Chapter 33: Turnabout

The Errant Magpie jerked upwards. Chloe would have been hurled across the bridge if the ship's artificial gravity hadn't dampened the acceleration. Instead, she recognized the motion only from the images flashing across the main screen.

"Strap in, Your Highess, Commander Slava," Tarkov, the Kronistine helmsman, called from the front of the bridge. "This could get choppy."

Chloe noticed he didn't bother to warn Rudy, who strapped into an empty chair anyway.

She wondered how much maneuvering the Magpie could do. The Mother Goose could never have executed such a turn at all, much less one capable of taxing the newer ship's obviously better-than-line-model inertial dampeners.

Slava asked, "Where is Lord Kyrillos?"

Chloe realized with a start that the hybrid commanded in Stephan's absence. Until the Kronistine men revealed their actual allegiance, he'd acted the part of a common thug.

"I've lost contact, Commander," Quinn, the sensor man, said. "He's stealthed."

"The Reformer?"

"Coming in fast," Quinn said. "It will be onscreen – now."

The Magpie finished its turn toward the sea of stars. A blunt wedge loomed on their left, its well-lit exterior growing larger with every second.

Tarkov glanced over his shoulder. "Sir?"

"That is not so good," Slava said. "Your Highness forgive us, we must wait."

"It's your ship," Chloe said. "And please, don't call me that."

For an awful moment, Chloe thought the Reformer intended to ram the battlecruiser. Its searchlights lanced at the battlecruiser all across the visual spectrum and even beyond, painfully bright.

Then she realized the bigger ship's shields had come up, distorting the view. The destroyer executed what seemed like an impossibly close pass before vanishing overhead.

"Now?" Tarkov asked.

"Wait for Lord Kyrillos," Slava said.

A mecha's smaller searchlight pierced the hangar.

Chloe tensed. The Magpie, she realized, had its own lights off. But wouldn't the Feds recognize it anyway?

They never got the chance.

A blur shot from the shadows beneath them. The probing searchlight spun wildly into the vacuum, still attached to the dismembered arm of the mecha bearing it.

A silvery form unfolded before the line mecha, bathing the hangar in brilliant light.

For a moment, Chloe thought it was her birth mother's mecha, but it looked somewhat smaller, more mechanical than her parents had described that machine. Besides, Chloe recognized the outline if not the color scheme: Stephan's machine. "Why does he look like that?" she asked.

"I can guess," Rudy said. "I'll bet the Black Rook there is trying to sell Marcel on you having your 'erinyes' and knowing how to use it. I'll also bet he's piping his communications through the battlecruiser so it looks like he's still aboard."

"This is so," Slava said.

"But why?" Chloe asked. "Say I did have my mother's mecha. Say I even knew how to fight. It still wouldn't amount to a hill of beans to a whole destroyer, right?"

Slava, Tarkov and Quinn exchanged glances.

Chloe gulped. "Right?"

"What exactly is Stephan trying to sell?" Rudy asked. "I think we better know, in case we need to back up his bluff."

"Erinyes," Slava said. "That is an Imperial's mecha. With that, with Her Highness to pilot it? Admiral Avalon would have no time to be afraid."

"You expect us to believe," Rudy said, "that one mecha, however powerful, could take on a modern destroyer?"

"Or a whole fleet," Slava said.

"Then how come this 'erinyes' is sitting in a mecha bay on a dead battlecruiser, Chloe grew up with adoptive parents instead of her allegedly invincible real ones, and we're cutting and running?"

Slava's whole head bent forward with a frown of concentration, difficult for his jaw to form. After a long time, he said, "That, I do not know, Oligarch's son."

Rudy groaned. "Wonderful."

Chloe kept out of the interchange. She felt an inkling of a hunch, an answer just beyond her reach, but her mind refused to grasp it. She wondered why her intuition – her clairvoyance, since she had no reason to deny what it was anymore – instinctively shied from this truth.

Once she learned to use her powers, she'd understand.

She blinked. She had come to the battlecruiser for knowledge and power, believing her mother's mecha held both. In doing so, she had delivered herself into the hands of people who could, who surely would, train her to use her psychic heritage.

Did she know for sure which outcome her clairvoyance had predicted?

Before she could consider the implications, the view on the screen recaptured her attention.

Stephan might not wield the power to destroy the Reformer, but his mecha had so far done nothing to dispel the illusion he did. Every sweep of his machine's glowing arms sent a wave of laser-like white light rippling through a squadron of Fed mecha. The waves cut through stubby line mecha like monomolecular scythes, casting the machines' dismembered remains into deep space. Even if the Reformer hadn't moved to the far side of the battlecruiser to avoid the alleged erinyes, its guns could not have targeted something as small as the Black Rook through the cruiser's powerful gravitic shield.

"Are you sure," Chloe asked, "he can't beat them all?"

"Those crappy line mecha are just here to flush us out," Rudy said. "Once the elite mechaneers in Wyverns show up, much less the Divine Auric Drake, Stephan will have to bug out."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"That is not so certain," Slava said. "It is the ship my lord fears, not the men."

"Oh, please," Rudy said. "That's the kind of attitude that lost you guys the Civil War."

The ursid growled.

"What? You did, remember? Lose, I mean. Even before the Feds butted their noses in, the Oligarchy was winning."

Chloe reached for his arm. "Rudy…"

He glanced at her. "You don't buy this crap, do you, Clo?"

"Stephan does seem awfully powerful." She thought, but didn't say, he beat you using one of those 'crappy line mecha' you're disparaging, and you in your Epee. Doesn't him being powerful make that less shameful?

Rudy rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying, he's ridiculously outnumbered. The Feds can take these kinds of losses. Billions of kids would give an arm and a leg to call themselves Federal Navy mechaneers. A war hero never has to sleep alone, you know? And those line mecha literally build themselves. I've seen the nanopaste colonies working the asteroid belts. Plop a canister down, come back a month later and you've got a batch of newly minted cookie-cutter mecha."

"This does not mean my lord loses," Slava said, "only that his winning this fight does not win a war."

"It means the Feds will keep throwing troops at him until he makes a mistake," Rudy said. "Everybody makes mistakes, and it only takes one. How many young noblemen you guys have waiting on an opening in the mechaneer corps? Ten? Five? Any?"

Slava didn't answer verbally. His curious, ursid frown said volumes.

"Thought so," Rudy said. "What about mecha? How come you men-at-arms don't get fancy ones like your boss's? Don't suppose you can't make new ones like that?"

Again, Rudy's question elicited no answer.

"Look," he continued, "I'll be honest – I really don't want you guys to build back up and win a new Civil War, although I'm not sold on the idea the Feds are an improvement. With that said, you're at least not actively trying to kill me, so here's some free advice: 'your lord' is out there because he wants to show off, not because it's important enough for him to risk his precious noble ass over."

"You have no right," Slava snarled. He surged from the captain's chair.

Rudy met him halfway across the bridge. He rolled inside an overhead swing and kicked himself back and airborn before the ursid could clasp him in a killing grip. The impact rolled Rudy smoothly to his feet and sent Slava rocking back on his heels.

Quinn shot from his seat in defense of his superior. Tarkov apparently didn't dare switch to autopilot when he was waiting for an opening to flee, but he craned his neck to watch.

Rudy vaulted Quinn's lunge and kicked the Kronistine man into Slava as the latter started to right himself. Rudy followed the tangled men down, snagging Quinn's ankle with his own and spinning the stunned sensor operator up into a punch that smashed him across his console to the lower deck where Tarkov sat.

Slava had his footing now, though. He socked Rudy backwards into a darkened, unused bank of controls and lunged after him. The ursid reeled back, gagging, from a punch to the throat. He recovered almost instantly, hurling back a second punch with his massive forearm and smashing Rudy into a screen.

Rudy didn't stay down long. He whipped his legs up to grip the ursid's neck. When Slava pulled his arm back to wrench Rudy's legs away, Rudy snapped himself forward at the waist and jabbed the ursid's nose. The momentum sent them both sliding toward the center of the bridge, Rudy's fists shooting like pistons into his dazed opponent's snout. He flipped off before Slava crashed to the deck.

Chloe had watched the whole exchange in a single unconsciously held breath.

Now she exhaled – and moved.

"Get the sensor man," Rudy shouted. "We can take the ship now –"

Chloe tackled him.

She couldn't have hoped to scratch Rudy in a fair fight. She lacked anything approaching combat training, much less martial arts, he outmassed her by kilos overall and even more in muscle mass, and she possessed all the killer instinct of a frightened deer.

But knock him back while he stared, stunned?

That, she could do.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, her face flush and her knuckles white with rage.

He stared up at her. "Thought we were gonna –"

"You didn't think, Rudy, not even a little. You never think. You just wing it and fly by the seat of your pants and want to make a big show of fighting these men because you're mad Stephan's a better fighter!"

"We planned on this, Chloe," Rudy hissed. "Remember? We had it all worked out."

"When we thought we were dealing with gangsters," she said. "Even then, you swore you'd only fight them if they betrayed us or if you thought it was the only way we'd survive."

"Whatever you say – Princess." Rudy spat the title like a curse.

Chloe climbed unsteadily to her feet and took a step back.

She felt Slava's hand on her arm, tensed.

"You are well, Highness?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. "Rudy would never hurt me."

"Too bad the feeling isn't mutual," Rudy said. He flipped to his feet and backed up against a console. "Seeing as how you probably just got me killed."

"No one is going to hurt you, Rudy," Chloe said. "These men aren't gangsters. They're men-at-arms to a member of the mechaneer-aristocracy, and they think that I'm the daughter of the Emperor. Even if they're wrong, I'm at least a noble."

"They're Stephan's thugs," Rudy said. "They may be something else as well as gangsters, but that doesn't mean they're any less gangsters."

"But they aren't really criminals," Chloe said. She looked over her shoulder at Slava's bloodied face. "They just pretend to be part of the Syndicate to sneak around the Federated Stars. Right?"

The ursid didn't answer.

"How do you think," Rudy said, waving a hand to encompass the Magpie's battered bridge, "they keep this operation running? The Feds froze all the nobles' assets and drove them from all but the most remote of their physical holdings. Stephan does operate the Kronistine Syndicate. It's the only thing that makes sense. In fact, I'll bet it's nothing new. When did you people take the Syndicate over?"

"There was no need," Slava said. "It is ours, always was. Intelligence division."

"You boys must've been pretty slick back then. Are you slipping nowadays, or are most people as gullible as Chloe?"

She flushed, more embarrassed because she couldn't deny it than angry because he said it.

"It is not so hard," Slava said. "The crime is always there. We organize. We guide. Then we listen. Effective, yes?"

"Like I said, pretty slick. I doubt Otto has as good of an intelligence service, and the Feds sure as hell don't."

"What happens now?" Chloe asked.

"Now," Rudy said, "your friends here probably shoot me."

She followed his gaze. Quinn had drawn a long, heavy-caliber pistol. He pointed it at Rudy's chest.

"No," Chloe cried. "You can't!"

"He attacked us, Your Highness," the sensor man said. "He could've killed me, knocking me over the railing like that. Or all of us, if he damaged the controls. For your safety, we have to put him down."

"He made a mistake," Chloe said. She tried to interpose herself between Rudy and Quinn, but Slava's grip was iron on her arm. She whirled on him, twisting uncomfortably. "He thought it was what I wanted."

"It does not matter," Slava said. "Quinn –"

The Kronistine helmsman inclined his head. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Rudy tensed, his eyes flashing about as he searched for cover and a way to get to it.

Slava stood impassive, his bloodied jaws forming his subordinate's name.

Tarkov split his attention between the standoff and the main screen, where the Black Rook's arm froze, faux-erinyes light forming to lash out at the first of the elite Wyvern mecha cresting the view.

The chronometer's count of seconds disappeared, awaiting its near-instantaneous replacement.

A drop of blood, Slava's or Rudy's, pooled at the edge of a broken console and, sparked into motion by a stray wire, began its plummet to the floor.

Chloe saw it all, down to the minutest detail. She felt like she had an eternity to take it all in, like she could step outside the moment and put it in a glass and keep it forever.

Then time flowed back, and a gun crashed, and Chloe moved.