Relic of Empire

by W. Michael Gear

  Rysta Braktov stood where she’d been waiting in the back row. “Ladies and gentlemen, if there is anyone here who knows what we face, I do. I’ve watched Fist at work. Like Axel, you know me, know who I am and what I’ve accomplished. The Lord Commander offered me a position among the Companions more than once. You know that I’m a capable officer, and you know that I’m Regan to the bones. If Fist says he’ll step down if he can’t deliver, I think he will. He’s put his neck on the line for the Empire. It’s time for the rest of us to do the same. “ Rysta shook her head. “Nothing is certain anymore, but I’m willing to gamble on Fist. I don’t like him, or what he stands for, but before we sort the rest out, we must save the Empire.”

  Sinklar watched their expressions, some sour, some hating, and more than one, thoughtful. I’ve bet so much in the past, has this been a stroke of brilliance? Or the desperation of a fool?

  She stood before the transparency in the observation nacelle. A long gown draped in folds from the ornate pins at her shoulder. Her rich auburn hair fell to the middle of her back in rippling waves of redgold that glinted in the light cast by the overhead panels. She placed her slender hands on the railing, fingers perched delicately. Motionless, she stared out at the planet, as if sculpted of desolation and heartache.

  Governor Zacharia Beechie hesitated to approach, absorbing the moment, engraving it in his mind. If any pose could have typified Marie Attenasio, this one did. One might imagine a woman standing so as she watched a lover depart for war or see it as the posture of a heart-rent mother staring as her child’s casket drifted into the endless night of space.

  For a time he agonized about disturbing her, then he took a breath and walked forward, heels tapping to alert her to his approach. She remained motionless even after he’d come to a stop beside her.

  Beyond the transparency, Myklene turned in the green light of its sun, Myk. Swirled patterns of cloud masked much of the surface, but here and there, patches had cleared as the smoke and debris of war precipitated from the atmosphere and the world began to come alive again.

  “Are you sad to leave, Marie?” He dared to glance at her profile, his heart racing once again as he took in her beauty. The dry tracks of tears couldn’t be mistaken. Her amber eyes possessed a wounded look. “No, Governor. “

  “The politics of worlds and empires take no heed of the people they crush in their struggles. The price in lives and misery is far from apparent to those who must suffer for the accomplishment of interstellar goals. For the security of His Holiness’ empire, Myklene had to be dealt with. Someday soon, all of Free Space will be united under one rule. We’ll have peace then, Marie. The house of man will live under one roof.”

  She kept silent.

  “I suppose I’m trying to apologize for the empire, to tell you that we didn’t come to destroy your life or your loves. The actions of armies and empires might be likened to those of a colossal beast. As it strides through the forest, it never notices the small creatures crushed beneath its ponderous weight. To the mouse who scrambles from the wreckage of its burrow, the event was catastrophic, but the giant beast bore the mouse no malice. The burrow, and perhaps the newborn within-“

  “I bear Divine Sassa no ill will.”

  Beechie clasped his hands behind him. “I’m glad to hear that, Marie. I understand your grief, however. Myklene was a beautiful world. I myself suffer a bruised soul for the damage done in the conquest. Once, years ago, I served on Myklene as assistant ambassador in the Sassan Delegation. How I enjoyed walking the streets in the cool evenings, admiring the architecture, and refreshing myself, in the gardens along the Agora Magna.”

  The corners of her eyes tightened. “I never saw it, Governor. But yes, I often heard that Myklene was a beautiful planet. For me, however.... Nothing. Forgive me. “

  “Go on. You always seem so sad. I’ll ask again. Is there anything I can do? I’m at your service. “ As always. She never responded to him except with the utmost courtesy. She listened intently when he spoke and carried on a perfectly civil conversation so long as the subject didn’t lean toward the personal, or toward serious issues. When that occurred, she sidestepped with a deft art that Beechie-a longtime bureaucratcould only admire.

  She gave him a warm, if guarded smile. “You have already been more than kind, Governor. It is I who am forever in your debt. I promise you, when we reach Sassa, you shall be well rewarded. Not only for your kindness, but for your decency and nobility.”

  He hated it when she brought that up. Damn it, he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her. And the problem with falling in love with a delicate, saintly doll, was that you always wished she had the spark of the wanton hidden somewhere within. Nor could Beechie nerve himself to make an advance despite his growing desperation. One didn’t rough up a fragile creature like Marie anymore than one would throw a bone-china doll to a dockhand.

  The irony of his situation frustrated Beechie to an extent that even eighty years in government service hadn’t.

  The planet looked smaller now as the Markelos shipped out into the traffic lane and began to build boost for Imperial Sassa.

  “It’s late, my lady. We’ve been hours in transit, delay, and changing shuttles. I believe I’ll have an evening brandy and turn in. It would be my greatest pleasure to share a nightcap with you.” Please, please, Marie.

  “Your offer is very kind, Governor. If you don’t mind, however, I’d like to stay here for a while longer.” A ghost of a smile curled her full lips. “I’ll never see Myklene from this perspective again. I need to.... Well, thank you. Perhaps later, when we’re in null singularity.”

  Beechie bowed to necessity. “As you will, lady. If you need anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call on me. “

  “Sleep well, Governor.” But her gaze had returned to Myklene, the welling anguish shining in her amber eyes.

  Beechie forced himself to walk away casually and mused on her words. I need to.... That could imply so many things. I need to what? Mourn for your dead?

  Is that why you watch Myklene dwindle? Does your soul dwindle with it?

  Once he’d reached the main corridor that ran through the Markelos, Beechie slammed an angry fist into his palm. Well, he had almost a month before the giant freighter made port at Imperial Sassa. After that, he’d see to her arrangements, secure quarters for her close to his. Time, that’s all he needed. With time, he could win a place in her heart, replace the misery with his love.

  I’d give all of Sassa and my soul to see your eyes burn for me that way. I just hope he was worthy of yourlove ... and your pain. Whoever he was.”

  Keeping in mind that the fundamental baseline assumption the Seddi make about God is that the universe is the reflection of God, Itself, the question is begged: What can we say about the nature and qualities of God?

  “First, let’s look at the universe through a physicist’s eyes. From our observations of redshift, solar evolution, and quantum mechanics, we can make a single general statement about the universe: it continues to grow more complicated. Physicists believe that in the very beginning instant, our universe began as an explosion of intense energy. In that instant, our universe consisted of expanding masslenergy which, within ten microseconds, had broken down to basic matter and the four forces. Gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces evolved-the four factors which must be unified for subspace communications and null singularity navigation. Within yet a few more seconds, particles came into being, nuclear material consolidating in the preform of the hydrogen atom. This entire bursting soup reacted with itself in destructive and constructive interference, creating the initial conditions for the levels of order and chaos we observe today. Such wave functions are now measured in our gyroscopic interferometers-the basic tool of interstellar navigation.

  “This interactive birth of chaos changed the density of the expanding hydrogen medium. At the same time, collisions occurred, and vast amounts of energy created isotopes. Some such collisions gave
birth to helium, and possibly to lithium and beryllium. The uneven distribution of mass triggered instability in the matrix, gravity condensing and compressing until the first stars ignited, fusing hydrogen into helium, and eventually into ever heavier and more complex elements. In turn, those first massive stars exhausted their fuels. Gravity won the duel it fought with radiation, the stars collapsing in final supernova explosions which forged yet more complex atoms. The nebulae spun from the corpses of these giants generated the birth of ever more and diverse stars, which in turn died, spewing their heavy elements into the cauldron of space.

  “Today, looking out past the mist of the Forbidden Borders, we see the result of this constant evolution of complexity. We see it spanning from atoms to humans to galaxies and the Universe itself.

  The Seddi believe we are seeing the reflection of God-and isn’t that more reassuring than the idea of Rotted Gods battling with Blessed Gods? Or a deified human being with his emotional disabilities and limitations? We, like our Universe, and God Itself, must grow more complicated and complex as we age, and learn, and observe new things.

  “God is continuing to grow, why don’t you? Investigate your life. Learn something new today. God does with every passing second. “

  · Excerpt from Kaylla Dawn’s Itreatic broadcasts

  CHAPTER 10

  The machine asked for clearance. “Seven three five five,” Anatolia told it.

  “Accessing.” The laboratory hummed in the silence of early evening. The last of the professors had left. Even Vet had given up on her, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the lie she told about having another ride home.

  Anatolia clenched her fists. The trip up the liftdespite Vet and Marka’s companionship-had left her shaken and trembling. She’d walked down the hallway. to her apartment, discovered the door jimmied, and entered to find the room trashed. PUS LICKING GOVERNMENT BULL had been scrawled across one wall in red letters. Her personal possessions had been ransacked and anything of value stolen. Her clothing lay stewn about and most of it had been urinated upon. Her underwear had received particular attention, strung up and shot with red paint, as if to simulate the aftereffects of a brutal rape.

  Her knees weak, she’d left, aided by Vet and Marka. She’d only taken long enough to gather the least sullied of her clothing and jam it into a sack.

  I’m never going back there. No, she’d stay here in the lab and work on her 7355 study until she couldn’t see straight. After that, she’d sleep here, in the chair. And if anyone came in, she could walk down the hall to the women’s room and stretch out on the bench there for a couple of hours of sleep.

  It And I can’t dream. Not ever again.” Because Micky lurked there in the back of her mind, waiting to creep out of the nightmare and grope her breasts and shove his fingers between her legs while his rancid breath filled the air. She’d fight him, and hear the metal rod smack wetly into his bleeding skull. Until the day she died, she’d never get her hands clean of the memory of clotted blood caking her nails and cuticles.

  The data flashed onto the screen and Anatolia stared at it; she let her consciousness drift away into the structure of the DNA specimens she studied. There, among the double helix of guanine and cytosine, thymine and adenine-all bound by pentase sugars-she could find structure and order: the sculpture of the human being. Here in the elegant sequence of familiar patterns she could be at home. Here she could attack the puzzle that made no sense. Here she could lose herself in a universe that was measured in angstroms but stretched across centuries.

  This new universe she probed consisted of three specimens, each taken from a human being. Two of those specimens, she could place into a pattern. One Targan, the other Etarian. But the third-the sample she’d taken one night from a young soldier-that one defied anything she’d ever seen.

  As she studied the structures under her microscope, she forgot everything but the decoding of the unique pattern and its meaning.

  “I’ll find you. I’ll learn what you mean.”

  Piece by piece, Anatolia Daviura mapped the curious structure, tapping information into her comm. Unnoticed, the hours passed. The laboratory continued to hum to itself as the capital city slept.

  “Would you say that Skyla Lyma was in love with the Lord Commander?” Ily asked, arms crossed. The chill of the interrogation room had begun to reach her, but she endured, attention rapt.

  “Yes,” Tyklat answered, his eyes dull now. He shivered periodically in the cool air. She’d finally broken him. Every time he’d pulled up his tenacious internal fortitude to resist her, she’d worn him down until finally, after hours, Tyklat had given up. She worked him like a piece of damp clay in the fingers of a master.

  “And the Lord Commander is in love with Lyma?” “I don’t know.”

  “Is he in love with Kaylla Dawn?” “No. “

  “But he traveled to Targa in a box with her. Doesn’t that suggest that they were close?”

  “No. You don’t understand. Kaylla was Stailla Khan, the first Lady of Maika.”

  “Yes, yes, we’ve been through that. Staffa murdered her husband and children in front of her. She only escaped because she managed to change places with a household servant.” Ily chewed on her thumbnail, considering everything she’d learned. “So Kaylla would never be Staffa’s lover?”

  Tyklat looked up miserably, well aware that even though the Mytol had worn off, the monitors would detect a lie. “I’ve talked to Magister Dawn too many times. You can tell from her reactions. She tolerates Staffa ... even pities him in a curious sort of way. But the memories of her children, her husband, and then the rape by Companions as she lay in her family’s gore ... well, what would you expect?”

  “Evidently nothing that I could use right at this moment.” Ily paced the couple of steps the room afforded. “The fact, however, is that Staffa was rescued twice by the Wing Commander. The second time, she scrambled the Companion fleet to whisk Staffa out of my hands. The question, then, is how much does he love her?”

  “I don’t know.” Tyklat sagged in the chair. “All I know is that Nyklos fell in love with the Wing Commander-and she hardly noticed his existence. It drove him nuts. He considers himself quite a lady’s man, you see. The last time I talked to him, he told me that Skyla had moved in with Staffa, and Nyklos had busied himself with Magister Dawn and Magister Bruen. “

  “But you’ve told me that Bruen is a broken man. His entire plot to lure Staffa into his reach backfired. Correct? The entire Targan revolution was hatched as a ruse to bait Staffa into range so that Bruen and this Magister Hyde could use Arta Fera to assassinate the Lord Commander?”

  “That’s correct ... so far as I know.” Tyklat licked his dry lips. “You have to understand, Bruen and Hyde didn’t tell the second echelon agents-like myself-what the plans were. I wouldn’t have known any of this if I hadn’t been involved in Staffa’s escape from Etaria. That’s all I know about it. I swear.”

  Ily nodded, slapping a hand against her thigh. ‘”I see. Well, it’s been a most enlightening session, Tyklat. It turns out you’ve kept me occupied through most of the night. It’s too bad Staffa pulled all of your Seddi kin out of Makarta.”

  Tyklat closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about the Seddi agents in Rega. After the evacuation, Kaylla did a lot of shuffling. We normally work in cells anyway, just in case someone like me gets caught.”

  Ily stared into nothingness for long minutes. How do I use this? Skyla is in Staffa’s bed? Is that a lever? “Tell me, Tyklat, if you were in trouble and called Skyla Lyma for help, do you think she’d turn you down? After all, you placed yourself at considerable risk. “

  Tyklat took a shaky breath, eyes imploring. “Please, don’t ask me to-“

  “Would she?” Ily barked.

  Tyklat winced before his head dropped to hang limp. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Answer me, Tyklat. You can do it now, or after I’ve shot a little more Mytol into your veins.”


  He swallowed hard. “I don’t know. It would depend, I suppose, on what it was that I asked her for.” For the first time, Ily smiled. “Thank you, Tyklat.

  I think that will be all for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll work on what you’ll say to dear Skyla when you make your request. “

  Sinklar stared at the endless list of requisition forms, and took a sip from a cold cup of stassa. The meeting with the Commanders had broken fifty-fifty, which was more than he’d hoped, but he had a chance now. Still, he couldn’t keep his thoughts off Ilyand worse, what he’d almost done with her. The more he tried to force it out of his mind, the more he dwelt on it.

  He stood, pacing back and forth before his desk in his quarters on Gyton. Through the deck plating, he could hear shuttles docking, the muted clangs and bangs of hurried refitting. Rysta had been on the comm six or seven times, pestering him about what was happening. Each time, Sinklar had firmly refused to provide any information.

  Too many leaks, Mac. You’ll have to brie the Commander once you’re underway. We can’t let the Sassans know we’re making a strike. If anyone has to know, tell them you’re spacing for Terguz, that intelligence has tipped us Dff that the miners are thinking about going on strike.

  “I almost slept with Ily,” he admitted aloud. “Sinklar, how could you?”

  It had to be the ale. Ily had to have put something, in it, some sort of aphrodisiac. The memory of her sensual eyes lingered. Her lips parted, desire reflecting from her alabaster features.

  “Fool, you put the ale inside you! That was the only drugging going on.” He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Oh, Gretta, I’m sorry.”

  He paced back around the desk to stare down at the monitor. Heedlessly, he simply stabbed the “yes” key on the appropriations list until he’d gone through all three hundred and ninety-two remaining items. What the pus-Rotted hell, they could sort it out later.