Succession. Today the grand arched windows of La Chambre Rouge revealed Catharine's birthright. Five kilometres beyond the glass, rust-brown columns rose in the sky—fire and smoke marked her ascension. A flash of light spiked above the palace approaches. When the next strike flared, brown smoke was already curling in the air. Behind it all, Pavonis Mons endured.

  Smoothing the arched glass with her fingertips she measured each necessary concussion. Dispassionate. Unafraid.

  At her throat, the queen’s necklace. Three red diamonds. One for each volcano surrounded by six rubies and nine blue diamonds. The Arisia consort gems. After her campaign, all Mars would call her queen.

  “Bring me my infiltrators.” She tore her hand from the gems and pointed to the palace guard.

  Four fresh gouges marked the principal keystone above her—all that remained of Krrel's crest, Strata Angustus, now stripped away. Crimson draperies still bore her mother’s crest. Strata Cydonia: Crossed pikes and a coiled snake over a planet with twin rings.

  A pair of elite guards stood on either side of the princess, pikes held at attention. Catharine’s new brigade. Stone-faced. Disciplined.

  At her back, Catharine's snake coiled into a twisting knot of sinewed muscle, thick as a guard’s thigh. The bones of a large rodent snapped like dry twigs as Echus crushed it. When Jendrick approached from the Antechamber, she turned to him, raising her jaw.

  Eyes blinking once, his forked tongue tasted the Regent’s approach. Catharine stroked the scales behind its skull and flipped her hair back.

  “Princess.” Jendrick stepped forward. “As you requested.”

  Behind him were four miners and Pericles' man. A pair of palace soldiers held him by the shoulders. His fractured arms encased in a steel cage. Clinking steel, chains looped from each ankle to his wrists and a black hood hugged his face tight enough that each breath made the fabric move.

  “I trust that the Royal Chef has fed your miners?” Catharine smiled softly at Branik. The same smile she used when measuring men.

  Branik bowed. Awkward, uncultured. A miner trying to play courtier. “Yes… Catharine… m’lady, it was a long—”

  “Twelve hours or more by Mars’ fastest, I hear.” A concussion shook the windows. Outside, a fresh mushroom cloud corkscrewed into the sky. Almost every other eye lifted, following its rise into the stratosphere behind her and she watched the fear in each of them.

  “Take Pericles’s man to the tunnels below. For now, I have troubling things to discuss with our miner friends.” Her glance was almost sincere. “Later… I’ll meet you there, young Regent.”

  Jendrick bowed, then nodded to the guards. When they hauled the prisoner toward the door the ankle chains rattled and his feet skidded across marble. Beneath the hood, Pericles's officer roared.

  "Beggin' you, princess, what will happen—"

  Echus moved. The massive body shifted with a dry scrape of scales on marble. Sandpaper. Branik's voice died in his throat.

  The snake uncoiled and dragged the large rodent to the left of the princess then nudged it against the wall. Catharine nodded and chuckled softly. “Sometimes Echus likes to save his favourite ones for later.”

  The miner’s eyes looked on, white with terror.

  Lacing her fingers together, she fashioned a smile. "Your future here on Mars is most important to me." Her voice dropped, intimately. “One has to choose the best path. The one that will do the least harm and that will keep your friends, your families safe.”

  Watching quietly she let the words settle.

  “The correct decision may not seem clear at first, but I can help you with that, after all you don’t want to see these men of yours killed in a battle that you can never win.”

  Catharine's gaze swept the miners, then returned to Branik. She sighed.

  “The widows, the orphaned children. A prolonged war might damage the food supply, and those too young, or too old to work or fight, could starve. Die of starvation. Imagine.”

  “Princess?” Branik rubbed his forehead.

  “If you fight for Krrel, or you fight for Rafael—and die, what would be the outcome?”

  “When the queen was alive—right here in this palace—life was better for you. You know this truth. Mars remembers. I will promise you—that the instant the fighting ends, a better life will begin again.”

  “In the mines?” The fourteen year old kid spoke.

  “Branik will know this: Krrel made you mine ore with picks and shovels. I will make sure that you have proper machines. The work will be faster, more ore will be produced and Mars will prosper.”

  “And our families?” Another miner asked.

  “Will be alive.”

  “If you fight with Rafael, will it be better than fighting with Krrel and will less of you die? Tell them Branik.”

  “Raf doesn’t have weapons, Princess.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned to the boy.

  “So you will die faster. Defenseless.” Catharine closed her eyes.

  Branik said the name. Raf. She wanted to touch her chest instead Catharine's hand moved to her wrist-comm but the metal stayed cold. Silent.

  She turned back to the window and measured her breathing.

  "Princess?" Branik lifted his eyes to hers.

  She didn't answer immediately. Three breaths. Four.

  Stooping Branik nodded slowly.

  “You can stop that from happening today—now. Will you help me to end the war? Help me save your friends?”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Catharine stepped forward and touched Branik’s arm, letting the scent of her perfume linger. “You have helped me already. I know you want to.”

  A tear trailed from Branik’s eye when he nodded. The other miners looked at him and shrugged.

  Satisfied, Catharine’s lips curled up ever so slightly.

  “What do you want us to do?” Branik sobbed and Catharine wrapped her arms around him.

  Like a winter breeze, she made her voice soft. “You must tell the miners how dangerous Rafael’s plan is and remind them of their suffering. How people will starve. Explain to them what I have told you.”

  The reek of sweat and plasma burns touched her skin. His hair was crusted with red dust, but Catharine combed her fingers through it anyway.

  "I'll protect you," she whispered.

  Leaning back, she cupped his weathered face, scarred by decades underground. He shivered under her touch—fear or relief, she didn't care.

  Catharine couldn't stop the smile. He was hers now.

  ∞

  Catharine dismissed the miners with a gesture. "My palace guards will escort you to the Noctis Shipyards. There, you will board a ship. Mars requires your service."

  Branik bowed, tears still wet on his face, and shepherded the others from La Chambre Rouge—following the guards. The fourteen-year-old looked back once before the doors sealed.

  The miners no longer fighting for Krrel. Their loyalty to Raf, severed.

  "Young Regent." Catharine turned to Jendrick. "Come. It's time you understood the tools your queen employs."

  She led him to the spiral stairs—down through marble halls, past the palace foundations, deeper still. Ten levels beneath La Chambre Rouge, the air turned cold and clinical. Sterile white tiles replaced red velvet. The scent of antiseptic burned away the perfume.

  Jendrick's footsteps slowed as they approached the laboratory doors.

  Inside, Pericles's officer lay strapped to the Tractability table, hood removed. His eyes were wide, searching desperately for mercy he wouldn't find.

  Catharine smiled and looked down at the prisoner.

  "Imagine," she said, loud enough for him to hear every word, "you will walk out of this room a Battalion Chief, in service to the new queen."

  An alien glyph meandered across the surface of her wrist comm. It pulsed while the corners of the Tractability table glistened like a mirror under the laboratory’s blinding spotlights.

  Catharine's soldiers pinned Pericles's officer to the table. Black straps snapped together, immobilizing him as he wailed.

  Raising her hand, Catharine stopped the doctor. "Let me do it."

  "This pinches a bit." She twisted the palm-sized wrench. Six bolts sank into his skull, anchoring the steel halo around his forehead. “One extra twist for the last one.”

  His eyes were wide, watering, but Catharine wanted him more terrified before she took his mind. She touched the drill above him. “When this little wire goes next to your prefrontal cortex, you will do everything your new queen asks.”

  A sound rose, like the baker's mixer in the palace kitchen. The drill spun faster—louder than she remembered—louder than Xylia. It pierced flesh above his eye. The man's scream cut off into a gurgle.

  “Come Jendrick, it’s important to observe the fruition of our efforts.”

  Technicians were cutting away the soldier’s splints when Jendrick tiptoed forward. Covering his nostrils, he stared at the bolts. Each one bore threads razor sharp

  Catharine grabbed his collar and pulled him to the table where the steel and bolts crackled into the man’s arm bones. Inhaling the sterile air within the laboratory, she put an arm around Jendrick’s shoulder. “Be unafraid, only the disloyal look away.”

  “See, there is very little blood.” Marvelling at the doctor’s efficiency, Catharine handed Jendrick a drill. “Secure his arm bones. Turn it until it stops, so the bones fuse correctly.”

  Pressing his lips together, beads of sweat appeared on Jendrik’s brow. Catharine wiped them away, then tilted her head.

  “You are doing well.” Lifting his elbow as Jendrick drilled, her eyes beamed when she heard the satisfying pop. “Now the bolt.”

  “You’ll hear it, when it’s tight.”

  Rotating the handle Jendrick screwed the bolt into the soldier’s bone, until he could turn it no more.

  Grasping the handle Catharine ratcheted it in then stopped as it made an eggshell like crack.

  “There.” Catharine ruffled Jendrick’s hair. “Next, you will supervise the obedience, in person, when I cannot be here.”

  Her heels clapped on the sterile floor. Measured while holding Jendrick’s hand until they were just outside the laboratory door.

  Covering his nose and eyes, her Regent’s face flushed. Behind them, howls erupted from the laboratory—then cut off as the door sealed.

  "It's a sweet smell. You shouldn't fear it." Catharine lifted his chin. “...and you are about to become my Viceroy. This is a celebration.”

  Slipping the Heretic’s Fork from her comm bracelet, she unfolded its prongs and palmed it like a tiny spear. Silver filaments, fine as hair, quivered at each tip. “With this… I see what you see. I hear what you hear.”

  "M'lady?" Jendrick's head trembled, but he didn't step back.

  Pinching his jowl between her fingers and thumb, she darted a tip into his eyebrow. Jendrick’s breath hitched.

  “So I see and…” Yanking his earlobe up, she spun the other tip under it. Catharine’s wrist comm blue-shifted then pulsed twice. “ And a fast prick, lets me hear.”

  Her stab was quicker than a sewing needle, leaving a two millimetre projection of silver wire.

  Jendrick's brow furrowed. He swallowed hard and watched Catharine fold the Heretic's Fork. Docking it into her comm bracelet, disappearing beneath her sleeve.

  “Simple, yes?” Catharine laughed.

  Boots echoes fell behind Jendrick and two brigade guards appeared in Pericles’s strata uniforms. A precise salute to Catharine and they formed up beside him.

  “You are about to execute your first orders as…” Catharine’s eyes glistened when she pulled him close and kissed him on the forehead. “As Viceroy.”

  When Jendrick looked over each shoulder, the guards stiffened and tapped their heels together.

  He grinned, admiring her presence.

  “Take this man with you.” Burning smells wafted from the Tractability Laboratory just as the door opened.

  Glaring eyes—void of sentience—benumbed, he stood there. Six red imprints marked his skull. Pericles’s soldier, transformed. Bolts secured his fractured arms hidden under Pericles’s colours. Catharines infiltrator.

  “Take our fine Battalion Chief to infiltrate Major General Pericles' armies where he will take command.” Catharine pinched Jendrick’s cheek, playfully. “And bring me back more—here. Viceroy.”

  Jendrick tilted his head and smirked.

  “It should be no trouble, after all you are Jendrick Pericles.” Her wrist comm flared—a surge of alien heat beneath the sleeve. Not now, she thought.

  Wrapping a hand around the comm bracelet, Catharine’s voice sharpened. “Soon we control Mars’ armies, everywhere. Make me proud.”

  He bent at the hip, and held his bow. His mentor. “My queen.”

  The guards bowed fractionally and pivoted. Locked in step with the guards, Jendrick rubbed his ear, trying to find the hairline filament.

  “Remember Viceroy, I’ll be watching you.”

  But it wasn’t Jendrick she was curious about. Touching her wrist comm, the metal stayed inert. Cold. No signal. No coordinates. No trace.

  The alien presence declined her need. Raf was gone.

  Her hand drooped.

  Everything she'd just done—the miners, Branik, Jendrick, Pericles's man—all of it to force Raf's hand. To make him need her. To bring him back.

  Where are you? Where on Mars?

  She stared at the dormant comm.

  It didn't matter. She told herself that twice.

  The bracelet pulsed. Black veins spidered beneath the metal in the familiar lattice. An ally for now. Not a servant.

  The alien presence—patient, waiting—reminded her: she didn't need anyone.

  She had Mars.