

A message from Liam lit up her comms screen. “Come to the office. I have a download of yesterday’s news cycle and discussion forums.” Whichever ship they were in contact with must have sent it across.

“Sam’s with me.”

“I’ll have the download forwarded to him.” Translation: don’t bring him.

Nora alerted Sam to the information headed his way, and excused herself.

As she entered the captain’s office, Liam closed the door on her heels. He pulled her into a fervent hug. When he didn’t speak, nor did she.

He’d dragged a second chair to his side of the desk. They sat together to go through the news broadcasts before separately skimming some of the forum discussions.

In the weeks since Hermione’s death and Capitoline learning of it, people had had time to form opinions and entrench themselves in those same opinions. Some wanted war. Others argued that Hermione had married Dominic for peace, and going to war would be to spit on her sacrifice.

“I have to tell Aria,” Nora said.

“Now?”

“I’d like you to be part of the comms call.” He had an entire crew and convoy to lead, but she wanted this personal moment first.

“Absolutely.” He adjusted the camera to take in both of them before calling Aria.

Meantime, Nora messaged Cherry and Veronica to stand by. She took strength from the knowledge that Jonah would be observing them all, and ready with his own sympathy or distraction for the girl.

“Hiya!” Aria was bright and cheerful, interrupted mid-craft project, judging by the glitter smeared on her face.

Her obsession with glitter and pastel colors was wrapped up in her crush on Princess Hermione.

Nora and Liam greeted her briefly. She leaned into him, safe in his embrace, where she wished Aria could join them. Hugs helped bad news. “Aria, we’ve just learned that Princess Hermione is dead. I wish we could have told you in person.” Her heart broke at Aria’s blank expression. The girl was learning young that every new death raised old grief. “Cherry?”

Cherry popped into view, and hugged Aria.

The girl fought free. “I’m okay.”

“Well, maybe I need a hug,” Cherry said with attitude.

“And maybe I need her to hug you, and you to hug her, till I can hug you both,” Nora said.

Aria burst into tears. She stopped fighting Cherry’s hug.

Tears shimmered in Liam’s eyes. He blinked, and they were gone. When the call ended, he kissed Nora passionately. “I’m not surrendering you to the Palantines. Not for politics, not for anything. Before, I would have gone with you and supported you, if it was asked of us. But if they could kill Hermione, it’s too dangerous.”

It might be a vow he couldn’t keep.

Nora certainly wouldn’t hold him to a promise given while shocked and grieving. She kissed him back till he had to go and be captain, holding steady for the rest of the crew and convoy.

Zac and the other Palantines in the convoy couldn’t believe the Duke of Ontario’s actions. They were angry, embarrassed, and tense about the volatile conditions they’d be entering on Capitoline. According to the news, in some quarters, anti-Palantine sentiment was worse than during the war.

A Navy frigate met the CC Arowana a week out from Capitoline. Onboard was an admiral who was the son of a Capitoline duke, plus far too many Royal Guards. They docked with the CC Arowana, and invited Nora, Liam and Sam across. It was the sort of invitation that couldn’t be refused.

The RC Keying had a conference room that wouldn’t have been out of place in a five star hotel. In addition to coffee and tea, refreshments included warm scones, jam and cream, and shortbread that melted in the mouth. There were gilt-edged bowls of mints laid out at regular intervals in the middle of the table.

To Nora’s astonishment, her marriage to Liam was well-received. The sticking point to her landing on Capitoline was the security force she’d employed. Zac and his people weren’t wanted.

“They will not receive visas for entry. They’re Palantines.”

Nora crunched a mint. “Apparently, so am I.”

“No.” The Admiral’s sharp rejection of that idea revealed the gambit the Capitoline royals intended to play. “You are the wife of a Capitoline war hero.”

That less than two years ago the Admiralty had supported the royals’ decision to destroy Liam’s reputation for the heinous crime of holding Crown Prince Dominic hostage, and thus, ending the war, was conveniently ignored.

“The widow of one, too,” Liam added. He answered Nora’s quick look. “Ethan deserves to be remembered.” In their time together in the captain’s cabin, she’d shared how Ethan had convinced her she was worth loving. “Ethan Stirling was a sting ship pilot and a hero.”

Admiral Quispe nodded. “He’ll be remembered.”

Nora understood they were crafting the story—her story—of the Palantine princess whose mother had fled Palantine to protect her. She and Jonah might have limited contact at the moment, but he was scrupulous in ensuring that as much as he knew, he shared, so that she wasn’t blindsided by events.

Royal Guard Captain Molly Jones coughed that special cough unique to advisors.

Nora had heard her lawyer utter it.

The cough said, you’re not going to like what I’m about to say.

“We’ll be bringing you in to the Terminus. I believe you have an adopted daughter? Aria will, of course, be with you. Your half-sister, however, would be better served making her own way to Capitoline.”

From Jonah, Nora knew that the consensus of those arranging the public story of her existence was to downplay her childhood in the Angkorran towers. How they thought to hide the accent she still carried was a puzzle. Yes, she’d tamed it over the years, but it strongly showed itself when she was stressed. Still, the fact that they didn’t want Cherry associated with her wasn’t news.

It was best for Cherry, so Nora acquiesced. She marshaled her energy for a different argument. “I want visas for all my staff and security force. Three of them will accompany me. Aria trusts Veronica and Gage. She’s used to them guarding us. I respect that the Royal Guards are responsible for our physical safety, but Aria’s emotional well-being, her having familiar people around her when I’m otherwise occupied, is my responsibility.” Ideally, Nora would include Jonah in their party, but the Royal Guards would try to inspect him, and Jonah’s unique form, one of his own Vapori-inspired creation, wouldn’t stand up to an attempt to dismantle him to check for explosives. “Plus, I want Zac with me. He can stay in the background, but he’s my adviser on Palantine affairs.”

She was faced with a wall of No from the Admiral and the Royal Guards.

She nodded in recognition of their expected recalcitrance. “Yuri was like you. He believes he has the authority to say “jump!” and I will. Maybe you can force me. He compelled me to return to Capitoline before I was ready. But I haven’t wasted my journey. Agents like Charlotte Moigne sent messages ahead by courier to beat the CC Arowana to Capitoline. So did I. My legal team is preparing for my arrival.”

Admiral Quispe raised a heavy eyebrow at Liam.

Liam smiled a small, angry smile. He hated bullies. They wouldn’t sway him to attempt to force her compliance to their demands. In fact, he’d sent messages ahead to his allies, too. “Quite a few people are expecting us. I sent messages to Crown Prince Francis and other friends.”

The nature of those friends had surprised Jonah. “I don’t quite grasp what he’s doing, but he’s calling in favors to protect you.”

Jonah and Nora had found a balance between Jonah observing many things that humans considered private or not what an individual might reasonably learn about other people and groups, and what he shared with her. He wasn’t human. He could know these things. She was human, and she was more comfortable, felt more integrated in the mores of her society, if she didn’t know everything.

A CSB agent like Charlotte Moigne might have found access to Jonah’s breadth of observation the pinnacle of her professional dreams. Nora found it a burden that became bearable when they framed it to exclude the majority of it.

She’d rather know less, and not trespass on the privacy of the people around her or betray some impossible knowledge that drew suspicion to her.

Already the Royal Guard treated her warily.

However, even at the risk of stirring their antagonism, she couldn’t back down and surrender crucial allies.

After a stare down, from which Nora didn’t flinch, Royal Guard Major Fidel Babar finally acceded to her demand. “Isaac Mstivoj stays in the background. You do not mention him. He is not in any images of you.”

“That suits him and me fine,” Nora replied.

“Visas will be supplied for the others.”

As needed, Nora finished silently. Some of Zac’s people—her people now, according to their contract—were from Capitoline, including Gage. His familiarity with the planet made him a good bodyguard for Aria, in addition to the fact that the girl liked and trusted him.

Aria was beyond excited to arrive at Capitoline.

All traffic to Capitoline had to dock at its space station, the Terminus. Shuttles then flew people and goods to the space elevator, which carried them down to the planet. The arrangement protected Capitoline’s atmosphere.

When Nora and Liam exited the CC Arowana at the Terminus, Aria was waiting for them, bouncing on her toes between Veronica and Gage.

Behind her, Cherry attempted to flirt with a young Royal Guard.

“Oof.” Nora absorbed Aria’s boisterous hug, and returned it.

A journey’s worth of family comms calls which had included Liam meant Aria then bounced into hugging him. He returned the hug before tucking her between him and Nora.

“Everything is so shiny,” Aria exclaimed. “Veronica wouldn’t let me go exploring, not that I would have without you.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” Cherry approached and hugged Nora.

Aria stuck her tongue out at her.

Nora pretended not to see. Her pretense of not seeing wasn’t as good as Liam’s.

A Navy captain learned when to turn a blind eye. He hugged Cherry. “Where’s your security?”

She rolled her eyes, as any respectable little sister would at a big brother fussing, but she also smiled, pleased at his concern. “Niemenen and Stew are lurking around the corner. The Royal Guards locked this area down for Nora. They barely let me in to say hi.”

Aeric Niemenen and Jai Stewart were two of Zac’s Capitoline employees. They’d guard Cherry on-planet.

“We encouraged you to see your sister,” Royal Guard Captain Molly Jones corrected. “However, the shuttle is waiting.”

It was a Navy shuttle. Cherry and the others had seats on a public shuttle. Ben would oversee them, ensuring no one got into trouble even if hostility was displayed toward the mainly Palantine group. They would meet up at the property Nora had asked her lawyers to purchase. Ganbold, Pak and Karimov specialized in corporate law, but they could accommodate the requests of their newest, and one of their wealthiest, clients.

Purchasing a property and moving in within days was possible when you were rich and guaranteed to become obscenely richer. Even if the property turned out to be a mistake, it was one Nora was willing to risk.

Mangrove Mansion was the locals’ ironic name for the sprawling, abandoned compound. A restrictive covenant on the property which prohibited development meant few people existed who were willing to pay such a large amount of money for ten acres of land on the outskirts of Capitoline’s capital city, Bangalore, especially when half of said land was mangrove swamp.

Nora liked the freedom and privacy and the fact that even in its dilapidated state, the compound had room for all her people. Ben would oversee its renovation, keeping in mind their needs and fending off Cherry’s crazier ideas.

Best of all, Mangrove Manner was only two hours through the heavy city traffic to Liam’s mother’s apartment and the Laotian Palace, the Capitoline royal residence and the location of the vault containing the royals’ burrs.

The shuttle docked at the space elevator.

“We’re home!” Aria shouted.

Home was an odd, emotional concept. Aria had never visited Capitoline. It had been her father’s home. He’d married her Palantine mother in space, and they’d lived the life of independent miners, venturing through border space, far from the war. Yet Aria was nearly in tears at the thought of “coming home”.

Nora smiled at her excitement, and held Liam’s hand tightly.

Due to the war, and then, to his assignment to the Hadrian Line, it had been five years since he’d been home and seen his family. The Kimanis had lost loved ones to the war. Liam’s father had served as a chief engineer, and died on the RC Cobra. His older by two years sister had followed in their father’s footsteps, and died in the RC Volt’s fiery explosion in the battle of the Vesk Route.

One year younger than Liam, Elise was the only sibling to share their mom’s professional passion for music. She was a music teacher. Jason was in his last year of an engineering degree, and Phoebe a high school senior.

The space elevator connected to Himalayan Island. An eight mile bridge connected it to Bangalore.

Liam’s family were waiting for them on Himalayan Island.

Molly had arranged a private room.

The Royal Guards, as well as Zac and his people, halted outside the room.

Liam entered, and froze. “Mom?”

Susan Kimani was a gaunt, ravaged mockery of the photos Liam carried on his personal comms unit. She burst into tears, weak tears that escaped her even as she raised her arms for a hug.

As Liam carefully embraced his mom, an elderly man harrumphed. “You must be Nora.”

“Mr. Kimani.” She recognized Liam’s grandfather, sturdy and upright in his mid-eighties. His daughter-in-law looked older.

“None of that. Granddad or Bruce.” Bruce had the loud voice of someone slightly deaf, or perhaps, uncomfortable.

Liam patted his mom’s back while interrogating his eldest sister. “Elise?”

“Mom’s bone cancer came back.”

“Back?!!”

Susan wriggled out of his embrace. “Nora? Where’s Nora?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Liam snapped.

Nora hurried over, and put a hand on his back. “I’m Nora.” Jason tugged his older brother to the side and Nora cautiously returned Susan’s hug. She felt fragile. “I’m so glad to meet you after only hearing your voice.” And that, only in the last two days of travel.

“You are very welcome in our family.” Susan touched her face and smiled unsteadily. “And you, too, Aria. My first grandchild.”

“Um, hi?”

They hadn’t guessed Susan was sick. Jonah hadn’t mentioned it to Nora. But then, she’d asked that he focus elsewhere. Liam’s family weren’t a threat to them. Other things were. Moreover, she’d wanted to learn about them naturally.

Unfortunately, that meant they were blindsided. Liam was furious, and Aria half-scared.

Liam and Elise argued in hissing whispers. She was much shorter than him, curvy and tired. Her pixie cut, maxi dress and slip-on shoes were chosen for practicality and to save time.

“Which means I’m an aunt.”

Nora smiled gratefully at young Phoebe, who tried valiantly to be upbeat and friendly.

Phoebe elbowed her brother to do the same.

“I’m too young to be an uncle.” Jason grinned, but his attempt at teasing was undercut by his focus returning to Liam. He was a younger, slighter version of his older brother, sporting horn rim glasses that he adjusted in a nervous habit.

“How could you not tell me?” was the theme of Liam’s attack.

Susan sat back down. “My decision.”

Jason spoke quickly. “Mom was diagnosed during the war, a year after Melissa’s death. We were going to tell you, but she went into remission. We thought she’d beaten it. We were going to tell you, but the war ended and you were assigned to the Hadrian Line. It was so unfair and you were so angry. Mom didn’t want to add to your anger by telling you she’d been sick. She believed it was gone.”

“But it came back,” Liam said. “You should have—”

“They wouldn’t have given you compassionate leave,” Elise cut in. “You have no idea how much hatred of you they drummed up around here. You, the commoner who dared to imprison a prince.”

Susan begged her oldest son for understanding. “Your dad hated being away from us when we needed him. It was the sole part of life in the Navy that he resented. I couldn’t add to your burden.”

“My burden?” Liam stared at his mom, then around at his younger siblings.

Nora understood. He’d have wanted to be there for them, too.

He felt excluded and helpless.

Bruce, or Granddad, harrumphed. “I reckon as how you’ve got your own secrets you’ve kept from us for our own good. Those are Royals Guards out there. They told me Nora couldn’t come home with us.”

Liam hadn’t told his parents who Nora’s father was. Onboard the CC Arowana, it had seemed like the sort of news to share in person.

Now, wasn’t the time for it.

Liam glared at Bruce.

“We’ve bought a place in Salmar,” Nora interjected quickly. “Hopefully, it’s secure and livable.” Any renovations would either have to be accomplished in record time or put off. Susan was too sick to visit a construction site. “Once our security force clears it, we’ll move in. There’ll be room for you all to visit or stay.”

Phoebe wrinkled her nose. “Salmar? I thought you found blaze and were rich?”

“Pheebs.” Elise glared murder at her baby sister.

Nora managed a laugh. “A fortune in blaze brings its own problems.” She took a deep breath. “But also opportunities. I’m not sure how long we have this room for, so just to put it out there. If you need money…if there are any treatments…or medical bills—”

“I would have sent you my pay.” Liam couldn’t let go of how they’d kept their mom’s sickness from him.

“We want to help,” Nora finished.

Aria nodded, wide-eyed and leaning into her. “A lot.”

Susan smiled.

Even Elise relaxed a fraction at Aria’s earnestness.

“I’m seeing the doctor who helped me last time.” Susan held her hand out to Liam. “I love you.”

“Mom.” He dropped to his knees.

Elise hurriedly wiped her eyes. “We did the best we could,” she whispered.

Nora heard her, and hugged her. “Thank you. We can help, now. We want to.” A wry smile. “Liam needs to.

After a moment’s stiff resistance, Elise hugged her back.

The tension in the room broke.

Liam met Nora’s eyes, and gently freed himself from his mom enough to hold a hand out to Elise.

“Stupidhead.” Elise remained standing, but gripped his hand even as she flicked his nearest ear.

Susan smiled. “These two always fought.”

Whereas Jason and Phoebe were so much younger that they’d have grown up mostly in Liam’s absence.

He bridged the gap between them with a rough, three-person hug. “We’re a family of fighters. And this fight, we’re all in together.”

But looking at Susan’s frailty, it was a fight Nora feared they wouldn’t win.

Chapter 11

Liam struggled for self-control as his brother half-carried their mom out of the room.

The Royal Guards outside parted to let them through.

Liam strode out the door, halting in the passage.

Zac, Sam, Veronica and Gage stared from the skeletal form of his mom, and back to him. They looked shocked.

The Royal Guards, on the other hand, had known exactly what his mother—his family—were facing.

“It wasn’t our place to tell you,” Molly said quietly.

He inhaled sharply. That was true.

Nora slipped an arm around him. “Go with them. I have to do these tests or whatever, but you’re free. Your mom needs you.”

He shook his head.

Nora persisted. “You need her.”

He swallowed the jagged lump in his throat. “We’ll get you settled, first. And I need time to process this.”

It was the last sentence that convinced her. Though the worry in her eyes didn’t ease. “Whatever you need.”

Her. He needed Nora. Always would.

The ache in his chest was survivable with her holding him.

“Can we buy Nana Susan a smarter doctor?” Aria asked. “Would our med-doc help?”

The automated medical unit on the CC Kangaroo could handle routine medical care, including certain cancers. Bone cancer wasn’t one of those cancers.

He had a new appreciation for the emotions driving Timothy Zangmo given Stanley Zangmo’s fatal acid bones condition. Liam would do anything to spare her pain and cure his mom.

“We’ll ask Susan, later,” Nora said. “Elise, too.”

He was grateful for Nora and how clearly she saw things.

They had to respect his mom’s right to determine her own treatment, and also respect the burden of worry and care Elise and the others carried; had carried in his absence.

“We’ll help however we can,” Nora said.

Liam’s family vanished from view.

“The town car is waiting,” Molly prompted.

They couldn’t stand in the passage all day. Although the manner in which Zac and Gage set their feet indicated they were prepared to give Liam all the time he needed, and to hell with the Royal Guards’ schedule. They were good men to have at his back. Good men to be guarding Nora.

Liam squared his shoulders. “Lead on.”

Aria walked on Nora’s other side. His mom’s terrible news had squashed the girl’s natural excitement.

“Aria will be walking out first,” he said, giving the Royal Guards time to alter their security arrangements as needed. No changes should be warranted. The royal exit from the space elevator base ought to be secure, always. “It’s her first time on Capitoline.”

Nora squeezed his waist before releasing him to clasp his hand, instead. At the door, she smiled at Aria. “Lead the way.”

The door opened.

Aria marched out grandly, looked up, and gave an ugly, terrified gasp before collapsing.

Between one blink and the next, Liam, Zac, Veronica and Gage formed a square with Nora and Aria inside it.

The Royal Guards froze; not because they weren’t ready to act. Sam had his hand up in a sharp gesture for them to halt.

Later, Liam would interpret the Royal Guards’ expressions and realize that was the moment they—and he—recognized the trust between their quartet. No, their quintet, because Nora was part of it. He and the other three had acted instinctively to protect Aria, and Nora had trusted them to do so while she focused completely on the girl.

He trusted Sam, too. But that didn’t surprise Liam as much. Sam was both a former Marine and vouched for by Casimir.

Two heartbeats later, Gage moved aside to allow a Royal Guard with a paramedic’s insignia to assess Aria.

“Sky terror,” the paramedic said calmly. “It’s a stationers’ and spacers’ condition. An existential dread of nothing between them and the void. We should get her back inside before she wakes.”

She was already stirring from her faint, eyelids twitching.

Liam scooped her up and strode back inside the base.

Aria’s eyes opened. “I fainted.”

“You did.” He returned to the room his family had vacated.

“We’ll have a doctor assess her,” Molly said.

Aria looked around for Nora. “It was the sky. It tried to eat me.”

Sky terror. The paramedic was right.

Nora gave a little laugh that was half-sob. “I thought your first visit to a planet would be fun.”

“You should have let me outside on Beaconditch.”

Beaconditch was uninhabitable. Life there would be restricted to portable habitat modules.

“Sassy.” Nora sat beside Liam on a narrow sofa.

Aria leaned out of his arms, into hers. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Nora said. “The paramedic said this is a real thing for people who didn’t grow up on a planet.”

“It’s actually quite rare—”

One of the other Royal Guards smacked the paramedic’s arm.

“It’s normal,” Liam said. “Just something we need to work through.”

Aria immediately curled into herself. “I don’t want to go out there.”

Molly reminded them calmly that a doctor was coming and would advise them on the best course of action.

“Can we go back to the Roo?” Aria asked.

The honest answer to that was no, they couldn’t return to the CC Kangaroo.

The Royal Guard had taken a blood sample from Nora on the frigate, and confirmed her identity as the Palantine king’s daughter. They had a range of tests set up for her. They also wanted her physically present, not connected by comms, for interviews and briefings. They weren’t forthcoming as to their plans for her, but according to Jonah they had their own thunderbolt due to strike them in a day’s time. Nora needed to be on Capitoline to manage the fallout to her advantage, or at minimum, to prevent it turning to her disadvantage.

“We’ll talk to the doctor,” she said. “There’s so much to see and do on the planet. There may be a simple method to stop the sky eating you.”

“Okay,” Aria mumbled reluctantly.

Zac entered carrying juice boxes. “How about a snack?” he asked Aria cheerfully. “Apple, orange or mango?”

“Apple, please.”

He handed over the apple juice, fished in his pocket, and passed over a wrapped cookie. “I found a vending machine. Chocolate chip.”

“Thank you.”

Zac looked at Nora and Liam. “There’s coffee.”

“Please,” Nora said gratefully.

Zac was like Liam, a commander and a pilot. Veronica and Gage were the experienced guards, so Zac had ditched his ego to play errand boy while Veronica and Gage stayed close to protect Nora and Aria.

Sam remained in a watching role. He’d fallen, or chosen, the unenviable position of bridging the lack of trust between Nora, Liam and their people, and the Royal Guards.

As Zac passed over their coffees, Liam said, “I just learned my mom has bone cancer. I’m not sure how it will change our plans.”

“You’ll want time with her,” Gage said instantly.

“Oh.” Aria gulped. “I’m not going to be scared of the sky. We don’t have to go back to the Roo.”

She was a great kid.

“I lucked out getting you as a daughter,” he told her.

“Aww.” She blushed bright red.

Nora gave her a one-armed hug.

The doctor’s entrance distracted them. He was an athletic man in his late forties. “Well, if you’re my patient, I’d say I wished they were all so resilient. Bounced back already, hmm? Can we have some privacy?”

Liam stood. He, and everyone bar Nora, left. In the passage outside, he leaned against a wall. He needed a moment.

“What is the treatment for sky terror?” Veronica asked the paramedic.

“Graduated exposure. Some people settle for drugging themselves silly.”

Liam scrubbed his hands over his face. How would they fit exposure treatment for Aria into the other demands on their time?

Zac stood near him. “You’re not in this alone. It’s why Nora contracted us. Aria is a great kid. She’ll understand that sometimes one of us has to stand in for you and Nora. Ben can adapt the mansion’s renovation to provide a familiar feel for Aria.”

The door opened.

“Aria is going to try again,” the doctor said. “She’s fine in this windowless room, so she’s already partly adapted to life on a planet. Bad cases of sky terror race straight back up the elevator into space.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Aria said.

“But we’re not going to stress her about being outside until she’s talked to one of my colleagues. Dr. Rae Scott is a child psychiatrist. We want Aria to enjoy her time on Capitoline, so it’s best if we proceed under expert guidance.”

He’d have no argument from Liam or Nora. They wanted help.

“However, we can’t leave Aria stuck at the elevator base, so Aria has agreed to play a game—”

“I’m not three years old,” Aria objected. “I’m going to hide under a jacket or blanket if you can carry me out to a car, Liam, please? I’ll stay under the blanket like a scaredy cat so I don’t see the big, bad sky.”

Self-mockery could be dangerous, but it was also somewhat Nora’s style. Aria was being as brave as her adopted mom.

And Nora was as anxious as any mom.

Liam smiled to reassure them. “I think I can manage to lift your weight.”

The doctor took over explanations from Aria. “My recommendation is that you stay in an underground suite till you’ve spoken to Dr. Scott. Don’t risk accidental glimpses of the sky. Try your best to be calm. Sometimes panic that appears triggered by a particular incident is actually an expression of other stresses. Treated sensibly, I don’t believe there will be any serious, long term consequences.”

The doctor was professional, competent and condescending.

Liam wished Brielle was here. As a Navy doctor, she wasn’t practiced in child health, but her commonsense and kindness would be welcome. She’d also help him understand his mom’s condition and her treatment options. “Do you want my jacket?” he asked Aria.

Or someone could find them a blanket.

“Yes, please.”

He took off his uniform jacket, eying Molly as he did so. “Is the car ready?”

“It will draw up to the door.”

Nora took his jacket from him. “Ready?”

Aria clenched and unclenched her small hands before nodding jerkily. “Yep.”

“We’ll be right here with you,” Veronica said.

Nora smiled. “And you know Veronica is badass enough to hold up the whole sky.”

Veronica rolled her eyes, while Aria giggled and tugged the jacket over her head.

Nora held it securely in place while Liam picked up Aria.

“Okay?” he checked.

“Yep.”

Nora hovered, keeping hold of the jacket with a hand on Aria’s head. “I’m getting in the car first.” The limousine enabled them to enter with minimal maneuvering. She tucked Aria securely against her.

Veronica, Sam and Molly joined them, sitting in the opposite seat and facing backward. They joined in Nora’s reassuring chatter to distract Aria.

Never had Liam departed the space elevator base so stylishly, but the actual route, the eight mile bridge off Himalayan Island, was familiar. Every return from space began with this ride over the sea. Usually, he lowered the windows to smell the sea air. Today, they remained sealed. Aria didn’t need any additional new stimuli.

The limousine headed for the palace. Situated beneath it were the vaults containing the burrs. At least there would be no shortage of underground rooms for Aria to hang out in until Dr. Scott gave her the all clear to try venturing out, again.

Had the Royal Guards doctor been correct and Aria’s freak out was due more to his and Nora’s stress than to her own unfamiliarity with planetary existence?

“We’re going to the Palace, right?” Nora checked.

“Yes. We’ll drive directly underground,” Molly said.

Nora patted Aria’s shoulder beneath the jacket. “You okay under there?”

Aria wriggled. “I wish I could see everything. Stupid sky.”

Given her attitude, Liam didn’t expect treating her sky terror would take long. Aria was impatient and ready to do whatever was required to move around freely.

“Everything will be there, tomorrow,” Nora said. “Or whenever Dr. Scott says you can peek at it.”

Aria grumbled.

Reassured by the sounds of ordinary petulance, Nora pulled out her comms unit.

Molly leaned forward, caught herself, and deliberately relaxed back against the seat.

“I’m messaging our lawyers,” Nora said without looking up from the screen. “We have a lot of paperwork to churn through, ASAP. Where can they meet us?”

“You questioned us thoroughly on the RC Keying. Now, that we’re on Capitoline, we need a few hours to handle non-burr matters.” Liam emphasized that it was a reasonable request.

Molly disputed that. “There were many people who need to speak to Nora and test her who were unable to meet you on the frigate. Their time is tightly scheduled.”

Nora stared at her. “You respect my time. I respect theirs.” It was a reminder that she was currently cooperating, but that her attitude could turn on a dime.

“Have your lawyers present themselves at the Borealis Wing in an hour,” Molly said tightly.

The Borealis Wing of the Laotian Palace was for visiting dignitaries.

The limousine drove into the palace grounds via a service gate. A bunker door opened, and the vehicle proceeded downward.

“There are no windows along this route,” Molly said.

Aria didn’t wait for permission. She flung off Liam’s jacket. Her hair was messy and she blinked rapidly in the limousine’s dim lighting. She crawled over Nora to stare out a window. “Oh boo. It’s a car park.”

Nora pushed her back onto the seat as the limousine stopped. “Patience. You’re all elbows.”

The girl might have argued, but Veronica pointed a finger. Sit.

Zac chuckled. “If only all bodyguards had your powers, Vee.”

Their drive across Bangalore had taken nearly an hour.

Molly tapped her ear. She had an earpiece in. “Your legal team is in Conference Room B3. The Palantine ambassador expects to meet you at one o’clock.” An hour and forty minutes from now.

“And Dr. Scott?” Nora asked.

“We’re arranging an evening appointment.”

“Thank you.”

Liam needed to call Elise. He couldn’t in the car. She’d still be with their mom, and he had his own unwanted audience of guards. Nor could he subject Aria to more emotional stress. He’d call Elise after the Palantine ambassador’s visit.

A Royal Guard opened the car’s door.

Sam got out.

Veronica jerked her head fractionally at Liam.

Accustomed to being directed by his own security people, namely Marines, he followed Sam out.

Gage and Zac had arrived before the limousine, and stood by, outnumbered by a factor of three by Royal Guards.

Aria burst out of the car, distracting Liam from his curiosity about the number of guards in the secure grounds of the palace. He turned and held out a hand for Nora.

She didn’t need his assistance, but she kept hold of his hand.

A united front was a good idea. Aria joined them.

“Conference Room B3.” Molly led the procession.

The murmur of voices and rustle of clothing through the open door indicated that the lawyers had barely beaten them to the meeting room. The four men and three women rose at Nora’s and his entrance.

An oval table at the front of the long room allowed space for an arrangement of a sofa and four armchairs at the far end. Healthy snacks had been set out on the coffee table in the center. The intent was clear, and after a quick exchange of glances with Nora, Veronica led Aria to the armchairs.

Zac ambled after them.

Gage stayed behind Liam and Nora. He literally had their backs.

Meantime, the legal team launched into in-person introductions with a flurry of handshakes. Despite having discussed issues for hours with Nora and Liam over comms calls during the last two days, certain courtesies were required.

Liam cut through them. “Nora has an appointment to meet Ambassador Yakamia shortly. We need these documents signed immediately, and filed, today.”

“Everything is ready for your signatures.” Pierre Ganbold gestured, and documents were placed in front of two empty chairs. “Exactly as discussed.”

Nora dropped into a chair and reached for the nearest pile.

In fact, they had only eleven pages each, swiftly skimmed. Digital signatures were acceptable for the majority of contracts, which meant he and Nora had already submitted most of the paperwork to transfer an equal share of Blazing Kangaroo Corporation into his name; just as she’d transferred money into his name, created a new joint account, and purchased the Salmar property jointly before ever arriving on Capitoline.

His pride had taken a beating at the one-way traffic. It seemed as if it was all her giving and him taking.

She read his hesitation and gripped his knee under the table. “I need a partner.” Surrounded by strangers she dared to give him her vulnerability, to balance what was between them.

He squeezed her hand before releasing it to scrawl his signature multiple times.

Nora’s signature was neater and slower.

“Excellent,” Pierre Ganbold said as two of his colleagues collected the pages and checked them over. “Yours is truly a unique situation. We stand ready to assist you in any manner necessary, from legal advice, as goes without saying, to putting you in contact with people who can handle specific problems. I hope you have considered Jasmine’s suggestion that you hire a public relations manager.”

That was the issue Ganbold wanted to pursue during a limited-time meeting?

Molly beat Nora and Liam to an answer. “The Royal Guards will protect Nora’s reputation.”

Although Molly’s answer wasn’t one that satisfied anyone but her, and presumably, her superiors.

“I have someone in mind,” Nora said.

She did? Liam relied on his expressionless command face to hide his surprise.

But maybe Nora sensed it. She grinned at him. “You’ll like her.”

The youngest Pak partner tapped the pages he’d checked over against the table. “All signed and correct.”

The lawyer, a Ganbold woman, who’d taken Liam’s signed documents, nodded. “We’re ready to file them.”

Pierre smiled benevolently. “Do you have any questions or requests?”

“Not at the moment.” Nora had been mindful not to send too many worried glances in Aria’s direction. The girl appeared happily wrapped up in something she was watching on her personal comms unit. “I grew up poor, the kind of poor where you go to bed hungry if you haven’t hustled through the day or if you had bad luck. So, I won’t ever complain about no longer having to worry about money. But…holy quacking star ducks, I had no idea being rich and important meant so many meetings.”

Life as a naval officer had inured Liam to meetings. Communication, two-way communication, was required to keep everyone moving in the same direction over the long term. Nonetheless, he’d also had enough meetings, today. However, one of the most challenging loomed ahead of them. He and Nora needed at least a few minutes’ break before meeting Ambassador Yakamia.

He stood. “Unfortunately, they’re a necessary evil. I apologize for cutting ours short, but as I mentioned—”

“Ambassador Yakamia.” Pierre rose, unhurriedly.

Nora ducked out of the round of farewell handshakes. “Aria has some health issues. Excuse me.” She rushed down to the other end of the room, almost managing to disguise that she was escaping her own legal team.

Molly stepped up and firmly ushered them out. Just how adroit her people-handling skills were was demonstrated by the fact that she kept the group moving even as a newcomer entered the room.

“Liam!”

Liam’s breath whooshed out in relief at seeing a friendly face. “Francis.” Given the Crown Prince’s busy schedule, his visit was a kindness Liam had hoped for but not counted on. He’d hoped they’d catch up some time during the next couple of days.

For a couple of seconds, the two men studied each other.

Designer stubble along Francis’s jawline and his excellently tailored suit failed to disguise the weight he’d gained in his thirties.

Accustomed to the fitness standard Brielle enforced on the RC Genghis Khan, and which Zac’s people matched, Liam was startled by Francis’s plumpness. At the Naval Academy, they’d matched each other’s efforts in the gym.

But Liam had gone on to fight for his life and that of the people under his command. Francis had other people to fight for him, and protect him.

Despite their divergent paths in life, Liam was fiercely glad to see his old friend.

Judging by the gleam in his eyes and his firm, back-slapping handshake, so was Francis. “I’m glad the RGs,” Royal Guards, “reverted to the original plan.”

“Pardon?”

Studying Nora at the far end of the room, Francis answered offhandedly. “A couple of days ago, after the RGs confirmed Nora’s heritage, they decided to transfer you directly to Shirvan.”

“What the heck for?”

Liam’s exclamation drew the attention of the Royal Guards and Nora’s guards, as well as Nora herself. Liam concentrated on Francis. “Why would we be sent to a blazing desert?”

Shirvan was a wide strip of desert along the west coast of the southern hemisphere continent of Ashoka. It was in the same time zone as Bangalore, but almost uninhabited. Almost uninhabitable.

Francis lowered his voice to a murmur. “We test burrs there. The vaults are actually quite comfortable. Cool, unlike the surface.”

Liam had understood from Yuri that Nora’s freedom would be tested by the Royal Guards’ demands. He hadn’t guessed that he’d be drawing a line in the sand with Francis rather than the guards. “Nora has other responsibilities.”

Nora’s blaze discovery mattered to Capitoline’s future. It mattered because of the fuel cells it produced. The inner realm could condense and survive curtailed interstellar travel. But travel between realms would become vanishingly small, and hence, inter-realm trade would become vanishingly small. The recent war showed how that lost trade diminished all realms.

Francis withdrew his attention from Nora as she approached. He smiled at Liam. “I’m positive you can handle Nora’s responsibilities. Better than her.”

Stars bless Nora, her footsteps didn’t falter although Francis had timed his provocative statement to reach her ears.

“What are you doing, Francis?” Liam asked.

Francis’s statement had also reached Zac and Sam, who followed Nora. That they’d heard was evidenced by their suddenly blank expressions.

Francis noticed. If he hadn’t been born a prince, he’d have been an excellent intelligence officer. “You always had a knack for leadership, Liam. You give your loyalty, but you also inspire it.” He smiled at Nora as she reached them. “Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Kimani. I’ve just been congratulating Liam.”

Actually, he hadn’t.

“Your marriage to one of Capitoline’s greatest war heroes has our courtiers excited. It will play well in the press when news of your heritage leaks.”

“I’m sure the leak will be perfectly planned.” Nora didn’t bother smiling. “Liam has mentioned you often, Francis. Interesting to meet you.”

Zac laughed under his breath. “Prince meet princess.”

Nora moved sideways and stomped on his foot.

Uncertain why this was all going so wrong, and already off-balance from his mom’s news, Liam rubbed the back of his neck.

“Your eyes are your father’s,” Francis said. “But you’re your own person, aren’t you?” He considered her meditatively. “We’ve told the Palantine ambassador of your existence. You’ll have to be kind to him. He won’t be expecting a lioness. Unlike me, he doesn’t have the advantage of knowing that the woman Liam married would be redoubtable.”

“Like a battlecruiser?” Zac inquired wickedly.

Francis frowned. “I prefer not to speak to you, Captain Mstivoj.”

Zac rocked on his heels. “How will I survive the snub?”

“By being quiet,” his employee suggested. Although to be fair to Gage, the Capitoline-born guard appeared no more impressed by Francis.

Francis, in fact, was presenting himself badly.

“Are you trying to antagonize Nora or me?” Liam asked.

“You’ve chosen a difficult path.” Francis walked away.

“Jealous,” Zac coughed; fortunately, not loudly enough for Francis to hear.

Nora tilted her head, curious. Some of the anger and regret in her expression eased.

“Of Nora?” Liam asked. Francis had been married to Evelyn for over ten years. They had two children, two boys aged nine and five. Liam remembered how happy Francis had been when their betrothal was announced. The two had been friends from childhood. Evelyn was the daughter of a Capitoline duke.

Zac dropped his mask of mockery. “Of you, Liam. You were out there, serving Capitoline interests, serving him, and you chucked it for Nora. He can’t even express his anger at you because Nora matters, and you matter as her husband and co-owner of Capitoline’s newest blaze empire. If he’s a good man, he’ll adjust to the new balance of interests and power between you.”

It was a low-key, serious warning.

From what Zac said, and didn’t say, and from the fact he’d departed Palantine space as soon as the war ended, the Palantine royals had screwed him over.

Liam expected better from Francis. He trusted Francis. Nevertheless, as he put a hand on Nora’s lower waist and they both looked across, checking on Aria, Liam acknowledged Zac’s perspicacity. Liam’s priorities had changed. Every relationship, including friendships, had to stretch and grow. Otherwise relationships withered or broke. It was up to Liam and Francis whether their friendship endured through Liam’s acquiring of a wife and daughter and his career change from Navy captain to a captain of industry.

Tomorrow, he’d resign his commission. It was something he’d wanted to do in person. But now, given his mom’s condition and Aria’s, and Francis’s mention of a secret facility in the Shirvan desert, he was reluctant to lose hours at the Admiralty.

He could submit his resignation digitally. The prickling at the nape of his neck, the one that warned of danger, indicated it might be smarter to do so, immediately.

Years at the Naval Academy here on Laos, and then, in service had conditioned him to sacrifice and follow orders. Nora changed that calculation. His mother’s bone cancer, that she’d hidden from him, confirmed the cost of continuing in the Navy.

Molly broke into his thoughts. “You have a few minutes if you’d like to see your rooms and freshen up?”

She herded them through the subterranean passages. “We put you in a suite. Aria will have her own room. Your guards will be accommodated close by.”

They arrived in their room to discover their luggage hadn’t merely arrived. It had been unpacked.

Nora’s eyes narrowed.

Molly called out from the living area. “The coffee’s hot and I have sandwiches.” She was adjusting her behavior to be more casual; taking her cue from how Zac and the others interacted with them. In fact, when they returned to the living area, she was seated at the table eating a sandwich. “You said you had a public relations manager in mind. Until they’re onboard, I’ll advise you. My first piece of advice is that Liam not attend your initial meeting with Ambassador Yakamia, Nora. Given that he held hostage your half-brother Crown Prince Dominic, Hamish Yakamia would take Liam’s presence as a provocation.”

She hurried on. “Before you argue, I’ve taken the liberty of requesting information on bone cancer treatments and top doctors, as well as on sky terror.”

It was a neat tactic; reminding Liam and Nora of their familial responsibilities.

Across the table, Aria pretended to eat a sandwich. Her missing appetite was probably due to snacking. However, she needed reassurance that her world was stable as much as he did.

His mom wasn’t ever meant to be sick. Parents were meant to be superhuman.

Aria had already lost her parents; murdered on their mining barge. He and Nora had stepped up to be Aria’s solid ground. The girl trusted Veronica and Gage, but Liam didn’t shrug off his responsibilities.

Unlike Yuri’s abrasive approach, Molly was a smooth operator. She reframed a situation so that the outcome she wanted appeared the lone reasonable option.

“Divide and conquer,” he said. It could have two meanings. Between Nora and him, it meant splitting duties to accomplish everything. For those wanting to manipulate either of them, it meant separating them to weaken them. He trusted Nora to stand alone, and he hated that on the day of their arrival on Capitoline, she already had to. “Aria and I will stretch our legs either exploring the underground palace.” Wickedly, he enjoyed the way Molly stiffened in protest. “Or burn off some energy playing handball in the car park.”

Aria started to grin.

“We have a windowless gym,” Molly said.

“Handball and research it is,” Liam said. And he’d take the opportunity to resign his commission. The decision to end his naval career suddenly hurt less.

Nora tapped her sandwich against his, like clinking glasses in a toast, before nudging Aria’s mangled sandwich as it dripped ketchup. “I’ll join you as soon as I’m free of the ambassador.”

Chapter 12

Riding up in the elevator to the second floor of the Laotian Palace, Nora reviewed the last two hours.

Molly had flat out lied. They were only now going to Nora’s meeting with the Palantine ambassador.

For two hours, Nora had been interrogated as to her fieldwork as a xeno-archaeologist specializing in the Silicaese. Paranoia seemed rife among burr researchers and Royal Guards. Their questions had circled the notion that she’d used her fieldwork to locate and sell on the black market unregistered burrs. They’d stopped just shy of outright accusation.

She was bemused that they even raised it as an issue. How in the stars did they think she could manage any such covert activity in the tight confines of a xeno-archeological study team and vessel? And even if the entire xeno-archaeological team had been involved in what the Royal Guards clearly considered treasonous theft, the team had been working for the Capitoline Navy. Tadj, Nora’s expedition leader, had gotten their funding from the war effort on the basis that their digs on icy sulfuric planets might provide hints as to the location of burr caches. It had been a stretch, but Tadj had sold the idea. The Navy had closely monitored them and the investment they represented.

There was absolutely no reason for the Royal Guards’ and self-important burr experts’ suspicions except their own paranoia.

But paranoia could be dangerous.

Francis had told Liam the Royal Guards had intended to dispatch her directly to a secret facility in Shirvan. If they had, if not for Aria’s sky terror, what had they intended to do regarding the Palantine ambassador’s request to meet her?

She doubted the ambassador would have cancelled his other duties to travel with her to Shirvan. Perhaps one of the junior diplomats would have done so.

She missed Jonah; for himself and for the information he possessed.

On Border Station and in convoy to Capitoline, they’d been confident in his superior hacking skills, confident enough to risk messaging to stay in contact. But Capitoline was different. The Royal Guards monitored her every move. Zac had warned her of the likely intrusive surveillance, as had the RC Genghis Khan’s intelligence officer, Allison Chirlee.

“Everything you say and do, even what you believe no one will notice, will be seen and will reflect on Liam as well as on you.” The unspoken message was that since Liam was giving up his career for her, the least she owed him was not to disastrously complicate his life.

In Jonah’s absence, Nora had to rely on the information he’d provided before she’d boarded the Navy frigate and entered the Royal Guards’ lockdown. That data might be perilously out of date.

She clung to a key piece of knowledge she possessed, one that Molly and her ilk lacked. If Nora kept it in mind, and achieved her objective from this meeting with Ambassador Yakamia, then she had a chance at recruiting an important ally no one could have anticipated.

Molly ushered her into a small sitting room overly decorated for Nora’s taste, and introduced the man waiting there.

He was slightly below average height, slender and charmingly ugly; his mouth too wide and his nose too narrow, both out of proportion in his triangular face. Blond hair fell sleekly either side of it in a style that, in a woman, would have been called a bob.

Ambassador Hamish Yakamia inclined his head. “Thank you, Captain Jones.” He waited for Molly to withdraw. “I requested a private meeting with you, Ms. Devi. Or should I call you Captain Devi?”

Nora had prepared for such a question. “Mrs. Kimani or Nora is fine.” She sat in an ornate wing chair which proved to be as uncomfortable as it looked.

Hamish’s wide mouth compressed at the corners.

She smiled at him. She had married Liam. The Palantines, along with everyone else, had to accept that fact.

“A platoon of Palantine Royal Guards is permanently assigned to the embassy on Capitoline.” Hamish unexpectedly changed the subject. “Two of them were among the Royal Guards who observed you on the RC Keying. They assure me that you are, indeed, King Ivan’s daughter. However, we have no idea as to your mother’s true identity.”

“She’s dead,” Nora said.

“Which does render the mystery less pressing.”

Unwillingly, she gave him credit for his aplomb, but she didn’t show it. She stared silently to the left of him, out the window at the palace grounds. She wished she was out in the gardens, enjoying the sunshine. Better yet, she’d be with Liam and a miraculously sky terror-free Aria exploring the Mangrove Mansion and its surrounds.

She gave Hamish her silence.

This was a meeting he’d requested. Let him guide it.

He studied her for long enough that she wondered if that alone was his reason for meeting her. Then he smiled. “You are unexpected in every sense, aren’t you? Born in the slums and unrattled in a palace. How did you come to out yourself as a Forgotten and a royal? Was it on purpose?”

“My mother revealed her own, and our, Forgotten status to her other children, my half-siblings.”

Over two decades later, Nora still couldn’t guess why Maya had told Nora of her heritage. Was it out of a sense of duty or superstition, inculcated by her own mother, Nora’s unknown grandmother? Or had there been some love for Nora, hidden deep beneath Maya’s self-interest and love for her younger, acknowledged children? Maya hadn’t had to settle in the same tower where Nora was fostered. Although slums were a suitable location to lose oneself if you feared being hunted.

“The Pendits.” Hamish had done his homework. A facility for names would be essential in a diplomat.

“They were less strict than I was at keeping the secret.”

He tilted his head, blond hair sliding against his chin. “But then, their secret was less unusual than yours.”

Nora agreed demurely. “Yes, Queen Sarah wouldn’t want them dead.”

His eyes dilated in horror.

Understandably. Her suggestion was a diplomat’s nightmare.

“My biological mother had limited time for me, but she ensured I understood how dangerous Sarah’s jealousy was. Lethally dangerous.” Nora didn’t add that Maya had warned her against the entire family, including Nora’s thankfully deceased grandfather, the vicious King Olav. She deliberately applied pressure to trigger Hamish. “Any woman Sarah saw as competition would be in danger.”

Hamish Yakamia had spent the last couple of weeks struggling to navigate and tame the treacherous political currents and blasts of grief and anger in the public sphere that resulted from news of Hermione’s death.

Sarah’s brother, the Duke of Ontario, was blamed for Hermione’s assassination. A dead man couldn’t defend himself.

Sarah had been meticulous in her planning. Unless you were a Vapori AI, fascinated by and observing Nora’s royal family, you wouldn’t know what Sarah had arranged. Even now, Jonah couldn’t assemble evidence of Sarah’s actions. But then, he and Nora weren’t criminal investigators. The problem was, no one on Palantine had reason to push for a further investigation into Hermione’s death.

The Duke was to blame, and he was dead.

The one person who might have kicked up such a ruckus that a real investigation probed events of that day was no longer on Palantine.

That information would come as a shock to the ambassador, tomorrow.

According to the last information Nora had received from Jonah, Crown Prince Dominic was due to arrive on Capitoline unannounced and utterly unexpectedly, tomorrow morning.

He’d hitched a ride on the official courier that sped between Palantine and Capitoline, carrying communications and small items. This time the item was larger and more problematic than usual, a grieving husband.

The idea had been his eldest sister’s. Eldest full sister.

Nora’s half-sister Regina.

Jonah said she was smart. “Academically, Regina never excelled. The other royals and the courtiers don’t think much of her. But she has survived her mother and carved out her own identity as ‘the Charity Princess’. She does good works, and there’s a pattern to her activities. As much as they appear to be publicity-focused, behind the scenes, there are opportunities for her to meet genuine activists. She does good without challenging the King and Queen or the system.”

Regina advised Dominic to travel secretly to Capitoline after Hermione’s state funeral. “You need to share your grief with those who loved her the most. Her family. Even if they’re mad at you because of our uncle, don’t get mad back. Be there for the people Hermione loved.”

Jonah speculated that Regina wanted Dominic off Palantine for his own safety. “She sees their mother clearly.”

“But she won’t speak up,” Nora had concluded.

Nonetheless, Regina had inspired Dominic to escape on a sting ship to Capitoline, and when he arrived, tomorrow, Nora intended to meet him.

She was aware, as Dominic could only guess, of the unstable state of affairs he’d left behind.

Jonah had reported relief at the palace at the departure of Dominic and his unpredictable rages. But Queen Sarah was annoyed, presumably because his absence frustrated some of her schemes. King Ivan appeared unmoved. There had never been a warm, or even mutually respectful, relationship between him and his eldest son.

But if Sarah had been irritated by Dominic’s desertion, she was enraged at the news of Nora’s blaze discovery. It went against her ploy to run down the supply of blaze and fuel cells, and thus, reduce interstellar travel and trade to intensify her grip on an isolated Palantine.

All of this information, the Capitoline royals had yet to learn. As had Hamish.

Whereas Nora and Jonah had crafted her strategy in advance, even if she amended it on the fly.

She wanted a meeting with Dominic.

“You cannot speak such calumny of Queen Sarah,” Hamish rebuked her.

Nora smiled. “Speaking the truth isn’t calumny.”

He wrung his hands. It seemed his nerves were more on edge than his elegant appearance indicated. “It could start a war.”

“That is an interesting observation. Because if my suggestion that Queen Sarah was a threat to those she considered rivals was truly rubbish, you wouldn’t fear the Capitolines believing me.”

“The relationship between Palantine and Capitoline is tense at the moment,” Hamish countered. He tugged at the sleeves of his jacket. “Inflaming the situation will do you no good, personally. You do not want to arrive on Palantine having already made enemies of its royal family.”

She grinned, honestly amused by his assumptions. “I’m not going to Palantine. Maybe, before Hermione’s death, the Capitolines would have surrendered me to my father, or to you as his proxy. But Hermione died in your care.” Your meaning Palantine protection. Hamish understood. He went green. “Now, it’s a case of a princess for a princess, even if I’m the slum kind. The Capitolines won’t force me to some mockery of a meeting with King Ivan. In fact, they’ll gleefully support my decision to stay right here.”

“In the palace?” he asked weakly.

Her nose wrinkled involuntarily. “No. On my private estate.” She was mocking her own wealth and the Salmar property’s less than complimentary local title, Mangrove Mansion.

But Hamish nodded seriously.

It reminded her that one of the barriers, or potential points of miscommunication in a royal milieu where she was as out of place as a housecat in a lions’ enclosure, was humor. When discussing serious issues, she had to be serious. Her habit of relying on humor in dark times might harm her now.

She had to proceed confidently and clearly. “Maya, my biological mother, is someone I prefer to forget, as she forgot me. So, I won’t mention her view of Queen Sarah to the Capitoline royals.” She continued before Hamish could relax. “However, that wasn’t Maya’s only warning. No, not warning. It wasn’t her only secret concerning the Palantine royals, the people she hid me from.”

She paused to study Hamish. Hating lying, meant she wasn’t a practiced liar. But she read Hamish’s body language; the way he leaned fractionally toward her and the stillness of his long, skinny hands. He was willing to entertain the idea that she possessed a critical secret inherited from Maya. It helped that she’d spoken the truth. Conviction had rung in her voice. Maya had held other secrets involving Palantine royals, like the very basic one of where she’d met Ivan, Nora’s father.

Nora nodded at Hamish as if they’d had a silent, satisfactory conversation and reached a mutually agreeable conclusion. “I’m sure you would like to know the prince’s secret, but that’s one I’ll only share with Ivan or Dominic.”

Prince had a nice ambiguity to it. The ambassador caught it.

She could be referring to Ivan, who’d been the Crown Prince of Palantine, not its king, when Nora was born, or to the current Crown Prince.

“Ambassador Yakamia, to speak plainly, I’m not happy at being compelled to return to Capitoline. Life along the Hadrian Line suited me. Life in obscurity, or in as much obscurity as the blaze discovery allows me, remains my preference. But because I have been pulled into world of the royals, Maya’s secret matters.”

He crossed one leg over the other. “To you, perhaps.”

She smiled, unamused. As a child she’d survived the intimidation tactics and negotiations of the Angkorran towers. “It’s a secret the Capitolines would enjoy.” Threaten her, and she’d growl back. And she wanted Hamish to believe she had bigger teeth. She bared them, metaphorically speaking. “But I don’t want to start a war. I lost my first husband to that insanity. I won’t lose Liam, too. Unless you’re very stupid.”

He sat straight, both feet flat on the floor. “What do you want from me? You’ve said you won’t go to Palantine. How do you expect to speak to our king or prince?”

“To my father or brother? We share a blood tie, remember?” She reminded him of who she was. She also hinted at secrets in her heritage—and almost sagged in relief as the narrowing of his eyes showed he’d taken the bait.

Sensitivity to burrs was the foundation of royal power. Everyone whose own personal power and position was based on the royals’ had an interest in maintaining the status quo, and that meant strengthening the royal heritage of sensitivity to burrs.

“You’re the ambassador,” Nora said. “You find a way for me to communicate confidentially with Ivan or Dominic. Find it quickly.”

She left.

It was all about timing, and setting Hamish on edge so that his agitation inflated her hints into a danger he believed had to be addressed immediately.

If Dominic arrived on schedule, tomorrow, Hamish would throw that urgency at the Crown Prince.

Dominic mightn’t be interested. He’d spent months traveling to Capitoline to honor his wife’s death and grieve with her family. Hermione would be his priority—except Nora had shock value on her side. Dominic was his mother’s son, and Nora was a rival appearing from nowhere. He’d want to assess for himself the strong sensitive who was both royal and Forgotten, and technically able to challenge him for the Palantine crown.

Confident that she’d done everything she could, today, Nora followed Gage, Sam and a pair of Royal Guards back to her suite. She needed to check on Liam and Aria. Hopefully, the promised child psychiatrist arrived soon.

Pacing in the bedroom, Liam heard the door to the suite open, and Nora check on Aria. When she continued on into the bedroom, he met her by the door and closed it. “I messaged Elise. She’ll call me later tonight, after Mom’s settled.”

“I’m so sorry, Liam.” She searched his face for a sign from him as to what he wanted, what he needed from her.

“I’ve resigned my commission.”

He caught her off-guard, and the worry in her incredible green eyes deepened. “You were going to talk to Admiral Moore—”

His old mentor. As an ensign, he’d served under then Captain Moore.

Liam closed the small gap between them.

She hugged him fiercely. “It’s been a rotten day.”

“Not what we expected.” Not his Mom’s news nor Francis’s attitude. “I’ll talk to Moore later. He’ll probably call me.”

He appreciated the silence that fell between them.

When Nora broke it, she did so with good news. “Casimir’s sister, Kennedy, has accepted the position as our public relations manager. She’s handing over some other accounts this week, then she’s all ours.”

“Ken?” He double-checked.

Nora nudged him. “Don’t sound so stunned. Does she really like to be called Ken?”

He smiled slightly. “No, not according to Casimir, although that’s what he calls her.”

“Kennedy,” Nora said deliberately, “seems nice. Casimir mentioned her to me. He also sent a message ahead of us, mentioning the blaze and my royal heritage—with my permission—so that we’d have a media savvy ally on Capitoline. I think Kennedy was going to refuse our business, but then you wrote her dad a message?”

Liam had, indeed, sent a message ahead of them to Casimir’s father, as Casimir had advised. The two veterans were trained to think of worst case scenarios.

The Stas family were rugby legends on the polar-spanning continent of Karachi. Liam had reached out to the patriarch, Julius Stas, writing plainly.

I’m used to protecting people, yet Nora is the most important person in my life and I don’t know if I can keep her safe, keep her free. So, I’m asking you, even though it’s not your fight, if they try to make her disappear, will you speak up for her existence?

Julius Stas had played full-back. He was tough under pressure and would have laid down his life for his team. He’d certainly broken enough bones for them—his own and other teams’. Like Liam and Casimir, Julius had been born to protect the people he called his own.

“Kennedy said their dad reminded her that Casimir had said that your ship, the RC Genghis Khan, was the best he’d ever served on. That you’d kept Casimir alive and mostly uninjured through the dangerous last years of the war, and ended it. ‘We owe him,’ Julius said. But you know what clinched the matter? Casimir’s message. You’re his friend. That makes you, and me, part of the Stas family.” Nora smiled. “I like them. Kennedy sounds fiercer than Casimir. I think her first meeting with Molly will be awesome.”

Two titans of determination and manipulation clashing.

Liam saw the appeal. He also thought a wise man would steer clear. He kissed Nora admiringly. “You’re braver than me. I’d hide.”

She laughed and pulled him back into the living area of the suite where Aria was half-paying attention to the cartoons on the wall screen, and half-listening to Zac, Veronica and Gage discussing the Salmar property.

“Ben called,” Zac said. “He’s sent through his own photos of the Mangrove Mansion, more candid shots. He likes it. The compound wall is solid. Lines of sight are good.” He grinned. “Cherry has ideas for the interior.”

Nora curled up on the sofa beside Aria. “Spare me!” But she laughed, and there was relief in it. Cherry was safe and well if she’d chosen to stay with Zac’s people. Given the trust fund Nora had established for her, her young half-sister didn’t need to work. She chose to.

Perhaps everyone needed a place and people to belong to.

A briskly assertive knock at the door interrupted Zac’s teasing elaboration on the marvels of marble pillars and the matching fountain Cherry envisaged for the central courtyard of the compound.

Gage opened the door to reveal a late middle-aged woman whose ruffled gray and brown hair matched that of the large mutt who sat beside her on a slack leash.

The dog’s muzzle was gray with age, but his eyes were bright and his tail swished happily.

Aria abandoned the cartoons. “A dog!”

One brindled ear pricked up at Aria’s excited cry, while the other remained flopped over.

“I’m Rae, Dr. Rae Scott,” Dr. Scott introduced herself to everyone at once, but her gaze found first Aria, then Nora. “I asked the guards and they said you’d bought a property in Salmar, one big enough it’ll have a caretaker even in your absence.”

“We have,” Liam said.

Nora was as distracted as Aria by the dog. Both cooed over it.

Rae handed over the leash. “Bailey is yours.”

Aria gripped the lead uncertainly. “Mine?”

“Yes. I rescued him from a shelter. His former family couldn’t house him anymore. I suspect the new stepdad simply didn’t want him. Bailey is friendly, but old. He’ll probably die in a year or two.” The doctor smiled and shook her head at Nora and Aria’s betrayed, indignant glares. “Bailey doesn’t know I’m predicting his death. And all his age means is that you need to cram as much loving into his last years as you can.”

Aria nodded vigorously. “Bailey’s a good boy.” She patted him enthusiastically, while Bailey panted.

The mutt was rough-haired, large-boned, and conspicuously amiable. If Ben, overseeing the Salmar compound, wanted a canine security force for it, Bailey wouldn’t be part of it.

Bailey, Liam recognized, was part of the family.

“Let’s take him for a walk in the garden while you get acquainted,” Rae suggested.

“Okay!” Aria shouted.

Bailey woofed.

As they exited the elevator and crossed the foyer, Bailey led the charge out to the garden.

Aria didn’t hesitate.

With her attention on the girl, Rae said to Liam and Nora, “Sometimes the answer to a problem is simple. Just a girl and her dog.”

And two bodyguards, Veronica and Gage, who’d been smart enough not to interfere.

Discreet lighting lit the patch of lawn where Aria romped and squealed and ran backwards in a circle calling to Bailey. The night smelled of frangipani and jasmine, drowning out the smoggy underlay of pollution that was inescapable in even the most prestigious of cities.

Liam’s arm tightened around Nora as she squeezed his waist in happiness and relief.

The air at their Salmar property would smell of the mangrove swamp and the sea.

“We’d better show Ben so he can prepare for the new family member.” Zac snapped a photo.

Aria and Bailey raced up to them. The dog immediately lay down, showing his belly for a rub.

Rae obliged. “I guess I’m not needed anymore.”

“Thank you, Dr. Rae.” Aria hugged her. “I love Bailey.”

He thumped his tail at his name.

Nora thanked the doctor again before a Royal Guard materialized out of the shadows and escorted Rae away.

Zac chuckled. “Ben says an older dog won’t have as much energy as a puppy, and we should count ourselves lucky.”

“Bailey is better than a puppy,” Aria said loyally.

Veronica smiled down at the old dog before scanning the garden again.

“We need to do better at getting you off-duty time,” Liam said.

“We’ll manage for a couple of days,” Gage said. “Give it time to shake out before we see about rotating in others.”

Nora’s yawn muffled her words. “I’d like to be at the mansion by then.”

Liam looked at Aria, lying on the lawn and staring up at the stars. Relaxed family time had cured her stress. “Even if we have to sleep in swags and stand guard in shifts.” He was aware the Royal Guards heard him. That was fine.

“Dinner,” Nora said.

Bailey woofed approval of the idea.

Aria scrambled up.

Dinner followed by an early night for Aria and Bailey, and a long conversation between Elise and him, and finally, Liam would be free to crawl into bed beside his wife.

He liked that phrase. His wife.

He and Nora weren’t perfect together. But they tried.

She slipped into their bedroom with him after dinner, and kissed him before leaving him to talk to Elise.

“She’s dying, Liam. Last time, when Mom beat the beast, the odds were against her, but not like this. This time…” Elise choked back a sob.

The briefing Molly had provided him on bone cancer told him the odds. Of the type his mom had, a recurrence generally meant death inside six months.

“Can we fight this for her? What can we do?” He paused. “How do I help you?”

Her voice wavered. “I don’t know. Mom recorded a message for you three weeks ago. She’d given up then. Your news arriving ahead of you, of your return, meant she held on to see you again.”

The metaphorical knife in his chest twisted in guilt, pain, and love. “Should I be there, tonight?” There was their childhood home, an apartment near the Royal Opera House.

“Mom’s asleep. She crashed from exhaustion and her medications. I…come early tomorrow. Mom wakes early. Give her a chance to shower and dress, and have breakfast with us at seven. Bring Nora.”

“We’ll be there.” And he’d make it up to Elise, and to Jason and Phoebe, that he hadn’t been home to carry his share of the worry and care. He also had a list of doctors if their mom could be persuaded to try other treatments.

After the call ended, he stared at a large painting of a sailboat cutting across Bangfai Sound. It hung where a window would be if they weren’t below ground. To be at his mom’s by seven, they’d have to wake Aria at dawn and take her and Bailey out into the garden to confirm that she was okay beneath a daylight sky.

Nora opened the door a crack, saw him, and entered. “Aria’s asleep. Gage is staying the night on the sofa in the living area. He’ll keep an eye on the dog.”

“Mom’s dying.” He lunged for Nora and held her tightly. “We’re to have breakfast at home with them. Seven o’clock.”

She rubbed her cheek against his. Her softness to the bristles of his stubble.

“I have to tell Molly,” he said.

“I’ll message her, later.” Nora bought his mouth to hers.

“God, yes.” He needed her. Sex was the primal counter to fear of death. He consumed her even as he lost himself in her, and in the driving urgency of his own body.

“Love you, love you, love you.” She held him together, binding him with the mantra of her own need and gift of herself.

If not for Nora, if not for his decision that she meant more than his naval career, he’d have never seen his mom again. “I love you.”

They were hot, sweaty and tangled together when Gage knocked at the door.

“What?” Liam asked.

Nora snuggled closer in protest.

“Liam, Crown Prince Francis wants to talk to you.”

He rolled out of bed and grabbed a two minute shower before pulling on a t-shirt and jeans.

“Worst timing.” Nora slipped past him, naked and gorgeous, and into the shower. She raised her voice. “I messaged Molly about tomorrow.”

The reminder of breakfast with his mom was a punch to the guts.

He sat on the bed to pull on his socks and boots.

When he opened the door, Francis stared a moment, gaze going past him to the rumpled bed.

“Sorry.” The Crown Prince of Capitoline flushed, and turned on his heel. “Let’s walk.”

And talk privately?

Perhaps Francis did want privacy. He brought Liam to his office and only spoke again once they were seated in chairs to the side of the desk. “I should have waited till morning to apologize. I have so many evening engagements, I forget other people have different schedules.”

“Diplomacy at midnight?” Liam asked sardonically. They were a couple of hours yet from the witching hour.

Francis’s smile twisted. “Diplomacy never rests. Earlier, I hit you with too much of my honest emotions, and no explanation. The opposite of diplomacy. We’re friends, Liam. You deserved better from me. Congratulations on your marriage. I hope you and Nora will be very happy.”

“Thank you.”

“It won’t be easy.”

Liam was in no mood for vague prognostications of danger. “Today, I learned my mom is dying of bone cancer.”

“Oh hell.” Francis wiped a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Liam. If there’s anything I can do…”

“We’re having breakfast with her, and my brother and sisters, tomorrow. Early.”

“If the RGs give you trouble, send them to me. There is some stuff I can protect you from.”

Liam groaned. “Which means there is stuff you can’t, and I won’t like it.”

Francis nodded. “If Nora tests as strongly as Captain Bennett reports.” Captain Bennett was Yuri. “Her genetic heritage will be wasted in combining with yours.”

Genetic heritage. It took Liam a moment. “You’re talking about our children.”

“She’s good with kids. People are already talking about how she prioritized Aria’s welfare. Liam, before you get angry, stop and think. I didn’t this afternoon, and it’s why I owed you an apology.”

Francis took a deep breath. “Callum is nine and Knox five.” His children. “Both old enough to be tested for sensitivity to burrs. Callum…has none. He doesn’t sense them, at all.” It meant Francis’s eldest child couldn’t inherit the crown. “Knox has a low level sensitivity. There was talk of Nora carrying my baby,” he finished in a rush.

Liam’s ears rang with shock.

“That was before we learned you’d married her.”

Like a fighter shaking off a jab, Liam shook his head. “You would have had an illegitimate heir?”

“No. We’d have faked Evelyn’s pregnancy. It’s happened before.”

Liam stared.

“The other option was marrying Nora off to Harold. He’s thirty, now. He can’t put off marriage any longer.”

“He’s gay, Francis. You told me, yourself. If he marries anyone…oh hell, no.”

Francis sighed, loud and painful. “That’s why I’m warning you. Someone, sooner or later, will suggest that Harold can marry whoever he wants if one of the strongest sensitives in years carries his baby. Nora will reject the idea, but some people won’t let go of the notion.”

“If Harold refused—”

“Harold,” said his disgruntled brother, “has a talent for wriggling out of his problems and making them someone else’s. It’s you and Nora who will need to stand firm.”

Liam rose abruptly and paced to the window rather than saying something he shouldn’t. He rubbed the back of his neck as he stared out across the glittering city lights. “I thought Nora was repeating a fairy tale, a sort of bogeyman under the bed story, that the Forgotten tell. She said the royals breed the Forgotten.”

Francis had the decency to sound ashamed. “It’s not a breeding program. Strong sensitives from non-royal lines are encouraged—paid—to have children with royals.”

Liam turned back to him. “Nora has too much money to be bribed.”

“Plus a husband she’s devoted to and a streak of independence our advisers really should have expected from someone who chose to work as a tagger in border space. Hiring a Palantine privateer as her head of security set the cat among the pigeons here.”

“The war is over,” Liam said. “He’s a good man.”

“They killed Hermione.”

“I’m sorry, Francis.”

His friend rose clumsily, blinking rapidly. “If we can’t keep the people we love safe, what good are we?”

Francis had to keep his wife and sons safe. He cared about his brother’s happiness. Plus, he had an entire realm and its future to struggle with.

But Liam had his own problems. Moreover, he’d learned in the harsh school of war that abandoning one’s own concerns till a better time out of sympathy for others’ needs never worked. There was never a better time. “Were you aware the Zangmos were breeding Forgotten into their family line?”

Francis halted his retreat to the door and his retreat from his own emotions. “The Zangmos? No. However, Willow is evidence they included royals in their breeding program, as you call it. Sly kid, her son, hiding his sensitivity from everyone.”

Lucas despised what Francis craved for his sons. That would be tough for Francis to accept, and understanding his worry, Liam restrained his own response that Lucas would have confided his secret if anyone in his life had shown they gave a damn for him, personally. Lucas’s trust in Nora, and his loyalty, was proof that Lucas was more than a sulky kid. “Is a personality transfer possible?”

Francis’s sardonic laugh was a blast from the past.

Despite everything, Liam’s mouth twitched upward at the once-familiar sound.

“The Quirinals tried to transfer consciousness a couple of centuries ago.” Quirinal was the third-to-be-settled planet in the Human Sector. Capitoline had been at war with them almost as often as with Palantine. “Mind-wipes are catastrophic. I’ve seen old video of it.”

“Two centuries ago,” Liam said neutrally.

“Burrs don’t change. The obliteration of a personality leaves the body physically capable of existence. It’s eerie that the non-person can comprehend and follow simple orders. But attempting to layer a new personality on top of the obliterated one was worse. The Quirinal experiment showed the subjects had to be restrained, and ultimately, ended. They tried to tear themselves apart, literally clawing themselves open.”

A nightmare vision flashed across Liam’s imagination; that of a person mindlessly trying to rip out an invading personality. It was akin to the ancient notion of demonic possession.

“If Zangmo had seen that vision, he wouldn’t have tried to live on via a fantasy of personality transfer,” Francis concluded.

Was Francis right, that the transfer of consciousness via a burr-enabled mind-wipe preparing the victim’s body for possession was as impossible now as it had proven two centuries ago? Or did Stanley Zangmo have access to other research? Did he believe, as Nora did, that while the burrs mightn’t have changed, people’s ability to use them had?

The royals benefited from a society that remained as it had been for half a millennium. They were at the top of the pile. But did that blind them to change?

Nora believed that, epigenetically, humans sensitive to burrs had changed, and that those changes, apparently untracked by the royals, meant the Forgotten could use burrs differently. She had a point. Life didn’t stagnate. It evolved. Logically, that meant humans’ ability to use burrs would also change.

“Good night, Liam.” The weariness in Francis’s voice sounded a lot like good-bye.

The shared chapter of their life together, the one begun at the Naval Academy, had ended. Liam had resigned his commission. Francis had a crown prince’s responsibilities. To continue their friendship, both would have to bend.

“Good night, Francis.”

Chapter 13

Breakfast at Liam’s family’s home was heartbreaking. Nora emerged from it having taken on a small part of the family’s grief. Susan Kimani was a beautiful soul whom they were losing too soon.

The Admiralty had called Liam in for an urgent debrief on life on the Hadrian Line, and undoubtedly, to discuss a contract for fuel cells with the new chairman of Blazing Kangaroo Corporation. He was going because he wanted backup for the RC Genghis Khan. The Hadrian Line needed additional Navy ships to patrol the region and additional Customs officers and ships to manage the area around Border Station.

Trent and another Realm Edge Security guard had a new, armored car drawn up in front of the Kimani family’s apartment block. After a curt nod for Nora, Liam ducked into it.

Molly waited in the Royal Guards car that had driven them there. After a glimpse of Nora’s face, she closed her mouth on whatever briefing she’d been about to deliver. In fact, she turned and gazed out the window.

The other rear window was Nora’s. She hadn’t been on the edge of tears. Like Liam, she preferred not to parade her emotions in public. Nevertheless, she was grateful for the small gift of privacy in which to recover her balance. The city sped past, barely noticed.

“The vaults,” she said when she was ready for conversation.

Gage and a partner followed in another car. Ben had been busy with more than the Salmar property. He’d begun purchasing a fleet of vehicles.

“They’re austere,” Molly said. “The Originals designed them and the individual shield cases for the burrs. Some of their descendants were able to replicate their designs. Occasionally, people are affected badly by the vaults. Even those who are normally okay underground can be overwhelmed by claustrophobia. But I’ve never heard of it happening to a sensitive. You all seem enthralled by the burrs.”

“But they’re in their own cases, aren’t they?” That’s what the Royal Guards who’d interviewed her on the RP Keying about the leaking shield case she’d noticed around the burr Willow wielded had implied.

“Yes. But royals take them out to practice with. You won’t have that right, at least, not yet.”

Nora shrugged. “Mutual mistrust is fair.”

“We’re not your enemy, Nora,” Molly said earnestly.

Nora laughed. “Yuri said something similar, as he forced me out of my comfortable future on Border Station and into this nest of vipers.”

The Royal Guard captain cocked her head. “Who do you consider vipers? Why?”

“People have different agendas. I’m not sure how far some people would go to use me to their ends.”

“That’s fair.” Molly drummed her fingers against the door handle. “But that is what we’re for. The Royal Guards. When I say we’re not your enemy, I meant it. We will keep you safe.”

“For your definition of safe. My definition includes freedom.”

Molly smiled. “Spoken like someone from border space.”

The car descended under the palace, and they let their conversation lapse.

Exiting the carpark, Molly led Nora, Gage and two Royal Guards through another security check before entering an elevator and descending further. Its doors opened to a sterile corridor, reminiscent of a military hospital’s stripped down functionality.

Nora imagined Lucas as a tiny five-year-old boy trailing beside the imperious stranger who was his ducal grandfather, utterly lost in this bleak maze.

It made her furious.

Molly scanned her ID and pushed open a door. “Nora, if you’ll take a seat in here, Gage can stand guard outside.”

The air in the room smelled dead. The Border Station docks had better air quality.

Nora sat at a narrow table. Two empty chairs faced her.

The two burr scientists who entered a couple of minutes later to run her through a series of tests encountered a woman determined to be distantly cooperative; not combative, but disapproving. The younger man attempted encouragement. “You’re doing well.”

It was like the test Lucas had described. Every few seconds a light lit on the table and Nora had to indicate if she felt a buzz from a burr or not.

“I’m bored,” Nora said plainly. “But continue.”

They did, although not for long.

Molly interrupted them, ignoring their scowls. “You’re needed, now,” she said to Nora.

It was still morning, earlier than Nora had anticipated, but she almost forgot herself and crossed her fingers in hope that the interruption was Dominic.

Molly didn’t escort her out of the vaults, but further down the corridor. Gage followed as Molly briefed Nora in an undertone. “Crown Prince Dominic has arrived unannounced. No one knew he was coming. He hasn’t spoken to the King or anyone yet. He’s insisting on meeting you.”

Through an open door, Nora glimpsed Ambassador Hamish Yakamia.

His hands twisted around each other before he shoved them in his pockets, disrupting the elegant line of his pants. He avoided the eyes of the man standing close by glaring at him.

Crown Prince Dominic’s dark auburn hair was cut short. Heavy brows arched over the unusual green eyes Nora and he had inherited from their father. His tall body was neither lean nor fat. He’d have appeared average if not for the tension radiating off him. “The bastard, I presume? Hoping for a family reunion?”

Hamish flinched.

Nora recognized Hamish’s fear of Dominic’s famous volatility. She didn’t share it. “I already have one pathetic half-brother, on my mother’s side. I don’t need another.” She turned to Gage. “Stay outside, please. There are already too many looky-loos in here.”

“Ha.” Dominic overheard and agreed. “Is it you or me they’re most curious about?”

“I hope they’ve offered their sympathy,” Nora said quietly. “I am very sorry for your loss. Hermione is mourned by everyone.”

A couple of the onlookers coughed, embarrassed, though those weren’t Royal Guards.

Nora thought about asking for the scientists to be removed, and decided against it.

“You never even met her.” Dominic rejected her sympathy.

“Princess Hermione is my adopted daughter’s hero. I have to ask, how are her ponies?”

Dominic gaped at her. Then his mouth closed. He waved off Hamish, who’d sidled up to them now that Nora proved capable of handling Dominic’s rudeness. “They miss her.”

Her idea had been to poke Dominic off-balance so he’d listen to her. But his sincere grief rendered her ashamed of her manipulations. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be family. That’s up to you. But I have to give you a hug from Aria to give to the ponies.”

He stood awkwardly frozen in her, admittedly equally awkward, embrace. At the end of it, she rubbed his nose.

He spluttered.

She grinned crookedly. “The hug was for the ponies. You always rub their noses.”

Around them, every single person wore an expression of horror and horrified anticipation. The Capitoline Royal Guards rather obviously yearned to haul her away from her volatile half-brother.

Dominic laughed.

When he quieted, she said simply. “They’ll have told you that I married Captain Liam Kimani. I love him.” As Dominic had loved Hermione. “We only learned yesterday that his mom has bone cancer.” Nora didn’t wait for any expression of sympathy, if it would have been forthcoming. “Dominic, can burrs obliterate cancer cells?”

“No.”

She hadn’t expected they could. “It was worth asking.”

“Yes.” He eyed her irresolutely. “Liam Kimani. Hermione liked him. She said he was kind. She had a story of him carrying one of her miniature ponies when he visited her brother Francis. There’d been an accident. Fencing wire. Hermione was right. Captain Kimani saved people on the RP Plymouth. I’d have risked them for my ego. He traded his reputation for their lives and to end the war. He could have blown us all up to kill me.”

“That’s not him,” she said easily, confident in her husband. “As for his reputation, it’s been resurrected as you become the bad guy in Capitoline eyes.”

He shrugged that off. But then he grabbed her wrist. “I resent her family,” he confided abruptly. “They had years with her. Our time was measured in months. But I can’t be angry. They have that right. I’m the husband who failed to protect her. She died!” Outrage and grief mingled explosively. He flung her arm away from him. Then registered the protective surge forward of the Royal Guards. “Sorry.”

The Royal Guards halted.

Nora noted that Palantine Royal Guards, as well as Capitoline ones, had moved to intervene. Had they intended to defend Dominic from the Capitoline Royal Guards, or had it been Nora they’d have protected?

“Hurt me and I strike back.” She’d have said more, but Casimir flushed an ugly red.

“I am sorry.” He meant it. “I have to face her family, and they’re going to hate me.”

Nora considered his hunched posture.

It hinted at the boy he’d been: awkward, yearning for emotional connection, and expecting emotional or physical blows.

Queen Sarah really was a queen witch.

“Sometimes shared grief brings you closer. Sometimes it doesn’t.” Nora’s own in-laws, Ethan’s family, considered her family. They loved her for her, but also for her connection to Ethan. Happy memories tied them together. She had to find time to meet with them, soon. Even if it meant them leaving their farm and traveling to Bangalore, they’d be up for it. “I realize that Liam as your brother-in-law is weird, but we’re family, if we choose to be.”

Dominic peeked sideways at her. “Hamish said you had a secret about me.”

“We can speak privately later—”

A door or a chair or something crashed. Francis stormed into the room. “What the hell is he doing in our vaults?”

Nora patted Dominic’s shoulder. “Not so much a secret as something we can do together. When it comes to the burrs, I have strength. You have training and control. I want to open the Origin black hole. Imagine how our lives would change if we could escape the Human Sector. What do you say, brother?”

Want More?

Cajole is out March 28 (pre-order link https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MVP5X4Z/ ) with Resolve (pre-order link https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MVPF6TR/ ) completing the Adventures of a Xeno-Archaeologist series in June. I’m not giving any hints, not a peep, as to what’s ahead for Nora, Liam and everyone. It’s complicated, in the best of ways.

2021 has certainly been an interesting year. I hope the new year brings us all joy and peace, health and happiness, and the freedom to pursue our dreams. Have a wonderful New Year!

Until the next book

Jenny

***

To stay up to date on new releases from me, please follow my author page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jenny-Schwartz/e/B0042MAD86

Catch up with me at my Facebook page, on Twitter @Jenny_Schwartz, or at my website.

Other Series

Uncertain Sanctuary:

The House That Walked Between Worlds

House In Hiding

The House That Fought

The Faerene Apocalypse:

Stray Magic

Bound Magic

Loyal Magic

First Magic

Rough Magic

Interstellar Sheriff:

Space Deputy

Space Rodeo

Space Specter

Space Baby

Shamans & Shifters Space Opera series. Complete (for now):

Her Robot Wolf

Cosmic Catalyst

Shattered Earth

Jingle Stars

The Ceph Sector

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Want More?