They didn’t. Not all of them. Cardenia’s guards shoved her at the door and she tumbled, arms out. From the other side of the door, an arm reached out, a hand grabbed one of her hands and yanked her through the opening so roughly that she screamed out from the pain as her shoulder nearly dislocated. Then she was on the other side of the door, scrambling to get her foot out of the way as it slammed shut. Somewhere along the way she lost a shoe.
Cardenia was pulled up and dragged forcefully down the curving corridor, toward the ring spoke that would send them back to the main body of the ship. When they were in sight of one she looked at the three guards who were with her and was about to ask what happened when there was a crack and a shove that pushed her hard into the deck, fracturing her wrist and abrading her arms and face as they were dragged across the surface. The wind howled again. One of her guards, who had stood up after falling, was pushed out of the ring section and was carried away before more pressure doors slammed down.
When they were down, Cardenia counted to ten before getting up off the deck. She gasped desperately for air; the two ruptures had thinned out so much of the ship’s atmosphere in the ring that Cardenia felt like she was suffocating. One of the remaining guards, gasping herself, located a wall-mounted emergency kit and broke it open, fishing out the two small pressurized containers of oxygen inside of it. She handed one to Cardenia and showed her how to use it. Cardenia sucked down a gulp of the oxygen and was so grateful for it that she started to sob.
The guard then checked on the other, who had not gotten up from the deck. Cardenia looked and saw a pool of blood surrounding the guard’s head. He’d been pushed so hard into the deck that he’d hemorrhaged out.
All around them a huge creaking, popping sound moaned through the surfaces of their ring segment and into the attenuated air.
“What is that?” Cardenia asked.
“The ring was rotating to help give it gravity,” the guard said. “Now it’s been ruptured. The ring is tearing itself apart.” She reached over to Cardenia, offering up her hand. “Come on, ma’am. We need to get you up that spoke.”
The spoke was designed with push fields in mind; a wide walkway detoured off the main floor and up what appeared to be the wall of the ring segment and then into the spoke, with focused push fields securing crew as they walked up the “wall” to get to the spoke. The spokes emptied out into the main ship with push fields securing the path on that end as well.
“You first, ma’am,” the guard said, and Cardenia limped up the wall, oxygen container in hand, and into the spoke, then turned back to look at the guard. “Keep going!” she said, looking up, motioning Cardenia forward, and then the groaning noise became much louder and from below the guard Cardenia could see the deck of the ring segment begin to buckle and tear. A pressure door, this one to seal off the spoke, irised closed. The last image Cardenia had of the guard was her yelling at Cardenia to run.
She didn’t need the encouragement. She sprinted down the spoke until the push fields gave out, and then she was careening weightless down the spoke, first crashing into the wall and then dragging herself down it, trying to get to the far portal into the main ship.
As Cardenia careened down she passed a segment of the spoke with a transparent section. She looked out and saw the wreckage of the ship’s ring, and the segment opposite her tearing away from the ship, rupturing the spoke that led from it, spilling debris. She watched it as she floated past and then it was behind her. In front of her was the portal to the main ship.
Which she now realized was sealed.
A sharp, jolting crack shoved the spoke around Cardenia, slamming her into a wall and spinning her around. As she spun she heard a high, chorused whistling; down the spoke was a rupture along the wall, little holes like pinpricks, strung out in a rough line at least three meters long. The spoke was losing atmosphere.
Cardenia clutched her oxygen canister tighter, pushed her way to the portal separating her from the main ship, grabbed a handhold on the side of the portal, and started banging on the portal with her canister. She kept at it as the air thinned and grew cold, taking occasional hits off the canister to remain conscious and banging. She kept at it until she either heard or hallucinated someone banging back on the other side.
She kept at it until the cold took her.
Chapter
17
Imperial guards swarmed through the House of Lagos offices in the Guild House, prompting what Kiva thought was the only rational response to the event.
“What the fuck?” she demanded of Lord Pretar, who stood in his office while guards and investigators went through his files and tablet, along with the files and tablets of every other single person in the offices.
“There’s been an assassination attempt against the emperox,” Pretar explained.
“Which has fuck all to do with us how?” Kiva demanded.
“Lady Kiva, please,” Pretar said, looking around at the guards. “Keep your tone respectful.”
“Fuck tone,” Kiva said. “Answer the goddamned question.”
Kiva could see Pretar trying to decide if he, the senior director of the House of Lagos on Hub, could thump on the daughter of the matriarch of the house. After a second he decided against it, which Kiva thought was the correct although disappointing choice, because she was itching for a chance to grind him directly into the fucking carpet right about now. “The emperox was touring a newly completed spaceship,” he said. “Someone crashed a shuttle into the ring segment she was touring.”
“Okay. And?”
“And, the shuttle is from one of our ships.”
“What? Which ship?”
“The Yes, Sir.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Kiva said.
Pretar looked around them and arched his eyes, which Kiva found spectacularly annoying, as if to say, These people wouldn’t be here if I were kidding.
“Lady Kiva,” a voice said from behind her. She turned and saw a very officious-looking prick staring at her.
“Who are you?”
“Hibert Limbar. Chief of the Imperial Guard. I want to talk to you.”
“Good, because I want to talk to you, too.” Kiva turned to Pretar. “Out.”
“It’s my office,” Pretar protested. “And you’re not your mother, Lady Kiva.”
“No, I’m not,” Kiva said. “Call her and complain about me if you want. Until then, fuck off. I need your office.”
Pretar stared for a moment, then exited. The guards and investigators in the office stared as he went.
Kiva motioned to them. “Tell the rest of them to fuck off, too,” she said to Limbar.
“Everyone fuck off,” Limbar said. “For the next fifteen minutes.”
Everyone fucked off, and Limbar closed the door behind them.
“So how the fuck did one of our shuttles get jacked for this?” Kiva asked, walking over to Pretar’s office chair and falling into it.
“It’s funny you should ask me that, Lady Kiva,” Limbar said. “I was going to ask the very same question of you. Possibly with fewer ‘fucks’ involved.”
“Obviously I have no idea.”
“You were the owner’s representative on the Yes, Sir.”
“Yes.”
“And on the way back to Hub from End you stuffed your ship full of emigrants from End, allegedly fleeing the civil war there.”
“Yes. So?”
“So it’s possible one or more of those emigrants had plans once they got here.”
Kiva snorted. “You’re suggesting one of those assholes we shipped to Hub knew the emperox—a brand-new emperox, who was being crowned just about the time we left—was going to be on a particular ship at a particular time and then just borrowed a shuttle to take her out.”
“I don’t think that’s likely. I think it’s rather more likely someone here gave them instructions once they arrived, and scoped out the political landscape.”
“What does that mean?” Kiva asked.
“Lady Kiva, are you aware of the ship that was attacked?”
“No.”
“It was the If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out, which was a new tenner commissioned by the House of Nohamapetan.”
Kiva said nothing.