The Star Queen.
Susan Grant.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.
-Lao-Tzu.
Prologue.
Romjha B'kah rolled a dart fashioned from a spent rifle cartridge between his finger and thumb, squinting to clear eyes blurred by blood loss, fatigue, and painkillers.
Painkillers? He almost laughed. More like enough glasses of ale to make him forget about the bullet hole in his thigh. By morning all he'd care about would be the monumental hangover left from his overindulgence; but if he'd consumed what the healer had tried to push on him, the official knock-you-out-for-a-day-or-two pills that passed for medicine, he'd be flat on his back now instead of playing darts.
Priorities, he reasoned. A man had to have them.
Nearly all of the community's available women were crowded into a corner of the Big Room, the social heart of their community, to watch him and the other raiders wind down. He and his men drew female attention by being members of an elite group. Raiders. Who didn't love them? At great personal risk, they left the security of the caves to forage supplies from the surface: fuel, building materials, medical supplies- all left behind by the absentee conquerors who'd gutted their homeland three generations ago and still visited random terror campaigns upon them.
It didn't hurt matters that every man in Romjha's assigned cell of five was a bachelor in good health, or that at twenty-four he was the old man of the group.
Romjha took aim. A target hung from an unadorned wall of solid rock. The Big Room, unlike other parts of the surrounding cave, made no attempt to hide its origins: an underground munitions storage facility. The installation had served as home for Sienna's surviving population since they were driven underground by invaders who had exterminated everyone unlucky enough-or witless enough-to remain topside.
Romjha leaned on his crutch. The target wavered. Or was it his eyes? It almost felt as if his head were floating away from his body. He swallowed, his mouth parched, and put the bulk of his weight on the crutch.
"Looks like you'll need to put a bullet in your other leg to even out the load!" yelled Petro.
The raiders lounging nearby guffawed, slapping their legs with dirty hands. They hadn't cleaned much more than the sweat from their faces after returning from last night's mission, one which had nearly won Romjha a one-way trip to the Ever After. Petro had been crawling next to him when the catwalk they traversed gave way, causing Romjha's rifle to misfire. The bullet had passed clean through Romjha's leg, missing the artery. Had he not long ago lost his faith, he might have believed the Great Mother was looking out for him.
Since women were present, Romjha refrained from answering his friend with a rude gesture. There might not be much of the warrior's creed to which he still adhered, but showing consideration to females was part of it. "Maybe I'll put one in your leg next time we throw-to even the odds," Romjha suggested. The women laughed, and he flashed them his most charming grin. He enjoyed their company (he enjoyed women, period-the texture of their skin, their hair, their taste, their scent) but he'd showed so little interest in making any of them his mate-or interest in them at all lately- that they assumed he was still grieving for his wife.
He didn't know the cause of his disinterest to tell the truth. It had been years since Seri died. He was still a warrior, still fierce and proud. Although perhaps his fire had faded some. He'd been so helpless when Seri and their newborn son died from complications regarding the birth. All the weapons in the world couldn't have prevented their deaths, not when his people lived as primitives without modern medical facilities.
He let the women all imagine what they wanted about him, let them imagine that they knew him. But he didn't even know himself anymore. He certainly didn't feel like much of a man, a protector. Perhaps the others still did.
Flicking his wrist, Romjha threw his dart. It landed true with a resounding thwack. He shrugged to the sounds of whistles and the grumbles from the men who'd lost their bets-shares of their allotted portions of ale.
Hobbling to the target, he plucked out the dart, sunk deep and dead-center. As if he'd withdrawn a dagger imbedded deep in living flesh, the action brought about a blood-chilling scream.
And then another. Women's voices. Children's.
Romjha turned around, the dart hanging from his fingers. His pulse didn't even accelerate. He simply peered over the heads of those around him to view the latest mishap. Too much carnage, too much death- they had a numbing effect on the psyche.
Covered in gore, Taj Sai, Joren Sai's orphan, staggered into the Big Room. Her red-blond hair had come loose from its binding, thrashing about like blood-encrusted whips as she swung her overly bright gaze from one end of the room to the other. She waved off an army of helpers. "I'm unharmed," she gasped.
She stopped in the middle of the room, her hands fisted at her sides. At first glance, she appeared fragile, her amber eyes hollow and haunted, but the muscles flexing beneath the skin of her slender limbs indicated endurance and strength.
The silence as everyone paused was deafening. Taj Sai pressed one bloodied fist to her chest. "Pasha is dead," she said on a breath of anguish.
"Pasha . . . Pasha," came cries and murmurs around the room. The bombmaker fabricated the munitions they used on raids. Taj was his apprentice. It should have been many years before she had to take his place.
Should have been, Romjha thought. There were a lot of things like that.
Elder Patra, an ancient who'd known those who lived topside in prewar days, raised her voice. "What happened?"
"There was an explosion in the lab." Taj shook visibly but didn't shed a single tear. With contempt she spat out, "Another accident. And I have come here to tell you that this irresponsibility must end, or we will end as a people!"
Romjha's head spun and his leg ached, but he couldn't pull his eyes from Taj as she shouted, "We've met the enemy, and he is us! Should you doubt me, you can ask Pasha-for if things continue as they are, all of us will be making a trip to the Ever After to see him. Just yesterday a raider's rifle misfired." Her wild, impassioned eyes found Romjha's. The jolt of that brief contact rocked him to the core.
"Last week it was the fuel spill," she continued, dragging those appalled eyes from his. "What is next?" she beseeched the shocked, silent gathering. "Who is next?"
Romjha grimaced. Her accusation rang with a truth he couldn't deny. His misfire was a mistake that could have just as easily killed Petro or any of the children scampering underfoot. He'd loaded his weapon too early, kept it cocked. With their population in decline, could they afford such recklessness, such sloppiness?
"We have become lax," Taj charged. "That is what is killing our people. Laziness. Apathy," she growled. "These are the greatest dangers of all!"
Her scorn for men like Romjha emanated from her like heat from a blaze, melting his indifference like wax. Abruptly self-conscious, he cleared his throat and shifted more of his weight to his good leg.
Taj marched back and forth, as if the energy coursing through her wouldn't allow her to stay still. Romjha had been raised to celebrate and appreciate the differences between men and women, but this woman was unlike any he'd ever encountered. The black outfit she wore was utilitarian and unisex. It contrasted with her long hair and graceful body. She obviously relished her femininity, and yet she addressed her people with the confidence of a raider.
It roused his curiosity.
What was she-seventeen by now? Eighteen? He should know, but he didn't. He'd grown up with the girl. Joren, her father, had been a hero to him.
Joren was one of the few men who studied theology beyond the classes given them all as youngsters in an attempt to keep this small, cavern-bound civilization "civilized." He and Romjha had debated endless hours on religion. philosophy. and politics. If not for Joren, Romjha would not know as much as he did about the pre-Fall years of the Empire; he would not have known how to study the books-huge handwritten tomes created from what the original survivors of Sienna had remembered from the days of computers and historical databases. Joren had helped Romjha form opinions on what the ruined galaxy might be like now, who in it had perhaps survived, and who had not. And then Joren had died.
Taj had been a brave soul throughout the ordeal, but Romjha hadn't given her much thought since, or anything else much thought. He'd spent too much time drifting in his own personal hell.
It occurred to him now that Taj had lost her family, too, and here she was: so vital. So alive.
So angry.
"We say that we fight the warlord," she growled. "But I question who is the real enemy when all the casualties we've suffered of late have been at our own hands."
Several of the elders attempted to physically intercept her, presumably in consolation, but she thrust out two fists, keeping them at arm's length. Shaking and bloody, she admonished them in a tirade that covered everything from unreliable weapons and volatile chemicals to sloppy safety procedures. She swore they'd blasted well better fix things since she was taking Pasha's place. Things were going to change. "Destiny isn't a matter of chance," she concluded fervently. "It's a matter of choice. If we are to survive, you have to change your thinking. I have already changed mine."
Romjha regarded her, awestruck. He was no stranger to bitterness and sorrow in all its forms, but never had he witnessed anyone strike back at fate with such fury and intensity. This young woman had taken tragedy and turned it into opportunity, clearly working to effect real changes in the way munitions were fabricated and in the procedures for utilizing them.
What had he done after his wife's death? Absolutely nothing.
Shame crept into his gut, and Romjha dropped his gaze to his hands. Capable hands. Strong hands. A warrior's hands. But he'd kept them at his sides in cowardice.
Inaction was cowardice. Instead of doing something about the poor conditions that led to his wife's death, he'd become part of the problem. Careless. Apathetic. Negligent of the risks he took, as if his life meant nothing. He was one of those who vexed Taj.
To be honest, his life didn't mean much to him. But others' did. And when you ignored the peril you put yourself in, you risked those around you. He didn't deserve the rank of raider or the accompanying privileges. Especially not in comparison with Taj, who had put the entire community on notice that she intended to use her position as a means of making things better. Safer.
Romjha rubbed his stubbly chin. Could he not do the same? Wasn't a raider as capable of doing good? Couldn't he shore up their defensive installations? Tighten safety procedures? Improve weapons training? Not to mention what he might do to boost morale, which had been flagging lately. And as raider commander, he would have a real opportunity to change policy, to set examples and make their forays topside more than mere scavenging missions.
Raider commander?
Wooziness made the room spin. You're insane, man. Yeah, maybe he was. But he was good with a rifle; he could think quickly under pressure. And it just so happened that the current raider commander had been chosen because the man had been the only one absent when they held the vote! Nothing blocked Romjha from vying for the job. There, he could begin the slow process of helping his people reclaim their world. And more.
His bleary gaze swerved to Taj. The women were surrounding her now, wiping the blood from her face and hands. Anger and deep-seated shame boiled in his belly. Women and children, the weak and the sick-they should be safe from war, he thought, frowning.
Romjha's free hand balled into a fist. He would go after the warlord himself and take him out, if he could figure out a way. But there were a few minor details holding him back, such as not having a fleet of space-capable craft at his service-or any real tech at all, for that matter. Not to mention his lack of the few million soldiers that might come in handy in an attempt to trounce his people's enemies.
But he vowed to keep his goal.
With a surge of protectiveness, he watched Taj at last allow one of the women to take her hand and lead her away. He himself ought to be holding that hand; he should be the one to gently cleanse her, to calm her. To protect her.
The urge to follow was almost unbearable. But Romjha was not yet the man Taj deserved. One day soon, he would be. And then he would make his intentions known. Body and soul, she would be his.
Another grand goal, he thought. Moments ago he'd had none at all; now he was full of them, it seemed.
He drew in a deep breath, squeezed his crutch until he was sure it would shatter in his hands. "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It's a matter of choice." Yes, my young Taj.
Romjha B'kah would no longer wait for the future. No, indeed. From this day forward, he would achieve it.
Chapter One.
The echo of a distant explosion rumbled through the vast underground network of caves. In the weapons lab where she'd worked all night, Taj Sai jerked her head up and listened. She'd never heard an outside- "topside"-blast from deep inside these caverns.
Her fingers clamped around a handful of bomb fuses she'd been cutting. Her heart thumped against her ribs. She aimed her good ear in the direction of the nearest passageway, but hissing burners and bubbling beakers on her worktable and walls of solid rock drowned out everything but the roar of her pulse.
By now, fear and curiosity would have sent the others rushing to the Big Room at the front of the cave. Every nerve ending in her body screamed for her to drop what she was doing and follow. But Taj didn't feel like pasting charred strips of her quivering flesh all over the walls of her lab.
No, thanks. Not tonight. It wasn't exactly her idea of redecorating.
Taj glared at the fuses in her hand and threw them into their box. Cooling in an ice bath on her worktable was a glass beaker filled with a solution of radic acid. She lifted it and poured a thin stream of the solution into a large spun-glass funnel filter. Delicate yellowish-white crystals collected at the bottom: a lethal harvest.
Her skin prickled with sweat. Radites. In this state the compound was extremely unstable. If it contacted anything but glass-boom! That little idiosyncrasy had killed her predecessor. Taj knew-she'd had to clean up the mess Pasha made. The mess Pasha became.
It had been four years since the old bombmaker had made that error and killed himself. But he might have killed someone else. That would have been worse.
Sweat gelled on her skin, suddenly icy cold. Five men were topside tonight, honored raiders all.
Her hand shook. Setting the beaker on its stand and wiping her knuckles across her brow, she swallowed thickly. The raiders had taken along her new shaped charges, miniature pipe bombs a hundred times more powerful than their bigger brothers. The men loved the idea: a minimum amount of explosive for a maximum amount of damage. "More bang for the buck," went the ancient saying that wasn't as outdated as most thought. Currency might no longer be in use but explosives surely were.
Yet the new shaped charges hadn't been tested. The explosive crammed in those tiny cylindrical casings could breach the strongest armor, including-Taj winced-the skyport's fuel storage facility: hardened underground fuel reservoirs. The explosion she'd heard could have been those reservoirs blowing sky high. Had they gone off at the wrong time in the wrong place? Had she combined ingredients in the wrong proportions, or had the booster charges malfunctioned due to some error she'd made? Great Mother! Had she made a blunder that killed someone? Why had she let those explosives be taken before they'd received more lab testing?
Her mind clouded with possibilities, scenarios. All the errors she'd ever made returned to haunt her.
She was mostly deaf in her left ear, her eyelashes and brows had been singed off a half-dozen times, and once, the year before, she'd been flash-blind for a week. Consequences of honing her art. If one could call mass destruction an art.
She, the legendary taskmaster for reducing accidents, had screwed up in that quest more than anyone knew. But the only one she'd ever injured was herself. People trusted her. Had her precarious track record just blown up in her face?
Taj stared at the sweat glistening on the back of her hand but saw bones poking out of scorched flesh, bloody fluid oozing from a socket where an eye used to be, violent convulsions driven by a fatally swelling brain, accompanied by the last hoarse screams of agony before death silenced the suffering.
Her mother had died silently, Taj was told, but the woman's battle with blood cancer, a disease curable in the long-ago days of tech and medical miracles, had gone on for the better part of a year. Taj had been two.
Her father-he'd died valiantly, too, his fight to survive far shorter but no less heart-wrenching. Taj had been fifteen when it happened, and his pointless death had changed her life forever.
Joren had been a raider-"the best of the best" according to Romjha B'kah, the current raider commander who had been then only a cocky recruit. The man's brisk, gruff statement at the death vigil had bemused Taj. All that had been required of him as a raider was to pay his silent respects to Joren's kin. But as a boy Romjha had idolized her father more than most, and so he must have felt obligated to console her.
The community had reached out to Taj, too, but their wealth of kind words had only exacerbated her awareness of her loss.
Grief. She hated it. More than that, she detested being afraid. Fear meant helplessness, and helplessness meant you had no say in your fate. But she'd found the antidote to that vulnerability-not in the protective arms of a mate, as was usual, but in her job: the manufacture of pyrotechnics.
Frowning, she blew several long strands of hair off her face and reached for the beaker. Her hands were steady enough to resume pouring acid and filtering radites.
There was another rumble, and this time the entire room shook. Great Mother. Another explosion. It sent stones and powder sprinkling down from high above, plunking onto Taj's head and worktable. She slapped her left hand over her beaker. A pebble bounced off the knuckle of her middle finger. Her stomach muscles clenched. Her pulse pounded in her throat. The beaker's cold rim bit into her palm. If she'd reacted a heartbeat later and the pebble fell into . . .
Don't think about it. She manufactured explosives; solids, liquids, powders, pastes, she mixed them all. She took on death daily, face-to-face, hand-to-hand. She wasn't supposed to care if she lived or died.
Sooner or later, she'd figure out how not to.
The familiar and oddly comforting red haze of anger returned. She let her temper smolder, let it stamp out the unwelcome signals transmitted by her raw nerves. With banked wrath, she forced herself to concentrate on emptying the beaker of acid. Her brain screamed at her to hurry, but she gritted her teeth until her jaw ached and took the time to clear her worktable of anything that might kill her, now or later.
At last, she abandoned the lab to see what horrific news awaited her in the Big Room.
Chapter Two.
Sprinting, Taj moved blindly through the shadowy maze of tunnels she'd memorized so early in her life that she had no recollection of doing it. The inner passages of these caves were neat, swept clean. Dust had a tendency to congest the lungs of the elderly, making the final years a chore for those lucky enough-or unlucky enough, as the case often was-to make it to old age, and so such dust was eradicated now. She'd helped see to that.
An occasional torch lit her way. One mustn't waste precious fuel on illumination. In between the lanterns it was pitch-black, seeming to amplify the thumping of her boots over the unseen floor. Her pants were snug, allowing her full strides that a dress wouldn't. Her shirt hem fluttered with the pumping of her arms. Only high-quality fabric whispered over skin like that, left her free and comfortable to maneuver. But that was as far as her interest in clothing went. Weaving and sewing she left to those who had patience for such things. She made explosives. In exchange, the raiders' women made her clothing from the best synthetic fibers they had. It was a good arrangement.
Taj pushed her way through the people gathered by the entrance to the Big Room. It was a dead cave, old and dry. Natural columns imparted a feeling of stateliness upon the central meeting area. Farther in, the odors of perspiration, warm bodies, and stale breath thickened the air. Underlying the usual smells was the tang of fear.
Romjha B'kah, the leader of the topside raids, was easy to find in the crowd. Soon after Taj had found Pasha dead, the tall, broad-shouldered warrior had seemed to come out of nowhere and taken the position of raider commander. After four years working with him, side by side, Taj couldn't imagine her life without him. He was intense, driven, tireless. He always knew what to do when the others spun in circles. He never risked a man unnecessarily; he thought things through before he acted, and he didn't show off.
"Stay low, stay alive to survive," he always said. And, like her, he worked to eliminate the accidents that had at one time been eating away at their meager population. They'd made great strides.