The sound of a running shower woke Ethan. Warm light shined through the frosted glass leading to his bathroom and Lati’s soft humming seeped through the door.
He rose and stretched. His body ached less than he expected, thanks to his extremely comfy bed, which had been built to handle significantly heavier people than both himself and Lati. No sign of a hangover, but the clock told him it had only been a few hours since he crashed out.
Combined with the party, it was close to 12 hours after he’d awoken for the space battle with the Torken. His sleep cycle was torched. While nothing stopped him from letting it remain off kilter while in space, he’d need to ensure it aligned with Rylamis Prime at some point. Not to mention he’d likely be asleep while Sai, Heafi, and Yany were awake now.
He changed clothes. Despite having Lati pressed against him, he hadn’t sweat much. Maybe she’d rolled off him in her drunken state.
While cleaning his face using the water dispenser in his room, the bathroom door cracked open.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Lati murmured.
He turned to see her head peeking out, while the door tried to decapitate her. An orange blush filled her cheeks. The black void behind the frosted glass suggested she was naked.
“Do you have a spare towel?” she asked, mechanical eyes glowing in the dim lighting of the room. “I can tell the two in here are for you and… Kiels.”
“Sure,” he said.
There was a gigantic pile of spare towels and other linen hidden away in his quarters, so he tossed her a set. She squealed, ripped the door open and barely caught the fluffy pile. As quickly as she’d set foot in his room, she retreated.
Then the door opened a crack.
“Thanks,” she said. “Um, any chance you could get someone to fetch a spare suit for me? This one is drenched.”
The door closed.
He nodded to himself. Lati hadn’t changed even after everything. As forward as she was in other matters, shyness overwhelmed her when it came to showing skin. He did suspect her soaked bodysuit explained his own pleasant state. It had probably shielded him from the worst of her heat.
After asking one of the service staff to fetch a change of clothes for Lati, he peeked into the living room. The lights remained off. Once his vision adjusted, Kiels’s form became apparent on her bed. She curled up facing away from the door, her tail hanging over the side as she barely fit on to the narrow frame.
He quietly stepped into the room and made himself a coffee. Kiels stirred as the machine hummed, but remained sound asleep.
For good measure, he made Lati a coffee as well. He knew her regular order by heart now.
When he entered it into the drink dispenser, a warning blinked on-screen. It informed him of potentially dangerous caffeine intake, and his analytics module helpfully converted the amount, then told him the caffeine in the beverage might induce caffeine toxicity.
None of this was news to him. Lati, and most Yinil, preferred a concentrated cold brew served thick and ice cold. He’d made the mistake of drinking it once, and made it halfway through the cup before the heart palpitations and shakes forced him to stop.
Something about Yinil biology caused them to process caffeine differently. They’d only discovered the “joy” of coffee upon meeting the Union. Lati told him that her people learned coffee was a thing because a Union delegation gifted them a carton of fancy Faecrim cold brew, somebody drank the whole thing at once, and the Yinil were enlightened.
A knock on the door pulled him away from the dispenser. Lati’s spare bodysuit and undersuit had arrived. A Void Hound and two Faecrim guards stood outside as well, and the Hound didn’t bother hiding her smirk as Ethan retrieved Lati’s clothes.
Kiels remained asleep, so he retreated into his bedroom. Blackness leaned against the frosted glass from the inside of the bathroom.
“I’ve got your clothes,” he said.
Lati pulled the door ajar and he passed her clothes through. She left it open a little, though. The shuffling and squeaking noises as she pulled on her suits came from within, leaving him to imagine the process.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Tired and a little achy, but the alcohol’s been nuked,” she said. “I can’t believe how much she drank. Sure, she’s probably as organic on the inside as I am—not at all—but I’ve got extra shit to neutralize toxins and alcohol. It’s why I’m up and bouncing around, and I bet she’s dreaming about being queen puppy slut.”
“She is still asleep, yes,” Ethan said drily, unsure where Lati’s aggressiveness toward Kiels came from.
“Fucking knew it,” Lati mumbled. The shape beyond the glass shifted, and he suspected she was pulling something over her head. “Anyway, I’ll be fine. Not sure about my pride. I only know what went down because my eyes recorded it. Can’t believe I fought the guards…” She let out a high-pitched whine. “May as well have laid an egg in the corridor.”
“One day you’ll tell me why you keep talking about eggs,” he said.
“And you’ll tell me who this Jesus Christ you keep referring to is. They’re just figures of speech.” She paused. “Unless you’re a techpriestess.”
“Do I want to know?”
“You did ask.”
He let out a breathy laugh. “I suppose.”
The door slid open and Lati emerged, fully dressed in her typical bodysuit. She stretched, giving him a great view.
“Anyway, uh, thanks for putting up with me,” she said.
He pointed at the coffee he’d made for her. “Why don’t we go for a walk and keep talking? Been a while since we’ve just caught up like this, and we pulled off something huge yesterday…” He blinked. “Today.”
She grinned at him, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Heh. Your feats of heroics are already becoming so normal you can’t remember when they happened? Sure. Thanks for the caffeine.”
Her eyes followed him to the door as she took a deep slurp. After a moment, she followed him, her wings flexing nervously behind her. A smirk graced her face as they tiptoed through the dark living room and she glanced at the dozing Kiels.
Once outside, he strode down the ship’s corridors and let Lati catch up. She bounced beside him after a quick scan of the nearby guards. The Hound and Faecrim followed them at a distance, proving they were taking the place of Kiels while she remained indisposed.
Lati remained quiet, save for the noisy clacking of her armored boots against the floor. Ordinarily, the corridors would bustle with crew between shifts but only guards watched them. The battle had thrown things off, hopefully only temporarily.
Then again, they had a little over a week in foldspace for everyone to get back in the rhythm. Assuming no more fleets popped up out of nowhere to ambush them.
They entered a long, empty room. The floors and ceilings were lined with glass. Seconds within walking inside, that glass and the entire room transformed into a Japanese garden from Earth, complete with cherry blossoms, stone zen garden, red lanterns, and a distant view of Mount Fuji.
An emulated view, naturally. If he focused, the illusory nature of the room became apparent. His hands passed through everything, as they were little more than holograms.
This room was known as a meditation chamber, although Ethan didn’t quite understand the name. Maintaining gardens and other natural locations on ships was far too expensive, so the Gloria instead used several chambers full of fancy holographic displays and panels to let the crew enjoy nature, or whatever experience they desired. On Dominio, the same technology often relied on psionics to create the visuals from the user’s memories, but that would be dangerous inside foldspace.
“Cute meditation display,” Lati said, tilting her head as she stared at the mountain. “This from Earth?”
“Space Station Renewal had a garden like this. A real one, although less lush.” Ethan ran a hand through a fake cherry blossom. “Maybe more lush. The plants were a bitch to maintain on a space station. I ate lunch there pretty often. It was a memorial to the attacks when the Union first arrived on Earth, I think.”
She pursed her lips. “So this is where you would have grown up if they didn’t bomb your planet to bits?”
“Nah. I grew up half a world away, but a lot of cities were devastated. Fuji—that’s the name of the mountains—looks entirely different now, as they’d built alien weapons projects inside it.”
More than a few natural landmarks turned out to be secret weapons projects. A century of nonsensical conspiracy theories claiming governments were researching alien technology in every nook and cranny desensitized humanity to the possibility it might ever be real, right up until a Taer battleship blasted them from orbit.
Ethan would love to say that losing some natural landmarks would be far better than the cities, but it’s not like the old, corrupt leaders of Earth didn’t put their labs and weapons factories inside major population centers.
He strode along the chamber. The guards didn’t follow them inside, but he suspected there’d be some protecting the other entrance. They’d be undisturbed.
Was he now the corrupt leader of the Rim, and a hypocrite to attack the crooks who fucked over Earth? It felt bizarre to know that bodyguards followed him everywhere he went and that simply entering a room like this ensured nobody would bother him. If somebody had booked it, tough luck. He was the Sovereign.
“Enjoying being the biggest dick on the ship?” Lati asked, pulling him from his thoughts. “You commanded a whole damn space battle and had all those officers desperate to praise you.”
Once again, her grin didn’t reach her eyes.
He shrugged. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I don’t think I understood what it meant to be in charge until today. Watching the battlecruiser’s cannon rounds fly toward us while the shield batteries recharged terrified me. Sure, I was giving orders, but what could I do? I’d made a decision that might have gotten everyone killed, and all I did was sit in a damn chair.”
“You never complained about jobs where you just stood there and let me shoot people,” she said, but her grin vanished.
“We usually went in with a plan and I still had my own gun. Things felt more… in my control.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, as if trying to grasp the intangibility of his own command. “It’s something I’ll have to get used to. I’d be an idiot to try to give it up, not to mention that I don’t think I can.”
Lati opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Lati?” he asked.
She sighed and rubbed one of her horns. “Sorry. Just a stupid thought. So you don’t regret accepting the… offer?” Looking up, she seemed to be hinting that they were probably being watched.
Speaking too openly would be a mistake, but nothing would get done if they bottled literally everything up out of fear.
“No. Do you?” he asked.
“Eh? That’s…” She grimaced and looked away, rubbing one of her cybernetic arms. “I think it’s kinda the same problem. Figured this would be just a bigger job than the past ones. Shoot bitches, look hot next to you, handle some engineering issues. Didn’t think much of this Marshal business. ‘Cept when I got down into engineering, I found myself in command of most of the <fucking> ship.”
“I think that was me. And Poi,” he said drily, then frowned. “You mean that the chief engineer became your subordinate, right?”
“Yeah. Formally, the chief sits beneath the XO, but that’s a sham. It’s the job with the most responsibility. Everything on the ship relies on the fusion drive and batteries, and the chief engineer oversees power distribution. The chief is usually the most important person on a warship save for the captain herself.”
“I get it. Everyone tends to forget, but I trained as an engineer,” Ethan said, and Lati winced. “Never did anything as cool or interesting as serving on a warship, but the reason I did those ‘boring civil engineering’ jobs as a privateer was because it was literally what I trained to do. Often paid better than the shady shit, too.”
“Then imagine if you went back to Earth and you were in charge of all your old superiors,” Lati said. “I never got close to being chief engineer. Suddenly, I’m the top dog in a complicated-ass warship and can boss everyone around.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and her wings cocooned her sides.
Sai’s words from when he’d chosen Lati came to mind. Was Lati getting cold feet?
“If it’s too much responsibility, too fast, we can—” he began to say.
Lati shot him an annoyed look and unwrapped herself, instead placing her hands on her hips. “That’s not what I meant. I handled it, and we got through the battle. No way would I fuck things up after talking a big game about managing the shields. It just…” She closed her eyes. “It just felt weird. Like how I reckon you’re feeling with this shit, right?”
“A bit, yeah,” he admitted.
“Things were easy when it was just the two of us,” she mumbled, unwilling to look him in the eyes. “We had each other’s backs, knew that the bitches clawing at you couldn’t be trusted, and handled the jobs like pros.”
“Pros?” He barked with laughter.
Lati pouted, her cheeks turning a vivid orange. “Fuck you, Ethan. We were damn good.”
“Sure, sure.” He pretended to wipe a tear from an eye. “Is that why you’re so bothered by Kiels?”
The dragon froze up and the retinas of her eyes constricted. “W-what?”
“I’m not stupid,” he said. “She’s thawed toward you, but you’re like a spitting cat.”
“Don’t compare me to a Hotum,” she mumbled. A long pause. “Am I that obvious?”
“Emotional subtlety has never been your strong suit.”
“It annoys me that it’s yours.” She reached out and brushed some hair above his forehead. “If you didn’t talk openly with me like this, such as when we first teamed up and I, uh, got a bit too frisky, I’d never know how you think.”
And now it was time for Ethan to open up a bit, instead of probing Lati. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked past her. She kept pace with him, taking slower steps while looking down at him.
“I told you what things were like when I first got to Dominio, right?” he asked.
“In bits and pieces,” Lati said. “I got the picture. A human male all on their lonesome on Dominio, trying to make it as a privateer while buried in debt. Lots of predators could smell your desperation and would love a prize.”
“Pretty much.” He smiled wryly at the memories, as they were distant enough for him to not be bitter over them. “Within hours of getting through customs and entering Dominio, I got an offer from a Vaelix princess—sent through a Faecrim servant—to serve her for life. Came with a fancy holographic display of the space palace I’d stay in, and images of the female servants I could entertain myself with. I got a few offers to surrender myself to women with so much wealth they made Earth’s greatest businessmen look like beggars.”
“It paid off. Now you’re wealthy enough to make those princesses beg.” Lati grinned. “Literally. Once you fix shit up, I bet you could convince more than a few princesses to serve you in your harem. They’d have a chance for their kids to be part of your dynasty. Their families would happily sell them off.”
He hadn’t thought of that, and wasn’t sure he wanted to entertain the idea.
“Maybe I am, but it’s because my name was basically pulled out a hat,” he said, stopping abruptly. “I’m doing everything I can to become an actual ruler, instead of a fop who hides away while everyone else does the real work. But the problem is the same as when I first arrived on Dominio?”
“Uh… How?” Lati pivoted to stand in front of him, openly confused. They stood only a few dozen feet from the door.
“Trust, Lati.” He met her gaze, and she didn’t look away this time. “I never really got to know many people on Dominio. Almost everyone I met wanted to get in my pants. You were different—”
“After a quick chat on our first mission.” Lati giggled and scratched her horn.
“You came on pretty light even then,” he said. “Most women think when I reject them that I’m playing hard to get, and just keep trying.” He sighed. “I don’t know anyone on this ship. More than that, I don’t know what they truly want. What happens if Sai… if the Union decides they don’t need me or like me? What if Heafi needs to choose between loyalty to the rich assholes who appointed her Steward and me? Hell, someone might be a Mortami spy. You know who I can trust?”
He reached out and poked Lati’s nose. She recoiled and screwed it up, then blinked a few times.
“Oh…” she said.
“I trust you with my life, Lati. That’s why I came to you on Dominio when I needed somebody I knew before I threw everything away and jetted off to the Rim. Like you said, we’ve been a team for years. Maybe it was just because there was no bullshit—”
“I was full of shit for saying that,” she interrupted, grimacing and hunching her shoulders. Her wings practically vanished behind her. “I trust you too. Just… It was a crazy offer you were making and I get a bit defensive when people ask me about you. Everyone always assumes we’re fucking like crazy, and I’m taking jobs with you for your cock. So, yeah, I trust you, too, Ethan. That’s why I came with you, even though I have no fucking clue what’s going to happen.”
Before he could say anything, she stepped up to him and wrapped her arms around him. He blinked in surprise as her warmth ensconced him.
She shuffled around him so that her head rested atop his and her breasts pressed against his neck and the back of his head. Her arms held his chest against her body.
“I’ve been dumb,” she said. “Got so caught up in my own dumb bullshit that I forgot this had to be hard for you, as well. Just… I saw all the women hanging on to you, and all the power you had, and assumed it was perfect. Stupid, huh?”
“I think we’re all pretty stupid when it comes to this emotional crap,” he said, rubbing her arms. He rarely got the opportunity to feel her cybernetics like this. “We’re not psychics like Sai.”
A breathy giggle rumbled against his head. “I really do want to see you fuck the shit out of her. She’s so fucking haughty and full of herself, and she needs to be so much more submissive. The rest…” Silence. “I’ll stop being such a bitch to Kiels.”
“That wasn’t what this was about, but thanks.”
They remained like that for a few seconds. Long enough for him to wonder what came next.
When he tried to move, Lati’s grip tightened.
“Can… can we stay like this for a bit longer?” she asked quietly. “I can’t remember the last time we’ve hugged.”
Honestly, neither could he. “Sure.”
***
After grabbing dinner—or breakfast, depending how Ethan looked at it—with Lati, the pair separated and he returned to his quarters.
Kiels leaned over the far end of the dining table, nursing a tall glass of ice water. A medicine packet sat nearby. Her face was a blotchy mix of pale and flushed, and she looked tired. No signs of bloodshot eyes, but that might be her cybernetics preventing the symptom.
“Are you alright?” Ethan asked, worried about the sight of medicine.
She waved off his concern while taking a big gulp of water. “It looks worse than it is. I just drank way too fucking much too fast. Overwhelmed my enhancements. This stuff”—she held up the medicine—“contains a small charge of nanobots that nukes all the alcohol in my bloodstream.”
He nodded slowly while taking a seat. “Why don’t your cybernetics or other implants do that? Seems pretty smart to have something to keep your bloodstream clear.”
“One, I like feeling drunk… in moderation,” she said. “Two, it’s an easier idea in theory than in practice. Think about it. If the implant has a bunch of nanobots inside me, what replaces them as they break, dissolve, or reach end of life? It’d be a maintenance nightmare.”
“Can’t they maintain themselves?”
“That’s super illegal. Self-replicating machines aren’t managed by the Union, but everyone learns their lesson pretty fast. The Yinil scoffed at everyone, then lost a planet to a replication plague. Had to nuke the shit out of it from orbit and pay the Union a massive fine.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You just said the Union didn’t manage it?”
Kiels downed the rest of her water, heaved a noisy sigh, then moseyed over to the drink dispenser. Coffee this time. “They don’t. The fine was for nuking the shit out of a habitable planet.”
After her drink came out, she began making another. For him, he suspected. She’d picked up on his coffee preference and made him a Faecrim latte.
“I get the feeling the amount of Union laws and conventions is far longer than I’ll ever understand,” Ethan said. “It’s illegal for an interstellar power to blow up their own planet?”
“The Union likes to discourage it, and there’s a big treaty about it. Spaceships carry some bonkers weaponry, so orbital barrages can quickly turn into apocalyptic events. Like a lot of things, we helped make it illegal.” She jabbed a thumb against her chest.
“… this is going to be another horrible story about the crusade, right? Where both sides do horrible things? And thanks,” he said, taking his coffee from her.
Kiels dropped back in her chair, but kicked her feet up this time. She’d left her boots off.
“Eh, it’s more black and white this time. At least to me,” she said. “We crossed the line and got informed of why it existed.”
When he merely stared at her in curiosity, she grimaced.
“I’ll keep it short,” she said. “Don’t want to become a storyteller like some old grandbaba. We were being forced out of a Hotum system we’d just taken. Instead of leaving peacefully, we glassed the planet on our way out.”
Ethan hissed. “Fucking hell.”
“Yeah. Told you it was black and white.” She took a long sip of her coffee while staring over his shoulder. “The Hotum sent a suicide fleet directly to our second-most populous planet right after. Punched through all our best psychics and disruption attempts, so you know they used a powerful Pathbuilder. Killed billions, along with a third of the Empire’s males and the breeding factories containing them.”
“This is your version of black and white?”
She ignored him. “The Union sent us a message afterward. ‘We hold back not because we must, but because we can.’”
The words sent a chill down his spine, and he couldn’t clearly explain why. “That’s a little too casual for a message after vaporizing a planet, isn’t it?”
“It got the point across. Until then, the war between the Union and the Taer was one over territory. Sure, we killed lots of soldiers and dented their precious pride, but they could retake the planets and ‘free’ their people. If we turned the war into a genocidal race war, then they would—and easily could—end it. Those Rho-class psychics and posthumous Omegas could be used to obliterate us entirely, while unleashing nuclear Armageddon en masse and dropping massive asteroids on our people.”
She fell silent, and Ethan wasn’t sure what to say.
The books he’d read tended to gloss over this part. Or, if it came up, the idea of avoiding killing billions of innocents was usually presented almost like a form of chivalry.
In reality, it existed much like the old concept of mutually assured destruction from Earth. Any war that escalated beyond fleets battling one another into planetary annihilation would scar the galaxy deeply, and was therefore discouraged by extreme force.
Kiels spoke up after a brief silence. “I saw the ruins of Iniikim during my training. All special forces do a stint in a space station orbiting it, and we even descend to do some training on the ground. Lots of memorials built on it. Sobers you up about what war can involve. Made me wonder what the Vaelix or Hotum did in the past that made them realize this would be a mistake. Everything the Union does is because of some major fuckup, and they had a long time to fuck things up before anyone else became important.”
“I was wondering that,” Ethan said. “Earth’s history has a nasty trend of brinksmanship paying off, but the Union seems to short circuit that by just hammering anyone who crosses certain lines.”
“The Vaelix play a long game, and that means accepting losses to guarantee a future a lot of us don’t think we’ll see.” She sighed and waved her hands toward him several times. “Okay, okay, enough sad crap. Makes me feel miserable…er.” She grinned and looked him right in the eye. “Enjoy fucking the shit out of Lati? I don’t remember anything after she beat me in the drinking comp, but I know she was jealous as hell that I’m in here and she’s not.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “Fuck her, that is.”
“Suuuuuuure.”
He shook his head. “That’s not our relationship.”
Kiels stared at him for several long seconds. Then she whistled. “Wow. You are serious. You know she wants to fuck you real bad, right?”
“Who on this ship doesn’t?”
Her eyes narrowed and she played with a lock of her black hair. “Well…” Then she froze. “Fuck. Now I feel stupid. You’re not dodging sex because you’re sizing us up or think I’m going to shatter your pelvis. You have some sort of hang up over it, right? Shit. Sorry.”
Kiels rubbed the back of her neck and looked down at the table.
He raised his hands and smiled. “It’s fine. I wouldn’t call it a hang up, and I don’t talk about it for a reason.”
“You have a ship full of women who would happily make a schedule to fill your entire waking life with sex, and you’re refusing. Sounds like a hang up.” She winced at his flat look. “Sorry.”
He sighed. His coffee had run out, but he really didn’t need more caffeine.
Alcohol seemed like a bad idea, but maybe he wanted some if he planned to get his sleep back on track. Holding fast, he held back and just poured some soda.
Having this drink dispenser right here might be bad for his health. He preferred it over the fortified water, though.
“So when you said you wanted to make a gigantic harem, that was bullshit?” Kiels asked, watching him carefully with narrow red eyes. Her ears hung low and her tail remained dead still.
“It’s the sort of thing I’m expected to say,” he said. “It’s funny how even with the vastly different gender roles and ratios, men are still stereotyped to only think with their dicks across the galaxy. Not that it’s complete bullshit.”
Kiels grinned. “I’ve noticed you eating me up with your eyes when I only wear my undersuit. So it’s not some asexual thing. Good to know.” A pause. “So, uh, what’s the deal? If I can ask.”
“You can always ask, but—” he began to say.
She groaned. “Fucking hell, don’t give me that crap.”
He chuckled and sat back down. “I’m surprised you haven’t assumed it’s some Earthling thing. Didn’t you read up on my planet before arriving?”
“Yeah. Equal gender ratio, male dominated society, crazy amount of friction and sexual taboos. It’s like something out of a bad romance novel. There’s a really popular Yinil series making a splash across the Union that’s pretty similar, where the female hero goes to a parallel universe and battles the Patriarchy in a bad political pastiche.” She rolled her eyes. “But what would make me think…” She paused, and zoned out.
Ethan waited. Kiels was consulting her omnimodule.
After a few long seconds, she spluttered. “What the fuck? You practice monogamy? What kind of male-dominated society would limit themselves to one bitch?”
And there it was.
He grinned. “Ready to fight over who becomes my wife? There can only be one.”
“You’ll have to set up a gigantic multi-stage tournament and death arena,” Kiels grumbled. “I can only imagine how crazy people will go. There’ll be princesses and wealthy families from across the galaxy trying to get their claws in you. Only one wife and one line of inheritance for the Rim? Insane.”
“Uh, I was joking.”
“Were you? The info says Earth is an almost exclusively monogamous culture.” She tapped her head. “Or did we inject our crazy, sex-addled ways into you?”
“Let’s go with that,” he said. “But to keep to the topic, the problem is much simpler. I’ve felt… commoditized since leaving Earth. Sure, I’ve gotten my dick wet a few times and enjoyed it, but there’s never felt like a chance to have a real connection.”
“Males are scarce. The fact you were a privateer meant almost everyone you dealt with had probably never fucked one, let alone talked to one without spending money to do so. The rich hoard you, governments cloister you away, and the small number that strike it out alone tend to charge a fortune for a bounce.”
He grunted. That had been the unfortunate reality.
“You can do better now you’re the guy on top, though,” Kiels added.
“Can I? It changes the dynamic, but now…” He sighed and looked away. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s hard not to assume the interest is purely because I’m rich and powerful now. A small part of me… Okay, a very vocal part of me would happily ask you and your platoon to strip down and line up in an empty room so I can fuck all of you. But I also know the only reason you’d do that was because I’m in charge.”
“So that’s your hang up,” she said while nodding. “Okay, that’s better than I expected. So, uh, why aren’t you fucking the <dragon?> You’ve known her for years and if she wants a bounce, it’s not because you’re rich.”
“It’ll happen when it happens,” he said, aware that might be very soon after their recent chat. “Anyway, that’s the long and short of the whole thing. Trust is hard, especially when I’ve had little reason to hand it out and a lot of reasons to be stingy with it.”
Kiels looked him in the eye. “Do you trust me?”
He stared back.
The constant rumbling of the ship around them prevented a true silence from forming. His fingers drummed against his glass.
“I think that’s something worth talking about,” Ethan said, being intentionally cryptic. “Tell me, what have you made of everything that’s happened? The way I’ve become Sovereign Administrator, Mortami’s involvement, and the situation with the Rim—everything.”
Kiels narrowed her eyes. Her feet vanished from the table as she sat up straight and pulled her chair up to the table, causing her to almost loom over him despite being a whole table length away. The two feet of height difference sometimes made itself very apparent.
“Funny question,” she said, enunciating each syllable very clearly, almost as if tasting them.
“I can’t tell if you’re implying you’ve thought about it before now or I’ve set you off.”
She snorted and stretched her arms behind her back. “I’m not stupid. Don’t get picked for the elite forces if you’re too distracted by the shinies to think about why the shiny is there to begin with.”
“So?”
“It all adds up… until it doesn’t,” she said. “Someone from a backwater under uplifting restrictions gets picked to be the ruler of the Rim, after the Union has spent multiple tencycles cutting it off? You were picked to be someone’s convenient puppet. When Mortami tried to grab you, I assumed we’d found our culprit.”
“Huh. Really?” He frowned.
Kiels kept her face expressionless. “They knew you were picked before you did and tried to get Lati to flip on you. Seemed like a plausible explanation to the Association rushing over here, too. But then the Executor started acting strangely and nothing made sense.”
“I assume there would be a standard playbook to handle this?”
“Corporate corruption and undermining of the Union? Yeah. It involves a STARFALL agent showing up and delivering Niura Mortami’s head to the Union’s governing council.”
Ethan nearly spat out his cola. “STARFALL? I thought they were a myth. I’ve read about them in stories, but the shit they do always seems way too crazy to be kept secret.”
“They’re not as cool as fiction makes them seem.” Kiels grinned. “They’re not galactic superspies capable of taking command of the Union at the drop of a hat. The executors are the public face with command of the military and STARFALL are like internal affairs. Just like how Sai can legally pop your brain if you break any of the really big Union laws, STARFALL can do the same to anyone if they’re found to be corrupting the Union, committing fraud or treason, or just undermining the Union in general.”
“You’ve met one?” he asked.
“One. Not long before I got seconded to the Union. She replaced my platoon commander in order to get close to the CEO of an agriculture company. Think she was defrauding the Union of a lot of food near the borders between the Empire and Dominion. The agent vanished while we were hunting for some Dominion infiltrators, then returned to our shuttle with three bodybags and flashed her credentials to our modules.”
“… okay, you said they’re not as cool as fiction says they are, but that sounds pretty cool.”
“A little.” Her grin suggested she agreed with him. “But that’s where things should have went. Mortami had infiltrated the Union and fucked with control of the Rim, so Sai should have battened down the hatches and had STARFALL deal with it.”
“And me?” he asked.
“Not a clue. In case you’ve somehow missed it, the Union happily lets small fries slip into the cracks. Maybe the agent assigned to deal with Mortami would have used you as bait, or a Union higher-up would have made you disappear by gifting you to some princess.” Kiels scratched the back of her neck and blushed. “Our squad dreamed a bit that we’d get you, but that was pretty dumb.”
Ethan kept his thoughts to himself on that matter. Kiels clearly regretted it, which was enough.
And given what he wanted to ask her, being aggressive might backfire.
“So, what do you think has happened?” he asked.
“Honestly, I don’t fucking know,” Kiels said. “It looks like the Rim really is on fire and Mortami are trying to take it over. That’s pretty typical Union shit. Maybe our Executor thinks pulling the Association out of the fire is a higher priority than dealing with who the ‘rightful’ Sovereign is. Or…” She leaned back and kicked her feet up again.
“Or…?” he pushed.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to suggest the other possibility. You’re bringing this up for a reason. Maybe you should spill.”
He nodded and spread his hands out, as if gesturing he was laying his cards on the table. “If you already know things are strange, then I can be frank. My problem is that I don’t have anyone I can trust. The Rim is a basket case that might not appreciate a new ruler.”
“A new male ruler especially,” Kiels added.
“Mortami wants me dead or captured, because I’m in the way of their plans,” he continued. “Their spies could be anywhere. But there’s one thing that worries me above all else?”
Kiels remained silent, but her body tensed.
“The Union. Sai.” He locked eyes with Kiels, whose lips turned down in a grimace. “You and the Void Hounds are elite marines who could take out the whole damn ship and put a bullet in my head ten times over. What happens if I’m no longer useful? Or the Union decides it’s found a better candidate? Or a billion other things?”
“You think I’ll shoot you?” Kiels asked.
“If you’re ordered to,” he said.
She grunted and dropped her feet again. This time when she leaned forward, she steepled her fingers.
“So, this isn’t just about trust,” Kiels said. “This is dealmaking. You want to know if you can strike a deal with me and the Hounds to favor you over Executor Sai if push comes to shove. What are you offering, Ethan?”
- - - - -
Commentary: I suspect Ethan's attitude toward sex is going to be controversial. It's partly a way to avoid this becoming a series superheavy on the sex, but I think it also fits with how someone might feel in such a situation. That doesn't mean a lot of people aren't going to be annoyed with him as it deviates from the typical harem protag.
Anyway, we're exploring the characters while Ethan shores up his power, instead of relying entirely on others (and risks getting betrayed). Things are moving much slower than my usual series (he still hasn't even made it to his empire) but he's establishing his agency.
Next chapter will likely be after the weekend or at the tail end of it, FYI.