The Bronze Skies Read online

  Table of Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  Characters & Family History

  Time Line

  The Bronze Skies

  Catherine Asaro

  TOUGH FEMALE P.I. EXPLORING THE UNDERWORLD OF A VAST STAR EMPIRE. Book two in a new series set in the world of Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire series.

  Major Bhaajan achieved the impossible. Born to the Undercity, the slums below the City of Cries on the planet Raylicon, she broke free from crushing poverty and crime to become a military officer with Imperial Space Command. Now retired from military duty, she walks the mean streets of Undercity as a private investigator. And she is about to embark on her most challenging case yet.

  Summoned by no less than the Ruby Pharaoh herself, Major Bhaajan is tasked with finding a killer. But this is no ordinary murderer. The Ruby Pharaoh witnessed a Jagernaut cut down Assembly Councilor Tap Benton—which shouldn’t have been possible. The Jagernauts are the elite of the elite soldiers in the Imperial Space Command. What’s more, the spinal node implanted in all Jagernauts should have prevented the murder. But the Ruby Pharaoh is sure of what she saw, and she has reason to believe that the Jagernaut will kill again.

  Now, Major Bhaajan must hunt down a killer before it is too late. To do so, she must return to the one place on Raylicon she knows best: Undercity.

  Baen Books by

  Catherine Asaro

  Skolian Empire: Major Bhaajan

  Undercity

  The Bronze Skies

  The Saga of the Skolian Empire

  The Ruby Dice

  Diamond Star

  Carnelians

  Sunrise Alley

  Alpha

  THE BRONZE SKIES

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Catherine Asaro

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-8258-5

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-609-7

  Cover art by Alan Pollack

  First Baen printing, September 2017

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Asaro, Catherine, author.

  Title: The bronze skies / by Catherine Asaro.

  Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Books, [2017] | Series: Skolian Empire:

  Major Bhaajan ; book 2 | Series: Saga of the Skolian Empire

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017031138 | ISBN 9781481482585 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Skolian Empire (Imaginary place)--Fiction. | Women private

  investigators--Fiction. | Life on other planets--Fiction. | Science

  fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / General. | FICTION / Science

  Fiction / Adventure. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera.

  Classification: LCC PS3551.S29 B76 2017 | DDC 813/.54--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017031138

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  To Binnie Braunstein

  For her years of friendship,

  And her belief in my writing.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to the following people for their invaluable input: to Aly Parsons and Kate Dolan for critiquing the entire manuscript; to P. J. O’Dwyer’s critique group for their insightful commentary on scenes; to the great group of people at Baen Books, my publisher Toni Weisskopf, my editor Tony Daniel, and all the other people who did such a fine job making this book possible. My thanks to my excellent agent, Eleanor Wood, of Spectrum Literary Agency; and my publicist Binnie Braunstein for her enthusiasm and hard work on my behalf.

  A heartfelt thanks to the shining lights in my life, my husband John Cannizzo and our daughter Cathy, for their love and support.

  I

  The Woman on the Bridge

  Forbidden land.

  Today I walked in the City of Cries, the jewel of the desert. As a girl, I had never seen this glistening city, for I had been born in the ruins beneath it. The elite population of Cries barred my people from coming above ground. No written laws prevented us from entering Cries, only traditions so ancient, their origins had become buried in the unrelenting poverty of my people. Even today, when I walked along a boulevard in Cries as a citizen of the city, I felt like a criminal. All my time in the army, all those years of people calling me Major Bhaajan, all my work in covert ops, followed by my years as a private investigator with an elite clientele—none of it erased the buried voice inside of me that whispered you are a fraud.

  Even now, I half expected the police to show up and throw me into prison or back into the slums under the city. Except only they used the word “slum.” We called it the Undercity. Home. It had a beauty they would never understand.

  The City of Cries spread around me in spacious avenues and parkland. With its mirrored towers reflecting the sky, the metropolis gleamed like a gem in an otherwise barren desert. The imported greenery that softened its edges depended on extensive irrigation systems only the wealthiest could afford. Across the avenue, a kiosk offered access to the world mesh. No traffic marred the streets; the law forbade ground vehicles. A few flycars cut through the sky, bright slivers against its pale expanse.

  Noonday heat beat against my face, prompting my leather jacket to cool my body. It was a perk of my job, that I could afford smart clothes with climate controls. Silence surrounded me. No other people were out. No surprise there; it was noon, the time of daylight sleep. I’d read somewhere that humanity had evolved on a world with a twenty-four-hour day, a place where people slept at night and stayed awake the entire day. I didn’t know. I’d never visited Earth. Here on the world Raylicon, the day lasted eighty hours. Apparently my clients didn’t care about sleep, seeing as they had scheduled this meeting at noon. I had to be at the top of my game today. I had an appointment at the palace.

  I expected to meet my contact at the city outskirts, but no one was waiting when I reached the designated spot. Instead, a flycar stood parked where this street blended into the desert. The vehicle glinted in the sunlight, gold and black chrome. Breezes feathered across my face, the air even more parched out here than in the city center. A silver bot no larger than my foot scuttled by, sweeping the path clear of red sand flecked with blue minerals.

  As I walked to the flycar, its hatch irised open like the shutter on an old-fashioned camera. I scanned the vehicle using monitors in the tech-mech gauntlets on my wrists. The scan came up clean. I surveyed the shadowed interior, looking for threats. Nothing. Nor did any person wait inside, not even a pilot. Now that I saw the flycar up close, I recognized the craft; it belonged to the Majda family. Right, real personal, have an automated vehicle fetch me to their palace. It didn’t surprise me, though. They kept me on retainer, but none of our interactions changed my unease about working in the shadow of their stratospheric power. Even so. The Majdas ruled the
City of Cries, Cries ruled the planet Raylicon, and I lived on Raylicon.

  I stepped up into the flycar.

  With the House of Majda, power came in a trio, three sisters, all formidable, all different. I found Colonel Lavinda Majda the easiest to deal with, or more accurately, the least nerve-wracking, and I wasn’t one whose nerves were easily wracked. Majda women were impossible to read, towering and impassive, born to power. Many were officers in Imperial Space Command, more commonly called ISC, the combined military forces of the Imperialate. In fact, Vaj Majda, the oldest sister, served as General of the Pharaoh’s Army, which made her a joint commander of ISC. Lavinda, the youngest, had been my contact on the first case I worked for them, when a crime boss in the Undercity kidnapped a Majda prince. The Majdas hired me because of my Undercity origins. I could go places below the desert none of them even knew existed. They feared he had died, and they were damn near right, but I found him in time. For that, they decided I was human after all, despite my humble origins.

  In the past year, I had visited the palace several times, and I never lost my awe of the place. Today a man ushered me through the corridors. No one could afford human staff anymore; everyone used robots, which required less investment in terms of pay, food, and housing. Yet here this fellow walked, dressed in black, with a subtle sense of power that made me suspect he too was military. Majdas employed people who looked like them. Hell, even I could be an untamed version of them, with black curls I could never control and dark eyes. A lover had once told me I defined the phrase “wildly gorgeous,” which I think he meant as a compliment, but I gathered he also didn’t think I looked civilized. Majdas were the epitome of civilization.

  We followed a hall wide enough for ten people to walk side by side down its gleaming length. Mosaics graced the walls, gold sparkling amid blue and green hues, evoking fish in a pond, here on a world with no surface water. Light filled the hall, though I saw no lamps. In fact, no sign of technology showed anywhere. The palace looked as it must have when it was first built, exquisite, pristine—and ancient. It had been in these mountains almost as long as humans had lived on this world.

  The Majda lineage went back millennia, to a time when their power had been second only to the House of Skolia. Led by the Ruby Pharaoh, the Skolias had raised the ancient Ruby Empire, a far-flung civilization that stretched across the stars. It collapsed after only a few centuries. My ancestors plunged into barbarism, and we didn’t regain the stars for millennia. Today, an elected Assembly ruled our people. However, it escaped no one’s attention that we called ourselves the Skolian Imperialate, not the republic of this or the federation of that. The Ruby Dynasty still wielded influence, and after them, the Majdas remained the most powerful House. Today, however, the Majda empire was financial. They had more wealth and influence than the combined governments of entire planets.

  My escort never spoke. He left me in a room with vaulted ceilings that created a sense of space. The walls displayed paintings of the Vanished Sea, showing the sun setting over that vast desert, spectacular works of art, yes, but they also accented the death of the world Raylicon, its long dying over the ages. Without our technology to keep it livable, Raylicon would soon become uninhabitable for human life.

  The door opened behind me. I turned to greet Lavinda—and found myself facing General Vaj Majda. Her presence dominated the room; at two meters, she was taller even than me. Her hair swept back from her face, accenting her high cheekbones and straight nose. She wore civilian clothes, a black tunic with trousers, but she still looked military, with her upright posture and aura of authority. Although grey dusted the hair at her temples, if I hadn’t known she was more than a century old, I’d have guessed she was in her forties. Those of us born in the Undercity normally had no access to age-delaying nanomeds, but I’d received them in the army. Despite my apparent youth, I was over forty years old. Compared to Vaj Majda, however, I felt like a green kid. She scared the devil out of me.

  “General.” I bowed rather than saluted since she wore civilian clothes.

  She inclined her head. “Major.”

  I wasn’t actually a major anymore; I had retired nearly a decade ago. I preferred army titles, though. I understood military hierarchies, which meant I had less chance of saying something stupid.

  The general considered me. Maybe she thought silence would prod me to talk. I had used that trick myself while questioning suspects, but I didn’t see the purpose here. So I waited. I had no idea why she had met me instead of Lavinda. It couldn’t be because Lavinda wasn’t available; she would have sent one of her aides, not her powerful sister. Something was up.

  A ping sounded.

  The general spoke to the air. “Are you ready?”

  A woman answered in a clipped style. “We’re set, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Vaj said.

  “Set for what?” I asked, too blunt in all this subtle, sophisticated elegance, but the Majdas had known what they were getting when they put me on retainer.

  “A client would like your help.” Vaj lifted her hand, indicating a door. “Shall we?”

  I went with her, even more uneasy than before.

  The general and I walked through the palace gardens, a wild area with blue flowers imported from offworld. A creek gurgled through the grounds, and the forest beyond created a vibrant pocket of life—this on a world with no native trees. Bronzed sunlight streamed over us, rays with an aged quality, a reminder that our world, gilded by its dying sun, had seen its best days long ago.

  My client was waiting in the garden. I expected another imposing queen. Instead, I found a small woman with long black hair standing on a delicate bridge that arched across the creek. A shimmerfly floated by her, its wings glistening. Raylicon had no native insects, only tiny reptilian fliers. The law forbade anyone from importing bugs—except, apparently, the Majdas. The woman didn’t seem to notice. She was watching the water, leaning with her elbows on the rail of the bridge. I supposed she was pretty, though I’d never been much of a judge of looks in women. I was excellent, however, at recognizing authority or its lack thereof. To succeed in the army after I clawed my way out of the Undercity, and then to make the almost impossible jump from the enlisted to officer ranks, I’d learned to read people well and fast. This woman seemed innocuous, perhaps a lesser member of the Majda family.

  When we reached the base of the bridge, the woman turned to us. I couldn’t tell her background. Although she had the dark hair of Skolian nobility, her skin was lighter, with a quality that seemed almost translucent. She could have been born out of wedlock to a Majda and a commoner. Her ethereal quality set her apart from the other Majdas I’d met. They were many things, but never delicate and pretty. I had no idea what to make of this stranger on the bridge.

  The woman spoke in a musical voice. “Major Bhaajan.” She tapped the rail. “Come join me.”

  I walked up the span and stood with her, feeling large and clumsy. Gods, I could break her in two, given my height and strength. She gazed at the creek flowing under the bridge, its ripples glinting in the sunlight, the water gurgling, a sound heard nowhere else in this desert. I glanced back to see Vaj Majda still at the base of the bridge, watching us. Something about her posture seemed off, but I couldn’t figure out what. She looked as rigid and as intimidating as ever.

  I turned back to the woman, my hand resting on the rail, its tiled surface cool under my palm. Why I felt so uncomfortable, I didn’t know. Well, yes, Vaj Majda always made me uneasy, but she was out of earshot. Then again, given all the biomech augmentation she must have in her body, more even than I carried, she could probably hear every word we spoke here.

  “General Majda tells me you are good at what you do,” the woman said. No introduction, no My greetings, pleased to meet you, my name is Whatever the Hell. Right down to business. Good.

  “Do you have a job for me?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer right away. Definitely a Majda. No matter. I could ou
twait any of these aristocrats. Up close, her eyes were even more striking, a deep green color, like leaves in a forest. A translucent sheen of sunrise colors overlaid her irises. It could be a deliberate alteration; rich people changed their eye color as often as they changed their shoes. I suspected she didn’t give a whit about fashion, though I couldn’t have said why. She didn’t seem military, either. Maybe she was involved in business, like Corejida Majda, the middle sister, who handled the finances of their empire. Whatever her identity, I wished she’d get to the point.

  “Forming a sense of a person takes time,” she said.

  Apparently I didn’t hide my impatience as well as I thought. I smiled wryly. “If you’re looking for profound utterances to give you a sense of me, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint. Deep conversation isn’t one of my strong points.”

  She laughed, a beautiful sound. “I appreciate straight talk. It is as rare as it is valuable.”

  Interesting. In the Undercity, we were always blunt. Hell, we hardly spoke at all. Our terse dialect revealed little. When I joined the army, I had needed to relearn how to talk.

  “I would like your help in locating someone,” the woman said.

  “Who is it?”

  She had an odd look, unsettled, and she didn’t answer right away. I didn’t think she was testing me; she needed to consider her response. I doubted they wanted me to find another missing prince. They only had so many. Although the world had long ago changed, becoming egalitarian for women and men, Majdas followed an ancient and profoundly sexist code. Their men lived in seclusion, seen by no one outside the family. They were the most valuable, best-guarded possessions of the Majda empire. You could be thrown in jail just for trying to glimpse one of their cloistered men and executed for touching a Majda prince.