Ghost Ship Orlova

Anastasia, Part 1

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov stood on the forward observation deck of the Imperial cruise liner, the Lyubov Orlova, and nearly swooned with dismay at the planet just visible ahead. Its name was Yekaterinburg.

Once the Imperial Family had boarded the Orlova on Tobolsk, and all their belongings had been secured in the cargo holds, the Bolshevik Infantry Captain in charge, Yakov Yurovsky, had ordered all their servants off the ship.

"What's the meaning of this?" her father, former Tsar Nicholas, had said in his most commanding voice. A voice she'd rarely heard from him since he'd been forced to abdicate nearly a year ago.

"Pardon, your Highness, but we've received word that members of your retinue have been communicating with the White Navy. You'll get a full complement of service staff at our destination."

"I give you my personal assurance that that is not true. Where are you taking us?" Father demanded.

"A location being held in strictest confidence, your Highness, for your own safety."

Tsar Nicholas glanced around and lowered his voice, not seeing Anastasia half-hidden behind the door. "But surely you can tell me, can't you?"

Anastasia strangled the cry in her throat and drew back into the next room, tears springing to her eyes. Father sounds as if he were begging! she thought, disbelief and revulsion churning through her bowels. She scurried through multiple staterooms, the cruise liner rooms interconnected, as in their many castles. The Lyubov Orlova might have a Bolshevik navigator and crew, but it was and always would be the Imperial Cruise Liner, built to specifications laid out by Tsar Nicholas and furnished to the demands of Tsarista Alexandra.

Named after their family friend and child star, the actress Lyubov Orlova, the Imperial Cruise Liner had been built in two short years, and the Tsar had insisted on using it on a family vacation to the Dardanelles on Anastasia's thirteenth birthday, even as the ship was in its final stages of outfitting. Since then, they'd taken the Lyubov Orlova to the far reaches of the Russian Empire, all the way from the thriving Petrograd in the Pleiades Constellation out to the Kamchatka spur, a desolate string of constellations at the rim of the Milky Way. In all, the Imperial Family spent nearly three months of every year aboard the Orlova, enjoying its stately corridors, its plush bedrooms, and its vast and fancy dining halls.

Fancy as it is, Anastasia thought, it's still a prison. She looked around the forward observation deck. The gleaming brass handrails, plush-pile carpets, and velvet-upholstered chaises did nothing to relieve her feelings of oppression.

"Looks balmy at least," Alexei said, looking over at her. He sat slumped in his hoverchair near the floor-to-ceiling viewport, a cluster of escort vessels to port and starboard like sharks in the water. He jingled a handful of coins in his pocket.

But of more concern to Anastasia now was Alexei's suffering. The sight of her brother in his hoverchair clutched at her heart. Her younger brother had taken ill from the moment of their exile. Upon their confinement to the compound on Tobolsk, he'd tangled with a surly guard and had been thrown to the ground. Thirteen, still a stick-figure adolescent, his voice as warbly as a thrush, Alexei had suffered from compromised health all his life. The most advanced medical cures had proved ineffective, from clotting factor infusions to reparative theragenesis. The wealth of the Romanov Imperial Family hadn't been able to purchase the miracle cure needed to stave off Alexei's attacks, and he'd spent more time moaning in his hoverchair than he had playing with his older sisters, his childhood taken by disease.

Only the Starets, Rasputin, had found any way to give him surcease, and only his comfort seemed to ameliorate Alexei's suffering. But Rasputin had died six months before the Tsar Nicholas' abdication, a horrible murder intended to deflect the opprobrium that followed the Starets like a foul miasma. His death had done little to stave off the Tsar's removal from power.