by Tao Wong
Of course, Ayuri shouts at me for a bit. The Queen sniffs at me in a very brief conversation. But they take possession of the ship and the men, as per my orders.
And then we turn around. To do it all over again.
Chapter 17
“Six battleships, including his flagship, the Titan of the Seven Nebulas. Two space stations, half a dozen mining locations, two prison complexes, and one fortified palace in one month,” Empress Hasbata glowers at me over the communicator, projected larger than life into the cockpit of the Heartbreak as we float in the dead space between the stars. And somehow, her projection is still smaller than her presence, the pressure she’s emitting.
In the corner of my eyes, just below in the pilot and copilot’s seats, Dornalor and Harry are white-knuckling their chairs. They can barely breathe, her presence a physical weight upon our chests. Bolo’s lounging out of sight, looking blasé about the whole situation. Except for the strain in his eyes, the way he cracks his neck every once in a while. Mikito’s smarter, hiding in the engine room, taking care of the ship.
“Seems low,” I say, doing my best to keep my face neutral. “Doesn’t it sound low?” I turn to Ali, who is giving me wide-eyed looks of horror.
“Those are just your personal team’s numbers!” the Empress snaps. “Are you trying to weaken my Empire?”
“Most of them are in one piece,” I say. “We’ll be able to return them once this is over. And the damage the initiates are doing, that can’t be helped. Doesn’t really matter anyway. They just have secondary locations.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Her nostrils flare, so small that they’re almost imperceptible. She leans forward, growling out her next words. The Aura she bends on me increases even further. I should have had Dornalor jump us outside the Empire for this talk. That way her Aura would be less severe. “Are you trying to have me order your death? That’s millions of Credits and hundreds of lives! Advanced and Basic Classers we have built up over years.”
“And the immigrants, the refugees, and travelers he had taken?” I reply irately. “There were two Master Classers we found chained to their desks in those prisons. A dozen more Advanced Classers at the highest Levels. All trapped, forced to work for him. For… trespassing.” I spit the word, shaking my head.
Of course the legal terms he’d used were more complex. Entry without permits. Fines for non-payment of the permits. Problems with their transportation that resulted in more fines. Lack of permits for Skills or spells, for transportation. All of it just so that they could capture those who traveled through.
And, of course, it worked. Because anyone traveling by mundane means or via short-hop teleportation is doing so because they can’t afford the more expensive, long-range teleportation.
“Duke Ucald grew their Skills—”
“By selling their work. And then buying more materials and making them work on it again and again,” I snap, pressing down with my legs against the bulkhead floor to burn off some energy. “He’s been doing this for two decades, and you did nothing about it. So yeah, I have to break a few eggs. But he had it coming.”
Memory comes back, recollection of the blood-soaked month. Thirty-five days, as per their calendar. Our first attacks went well, then his reinforcements poured in, teleportations of his best people. Things had gotten hairy for a bit as we fought his guard, his eldest son—who I’d been forced to kill—and the reinforcements from other nobles and a couple of mercenary guilds.
They’d even managed to track Dornalor down once. If not for the fact that the pirate is professionally paranoid, we’d have been caught. As it was, the close-in fission mines we’d set up had nearly torn the Heartbreak apart when they went off. Only the use of our combined Skills and me linking everything together, including Disengaging Safeties, had left us alive and limping out.
“Your actions have more consequences than just your problem with the Duke!” the Empress says. The chain around her neck trembles, swinging back and forth as she leans forward, glittering gold and emerald. “You are hardening their stance against you and your Paladins.”
“The Empire’s Paladins,” I correct. “And so be it. We aren’t going to stop until he stands down.”
The Queen tenses for a second then calms down, leaning back almost languidly. My danger sense pings, and I tense a little. “And if I ordered you to end this?”
“Then I’d say you’ve got the wrong person for the job,” I say. “Because I’m finishing what I started.”
She nods, her eyes tracking upward to my Status above my head. When her eyes move back down, they are cold as her words. An arctic wind, blowing across a lake when it’s -40 below. “Then end it. Soon.”
I don’t get to reply, as she kills the connection. The pair before me let out exhalations of relief in conjunction, while even Bolo relaxes further. As for me, I wipe my forehead, finding it slightly damp. Damn, but that woman can pressure.
“Well,” Ali says, floating back down through the ceiling from where he’s been hiding, “I guess we’re done.”
I purse my lips, hating to be pushed. But… she’s not wrong. It’s time to finish this.
“Call them back.”
***
It takes the initiates the better part of a day to arrive. The last ship to flash in is Ropo’s, and it does so in a dramatic fashion. The moment it materializes, alerts resound all across our notification windows. It’s leaking fuel and radiation, large rents torn across the starboard aft of the ship. It’s lost all of its cloaking abilities. Even the shadow skills of the Captain have been blasted away. Two-thirds of its weaponry is down, its main engines barely spluttering along. Repair drones deploy immediately, from ours and other ships nearby, burning fission materials as they near the damaged ship.
Ropo comes online seconds later, his bearded face half shorn of hair, burnt off in his latest scuffle. The bridge itself doesn’t look much better, nearly half of the consoles wrecked, sparking electricity and releasing wafts of smoke. Good thing that for most ships, the physical controls are only built as a secondary failsafe. System-enabled controls are faster and more efficient. They’re also more difficult to destroy. Though sometimes its easier to block. Thus, secondaries.
I draw a deep breath and dismiss the slight hint of funk that comes from not using a Cleanse spell for a full day and the remnants of chocolate bars on my breath. This time around, it was dark chocolate, the hard bitterness of the bar still present in my mouth, the slight hints of the strawberry and nougat lingering. I want another, but this isn’t time.
Whether it was because I was pulling the initiates out or because the universe has a strange sense of humor, the Duke launched his payback today. Because of that, the team had been struggling to disengage.
Ropo’s ship was the least worrisome. At least he made it. We lost Kino’s signal in the middle of the day, and even Harry’s access to the Shop cannot provide us details. They’ve locked it all down under multiple Skills. There’s no way to know whether anyone survived without finding out ourselves.
Some of the other ships have come out fine. Magine had finished his attack, leaving him free to scuttle off before they launched theirs. Gheisnan never planned to do an attack today. I can’t help but wonder how much of that was because he foresaw the attack. The rest were a mixed bag in between Ropo and Magine.
“Welcome back. I think that’s all of us not.” I nod to Ropo and gesture, reading the various communiques from the others.
The initiates have nothing to do with running the ships, so there’s no reason to delay our discussion. They all look a little harried, just a little stressed. Even if we have access to the Shop and have adequate inventory and supplies to keep us going, a month of hit-and-run tactics, ostensibly against allies, can make people grumpy and stressed.
“Any word about Kino?” Magine asks.
I’m a little surprised the Dueling addict has paid enough attention to even realize the Risen isn’t here. Then again, maybe that’s just me projecti
ng my own biases.
“Nothing,” Harry answers for me, a frown etching his dark skin, deepening lines that are normally quite well hidden. “Not even an announcement of his victory.”
Surprising that. Our attacks have been local news, news that has grown more and more harried over the month as the attacks from “unknown sources” have escalated. The Duke has a bit of a PR problem, with the truth of our face-off kept from the public. Still, we’ve done enough damage that they can’t afford to say nothing.
“Did you know about the attacks?”Anayton is glaring at me, obviously having an answer to that question in her mind.
“Nope.” I shake my head, letting my gaze flick over the blue screens filled with the initiates’ Statuses.
At the same time, I get a glimpse of our own cockpit displayed from the camera feed of the ship. Myself above in the vice-captain’s chair with full access to the system, Bolo at weapons and security console, and Mikito seated in the passenger chair behind. The new cockpit is big enough to fit all five of us, which is kind of nice.
“I had a call.” When my pronouncement doesn’t elicit a reaction, I continue. “From the Empress.”
That gets a reaction. More than one of the initiates hiss, and Freif mutters, “I knew it.” They all have the look of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or a System notification to update, as the Galactics would say.
“She wants us to finish this. Now.”
There are a lot of firm nods, straightening of spines. No surprise there.
Most of them have been doing well. Picking their targets with care, exploiting holes in defenses, using fake-outs and overwhelming force as necessary. Just as importantly, they’ve also come into close contact with the policies of Duke Ucald. And even the most blasé, the most supportive—like Magine—have begun to see the problems.
It’s one thing to espouse intellectually sound policies, to weigh the lives of the masses against the needs of the few, to do what is right for the many at the expense of the minority. It’s another thing to look in the face of those few and tell them they aren’t worth it. To drag them out from their kennels, to unchain them from tables that have locked them in production forever. To stare at the children who ask you where their parents are. And know that you have no good answer.
Stage two was never really about training or Skill development. Stage two was all about reinforcing the only thing that’s truly important to a Paladin. We serve the Empire. And the Empire isn’t some corporate monolith or the nobles or some abstract series of rules and regulations that dictate the order of our lives. It’s not even the social structure that holds it all together.
The Empire, society, is about the people.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe some of them can look at the choices the Duke made for his own good, for the good of his domain, and call it fair and fine. Maybe all I’m doing is screaming into the dark. Maybe that’s okay too. Because we’re only a few, even with all the power we have. And if I’ve learnt one thing from the apocalypse and the library in my head, it’s that there’s no single solution. Maybe conflicting beliefs might be able to right wrongs in all kinds of places.
“What’s the plan?” Gheisnan asks, ears curling down around his head.
“Duke Ucald has doubled down, refusing to change. We can’t make him. So no more going around, no more playing nice. You have—” I stare at the estimates and dismiss them. It’ll take too long for Ropo to fix his ship. I compose other orders to have him join another initiate. “An hour to get yourselves ready. Jump to the nearest Shop if you need it. But then, we’re going.”
All their faces go flat, game faces slipping on. Only Gheisnan has a slight smile on his face, as if he’s seen this all. As if this is the best option. I hope it is.
I draw a deep breath, closing all the windows, and pull out the Duke’s palace blueprints. A gesture brings over the rest of the team, and we pour over the details. Going over the plan one last time, making adjustments now that we’re certain we’ve only got five.
And I can’t help but wonder if I’m going to lose anyone else.
***
The center of Duke Ucald’s domain is the Infinite Keeps. Are?
There’s a different name for it in Erethran, one less flowery and more practical, but Ali translated it for me as Infinite Keeps. And I can see why.
It’s a weird, highly defensive structure. The external structure is reminiscent of a stumpy fortress, something built in the fifteenth century, when we were still transitioning between guns and bows. It has multiple towers, sprawling crenellated walls that reach up and up into the sky. The walls themselves aren’t just defensive structures, but residences too, apartment complexes for the unworthy.
There’s technically a central keep, a location for defenders to fall back to. The obsidian walls shroud the inner courtyard in perpetual twilight, no matter how many lights they install. The Infinite Keeps were built for three reasons, and they do them well.
Firstly, the Infinite Keeps are where the Duke and his extended family reside. Because of the folded space design of the keeps, each location is embedded within the next, growing larger as one passes through the layers. Those individuals who are most in disfavor at the present moment are left on the outer rings, with the larger, more expansive grounds inside reserved for those in favor or within the direct line of descent.
The punishment of being forced to live in noble squalor, having only a few thousand square feet of space to oneself, was enough to drive the various branches of his family to compete.
Secondly, the smaller and more portable nature of the outer keep meant that the Duke could use it as his mobile fortress. Using its defenses, the Duke and his retainers could unleash their strength upon problematical locations throughout the solar systems. Whether it was a monster population that needed culling or an invading fleet, the keep could deploy forces directly.
It helped as well that as a mobile residence, the Duke could enjoy the various festivals and entertainment opportunities his planets offered.
Thirdly, and the reason why we’re launching our attack, is the System Settlement Sphere. The Erethran noble Title system is a strange little thing. Not to say that other Galactics haven’t taken it up, but it isn’t extremely common. To reduce the burden on the System and to allow their nobles to anchor their Skills over a wide plane, the Erethrans created these Settlements Spheres.
Each sphere is like a pin in a staked-out handkerchief, warping the local area around it. By tying the noble Title to it, the Empire could rule over large swaths of space with lower System requirements and populations. In that way, pound for pound, a designated noble from Erethra had more powerful Skills than another of the same Level. On the other hand, it also left them more vulnerable.
A vulnerability we intend to exploit.
I take a deep breath, staring again at blueprints. Like an inverse Russian matryoshka doll, each keep we defeat will lead to another of greater size. Inversely, that also means that the concentration of fire and personnel will grow smaller. That doesn’t mean less danger though. After all, Classes and Levels as much as politics dictate who stays within. The deeper we delve, the more dangerous it will get. For that reason, I sent the initiates in first.
“In three,” Dornalor calls.
I give my head a quick shake and focus on what’s happening. Exactly on time, the ships with the initiates drop out of hyperspace. All five of them deploy drones and fire missiles at specified locations. These are custom-designed missiles meant to punch holes in settlement shields rather than destroy them. They work, however briefly, before the shields regenerate.
It took a little bit of wrangling to get those missles from Brerdain. He hadn’t wanted to let them go, especially because of how expensive they are to make. Each of them had components from Master Class Artisans, but they were the only way I could see to punch through in short order.
Ahead of me, leaning forward over his console and guiding the ship using his fingers, Dorn
alor controls the Nothing’s Heartbreak as we fly along behind Gheisnan’s craft. We drop down toward the keep as well, but so much more quietly. Whereas the initiates are here to make noise and deal with the main defenses in the front lines, we’re supposed to cut through and take out the main target.
I eye the surroundings, taking in where we are as Dornalor flies us in. Beside me, Ali is focused turning aside lasers and electric beams with equal prejudice.
When we dropped out of hyperspace, we were just outside the shields. With the settlement shield down, the apartment walls have opened up almost immediately with attacks, firing upon us as we swoop in. Dornalor weaves us between fire, letting the lead ships soak up the attacks as we pass through where the shields should be.
The moment we cross the threshold, artificial gravity takes hold, enforcing its arbitrary concept of down. The hunk of land that makes the keep look like a floating castle in space is what we target, the open ground unrestricted—unlike the already cluttered space above the keep. Cluttered with lasers, missiles, drones, and rail-gun-driven masses of metal and enchanted rock. We get in low while the rest of the ships land, disgorging their occupants around the keep.
The initiates throw themselves out, rushing the wall-cum-towering-apartment-buildings, using tactical movement and cover fire to get close. They combine force shields, distracting robots and drones and moveable defenses to keep themselves moving. All the while, they return fire, using the ship’s on-board weaponry and their own Skills to tear at the walls and defensive weaponry.
I can’t help but wonder who else we’re killing, who else might be injured by their indiscriminate attacks.
“Watch out, drones incoming,” Harry barks. The War Reporter is in the copilot seat, doing his best to help without participating directly.