My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire

by Colin Alexander

  It was an immense relief to finally break out at Kaaran, even though Franny’s battle control boards promptly lit up from one end of the bridge to the other. Thank God for that safe conduct! Kaaran system literally bristled with weapons emplacements. There were bases on the other planets of the system and their moons, bases in various orbits, warships of Kaaran’s own defense command and, finally, two Fleet squadrons. Looking at the firepower concentrated in that system made me think that my original plan of flying straight to Kaaran in the Flower had been hopelessly harebrained. If the defenders had chosen to shoot before asking questions, I doubt we could even have surrendered before we were atomized.

  Ruoni startled me by saying that it was about what he had expected. If that was true, why in God’s name hadn’t he said anything when I was setting Flower’s course?

  “It was at your order,” he said. “And you didn’t ask for discussion. Maybe it would have worked. That is the essence of command decisions.”

  That statement gave me an insight into Ruoni, and an answer to questions I’d had about him for a long time. “That’s not something you want, is it? Command, I mean. You don’t want to have to make those choices.”

  Ruoni looked past me, as though he were assessing whether anyone else might hear. “I think you know the answer to that,” he said finally. “If I really wanted Command, there were times I could have had it. I’m good at what I do, and there are certain things I do not wish to do.”

  Ruoni did not wish to discuss the matter further. I suppose that not aspiring to Command would have been considered odd for a Srihani in his position , so I let it drop. It was enough for me to know that, in the past, my life had turned on Ruoni’s knowing the limits of his ambition.

  Shortly after that conversation, a young Kaarani officer appeared on the screen to welcome us and provide Franny a course and parking orbit. There was really no need for a face-to-face exchange. Franny’s computer would have answered any questions and a navigational computer could have transmitted the response. I think the youngster just wanted an excuse to talk to the famous freebooter. Even though Donnar had sent no word of my impending appointment, and had asked us to keep mum about it also, his account of the battle had been transmitted by messenger. We were instant celebrities.

  Farad shaped our course meticulously according to the coordinates he had been given. We might have become socially acceptable, but nobody wanted to discover if someone in Kaaran system had a long memory and an itchy trigger finger. There was just too much firepower confronting us.

  After we made orbit, Jaenna and I met Harvangi at the landing-boat bay to find twenty-five of the strike force waiting for us, with Angel at their head. “Have to make a good impression on the natives,” he said. He followed us through the hatch. Jaenna just shook her head, as though she was not really focusing on what was going on.

  The spaceport we dropped toward, one of six major ones on the planet, served the capital area. This was a sprawling metropolis that dwarfed any Earth city in area, height and population. The viewscreens gave me sectional glimpses of ranked towers, with occasional stretches of low buildings or parkland to provide perspective on exactly how huge those towers were. The spaceport was built to the same scale, and only its size kept it from appearing too busy.

  During our descent, two ground-to-orbit shuttles rose past us, while behind us in our trajectory a landing boat fell from one of the orbiting warships. The spaceport was dotted with ships. Unlike the other ports I had seen, where you set the boat down wherever it was convenient, this one had clearly marked landing zones. It was necessary, I suppose, with such a flux of ships.

  The governor’s residence was located away from the metropolis, on an open plain past the spaceport. Beyond the residence, the plains ran on to a distant range of mountains. “Residence” is the way the Srihani word translates, but it fails to convey the flavor of the place. Seen from above, it was a small city in its own right, located where a cluster of low hills broke the monotony of the plains. It held the living quarters for the officials who made up the planetary government, their families and their retainers. Many of the administrative offices were located at the Residence and, along with them, the support facilities they required. Of course, there were also defenses at the Residence, which required troops to man them. Around the Residence proper, a full-scale city had sprung up, much like the towns that clustered around medieval castles. Wrapped around the homes of the movers and shakers lived the bakers and candlestick makers. By the time we landed, I had seen enough of Kaaran to be mightily impressed.

  The moment Harvangi cut the power, Jaenna snapped out of her trance. She noticed, as if for the first time, that she hadn’t come down by herself and she made it quite clear that she expected to go to the Residence alone. Politics aside, she argued, this was her family and her private business. She didn’t need to arrive with a group of scruffy freebooters at her heels. As I recall, scruffy was not quite the adjective that she used.

  I didn’t agree with her plan. I was worried by her emotional state. I did not want to find myself heading back to Lussern alone, at least not without having had a chance to do anything about it. I also had an ulterior motive. I wanted to meet Tyaromon. I had spent most of my adult life ducking girls’ fathers, but in this case I was anxious to see what he was like. Okay, I also thought that he might support my position if given a chance. Eventually, I argued Jaenna into making the trip together.

  When we popped the hatch, we discovered that Angel and Harvangi did not intend the group of twenty-five as a guard for the boat. They were for us. Jaenna jumped off the side of the ramp to the field, furious.

  “No, this will never do,” she shouted, pacing back and forth on the field next to the boat. “I cannot show up at the Residence with twenty-five of you. The guards will have a fit and that won’t begin to approach my father’s.”

  “Jaenna, be reasonable,” Angel replied. “I don’t care if this is your father’s world or not. I remember the one time we got invited to an Imperial world we were lucky to get off at all. And we weren’t exactly invited here.”

  “I do not need an invitation to my own family’s ceremony,” she retorted. “Besides, Angel, my father may not have much use for me, but I can’t see him shooting me.”

  This time, I sided with Jaenna. “Angel,” I said, “look at this place. It’s an armed camp. Two or twenty-five won’t make any difference if it gets nasty, although I don’t see any reason why it should. Besides, the more of your trigger-happy kamikazes we bring along, the more likely we are to start a fight that we can’t win.”

  Angel looked unhappy. He said, “You don’t expect me to let the two of you go off without a chaperon, do you?”

  “I don’t need a bloody chaperon, and since when have you been qualified to chaperon anything anyway?” I protested. “Blast it, Angel, I’m the captain of this outfit, remember?”

  “Yup. You’re the captain. Want to shoot me?”

  I could see that I was going to pay for not looking quite right on the trip out. Angel was going to keep an eye on us no matter what. I offered the compromise of having the three of us go. It made no one very happy, so we were able to agree on it.

  Having settled the composition of the party, it was relatively simple to proceed. A small passenger vehicle was slaved to a metal strip that ran from our landing spot into the terminal building. It arrived next to our boat while we were arguing, and when we ignored it, began to beep loudly. Opening one of the doors stopped the beep. There was room for twelve inside, so there was plenty of room for us. It whisked us to the terminal where I was treated to the first semblance of customs I had seen in the empire. Very likely, that was because this was the first civilized planet I had landed on in anything like a normal fashion.

  A computer terminal swiveled in front of us and asked for identification. When we answered, the screen flashed green and a wall shut us off from the rest of the terminal. For a moment, I thought that we were being held as undesirable
aliens, but soon an officer in Fleet uniform arrived to escort us.

  On the other side of the terminal building stood a row of aircars. It looked like a taxi stand, and that’s what it proved to be. These were aircars, not the little hovercars I had seen elsewhere. They were sleek and polished and proved to be as fast as they looked. Our new host ushered us into one and it rocketed away from the terminal, crossing the reach of open plains between the port and the Residence in minutes. But it didn’t take us into the Residence. Instead it put us down at a checkpoint out on the plain. Beyond the Residence, rose the peaks of the mountain range. Behind us were the artificial peaks of the capital. We stood in the wind, waiting for the guards to come out, a little self-conscious without our weapons. We had left them at the boat for the same reason we had left the other guards.

  The guards asked our business, took our names and recorded voice and retinal prints. Another guard came out of the building then and brought a small ground-effect vehicle around to where we stood.

  The buildings of the Residence, seen close up, were low, rambling structures spread throughout a parklike area produced by the low hills. The real residence, within the Residence, was a multistory structure that would have dwarfed the New Orleans Superdome. Trees grew alongside the walls, some of them overhanging the roof. A jet fountain in the front courtyard sent up a spray that caught the sun, forming a rainbow that arced over the building. It was a peaceful pastoral scene, except for the armed and armored trooper I saw on the roof before he vanished behind a cornice.

  The guard who had driven us in left us at the main doors. These were not the usual sliding doors of the empire. They were carved from ten-foot-high blocks of wood and hinged so that they would swing open, soundlessly, at the lightest touch. The wood, I later learned, encased a blast plate that would block even a heavy blaster. More elaborately carved wood lined the walls within the vestibule.

  The Srihani who opened the doors wore the uniform of Kaaran’s guards, but carried no weapon. “Your father will see you in his study,” he said to Jaenna, totally ignoring Angel and me. “I can show you the way.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I know the way.” Her soft tones concealed the emotions beneath.

  She led us through a maze of hallways, each covered with a soft, richly patterned carpet. At each intersection, a little pedestal displayed a crystal sculpture. Windows and skylights gave even the narrower halls a feeling of spaciousness. Jaenna finally stopped at another pair of massive wooden doors. Up close, I could see that the carving across both doors was a bas-relief of a feast. I could even see texturing in some of the food. Jaenna put her hand to an ID plate and the doors swung inward.

  Tyaromon’s study could have served as a ballroom for a good-sized hotel. It was shaped like a cut diamond with the entrance at one point. The floor, where it was visible beneath rich carpeting, was made of the same wood as the doors, inlaid with a mosaic that depicted the same feast scene on an even grander scale. Light came from a bank of windows. Groupings of low leather couches, each centered on a table, were distributed around the room. Delicate crystalline sculptures hung from the ceiling, and stands placed throughout the room held carved figures or abstract sculpture. Nothing in that room looked familiar, yet there was also nothing in that room, not even the ordinary looking computer screen on the desk, that would have told me the room belonged in the Galactic Empire.

  Tyaromon stood behind his desk as we entered. It was easy to see where Jaenna had come by her jet black hair and slanted eyes. Tyaromon’ eyes, however, were as black as his hair. He was a large Srihani, easily topping my own height and with a body to match. A snow-white tunic showed off his torso. Somehow, I doubted that he needed the memory fabric to hold his shape. The only decoration on his tunic was an embroidered galaxy and supernova over the left breast. Tyaromon’s face was heavily lined, but the skin was taut. I could read nothing into his expression.

  “Hello, Father,” Jaenna said softly. She had stopped just inside the doorway and, perforce, so had we.

  Goddamn, I thought, she’s afraid of him. That was when I started to be afraid also.

  “Greeting, daughter.” Tyaromon’s voice was deep. Just hearing him speak softly was enough to let you know that if he turned up the volume there would be a real roar. He glanced briefly at his desk, then looked back at Jaenna. “May I inquire as to the reason for your visit?”

  Reason for the visit? Good God, was this how you respond to the reappearance of a kidnapped daughter?

  “I’m here for Valaria’s ceremony. You should know that I would come for that if I were able. I told that to the guards.”

  “So you did. I had heard that. Also that you arrived with a Fleet safe conduct. It is not the habit of Kaaran to welcome freebooters.”

  So that was it! “Now wait a minute,” I broke in, “you’re not being fair at all. Jaenna had no choice about being a freebooter, not if she was going to survive. I think you need to consider that.”

  “I do not need to consider that, and I do not care for fairness.” Tyaromon turned toward me and I felt the intensity of his gaze and voice. “What I must consider is the standing of this house and family. Kaaran is one of the key systems whose first loyalty remains to the emperor. I cannot have that questioned by association with freebooters, nor can the empire.”

  Jaenna was silent, but I wasn’t about to back down. “Whether you can or cannot have that, you can hardly have expected her to just sit there and die.”

  “Sometimes dying is necessary,” he said.

  I could have told him that the actual situation had been a good bit more involved than that. Instead, I said, “You should have heard that we fought for the empire at Lussern, Tyaromon.”

  “So you did,” he replied. There might have been a faint smile on Tyaromon’s lips, as though he had scored a point against me in some arcane debate. “I said that it was not our habit to welcome freebooters, not that we would never do so. You are welcome here for the ceremony, which will take place three days from now. I have also not forgotten that Jaenna is my daughter. She is welcome to rejoin the household, as she knows even if she has not told you. Now, if you will pardon my lack of excessive enthusiasm, I think this welcome is quite sufficient for a daughter who has disgraced herself. If there is nothing else right now, I have work to do.”

  “Just one thing, father,” Jaenna asked. “Can you tell me where Valaria is?”

  “In his quarters, I would expect,” Tyaromon answered. “But you will have to understand that he doesn’t have time for idle chatter as he used to.”

  Stung by the comment, Jaenna flushed and said nothing else. It was clearly time to leave. Once on the other side of the doors, I let out a sigh of relief.

  “Lords of Space! What a welcome home!”

  “Actually, it’s about what I expected,” Jaenna said. “Maybe a little better.”

  “Why? You mean you expected to be treated like this because you’re a daughter instead of a son?”

  “Yes,” she told me, “my father would have shot a son who went freebooter, safe conduct or no safe conduct. Every position has certain advantages. Anyway, you lied to him about my having to be a freebooter. You know the truth as well as I.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. My father is seen as a bulwark of the empire. The appearance is all that matters.”

  At this point, we were facing each other, a good deal closer than customary speaking distance. Her eyes, which were all I really saw, seemed much softer than usual. It was then that a loud “Ahem!” from Angel broke into whatever might have been. He had been with us all along, but I had completely forgotten about him from the moment we faced Tyaromon.

  “Are you two planning to go see dear brother Valaria?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jaenna answered for both of us.

  “Yup,” Angel said, mostly to himself. “Well, while you two were lost in conversation,
I heard a couple of the guards discussing a dice game. I’m not much for family reunions, so unless you need me along, I’ll see how good they are.” He managed to keep the chuckle out of his voice while he delivered his lines, but nothing could keep the grin off his face.

  Assured that we could do without him, he went off to find the dice. His ideas about what we would be up to doubtless kept him amused. (To be honest, I had similar thoughts, but the middle of a hallway, outside Tyaromon’s doors, was not the place.) Off we went, to see Valaria. He turned out to be a younger version of Tyaromon, the chief differences being his smooth face and blond hair. When it came to his greeting, however, any resemblance to his father vanished.

  “Little Jaenna!” he shouted when we came in. He didn’t wait for us to enter the room, but bounded across the floor to sweep her off her feet. Her face was scarlet by the time she regained her feet and stayed that way as we completed our introductions.

  “We’ve heard about what you’ve done. I was thrilled when the Fleet squadron brought word that you would be coming. Have you seen father?”

  “Of course,” Jaenna answered. “He has heard all the news, too. I don’t need to tell you how that went.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Valaria swept the space between them with his hand. “We are proud of you. Father has just lived in his position so long, he can’t show it. Not even privately. That, at least, is one of his problems I don’t have to share. Jaenna, I would love to talk, wait until I tell you about the agreement we have with Duromond, it’s fantastic, but I have to be in the capitol until late tonight. I’m glad you caught me before I left. Tomorrow maybe? And if you have time then, Captain Danny a Troy, I would like a chance to speak with you as well.”