Princess of the Void
[side story] Talem & the Knife – pt 1

“It’s all women,” Talem says. “Wonder why.”

On the ready room camera bank, they watch the drone feed as it follows the Eqtoran patrol squad. Pentine is here as their proctor, tablet in hand. Talem is here to bother Pentine until the sortie’s done and they can get out onto the range for some target practice.

“They’re still manufacturing the anticomps for the dudes,” Pentine says. “Gotta make them special on account of the tiny ears.”

“Like wraparounds?”

“You figure. And the ladies are the soldiers, usually. They’re the biggest and the strongest.”

A chatter of LMG fire from the ridge opposite the Eqtorans signals that the ambush is sprung. A hardlight Amadari howler squad leaps from the rocky outcropping and sprints toward the test subjects. Howling, appropriately enough. The Eqtorans break for cover from the snapping gunfire and return fire in staccato bursts. The howler holograms caterwaul and dart as they approach.

“They’re so cautious,” Talem says. “Wasn’t expecting that. They’re so big and muscular and they stick to cover.”

“Well, sure,” Pentine says. “They’ve never had HAK suits. They’ll get with the program.”

A halfscore howlers have become fizzing corpses by the time they reach the Eqtorans. A battlecry rises from the lead Eqtoran marine in roaring response to the digitized Amadari. She yanks a curved blade from its scabbard on her midsection and surges forth from behind her slate outcropping.

“Hate to be their CQC proctors,” Pentine observes, as the Eqtorans burst from cover.

“I wouldn’t. Learn a thing or two.” Talem whistles at the flying takedown their pointwoman executes. “Maybe get head-scissored by some big fishgirl thighs.”

“They’d break your skull, dude.”

Talem chuckles. “What a way to go, though, right?”

Pentine punches his shoulder. “There’s one right there.”

Talem looks up from the monitors. An Eqtoran in full HAK has stomped into the ready room, trailing mucky snow from the wilderness conditioning course. She moves to the gear lockers near the two marines and starts disassembling her gear. She’s head and shoulders taller than either of them—almost two meters tall, if Talem had to guess.

So?” Talem gives her a brief wave. “Not like they can understand us.”

The woman glances at them and then glances away again as she stows her rifle. Eqtoran HAK armor is based on the Zu’ar’anian Shocktrooper pattern, though it’s been sized up and modified to account for her people’s musculature and curves. Both of which, Talem is not afraid to admit, he has been ogling with an abandon afforded to him by his hidden eyes.

Anticomps suck and are annoying, and if you go too long without wearing them, they give you a headache when you put them back on. But as far as giving people the once-over, it comes in handy to hide where you’re looking. And Talem finds himself giving the new Eqtoran soldiers the twice or thrice-over. They’re so broad-hipped and buxom that even in heavy HAK armor, they are always unmistakably feminine. This one unbuckles a white pauldron from her shoulder—looks sort of like the scarlet markers the Black Pike’s sergeants wear—and tugs her helmet off.

Eqtorans do not look like Taiikari. Not like the Maekyonite Prince does. There’s a reason the Pike’s garrison calls them fishfaces. Blunt, sharklike snouts, deepset amber eyes, and mouths full of razor teeth. But there’s something about them, to Talem at least. Something magnetic. This particular woman’s face bears a subtle set of scars across her forehead, like the claw of some boreal beast, one of which has carved a fetching notch into her eyebrow. There’s a lethal grace about her smooth and exact movements. A martial beauty, like a finely crafted saber’s.

Plus, when she takes her breastplate off, her tits are the size of his fuckin’ head. So that is cool, too.

Talem’s fists tighten as he observes the display from the corner of his eyes. “I am seriously thinking about going fishing, dude.”

Pentine snorts. “You are an uncomplicated man, Tale.”

“That’s my charm point.”

The Eqtoran’s finished getting her armor off. She picks her tactical scabbard up off her discarded armor and straps it around her thick thigh.

Talem double-takes. “Is she allowed to take that bigass dagger with her?”

“Sure,” Pentine says. “It’s a ceremonial thing. You know what an Eqtoran squad calls itself? A Knife. Like ten Eqtorans is one knife.”

“That is fucking hardhorned,” Talem says.

“Extremely.” Pentine watches the Eqtoran unit onscreen finish off the final howler. Two of the ten-woman unit have the blinking green casualty indicator lit on their chests. “Two wounded after a howler ambush. Goddamn. Makes you wish we could have a few on the Pike, huh?”

“We’ve got a few days left with them.” Talem leans on the camera bank and, out of the corner of her eye, watches the Eqtoran woman shake out the frilly finlike fringe atop her head, which drapes down her scalp like a pixie cut. “What do you think? That enough time for some diplomacy? They have those keepers who are around our size. You gotta think some of them would be into Taiikari guys.”

“I’m gonna mark that as satisfactory and rec some extra HAK training.” Pentine taps on his tablet. “You’re really caught on this, huh?”

“Sure,” Talem says. “Be nice to be on top for a change, you know?”

“On top?” Pentine snorts. “Now you’re really delusional.”

Talem smirks. “How is an Eqtoran chick gonna hold me down? They can’t even compel.”

“Tale. They’re huge.”

“Yeah, and?” Talem taps his chestplate. “I’m a marine. I got adrenal implants, I got training. I eat fish for breakfast. Without the compulsion, how are you gonna handle a Taiikari marine? I mean, you remember that cruiser? You and me and Jax, we were in the only actual combat that Eqtorans and Taiikari had.”

“That was over before it started, really.” Pentine slips his anticomps off and tugs his helmet on. “And Jax did the shooting.”

“That’s my point, dude.” Talem finds his own helmet. “We mopped the floor.”

The Eqtoran glances their way, her expression probing. She tilts her head like she’s trying to figure out what they’re saying. Then she racks her folded-up armor into its place and stalks out of the room.

Pentine snorts as he hits the range door release. “If she could understand you, you’d be fucked right now.”

They step out into the frigid taiga. Talem elbows his vambrace. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

***

“All right, gals.” Ajax strides into the barracks and smacks his gauntleted fist on the prefab strut by the door. “His Majesty’s on the way. Tighten up.”

The casual chattering soldiers hop to their feet and assemble; the small handful of women in front, the majority-male detachment lined up behind them.

The man who enters the barracks, stomping off snow and blowing into his hands, is not like the man they removed from Maekyon. He doesn’t look at you the same. Pentine says it’s just that their brains are filing him under prince now; Talem isn’t convinced.

“God, it’s cold on Harok. Feels like my horns are gonna fall off.” Prince Grantyde of Maekyon inclines his head. “Afternoon, marines. The Princess sends her regards and regrets that she’s still cooped up with the politicos.”

Talem’s head notches higher. Around him the marines stand a little straighter as they salute. Prince Grantyde of Maekyon started as something of a joke aboard. Big and ungainly and with a face like he was always about to apologize for taking up space.

“Just a few announcements. Won’t take long.” Grant walks to the other end of the barracks, where a speaker’s plinth sits comically low at his waist, and takes a notepad out of the pocket of his fur-lined tunic. “Four days from now, we’re getting back on the Pike and sweeping for the Void Convocation. That’s further than any Eqtoran has ever been from home. And we’ll be hosting the new Governess of Eqtora as well as her delegation aboard the Qena-Qel. They’re going to be tense and anxious. So you’re all gonna take good care of them. And we’ll show the Empress the job we’ve done getting the Pike sector’s newest Imperial citizens ready for the Core. What else.”

He flips the page.

“Right. As part of the delegation, we’ve got a pilot program aboard. Some of Eqtora’s top armada infantry have volunteered to take the language implant to hasten their training into the Imperial Navy corps. Their pathways are baked in and we’re integrating them into the crew. You’ll recognize them by the white left pauldrons on their uniforms, or their white armbands when they’re out of it.” Grant gestures to his shoulder.

Talem’s heart skips like a scratched record.

“Wouldn’t go amiss to introduce yourselves to them and get some camaraderie going,” Grant says. “It’s a good opportunity to learn more about Eqtorans from them directly. Okay. That’s all from me. Keep up the good work, boys.” He glances Pentine’s way—the marine’s raised a hand. Talem glances in panicky consternation. Shut up, man.

“You have a question, Private Pentine?”

“Just a quick clarification, sir. You’re saying that a white pauldron means they can understand what we’re saying.”

“Correct,” Grantyde says.

“Every word?”

The Prince squints across the barracks. “Are you alluding to something, Pentine?”

“Only making sure I get you, Majesty.”

Grantyde offers a bemused grin. “All right, Private. You good, Talem?”

Talem snaps his face forward. “Yes, sire.”

Grantyde salutes. “Keep up the good work, gentlemen. At ease.”

The marines salute. His Majesty returns it and heads back through the barracks out the way he came. Ajax falls in with him, and cuffs Pentine on the arm as he passes. “Can you chucklefucks stop chucklefucking in front of the Prince?”

“Won’t happen again, sarge,” Pentine says. Ajax is almost always fully armored and visored; but the sergeant has mastered the ability to look fed up behind a solid inch of HAK ceramic. He follows the Prince out.

“Hey,” whispers Fion, behind them. “Why does Talem look like he’s about to shit himself?”

Talem tries to untie his tongue. “I, uh—”

“He’s just got a lot of thoughts about how to get some camaraderie going,” Pentine says.

***

“My theory,” Talem says, over the chatter and music of the taproom. “My theory is that the Prince extracted some kind of Maekyonite blood promise from Her Majesty to get her off. And that’s why now he’s got equal hold on the Pike.”

His unit clusters at a long table near the stack of kegs that serves as the quartermaster team’s desk and primary product. The more food and drink Talem gets into himself, the less worried he is about the whole thing. What’s done is done and he’ll just pretend it never happened and if he ever sees that scarred Eqtoran lady again, he’ll ignore her if he can, and take his licks if he needs to, and then it’ll be fine.

“Why would Princess Sykora honor a Maekyonite blood promise?” Pentine asks.

“Cause she’s honorable, man,” Talem says.

“Honor’s one thing.” Xuina takes one of Talem’s spring rolls and drops a fritter in its place as repayment. She licks grease off her thumb. “But honoring the traditions of a barbarian planet that was fixing to dissect her?”

“Maybe it was just a normal-ass promise, I don’t know. You’re getting hung up on the blood part.” Talem slides his plate away, clinking it against his dark, fizzy beer. “Why do you never just get your own rolls, sarge?”

“Your complaining makes them taste better,” Xuina says.

A shadow falls across the table.

It’s cast by a familiar, scarred Eqtoran. Behind her are two more—another female, thin and rangy, with a nose ring in her snout, and a rust-colored keeper with a shoulder-length fringe and two full-sleeve tattoos.

All three of them have white armbands.

Talem’s training has prepared him for zero-gravity firefights and basic trauma medicine and combat with the weaponry of half the firmament. Something tells him it has not prepared him for what is about to happen.

The scarred woman’s uniform jacket is tied around her waist by its sleeves. A sergeant’s pips are sewn into its shoulders. The stitched nametag hangs in the middle of her expansive thigh, just over the cleaver-sized knife strapped to it: QIVA.

Her golden shark eyes sweep across the table of suddenly silent Taiikari marines.

“Clear out,” she says.

Sergeant Ajax frowns. “What?”

“This is Knife Seven’s table.” Sergeant Qiva jerks her head. “Clear out. Find another spot.”

“Hey, lady,” Sergeant Xuina says. “You can’t—”

Her voice dies as Qiva approaches her and stands directly over her, the Eqtoran’s massive shadow an eclipse over her protestation.

“There’s a lot of room,” Xuina says, somewhat pitifully.

“Don’t care,” Qiva says.

“All right, marines.” Ajax stands up. “New spot.”

Talem’s fingers dig into the fabric by his knees. “Sarge—”

“Private Talem,” Ajax says. “We’re not gonna wag our dicks and cause a diplomatic incident. Plus.” He nods to the other end of the taphouse. “Corner booth’s open.”

Qiva’s scarred gaze slides to him. “You’re Talem.”

“Uh. Yes. I am.” He takes a step toward the booth. “We’re just gonna—”

“Sit back down,” she says. “You stay.”

“I—” He looks at Ajax.

“You gonna hurt him?” Ajax asks.

The thick cords in her shoulders shift as she shrugs. “That’s up to him.”

“I’ll take yes or no,” Ajax says.

That gets an unfriendly grin out of her. Lots of teeth. Ajax does not flinch. He just folds his arms.

“No,” she says.

Ajax looks past her, to where Talem sits frozen. “What did he do?”

“Talked,” Qiva says.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Talk.”

Ajax clicks his tongue. “Find out you did anything else, there’ll be problems.”

“Fine.”

“All right.” Ajax gives Talem an incline of his head and plucks his curry off the table. The Taiikari marines gather their food and drinks and move over to the booth on the far end of the taproom. Talem wants to call him back but his voice isn’t working right and instead he just makes a plaintive huh noise.

And now he is alone with the Eqtorans.

Nose Ring at his left. The tatted keeper at his right. Qiva sits directly in front of him, her chair turned back-to-front so that her big fat aquatic tail has room to hang. She folds her burly arms on its backrest. Her heavy breasts settle over them. There’s a yellowed tusk on a chain around her neck; it nestles in her copious cleavage.

They stare at one another for a few silent seconds. Talem raises his hand with the care of a man held at gunpoint and takes the handle of his beer. He draws a bracing gulp.

Qiva watches him place the stein back on the table. “What’s your deal?” she asks.

“What’s my deal?”

She nods.

“Nothing,” Talem says. “I don’t have a deal.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say, sergeant?”

“You had a lot to say the other day.” She taps her blunt digits on the table.

“Heard you were a talker,” Nose Ring says.

“I’m just eating, all right?” He gestures to the rolls. “I don’t want to get into whatever you’re trying here.”

Qiva examines the plate. “Not fish?”

“What?”

“Said you ate fish for breakfast.”

“It’s not breakfast.”

She laughs. It is not a warm sound. Her two backups join her.

Why did Talem say that? He should be de-escalating. Or getting his ass out of here. Yes. Maybe that. He stands up.

Qiva’s catcher’s-mitt hand fires out and snags his forearm. “Didn’t say you could go.”

“I got places to be,” he says. “And you’re not my CO.”

She reaches across the table with both hands. She takes hold of his waist. She tugs downward with irresistible force; for a foolhardy second he tries to stay standing but it’s useless. He thumps back into his chair.

She slowly releases him. She sips her beer. She taps her forehead.

“Know why I got this implant?” she asks.

What else can he say: “Why?”

“Cause I like strong,” she says. “And the Empire’s strong, is what I figured. Strong enough for me.” She drains her beer. She clacks the stein onto the table. “Now I’m wondering: was I wrong?”

“Beer’s weak,” Nose Ring says.

“Music’s weak,” the keeper adds.

“Are the men weak?” Qiva asks.

“We know how to do our duty,” Talem says. “And follow orders. That’s not weakness.”

“Follow orders.” She smirks. “Huh.” She slides his beer across the table to her, and drains it, too.

He scoffs, and it helps to knock his tightening throat open again. “Are we square, now?”

She belches. “Square?”

He gestures to the beer. “Is that what I owe for what I said?”

She chuckles. Her golden eyes are narrow in the shadow of her scarred brow.

She stands up, her seat making a loud protest as it scrapes back, and he flinches, which grows her toothy grin by another couple of cuspids. God dammit.

She thumps down next to him in the booth. Her big round butt lands with enough force it bounces the wooden planks beneath him.

“No,” she says. “We’re not square.”

A rumble of laughter from her goons. They scoot their chairs closer. The keeper makes a cooing sound. “Aww. Look. He’s blushing.”

“When Taiikari fuck,” Nose Ring says, “do the men get compelled?”

“Why are you—” He looks from Nose Ring back to Qiva. “What do you want?”

She leans against him. There is a startlingly soft smush across his shoulder. “I want you to answer Shan’s question.”

Something digs into his clavicle. It takes him a moment to realize what he is feeling.

Sergeant Qiva has pierced nipples.

“Sometimes,” he says.

“So that’s what you were saying,” Qiva says. “Talking about how’s an Eqtoran chick gonna hold me down.”

“Look,” he says. “I didn’t think—I mean, I would never have—”

“If I held you down, do you think you could get back up?” Her arm drapes across his shoulders.

“Sergeant—”

“Try it.”

“I’m not gonna—”

Her voice drops into a wrought-iron growl. “Try. It.”

He plants his feet on the floor and tries to push off, tries to get distance from her. The sculpted expanse of her arm is like a fleshy steel girder on his back. His face is hot; his throat flutters. Is his adrenal suite firing off or something?

Her hand tightens on his bicep. Her tail snakes past his hindquarters—so thick and blubbery, so much bigger than a Taiikari’s—and nudges against his far hip, dragging him closer. It is becoming impossible to avoid contact with the muscled swoop of her waist. Her skin is slick and hairless and cool to the touch.

“What are you doing?” he manages.

She just sits. Sits and grins. Her forearm drapes past his shoulder to his front. Her massive hand fans its broad fingers out on his chest.

“Your heart’s going fast,” she says. “You nervous?”

“I’m—” He swallows. “I’m agitated.”

Qiva’s hewn arm bends, and slides him further into the crook of her body. “Do you know what I reckon, girls?”

“What’s that, Qiv?” says Nose Ring, practiced and prompt.

“I reckon this is the kind of boy I look for.” Her hand is snaking up, from his chest to his shoulder, to the back of his neck, where it sits like a heavy shackle.

The keeper giggles. “I think he might be.”

Under his uniform, Talem’s back is coated with sweat. “What kind of boy?”

Qiva’s breath is hot and spiced with alcohol. “The kind,” she says, “that’s desperate to prove they ain’t afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” he says.

She leans down, so they are eye to predatory eye. The fabric of her quilted tank strains against the swell of her chest. Nose Ring and the keeper are grinning at one another but he hardly notices them. Her gaze has snared him as surely as if she’d flashed him. Her huge purple tongue emerges from behind her pearlescent teeth.

Talem chokes a tight breath of disbelief as it lands on his jaw and traces a hot, glistening trail up the entire length of his trembling ear.

Hot breath huffs against his skin.

In her deep, contralto rumble, Sergeant Qiva says, “Prove it.”