The Emperor's New Clothes (Royce Ree #1) (3 page)

-Independent Baldasshi Hover-Taxi
Driver

Excerpt from verbatim report by Agent R.
Ree

Their chosen exit disgorged them right
onto a public thoroughfare in the city of Nessadar. The street was
empty—the binary star-system’s second, dimmer, sun was just
clearing the horizon.

Les had asked for something bad to
happen, and it had.
What god would be irresponsible enough to
grant
my
prayers?

Elation had been seared out of his
veins, leaving behind a knot in his throat, and a memory, of that
vivid tang of blood….He looked down at his hands. His fingertips
were tinged red from closing the one guard’s eyes. He couldn’t get
to the other two.

Cold comfort, that Royce wasn’t here for
the drive after all. But it did stop his heart’s hapless
flip-flopping, replacing it with purpose. He had to warn someone of
the Kova’s presence.

Before it was too late.

Royce, in the lead, was halfway down the
street already. He moved with a lackadaisical grace that belied the
direness of their current situation. Then again, his voice hadn’t
lost its confident tone even as the Kovan paramilitary team raced
over their heads.

Les wondered if he’d imagined that
anguished look on Royce’s face, in that first moment they startled
each other in the lab. He must have. It was wishful thinking—Royce
was capable of many things: daring escapes, single-minded focus,
brilliance. But not
anguish
. Certainly not regret, the kind
that made Les want to babble, about something, anything, just to
hear Royce say his name once again.

“Les,” said Royce, “keep an eye out for
a trash incinerator.”

“Why?”

“The first one you see,” he cast over
his shoulder, without explanation, and continued down the
street.

The familiar, smug, attitude made Les
want to chuck something at the back of Royce’s dark head. Or
wrestle him to the ground and kiss him till he couldn’t breathe.
Gritting his teeth, Les contained both impulses, and started
scanning the street.

There was a green bin, with a Baldasshi
civic-services sign not ten meters away from him.

How did Royce miss it?

“There!” Les called, pointing towards
the device. Royce nodded, and increased his pace, forcing Les to
lengthen his stride. Royce approached the bin and casually flicked
open his vibra-blade. Before Les could say anything, Royce sank it
into the incinerator’s polymer shell.

Instead of spewing gouts of superheated
plasma through the breach, the incinerator’s maintenance panel
popped open.

Les started breathing again.

Royce reached inside, pulled out a
nondescript black bag, and turned to Les with a grin.

The world snapped into focus.

“You planned this,” Les said.

“Um…yes?” said Royce. “That’s what one
does, generally, when a heist is required.”

“No. The Kova. You
knew
they were
coming to the Institute today.”

Royce sighed, and leaned back against
the broken incinerator.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“The Kova took down most of the defenses, cut the comm lines in
case some Baldasshi guard got courageous. I just…took advantage of
it.”

“You knew they would kill the
guards.”

“Not until the claxon went off,” said
Royce. “Then…it was inevitable.”

“You could have warned them.”

“And failed the mission, sure.”

The nonchalance took Les by surprise. It
shouldn’t have.

Same old Royce.

“The guards had names,” he said.

Royce looked a bit surprised. “I expect
so.”

“They were my
kin
.”

“Professionals like us,” said Royce, a
note of censure in his voice. “Don’t buy their own cover
stories.”

Les wanted to rip that look off his
face. “You might as well have murdered them yourself.”

Royce’s gaze narrowed. “Now that,” he
said, “is unfair.” His eyes glittered with a decidedly unfriendly
look. “I didn’t trip the alarm. If it was just me in there, nobody
would know anything was missing. Ever.”

It was not an idle boast. “Because you
planned for the Kova to neutralize the guards.”

“It saved our asses,” says Royce. “I
care more about your safety than—”

“Care? Let’s not delude ourselves, Agent
Ree. The Imperial Command in my neck obliges you to render
assistance.”

Royce’s gaze, hot and angry up to this
point, turned cold. “You are quite right, Lord Les’Anther. A rabid
dog with
that
chip on it, I’d pat it on the head, feed it
kibble and take it home for the night.” Royce smiled, and the sheer
viciousness of the expression made Les want to step back.

He held his ground, refusing to let his
gaze waver. “The Academy is just a few blocks from here. Raw
recruits, Royce, with policemen as their commanders. They have to
be warned.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Royce’s posture
changed subtly.

Ready to grab me if I make a run for
it.

“You don’t think they know by now?”
asked Royce. “Hell, the hover-cab driver that dropped me off knew
the Kova were invading.”

The drivers may have known. The rest
of Baldessh didn’t
. The rest of Baldessh voted to join with the
Kova. And the Princess’s broadcast last week…
she was animated,
excited.
“The takeover was supposed to be peaceful. The Academy
may be expecting non-hostiles. I have a duty to—”

“No,” said Royce. “What you
have
is an Imperial Command, embedded in the back of your fucking
neck.”

Les tried to keep from snarling. “So I’m
supposed to hop on a ship, just forget the fact that they
murdered
people last night?”

“Yup,” said Royce, and raised a hand to
forestall Les’s objections. “
Imperial Command.
You don’t
have a choice. Neither do I. So I want you to take this bag into
the refresher of a bar two blocks from here.”

“Some things are more important than a
damn mission,” hissed Les.

“The Empire you are sworn to serve,”
said Royce, as if he hadn’t heard Les’s words. “Or…,”

Les couldn’t help but complete the
sentence:
or the Baldasshi, who invited their doom upon
themselves.

“Use the bag,” said Royce. He thrust it
into Les’s hands, and took the lead again.

For eleven billion years, the Empire
has watched lifeforms evolve across a million worlds. Trees,
insects, fish. Our very own household pests.
People
, honoured advisors, whose genome is so very
similar to the way ours used to be in the beforetimes.

Obviously, there is a mystery at the
heart of the Universe. And part of it, the part my respected
isolationist colleagues want you to ignore, is that
we
, nobody else, carried the infection
of life into this universe with us.

-Val’Anther Dai-Nees, “Introduction to
Panspermia.”

I have to survive long enough
to
...right the wrongs done to Baldessh? Make sure their drive
remained theirs? Explain himself to the Emperor? Find the
traitor?

Les clawed, savagely, for clarity.
One thing at a time
. His best shot at surviving long enough
to…whatever…had ordered him to “use what’s in the bag”, in this
particular refresher.

Even the taps here were near-perfect
models of antique Baldasshi metalwork. Synthetic materials and
holograms combined to give an impression of warm wood, polished to
a shine.

He wondered what story Royce would feed
the bartender—full introductions would be required in a place like
this. Then again, this was Royce Ree. There would be a Plan in
place. Several, to cover every contingency from injury to a pet
elephant.

Les locked the ‘fresher door, then
placed Royce’s bag onto the stone counter. Inside, he found a
toolbox, a pair of blue coveralls, and a standard Ops kit:
ballistic, stunner, first-aid supplies, basic comm-supplies, basic
disguise materials.

It is the last, obviously, that he was
meant to use. Les picked up the scissors, and got to work.

Sometime later, he took in the full
effect of his efforts in the mirror. His flowing hair had been cut
to shoulder length, dyed an Imperial jet-black. The face-mod
inserts destroyed the angular lines of his face, thickened his
lips. Enough, he hoped, to fool the Baldasshi’s crude homebrew of
face-recognition algorithms.

As a last step, he donned the overalls,
then packed everything up, and returned to the bar proper.

To his surprise Royce was deep in
conversation with the bartender. And he’d obviously made use of a
disguise kit as well.

How many black bags has he got stashed
around here?

With a vision of planetwide trash
incinerator breakdowns dancing in Les’s head, he approached the bar
and his almost-unrecognizable ex-husband. Royce’s hair was bleached
a straw blonde, and streaked with garish orange stripes. The
face-inserts gave him the listless look typical of an indentured
Cartel dockworker.

Les’s entry attracted Royce’s attention.
Again, a look flit across his face that Les would have described as
anguished, had it but graced the features of anyone other than
Royce Ree.

“Come, love,” Royce gestured, then
pretended he didn’t see Les wince, “meet our fourth-cousin.”

Royce’s command of Baldoon, Baldessh’s
primary dialect, was idiom-perfect.

“Hello, cousin,” said Les, and sat down
on the indicated barstool. At least Royce’s story saved him from
having to think up a spur-of-the-moment family-tree.
Beyond
dangerous, to use the one designed for his lab-technician
cover.

“Good disguises,” said the bartender.
Les tried not to choke. “But if you want my advice, get married,
then go back home.” He reached for a bottle of synthahol and
uncorked it. Royce had already been served something in a
glass.

Les feigned a grateful smile in the
man’s direction, and took a sip to give himself time to think. So
Royce and he were playing runaway lovers. And despite what the
other agent did or did not believe, Les was a professional. He
gestured, subtly:
got it.

Royce did not respond.

“What can they do after you’re married,
eh?” continued the bartender.

Les judged the question to be purely
rhetorical. He sighed and put down his bottle.

“That’s what I keep
telling
him,”
said Les, tilting his head towards Royce. “But he hates my mother.
Won’t even give her a chance.”

The Baldasshi glared at Royce. “My aunt
is a good woman.”

Royce raised his hands defensively,
giving Les a dirty look in the process. The bartender rolled his
eyes, and walked away to deal with another customer.

Les concentrated on his drink. The cool
liquid slipped down his throat, relieving a thirst he didn’t know
he had.

“She hated me first,” muttered Royce. It
was highly doubtful “she” in this case referred to Les’s fictional
Baldasshi mother. No, Royce meant Lady Anther who did, indeed, hate
him first.

This was pointless. Neither of their
missions would be served if they continued arguing. So Les
gestured:
You Make Good Cover. Less Questions.

“Whole thing is nuts,” said Royce, still
murmuring into his glass. “What sane person would want to be
related to an entire fucking
planet
?”

“It was…strange. But…” It had been a
powerful force pulling Les deeper into my cover identity.

“My planet, my tribe?” asked Royce.

He knows me too well
. The
Baldasshi net of interconnected relationships, all traced to the
current reigning monarch, it was not so different from the way Les
himself was raised.

“Adoptive,” said Les. “At least for a
time.”

Royce blinked.

So “adoption” is still a loaded word for
him.

“I’m sorry,” Royce said after a minute.
“I couldn’t warn the guards.”

“I know,” Les replied, summoning a smile
from gods-knew-where. But the silence they lapsed into was less
strained than before.

“About the academy,” said Royce, when
his glass was almost empty, “all they’ve got in there are raw
recruits. The Kova are far too smart to hurt a baby force like
that. Not when a simple uniform change turns it into a
Kovan
navy instead of Baldasshi.”

Some part of Les’s tension drained away
at Royce’s words. “You’re right,” he said.

They finished their drinks at
approximately the same time, just as the bartender returned.

“Gotta close up for a bit,” he said.
“Need to feed the bear.”

Royce reached for his belt-pouch.

“On me,” said the bartender, waving away
the credit-chit in Royce’s hand. “What are cousins for, eh?”

It was a well-worn joke amongst the
Baldasshi. Les laughed along with the others, and if his laughter
was a little weak, nobody seemed to notice.

Royce makes their farewells, and rose.
And as soon as he stepped outside the bar, the languor that had
suffused his posture up to now disappeared.

“Where to?” Les asked.

“Spaceport.”

The Baldasshi have taken to
Regia—credits—like fish to water. Who knows what it’ll do to their
genome in the long run, but for now it makes them the darlings of
the Cartels. Not like most of the new-FTLers, sticking to their
damn gold standards and cryptocurrencies….

-Courier Pilot, Gaste Hospitality Trade
Cartel

Conversation overheard at spaceport
cantina, Mrigir Prime

Most of Baldasshi’s offworld imports
come in through its equatorial spaceport. And in the port’s
sprawling launch zone, filled with hangars and shipyards and
offices, the presence of two dockworkers passed without notice.