by Tim C Taylor
He had recovered from his immediate sense of awe at sight of the Emperor, but only to a degree.
Physically, the White Knights were unlike any other race of Arun’s experience. He was accustomed to conjuring a mental image of a Jotun, a Littorane, even a Hardit, when he thought about each race, but there was no chance of doing so with the White Knights. They possessed so many varied forms – some of them radically divergent – that it was impossible to contemplate a single generic image. On first arriving at the capital, he had been impressed by the number of races in evidence, all of them new to him. He assumed that what he was seeing were various subject races, those high in the White Knight’s estimation and deemed worthy to attend the homeworld. He found the truth astounding, that these were all forms of the White Knights.
Arun saw crusted chitinous forms that made the worst mutated skins of the Wolves seem mild in comparison, and rotund, almost spherical beings that initially seemed to roll across the ground, until he realized that short stout legs sat beneath their corpulent bodies and the impression that they rotated was just that: illusion. There were frail-seeming skeletal beings who stalked across the ground on tripedal legs, towering over the majority of their contemporaries; reptilian vermillion-scaled individuals with compound eyes, and amorphous blobs whose faces seemed to be their only immutable features. The latter flowed across surfaces in a disconcerting manner, evidently untroubled by how steep or narrow the path before them might be.
Size, color, form, even the number of limbs seemed ever variable, and Arun struggled to comprehend how such extreme divergence could constitute a single species.
“I knew there were variations in White Knight form,” he muttered to Del-Marie, “but this–”
“Don’t bring the subject up with the Emperor,” Del-Marie said quickly. “Let the Emperor explain the differences in his own time. We’ve no idea what cultural mores or taboos we might stomp over by asking without being prompted.”
Arun had little trouble in acceding to Del’s advice. As he had first approached the citadel, flanked by his most trusted officers – well… most of them – and with Valiants thundering past overhead, it had been easy to adopt an attitude of strength, of authority, to imagine that the Emperor should worry about offending him rather than the other way around. But at the first sight of the Emperor’s golden form all that had crumbled to dust. It wasn’t just him, either: the whole party had reacted in similar fashion, their defiant resolve swept away in the face of this – the supreme ruler of the White Knight Empire – radiant and glorious among the dust and rubble. Here was a being born to rule, while they were born to serve.
That was then. Arun was determined not to succumb to the Emperor’s sheer physical presence again. Thankfully he had been given the opportunity to recover. They had all been shown to private quarters within the citadel ahead of a formal audience, and Del had helped him to regroup, to reassess the situation and stitch the tattered threads of his resolve back into a semblance of order. Arun still found it impossible to trust his senior diplomat as fully as he once had, but, as Del himself had pointed out, “If that was me you saw, if that really is me from the future, it’s precisely that: the future. The me that’s here and now is the same as I’ve always been – your friend, your advisor, committed to the cause just as you are. Don’t let the specter that our relationship might change at some indefinable point in the years or decades to come prevent me from contributing now, when you most need me. After all, who’s to say what lies ahead for any of us?”
Arun could have said something then, about Night Hummers and even Tremayne, but he bit back the words, unwilling to risk compromising this new beginning with Del, such as it was.
Among all the bewildering variety of White Knights they encountered en route to the Emperor’s chamber, there were a few – a very few – tall, slender beings, humanoid in essence but elongated as if stretched, and lacking any hair. Their skin was of a burnished gold that almost seemed to glow, and they carried themselves with a poise, a grace, that set them apart even in such a kaleidoscope of physical forms. These were the Royals, Arun knew, considered to be the epitome of the White Knight form. Perfection. Yet none were a match for the Emperor, the most perfect of them all; these others were like echoes or reflections, appearing flawless until you saw the original and realized that in fact all the others had been fractionally distorted, marginally compromised…
Again, that sense of overwhelming awe struck him as soon as he entered the Emperor’s presence. At least Arun managed not to abase himself this time, but only just.
“Ah, General McEwan, welcome.”
“Your Elevance,” Arun replied, his voice slightly muffled by his mask, which protected against the Flek. By contrast, the translation Barney was providing of the Imperial voice had none of the monotone flatness Arun had known all his life. The intonation and idiom were more than natural. It was preternatural: the voice of an angel. Or a demon.
The Emperor had risen to his feet – which might have been a mark of respect, but Arun suspected a different motive, as this enabled the White Knight to tower over his visitor, making Arun’s own situation all the more frustrating. However much he kept telling himself that this was a meeting of equals – the Legion had, after all, just saved the Emperor’s ass – Arun had been raised to think of the White Knights as beings so far above him that they might as well be gods. Yes, he had dedicated his entire life to casting off that yoke of servitude, but indoctrination like that was deeply ingrained, no matter how much he might want to deny the fact. Despite his resolve and all the coaching from Del, it was all Arun could do to meet the Emperor’s gaze. And when he did, he could only do so by craning his neck and staring upward towards the heavens.
Arun was determined to overcome this sense of inferiority. Yes, here was a being used to feeling superior to everyone, even to other White Knights, who doubtless felt all the more superior when dealing with a member of a ‘lesser race’ whose head didn’t reach much further than his waist, but at the end of the day it was the Emperor who had come to him for help, and not the other way around.
He gazed up unflinchingly into the White Knight’s eyes, smiled and said, “Shall we begin?”
——
The Flek dissipated quickly once they left the citadel behind.
“It’s ever present,” the Emperor said when Arun commented on the fact, “but in such low volumes in this area that it’s harmless, even to off-worlders. So, yes, you may remove your breathing apparatus.”
Reasoning that there were a thousand easier ways for the Emperor to kill him than lie at this point, Arun removed his mask and breathed the Flek-tainted air. Even in this low concentration, his lungs tingled, and the taste of almonds and burnt biscuits that filled his mouth was surprisingly familiar. He felt his face pinch when he realized why. On that day in 2565 when Arun had participated in the Cull, the replica-Flek released by Sergeant Bissinger had the same bitter taste of biscuits and almond.
“Flek can accumulate, though,” continued the Emperor, “gathering into dense clouds, as you’ve seen. The accumulation is predictable at certain times and places but not always – Flek can manifest almost anywhere.”
“And that process can be manipulated, I take it,” Arun said, “to bring additional protection to a defensive position, for example.”
The Emperor smiled. Or so Arun believed.
Arun was learning to recognize the expression now; at least he hoped so. At first the Emperor and his courtiers had seemed inscrutable to him. This golden variety of the Whites Knights presented a uniformly blank expression to the world for all their outwardly humanoid appearance, their features apparently frozen, immobile, but Arun was coming to realize that this was not entirely true. It was the eyes. They widened and narrowed, bringing fleeting changes to cheeks and the ghost of laughter lines that disappeared almost before Arun could be certain of their meaning. The subtlest of clues, but he was working to master them.
He still found it har
d not to be deferential, still struggled with the concept that he was in casual conversation with the Emperor. Drugs might help and had been suggested by Del-Marie, but Arun had rejected the idea, determined to keep a clear head. This was too important to risk missing the slightest nuance. He still wasn’t entirely clear why the Emperor had insisted on this ‘extended audience’ – that was the term he used – personally escorting Arun around Athena to show him the White Knight world. “It will help you appreciate who we are,” the Emperor had said. “Once we have established that, we can begin negotiating properly.”
Perhaps, but Arun and his Legion advisors were not about to accept the explanation at face value. “It’s intended to soften you up,” Indiya had opined. “Either to win your sympathies or impress the hell out of you.”
“If it’s the latter, they needn’t bother,” Arun had replied. “Simply being in the Emperor’s presence does that, even if the Tree hadn’t.”
To distract himself, Arun glanced out and upwards. From here, aboard the fragile-seeming aircraft with walls that could be made opaque or transparent at will, Arun could see the Tree, the great metal shell that arose from myriad trunks across this world; a bewilderingly vast habitat that supported… how many White Knights? Arun realized he had no idea.
“Many of my people go their entire lives without ever setting foot on our homeworld’s surface,” the Emperor said, presumably noting the direction of Arun’s gaze. “The Tree, as you like to call it, provides all we need, all we desire.”
“And yet you have situated your own home on the surface,” Arun noted, thinking of the citadel.
“One of my homes,” the Emperor replied.
Arun returned to studying the Tree, trying to imagine how this was all built: the massive supporting structures, the tubes and blisters and gantries that appeared slender and delicate from this distance, but which were undoubtedly vast in reality. The enormity of the undertaking was astonishing. A statement that brought home the power of the White Knights more emphatically than anything he had yet encountered, brazenly declaring, “We are beyond you all!”
This underbelly, this planet-side view of the world-encircling structure, was invisible from the ground. The White Knights had done a credible job of creating the illusion of open-skies, of a natural climate, which continued to deceive the eye from the ground despite all the damage suffered by the Tree during decades of war. But, from up here, the Tree was visible.
Beside him, Indiya too gazed upwards toward Athena’s great metal shell. Today it was her turn to accompany Arun, though not with any enthusiasm – he knew that she was itching to be back aboard her precious ships. There was no way she or any of the Legion officers were going to let him travel unaccompanied, however. They all had better things to be doing, so it was decided that the command team would take it in turns to escort Arun during this ‘grand tour’ that the Emperor had insisted upon. It was the Emperor himself who suggested Indiya should be the first to do so. He seemed fascinated by her purple hair, saying, “And this is natural, not a cosmetic effect?” The question was addressed to Arun, as all of the Emperor’s conversation had been; deliberate provocation, no doubt, suggesting that all other Legion commanders were beneath his notice.
It was Indiya who answered, though. “No, I was born with it.” Arun had to admire her restraint.
“Interesting…” The Emperor still managed to avoid looking at her, even when replying.
——
Their first port of call proved to be an area of comparative wilderness. They had flown over cultivated fields and gazed down upon crops growing in regimented rows; on herds of great lumbering six-legged beasts, their heads crowned with bony formations that looked capable of battering through walls when powered by their thick neck and shoulder muscles. A simple command magnified the scene, enabling those aboard the royal craft to study individual specimens that would otherwise have been mere motes among the herd. The plane had then dropped lower and sent groups of white skittish creatures scuttling from one side of a vast paddock to the other in order to escape its passage, while it had produced the opposite reaction from a forest of giant purple-green fronded trees, which reached towards them with serpentine tendrils that swayed in unison, following their course in an eerie semblance of sentience.
The first place they set down, however, was in wilderness. Arun found himself strangely disappointed to be landing. On board the plane, everyone had been seated for most of the time, and he had almost forgotten his disability. Now, though, as everyone else rose to their feet, he could only rise on his chair’s servos and glide towards the exit ramp. Within the chair’s gleaming carapace, his upper limbs were bathed in a soothing gel intended to both protect and anaesthetize. He didn’t doubt that physically the latter was true, but the gel did nothing to suppress the memories. Now that his attention had been drawn back to his disabilities, he felt it again: the sharp pain of his torture, the stabbing agony of his toes. It haunted his dreams, not as a painful memory of past experiences, but as if he relived the whole awful experience again… and again. This, if anything, might have caused him to resort to drugs, but he couldn’t, not now.
“Are you all right?” Indiya asked quietly from beside him.
He must have flinched, must have reacted to the searing memory of suffering. He forced his muscles to relax. “Yes… yes, I’m fine,” he lied.
She wasn’t convinced, he could see that in her eyes, but at least she said no more as the royal party decanted from the plane and into a large semi-circular building that perched at the top of a cliff. They entered a sizable room, which seemed designed to allow every seat an unrestricted view out of the vast, curved window at its front. Arun wondered whether this was a restaurant or café, the sort of place where tourists might relax in a degree of comfort while enjoying the panorama – which was spectacular – except that he had no idea whether the White Knights did tourism; or restaurants for that matter. Certainly there were no other patrons, but he supposed the Emperor’s attendants could arrange such things without trouble.
There was no glass in the window, the room’s extensive frontage to all intents and purposes open to the elements, yet the severe winds that clearly scoured the rock face and its sparse vegetation failed to reach them. A force wall of some sort; one that gave no indication of its presence beyond the fact that it held the outside world at bay.
Beyond this unseen barrier a verdant landscape spread before them. The viewing room’s situation had been chosen with care. It sat at the head of a valley, its lofty vantage point giving a perfect view. The steep folds of land forming the valley were cloaked in rich forest or jungle. The barrier protecting them from the wind did nothing to block sound, and occasional bird calls rose above the ebb and flow of the wind’s gusting.
This was a long remove from the barren and dusty ground that surrounded the citadel, and seemed to hold out the promise of healing for even that war-ravaged land.
The bottom of the valley was lost to sight beneath a mist that might have been low-lying cloud. The mist had an alien tinge at its heart, a brownish orange: Flek; the same deadly gas that cloaked the world from orbit, but in these pockets of lower concentration produced a delicate tracery of color that was almost beautiful. For some reason, in this paler form, the misted Flek put Arun in mind of the gases in a Night Hummer’s chamber. He thrust the thought to one side, determined not to let such associations sour his mood.
As he watched, the mist appeared to swell, as if it were rolling along the valley towards them. A sudden flash caught his attention. It came from within the cloud, almost as if an energy weapon had been discharged.
He glanced across at the Emperor, who was gazing at the mist without any indication of concern. When he met Indiya’s gaze, though, he saw a mirror of his own worries. The possibility that this might be small arms fire, combined with the recent memory of Flek burning in the invasion of Australia, had Arun assessing their situation from a defensive perspective: they were exposed, sitting
in a line like targets on a range. How effective was the force wall in front of them? It could hold the elements at bay, certainly, but would it be effective against concerted weapon’s fire?
There came another flash from within the cloud, more dramatic this time – the crack of released energy clearly audible – and it was followed almost immediately by another. Despite his unease, Arun drew comfort from the uniform lack of reaction displayed by the White Knight retinue. They were behaving as if this was exactly what had been expected. It occurred to him that the humans might have been deliberately left in ignorance, perhaps as a test, or even an anticipated source of amusement. Fearing that might be the case, Arun determined to deny them the satisfaction of any reaction. He would not start at each flash, or ask what was happening, but would instead wait for an explanation.
Fortunately, he did not have to wait long. “Almost time,” the Emperor murmured, as if to himself. But then he said more loudly, “Watch the mist.”
As if Arun’s attention could have been focused anywhere else.
The flashes were coming thick and fast now, any pretense not to be watching the mist had been abandoned; all around Arun the various alien forms of the White Knights were straining forward in obvious anticipation. The thunderous noise rose towards crescendo, as a pattern started to emerge in the bursts of energy within the Flek-tinged mist. It almost seemed as if the lightning acted to power some monstrous heart cloaked within the mist, the thunder coming so frequently now that it took on the guise of a drum roll, heralding something momentous.
Arun would wonder afterwards if some artifice had been employed to amplify the sound of the thunder for dramatic effect; certainly it rose to a peak that caused him to wince. Just as he started to do so, things came to a head. The mist abruptly burst open – or that was how he interpreted the sight. A host of comets burst from its heart – several hundred, Arun was convinced – trailing fiery sparks in their wake as they arced outward over the jungle in a multitude of directions: a candescent flower unfurling its petals.