Gate Quest (Star Kingdom Book 5) Read online

  “It wasn’t singlehanded. Asger was there. And so was Zee.”

  “I’m sure Zee masterminded everything.”

  “You were there too.”

  “Not in the control center when all the banter with the pirates was going on.”

  Casmir’s usually expressive face grew closed at the mention of pirates, and Kim regretted mentioning them. It wasn’t as if they had been paragons of humanity, but even she would have felt morally squeamish had she been the one to kill the power to all of their ships, an act that had allowed the four Kingdom warships to swoop in and annihilate them. Per Ambassador Romano’s orders, from what she’d heard. Even Captain Ishii had appeared glum at the role he’d played in slaying thousands of helpless people.

  “President Nguyen hasn’t said she won’t negotiate with the Kingdom,” Casmir said. “Just that she wants me to be there if she does.”

  “Which definitely won’t draw Jager’s attention to you. Again.”

  Casmir spread a helpless hand. “Even if I sent a letter of abject apology, I’m sure he wouldn’t read it. I’m just a peon.”

  “Not quite.” Kim sat on the end of the bed. From there, she could see the text and photos glowing on his display. Ah, he’d been researching his progenitor, Admiral Tariq Mikita. It was about time. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Some pictures that look startlingly like me. Something between me and Rache, actually.”

  Rache.

  Her stomach did a little flipflop at his name, and she remembered him standing in his airlock, telling her how Jager had masterminded his kidnapping and the brutal death of his fiancée. Even after ten years, his eyes had been haunted with pain. She understood now why Rache loathed King Jager and wanted to make his life miserable. She was surprised Rache hadn’t assassinated the man, since it seemed like someone with his talents and resources could pull that off, but maybe he wanted Jager to suffer, to feel emasculated by loss after loss…

  “See here?” Casmir pointed at a photograph. “Mikita looks kind of hard and intense like Rache is, but then in this picture, he’s smiling and seems… maybe not as goofy as me but approachable. It probably depended on whether he was on his way to conquer a system or if he’d just conquered it.” Casmir’s lips twisted with wry uncertainty.

  Kim deduced that he hadn’t yet decided if having been cloned from the legendary admiral was a good thing or not. “Maybe he was determined when he was thinking up ways to win Princess Sofia’s love and smiling after she sent him a note about how charming his robots were.”

  “I’m sure that didn’t happen. There’s nothing about an interest in robotics in his record here. Just military strategies and tactics.” Casmir brought a thoughtful finger to his chin. “Do I look determined when I’m thinking up ways to win Princess Oku’s interest?”

  “More frenetic and scheming.”

  “Oh. Is there any chance women like that in a man?”

  Since Kim was horrible at lying, she avoided answering. “I’m going to send you some of the work I’ve been doing for her on bee bacteria these last two days.”

  His eyebrow twitch said he had noticed that she’d avoided the question, but he nodded and leaned forward, letting himself be diverted since this was also about Princess Oku.

  “I heard we’re only a couple of hours from reaching Xolas Moon’s orbit,” Kim said, “so you probably won’t have time to work on anything, but I had an idea where you might come in.”

  “With bee bacteria?”

  “With robot bees. I can improve the health of some regular bees with a custom strain of beneficial bacteria, and I think that will allow them to survive more easily in the atypical environment of a rotating space habitat, and also compensate for the strange anomalies of gravity created through its spin. But from the research I’ve done, they rely on magnetoreceptors in their abdomens to navigate by the magnetic field on Odin—and other similar planets. The magnetic fields on space habitats aren’t as strong. I think that stressor may be a large part of what’s been causing the deaths of the experimental bees in space. They’re struggling to find their way home after gathering pollen. I was thinking, since bees are such social insects, that maybe putting some robotic guide bees into their swarm and having them programmed with routes to and from gathering areas might help the biological bees find their way back to their hives.”

  “Oh!” Casmir sat forward, eagerness in his eyes. “I already designed robot bees.”

  “Yes, you showed Oku. She mentioned it.”

  “She did? You’ve spoken to her?” He touched his chest and smiled hopefully. “About my bees?”

  “We—” The door chimed, and Kim broke off.

  Casmir hesitated, then waved for Zee to answer it.

  “I’ll send her my thoughts on the project,” Kim finished as the door slid open. “And we can run some experiments when we’re done with our mission here.” She smiled, trying not to let any bleakness into her smile, though she worried that their mission would not be easy.

  They had to use submarines to retrieve an ancient wormhole gate from an astroshaman base believed to be in the sea under the ice of Xolas Moon. The astroshamans had the advantage of this being their home base and their home system, and they also had greater technology and likely had greater numbers of people on their side. Further, the submarines the Fleet had acquired weren’t designed for military use. They were for civilians wishing to tour the water worlds of the system and had been rented from Tiamat Station. To top it off, Rache and his mercenaries were also after the gate and had chosen the best submarines before the Fleet ever got there.

  No reasons to feel daunted, none at all.

  “Let me in,” a male voice growled from the corridor.

  “This is the private cabin of Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee informed the speaker—Kim wasn’t sure who it was, since she couldn’t see around the massive crusher. “Hostile visitors are not permitted in.”

  “I’m not hostile. I’m an ambassador. I’m diplomatic.”

  The clipped tone sounded plenty hostile to Kim, and she grimaced at the identification. Ambassador Romano had given the order—supposedly delivered by Jager, but who knew?—to have all those pirates killed. After he had possibly made a deal to convince those pirates to come in the first place, to harry the station and make the citizens eager for the protection of the Kingdom. He hadn’t confessed to that, but Kim had heard the hypothesis from numerous people.

  “If you leave your cabin number or a comm ident where you can be reached, I will let Casmir Dabrowski know to visit you during daylight hours.”

  “You’ll wake his ass up so we can visit now.” Romano raised his voice. “Dabrowski, are you sleeping in there? I will, as the king’s specially appointed agent on this ship, speak with you. Tonight.”

  “Such a polite specially appointed agent,” Kim murmured.

  Casmir rolled his eyes. “If he’s not armed, you can let him in, Zee.”

  “His clothing may hide weapons,” Zee stated. “I need to search him physically to know if he’s armed. Shall I do so?”

  “No!” Romano roared.

  A wicked glint entered Casmir’s eyes.

  Kim shook her head and raised a hand in warning.

  “If he truly wishes to speak with me,” Casmir said, “I’m sure he won’t object to a quick pat-down. After all, someone on this very ship tried to assassinate me just a few weeks ago. As a reasonable man, he will understand my need for precaution.”

  “I have been instructed to search you for weapons,” Zee informed Romano.

  “Maybe he’ll go away,” Casmir mouthed to Kim.

  Kim rubbed her face. Her affable robotics professor roommate who could make friends with anyone had an alarming knack for making enemies out of people with the power to ruin his life.

  “Fine,” Romano growled.

  “Damn.” Casmir turned off the display, hiding his research.

  Kim believed that Royal Intelligence knew all about Casmir’s origins, a
nd figured they’d likely told the ambassador, but she could see why Casmir wouldn’t want the man to know what he was up to. The photographs alone promised that the entries on Admiral Mikita here in System Hydra were much different from the ones in the Kingdom, where a giant hero of a man had been inserted into the history texts. Whoever the real face had belonged to, he looked nothing like five-foot-seven seizure-prone Casmir.

  “He is unarmed,” Zee announced.

  A red-faced, scowling Romano walked into the cabin and straight up to Casmir without glancing at Kim. Casmir rose and forced a smile.

  “Welcome, Ambassador,” he said as Romano, who towered several inches above him, prodded a finger into his chest, which Casmir ignored. “Thank you so much for enduring my security ministrations—you can’t be too careful when there’s a bounty on your head, you know. I don’t suppose you know anything about that? I’ve been terribly confused about why some prince from the Miners’ Union would want me dead. Is it true that he has a home here in System Hydra? I was reading about him earlier, and it said his main residence and operations are in System Stymphalia.”

  By taking control of the conversation first, Casmir seemed to throw off Romano, who answered instead of leading with whatever had been on the tip of his tongue.

  Albeit, it wasn’t a flattering answer. “I don’t know where he lives, but I’m sure lots of people who’ve met you want you dead.”

  “If that’s true, that’s disturbing. Can I get you something to drink? I was able to acquire grape and cherry fizzop on Tiamat Station.”

  Romano’s eyes narrowed. “From President Nguyen, by chance?”

  “Ah, she may have been the one to know of a beverage provider who hadn’t been looted.”

  “Neither the king nor I are pleased with the role you played on Tiamat. You are not to comm that president—a former secretary of education running a huge space station with a population of millions, dear God—or send text messages to her, or stand on the hull of the ship and use signal flags in her direction.” Romano prodded him in the chest again. “Do you understand?”

  “Certainly, Ambassador. I’m only here to help Captain Ishii find the gate. Which, lucky for him, I did.” Casmir smiled brightly.

  “We’ll see if it’s actually down there,” Romano growled. “You better hope it is. More than your career rides on you making the king happy.”

  With that ominous threat delivered, Romano stalked toward the door. Zee was still near the threshold, and Romano bumped him with his shoulder. Zee didn’t budge, so Romano wobbled into the wall. He cursed and stalked out, muttering about the universe going to robots.

  “You need to work on your relationship with him,” Kim said.

  “This is the first time we’ve even spoken to each other face to face.”

  “Yes, and in case you didn’t notice, it didn’t go well.” Kim was sure Casmir hadn’t missed that unveiled threat about more than his career being at stake. He loved his parents and would worry about his actions affecting them negatively. Since the Dabrowskis lived fewer than ten miles from Drachen Castle and Royal Intelligence Headquarters, they would be easy targets for the king’s minions.

  “I did notice, but I’m not sure how to fix it except by doing what Jager sent me to do, help pinpoint the location of the gate.” He shrugged.

  As he’d said, he’d already made his best guess, and Ishii and his marines were either going to find it under the ice down there or not.

  “If you disable the gate’s security measures, the ones that make it ooze deadly pseudo radiation any time someone without immunity gets close, that might make Jager and everyone who has to deal with it happy.”

  She’d already suggested that to him—and to Captain Ishii. Since he had immunity, he was the logical one to take on the task, but she didn’t know if he was capable of it. He was a genius when it came to robotics, but whatever technology had been used to build the wormhole gates was far beyond what humanity—at least the humanity residing in the Twelve Systems—knew and understood.

  “If that’s what they’re expecting of me, I better finish the crash course I started on gate theory instead of researching Mikita or working on Oku’s robot bees.” He waved to the computer display, though he looked glum. Or daunted. Or both.

  “Just be glad your three-hundred-year-old genes didn’t get the modification that protects people born today from the Great Plague, since you’ll have the opportunity to try to deactivate the gate defenses without dying a not-so-slow death.”

  “Rache will be able to try too. If he gets there first.”

  “He probably will. They got a head start, right? You’ll just have to be smarter and know more than he does.”

  “Be smarter than my clone? Right, no problem there.”

  “He doesn’t have an advanced degree in robotics. His specialty is in making people dead.” Kim grimaced, wishing that wasn’t the truth, that Rache hadn’t felt compelled to become the killer he was today.

  “So naturally, he’s exactly the man I should want to compete against in a quest.”

  Kim thought about mentioning that she had received a message from Yas Peshlakai, Rache’s doctor, asking if she knew of any bacteria that might affect people who were modified with cybernetic implants.

  She’d given him a terse answer, since it would have felt like a betrayal to the Kingdom to help Rache beat her own people to the gate, but there were two species of bacteria that had come to mind. They were both known to feed not on the implants themselves, which were fairly indestructible, but on the synthetic myelin sheath material typically used on the cyberware that wired the implants into the human nervous system. It could be debilitating on someone with a lot of implants, requiring a return to a surgeon to have everything rewired. A couple of years earlier, her corporation had created a bacteriophage that could destroy the invasive bacteria in an infected person, which was the main reason for her familiarity with the subject.

  Inspired by Yas’s query, she’d hunted through the bacteria she’d brought along on this trip and found that she had a strain of one of the known offenders. She had agar plates growing more in the sickbay lab now and planned to tinker to see if she could modify them to act more quickly once they infected an astroshaman, perhaps after delivery by a fast-acting inhalant. But anyone with cybernetic implants would be affected, so she didn’t know how effective a weapon it would make. Further, anyone inside combat armor would be protected from an inhalant.

  Kim decided not to mention her work to Casmir, since she feared nothing would come of it, but he did look like he needed moral support.

  She gave him a pat on the shoulder, wondering if she would ever stop feeling awkward at such gestures. “You’ll do fine, Casmir. You’re crafty. I’ve never seen you fail to achieve something you truly wanted.”

  Kim just wished Casmir truly wanted to make King Jager happy. He seemed far more interested in making the Twelve Systems a better place. Which was admirable… but might get him killed.

  2

  Sir William Asger stood in the briefing room off the bridge, the doors closed so he could take the comm that had come in from his superiors at Prester Court in private. He ignored a message from his agent that had also arrived, saying he’d gotten Asger a modeling deal to promote children’s sporting equipment, though a bleak sarcastic part of him admitted that at least he’d have a backup job if he was kicked out of the knighthood.

  But he didn’t want to be kicked out. He wanted to do the right thing, as he believed he had on Tiamat Station, and he wanted his superiors to understand that it was the right thing. And to praise him instead of berating him.

  Judging by the exasperated expression that appeared on Sir Baron Farley’s face when it came up on the vid, praise wasn’t what would come out of his mouth. Even knowing it was a recording, Asger braced himself.

  “Asger, what the hell are you doing over there?” were the first words out of Farley’s wide mouth. As his lips reared back in displeasure, white teeth flashe
d like a wolf’s fangs. “You were supposed to save the existing president, not put a new one on the throne.”

  Asger supposed his boss wouldn’t appreciate a correction that presidents had normal seats, rather than thrones.

  “Chronis was already dead when I got there,” he muttered, even though there was no point in replying to a recording. He would have to think about how best to phrase a response to record and send back.

  “You haven’t done one thing right this year,” Farley went on. “Why can’t I depend on you? You passed all the exams, you swore the oath, and your IQ tests assure me you aren’t an idiot. Why are you making such idiotic choices? Chief Superintendent Van Dijk from Royal Intelligence was in here this morning, demanding to know why I sent someone so young on this mission. You better make sure Captain Ishii gets that gate for the Kingdom, or don’t bother coming home. We’ll have to ask you to ship your pertundo and your armor back in a crate and resign.”

  Asger hung his head, tears pricking at his eyes. He was glad it was a recording and that Farley couldn’t see his reaction.

  Frustration accounted for the tears as much as sadness, because he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Oh, he shouldn’t have helped Casmir back on that cargo ship in System Lion, but it wasn’t as if he could have known Casmir wouldn’t turn the gate over to the military. Asger couldn’t have foreseen any of this trouble. And he believed they’d helped a good person take charge of Tiamat Station. He would have protected Chronis if he’d arrived in time, but he had the niggling suspicion that, no matter what King Jager wanted, Nguyen was better for Tiamat Station and its people. And it wasn’t as if she’d said no to an alliance with the Kingdom. Just that she insisted Casmir be involved in the negotiations.

  “And that’s part of what’s irking them, I’m sure,” Asger muttered.

  But he’d helped get rid of the terrorist outpost on Odin. Maybe he hadn’t gone in personally with Casmir and Rache—he’d wanted to—but he’d helped Qin clean up those combat robots outside and make sure the way was clear when the Kingdom Guard arrived. Why couldn’t he get any credit for that? Surely, they weren’t giving it to Rache or Qin, even though Qin deserved it.