Scales of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘Lawrence!’ Alison wailed. ‘It killed him.’

  ‘Food. Now,’ the cat said, still emotionless. I didn’t respond, and it cuffed me on the side of the head with its weapon. ‘Food!’

  ‘Let’s give it what it wants, Jian,’ Commander Vince said quietly.

  We took the cat through the oxygenated tunnel to the hydroponics house. Unlike the dome, it was a half-cylinder shape with a ceiling only just high enough to walk under.

  Commander Vince was obviously waiting for the opportunity to attack the cat as he led it down the rows of plants. I followed. Two of us unarmed against one armed alien was bad odds, particularly one this ridiculously fast, but we needed to save our food.

  There was a commotion back in the dome, and the cat turned. We took advantage of the opportunity and jumped it. It fired its weapon, producing a blinding white light. Searing pain shot through my shoulder.

  We had the cat down, but it fired again, shearing off a large section of Commander Vince’s head. He fell to the floor, dead.

  The cat shoved me roughly away, and stood. It shot twice more, and I heard bodies hit the floor. I tried to stand, but stars spun around me. My arm was a blaze of agony and I slid to the floor, the air full of the smell of burned flesh.

  The cat pulled out plants from the hydroponic channels, obviously looking for the potatoes.

  Shiumo and Marque entered the greenhouse behind the cat, and I sagged with relief.

  ‘Marque,’ Shiumo began, but it was too late. The cat spun and shot at Marque, but the beam hit an energy wall Marque had placed in front of them.

  ‘That is extremely bad manners,’ Shiumo said. ‘At least talk to us.’

  The cat lowered the weapon, then shot at me again. I flinched, but Marque had shielded me as well.

  ‘The humans are under my protection,’ Shiumo said. ‘I suggest you go.’

  The cat raised its hands. ‘I understand. I will leave.’

  It shot at the roof of the greenhouse, dragging the weapon’s beam down the side. There wasn’t a pressure difference between the inside and outside of the greenhouse, but the oxygen escaped and breathing became more difficult. I gasped for breath. The air filled with oxygen again – Marque had oxygenated the energy bubble around us.

  The cat calmly popped its breather over its head, then methodically ripped the potato plants out of the hydroponics tubes and placed them in a compost bin. It raised its gun, cut a slit in the end of the greenhouse, stepped through it and left with our plants.

  Shiumo ran to me and put her front claw under my head. ‘It’s nearly taken your arm off! Marque!’

  ‘It broke the main dome,’ Marque said. ‘I can’t oxygenate that much air. We need to fold them all out before they suffocate.’

  Shiumo folded me up to her ship. I screamed with agony as my shoulder hit the floor.

  ‘I will be right back, darling Jian,’ she said, and disappeared.

  I lay back on the floor and stared at the stars, which were moving in layers. Some were the stars outside the ship; others were inside my head. I blinked at them as they grew red and fuzzy.

  24

  ‘I think she’s coming around,’ Shiumo said.

  I opened my eyes, and tried to sit up but my shoulder hurt too much. I looked around; I wasn’t in the dome and the air smelled fresher. Everything was tinted slightly turquoise.

  ‘Am I back on Earth?’

  ‘You all are. The cat destroyed the greenhouse and punctured the dome.’ She walked away, and back again. ‘I don’t know why they have to be like that. Plenty of room for everybody.’ She stopped next to me. ‘What was so special about those plants anyway? Everyone keeps telling me they’re not special and they don’t know why the cat took them, but that’s difficult to believe. There’s something about them, isn’t there?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re telling you the truth. Potatoes are one of the most mundane vegetables we grow; they’re mostly starch and don’t have much flavour by themselves. I don’t know why the cat reacted so strangely to them.’

  ‘I will never understand the cats,’ she said. ‘Imagine killing people for things? It’s incomprehensible.’

  ‘Did we lose our whole colony?’ I said.

  She hesitated, then looked away.

  ‘Shiumo. Did we lose the whole colony?’

  ‘We saved fifty people. The rest suffocated before they could reach the breathers or I could fold them out,’ she said, still not looking at me. ‘It was too large an area for Marque to keep them all alive.’

  ‘I had a relationship with Emily Walker, the security captain,’ I said. ‘The cat shot her.’ I choked on my misery.

  Shiumo gazed at me with her silver eyes. ‘I don’t know if she survived or not, dear Jian. We’ve yet to assemble the full list of your dead.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head, and gasped with emotion. ‘All for nothing! At least the other Earth colonies are safe.’

  ‘We went to check on them …’ Her voice petered out.

  Her emotion filled me with concern. ‘They are all right, aren’t they?’

  ‘It will take years for the cats to reach your other colonies. They can’t fold like we do. I’ll keep an eye on them.’

  I heard her hesitation. ‘But?’

  She sighed. ‘I can’t watch them forever; and if the cats decide to attack, there’s no way for the colonists to contact me. I don’t have any more spare scales to give them.’

  ‘Give them mine. It was jammed under my bed on New Europa.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I nodded. ‘They need it more than I do. Give me a replacement later.’

  ‘All right. I’ll give yours to the Japanese; they’re closest to New Europa.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your leaders are pushing me to have some half-dragon babies with volunteers,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to, Jian, unless it’s with you or Richard. But I don’t see how I can leave you and return to my homeworld – and my other spouses – until you can transport yourselves around. I’ll worry too much about you.’

  Her voice became a warm buzz. She asked me a question, but I didn’t understand it.

  I wasn’t really aware of the passage of time; the sunlight would be in one part of the ceiling, and then I’d open my eyes and it would be in another part, or gone altogether. The nurses came in, checked my IV, spoke words that had no meaning and then disappeared.

  Then Shiumo appeared next to me, and everything snapped into focus.

  ‘Only for ten minutes,’ Nurse Chandra said from somewhere behind me.

  Shiumo nodded.

  ‘Hey, dragonlady,’ I said, my voice gravelly from lack of use.

  ‘Hey yourself, lovely Jian. Can you understand me?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said, and giggled. ‘The drugs are making me really high. Everything’s funny.’

  ‘Maybe this isn’t the best time,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’ I said, still giggling.

  A picture of Emily floated in front of me. ‘Is that her?’

  ‘She’s alive! I knew you could save her!’ Emily’s face was swollen and bruised, but I was delighted to see her. I couldn’t hold back my amusement at her tousled hair; she’d always been so military immaculate. ‘She looks awful.’

  ‘Definitely not the right time,’ Shiumo said, and patted my hand. The picture of Emily disappeared. ‘I’ll be back later.’

  ‘Sure thing, super-hot man,’ I said. I raised my head slightly. ‘Hey. Hey! Can I see the super-hot man? I love that man.’

  ‘As much as you love Emily?’ Shiumo said.

  ‘Friends. With. Benefits,’ I said, trying to be serious and failing. ‘Why does everybody keep asking me that? I only love the super-hot man.’

  ‘Okay,’ Shiumo said softly. ‘I’ll come back later.’

  ‘Thanks for the photo of Emily!’ I said, trying not to laugh too hard and hurt my aching shoulder. ‘She wouldn’t be caught dead with her hair messed up like that!’

>   General Maxwell was sitting at my bedside next time I woke. My left shoulder was a grinding mass of pain, and I tried to move into a more comfortable position, wincing as the pain got worse. I gave up and leaned back. I had an awful feeling that something terrible had happened. Then I remembered the colony. And Emily. And the things I’d said about her when I was the closest thing to family she had left.

  The general saw my expression. ‘I know what you said about Walker, and it’s not your fault, Choumali. It was the cat.’

  ‘It was the drugs,’ I said. I wanted to wipe my eyes but my shoulder hurt too much. So did my heart – it ached with the loss of Emily.

  She took my good hand. ‘Are you in much pain? I can arrange for someone to increase your meds.’

  ‘I can deal, ma’am.’

  She returned my hand to the sheet and patted it. ‘We nearly lost you.’

  ‘We lost the colony,’ I said, miserable. ‘Please don’t have second thoughts – we need to try again. Earth’s climate may regress after Shiumo leaves – there’s still a chance it could end up uninhabitable. We need to start again in the stars.’

  ‘Everybody agrees with you,’ the general said. She crossed her legs and leaned her chin on her hand. ‘But to do that, we need our own starship engines.’

  ‘Oh, lord,’ I said softly.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s such a bad idea. How would we control the dragon hybrids? How long will they live? Can we arrange for another dragon to come and sire the second generation of full-blood dragons for us?’ She straightened. ‘When a half-dragon has a child with a human, they make another half-dragon; it’s a dominant trait. Do you know how long it would take to replace our entire population with half-dragons if we let them reproduce freely?’ She waved her hand. ‘The mathematicians say as little as ten generations.’

  ‘Shiumo said she won’t do it.’

  ‘I know, she told me herself.’ She ran one hand over her greying blonde buzz cut, and her voice went hoarse. ‘It’s my job to make sure she does. I have to round up some volunteers and talk Shiumo into getting them pregnant.’

  ‘That’s so wrong!’ I said. ‘If a woman doesn’t want it – if she’s not actively seeking it – if she’s doing it just for duty –’

  ‘You agreed to be impregnated with two children when you joined the generation ship project, didn’t you, Choumali? You agreed twice to be a mother out of a sense of duty. The King himself has fathered children because of duty.’

  I subsided, stung. She was right. I’d been mentally preparing for pregnancy when the cat had appeared and destroyed the whole colony.

  ‘Orders are orders, Lieutenant. Distasteful as the idea of a breeding program is, I think they’re right and we have no other choice. Shiumo’s talking about leaving Earth and going back to the dragon homeworld. She says she’s been here much longer than she intended, and she misses her spouses and children. We still need her: without her, our colonies are completely isolated and will probably fail. The cats’ home planet is close to our system, and you saw what a bunch of assholes they are. We’ve suddenly gone from peaceful colonisation of nearby planets to interspecies political bullshit – and I’d still like to know what the thing with the potatoes was about.’

  ‘Let’s get ourselves to Second and start trading opals – and perhaps potatoes, though I can’t imagine why – for our own dragons,’ I said.

  She smiled and pointed at me. ‘That is why I want you on my team. Hurry up and get better, Lieutenant, because we have a great deal of work to do. It’s only just begun.’

  I leaned back and stared at the ceiling, exhausted by even this short discussion. But there was something important I needed to ask … I wrenched my shoulder as I sat up too quickly. ‘What about Richard?’

  Maxwell had half-risen; she sat again. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he alive? Did he accept Shiumo’s scale? I heard nothing about him while I was on New Europa. Is he all right?’

  Her face closed up.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘He’s alive,’ she said, and smiled grimly. ‘Actually he’s in this facility, in hospice care, but he’s unconscious most of the time so it would be pointless to arrange a meeting for you. He’s tough. The doctors gave him three months and he’s already lived for more than six, but he doesn’t have long.’

  ‘He chose death?’

  She nodded.

  ‘He’s so stupid. He should have taken that scale,’ I said, turning away.

  ‘Respect his decision,’ she said.

  I nodded without looking at her, and she left.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed when I woke again. My shoulder was still aching.

  ‘Marque,’ I said at the ceiling.

  It didn’t reply.

  ‘I’m sure Shiumo left one of your spheres to keep an eye on me. I want to ask you something.’

  More silence.

  I’d just opened my mouth to speak again when it came into view.

  ‘Shiumo won’t make dragon babies for you,’ it said, ‘so don’t bother asking. The general’s wasting her time.’

  ‘How far away is Richard’s room?’

  ‘Oh. He’s two wings over, and one floor up.’

  I moaned. Such a long way. Walking would be torture with my shoulder still so tender.

  ‘Shiumo should have let me repair your shoulder,’ Marque said. ‘She raced back here with all the survivors and didn’t give me time to treat you in my medical facility.’

  ‘Can you do it now?’ I said.

  ‘No, Shiumo’s taken the ship and the rest of me to assist your people to collect the bodies of the dead colonists. It will take a few days to recover them all.’

  ‘I see. Hey …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You can make energy shields, right? Like you did on the train.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Could you use one of them to carry me?’

  ‘Of course I could. But why –’

  ‘Then carry me to see Richard.’

  Richard’s face was sallow and sunken. There was an IV in his remaining arm, and a feeding tube ran under the facial prosthetic into his nasal cavity. He wasn’t emaciated, but his whole body screamed ‘unwell’.

  ‘Richard,’ I said softly, touching his hand.

  His eyelid flickered but he didn’t move.

  ‘I think you can hear me, and you know what I’m going to say.’

  He remained completely still.

  ‘You know Shiumo’s scale will save your life. You need to accept it, Richard; it’s so important. You have to live because we need you.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Richard, the colony was attacked and destroyed. We need Shiumo now more than ever, but she’s leaving us.’

  There was a long moment of silence, then Richard said without moving or opening his eye, ‘How many people did we lose?’

  ‘All but fifty.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said softly. ‘What happened?’

  While I explained about the cat, his eye opened and his slack face gained some animation, but he was a fragile shadow of the impressive man he’d once been.

  ‘Shiumo wants to go home,’ I said. ‘If she leaves now, we’re in deep shit. Without her we have no way to do supply runs, and every colony needed at least three during the establishment phase. We need her.’

  ‘Please don’t ask me,’ he said, his voice hoarse.

  ‘Just until the colony is established. Then I’ll extract you myself.’

  ‘You know what happens when we’re with her.’ He raised his hand slightly, then dropped it back onto the bed. ‘We forget that she’s manipulating us; we just want to be with her. If I return to her, I won’t want to leave. I’ll stop you from extracting me. I’ll resist.’

  ‘Then take the scale. It’ll save your life, Richard!’

  ‘No. If I take the scale, I’ll fall under her thrall again and lose my individuality. I’ll be under her control.’

 
‘You people are so paranoid about this!’ Marque said, above us. ‘Shiumo should have ordered you to do something so you could see that she’s not controlling you.’

  ‘She did,’ I said. ‘She ordered me to attack someone.’

  Richard’s eye focused on me. ‘And you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you feel the urge to do it? Did you want to please her?’

  ‘No. I told her she was being ridiculous actually.’

  ‘See? She’s not controlling you,’ Marque said.

  ‘That proves nothing. I feel completely different when I’m with her,’ Richard said. He panted a few times, gasping for air. ‘Don’t deny it: she did something to our heads.’

  ‘It’s called love, you stupid human,’ Marque said. ‘You love her, she loves you – you should be together. Love is the greatest bond you organics can attain. Treasure it.’

  ‘Leave this room right now,’ Richard said.

  ‘Jian, talk to him!’ Marque said.

  ‘Out! Now!’ Richard collapsed back onto his pillow, wheezing.

  ‘Just think about it,’ Marque said, and left the room.

  ‘The answer is no, Jian.’ Richard turned his head away. ‘I will not hesitate to give my life for King and Country, but my soul is another matter.’

  ‘You won’t even accept the scale?’ I said, forlorn.

  He shook his head, still looking away. ‘I suppose I should be willing to make any sacrifice for Earth, but …’ His voice became rough with emotion. ‘No.’

  25

  ‘Just for a walk around?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Doctor Green said. ‘You stay in bed. Every time you move that shoulder, the bones go out of alignment. You nearly lost your arm, Jian! If you can’t do as you’re told, I’ll put the whole damn thing in a cast, and you’ll be stuck in bed for six weeks.’

  ‘All right,’ I grumbled.

  Nurse Chandra came in. ‘General Maxwell’s here for Jian.’

  The doctor pointed at me. ‘No. Walking.’ She turned to Chandra. ‘Let the general in.’

  Chandra leaned out of my room into the corridor. ‘You can see her, ma’am.’