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  “Act?”

  “This faux erudition, in a tramp freighter captain. This joke of a protective fleet would be hard-pressed to fend off a ship of Klingon invalids. You don’t have enough vessels—or pretty words—to drive me away.”

  “We’re nobody’s protectors. Our convoy just happened by, Your Maj—”

  “However you reached this miserable place, you’re still human. I can tell by how easily you lie.” She waved indifferently. “But you’re in luck, Mister Quadrillion. I don’t need you—or your freakish alien friends. I’m after other game.”

  A ratty-looking white-haired Orion leaned over Quintilian’s shoulder, trying to get his attention. The master trader looked irritated. “What is it, Vercer?”

  “New contact to aft. It’s Jadama Rohn.”

  Quintilian’s eyes narrowed at that.

  “We have that contact,” Eagan said. “It’s coming from beyond Tagantha—deeper within the territory.”

  Georgiou looked back to him. “Another one of these flyspecks?”

  “Negative. It appears to be an Orion freighter. Older, different manufacture.” Eagan looked up. “It’s the contact we were closing on!”

  The Whipsaw ship, she thought. Yes, her contact might well be transporting it to her via an Orion freighter. “What are the merchants doing?”

  “They’re at bay,” Maddox said, glaring at the viewscreen. “They’re just watching.”

  “Not anymore,” Quintilian said, having overheard. He gave a hand gesture to his crew. “You’re a busy monarch—we won’t take any more of your time. We’ll get out of your way.” He bowed again. “It has been a pleasure.”

  “It almost was,” Georgiou said, rising from her throne. “In another life, perhaps it would have been.”

  “Merchants powering up,” Eagan called out.

  “I don’t think so.” The emperor faced the old officer. “Eliminate them all—now!”

  4

  I.S.S. Hephaestus

  Georgiou didn’t see Quintilian’s jaw drop, but the shock was still on his and his companions’ faces when she faced the screen again. “We’re withdrawing!” he yelled. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Eagan was now joined by tactical officers at either side, working with him to compute firing solutions. “They’re turning to run—but won’t get far,” Maddox observed.

  Outside the viewport, a disruptor blast lanced out from Hephaestus, striking one of the freighters amidships. It blossomed bright against the Taganthan stellar haze, prompting gleeful cackles from one of the shadowy alcoves to the rear of Georgiou’s bridge. She didn’t flinch; she already knew which member of her coterie-in-waiting the merriment had come from. As more blasts produced high-pitched laughter, she smirked at the chills it was sending through the bridge officers.

  “We’re trying to focus,” Maddox grumbled, not looking directly at the alcove. “Is that noise necessary?”

  “You have your crew, I have mine.” In fact, they all belonged to her, but she was sure Maddox understood what she meant. “Tune it out, Captain. Get your people to focus.”

  They did. Another shot, another kill—and another and another. Quintilian was still on screen, shouting orders to the crew behind him. His convoy quickly disappearing, he looked back to Georgiou, hurt and betrayal in his eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  She shook her head. “For all your intellectual posturing, you seem to have forgotten the reason the Terran Empire does anything: Because we can.”

  Quintilian’s ship took a hit, instantly noticeable on screen as chaos erupted all around his bridge. A girder swung downward, smacking the old Orion he’d called Vercer squarely in the face. Alarmed, Quintilian rushed to cradle the man’s form—only to gawk in horror as the Orion’s head, barely connected, fell away to the deck. Startled, he let the rest of the corpse slip from his arms.

  Another hoot from the alcove.

  When Quintilian finally looked back at Georgiou, he showed her the green blood on his hands. “He was like a father to me.”

  “Family is overrated.”

  Fire and smoke rising behind him, Quintilian looked off to the side once before sitting, his jaw locked and his eyebrows joined in a stern frown. “You’ll regret this, Emperor. The poisoned chalice is a human concept—but we aren’t the only ones who know how it works. Not by a long—”

  A blast from Hephaestus silenced him—and his image vanished from the screen, to be replaced by an exterior view showing the blazing debris of his vessel.

  From the alcove, more hilarity—and from the bridge crew, shouts of success. Georgiou nodded quietly. She didn’t mind keeping the gallery entertained, and while Quintilian had been a pretty thing, there were other pretty things in the universe, and more important matters at hand.

  “Hail from the freighter,” the comm officer said. “The ship he called Jadama Rohn. Sent openly—but addressed as before, with your imperial code.”

  Georgiou looked about. The Veneti were gone, but that didn’t mean the coast was clear. “Scan in all directions for other vessels—including cloaked ones. Make sure we’re alone.”

  Maddox peered at her. “What is this ship, Imperial Majesty?”

  A look made him get to work.

  “Nothing,” Eagan said. “Nothing cloaked that we can detect. It’s just us and them.”

  “Very well.” Georgiou had waited long enough. “On-screen.”

  The Orion-built freighter had some Orions aboard, but it was the two figures in the adjoining command chairs that caught her eye. An older female and a younger male—both Caitians. The woman smiled. “We meet again, Philippa—or should I say, Emperor.”

  “S’satah, my old friend!” Georgiou warmed immediately. “You look just as I remember.”

  “You’re too kind,” came the response, half-spoken and half-purred. “And you seem to have gotten a promotion. Well deserved, I say.”

  “You would.”

  The Caitians were a species the Terrans hadn’t seen much of—and that was a shame, because the few members Georgiou had encountered had proven exceptional as playthings. Who could resist a human cat? Georgiou knew that wasn’t what they really were, of course, but a privilege of being Terran meant that she could value other beings strictly in terms of how they related to her own existence. Besides, the Caitians had almost certainly benefited as a species by their similarity to a human domestic pet, just as the ugliness of the Tellarite pig-men had made them more fun to kill.

  S’satah in particular was a double delight: part pirate, part treasure hunter. She’d worked the Beta Quadrant for two decades as a privateer, striking alien races before the Terrans could. The mere hint of an imperial invasion drove many to panic, relocating their valuables and weapons to safety; that’s when S’satah would hit them. Before becoming emperor, Georgiou had used the freelancer on many missions.

  But the male Caitian seated beside her was someone new. He was burly and black furred, and his face seemed frozen in a scowl. “Who’s the bad attitude?” Georgiou asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve found someone new to take up with.”

  “Don’t be disgusting,” he hissed.

  “Hush, P’rou.” S’satah patted his wrist. “You’ll have to excuse my son. You’re his first emperor.”

  Georgiou marveled. “You have a son? I never knew you had children.”

  “Just one—he’s only recently joined the trade. He’s a good pilot.”

  “Refreshing to hear someone’s child is good for something.” The children of other Terran emperors had definitely not been, unless sponging on their wealth counted as a productive activity. The only decent argument for mentorship Georgiou knew existed in the form of her own adoptive child, Michael Burnham.

  P’rou glared in her direction. “You destroyed the Veneti. That was never part of the plan!”

  Georgiou didn’t like explaining herself—a whelp was a whelp, no matter how strapping—but S’satah had earned her patience. “I didn’t want them to interfere. Fri
ends of yours?”

  P’rou continued to glare. S’satah spoke for them. “They were targets. That’s all they ever were—what passes for prey in this region. P’rou and I have hit them before.”

  “Then I have thinned out the herd. But I will make it worth your while. If you have what you say you have.”

  “I certainly do.” She looked to her son. “Thrusters to one-quarter.” She stood and faced Georgiou. “I have to go get it ready—but it’s definitely worth the price. I can’t wait for you to have it.”

  Georgiou couldn’t wait either. Having seen quite enough of P’rou’s grimace, she ordered the channel closed and snapped the fingers of her right hand. One of her black-clad attendants rushed from an alcove to her side. “Join the retrieval team in the transporter room,” Georgiou said. “Identify the cargo and determine its capabilities.”

  The attendant responded by vanishing, transporting away to another deck. Her team would tell her within minutes if Whipsaw could be safely transported to Hephaestus; within an hour, they’d say if it was of any use at all.

  Georgiou hoped to be able to reward S’satah for a good find, because the Caitian would not survive the alternatives. A dud weapon would merit death for wasting the emperor’s time, of course—but something of immense power might also endanger the pirate. Operational security would demand it; already, her bridge crew had caught on to the game.

  “It must be pretty important to bring us all this way,” Maddox said after a few minutes’ waiting. “I can’t wait to hear about it.”

  Georgiou ignored his fishing attempt. “Just make sure no other vessels are anywhere near. In other words, do your duty.”

  Tense moments later, a signal arrived from Jadama Rohn—this one, a voice message from her attendant. “Imperial Majesty, S’satah has shown us a cargo unit. It does not scan as containing explosive or any known harmful agents. We deem it safe to transport.”

  “I’ll follow in a few minutes,” S’satah piped in, “to explain it fully. It really is quite amazing.”

  “It had better be,” Georgiou said. She touched a control on the armrest of her throne. “Cargo transporter room, prepare to—”

  A flash ahead of her caught her eye. Georgiou looked up to see two glowing masses on the main viewscreen, rocketing in parallel from Hephaestus across the short distance to Jadama Rohn. The instant she recognized them as photon torpedoes, the pair struck the freighter head-on. The flash of detonation triggered Hephaestus’s viewport filters; the shockwave from the point-blank shots in the murky medium surrounding Tagantha set off the starship’s inertial dampers.

  “Shields up!” Maddox yelled. “Someone’s firing!”

  “We fired, moron!” Georgiou leapt to her feet. “Lock down all weapons and begin scanning. Something may be left!”

  “No life signs. Not the Caitians—nor your operatives,” another officer responded.

  “Who cares about them? The cargo! Scan for the cargo!”

  It was no use. The torpedoes had annihilated every bit of physical evidence that Jadama Rohn had ever existed.

  Georgiou spun and faced the trio at the tactical station. “Who fired those weapons?”

  Startled by her yell as much as what had happened, the two officers on either side of Eagan recovered quickly and pointed to the older man. “He did it!”

  His hands still clutching the console, Eagan appeared pale, the blood drained from his face. “I thought they were moving to attack!”

  Georgiou raged. “What difference would that have made? That tiny ship, against us? I gave no order to fire!”

  “Neither did I,” Maddox said, needlessly. “Explain yourself, Eagan!”

  Eagan stared at the emperor, frozen—until his expression changed. He tilted his head, and his mouth curled into a little smile. “Gotcha.”

  Maddox’s security officers drew their swords and approached Eagan—but Georgiou gestured for them to hold position. She needed answers. “Why?”

  “I can’t believe you have to ask—Lieutenant.” Eagan lifted his hands from the console and rubbed his neck. “I guess it’s true what they say—you don’t have to be a genius to be emperor.”

  “But why that?” she asked, trying to govern her wrath as she pointed to the main viewscreen, and the void where Jadama Rohn had been. “Answer. The agonizer booth will get it out of you, sure enough. What did you know about that ship?”

  “You wanted it. That’s enough.” Standing tall for the first time all day, the former captain of Archimedes’ Flame crossed his arms. “You took my ship, so I took one of yours. If I die, at least I die even.”

  Georgiou glared at him for several moments, deciding what she believed. When she did move, it was not to assault—but rather to walk back toward her throne. “Amazing. You actually accomplished something. You never amounted to anything, Eagan—but you have this.” She looked back at him. “Congratulations. Revenge is the sweetest reward in life.”

  Maddox was impatient. “Let us take him, Imperial Majesty.”

  “Oh, no. Such a long time to nurse a wound—he should have his moment. Tell me, Eagan, when I took your ship, did it sting?”

  “Did it sting?” Seemingly surprised to still be alive, Eagan laughed. “It festered! I was going somewhere, before you came along. But you left me alive. Your mistake.” He took a step out from behind the tactical station. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and kill me, like you should have done before!”

  “I have people for that,” she said. Then, in a sound only a bit above a whisper, she added: “Blackjack.”

  Eagan’s eyes bulged at hearing the word—and the haunting echo of laughter, beginning again from the alcove. He turned one way, and then the other, searching for what everyone knew was approaching. “No—”

  “Yes!” A black-clad figure yanked Eagan around by the collar of his tunic—and clubbed him with a metal baton, cackling as he did. The old man howled in pain, falling backward against the side of the tactical station. His attacker, a young blond human with deathly pale skin, pressed his advantage, getting into Eagan’s face as he raised his eponymous weapon. “Blackjack, blackjack! Kill you like she should have!”

  Georgiou watched with satisfaction as her agent did his work. A being that lived only to fight and kill, mentally conditioned by her scientists into the perfect assassin. Blackjack—his real name had never interested her—cared nothing for his own safety, turning bloodlust into blood on command. No security guard with a disruptor or sword had ever come close to being as deadly; there was no better companion in a fight.

  And, oh, how his laughter terrorized those who heard it. It filled the bridge as he brought Eagan to the deck, smashing away. “She’s got people for that! People for that!”

  After thirty seconds, Georgiou was satisfied. “That’s enough. The example is made.”

  “Example. Example.” A bloody mess, Blackjack continued clubbing as he sat astride Eagan’s corpse. “Example!”

  “Blackjack!”

  Hearing her shout his name, the assassin pulled his weapon back to his chest. With one hand, he wiped his eyes—spattered with blood—and then he gingerly wiped down his truncheon. In his few lucid conversations with the emperor, he’d claimed the weapon had killed just about every historical figure ever assassinated; he knew, because it had told him so. Whatever the truth, Georgiou knew that contemplating the weapon calmed him down. He began chuckling softly, a wild animal no more.

  “That’s a man who enjoys his work,” Maddox said, standing well apart. “Maybe a little too much. He’s made a mess of my bridge.”

  “It isn’t the first time,” Georgiou said. “Nor will it be the last. You’re responsible for staffing this vessel, Captain. Eagan’s disloyalty reflects on you.”

  “Not me,” Maddox said, putting up his hands. “He came from Lorca.”

  She frowned. Yes, she suspected Gabriel Lorca of having plotted against her—why should he be different from anyone else? His spies were legion. Had one aboar
d Hephaestus tipped him off that Whipsaw was valuable to her?

  She didn’t know—yet. But she did know what she would do now. “We’ve made a good start at depopulating this place, Captain. If the Troika species are uncomfortable with visitors, we should show them what true discomfort is like.”

  “Yes, Imperial Majesty!” Maddox smiled, quite obviously pleased at where she had directed her retribution. He saluted. “For the Empire!”

  “Call me when the fun begins.” She turned and strode off the bridge.

  I.S.S. Hephaestus

  DEPARTING TROIKA SPACE

  Georgiou had made good on her promise. Her two-week grand tour of destruction had proven that the species of the region were every bit as peculiar as Quintilian had claimed. But diversity, infinite or otherwise, was of no value to the Terran Empire—and she had found nothing else she wanted.

  In particular, no trace of Whipsaw. If it was some weapon one of the Troika powers had developed, it had not been brought to bear against her—not even in their darkest hour. She could not believe it was a hoax: S’satah was as capable of deception as any mortal, but the Caitian was a utilitarian after her own heart. There would have been no profit to her in misleading her emperor.

  Thwarting one, however, was a valuable end for many—and one in particular. In her chambers, Georgiou thought about her ally-turned-rival Lorca as she reread the latest message from the one person she did trust, currently on a mission to the Cawdor system:

  I’m sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for, Mother, but I think you’re off base in suspecting Lorca. I know you think I’m too trusting of Gabriel, but you’ve got to have talented people working for you if you want your rule to last.

  Frankly, I’ve never understood how you can enjoy being emperor when you’re constantly seeing threats around every corner—but you seem to thrive on it. I hope, for your sake, that’s not a front. The crown would be a terrible curse otherwise.