Cynthia- Empress of the Stars

by James Patrick Warner

  “Merlin, can you move sideways on my command?” I asked the ship. A green light flashed on the control panel. I grinned. I yelled “Now!” and hit the thruster controls. The ship skipped sideways, only a mile, but it was enough. Free from most of the blaster fire for a moment, Merlin was able to go to warp. We escaped the ambush at last. I thought about my mission; not at all the way Caryn’s missions had gone. I had failed and was in great pain and alone.

  “Merlin, take me home,” I mumbled, exhaustion and tension getting the best of me as I relaxed in my command chair and my overworked body began to shut down. I fell asleep crying from the pain of my headache. A device implanted by the Secret Police doctor into my brain began transmitting as soon as we exited hyperspace at Caryn’s star system, sending a transmission from its locator beacon back through hyperspace to the Pirate Secret Police.

  Chapter 17.

  The New Emperor

  “Emperor PenPen, we have the location of the human star system the spy was taken to. What are your orders?”

  The man I had recently promoted to Captain of the Secret Police was now the Emperor of the Stars. He smiled a crooked smile. His plan had worked to perfection. It had required many months of planning and it required that I live to take his implant home, but these things had taken place. He had had a year to arrange all the details. He hadn’t even needed to battle the alien by sword. He had used his mind as his sword.

  He assumed I was oblivious to the implant, since I had been unconscious when it was inserted. All the loose strings, including the bisexual doctor, had been taken care of by me. My genome had been scanned and was now recorded in their database and I would never be able to operate under cover in his empire again. The communication device I had been carrying in my brain was a puzzle, but he felt his scientists would ultimately figure out how it had worked and if necessary, give the technology to the Secret Police and possibly the fleet.

  The only thing remaining was to wipe out the humans on their star systems and expand the Empire to take over the entire galaxy. This was a dream worth dreaming. This was what he had spent his whole life planning, what his fleet was designed for, what he had been engineering for the last year. This was going to take place. No number of human starships could stop his fleet. They were the equals of our ships and he had far greater numbers, notwithstanding my ship that was something phenomenal and extraordinary. There had never been reported it’s like in all the years they had collaborated with the corrupt humans to steal Ancient Artifacts. So it was an anomaly to be set aside. Not ignored, but not allowed to disrupt his plans either. No one ship could alter what fate had engineered, with his help. The humans and their allies were doomed and the secrets of the Ancients would be his at last.

  He glanced at the battle display, showing the ten thousand warships, battle spheres and moon sized destroyers. Smaller ships passed between them, dutifully performing errands and helping maintain communication silence. It would take two months to reach the closest human outpost, called Last Chance Bar and Grill. He would deploy a small portion of the fleet, perhaps a thousand ships and wipe that planet clean of all life. It would be a good test for the larger work to be done.

  The Emperor had no clue what he was about to confront. His own spies were lulled into false security by the idiocy and political intrigue of the humans who were elected to run their galactic civilization. No mention of the Libraries, the Repair Stations, the 250 ships in storage on Caryna and now ready for battle, nor the Parents’ ability to translate a select few people to new nearly immortal bodies had escaped the tight security Caryn and I had set up. Not even dreaming of such a thing, they had not examined my body closely enough when I was in their clutches, assuming at last I was just another human. My body’s powers of regrowth and repair were not readily apparent to any of the doctors who treated me, since none of them were with me long enough to see it for themselves and there were no written records allowed due to my status as a spy. The Emperor was unaware of the extent of the damage done to my body, so he had no reference with which to compare the speed of my recovery.

  There were only a handful of these prototype “‘droids” remaining in the Parents’ facilities. If the exact number were asked about by any human, they would find out that only 523 existed in all the Ancient facilities throughout the galaxy and no more could be built. But the very existence of these facilities were not known, except to a few close friends Caryn had told who were sworn to secrecy and of course the still sealed records of Caryn’s discoveries and claim to the star system she had named Caryna. So like many greedy conquerors throughout history, the Empire was blind to what it was blind to.

  The scientists of the Empire had managed to buy some technology from Meph’s world, from businessmen who were less interested in preserving humanity than padding their own pockets. Meph’s family had not participated, but industrial espionage was as prevalent there as it was on Earth. This technology had allowed the Secret Police to detect and shield my implant. It had allowed them to foil to a certain degree Merlin’s shields at the spaceport. They assumed this technology would allow them to hide from the human ships and spy on them surreptitiously until ready for battle.

  But they didn’t know about the other race of aliens, some of whom now lived on Last Chance in a portion of the southern hemisphere. These aliens were invisible to humanoid senses, as they lived in a slightly different phase. Under normal circumstances there could be no contact between them and humans, who they were originally also oblivious to. But the agreement brokered by Caryn in her visit there gave the Frbylzks, as they called themselves, an awareness of humanity and other non-human life forms and set forth a peaceful cohabitation between them and the human settlers on Last Chance Bar and Grill.

  And the Frbylzks had a large interstellar civilization of their own, based on a series of star systems somewhere between the Pirates and the humans, on a different arm of our galaxy. How they would react to the Pirate invasion of Last Chance was anyone’s guess.

  I continued to recuperate at the medical facility in the Repair Station on Caryna 5 and at last the Parents decided it was time to put a new communicator into my head. I was brought by Caryn to the Library and ushered into the room Caryn had spent so much time in, learning about her new star system’s bloody history.

  “Caryn, there is a device already implanted in Cynthia’s brain. We will have to remove it. The damage will be severe and she will have to rest and recuperate for several weeks before she regains full functioning. Please prepare a place for her away from the stresses of the coming war. We will give you the device.”

  Caryn acknowledged. What could this device be? Something implanted by the Pirates, obviously. She worried about it as I went into surgery. My body was carefully and thoroughly checked, every single part of it. Every system was restored to full operational status. The Pirate implant was removed and a new communicator was inserted. The damage the Pirates had done was repaired and I was restored.

  All this was done with exquisite care. I was the first in 30,000 years to be transplanted. The first since the Parents’ exodus. But it would be some time before I would be able to move my body again. The connections for hearing and speaking were restored, of course, but I was kept unconscious for a time to test everything and make sure there was no residual damage. Then I was allowed to revive.

  At first it was like when I had been born before. The cacophony of voices of a galaxy full of Parent facilities was almost deafening. But my hearing worked! I opened my eyes and saw the brightly lit surgery and the ‘droids who had done the work. I felt the back of my head. It was like new and my hair was still growing out. I could not feel a scar, though I would carry some inside for a long time to come. My memories, as far as I could tell, were intact. I remembered the sexual abuse at the hands of the Pirates. My anger at the constant rape I had endured was well controlled. I would make them pay for their actions with their lives.

  I tried to sit up, but was restrained gently by the surgical �
�droids.

  “Daughter, your body needs to rest more. You want to be fully operational when you face the invasion forces and your sister and friends will count on you. We anticipate it will take all of your cunning and skill to be victorious, as the rest of the humans have dawdled and dissembled and not been able to decide on a course of action concerning the Libraries and Repair Stations in their systems. You and your sister will have to rally them and it will be soon enough. Rest now and let your body heal.”

  It’s not good to argue with your Parents, so I relaxed and was asleep in moments. I dreamt of Mike. Dear, glorious Mike. I was happy to realize I was still sexually attracted to him and missed him dreadfully. I had been suppressing it for over a year, but now it came back to me. I hoped he would be here when I woke up. I thought about Caryn and her daughter Kyla, whose name meant a beauty that only poetry can capture from the ancient Irish language. She was already that at five. Caryn was so lucky to be able to save her genetic line.

  “You, daughter, also have the ability to raise a family.” I thought I was dreaming. Maybe I was. The Parent continued. It sounded like Station 3, a soft, warm, motherly voice. “Yes, your genome was preserved in stasis when your brain and spinal cord were salvaged from the Silver Hornet. There is ample genetic material to create a clone of you should you so desire. There are human hospitals that specialize in such things on Earth. Do not despair that you cannot have a family, as this is a possibility you will have the opportunity to explore after this conflict is finished.”

  I could have a family, like Caryn? I fell back asleep with a smile on my face. A family, with Mike. All I had to do was live through the greatest space battle in the history of this galaxy. It was time to recruit crews for Caryn’s battle fleet. I slept like a log floating down the river to the sawmill.

  When I awoke, I knew, it was time to start up the sawmill. The first thing I did was get the pirate transmitter from Caryn and blast it.

  Chapter 18.

  Preparing for War

  All we needed were a thousand or so lumberjacks. We had the saw. We knew where the trees were. And the trees were coming. The first warning was from Meph, who was vacationing on Last Chance. He told Caryn that there was a stupendous fleet heading for that star system and he was leaving for Caryna immediately. Meph is not a coward at all. He’s a pragmatist. He brought his entire family with him. They were invited to live anywhere they wanted to. They chose a beach house on the shore of a nice lake a few miles away from Caryn’s house.

  Caryn called the Falcon and told her what was happening and asked her to relay the information to Fred and Mike, with a request that they come back to Caryna as soon as possible. She then had WitchCraft contact all the Scoutships through the Parents’ network of stations and informed them about the approaching fleet and the need to recruit crews.

  I called the Admiralty and gave them basically the same information, with a special message to the Admiral in charge of espionage about my present circumstances. I sent a full report to catch him up to date on a secure line using Merlin. I called Natasha, the holo star who played Caryn on the wildly successful soap opera about her exploits as a Scoutship Captain and asked her to come take care of Caryn’s daughter Kyla. She was overjoyed to do so, as her filming was finished for the season and she had time on her hands, not to mention a baby in the warmer from her boyfriend who played Fred on the series. They were all invited. She was going to have to take time off anyway until the baby was born.

  I found out where my DNA material had been stored. It was actually in the Parent Library on Earth for some reason, maybe because I had gone to school on Earth. I told the Parents to keep it safe for me and planned how to get Mike to propose to me when he and Fred arrived. The time passed quickly. Then the Pirate fleet arrived at Last Chance.

  A thousand ships, I am told, split off from the main force and attacked the planet. The Frbylzks fought alongside the humans and other aliens. The battle was fierce. But with scalar weapons on the Pirate ships the human ships were quickly destroyed. The Frbylzks ships held the Pirates off for several days, while their transports were able to evacuate much of the planet. But in the end they couldn’t hold out against them, there were just too many Pirate ships. The remaining Frbylzk defenders were destroyed, then the planet was wiped clean with nukes. It became a radioactive ball in space. I felt sorry for the old Commandant Harry, though he had not lost anything but his pride in that destruction. He soon answered our call for volunteers, as did many other humans who had escaped the destruction of their homes. The surviving Frbylzks retreated to their home systems. The Pirates did not follow, but rejoined their fleet and headed straight for Caryna. This would be the place the fate of the galaxy would be decided. I sent the message to the Admiralty and they promised all available ships would be sent to intercept the enemy fleet here.

  “Sis, we should send a battleship and a couple of cruisers to Earth in case the Pirates do again what they did at Last Chance,” I suggested to Caryn.

  “Oh. Certainly. I guess they haven’t even checked out their own Parent ships yet have they. Good idea. But I want to maintain control of them unless the war heads that way.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. I’ll mention it to the Admiralty when I ask for some of the Scoutships to be sent here,”

  When I spoke to Admiral Benson, the Earth Defense Commander, he was pleased at the exchange. He didn’t consider the Scoutships to be much use if it came to a full scale invasion. I knew better, but kept it to myself. The Parent battleship would be ample with two cruisers as support to defend Earth against up to a thousand Pirate ships – or at least that was what I figured based on my own experience as Empress.

  As the days passed more and more Captains and other officers from the Earth Admiralty arrived, many of them retired. We picked up ten Scoutship captains who had come out of retirement to join us. Then Fred and Mike arrived and all work ceased for several hours while Caryn and I spent personal time with our men.

  “Cynthia, honey. What happened with you and the Pirates? We lost all communication with you,” Mike asked after our first and most delicious love-making aboard the Falcon. Fred had gone straight to Caryn at her compound and I had gone straight to my lover aboard their ship.

  I started crying and held him close. “Oh Mike, please don’t ever ask me. I almost died in the hands of their psychiatrists.” I buried my head in his strong arms and chest and let the tears run their course. He didn’t say another word about it, then or ever. I love him so much. I knew it would upset him terribly.

  I was happy to note that I was fully able to enjoy him sexually. I had been worried, but the old body knew what to do and I was totally uninhibited with him. For his part he was up to the task after months of celibacy. If I could have gotten pregnant, that would have been the time. I thought more about the possibility of a clone. I vowed to talk to him about it when this was all over. I recovered from my sad memories and we did it again and he was a real champion.

  “Cynthia, what’s it like to be a sentient machine?” Mike asked me as we lay snuggling in bed after leaving our nest in the Falcon and returning to our home.

  “Well Mike, I suppose I could ask you what’s it like to be sentient meat. But it’s a fair question.”

  “No offense intended, but, well, I’m in love with you and I’m a little mixed up as to what it might mean. No, that sounds bad. Wait. What I mean is, uh.”

  I put my hand over his mouth and kissed his nose. We were a little punchy from a night of passionate rediscovery of the joys of lovemaking and I suppose, in retrospect, that Mike was a little taken aback at our reckless abandon. Of course, he didn’t really, down deep inside, believe that I was recently a mere starship. If Caryn hadn’t witnessed the transformation she would probably be a bit skeptical herself. I was, after all, very human and very female, especially at this particular moment.

  “Mike, I’ll tell you. You were the first man for me and I don’t know enough about love to say one way or the
other if I was in love with you at first. But I sure have been having a great time and you’re welcome in my bed and I love you.” I tongued his ear fondly. “But back to your question. I’m not embarrassed to tell you.”

  I snuggled as much closer to him as I could and as we wove our legs and arms around each other, I continued. “After gaining awareness, I was surprised at the busyness of everything. I hardly had a moment to contemplate the change in me. The ship was a constant sensory input, requiring my attention to maintain each and every little function without letup. While I didn’t have any problem with this, it was still annoying to not have time to ponder or contemplate a future.

  “I found that I could establish automaticities to handle the moment-to-moment life support and ship systems and this was a big help. Then, there were the inputs from the external sensors which couldn’t be shut off and which were important to our survival when I was moving through space. It took some time to figure out how to separate a portion of my consciousness to monitor these things while also keeping my main attention on my own interests. After all, I was tremendously curious about what had happened to me and how and why.