Oh I intend to, Kuanti thought while struggling to keep his elation private.
Chapter 33: Didn’t Walk Here for Nothing
During his extraordinarily long life Hastelloy had the pleasure of visiting royal palaces far too numerous to count. Over time they all, save a special few, ran together with the overwhelming grandeur of one subtly overshadowing another until the memories all ran together. At this point it took a lot to impress Hastelloy, but he was indeed awestruck by the compound Kublai Khan constructed as his royal palace. It was ornate and opulent, but above all it was vast.
As the emperor’s honor guard escorted the small group of European merchants, he took careful note of the palace grounds. They included a great park eight miles square enclosed by a wall and ditch with an entrance gate midway along each side. Within this great enclosure of sixty-four square miles was an open space a mile broad, in which nearly a hundred thousand cavalry troops were stationed. These grounds were bound on the interior by a second wall six miles square.
Within the second wall lay the royal arsenals, a deer park, meadows and plush groves. In the interior rose a third wall of great thickness, each side of which was a mile in length and stood twenty-five feet tall. This last enclosure contained the palace proper. The roof was unusually lofty considering the structure itself was only one story in height; it reached from the northern to the southern wall and included a spacious court in the center from which extended a marble terrace seven feet wide, surrounded by a magnificent balustrade.
The travelers were escorted into the inner sanctum of the single story palace where the emperor held court. “Great Kublai Khan, may I present to you members of the esteemed Polo family who have traveled all the way from Europe for the purpose of establishing trade.”
Hastelloy was instantly grateful he undertook the difficult task of learning the local language during their year long journey to this kingdom, thus allowing him to understand the verbal exchange. Comprehension of new languages was particularly difficult for Hastelloy, though the task was getting easier the more often he was forced to do it. Quietly he and Gallono watched Niccolo, Maffeo and Marco Polo step forward.
“Mighty Khan, we have traveled far to bring you goods from our lands for trade,” Niccolo offered which was promptly translated for the emperor’s benefit.
“What valuables do you offer?” the emperor asked while lifting his iron cup for a servant to fill with more wine. He took a drink and winced at the metallic aftertaste the goblet produced.
“To begin with, I can offer a vessel to hold your wine that will not alter the flavor,” Niccolo said while gesturing for his son to bring forward the wooden crate he carried. The teenager set it down, and Niccolo reached down and produced a glass wine goblet. “Behold, glass blown from the finest artisans in all of Europe.”
Niccolo paced forward, personally filled the glass with red wine and handed the beverage to Kublai Khan. The emperor took the glass and stared at it from all angles. He appeared fascinated at the idea of seeing his drink through the walls of its container. Finally, Kublai Khan took a mouthful, swished it around, and swallowed. Like a sunrise brightened a new day, a broad smile blossomed across the emperor’s usually stoic face, “Remarkable.”
“I can offer far better wares,” Niccolo beamed as he pulled glass plates, bowls, and vases from the box resting on the floor in front of him.
“And what can we offer in return for such wares?” the emperor asked while holding a particularly large wine pitcher up for closer inspection.
“Spices, silks, weapons,” Niccolo raffled off.
The great man suddenly lost interest in the glass objects and turned his full attention to the negotiator standing in front of him. “What kind of weapons do you have in mind?” he asked, almost as an accusation.
Hastelloy winced slightly realizing the man’s mistake. Niccolo had offhandedly ventured into dangerous territory and the couple steps Niccolo instinctively took toward the exit gave evidence to that fact.
Kublai Khan’s sudden rise to prominence revolved entirely around the technological advantages he held over his rivals. The secrets were tightly guarded with lethal force. A stranger trying to pry into those secrets was not welcome at all. In fact, Niccolo’s next few words would probably determine if his head would leave the palace attached to his body or not.
Niccolo regained his composure and firmly stood his ground to deliver his reply. “Thousands of miles from here, in the far off lands of my origin there are wars. The combatants in these conflicts would pay almost any price for the advanced tools of war you have perfected. Why not profit from that?”
“Why would I give them my weapons for their money when I can use those weapons to take their money, land and women instead?” Kublai Khan asked, producing a round of laughter throughout the chamber.
“Yes, you could do that, but there are many kingdoms and thousands of miles between here and my intended buyers your majesty. I know. I have seen them on my way to negotiate with you. Do you plan on fighting your way through all of them to reach the gold, lands and women of my buyers who reside half a world away from here?” Niccolo asked.
The edges of Kublai Khan’s mustache turned down slightly as the question suddenly muted the room’s laughter, “Of course not. Even my grandfather, the divine Genghis Khan, was not able to achieve such conquests.”
“Then I respectfully propose you sell the designs for your counterweight trebuchet and hand cannons to my buyers. You or your heirs will never in a thousand years cross swords with these far off kingdoms; and by that time you will have developed even more powerful weapons. I propose that for no effort on your part you can have their gold. You could even use that treasure to buy their women if you so choose, mighty Khan,” Niccolo concluded to a second round of hoots and hollers from the emperor’s court.
Kublai Khan still gazed intently upon Niccolo which put an end to the laughter and replaced it with a loaded silence. The emperor debated Niccolo’s words in his mind for several anxious heartbeats until he finally nodded his head slightly toward the negotiator. “Your suggestion may have merit. You and your travel companions will stay as my honored guests in the palace while I consider your offer.”
Never underestimate the greed of men, even one who apparently has everything, Hastelloy thought to himself as he and Gallono followed their royal escort away from the emperor’s presence.
Hastelloy noticed a series of family apartments for the emperor and his wives running along the rear of the palace. Behind that, between the palace and the adjoining wall, rose an artificial mound of earth, a hundred feet high and nearly a mile in circumference at its base. The slopes were planted with evergreen trees and crowning the summit sat an ornamental pavilion which served as the emperor’s private place of meditation.
“I think we should pay the emperor’s private chambers a visit tonight and see what he and his advisors truly think of the Polo’s offer,” Hastelloy said to Gallono once their escort left them alone in the shared bedchamber along the outer balcony of the palace structure.
“It would certainly be a shame to walk all the way from Italy without gaining a private audience with the man,” Gallono said over his shoulder while unpacking a pitch black set of clothes for himself and Hastelloy.
After nightfall the two men climbed over the balcony railing and scaled their way around to the secluded backside of the palace. Hastelloy hoped only a handful of guards would patrol the emperor’s private garden considering the nearly impenetrable defenses around the outside, but his hopes were quickly dashed. Every hundred yards or so, a pair of sentries patrolled the hillside and its surroundings on alert for intruders who would be summarily executed on the spot.
When a set of guards moved far enough away, Gallono and Hastelloy slunk out from the shadows and dropped from the balcony into the garden. Gallono absorbed the fifteen foot drop with a graceful summersault to the side that brought him behind a wide evergreen tree without a sound. Try as he may to remain
quite, Hastelloy let out a faint grunt when he collapsed to his knees upon landing and barely managed to stagger behind cover before another pair of guards came near. Both men drew their daggers in case the pair got curious, but they passed without incident.
“You sure you’re up for this old man?” Gallono teased. “Because I am not walking all the way back here from Egypt if we get caught on account of you sneaking around like a bull set loose in a glass factory.”
“Yah, yah,” Hastelloy whispered and gestured for the two of them to move across the stone paved walkway to begin climbing the tree covered hillside. The two moved in a leapfrog pattern. One took a forward position, verified the coast was clear and then signaled the other to move up. That man then assumed the forward position and signaled the other to move again when it was safe.
Gallono gave Hastelloy a wave which sent him creeping past his first officer and becoming one with a pine tree twenty feet ahead. Just when Hastelloy was about to signal Gallono forward, an unusually quiet set of guards rounded the tree Gallono used for cover. The pair paused to look around the general vicinity, but eventually took a noticeable interest in Gallono’s hiding place. Something caught their attention.
While the two guards had their backs turned to Hastelloy making their way toward Gallono, he floated out into the open and approached them from behind. The moment one of the guards reached for the soft bristles of the tree, Hastelloy jammed the business end of his dagger into the guard’s unprotected neck. He looked over to the other and found Gallono’s dagger had delivered a similarly fatal blow to the other guard.
“I can’t take you anywhere,” Hastelloy sighed while the two quickly dragged the bodies under the tree’s low hanging canopy and moved on up the hill toward the ornate temple.
The structure had three layers of curved roof lines stacked upon each other which culminated in a sharp point at the top. Beneath the roof lay an open air gazebo with a stone altar occupying the center. Immediately in front of the altar there was a kneeling pad for prayer.
The temple was unoccupied, but the two did not dare come out of hiding or venture too close. If Goron’s relic was indeed the driving force of Kublai Khan’s rise to power, Hastelloy knew from prior experience that the Alpha relic had the ability to detect other life forces nearby. Just to be safe, Hastelloy and Gallono took positions on opposite sides of the building and patiently waited.
While silently occupying the shadows they perfected their camouflage coverings by adding pine branches, sap and grass to the point that they were both practically invisible by the time Kublai Khan made his journey to the hilltop temple to consult his deity. It was an odd contradiction to watch an emperor powerful and arrogant enough to reside in such a palace lower himself to his knees and bow before the stone altar.
“I seek your guidance once more,” Kublai Khan said from his knees with his arms out wide and chin in his chest. “Foreigners from a far off land offer the opportunity we have been looking for to enhance the treasury to begin the next round of conquests.”
“Go on,” came a soft, almost feminine voice that sent Hastelloy’s adrenal glands pumping. It was Goron’s relic, it had to be. The three sets of protective walls, the army of cavalry, and the dense web of interior guards. It was not for the emperor, it was for Goron.
After a thousand years spent searching since the fall of mighty Rome, Hastelloy was finally in position to put an end to the Alpha interference on this planet once and for all. Then his crew could finally focus all their efforts to pull this civilization out of the dark times and on the road to technological progress once more.
“The merchants of course offer to buy our spices and silks, but they also wish to sell our weapon designs to far off kingdoms,” the emperor reported.
“And this strikes you as a wise thing to do,” the voice asked with a hint of amusement in the tone.
Kublai Khan also sensed sarcasm in the words which caused him to look up in confusion. “We could charge them dear and never run the risk of facing them in battle. I fail to see the downside of making such an arrangement.”
“Giving up one’s primary advantage is not wise at any price,” the voice instructed. “Now tell me about the negotiators. Who are they, how did they learn of our weaponry, and what makes you think you can trust them?”
Before the emperor could deliver his response shouts of alarm rang out from halfway down the hillside. Moments later two towering guards in full armor and headdress dashed from the tree line. Their height was such that the two needed to duck down in order to fit under the swooping roofline as they entered the temple and stood behind the emperor facing the altar.
Hastelloy was prepared to interpret their words spoken in Mandarin, but the series of harsh barks and growls took his mind a moment to process. He was in fact translating the Alpha language.
“Intruders have killed two palace guards just down the hillside,” one of them reported as he removed his helmet to reveal the long furry snout and pointed ears of an Alpha.
The sight of two live Alpha warriors still on the planet plunged Hastelloy’s stomach into a tailspin. His mind kicked into overdrive trying to play out the scenarios that could lead to a set of Alpha warriors standing in front of him at that very moment.
Had they survived the original crash in Egypt and remained hidden? No, they would have helped Goron back then.
Were the Alpha here in force with warships in orbit ready to conquer the planet? No, why would they wait. Why would they be messing around with this human and his little empire? The questions in his mind had no end.
“Quite a coincidence that this intrusion accompanies your new visitors don’t you think, Kublai? Do you still think you can trust those men?” the whimsical voice asked rhetorically. “Kasin, escort the emperor back to his palace.”
“I will see which members of the merchant party have not been accounted for every second of this evening and put them to the sword,” the emperor declared while rising to his feet. He then followed his escort as they both ran down the hillside leaving the relic alone with its foot soldier.
“I just informed Goron and Kuanti of this,” the mystic voice reported. “If it is the Novi, they most likely think I am Goron’s relic, therefore all their efforts at subterfuge will be focused here rather than his stronghold on the western continent.”
“With this fortress, the army, and Alpha warriors protecting you and Kuanti’s relic; I like our odds,” the Alpha guard stated with excitement hanging from his every word. The giant of a being looked excited enough to jump out of his own sizeable skin. “The thought of a Novi being almost close enough to reach out and strangle with my own paws is almost too much to bear.”
“Yes, it’s nearly enough to make me want to violate nature and reanimate just for the opportunity to kill one of them myself,” the voice added. “How I envy you. Generations spent eking out an existence on that barren red planet has amounted to this, and destiny has chosen you to lead the physical fight, but not yet.”
“Yes, one more year,” the guard vented. “One more year and the entire colony from the fourth planet will be here so we can end this once and for all and get our transmission out.”
“While we wait for that great day why don’t you round up the others and search every tree limb, branch, and blade of grass on the grounds,” the voice ordered. “I doubt you will find anything, the Novi captain has proven far too clever over the years to commit such an error, but surprises can happen.”
Surprises can happen indeed Hastelloy thought while watching the Alpha duck out from under the temple roof and bound down the far hillside letting loose a blood curdling howl as he went to summon his companions. Hastelloy and Gallono then patiently made their way off of the hillside and out of the palace since their cover was now hopelessly blown.
Gallono was the first to finally break the silence between them while they walked westward along the shores of the Yellow River. “Well that was certainly informative.”
Hastelloy j
ust shook his head in bewilderment at the sudden turn of events. He didn’t even know where to begin.
“Come on, look on the bright side,” Gallono said. For good measure he put his arm around Hastelloy and gave him a playful shake to lighten the mood. “At least we didn’t walk all way from Europe for nothing.”
Chapter 34: The Right Tool
“Are you planning on walking all the way back to Italy with your tail between your legs?” Gallono finally asked Hastelloy. He had remained silent for most of their two day hike up the Yellow River in order to leave his captain alone with his thoughts and careful planning. Gallono could be a very patient man, but this was getting ridiculous.
Gallono tried to skip a flat rock across the river surface out of frustration, but only succeeded in making a small splash with the first bounce. “Let’s review what we know. There are at least three Alpha relics on the planet now instead of just one. We’re not sure how many, but there are definitely Alpha warriors alive and well here also. What are they waiting for?”
“Reinforcements,” Hastelloy finally spoke. “From that conversation we overheard, it sounds like there is somehow an Alpha colony on the fourth planet. Mars comes closest to Earth in another eleven months. At that time I believe we can expect another shipment of Alpha and relics to arrive. At that time they will locate the jamming signal coming from the Nexus chamber, and it will be check mate.”
“How the devil do you think the Alpha established a colony on the fourth planet anyway?” Gallono wondered aloud while attempting unsuccessfully to skip another stone across the river waters. “Escape pods from the battle that landed us here?”
Hastelloy immediately shook his head as though he had already reached a conclusion on this matter a day earlier. “No. We saw no escape pods jettison from their ship after our torpedo hit severed the engineering section from the rest. Besides, the fourth planet is almost uninhabitable and would require far more resources right away than a few escape pods could provide.”
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