Cynthia- Empress of the Stars

by James Patrick Warner

  Hatred was strong in her eyes, but I also sensed the beginning of fear behind the hatred. She still thought she could kill me, but doubt was starting to nag at her mind. The crowd was terrible in its noise. The bleachers were thundering with stamping feet. Most were yelling at her to kill me quick. A few had started to root for me. I guessed there would be a riot in the square before we were finished.

  We battled a while longer and I could see she was beginning to tire at last. Though I was also tired, my artificial body had much more stamina than she did and I outweighed her by over twenty pounds if it came to a wrestling match. Just then I saw her lose concentration for a moment. I closed and swung with my sword and she managed to fight off the slash. But I kept closing and struck with my short blade, right in her heart.

  Shock and surprise were plain on her face as she dropped her sword and began to waver on her feet. I swung hard and cut off her head and her lifeless body fell to the mat, her spurting head rolling toward the other one still at the edge of the ring. I was breathing heavily. My costume was in tatters, barely covering the erogenous zones. Her blood had splattered all over me. I looked around the ring, not sure what would come next.

  My escort walked slowly to me, held up my sword arm and exclaimed, “Hail the conqueror. Hail the Empress. All Hail!”

  The crowed echoed his words. It was a traditional phrase I had missed in my studies. I looked at him and he was really into it. I noticed that his rank was Captain. I surmised he was to be the new Captain of my personal guard. So I did what came naturally. I grabbed him and kissed him. His shock turned to wonder, then pleasure. I decided it was time to stop, as I didn’t want this to be a public orgy. I turned away to accept the adulation of the multitudes, my sword upraised in triumph.

  The Empress’s entourage walked out from their corner and knelt to me. I looked at my Captain and he nodded to me. I walked over to them and with my sword under the chin I raised each head up and stared into their eyes. The first man had defiance and a hint of covertness in his face. I swiftly cut off his head. The next man was terrified. But I saw no guile or unexpressed threat. I released him and went to the third, a woman. When I looked into her eyes all I saw was carnal love and passion from the excitement of the bout. She had probably had an orgasm when I killed the Empress. I let her go for now. The next two men were soldiers. I studied each one carefully. I looked back at my new Captain and he indicated the first was okay. I went to the next and my Captain’s face grew hard. This man was trouble.

  I turned back to him, the last one in the line and he was pointing a blaster at me. Faster than he could pull the trigger I slashed off his hand. Then I closed to him and thrust the dagger up into his brain from under his jaw. The sneer never left his face but the life left his eyes. I held him up by the hilt of the dagger and turned him around for the crowd to see. Their blood lust was satisfied at last. It took a while for them to quiet down.

  “I will tolerate no treachery. Let all of you beware. I expect complete obedience and cooperation,” I announced in my new language to the crowd.

  I threw the man over the edge of the built up ring with my knife hand, keeping hold of the knife. Blood spurted all over as he fell, drenching the crowd near the ring. They let out a whoop and it became a tumultuous noise. I couldn’t tell if they approved or wanted to kill me. I motioned the surviving entourage to my Captain with my knife hand dripping in blood. I led them all off the ring the way I had entered and toward the Imperial Palace. We would have to walk the half-mile to the entrance, to give the crowd a chance to praise or curse the victor. My skimpy outfit in tatters, my body splattered with blood mixed with sweat, I strode triumphantly, if a bit tiredly, to my new home. All was proceeding according to plan. This was the easy part. The next few months would be the hardest.

  As we passed the Space Force headquarters building, I heard from a third floor balcony my name being yelled by a woman. I looked up and stopped. There was my ex-roommate, yelling Shawna and jumping with glee. I saluted her with my sword before walking on. She was overjoyed and her friends were congratulating her. I expect it will mean a promotion for her to be saluted by the Empress. I hope so.

  Chapter 14.

  Working Empress

  I had to put my plans to work quickly, before the entrenched civil servants could muster up some way to kill or otherwise depose me. I knew that after years under the control of the previous Empress, the government would have many officers and underlings who were favorable to her still running many important bureaus. It was my immediate and most important job to cull out mal-contents and bolster supporters. It was not going to be easy. There were of course tens of thousands keeping the Empire running smoothly.

  My first task was appointing the Imperial Guard. My Captain arranged interviews at my request and I examined every one of the potential allies carefully. I did not cut any heads off. Those days were for the moment finished. What I did was a standard Admiralty style interview, along with requesting files and previous history for every one of them. I needed thirteen men or women, plus my Captain. Of course I demanded the files and history of him first. He appeared clean, surprising in a civilization dedicated to a certain amount of lawlessness. I did not discover a wife, but his girlfriend was drop dead gorgeous and I decided right there not to involve him in any afterhours escapades. I called her in without him knowing and interviewed her for quite a while, determining her intentions and support of him and her loyalty to me as her Empress. She passed.

  I built up my guard, some from the Space Force and some from the local military police and other security people. There were none from the Secret Police. That group I’d have to handle in a different way.

  When I called the head of the Secret Police in, I was wearing my sword. This was not an uncommon trait for the Empress. He began obsequiously and I summarily cut off his head with one blinding slash. He dropped to the floor in mid-sentence. I called his second in command up to me, still holding the bloody sword and he stepped up, trembling in abject fear.

  “Captain Penpen, I want you to understand why your commander has been summarily executed. He failed to ensure the challengers to the Empress were innocuous. He colluded with factions here in the Palace and outside to put me, a complete stranger and so a threat to the Empress, first in line to challenge her, without warning her of the change or possible threat. His acts of treason to the Empress have been noted by me and I consider the Empire to be synonymous with the Empress. I want you to understand this perfectly. A threat to me is no less a threat to the Empire. Never forget that. Do you understand me, Penpen?”

  Captain Penpen dropped to his knees, expecting to also be summarily beheaded. I wiped my sword on his shoulder, then tapped him on the head.

  “Stand up you fool. You are now the commander of the Secret Police.”

  Penpen blinked rapidly for a moment. Then smiled. “Thank you Empress. Forever will I serve.”

  “Damn right you will. I have duties for you to accomplish immediately, before you organize or clean out your command. You are to report to me personally your completion of these duties. Then I will give you your general orders. First, you are to appoint a second in command. It must not be any of your friends nor any of the existing Secret Police. It must be someone you trust with your life and whose death will not compromise you. Second, you are to discover who wanted the previous Empress deposed and why. You are to inform me when you are ready to report and I will tell you where we will meet. Do not trust anyone in accomplishing the second task. Do not tell anyone who doesn’t absolutely have to know what you are doing. Never tell anyone the entirety of your discoveries or plan except me. Do you understand these orders?”

  He bowed, “Yes, Empress.”

  “Very well Captain. When you accomplish these two tasks successfully, you will be promoted. Remember, trust nobody. And guard your back.” If only I took my own advice.

  My reign went well the first few months. I found people I thought I could trust and put them in charg
e of various segments of the bureaucracy. The military was building up for an invasion of the human systems, starting with the outposts and moving in to the Earth system. I supervised the design of the starships and battle spheres, to make sure they were going to be effective against their Earth counterparts. I had to really do my work, or risk execution.

  At the same time I forwarded via Merlin all the plans, specifications and tactics of the fleet to Caryn and WitchCraft. This went on for almost a year before things took a turn for the worse.

  The first clue that all was not as it should be was the lack of challengers to my throne. Any successful Empress would anger certain factions of the empire, just by the nature of sentient beings. But not one man or woman challenged me to combat. This began to weigh heavily on me. I knew it was a sign something was wrong, something was up.

  Merlin had returned after a few months away out of the system. The next sign was that she reported a large contingent of military had attacked her in the spaceport, destroying the unfinished docking facilities around her, though she wasn’t damaged. She decided to leave the planet and hide out on one of the distant asteroids for a while.

  This didn’t bother me too much because I could still get a pod from her in a couple seconds just by asking. But it was a change in the behavior of the military and port authorities. I wasn’t connected to her in their eyes and I couldn’t let on my concern. I had assigned a complete incompetent to locate the alien starship’s owner and he continued to fail miserably. But the attack was a change that signaled something was going on that I didn’t know about.

  The final sign, though I didn’t take it seriously enough at the time, was that my Captain of the guard was assassinated by a suicide assassin. She walked up to him and needled him in the head from inches away, frying his brain. But the clincher was that she was actually his estranged wife. His girlfriend was morose for weeks. The assassination was a direct affront to me as Empress and the blatancy of it was astounding. The ex-wife was executed at once. But the fact that it happened, that no one caught it, that no one suspected it until after the fact, that no one even told me she existed, was the final sign that I hadn’t put together. The puzzle was complete if I had only seen it.

  Right after the New Year celebration, when the Imperial Palace was empty and the revelers had returned to their homes, I was walking through the halls, admiring the art on the walls, on the way to my suite. Suddenly from a side room, a door flung open and men started pouring out around me. They covered me with a net and pulled it tight, tossing me on the floor like a bag of potatoes. I hit my head on the finely polished stone floor and went unconscious before I could utter a word or thought to Merlin. I hadn’t been unconscious since I was transferred from the Silver Hornet to this body.

  I awoke in a padded cell somewhere in the Imperial prison underneath the palace. I was completely trussed up and also tied to a bed, lying on my face. The lights were very bright. It seemed more like a hospital than a prison.

  “Merlin, can you hear me? I need help,” I called to Merlin. There was no answer.

  “Caryn, sis! I need help! Are you there?” I called to Caryn, there was no answer.

  “Caryna Repair Station! Caryna Library! Any Parent! Can you hear me? I’m in trouble and need help!” I called out on the Parent hyperspace channels and there was no answer.

  I tried to call out verbally but my mouth was gagged and all I could do was mumble. I was alone, the first time I had been alone and hurt since my accident and death as a child. I began to cry. How could this be? What technology had the Pirates discovered that cut off hyperspace communications? And why me? Did they suspect I was something alien? I listened to the sounds around me. I was definitely not in a vehicle or space ship. This was a ground facility.

  In a while an evil looking man came into the room with a woman dressed as a nurse. He was wearing the white gown of a doctor. He had a bald head and a small thin beard. He looked like a caricature of a psychiatrist. He examined me, especially my head, which had healed from the fall. He did not talk at first. He ordered the nurse to remove all of my clothes. She did so perfunctorily, ripping and tearing when the fabric did not yield to her touch. The doctor was still examining my head, especially my hair.

  “You are an alien,” he said matter-of-factly. I grunted. He wasn’t interested in my responses.

  “You have a spy device implanted in your brain. Never mind how we discovered it. You are a very clever alien, but we are also clever. This room is blocking all inbound and outbound transmission from your device. I will remove your spy device shortly. If you survive, you will be exiled to a psychiatric hospital to live the remainder of your days in quiet contemplation of your crimes against our people. I do not think your species will send anyone to come for you, whoever they may be. It is likely that you will be a vegetable after this operation; the device is insidiously interwoven with your speech and hearing centers. In any event the galaxy will be in the tumult of an interstellar war of greater dimensions than you were led to believe as Empress.”

  The “doctor” smiled a wicked little smile, echoed in a more subdued manner by the nurse. ‘Led to believe’? Was this all an elaborate setup? Who had orchestrated it? When had it started? What did I do to make them suspect I was not who I claimed to be?’ The doctor took a moment to feel my body, the musculature and fat of my back and butt, arms, legs. He felt my neck and head.

  “It’s a shame, such a perfect specimen, such a waste. Oh well, let’s proceed.”

  The nurse hooked up a device to hold my head perfectly still, clamped to the bed. She cut all my hair extremely short, even the pubic hair. The tiny red roots of my real hair color were like soft fuzz. She examined a computer screen above my head and after a few moments marked my occipital bone with a small X where they planned to cut to retrieve the implant. The doctor made the first incision, cutting deeply, with no painkillers. Before I lost consciousness I screamed loud and long both verbally and with the implant until my scream was cut off by the surgeon’s scalpel. The nurse smiled sadistically as my neck bled profusely and the vibroblade continued to cut through bone, muscle and nerves.

  “There,” she said at last as the doctor grabbed the implant and connecting tissue with his forceps and pulled it out. She checked the monitors and saw that I was still alive, barely. She frowned, then took the implant from the doctor so he could sew me up. She put the implant into a hypersonic disintegrator and turned it on, much like warming up a cut of meat for lunch.

  In a few moments the implant gave out its last signal, a death signal on a different band than it normally used, a special hyperspace frequency that could penetrate the Pirate shielding. The signal contained all of the memories of this event, its removal, my condition and the location where it was destroyed and then it blew up, taking the disintegrator and the nurse with it. The doctor was seriously maimed in the face. I was peppered with glass fragments all over the left side of my body from the glass screen of their device.

  That last signal streaked past Merlin, past WitchCraft and strait to Caryn’s own implant. She felt the pain, the horror and got the flood of memories in an instant. She fell down in the playground, missing Kyla’s swing, a look of pain and utter astonishment on her face.

  Caryn began to cry from the torment contained in that last message. “Cynthia, what have they done to you?” she wailed, getting up and grabbing Kyla from the swings.

  “What is it mommy? Is Aunt Cynthia okay?”

  “No, honey, she’s not. We have to call all our friends to us right now. Let’s go back into the house.”

  “Daughter, we have received the death signal from the implant. Analysis indicates that your sister was not dead when the signal was sent, though her condition is uncertain because the implant had been inserted in a nearly impossible location for removal. Whoever did this act is very sophisticated and knows more about us than we suspected. We are gathering our forces and you should do the same.”

  Caryn knew something of my missio
n. She knew from the regular transmissions she received that things had been going well for me as the ‘Empress of the Stars’. She therefore knew because of my possible death that there was a deeper mystery than any of us realized concerning the Pirates and the threat was nearly upon us.

  “WitchCraft, ready yourself for our crew. Try again to contact Merlin. Call her home when you reach her.”

  “I have just contacted Merlin. She refuses to leave the Pirate home system. She claims Cynthia is there and will not leave until she finds her.”

  “All right then.” Mutinous space ships or no, Caryn decided she was going to go get me, alive or whatever, as soon as I could be found.

  “Fred, Mike, I need you to take a break and come to Caryna. We need to mobilize a search party for Cynthia. She’s hurt and alone somewhere in the Pirate quadrant of the galaxy,” Caryn sent via the Falcon.

  “We’ve just finished a mapping project and can come at once,” Fred answered on the Falcon’s subspace comm unit.

  “What’s your ETA?”

  “Two days from now your time,” Fred responded.