My Friend the Emperor

by William Lee Gordon

I was screwed.

  I also had no place to go.

  So reluctantly, with trepidation and a limp, I reported to the offices of the 133rd Military Legion of the Celcium Empire.

  ΔΔΔ

  “Sit there,” the attendant said and pointed to a seat in front of her desk.

  “While I scan your orders you can start filling out the forms,” she said.

  Fortunately, my double vision had cleared up enough that I could read the screen.

  “Okay, good marks, no serious disciplinary issues…” She mumbled to herself.

  “Okay,” she said in a more normal voice. “You’re right on the dividing line of what type of assignment I can give you. Technically you qualify for an advanced position, but you have no specialization. That could be a problem.”

  “I do have a specialization,” I said. “It’s…”

  “In civil service,” she finished for me. “That doesn’t mean squat here, soldier.”

  “But I’m not a soldier!” I protested.

  “Don’t you get it?” she asked me with what looked like honest curiosity. “You are now.”

  After a few moments I said, “Okay, so how much is it going to cost me to get a plum assignment?”

  “It depends on what you want. For 20,000 denars I can… Oh shrak,” she suddenly stopped in midsentence. “This is really unusual...”

  When I didn’t say anything she continued, “You’ve already been assigned. You also have sealed orders that I’m supposed to give you. Why didn’t you tell me this was just a formality?” she asked with restrained impatience.

  “I… I mean, I’m not sure…”

  “Look, I know you’re fresh out of The Academy, but next time just say that you’re connected or that the fix is in. Okay? It will save everybody a lot of time.”

  Now I really didn’t know what to say.

  She squirt-burst my new assignment and sealed orders to my implant.

  “Good luck soldier,” she said dismissively. “And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

  ΔΔΔ

  Admiral Tanakh didn’t look up from his screen as I stood at attention in front of his desk.

  His posture suggested he was busy with important things, but I could faintly detect the music of a popular network role-playing game.

  I had reported to his office just as my sealed orders had dictated. To my chagrin, however, they didn’t mention why I was being ordered here.

  The longer I stood, the worse the pain from my toe. There wasn’t much I could do, though. I could either bear it or I could pass out. I’d suffered through worse.

  Finally he looked up, obviously unhappy with his results on the screen.

  “So, you’re Nikolay?” he said almost like a question.

  “Yes Sir,” I responded.

  He stared at me a moment longer before saying, “At ease.”

  Before I could groan from the sudden pain of moving my foot he said, “Can I trust you Nikolay?”

  “Of course you can, Sir!” I said without hesitation. Now wasn’t really the time to contemplate the ethics of lying to a superior Citizen.

  After another awkward moment he said, “Very well, I’ve got a special assignment for you. Sit down.”

  Before I sat down I gave it one last shot… “Admiral, sir. I think it’s my duty to point out that a mistake has probably been made. My legacy is in civil service and that’s what I’ve specialized in. I’m not sure how much good I’m going to be able to do you, sir.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Nikolay. That’s all water under the bridge now; we’re not going to hold your past against you.”

  In a weird sort of way I understood his logic. I’d screwed up my career path and he really didn’t give a shrak. I was simply a chess piece that he was getting ready to move. Why did I have a terrible feeling that I was to be a sacrificial pawn?

  ΔΔΔ

  “Are you a patriot, Nikolay?”

  “Yes sir! I certainly am.”

  “And you believe in the Empire and you are totally loyal to it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Would you give your life for it?”

  I really didn’t like the direction this was heading. “Yes sir, I would.”

  “Tell me what you know about the Emperor and his family,” said the Admiral, suddenly shifting gears.

  “What do you want to know?” I said. “Eridanus Acamar III is the current Emperor. He is in the 37th year of his reign and is married to his wife, Empress Elaina.”

  “What about their children?”

  “They have three legitimate children,” I replied. “There are rumors of others, but…”

  “Don’t worry about them,” the admiral said. “Tell me more about the three legitimate ones.”

  “The oldest son and the first in line for the throne is Prince Eridanus Acamar IV. Next in line is the daughter, Grand Duchess Tauri Acamar. Finally, the third son is Grand Duke Alyster Acamar. To my knowledge they all serve in the fleet.”

  “Actually the Grand Duchess is IDF, but I’m more concerned with what else you might know about Grand Duke Alyster Acamar?”

  “I know he has no chance of becoming Prince Acamar.” I mentally reviewed the hierarchy of titles and confirmed that I had it straight – the title of Prince or Princess was reserved for the child next in line for the throne.

  “And…” he prodded.

  I was starting to get nervous. I had no idea how candid I was expected to be. There were the official versions, and then there was a truth that everybody knew. Alyster, for example, was reported to be a total flake. With virtually no shot at The Crown himself he played at being captain of a ship.

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say, Admiral.”

  “I want you to tell me what you know. The rumors, the innuendo, tell me all of it.”

  “Well, I personally don’t know anything. But the rumors are not very good. They say that Captain Acamar spends more time chasing his female staff than he does the empire’s enemies. The rumors are that the fleet humors him because he is, indeed, the Emperor’s son.”

  The Admiral said nothing but kept his eyes fixed on me. I realized I’d probably gone too far. Never believe the brass when they tell you they want you to be honest.

  “Okay, good. So is it fair to say that respect is not one of the feelings you have towards Captain Alyster Acamar?”

  Seeing my consternation he quickly added, “Never mind, you don’t need to answer that.” After a moment he continued in a more official voice, “Ensign, you have been assigned to the Celcium Empire Ship Halcyon. You will serve there as the personal aide to Captain Alyster Acamar. While doing so, you will also serve as my personal eyes and ears aboard that ship. This will be between you and I; no one else is to know.”

  After a moment the Admiral said, “Well, do you have anything to say?”

  I was tired of being stunned with events that seemed to come out of nowhere and slam me in the face like a shovel… So I went ahead and opened my mouth when I certainly should’ve kept it shut.

  “Yes Admiral, I do. I want to know why you are doing this to me. I’m a legacy of the civil service legion. I graduated The Academy with excellent marks and I know I can make great contributions to the Empire by serving in that capacity. I want to know why you’re dragging me away from that to play spy and royal nanny to a spoiled kid.”

  The Admiral smiled for the first time. “Well, well, well… The Ensign does have some teeth. Good. You’re going to need a strong will. As for why I’m… doing this to you… I’m not. You set your assignment as Royal nanny, as you put it, into stone long before I ever knew who you were. I don’t know who you pissed off, but somebody doesn’t think too much of you. Oh, and I also noticed that you have no family or political influence to speak of. That’s a lousy combination Nikolay. And a lousy way to start a career.

  “Anyway, it’s very rare for new ensigns to be assigned to the Halcyon. When it was brought to my attention I looked up your fi
le. The only thing that really stood out to me were your high loyalty scores. I can’t say that your new assignment is going to surround you with the Empire’s best and brightest, but I realized you could be some use to me and what’s good for me is good for the Empire. So our little side agreement comes after the fact. You can feel confident that you screwed up your future all by yourself.

  “Does that make you feel any better?”

  I closed my eyes, gathered myself, and said to the Admiral, “I apologize, sir. I think I’m just a little overwhelmed, but I am grateful for your trust in me and I will perform my duties to the best of my ability. But… may I ask why you want to spy on the Emperor’s son?”

  He laughed. “Good recovery. There’s no mystery as to why I want you there. One of my duties is to keep the Emperor’s kids safe. Oh, and by the way, the Emperor knows I do these kind of things so nobody’s really going behind anyone’s back. But as far as you’re concerned it is strictly between you and me. Understood?”

  “Yes Sir. I understand, Sir.”

  “Good. Now get out of here; go report to your new command.”

  Chapter seven

  ENSIGN JACOBY NICOLAY

  Meeting the Captain

  Present Day

  It took me a month to reach the Halcyon.

  My transportation was a slow freighter headed for one of the frontier quadrants.

  I used the transit time to brush up on my knowledge about the fleet. I could tell you how many sub ministers there were in any given bureaucratic region of the Empire. I could probably even tell you how many Citizens were assigned to staff each sub ministry. But when it came to the military, I wasn’t even sure what separated a fleet from a squad, or a squad from an expeditionary force.

  Apparently there were seven fleets in the Empire.

  The Home Fleet never left the Celcium system. It was one of the larger fleets and, apparently, the home of my new Admiral friend. I had been assigned, however, to the 133rd Legion of the Fourth Fleet.

  I wasn’t sure which fleet I really worked for but didn’t give it another thought once I discovered that denars were being deposited into my account from both.

  The Fourth Fleet is responsible for defending a flank of the Empire. We inhabited a spiral galaxy and if you thought of each spiral arm as a curved superhighway, the flank we were defending faced inwards, back towards the center. That direction was known as upspiral.

  It was considered to be a low-risk assignment because the current wave of Imperial aggression was expanding in the other direction, downspiral. We were on the opposite side of the Empire from all the adventure I’d grown up dreaming about. That’s not to say there were no other civilizations or empires deeper in towards the galactic center, that was probably a given, but there had been no contact with any of them in recorded history.

  To make it even safer, the 133rd Legion had the least threatening assignment of the entire Fourth Fleet. We had been entrusted to cover our border with the Hades Forest. The name ‘Hades’ was a little bit of a misnomer because there was nothing really evil or dangerous about it. Other than the occasional pirate challenge which plagued all the outer borders of our Empire, there were no governments or advanced civilizations there to defend against.

  At least not in the current millennia…

  It was well known that all of the star systems in the Hades Forest were dead. The planets were mined out, the gas giants were measurably depleted of important volatiles, and even the flora and fauna on most of the habitable planets was thin from poor soil.

  The only known entity in the galaxy powerful enough to cause such wanton desolation was man, but very little evidence of our presence remained.

  Xenoarchaeologists claimed to have uncovered the occasional evidence of human habitation that dated back somewhere between 700 million and 1 billion years in age. I assumed they knew what they were talking about but when I looked at the vid’s and still shots there wasn’t enough left for me to understand what I was seeing. It all looked like crumbled rock to me.

  The only awesome thing about the Hades Forest was its immense size.

  If you took all of the thousand suns of our Empire and represented that space as the size of a small pea, then set it down in the middle of an eight lane superhighway you would get an idea of how insignificant our empire is compared to the width of our spiral arm.

  Now, for comparison’s sake, understand that the dead zone called the Hades Forest extends the entire width of that superhighway. Nobody really knows how deep it is but for centuries it has provided us with a natural buffer against outside aggression from upspin.

  Anyway, it was the least desirable territory in known space and therefore the least likely to produce conflict. Which, I assumed, is why the Halcion had been assigned there. We must keep the Emperor’s son safe, don’t you know?

  Of course, the Emperor’s first son and daughter had been assigned to more standard deployments, but that’s another story.

  According to the records I was able to pull up; the Halcyon was a Tigress class warship. My mood brightened somewhat when I realized that Tigress class ships were some of the newest in the Empire; obviously the Emperor’s family was given first dibs on the very best. Much faster and more maneuverable than other ships of her size she carried the offensive punch of a heavy cruiser, but because of her size and armor she was classified as a light cruiser. She carried a complement of 183 men and women, 24 Citizens and 159 crew.

  I was considerably less thrilled when I looked up the record of the Halcyon herself.

  The ship had won or survived various skirmishes with pirates but had never been faced with a fleet-to-fleet battle. That was probably a good thing since all of her fleet exercise scores were significantly below par.

  There was one thing I realized immediately, I didn’t want to go to war aboard the Halcyon.

  The freighter crew I was traveling with weren’t Citizens of the Empire. And although they were far from subservient they gave me my space and allowed me to remain somewhat aloof. I had more conversation with crewmen Nguyen than any other - he brought my daily meals.

  After a week of casual conversation I finally asked him, “What do you know about the C.E.S. Halcyon?”

  Surprised, he responded, “Begging your pardon sir… but why do you want to know?”

  “Because I’ve been assigned to her and I want to know more than the official records are showing. What can you tell me?”

  “She’s the finest ship in the fleet, Citizen.”

  “Okay, now tell me the truth.”

  “Well… She’s captained by one of the Emperor’s sons, but I suspect you already know that.”

  I nodded for him to continue.

  “It depends on who you talk to, of course, but some say he’s a right friendly chap and others say he’s the most incompetent boob you’ll ever run into. If you’ll excuse me for saying so, Sir.”

  I sighed. “What else do you know?”

  “Well Sir, if I were to guess… Were you unlucky enough to get someone mad at you? Because I figure it’s either that or you really screwed-up big time – and I don’t figure you much for the screw-up type.”

  I think there was a compliment in there somewhere but I was too focused on getting more information to figure it out for sure.

  “Why would you ask that? Who usually gets assigned to the Halcyon?”

  “Look, Citizen Nikolay… You seem like a pretty decent sort and I really don’t want to offend you…”

  “Okay Nguyen, I get it. Consider me unoffended. But I really need you to give me some candid answers.”

  After a moment he spoke again, “Begging your pardon, Sir, but the Halcyon is the private toy of Captain Acamar. It never has or ever will do anything important. They say that being assigned to her is a career dead-end. Almost all of the Citizens that serve on her were transferred there for disciplinary reasons.”

  “Surely that’s a little bit exaggerated?” I said somewhat anxiously.

 
; “I really wouldn’t know Sir, but that’s what they say.”

  “Thank you Nguyen. I’m sure I’ll sleep much better tonight.”

  ΔΔΔ

  The freighter unloaded some cargo on the planet Altair. Since we were to be stuck here for a few days I decided to go exploring planetside.

  I was very surprised by the reaction I received from the local inhabitants. As soon as they saw me they would stop in midsentence. Those closest to me gave a little bow and everyone else averted their eyes.