Firestone Rings (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 4)

by J. Naomi Ay

  Taner raised his eyebrows skeptically. Berkan cleared his throat. They looked at each other.

  “I won't talk them out of joining the Empire, if that's what you are afraid of. Have they toured the public rooms? The art gallery? Walked in the gardens or courtyard? It's still light out. I could show them all those nifty new statues and the Rose Fountain? Come on, guys. I need to do something productive. Something other than changing my clothes and waving at people.”

  “Alright,” Taner agreed, a bit reluctantly. “You could walk with them in the gardens for a few minutes. Luci, you go with Madame.”

  “I'll go find you another gown, Madame. You've got spaghetti sauce on that one.” Luci ran off to the closets.

  “Why is it you guys all get to call each other by your names but you have to call me Madame?” I asked, clearing away the dinner dishes. “This isn’t fair.”

  “Did somebody say it was going to be fair?” Berkan asked and looked at Taner.

  “Nobody told me,” Taner replied.

  Luci and I walked across the courtyard to meet the five Talasian Ambassadors from the two planets. In addition, they had several body guards and the pilot of their spaceplane with them. As we approached, I stared at the pilot in amazement.

  “Zem!” I called. “What are you doing here?”

  He laughed and gave me a mocking salute. “Captain Katie, at your service, Ma’am. I’m ready to inspect your vessel for safety violations. Nice get up you got on, Cap’n. Much better than the spandex thing you used to wear.”

  “Very funny, Zem. When did you quit Spaceforce?”

  “A few months back,” Zem replied and reached for my arm which Luci intercepted and scolded him.

  “One must not touch Her Imperial Highness.” Luci pushed him away.

  “Well, excuse me.” Zem winked. “I quit Spaceforce after that fun we had on Altaris III. My contract was up, and I’d had enough of dinosaurs. I figured it was more important I head back to Talas anyway. We’ve had our problems with pirates, as you well know, and the Alliance wasn’t doing shit about it. Come on, Cap’n. I’ll introduce you to our ambassadors. Do you think Dr. Ron might be able to take a look at that skin graft on my leg while we’re here? It’s been hurting a lot lately.”

  “Always the clown, Zem,” I teased and then smiled politely and nodded to the ambassadors without offering my hand, which was strictly forbidden.

  We walked the gardens for a bit, and Luci pointed out the statues and Rose Fountain while I waved Zem to my side.

  “Can you take a letter for me, Zem?”

  “A letter? You mean like on paper in an envelope?”

  “Yes,” I laughed. “You know, the old fashion thing? I can't send or receive emails outside of the Empire anymore and I want to send a note to my parents and let them know we are fine and invite them to come here again.”

  “They don't want to come? Don't they know where you live?”

  “They know but they don’t realize. They never even came to visit me on Rozari although that's probably because my mom is afraid of space travel.”

  “Gosh, let’s see. Our daughter is married to the Great Emperor but we’ll just stay here in our little house back on Earth and wonder why they never invite us over for dinner.”

  “Zem,” I sighed, “I’ve invited them plenty. Don’t make me feel guilty about this. I would love it if they came here. Shika would too.”

  “And Dr. Ron? It’s okay with him if the whole galaxy joins his empire except for his in laws?”

  “Zem!”

  “No problem,” he laughed. “Write it down and then I'll email it to them. They can respond to me and next time we come I'll bring you a printout. Are we going to be cut off from the Alliance too if we join the Empire?”

  “I don't know,” I shrugged, “I suspect so. The Alliance isn't taking these defections too well. I wish there was some way to provide Talas and everyone else what they need without dissembling the Alliance to do it.”

  “You're not in the Alliance anymore, Kate. Why are you so concerned with it?”

  “I spent twenty years of my life defending it. You did too. Why should we be so willing to let it crumble?”

  “It was crumbling for a long time already,” Zem said. “Maybe we just ignored it because we believed so much in what we were doing. Unfortunately, Talas has been attacked almost continuously by pirates for the last five years. Our interplanetary trade has been virtually stopped. We've appealed to the Alliance over and over again and occasionally a starship comes by and makes some threats about doing a safety inspection and then flies off again leaving the pirates right where they were. Do you know why I am here? Because I'm the best damn pilot around and I know how to out fly those pirates. I'm the only one who could deliver these ambassadors safely here, and believe me I'm getting paid well to do it.”

  “You always were the best pilot around, Zem,” I agreed. “But that’s probably because I was your Flight Instructor.”

  “That might have had something to do with it." He winked. “If we join the Empire, I'm going to fly for the Imperial SpaceNavy. I can't wait to get inside one of those new ships. I'm going to take it back to Talas and blow everyone one of those pirates away. Do you think Dr. Ron will let me borrow one of his Starships if I fall on my face for him?”

  “Probably not. I’ve done the falling on my face thing, and I didn’t get to borrow a starship.”

  “Not even the one with your name on it?”

  “Not even,” I replied. “Seriously, Zem. Why would the Talasians want to join the Empire? Why would anyone?”

  “Katie, let me explain how it is for us minions. We work hard and send our money to the government in the form of taxes. Personally, I'd rather send my hard earned tax dollars here,” he waved his arm at the Palace, “than into that cesspool known as the Allied Budget Office. That’s just another name for a giant black hole that sucks in everything and spits out nothing. Hey, we should call all black holes budget offices.” He laughed and cupped his hands over his mouth as if he were speaking into a microphone. “Spaceforce Command, this is the Starship Discovery. We’ve got a budget office in Sector 28 Vector 12 that just swallowed a freighter.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How do you know the Empire will be any different than that? We’ve got thousands of layers of bureaucracy and a few budget offices, I’m sure.”

  “Not as bad.” Zem shook his head and waved at the Ambassadors who were standing around admiring the Rose Fountain and the streams of colored water that shot from the jets. “We saw what you guys have done here and on Altaris and Andorus. Have you been to Andorus lately? Those dudes used to sit around on their fat butts in the mud all day. I remember standing outside the crumbling palace smoking a cig and waiting for you and Dr. Ron when no less than twenty panhandlers came by asking me for money. Now there isn’t a panhandler to be found and the place looks positively prosperous. The Ambassadors and I went there last month just to see it. Did you know that prison Dr. Ron turned to rubble has been rebuilt as some kind of a speeder factory?”

  “Good for Andorus. But what does that have to do with Talas?”

  Zem sighed and shook his head at me. “Uh, well, Talas wants to be prosperous too. Duh! We want to be able to trade with each other without paying half our cargo as ransom.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad,” I said.

  “That bad and worse. Half your cargo is the least they will take. You’d be lucky to get away with only half of your crew taken as slaves. Open your eyes and look around, Cap’n. The rest of us aren’t living in your fairy tale. Ron's company made a ton of money and you had that huge mansion in Rozari and everything you ever wanted. The worst thing you ever did was fail a few freighters on their Vessel Safety Inspections because their forms weren’t filled out correctly. Oops, there are check marks in the boxes where X’s should be. Fail!”

  “I wasn’t like that, Zem, thank you very much!”

  “How many pirates have you actually blown up, Cap�
��n? How many bad guys have you killed with that little Glock of yours? You talk very tough but in all your years in Spaceforce, what did you really do to make this galaxy a safer place?”

  “You know damn well we were powerless to act,” I cried, getting pissed off. “We were to confiscate their ships and arrest them but they always escaped. In five years as Captain, I ordered torpedo strikes exactly once. Rules of engagement did not allow any aggression on our part. We were a defensive force. Did you forget that, Zem?”

  “Don’t you get it, Katie? That was exactly the problem.”

  “Katie!” Luci shrieked and drew her finger across her lip as if I were Petya and should zip it.

  “I can’t believe you people,” I continued, raising my voice so practically the entire courtyard could hear. “Can’t you do something about it yourself? Why are you coming here to beg for the Great Emperor to take care you? Why do you want to be dependent on him?”

  “He’s not taking care of us, Katie,” Zem shouted back, throwing his hands in the air. “He’s giving us back the chance to take care of ourselves. Shit Katie, did you check your brain at the door when you arrived, or is that dress so tight it's not letting your blood circulate?”

  Luci gasped.

  “He's ready to see you now!” Berkan came running up breathlessly. “What the hell is going on here? Luci?”

  Luci shook her head, her mouth wide open. She pointed at me as I stared down Zem, both of us with bright red faces even though the Talasians had green tinted skin. Berkan glared at me but spoke to the Ambassadors.

  “His Imperial Majesty is most anxious to meet with the Talasian delegation and work with them in any manner that they require.” Then, while smiling broadly, he did the same thing with his fingers that Luci had done, indicating that I should zip my lip, as if I were a child.

  I gritted my teeth and smiled. “Glad I could help. Welcome to Rehnor.” Then, I turned on heel and went back to my apartment.

  Chapter 8

  Shika

  When I was little we lived in a huge house on a beautiful beach in Rozari. The house was so big that I could make my voice echo through it just by standing on the balcony and yelling into the courtyard. I would run up and down the staircases all day long or at least until someone yelled at me to cut it out. It was great fun, down one staircase, up another and another and then down again and again.

  I never had any friends when I lived in that house but I had Andorian servants, Nana T and Nana S, who followed me around and made sure I didn't kill myself or break anything. They would do whatever I asked from kicking a ball to sliding down the banisters. They had to do what I wanted. I was the Prince.

  My mom, at that time, was a Starship Captain for the Allied Spaceforce. She would leave me home with the Andorians for weeks at a time but then she'd come back and take me to her ship and I would get to stay with her for months and months.

  I loved being aboard my mom's ship. There were usually a few other kids there who I went to school with and in the afternoon if my mom was working, I could go visit Uncle Jerry. If he wasn't busy, he'd take me to the rec deck and we would play ping pong or video games or kick a ball in the gym. He would always get me ice cream and soda afterward even if it would ruin my dinner. My mom always got mad when he did that but he still did.

  “You know who is really in charge of the ship, Steven?” he would whisper to me conspiratorially.

  “The Captain?” I would say.

  “Nope. The Ship's Doctor, which is me.” He’d pound his chest like a gorilla which always made me laugh.

  “Why's that, Uncle Jerry?” I would ask, sipping my soda.

  “Because I can say that the Captain, your mom, is crazy and that nobody has to listen to her anymore, except you of course.”

  “And my dad.”

  “And your dad. It's a secret power, Steven, but I won't use it.”

  “Okay,” I would nod. “Because my mom isn't crazy, right?”

  “Well, not that crazy.” Uncle Jerry acted like he had to think about it. “Just a little teeny bit and I am the gorilla man!” Then he would pound his chest some more and the two of us would laugh like it was the funniest thing ever and inevitably, I would end up snorting soda out of my nose.

  Before we moved to Mishnah, when we still lived in the big house by the sea, I saw my dad all the time. He and I would have breakfast together in the morning, and then, the Andorians would take me to my school. In the afternoon when I came home, I could go to my dad's office if he was there, and do my coloring or reading or math homework quietly in a corner.

  I liked to be in his office even if I did have to be silent. He usually had Taner and a lot of people in there and others on the vid too. I liked to listen to him speak to these people. He used a lot of fancy words and spoke everything with his lilting accent. It was almost like singing to me. I liked how everyone called him Sir or Your Royal Highness, and I would watch as they bowed to him.

  I pretended I was him and I copied him. I looked down my nose at everyone. I waved my hands to make things move even though they never did. I pretended I could shine my eyes at everybody who pissed me off and make them tremble in fear. When I was little, I wished I was just like him and I never really understood why I wasn’t.

  Sometimes, my dad would play chess with me after I had finished my homework. I would sit on the floor with the board in front of me and he would be over at his desk talking to his staff guys and a black piece would move. My dad always played black. I would move one of my white ones and then he'd move again from way over across the room. Sometimes, I would pick up my piece and if he didn't like my move, the piece I was supposed to move would start jumping and dancing. In the midst of my dad's meetings, I would fall over on my side with laughter as a bishop or a knight jumped up and down on my board. I never beat my dad. He was never the type to let anyone win just for the sake of it. I did learn to play an expert game of chess though and could beat anyone else I ever played. My mom was a lousy chess player. She could never plan more than two moves ahead of time and usually, I could mate her within eight or nine moves.

  My dad wasn't very good about playing ball or anything else with me. Mostly he was too busy running between the company, the hospital and later the planet. I remember once playing football out on the lawn though. We had a barbeque party or something and my mom was busy entertaining all our Rozarian friends and the staff, while my dad and a few of his friends like Thad and Berkan decided to toss a ball around. We formed teams and went at it for a while. Once during the game, he picked me up and carried me on his shoulders and we ran for a touch down with me holding the ball. My mom was screaming that he was going to drop me and kill me but I felt like I was flying way up there.

  When my dad became King of Karupatani, we went to Rehnor for a few days. I don't remember much about it because I was only four but I do remember meeting my grandfather and my cousin Tuman. Tuman fell in the river and my mom had to go in and rescue him. I was always afraid to swim after that. I never even went near swimming pools. That was okay with my dad though because he hated water too. That was because whenever he went in the water, the fish were attracted to his weird eyes. They’d surround him and swamp him and that would freak him out so he never went swimming but sat on the grass with me and we’d watch my mom.

  When I was five and a half, my mom and I went to Earth to visit my grandparents. I met my cousins who were teenagers then and very cool. They thought I was cool too coming from a planet so far away and being half alien. My grandfather took me sailing in his boat on the lake where they lived and told me stories of growing up on Earth. He took me to the shopping mall and there was a store there that had nothing but trains in it. He let me buy as many trains as I wanted and I came home with about twenty of them and loads of track for them to run on. I took it all back to Rozari with me but somehow it all got lost and when we moved to Rehnor I never saw them again.

  After my trip to Earth, my mom and I returned to her ship and then my dad
came aboard and took me back to Rehnor while my mom went on her last duty cruise. I could already speak Mishnese fluently from all those listening sessions in his office and from lessons that Taner gave me so I had no problem from the first moment Petya and Marik greeted me at the Palace. Taking my hands, they pulled me from place to place showing me this and that. The Palace was a wonderland full of games and adventures, swarming with people who even bowed to me and called me Sir. I rarely saw my dad though. If he was busy before, he was ten times busier now.

  I saw the coronation from the galleries in the great hall. Auntie Luci, Petya and Marik's mom, sat beside me even though they were not allowed to come. My heart was so big I thought it was going to burst watching that happen. My dad had become an Emperor and there wasn't a single person in the entire galaxy that would be as great and powerful as he was.

  Even in the Palace, my mom tried really hard to keep things somewhat normal for me. She made me dinner every night in the kitchen in her room and most of the time Petya and Marik and their mom ate with us too. We ate things like macaroni and cheese and hot dogs just like normal kids and if we had bad manners or fought at the table, we’d get sent to bed without dessert.

  My mom would read me stories in bed at night, always in English so I wouldn't forget it and Petya and Marik learned a little English, too, as they often slept in the bunks in my room.

  In the morning, our moms would walk us down the endless corridors of the Palace to our school room, and in the afternoon, one or both of them, would come pick us up.

  My mom was sad though. I thought she missed her ship and being Captain even though now she was the Empress and that should have been a better job. She missed my dad too. She didn't like not being able to have breakfast and dinner with him like we did in Rozari. I think she missed seeing him all the rest of the time too.

  I remember when I was little and I didn’t want to take a nap, which I always thought was a big waste of time. My mom would put me in their bed and lie down beside me and tell me stories. She’d almost always fall asleep before I did. Sometimes, my dad would come in and he’d let me sneak out and go play on the beach with the Andorians instead. Then he’d climb in bed with her and take a nap too.