by Jean Johnson
(I’ll slip a little Portugês into my speech.) The cheering of the Fourth Tier crowd was just as enthusiastic, if with somewhat less whistling. She realized the clothes of the last tier were predominantly shades of gray and green and brown. These were more gray and blue and purple. (Are the people of each Tier limited in the colors they can wear?)
(Of course not. No one can fake an Imperial Army uniform, of course, and red and gold together are discouraged—true gold, not brassy gold. I think those are simply the colors popular for winter coats in the price ranges for those Tiers in the last few years,) he offered. (Each Tier has popular clothing designers.)
(That . . . makes sense, actually. Certain colors do fall into and out of style as the years progress,) she allowed. A mock sigh gusted from her mind to his. (I certainly haven’t seen a decent orange with hints of peach in three years . . . Ancestors, this is a long walk. My cheek muscles are going to be aching at the end of all this smiling.)
(You do have a lovely smile,) he told her.
She could feel her face growing warm. (Thank you. I like yours. I think I’m even getting used to the stripe on your cheek.)
(Oh! And after all I’ve done to view you as mature instead of stripeless,) he teased. (Is that how you repay me?)
She laughed and lifted a hand to wave, parade-style. They were in a parade after all, so she did it on the other side, too, just as she had a few times while down on the Fifth Tier Plaza. (I mean, when you smile just right, it kind of does this weird thing where half your face gains five years in age, from the way the color bisects your eyelid.)
(Then that would make me a year older than you . . . No, I think I shall remain a younger man to you. After all, the older someone is, the more firmly set in their career they tend to be,) he said. (That means you’ll have a higher salary, and can keep me in a manner to which I’ll become accustomed.)
She almost snorted inelegantly. (Nice to know some things translate across the cultural barrier. There’s just one major flaw with that idea.)
(Oh?)
(This is your world,) Jackie pointed out. (You are the one in this pairing with access to actual money.)
(Ah, true. I shall endeavor to collect my pay, so that I can support you in your old age.)
(Oh! And after all I’ve done to encourage our bond, the romance is gone!) she protested, laughing again.
(You actually haven’t done all that much,) he pointed out wryly.
(We have to let word get around of our bond, and let people get used to the idea. Little steps. One Tier Plaza at a time,) she added. The stairs to the Third Tier still looked like they were a few more minutes of walking away, so she waved again to the throngs of people lining the valley of uplifted flagstones. (How long did it take your people to build a plaza floor that could be turned into grandstand bleachers?)
(It was my . . . hmm. Mother, Grandfather, Great-grandfather . . .) he countered. (No, wait, there’s an easier way to count. It was done by my ancestor two Emperors before we met up with the K’Katta. So pre–interstellar space exploration, about five hundred years ago, Emperor Mah’kien. He was sick of his Fourth Tier wife’s relatives complaining to him that they couldn’t see any of the special celebrations when everyone was all on the same level.)
(Wait, Fourth Tier wife?) Jackie asked, waving and smiling some more. The stairs to the Third Tier were drawing closer. (I always thought royals and nobles were too interested in keeping to their “own kind” to marry into the lower classes. That’s the way it used to be, back on Earth.)
(That would be biological suicide,) Li’eth told her. (We caught on quickly in the first half of the first millennium, post–War King, how if you do that, you inbreed idiots onto the throne. That was the first major shift toward a collateral line that had outbred itself into the lower ranks. They were merely cousins to the throne, distanced by four generations of marrying fresh blood from the lower Tiers. Only they weren’t Tiers at that time, more like informal castes . . .
(It took a couple hundred years to refine the system, but the law is the law. We have to marry common, unrelated blood by the fifth generation, or the throne goes to a collateral line. Usually it’s every three to four generations,) he said.
(Your father?) she asked.
(Noble-born, as was my paternal grandmother, but Great-grandmother was from the Third Tier. Father is Second Tier, though, not First Tier, so far less related than you’d think. He’s the son of an ergrave . . . that’s a rank above baron, but below a . . . viscount, I think is the appropriate level in Terranglo. Baron and baroness, ergrave and ergress, viscount and viscountess, count, countess, margrave, margress. That’s Second Tier nobility.
(Then you have First Tier, which starts at the bottom with duke, duchess, high duke, high duchess, grand dukes and grand duchesses . . . not counting any of the military ranks, or the ambassadorial or bureaucratic peers, the uppermost rank of the priesthoods—the lowest of which are Fourth Tier for the apprentices and Third Tier for the common, parish-level priests . . .)
The conversation was interesting, and carried her attention up through the Third Tier. Some of it even involved some of the aliens she spotted in the crowd though most of the faces were Human. Jackie had the impression that Li’eth and his family were resting comfortably in chairs, awaiting for the moment when they would be called outside, and envied him a little bit for it.
There was a bit of a fumble with one of the two the Terran robots carrying their own projection screens on the steps to the Second Tier, but a quartet of Marines swept in, two from either side, lifted it up before it could fall, and carried it double time without missing a step to the next plaza level, where the two technicians assigned to it were able to sort out its legs before Jackie, at the end of the processional with the last few guards, caught up with them. It swiftly caught up with its partner near the front, and the Marines went right back into position, again without missing a beat.
There hadn’t been much whistling on the Third Tier trip, and by Second Tier, there was none to be heard in that plaza. Plenty of applause, a bit of cheering, but the energy grew more and more restrained the closer they came to the last two sets of steps. The noises from the Fifth and Fourth Tiers were now just a rush of sound, while the polite applause up ahead swelled into sound. It came, she realized, from a slightly different style of clapping. Some of which was echoed on the Second Tier, a sort of back-of-the-hand-to-the-palm smacking. It was effective at making noise without producing any truly sharp sounds. Restrained, in other words.
The steps between the Tiers were fewer now, too. She could almost see the flagstones of the First Tier from the Second. There were still thousands around them, but not more than fifteen, maybe twenty thousand on the Second Tier, and only a few thousand on the First Tier. As they mounted the last few steps, the Marines spread out into a shallow rectangle, forming two lines with the Navy crew members, clad in black with brown stripes, black with blue stripes, even one or two with gray stripes. The civilians in between and the robot tenders moved to points a third of the way across the flat part of the plaza on either side.
Those robots shuffled their hexapod legs outward, then squatted and unfolded their projection towers several meters overhead. The three outermost poles unfurled with flexible, transparent membrane screens between them. For the moment, those screens remained blank, but studded all over the poles were Terran audio and visual pickups, which first blinked green, then flicked to pinpoints of red, showing that they were now streaming from the steps of the Winter Palace to the hyperrelay probe that had been delivered to a barren patch of the inner face of the tidally locked innermost moon, V’Neh.
At the same moment, the Imperial Family walked onto the Imperial Tier Plaza, flanked by Elite Guards in formal cream-and-gold suits embellished with red. That contrasted against the bright blood reds worn by the ruling family, save for the War Queen in a very fanciful version of the Elite’s
dress uniform. The highest of the plazas was only about thigh high to the First, and about the size of four grand-performance stages at most, so the Terrans had a good view of everyone once they were spread out.
Behind the Imperial Tier Plaza lay a very weathered, temple-like building with heavy columns, many of which had been replaced, but some of which looked weathered enough to be several thousand years old. Jackie had a brief glimpse of not just one huge doorway beyond the V’Daania clan, but of two more, and of a strange, sarcophagus-like block deep inside, bathed in a pool of light from overhead. That made her curious, but she didn’t have time to ask Li’eth about it. The rituals of greeting were about to begin.
The master of ceremonies for this event was not Imperial First Lord Ksa’an but rather an elderly gentleman whose name Jackie did not know; he was literally named Master of Ceremonies in V’Dan, giving up his name to his title the moment he had stepped into his position during the reign of the previous Emperor. The position was inheritable, and he had three daughters and a son working with him; after a period of study, she had been told, one would eventually be selected to succeed him when the white-haired, yellow-spotted, heavily tanned man was ready to retire.
His robes were cream and white with bits of yellow, orange, and red embroidered over it, forming either stylized tongues of flame or stylized flame-colored flowers, she wasn’t sure which. He had a podium platform off to the side, halfway down the steps. Reaching the podium and its discreet pickups, he lifted his arms into the air, a move echoed all around them by the giant projection screens. Within bare heartbeats of his arms going up, the roar of the crowd vanished, leaving only a hushed silence punctuated by a faint sizzling sound overhead from the snowflakes zapping against the force field protecting them from the weather, or worse.
“Kneel now on bended limb,” Master of Ceremonies intoned, each word delivered with crisp, slow, stately introduction. “For you exist within the benevolent, watchful protection of Her Eternal Majesty, Empress Hana’ka Iu’tua Has-natell Q’una-hash Mi’idenei V’Daania, Shield of the Twenty-One Worlds, Jeweled Sword of Heavenly Vengeance, War Queen of V’Dan, our One Hundred Sixty-First Sovereign of the Unbroken, Eternal Empire!”
His upturned palms flicked down, and everyone dropped to one knee in near-perfect unison. A discreet glance to either side as she lowered herself along with the Terrans showed that the nobles of the First Tier had risen from their seats so that they could drop to one knee themselves. Jackie saw most of them bowing their heads, but as per protocol instruction, she did not lower hers. Neither did the Grand High Ambassadors—she recognized the current Tlassian equivalent of their Grand High Ambassador, Warrior-Envoy S’ssull, who knelt with his head held level and his gaze steady—nor did any of the members of the Imperial Family who were direct descendants, she saw.
The Imperial Heir, Princess Vi’alla, was introduced next, then the Imperial Consort, a handsome older man named Te-los, followed by the other four Imperial offspring. Jackie smiled a little more warmly at Li’eth’s introduction, though they used his first name, Kah’raman. The Imperial Matron came next, followed by the Royal Consorts, and a fellow with the title of Consort Royal—something to do with begetting heirs with Ah’nan and her wife.
Shi’ol had given the Terrans an explanation in Terran quarantine, but Jackie had only listened to it with half an ear at the time; the official explanation during their time in V’Dan quarantine hadn’t exactly stuck, either, but then she’d been far more busy trying to work out the logistics of introductions and arranging how the embassy would function, and drafting initial proposals for all the meetings that would come. It had sounded vaguely sensible at the time, which was good enough for her.
For her own life, Jackie had Li’eth . . . once they got past all the cultural and protocol hurdles. There’d be no need for a consort heir-begetter at that point, since the two of them were the same species and initial genetics tests had shown the two factions should still be able to interbreed just fine. Once they got around to it, of course. If they wanted to have children; she and Li’eth had yet to discuss that possibility.
Finally, the signal was given for the people to rise and for most of them to resume their seats. Pushing to her feet, Jackie ignored her slightly throbbing knee. Long minutes of kneeling on hard, cold stone hadn’t helped things. She longed to rub the spot, maybe warm it up, but had to stand there looking serene.
“Eternity, Sovereign of V’Dan, before you now stand new potential allies to the Eternal Empire and the Alliance. Will you grant them your permission to be known unto you, unto your people, and unto your allies?” Master of Ceremonies intoned.
“I will,” Empress Hana’ka stated. Her voice echoed down through the layers of plazas, amplified and projected from the screens on either side. “Let the Blood be seated.”
A gesture of her hand, and something emerged out of the stones behind the Imperial Family. A massive gold-and-ruby throne for her, with somewhat lesser but still heavily gilded chairs for her heir and her husband, and equally ornate, cushioned, backed benches for the rest. They sat arrayed in a curve like the shell of the temple wall and its semicircular ranks of golden granite columns behind them.
Jackie had another glimpse of that sarocophagus deep inside the temple, and realized where the light was coming from. It pooled down from a great, pale golden crystal for a capstone set on the peak of the roof. Yes, the clouds were still delivering snowflakes but those clouds were lightening up, growing paler and brighter as they shed their load while moving past the capital. She filed that away for later, though, only briefly wondering if she’d get a chance to look at that innermost room some other time. She had to concentrate, now.
“Eternity. V’Daania. U’V’Dan,” Master of Ceremonies intoned, using the most formal name of their people, double-articled pronoun and all. “Standing before you now are the people of our eldest legends, the sons and daughters of the True Motherworld, descendants of the survivors of the Before Time who were left behind to guard our ancestral origins. These are the Terrans, the people of the Terran United Planets, our ancient, lost kin.”
It was rather backwards to put it that way to Jackie’s point of view, since “V’Dan” itself literally meant “The Lost,” and her own people had never lost their homeworld in exchange for another place, but she wasn’t going to quibble over tiny semantics.
“Standing before you are the guardians of these people, the Terran United Planets Space Force Marines. They stand before you in the Black of Space and the Brown of mud, where water meets land.”
Oh thank goodness, he got it right. She had put Darian Johnston in charge of making text-and-audio pronunciation files for Master of Ceremonies, since he had the most blended and thus most easily understood accent of the five linguists in the embassy.
“They are the Elite Guard of the Terran Armed Forces, and are led by Captain Hamza, son of Tariq, son of Ioseph, of the family al-Fulan.”
Captain al-Fulan took three steps forward and bowed crisply.
“At their side are their brothers and sisters in war, the Terran United Planets Space Force Navy, led by Commander Robert Graves, one of the brave rescuers of the survivors of the Imperial Warship T’un Tunn G’Deth.”
Robert strode three steps forward as well, stopping equal with al-Fulan. He, too, bowed.
“They and the might of their military come before you with the wish to greet you now with a haka, a traditional war dance of one of the regions of the Motherworld formerly under the command of Colonel Jacaranda MacKenzie, chief rescuer of the survivors of the T’un Tunn G’Deth. Do they have your permission to perform this ceremony exhibiting their might and their bravery, Eternity?”
“They do.”
Captain al-Fulan broke formation with a crisp right turn, took two steps forward, turned right again to face the Terrans, and hollered strongly, “Taringa whackarongo! Taringa whackarongooo!”
Tha
t was her cue. Closing her eyes, Jackie dropped to her knees visually. Her white dress shattered outward in a silent explosion of snowflakes. Fireworks whistled up overhead, exploded, and formed rippling banners of V’Dan lettering, evoking gasps from the crowd.
The lettering was a translation of his shout. “Listen now with your ears! Listen now with your ears!”
More explosions set off behind her, each Tier plaza getting its own set of translation banners while the camera views on the projection screens split briefly in chaos before following the captain, the lettering, and herself . . . standing now before everyone in formal Dress Blacks striped with Gray for the Special Forces, Blue for the Navy, and Brown for the Marines, all of whom had been put under her command in this system.
Thrusting up her hand, she let out a ferocious-sounding scream and grasped an archaic war-spear that materialized out of the air in a flash of light. It was a brutal-looking thing, fashioned from hard wood lined with shark’s teeth and decorated with long leaves and bright feathers. The crowd gasped and called out in shock. Even the Empress raised her eyebrows, as did most of her family. Only Imperial Prince Kah’raman remained calm. Serene, even, with a little smile playing around his lips.
Jackie didn’t exactly see it, though she could feel it through their link. She had her role to play, and did so with a strong shout.
“Kia rite!” Overhead, the lettering shifted, scrawling Prepare yourselves! The woman in Dress Blacks with three stripes down the sleeves and trousers, medals clustered on the left side of her chest, charged forward with a scream, moving to the forefront of the two officers. She skidded to a stop and repeated her yell, letting it echo off the temple walls, spear raised sideways to the Imperial Family since they weren’t actively threatening anyone, just demonstrating their power and their will to do so if necessary. “Kiaaaa riteeeee!”
Graves and al-Fulan yelled out the next two commands, one after the other. Hands on your hips! Bend your knees! With a group yell, the Marines and the Navy personnel immediately shifted so that they all faced outward, dropping into a broad-footed stance, crouching with their hands fisted and forearms parallel across their chests, one hovered over the other. All of them made faces, teeth bared, eyes rolling, some flicking out their tongues.