The Fourth Empire s-3

by Mack Maloney

  The Blue House was the closest thing Vanex had to an office. He hadn't been in for a while though, at least a few months. His job was more a formality these days. He lived in a fabulous house up in Chesterwest, the most exclusive suburb of Big Bright City, and he just didn't come to town that often anymore.

  But this was an emergency of sorts. It took a small army of maintenance workers, both humans and clankers, to make the floating city work. The head of this force had made a call to Vanex. Something had happened in the Blue House that no one could recall happening before. It had baffled all of the maintenance officers, and they needed some of Vanex's wisdom and advice.

  The maintenance officer had wisely not mentioned just what the problem was; he wanted Vanex to see for himself. Nothing ever broke on Special Number One. Everything ran splendidly, day after day. So much so, the small army of maintenance men did hardly any work at all. It was the robots who did all the actual cleaning, waxing, washing, and anointing around the aerial city.

  Vanex's chevy came to a halt just outside the front entrance to the Blue House; he was helped out by a squad of soldiers guarding this main door. Vanex thanked them graciously and paused for a moment, intending to have a chat with mem, but the soldiers scattered before he could get the first word out. They knew Vanex very well, too.

  The old man regained his equilibrium and then glided through the door of the grand building. The long hallway was lined with robots; all were down on one knee. Vanex moved past them, soon reaching a hovering lift. This carried him down three full stories, nearly to the bottom of the building itself. He floated down a particularly gloomy corridor to a set of huge steel doors. Even Vanex's ancient hearing could detect a commotion coming from the other side.

  The doors opened for him automatically, and he glided in. There was no ceremony here. What lay beyond was perhaps the most unkempt corner on the floating city. This was the so-called Boiler Room, an archaic name for the underbelly of Special Number One. It was a large place, dark and smelly, where hundreds of thousands of pulsating power tubes converged. These barely visible conduits pumped pure energy into the floating city from… well, no one really knew where exactly. But it was widely assumed that it all came from the so-called Big Generator.

  There was no small amount of confusion going on in the Boiler Room at the moment. At least a hundred humans and robots were locked in a scene of quiet panic, scratching their heads, huddled in deep conversation. The robots were more worried and more animated than their human counterparts. That's the way the robots were: fretting, nervous, trying to help, interrupting conversations where their presence was not desired. But the humans on hand looked worried as well.

  As soon as they saw Vanex, they all fell to one knee, again, the proper greeting for someone so close to the Imperial Throne.

  Vanex looked over the crowd of workers as if they were his children.

  "Oh, arise!" he said with a small measure of self-delight. "It's only me…."

  The humans regained their footing; most of the robots stayed down low.

  "Now, what seems to be the problem?" Vanex asked no one in particular.

  Two high officers slid up in front of him and, hats in hand, motioned him toward the far wall of the chamber. They walked slowly as Vanex glided behind, nodding and blessing the workers as they parted way for him.

  They finally reached the wall. There weren't any power tubes in sight. Instead, the wall contained a tangle of a very ancient technology known as pipes.

  Vanex had to contemplate the jumble of aluminum for a moment, trying to remember exactly what their function was. One of the officers saw his problem, stepped up, and whispered, "They're for the water flow, sir."

  Vanex nodded immediately. "Of course, I know them well."

  "It is here that the problem lies," the officer said.

  The reason for the pipes was simple really. The Specials didn't have to eat, but they did need water. There were literally tens of thousands of ornamental gold faucets in place around the floating city, never more than an arm's reach away from any member of the Imperial Family who needed a thirst quenched. The water system had been in place on Special Number One since it was first built.

  Vanex scanned the tangle of pipes; all of the maintenance men and robots had gathered around him.

  "Where is the glitch then?" Vanex asked.

  The officer indicated a certain length of pipe, then pointed to its T-junction. On its left-hand seam, there was a drop of water.

  Vanex studied it for a moment. This was very strange. He reached up and took the drop of water away with his gloved hand. Then he dramatically flicked it into the air, where it disappeared. He turned back to the officer and smiled. "Problem solved," he said.

  But the man directed Vanex's attention back to the T-junction and the seam. Another drop of water had appeared. The officer flicked this away, only to have yet another drop materialize. He repeated this several times, and each time, another drop would appear.

  A gasp went through the crowd; the robots became even more restless.

  "It's leaking, sir," the officer said in a very hushed voice.

  Vanex just looked back at him, somewhat befuddled.

  "Leaking?" he repeated the archaic, unfamiliar word.

  The officers nodded solemnly.

  Vanex turned back to the pipe. Two more water drops had appeared.

  "Leaking?" he said, almost to himself. "That's never happened up here before."

  The Gold House Saturnalia always began at midnight.

  This was not such an unusual hour to start a celebration. Midnight was where the day began in the Fourth Empire, a necessity of the far-flung realm.

  The guest list for this party was ultraexclusive; indeed, it contained the names of only the very closest relations to the Imperial Family, all of them highly placed Specials. At the stroke of twelve, the doors to the Gold House disappeared, and the 3,000 guests floated grandly into the Great Imperial Hall.

  It was an enormous ballroom. Its walls and floor were made of solid reionized gold. The roof held a special design of superglass, which boasted incredible magnification properties. On a whim, it could show the most colorful, most unusual stars in the Milky Way as if they were no farther away than orbit.

  Small forests of exotic plant life from around the Galaxy lined both sides of the hall. Trees and high bushes, some reaching thirty feet or more, were swaying in an artificial wind, bathed in a light spray of pure, crystallized water. Later on, it would not be too unusual to see a young girl fighting to get out of this maze of trees, her neck bloody, a mob of drunken revelers stumbling in hot pursuit.

  Ethereal chamber music wafted through the ballroom. The ghostly strings were being provided by a vast orchestra of sentinels hiding in the sixth dimension, not seen, only heard.

  Ringing the outside of the ballroom were several hundred ceremonial troops. All of them at attention, all of them heavily armed.

  Above it, a small fleet of air-chevys and battle cruisers orbited in ever-changing, aerobatic formations.

  The people inside the Great Hall were not immortal. They just seemed that way.

  They were all Specials, of course, so their veins ran thick with the Holy Blood, the life extender of the Empire's minor gods. Many of mem were destined to live for 600 to 700 years, some even more. Most carried the centuries well. A handful did not. It was a bizarre sight to see an 800-year-old couple gliding around, two feet off the ground, their clothes weighed down with sparkling crystals and aluminum, their skin and bones sagging as well.

  The guests moved in a clockwise manner around the long, rectangular hall, floating and talking. The proper height at which one could be at these things was twenty inches, with elders, military heroes, and the top 10 percent of the Specials allowed to glide at exactly two feet. Most everyone here already had a case of red-eye, the telltale sign of significant ingestion of slow-ship wine. There was a small sea of the stuff hovering in the middle of the hall. All one needed to get a drink
was to part lips and think: Wine. A thin stream of the highly intoxicating liquor would rise up from the pool and find its way through the crowd to deliver a gulp or two, all without losing a drop.

  As for food, there was only one kind served at these celebrations: an ancient and mostly ceremonial dish called potatos. Most times, the vast containers of the white, pasty mash went untouched.

  Of the 3,000 guests this night, more than two-thirds were women. Both married and single, by the custom of the Specials, nearly all of them were available sexually. Most of these women possessed beauty beyond words. There really was no describing many of them. The Holy Blood not only kept one alive, it provided a radiance, a luminescence, an aura of gorgeousness that lasted for centuries. Big eyes, high cheeks, great curves, and nice feet. That was the look, and it was hard not to wear it well.

  The women glided the hall in twos and threes, seeking out the most handsome and courageous space officers, open to just about any idea and all conversation.

  Stunning, all of them.

  Many of the women attending the imperial party thought the men were just as gorgeous as they — the Holy Blood thing cut both ways.

  No one in the room was more handsome, though, than Razr Joxx.

  As the saying went, Joxx had the stars in his pocket. He was blessed with startling good looks. He wore his near-white hair long and ruffled, like the heroes of the Ancient Second Empire, and he stood an even six feet tall. Joxx was a four-star commander in the Solar Guards, the highest rank allowed in the field. He had his own Starcrasher, the very famous ShadoVox. It was the flagship for a unit of SG warships known as the First Imperial Wing.

  Joxx had received preferential treatment from the moment he took his first breath. His father, Xayz Joxx, was Supreme High Commander of the Solar Guards. His mother was a sister of the Empress. Joxx, then, was nephew to the Emperor Himself.

  Joxx was already a war hero, though he'd yet to reach his thirtieth birthday. While it was true that he had received his Solar Guards commission purely by social rank, he was no coddled son. He'd fought in a number of interstellar engagements, mostly against the space pirates who operated out along the Fringe. He was a brilliant tactician, a crafty strategist, and when in the midst of space battle, absolutely fearless. That he would someday rise to the rank of supreme SG commander — his father's commission — was a given. There was even a chance that, if he managed to live long enough and the line of succession stayed constant, Joxx might one day become the Emperor himself.

  This was strange, because Joxx was also quite brilliant. He was master designer, had been known to correct calculations on some of the most complex bubblers, and could commit string matrixes to memory without the aid of thought drops. He was so sharp some whispered that he couldn't possibly be a real Special. Intelligence was not exactly the forte of the extended imperial family.

  Joxx enjoyed getting dressed up in his finest regalia and holding court at these things. The topic of conversation was always the same: the art of war. While squads of females orbited him, admiring his long white cape, his moisteningly good looks, thinking that he might be ready for a haircut, Joxx could usually be found near the center of the room, lecturing even the most senior SG officers on his theories of battle strategy and tactics.

  Two hours passed. The wine flowed, and the lights went lower. Wisps of hushed conversation began floating above the celebration.

  Most of the men on hand were military officers with a direct line of Specials blood. The majority of these officers belonged to the Solar Guards, but there were also some from the Space Forces, and exactly two from the Expeditionary and Exploratory Forces. Those men who weren't military were high functionaries of the imperial court, space diplomats mostly. These types held many secrets. With the slow-ship wine bubbling up as it was, tongues became loosened. All kinds of rumors about the condition of the Empire were swirling around the hall by now. Gossip involving nearly all of the bewildering number of characters in the imperial space opera gushed forth. Revelers flitted from one whispered conversation to another, pollinating the room with hearsay and secondhand information. Careers could be made here, just as fast as old family ties could be broken. The Specials were an insipid, arrogant bunch.

  By two in the morning, the intrigue was thick enough to be cut with a knife.

  All of this was leading up to the grand entrance of the night: the appearance of the Imperial Family.

  At exactly the stroke of three, rumored to be the Emperor's favorite time of day, there was a burst of pure white light at the far end of the Great Hall. Everybody and everything came to a halt. All conversation stopped. Streamers of wine froze in midair. The light grew so intense, many had to shut their eyes. Those who could take it stayed rigid and soaked in the effulgence. Then, at the point near the ceiling where the blinding ray was entering the hall, O'Nay suddenlv aDDeared. He was hoverine in midair, a tinv flame burning beneath his feet. Long, flowing green robe, extra long white hair, snow-white beard, those deeply vacant eyes, he stayed like this — just floating above it all — for what seemed like a very long time.

  Then came another white flash, and O'Nay finally began his descent. An ethereal anthem commenced playing from the sixth dimension. A gasp went through the crowd; an involuntary response to all the carefully orchestrated wonder. The music grew; the light became even more intense. Finally, O'Nay glided down to a point exactly three feet above the floor. At this moment, everyone else in the Hall lowered themselves to the deck. Tradition said that whenever O'Nay was in the house, no one could have their feet in the air except him.

  He hovered here now for another long stretch of time, the light behind him no less brilliant. Then came another flash, and at the top of the stairway of light, the Empress appeared. She, too, was beautiful, not yet 375, which was still young for a Special. She was dressed in an emerald gown, see-through in the bodice, with a train nearly one hundred feet long. She glided to the floor and settled in a spot behind her husband.

  The Princess Xara appeared next. She was the most lovely of all. Radiantly blond, small and curvy, she was dazzling but in a way completely different from the rest of the Specials crowd. As the third member of the Imperial Family, Xara appeared to be the most normal, the most down-to-earth. She always seemed slightly bemused at the attention she received wherever she went and from whoever she met. Nearly devoid of pretensions, she could intelligently converse with anybody, anywhere, on any number of subjects, a trait that was not carried in more than a thimbleful by the other three members of her family, combined.

  Xara held the fashion sway of the day as well, preferring simple long, white gowns, with little jewelry, her hair usually tied up but sometimes worn down, and occasionally a plunging neckline. She was considered the most beautiful female in the Galaxy.

  And still, she was only eighteen.

  There was no drama, onlv gracefulness, as she elided down the ray of light, like her mother, going right to the floor, where she quickly moved out of the glare. The imperial son — known to just about everyone in the Galaxy as The Dope — came next. He tried to impress those gathered with a speedy if detached descent, arms folded across his chest and a sun-ban ring covering his eyes.

  But most people had gone back to talking and drinking before his feet ever hit the floor.

  Xara certainly was not in the mood for a party, never mind one as elaborate and obscene as this.

  She really couldn't believe anyone actually enjoyed these things, especially when so many long knives were out Except her mother, of course, who saw them as yet another opportunity to be fawned over, to direct the latest palace machinations, to launch a few plots of her own, and perhaps ruin a few good lives. But such things were routine for her.

  Xara's brother hated them as well, but he hated everything. He was usually off cruising the Solar System — or terrorizing it might be the better term — he and his freaky friends and his extremely expensive ultracar. He was smart about one thing: As soon as he'd touched down, he'd
taken a few mouthfuls of slow-ship wine and then vanished.

  And her father?

  Xara looked at him now, seated upon the hovering throne at the far end of the hall, staring blankly off into space, seeing things that no one else could see — or at least so everyone thought.

  What did her father, Ruler of the Galaxy, mink of these things? What did he think about at all?

  Xara didn't have the faintest idea.

  The celebration swirled away from her as she walked the periphery of the Great Hall, keeping to the shadows but staying as far as possible from the edge of the thick artificial forests.

  She turned down many offers of slow-ship from hovering robot trays, at the same time shaking her head in disgust at the heavy hitters who were taking their streams of wine directly from the pool floating in the middle of the hall.

  So lazy they can't even hold a glass, she thought.

  She nodded to most of those who caught her eye and embraced a few old aunts and uncles. But her intent was to circumnavigate the party just once before quickly blinking back to her apartment, where she could be miserable again in peace.

  True, she was only eighteen, yet her heart felt like that of an ancient soul, weighed down as if she'd lived a couple thousand years already. Why the melancholy? It was all very foolish really. She was in love with Hawk Hunter. She dreamed about him every night and had sent romantic things to him in the past. And though she had not laid eyes on him now for nearly a year, he was always in her thoughts, his name always on her lips. It was almost as if she was able to carry on conversations with him in her mind, which really was foolish, because the number of times that they had been together — truly, just he and her— she could count on one hand.

  Yet he had touched a place inside her where no one else had been. He respected her, as the first daughter of the Galaxy of course, but she knew he could have cared less about her position in life. He knew that she felt the same way. And he was mysterious and gallant and handsome and a true hero. What girl her age wouldn't be intrigued by all that?