Guardian of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘How many defensive soldiers on Earth right now, Marque?’ I said as more and more portals appeared in the display. There were now about twenty of them, still within Earth’s orbital track.

  ‘About two hundred thousand soldiers are stationed on Earth right now. Most of the human army is on Barracks or the dragon homeworld, on standby to defend the Empire. We weren’t expecting the cats to attack Earth – although it makes sense that they’d want to wipe humanity out. You – and your chilli bombs – are the first line of defence.’

  ‘How many walkers are coming through?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t see all the portals. They start off nanosized and grow exponentially.’

  ‘How long before the walkers are here?’

  ‘I don’t have enough data to extrapolate from!’ Marque said, sounding frustrated. ‘I’ll tell you in half an hour when I’ve seen how fast they can go.’

  ‘If they’re all inside Earth’s orbit, then at light speed it will take about five minutes to get here,’ I said.

  ‘If they can travel at light speed they don’t need armour, because they’ll be a bright smear on the surface of space-time.’

  ‘Let me know when you find out how long it’ll take. Do we have weapons here in the Embassy? Can you synthesise some similar battle armour for me?’

  ‘Blake’s been notified,’ Marque said. ‘He’s establishing a command centre in UN headquarters in Old Geneva, and I’m putting together armour and weapons there. He’s asked for you.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Does Tomoyo know?’

  ‘She’s on her way. Meet her in the entrance hall.’

  The display blinked out and I headed down the corridor back to the entrance, with Oliver close behind me. Dianne, Victor and Mum were guiding a small group of people towards the bunker. Tomoyo appeared at the end of the corridor and we went to her.

  ‘Tomoyo, Marque, listen,’ I said. ‘As soon as we’re in Old Geneva, the two of you liaise with other dragons to evacuate as many people from Earth as you can.’

  ‘That’s a big ask with our population so diminished,’ Tomoyo said.

  ‘Marque, keep an eye on where the walkers are. Try to extrapolate their landing sites: they’ll probably go for strategic locations. Evacuate children and their mothers first. Got it?’ I put my hand on Tomoyo’s shoulder. ‘Let’s go.’

  Tomoyo folded us outside the Old Geneva headquarters of the UN. The UN building was a glass tower next to the lake, built after there was enough oxygen in the air to breathe at the top without assistance. We raced into the main entrance hall, which was a large two-storey atrium with an interior first-level balcony and stained-glass light in the ceiling that depicted humans and dragons working together peacefully. Obviously Marque had warned them as people were already running from the building. They weren’t screaming; they just ran in terrified silence, the only sound their footfalls on the stone floor and the occasional call as people linked up and went out together.

  ‘This way!’ Blake shouted from the balcony surrounding the entrance hall, and we went up the stairs to him.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, following him as he rushed through a pair of double doors and down a corridor to a lift.

  ‘Marque is synthesising weapons that will affect the aliens,’ Blake said without slowing. ‘Evacuation protocol is in effect. We’re rounding up the Prime Minister and Cabinet and putting them in the old nuclear bunkers.’ We took the lift a long way down and arrived in the protected bunker, which was set up as a conference room full of people talking over scattered paper files and on phones. ‘War room.’ He leaned on the table. ‘Right. We have limited troops here, and Marque tells me that these walker things aren’t indestructible. So I’m going to provide you with all the guards assigned to New Geneva, and I want you to lead them to defend the facility against the aliens. Ready?’

  ‘I am, sir,’ I said. I looked up. ‘Armour, Marque?’

  ‘I don’t have the resources to synthesise both armour and weapons,’ Marque said. ‘I’m producing weapons first, and I’ll provide you with an energy shield until I can produce the armour.’

  ‘Can any dragons collect our armour from Barracks?’

  ‘All Barracks troops will bring their armour, but we’re really short on dragons, particularly with the evacuation order in effect.’

  ‘Any idea how long we have?’ Blake asked Marque.

  There was a loud crash that made the entire building tremble. Another crash resounded, and the ground lurched again.

  ‘I think that answers your question,’ Marque said. ‘But it’s only two of them. They came in through the front door, and they’ve stopped in the entrance hall.’

  ‘Where are these weapons?’ I said, looking around.

  ‘Not finished yet,’ Marque said. ‘I’m spread so thin! Give me a moment.’ It went quiet.

  ‘Oliver, with me,’ I said. ‘Admiral, when I’m out of the room put the firewalls up. Where are the rest of my people?’

  ‘Gathering at the back of the building,’ Blake said. ‘The utility rooms we used for storage back when we were supervising Dragonhome.’

  I nodded. ‘I remember.’

  Oliver towered over me as he followed me out of the room. The doors closed behind us, and the firewalls clanged as they went up. The room was sealed. We went back up the lift and came out above the expansive entrance hall with the emblem of the UN inlaid in the stone floor. An organic wheezing rattle was coming from below, and I crept forward to see.

  The walkers had entered the hall and were shooting anyone remaining in the room. They were nearly the height of the ceiling in their black-and-white battle armour and were spraying the area with red-hot pellets from small, hand-held weapons. They killed indiscriminately, and a high-pitched rattling noise came from their heads within the armour. It took me a minute to realise that they were laughing. They chased down the people trying to escape and killed them with the weapons and their bare hands. A young woman tried to run and one of them moved with devastating swiftness, picked her up by the arm and threw her at the wall. The impact must have killed her.

  When the room was clear, the walkers moved to the centre of the hall and each pulled something off their backs. One of them flipped its object open – it appeared to be a set of three metal legs. The walker placed the legs on the floor and the tripod stood a metre and a half tall. The other walker added a spherical black object to the top of the tripod.

  ‘What’s that thing they’re building?’ Oliver said.

  ‘A neutron emitter,’ Marque said.

  ‘A neutron bomb?’ we said in unison, and shared a look. Neutron devices were outlawed everywhere in the known universe. They destroyed all life, leaving non-organics – buildings and materials – relatively untouched outside the small blast radius.

  Marque hesitated, then said, ‘I can disable it. They can’t set it off.’

  I sagged with relief. ‘Then we just have to deal with them.’ I glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Weapons?’

  ‘Head down to the back of the building where the rest of the defence team are gathering. I’ve synthesised some weapons there for you.’

  I turned to Oliver. ‘You’re not a soldier, Ollie—’

  He touched my arm. ‘My people are responsible for every death down there. I am making things right.’

  ‘Stop arguing and join up with the team,’ Marque said.

  I grunted with frustration and crept towards the back of the building.

  Tomoyo appeared in front of me. ‘Stop, Captain Choumali.’

  I checked behind me; the walkers were still in the entrance hall and the area was clear. ‘What, Tomoyo? I need to meet up with the other defenders.’

  ‘The Empress requires the Captain of her Guard,’ she said. ‘She is concerned that the walkers may attack the dragon homeworld as well.’

  That stopped me dead. I’d made a vow to protect the Empress above all others, but I hadn’t expected it to be this difficult to fulfil.

  �
��I have a message from the Empress,’ Tomoyo said. ‘She says that Admiral Blake will handle the defence here, Captain. She needs your skills. Return at once.’ She lowered her head and her voice became more high-pitched and sweet. ‘Please go defend my mother. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. ‘Take me to the folding nexus, I’ll go straight from there to the Palace. Ollie, put your hand on Tomoyo and come with us.’

  Earth disappeared from around me and I was on the orbital folding nexus above Dragonhome. The planet gleamed below, half in darkness, the cities glittering next to the shining ocean. I was alone: Oliver hadn’t put his hand on the dragon.

  ‘Go back and get Oliver,’ I said. ‘Marque, can you carry me down in a hurry?’

  Tomoyo disappeared.

  ‘Yes.’ The transparent wall in front of me vanished and I was looking out into open space, high above the planet, and feeling that I could fall into it.

  ‘Jump,’ Marque said, and I did.

  I’d never jumped from orbit before. The planet glowed beneath me, and I didn’t feel the movement. It was as if I were suspended above it. The network of elevator cables from the surface to the nexus appeared and disappeared as the light hit them and flashed down their silvery lengths. The sky in front of me glowed orange and then red in a curving flame as I hit the atmosphere. Marque protected me from the heat and I felt nothing as the flames danced in front of my eyes.

  ‘Can you hear me, Marque?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give me a heads-up display of what’s happening back on Earth.’

  The HUD appeared, showing the two walkers in the entrance of the UN. They were obviously trying to fix whatever Marque had done to the bomb.

  ‘Are they the only walkers that attacked us?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Marque said. The scene flicked to New Windsor Castle, where another pair of walkers were constructing a neutron bomb on the main forecourt, surrounded by the corpses of dead Queen’s Guards.

  ‘Is Her Majesty in her bunker?’ I said.

  ‘She is. The Prince-Consort and their children are there as well.’

  ‘List the other sites where they’ve appeared,’ I said, and groaned when I saw the locations. ‘Please tell me Aki’s safe.’

  ‘She’s in the Japanese Imperial bunker. She’ll be fine; even if the bomb goes off, the bunker is sufficiently shielded.’

  I huffed out a relieved breath. The flames still danced at the edge of my vision. ‘Keep a rolling image of the Earth locations in the corner of the display. Put a list of my staff on the main view, and who is currently on duty.’

  The list appeared. The flames began to subside, and I was glad the display blocked the sight of Sky City rushing up to meet me. It was evening, so the Empress wouldn’t be holding court.

  ‘Where’s the Empress?’

  ‘In her room with a couple of her consorts.’

  ‘All right. Graf is to station itself on the ceiling below her. Put Ak-Ak, Deep Blue-Green, and Three Lost Pinions – all three of my flyers – patrolling around the tower. Six Eighty Four Hertz is to patrol the electrical grid, and I don’t want to hear about your privacy concerns. The rest of the guard are to station themselves in the tower below her in their usual posts. Any further suggestions?’

  ‘I think that covers it. Arrival in three minutes.’

  ‘Thanks, Marque. Update? Any teleport stations near Dragonhome?’

  ‘No. They’re all near Earth. Looks like your people really pissed the cats off.’

  ‘We knew it was a possibility.’

  The heads-up display minimised to the side, and the glowing white expanse of Sky City’s main square, with Parliament on one side and the towers of the Imperial Palace on the other, became visible.

  ‘Hover me at one hundred metres above the square. I want a quick scan,’ I said.

  I slowed as Marque did as I asked, and then I was motionless above the tallest tower of the Palace. Marque scanned through the people in the square, identifying anyone of interest. There wasn’t much activity; it was too early for most nocturnals, and diurnals were already asleep.

  ‘Show me who’s armed, and any natural or artificial explosives.’

  Three of the individuals on the square lit up, two stink-bug types courting with their bioluminescent butts, and a shark-like Murakh floating in its liquid sphere with its ceremonial tooth-dagger.

  ‘Any other energy types riding the grid?’

  ‘No. Six Eighty Four is the only one in Sky City. A blue giant is going nova in one of the peripheral galaxies and there’s a massive party happening as they prepare to ride the wave.’

  ‘Okay, take me in and keep me updated on the situation on Earth.’

  Marque carried me under the floating top of the Empress’ tower and lifted me through a portal into her bedchamber. She was up and viewing the events on Earth in her theatre, and two of her current spouses – brilliant yellow and blue striped lichen-like creatures that were neither plant nor animal but a bit of both – were next to her and watching with interest, their appendages waving above their flattened bodies as they grew and absorbed light-sensing eyes.

  ‘Please escort my darling slime monsters out, Jian,’ she said, without looking away from the multiple depictions of the situation on Earth. The screens flicked slowly from image to image, a limitation of Marque communicating through dragon scales. ‘And then return and help me co-ordinate the defence.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ I said, and ran one hand over each lichen to politely greet them. ‘If you’ll come this way, honoured sentients.’

  ‘I hope Earth will be okay, Captain Choumali,’ one of them said through Marque as we proceeded to the elevator. ‘We appreciate all your people have done for us.’

  ‘We’re honoured to serve,’ I said. They slithered onto the elevator disk and Marque carried them down and out of the tower.

  ‘Scent flush?’ Marque said when they were gone.

  ‘Oh god, yes, please,’ I said, and the air around me whipped to clear the pungent sulphur smell that the lichens had exuded. I took a deep breath of the cleaner air and walked back to the Empress. ‘I don’t know how she handles it.’

  ‘They smell lovely to me,’ she said.

  14

  ‘We should have anticipated this,’ the Empress said, studying the different locations where the walkers were attacking. ‘Earth is the main source of both chilli and humans, our two major weapons against the cats. Of course they’d attack the source.’

  ‘Can they destroy the entire planet or population with the weapons they’ve sent?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Marque said. ‘Without ships, this is the best they can do. I have the impression that they gathered back home and made the joint decision to teleport agents to Earth to attack strategic centres.’

  ‘That won’t gain them anything,’ I said. ‘We’ll still be on the dragons’ side, particularly after what the cats did to our hostages.’

  ‘Thank you, Jian,’ the Empress said, without looking away from the displays. ‘The obvious strategy here is to disable the human administration and cause enough chaos that the humans can’t defend against whatever’s coming through next.’

  ‘Anything other than walkers coming through, Marque?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t tell. The portals are too damn small for me to identify,’ Marque said. ‘There aren’t enough iterations of me, and comms is limited to tapping dragon scales – I have five dragons next to my orbital instance on Earth, and the entire scales comms centre here working for me.’

  One of the displays went white, then black.

  ‘Marque?’ I said. ‘That was South American Parliament.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ Marque said. ‘They detonated the bomb by hand. One of them put the two masses of nuclear material together, and the other one shot into it to start the reaction.’

  ‘They killed themselves?’

  Another screen did the same
thing.

  ‘It’s a suicide mission,’ Marque said. ‘They know that matter transmission is death.’

  ‘That’s why they took our soulstones,’ the Empress said. ‘And why they waited five years. The walkers must have left their attuned soulstones back on the cat homeworld.’

  ‘I am far too accustomed to your non-violent nature, Silver,’ Marque said. ‘Our past avoidance of conflict is working against us. I have no previous experience of this sort of . . .’ It went silent.

  ‘I think the word you’re looking for is evil,’ I said.

  Another screen blinked out.

  ‘You are protecting the targets with energy domes, right?’ I said. ‘This isn’t hurting anyone?’

  Marque was silent.

  I glared up at its sensors on the ceiling. ‘Tell me my people aren’t dying while I’m sitting here in safety!’

  ‘I am protecting them with energy domes,’ Marque said. ‘But . . .’

  ‘Spit it out, metalman,’ I said. ‘Who’s died?’ My heart leaped. ‘Not Aki!’

  ‘The bunkers are lead-shielded, they’re protected against the neutron blast, but there is a significant shockwave and I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Any signs of a second wave weapon coming through to kill the rest of the population or destroy the entire planet?’

  ‘No.’

  The rest of the images blinked out as the walkers shared the strategy for working around Marque’s defence – there wasn’t much it could do if they pulled the devices apart and detonated them by hand, particularly when it was spread so thin. The last of the screens went off and we were left in a darkened room with no communications. I flopped to sit on the floor next to the Empress. ‘Any details on the targets?’

  ‘I can’t get close yet. The area around them is heavily irradiated and my drones aren’t equipped to handle it. Oh.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Comms stopped altogether. I think something destroyed my orbital instance above Earth, and the dragons I was using to communicate.’

  ‘No sign of matter transporters anywhere else?’ the Empress said. ‘Our homeworld is clear?’