In Extremis

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Those fleets are our enemies, huntbrother,” the Emperor said now, each word steady. “And they are massing to make war on our ally. It is not treason to arrange their demise.”

  “They’re our people!” the Admiral-Offense said, but he was pained, not outraged. “And you will give them to the aliens?”

  “Fortunately the aliens do not take slaves,” the Emperor said.

  “This is a trap,” Na’er said, ears flattened. “You want us to do your dirty work for you? Convenient that. We end up stripping the border of the Fleet’s defenses just so we can clean up your mess and set you up on your throne, just in time for you to kick us while we’re licking our wounds.”

  “Na’er,” Laniis muttered, ears back and eyes averted.

  “He has a point,” Meryl said. “There’s a significant risk in raiding this far behind Chatcaavan lines when we know that forty percent of your navy’s already on its way to the border.”

  “But,” Laniis said, reluctant, “If we can destroy sixty percent of it behind their backs…” They all looked at her, but she didn’t quail. “Keep in mind when we talk about the force being sent to the border, that’s just Second and the navy. It doesn’t include all the militia they’re mustering, which we also have to put down.” She inhaled, raising her eyes to Meryl. “They’re going to come for us anyway. It’s just a question of whether we think that sixty percent is more dangerous to us later than the forty percent is now.”

  “And whether the destruction wrought by either battle leaves you more vulnerable to the follow-up, I imagine,” Lisinthir said.

  “Fortunately this isn’t my call to make,” Meryl said. “I’ll kick it upstairs, like the good foot soldier I am.” She glanced at the Emperor. “But I hope for your sake you have a few ships to throw at your little problem, because if you don’t you’re not going to live long enough to sit on a throne again.”

  “Agreed,” the Emperor said.

  She held the Chatcaavan’s gaze for a heartbeat longer than necessary, then her eyes skipped to Lisinthir’s, and in them he read their conversation about the Emperor. He wondered now what she thought of the utility of their ally, who had invited the Alliance to cut his throat. No matter Na’er’s opinion—if the Alliance did the scutwork, they would not leave the Emperor an Empire to rule when they could annex the border territories themselves. None of them were unaware of the exigencies of realpolitik.

  “Well, then. I think we all have messages to write before we leave this drop site.” Meryl inclined her head. “Aletsen.”

  After the Pelted filed out, the Chatcaava left, and the agonized glance the Admiral-Offense threw the Emperor was like a lance. But their choices were few, and terrible, and their hope frail. And they all knew it.

  “What do you think?” Lisinthir asked later, once they were alone.

  “I think Uuvek is correct,” the Emperor said, sorting through the drawers he was using for clothes. He had started paying more attention to his wardrobe now that he was clothing such distinctly different bodies. Did he know that he was spending as much time living in those extra bodies as he did his own? And what did that mean? Plucking up the Fleet sweatshirt, the Emperor finished, “If we cannot move on this opportunity, then it may be years before we find a better one. Once the war moves to the border, the chances for decisive victory will decrease. Particularly with Second skulking in the dark with the entire Eastern naval fleet at his command.”

  “It doesn’t worry you,” Lisinthir said, quietly. “To have invited the Alliance to preside over the execution of the Empire.”

  “Should it bother me more than knowing the Alliance will shortly be the target of the Empire’s bombs?” The male shook his head. “No, Perfection. We have drawn the Pelted into this. If they lift their hands in defense, we have only ourselves to blame.” He smiled wryly. “Did you not teach me that in my bedchamber?”

  “I suppose I did,” Lisinthir replied. “And I remember fearing that my success would trigger a war, because two such nations could not co-exist without establishing dominance.”

  “Ah, but you showed me otherwise.” A smile then, gentler. “Now it is for me to teach others.” The Emperor shook his head back and with it came the Change, horns flowing into dark hair, skin gliding over scales. The transition looked so smooth, so effortless, that Lisinthir’s breath caught. The face that came through the collar of the sweatshirt was human.

  “Exalted,” Lisinthir said, unable to help his astonishment. “How did you—when?”

  “Did not the Queen say?” the Emperor answered, looking at him now with his human eyes. “Practice.”

  “Even practice had not made her so easy with it.”

  The human looked up at the ceiling, flesh wrinkling around his narrowed eyes—how strange to see it so clearly on this face, and yet still sense the same soul behind it. “Then perhaps it is practice at surrender.”

  Both Lisinthir’s brows rose despite himself.

  The Emperor chuckled. “And I am not so good with surrender, you are thinking. As well you should.” He padded to Lisinthir and slipped over his lap, bending close enough to kiss the Eldritch’s neck. Beneath those lips, an exhalation of peace: there was exhaustion behind it, and regret, and remorse, yes. But they were like sediment, settling at last to reveal a breathtaking clarity. “Perhaps it was my inability to surrender that required so much suffering as teacher.”

  “I do not like to think of the God and Lady as instruments of punishment,” Lisinthir said into that dark hair, sliding his arms around the narrow shoulders.

  “It is no god’s fault that I could not learn in any gentler way.” The Emperor sat up and cupped Lisinthir’s face in small hands. “Nor do I blame them for it. But…” A whimsical smile, “I find I do not want to invite more such catastrophic lessons. So I am trying to be more open.”

  “To surrender,” Lisinthir repeated, charmed and marveling.

  “To bow my head,” the Emperor agreed. “Because I do not deserve more than any other spirit made manifest in the universe.” He kissed Lisinthir’s nose, smiled. “I go now. I promised Andrea I would let her teach me another of her rituals.”

  “Right now?”

  The Emperor smiled a little. “Every other day, at this hour. She claims routine is important. Will you read my messages?”

  “Will you let me?” Lisinthir asked, astonished.

  The Emperor sat back on the Eldritch’s lap, human hands on the arms of their chair. “Do you plan to leave my side after this?”

  “No…!”

  The human nodded his head, eyes grave. “You love the Queen.”

  “Yes,” Lisinthir said, recovering his aplomb. “And you. And fain would I stay in the Empire with the two of you until death parts us. But if your Empire could not withstand such an arrangement—”

  “If my Empire cannot withstand such an arrangement, I will have made it in the wrong image,” the Emperor said.

  “A Chatcaavan Emperor with an Eldritch Second. Surely not.”

  “Second is a position beneath the Emperor.” Those eyes, so unwavering. “I was not thinking of a position beneath the Emperor.” A sudden grin. “Save in the bedchamber, when it suits us.”

  Lisinthir laughed, because there was no other reaction possible to what the Emperor was intimating. “When it suits us.”

  The Emperor took his hand and kissed its palm, communicating with that touch his certitude, and an ease that felt like a warm breeze beneath wings. “Tell me if anything in the message spool requires immediate attention. Otherwise, I will return within half an hour.”

  “Yes, Exalted,” Lisinthir said.

  The silence left by the Emperor’s departure rang with his final words, and with their implied promises. Lisinthir had told his cousin that he would stay with his lovers for as long as they wanted him, but he had never thought past that desire to what shape it would take when the practicalities had been addressed. He’d assumed he would have no rank at all—that the Chatcaava would treat h
im as Eldritch nobles might have treated a lover they could not claim publicly. He would have been content with that, just to be near them. Maybe, if he’d thought any further on it, he would have been glad to be a bodyguard of sorts—another sword between the Queen and her enemies, or the Emperor’s.

  To have actual political consequence?

  God and Lady, what would Liolesa say? He huffed a soft laugh and shook his head. And Jahir… Jahir would think it an entirely appropriate punishment for Lisinthir encouraging him to wed into the royal succession. Two princes, soon kings… and an emperor, and three queens. This princes’ game, evolving toward its inevitable end. What a beautiful tangle.

  The Emperor’s messages contained more offers of allegiance from minor lords and officers. Those could be added to Uuvek’s tally, though scanning them Lisinthir couldn’t see them adding up to something the size even of the pirate fleet. Three hundred ships, give or take a few score, would not win this war for them against the mass awaiting them at Apex-East. Switching to his own messages, he read the one summarized by Uuvek. At its end he stopped abruptly. He’d forgotten the question he’d appended in a moment of whimsy, and pain at what the Emperor and Laniis had been about. Raising his head, he looked at the door through which the Emperor had gone to further his education in humility at the hands of a former Chatcaavan slave. Because I do not deserve more than any other spirit made manifest in the universe.

  Lisinthir sighed out, shuddering. Perhaps he had been too long from the chapel himself. He would take care of it, after the mail.

  They were in bed when the alert sounded, waking them both. The Emperor left his Eldritch head on his lover’s chest, listening to the swiftening throb of that heart and the accompanying rush of adrenalized emotion. The Ambassador did not lift his head either, but said, “Yes?”

  “Lord Nase Galare?” Shanelle, the human. “We’re prepping to drop out of Well at our final destination.”

  The Emperor closed his eyes.

  “How long?”

  “Fifteen minutes to normal space. After that, if it’s safe, we’ll coast in-system, see what we find. Captain thought you two might want to be here.”

  “We’re coming,” the Ambassador said.

  “We’ll keep the seats warm for you.” A descending chime, signaling the communication’s close. The Emperor spread pale fingers on Lisinthir’s skin. His night vision in this shape was poor: without the faint glow of the chronolog floating alongside the night-table, he wouldn’t have been able to see his arm, even as pale as it was.

  The Ambassador caught up his hand and brought it to his lips; his words had a tactile presence, blown over the skin of the Emperor’s fingers, warm as the inside of a throat. “The moment of truth. Are you ready?”

  “You make of this more than I do,” the Emperor admitted. “I have come expecting nothing.”

  “So anything will be a pleasant surprise.”

  The Emperor smiled a little. “To find anything awaiting us would be distressing, as it is unlikely to be enough. I will look on people I can promise nothing and whom I will probably lose in a fight too great for our powers.”

  The Eldritch was silent, but under the Emperor’s palm that heart had slowed, and it felt like a dirge. “Do you truly think so?”

  “What else can I believe?” the Emperor replied. And then, because he could not bear to hear the concern those words inspired, he finished, “But I too thought I was lost, trapped in a trial too great for my powers. And here I am. More importantly, it changes nothing, because this fight must be fought. For all those who will die if we do not.”

  “Yes,” Lisinthir answered with a sigh, and kissed his brow. “Let us go.”

  The Emperor nodded and followed his lover out of bed, becoming his first body swiftly enough for his tail to slide off the mattress behind him. The Change grew easier with practice. Surely that was a lesson worth their attention.

  Together they walked to the bridge, where the Pelted captain was standing, arms folded, watching the screen. “Ten minutes,” she said without looking behind her. “You can sit or stand, whichever you want.”

  Remembering his vigil on the bridge of the flagship before the betrayal, the Emperor said, “We can stand.”

  They did then. Such an innocuous setting for this turning point, when he would look upon the desperate hope of a nation and know it would not suffice. Some would have claimed to feel a rising tension as they approached… but the Emperor felt nothing. Expected less than nothing. This was only a step on a journey that required trials. Triumph could only be bought with blood, and so long as he had blood in his veins he would never be done shedding it to atone for all he’d done, and all he’d failed to change.

  He could almost hear Andrea chastising him for taking too much on his shoulders. And yet, what else?

  If not him, whom?

  “Time,” one of the other Pelted said.

  “Lift us out of the Well.”

  “Here’s hoping we don’t get shot down,” Shanelle muttered from her station near the screen. “Coming up now.”

  The simulated streaks in the display steadied, focused into single stars. Tags and numbers flooded the wall screen as the human magnified the solar system and began painting the data sources. From his reading and very old education in navigational charts, the Emperor recognized the worlds of the Chatcaava’s birthplace, identified its sun, knew the labels that indicated the moons. What he didn’t understand were the extra codes that kept stippling the display, more and more of them.

  Nor was he the only one. The Pelted captain said, terse, “What are we seeing?”

  “Still cleaning up the sensor data, sir,” Shanelle said. “But… it’s ships.”

  “All those beads are ships?”

  “All those beads are clusters of ships.” Shanelle sounded apologetic, but she was also starting to grin. “Too many of them for us to separate at this distance.”

  “But… there are hundreds,” the Ambassador said, quiet.

  “And one of them’s nearly on top of us,” the other analyst said, ears flattening. “Patrol, definitely. They were lying dark and now they’re hailing us.”

  “But not threatening?”

  “No signs of active targeting.”

  The Pelted captain sounded amused. “Well, let’s hear what they have to say.”

  “…Alliance vessel. This is the Chatcaavan Naval Vessel East-Fifth-Two-Four-Seven. I am East-Reserve-Prime. Welcome to the Source.”

  The Emperor’s spine tensed and he stepped toward the screen involuntarily. “Say again?”

  The Pelted captain waved. “Open the channel.” A chime. “Chatcaavan Vessel this is the UAV Silhouette, Captain Meryl Osgood commanding. Can you repeat your designation?”

  “I am East-Reserve-Prime, and I hail you from the deck of East-Fifth-Two-Four-Seven. May we establish visuals?”

  “Go on,” Meryl said to the Pelted at the console.

  The window into the vessel opened immediately, and the Emperor’s wings began to tremble. The striping on the walls and deck were the right color and breadth. The bridge was fully manned, with a captain at the chair and a second male standing alongside in the right uniform. It could not be and yet… The Emperor stopped before the display, staring at that second male. “I see before me an impossibility.”

  “Exalted.” The male bowed, wings spread and head ducked to expose the horns. “An improbability, perhaps. But not an impossibility. We were honored to answer the call.”

  “How many? Did you bring them all?”

  “I wish I could have, Exalted,” the male said. “But as many as I knew I could trust have come. You find us several thousand strong.”

  The Pelted captain hissed in a breath. “Confirm that,” she said to Shanelle.

  “Looking good, sir. Not getting exact numbers yet, but I don’t think he’s lying.”

  “Who are you?” the Pelted captain exclaimed. “And where did you come from?”

  The male ducked his head t
o her now, though not as deeply, and the Emperor watched, astounded. “Alien Captain, I am the Worldlord’s second son, and I command the naval reserve for the Eastern sector. You see here my command. We are joined by several other partisans of the true Emperor, summoned by the call in the worlds-skein, and we have news to share.”

  “Oh, I bet you do,” the Pelted captain breathed, ears sagging in astonishment.

  “We should meet,” the Emperor said.

  “Exalted, Orbital-First waits to receive you.”

  “Then we will see you there once we make orbit,” the Emperor said.

  “Exalted. Until then.” The male bowed again, and the transmission ended.

  “Am I really seeing this?” the Pelted captain asked, incredulous. She turned to the Emperor. “Are there really several thousand ships out there?”

  “That’s still not enough to beat the entire Chatcaavan fleet,” the striped male at the comm station said.

  “But it’ll make a much bigger dent than the hundred we thought we’d have,” Shanelle said.

  “More importantly,” Lisinthir said, “Did I hear that was the Eastern reserve? Have we stolen some of Second’s strength out from under him?”

  “That is what we are about to find out,” the Emperor said. “We should proceed to the planet.”

  “Absolutely,” the Pelted captain said, her ears still akimbo. Clearing her throat, she finished, “That will take a few hours. Will you wait here?”

  “No,” the Emperor said. “I go to inform the others.”

  She nodded. “We’ll call you when we arrive.”

  He left then with his Eldritch shadow, and the moment they gained the hall he stopped to allow himself the luxury of weakness. Of wondering, suddenly and soaringly, if this was what hope tasted like after the dull smog of resignation and despair. He looked up, met the Ambassador’s eyes.

  “The Worldlord’s son,” the Ambassador said, reflecting some of that amazement. Then the Eldritch chuckled. “Deputy-East said he had more seeds flung all over the Empire than anyone knew.”