Thirteen days to go. Churning out about 1200 words per day (had to deck the damn tree yesterday; humbug). As you can see from the end of this segment, things are about to get very politically dangerous: a mention of the Jap spaceforce – as large as the Rus and imperium, combined (imaging me writing that on Pearl Harbor Day) followed by the elephant in the room; that is, the device behind the waterfall in the cavern. This is rather like the penultimate scene in “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly”: who shoots first?

As I have broken through my 50k word ceiling for this story, it’s a matter of wrapping it up and editing the crap out of it. That should leave me five months to write two more. I think at least one will be another collection but with a novella at its core. I’d like to write about the sorely neglected Habsburg Empire, but will do what I’m told.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

“Ouch!” she cried twenty minutes later as a medic put an adhesive bandage over the bridge of her nose.  He muttered apologies and left.  Not a throne room or meeting hall, Alicia looked about at the twenty by fifty meter room she found herself in, decorated in typical Petrine Baroque.  There was a small table in the center and a desk at the far end, along with some rickety antique chairs along the walls.  One of which she occupied.  There were more retainers at the door she was nearly carried in and also near the desk, so far away.

And why am I alone? she wondered.  Did my behavior make the Tsarina angry at me?

At that, the door she’d been brought in was flung open as an older man stormed in.

“Grandfather!” she yelled, leaping up, weaving, steadying herself while he closed his arms about her.

“Little Alicia!” he not quite shouted, almost crushing her.  “My wife, Nadia, had to stop at the toilet, but once I knew where you were in the Winter Palace, I came as quickly as I could.”

“Gr…grandfather?  I’m a frail Martian girl and can’t breathe!”

“Sorry!” Another shout, now just holding onto her shoulders.  “You look well for all you’ve been through this past week.  Mom, Fussy, told me they brought you here under a high G load.  For all that, you look okay.”

“I’m fine…”

“And you stumbled during the ceremony just down,” he went on.  “We saw it while being driven here.”

“That was deliberate.”

“What – ?”

There was a tap at the door and Alicia looked to see her grandfather’s wife.  Still not happy with me, after all these years.  Stepping out of Robert’s grasp, she walked over and managed a polite bow.  “It is good to see you again, Grandmother.”

“One of them,” Nadia said, trying to be polite to a side of her husband’s family she tried to not think about.  She extended her gloved hand.  The girl took it and gave a kiss of protocol.  “You’ve certainly made quite the name for you, Miss Alvarez.”

“I fell down a hole.  I’m no one special.”

“You are one of those demi-humans.  Like your,” her mouth made a moue, “mother.  And, you are friend of my aunt’s sister, Kira.  What is it you call her?”

“Midwife.  She is that to my planet and has my love and loyalty,” she replied in a careful tone.  I hope Grandfather can see how uncomfortable all this is.  Why did he bring her?

“Well,” raised in another imperial family, Robert was not stupid, “we’re very proud of you, even if your gift seems to be falling down.  Ah, here it is.”

He indicated the man and woman wheeling a cart with a nearly two-meter wide flatsceen on it.  They stationed it near a wall and plugged it in.  They were leaving, with a bow, as Empress Anastasia walked in.  Her niece curtsied and Robert gave a partial bow.  Alicia bowed, as well.

“Don’t know the finer points of protocol, Miss Alvarez?” she asked, sounding a little less hostile than she did earlier.  “And I see you nose stopped bleeding.”

“We are a frontier people, Tsarina, and perhaps not as refined as – ”

“Are you two finished?  I have work to do.” A harsh young woman’s voice barked from the screen.  Alicia looked over.  A round face with short, brown-red hair, except from a two cm fringe down the right side of her face.  Wide eyes, the color of clay with a mouth seemingly set to a permanent scowl.

“Prime Minister Mendrovovitch,” she said with another short bow.  “My older brother misses his friend, your eldest son, and appreciates when Ivan makes time for him at his military school.”

“Oh.” That seemed to catch her on her back foot.  “Thank you, Princess Hartmann.  That human was one of Ivan’s first, true, friends.”

“And why not just handle all of this in your construct?” Aurelia said suddenly, as the image on the screen split in two.  “It would be much faster for several of us.”

“The Tsarina is old and I did not want to stress her more than needed,” Reina replied.

“Well, that’s backhanded polite…” Annie said to the ground.  “Is there anyone else who need to be a part of this?  If we are meeting in this manner, I can have more screen brought in.”

“The Emperor of Japan, given their colony on Mars, is watching and listening,” the Thinking Machine told her, “but I explained to him his influence in this matter is limited.”

“One of his subject was burned and partly torn up,” Alicia said, thinking of Nichole.  “One who rescued me and brought me to this world.  I think he should – ” 

“Quiet, Hero of Mars,” Reina barked again.  I thought she was supposed to be nicer.  Maybe my home’s culture is that different from Old Home?

“And that they have the largest spacefaring fleet of all of our nations,” Robert contributed.

“Space is one thing,” Reina said, blinking her eyes slowly.  “Time is another.”

Everyone knew what she meant and no one wanted to step out into the thin diplomatic ice.

***