Path of the Hive Queen

The man who had tried to shoot at Regina, or at least near her, was a former soldier who’d been dismissed after the end of the civil war. A Cernlian born in Nerlia, he presumably had a chip on his shoulder. The man who had tried to ‘save’ her was a middle-aged engineer who was generally well-respected by his peers. He was known to gamble occasionally but didn’t seem to have significant debts, and had largely kept quiet about politics, although he seemed to be vaguely in favor of the Empire. That was quite common among the builders, who did get a well-paying job out of it.

Neither of their backgrounds offered any real hints as to who put them up to it, if anyone. That was probably on purpose. For her part, Regina was more annoyed than worried. This had shook up and scared the workers — and it wasn’t exactly fun for her either — and disrupted the operations at the new city. She didn’t think she had been in real danger, although this also pointed at a few issues, or maybe even vulnerabilities.

She hadn’t felt any real hostile intent from them, or the mix of emotions she’d come to associate with incipient violence through watching battlefields. Just nerves and anxiety, which were reasonable under the circumstances. But she couldn’t rely on that, not everyone who might want to harm her was going to be a roar of bloodlust. At least Madris hadn’t felt anything either, which probably shouldn’t be reassuring, though. Unless she did and just let me handle it myself, Regina considered before shaking off the thought. It didn’t matter now.

“I suppose we just got some more volunteers for teaching you interrogation tactics, didn’t we?” Max mused as they watched the prisoners who’d been bound in one of the quickly-erected huts near the construction sites. They were standing outside.

Regina glanced at Madris, who didn’t respond but seemed to be in agreement. “Maybe,” she said a bit dubiously. Was it really alright to use this as a training exercise? It didn’t seem to be that big of a deal, comparatively, but it might be important. Maybe she should just let Madris interrogate them?

“Don’t look at me like that,” Madris said. “I know what you’re thinking, my Empress. Max is right, this is a good opportunity to hone your skills. You don’t even have to be forceful about it if you don’t want to.”

“Fine,” Regina sighed.

It didn’t take long to set up, but Regina was distracted since she mostly paid attention to the rest of the people present. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the two idiots still had confederates in the group. Besides, watching their reaction gave her a bit more insight into the local dynamics and how these people thought. It was ultimately fruitless, though — she didn’t sense anything that would qualify as suspicious, and if there was someone else in on this plot, they’d either forgotten about that or were very good actors with fantastic self-control.

The interrogation turned out to be a lot easier than she thought, at least in one regard. Regina had barely sat down opposite the ‘accused’ before one of them started talking.

“Mark was hired to gain your trust,” the shooter said. “It was all a plot. Milady Empress.”

Regina raised an eyebrow. She could tell he was being honest, of course, but she didn’t have to fake the surprise. “Is that so?”

“This is ridiculous,” the other guy chimed in. “He’s just trying to sow doubt and get out of this. I was trying to help, Your Majesty. I saw the arrow and wanted to stop it, that’s all.”

He, on the other hand, was obviously lying. He was a good liar, she supposed, he held eye contact, but not excessively, didn’t fidget or look to the side, and looked earnest. But even Max could tell something was off, and his emotions told a clear story.

“We never intended on killing you, I swear,” the first guy, William, said, ignoring him. “I never would have even done this if I didn’t need the money badly.”

“You seem remarkably quick to confess and rat out your accomplices,” Regina noted.

“More like bosses, and not nice ones,” he retorted. “I’m just a pawn, I know it. I was going to take the fall for this stunt if I didn’t manage to get out really quick. Don’t get me wrong, I kept my head down and didn’t call them out on it, but a fact’s a fact. Piss on this, I’m not getting tortured for this shit.”

The other guy had enough self-control not to start ranting at his ‘partner’ and give himself away, but Regina could almost hear him thinking it. ‘You were supposed to be reliable. Bastard.’ That was a rather strong thought.

Anything beyond it, though, was elusive even if she focused her full attention on it. The man’s shields were better than she first thought. Sutble, but anything deeper than surface emotions and stray thoughts were locked away. It would take time to break him if she tried.

“What exactly was the plan?”

“Essentially just an infiltration mission, I think,” the talkative one answered. “Get Mark over there close to you, have him gain some trust for ‘saving’ you. Maybe they had plans for him later. Maybe they just thought it was worth testing your defenses, who knows.”

Regina leaned back in her chair, carefully probing their minds. “And who’s ‘they’?”

“No one did, I acted on my own —“ the engineer cut in, before Madris did something to the air around him that made him shut up. It looked like she cut off his air supply briefly.

“A noble, I think. I didn’t catch his name, but I did see his face. I can give you a description, or …” the man trailed off, eying her cautiously.

Regina glanced at Madris, who gave a slight nod. “Think back to the occasion and focus on what he looks like,” she instructed him. “Hold it in the forefront of your mind."

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the archer muttered and did as ordered.

Regina got in pretty easily, although he clearly had little training in that sort of thing. But good visualization ability was probably important for his work. Either way, she dove a bit deeper into his mind and it didn’t take her long to recognize the mental image he was focusing hard on.

She withdrew quickly, shaking her head. She’d almost hoped it wouldn’t be someone she recognized. That she did was probably both good and bad. The person was still a surprise.

"Tell me everything else you know,” she ordered the prisoner.

He did, although it wasn’t much, mostly irrelevant details. Maybe some of them would turn out to be important later on, but she wasn’t holding her breath. Regina’s attention was also only mostly on the conversation, too busy thinking about other things.

Once the interrogation was done, which didn’t take long, she stepped back out, sighed and cracked her neck.

“What now?” Max asked.

Regina glanced around. “I’m not letting this mess up my visit,” she declared. “We’re going to stay here for a while longer, I want to see more of the city we’re building. We also still need to sit down and talk to the architects about it.”

“Are you satisfied with their progress?” Madris asked, seeming idly curious. She spoke in her native language, which Regina caught this time.

“I don’t know, should I be? It’s only just getting started. Come on, let’s talk to some people.”

And so they did. Regina walked around a bit more, looking at the construction site, but there really wasn’t much more to see past the initial impressions.

They’d started in the center of the proposed city and were working on some important buildings first, but not crucial ones that had to be built perfectly, like defensive installations, to make sure their mixture of styles and techniques they were using wasn’t screwing anything up. Combining Hive drones’ abilities and Class Skills, like Ground Evacuation, with more ‘traditional’ skills from human masons and the like could be a headache. Regina believed in its potential, of course, but it was probably best not to try and build something to look impressive first. For more pragmatic reasons, too, they were starting with some housing for the workers who were laboring on the city, which were good testbeds for the integration of pipes and cables and the like anyway.

That was the consensus opinion among the architects and senior engineers, anyway. They seemed quite spirited about designing the city. Most of the meeting was spent arguing about details like the placement of roads. Those were marked out before they started actually building any structures anywhere nearby, of course. Regina had suggested a grid pattern for ease of navigation, and they were loosely keeping to it. Or more like several grid patterns. Regina wasn’t a city planner and had the decided impression these people knew more about what they were doing than she did, so she let them work.

At least they seemed relieved she wasn’t making any outrageous demands. Demanding any ornate palaces or specific patterns in the streets or the like would have been rather counterproductive, though. Regina only really cared that the city was practical and conducive to the health and well-being of the people living there. To that end, she insisted on enough green spaces and a lot of room for expansion included in the plans.

It was a rather enjoyable interlude, compared to the days at court, but soon enough it was time to move on. Regina promised to visit again soon and they set off with flying drones, so it would only be a matter of hours until they were back in Cera. She spent most of the trip immersed in the psychic link, catching up on work and making preparations for their return. She had a lot of work to do. Especially now that she had something else to worry about.

Regina had deliberated over who to go to first to talk about whatever plot was being spun this time. While the execution of it certainly left something to be desired, the effort was there. She had a feeling there was more to it than the half-assed attempt it ended up in. The supposed ‘rescuer’ was clearly a ‘deep-cover’ agent or whatever you called it. He was an accomplished engineer, well-respected, who’d passed a background check. And he was clearly loyal to his bosses. Not the kind of asset you would just burn on a whim, but something that must have taken effort, either to recruit him or to place him in the first place in a position to gather important information.

She’d almost suspect foreign involvement if she thought the Western Confederation could find their own backsides with a map, or if the Esemen were less disliked in Cernlia and Nerlia. It should be pretty hard for them to pull something like this off. Although that didn’t mean it was impossible. Maybe they thought it was worth it?

The arrival of the person she’d sent for to discuss it interrupted her thoughts. “You wanted to see me, Your Imperial Majesty?” Lord Daine asked with a courtly bow.

Regina waved him into her temporary office and the chair in front of the desk. She would have preferred to talk to Janis about this first, but unfortunately, the girl was still in the south, acting as a commander of the war effort. She was also currently in an important meeting with other officers and local gnomish civilian leaders, and Regina didn’t want to interrupt her.

“I wanted your opinion on an incident that occurred while we were visiting the construction site,” Regina said. She briefly outlined what had happened.

Daine listened without showing any surprise. “I take it you identified it as a ploy, Your Majesty? I would assume the persons responsible were already interrogated, did initial questioning yield any further information?”

“That’s correct.” Regina leaned back in her chair. “What do you know about John Cern, Lord Daine?”

“Lord Cern?” Daine raised an eyebrow, looking almost skeptical, and tapped his fingers on his chair for a second. “I would not consider him one of your supporters, Your Majesty, as I am sure you are aware. Frankly, he lacks the subtlety to keep his dissatisfaction to himself. However, for whatever relevance the former Marquis Lyns might have brought to him for a short time, it only left him more irrelevant today. He had the bad habit of trading on his name and a position he did not quite have yet to gain what he wanted.”

“You’d consider him unimportant, then?” Regina confirmed. She would agree with that, but she didn’t know if she might be missing cultural nuances.

“To be frank, most people are tired of debating the Cernlian succession,” Daine said. “Cern tried to use his family’s former status to influence it, but his candidate lost, against his own daughter. The Governors are very obviously not coming back. And now that Cernlia has become part of a larger realm, it is even less relevant. Queen Kiara does not even need to do anything; personally, I advised her to let him languish in irrelevance.”

Regina nodded. “But he might still have enough money or political capital to arrange something like a pretend attack to wiggle an agent into my trust?”

Daine hesitated. “Perhaps, My Empress. I would not have seen Cern as cunning enough for that, but if you have learned it from these men, it must be true, and perhaps I was wrong.”

“Or maybe that engineer was originally loyal to someone else and Cern only got involved later?” Regina asked. They would interrogate the man further, but she didn’t know how long it would take or what would come of it.

Daine narrowed his eyes. “It seems possible. Your Majesty, you are suggesting Cern was played?”

“It seems to line up with your estimation of his character,” she drawled.

“Oh, certainly. I was just making sure I understood correctly. In that case, I would say it is quite plausible.”

Regina tugged on her mandible. “He’s not here presently.” She had made sure of that beforehand.

“No, he has left for the northern reaches, supposedly,” Daine answered the unspoken question. “He was last seen heading northwest. But I am afraid I did not consider him a priority to track.”

“That’s fine. He should still come back if summoned, right?”

“He should. Your Majesty, an Imperial summons would attract attention and might spook him if he is truly involved or being directed by someone else.”

Regina waved a hand. “I was going to have Kiara summon him here. She has legitimate enough reasons to want to talk to him. Actually, I would ask you to inform her of what we have been talking about.” Kiara was currently also in a meeting. Regina couldn’t just pull her away easily to go talk to her every time something came up.

“I see. I will pass along your message. Discreetly, of course.”

Regina nodded. “I notice that when you spoke about Cern, you mostly talked about his public actions, reputation and how he is seen,” she noted. “Do you know him personally, Lord Daine?”

To her surprise, the man visibly hesitated for just a moment, clearly considering how to answer. “Not directly,” he finally said. “I knew some of his family. We only met in passing a few times.”

“His family members?”

“Dead, now, I’m sorry to say.” He made to rise out of his chair. “If this is all, Your Majesty, may I be excused to see to this matter?”

“Of course,” Regina waved him on. “Thank you for your efforts.”

She was a bit curious about whatever had happened and what he meant, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Considering she’d also never heard Gwen mention anything, the only other person from the family she knew about, it either was very private or perhaps tragic.

For now, Regina was more concerned with figuring out if she could get away with performing a deeper scan on a certain noble once he was found.