by Loki Renard
Leaning against the bathing room wall, Archon watched the woman prepare his bath with more interest than he’d taken in any of the forced festivities below. She paid him little mind, focusing on the task at hand, donning thick gloves and picking up great big pitchers of acid which she carried across to the gently steaming bath.
When it was ready, he stepped into it and sank into the hot, sparkling water. The acid really worked nicely with the water, reacting with little mineral deposits to hiss and spit and generally chemically beat the hell out of his skin.
The bath maid remained close, in case he needed anything topped up. She averted her gaze from him, and allowed him the closest thing to privacy anybody in the castle had allowed him since his coronation.
“Anna.” He called her name. She was probably surprised that he knew her name, having only been in the royal household himself a short time, but Archon paid more attention than others gave him credit for. That was the only reason he was alive.
“Yes, your majesty?”
Archon ran his eyes over her soft but sturdy body, clad in a gray dress which was designed to make her look deliberately unremarkable. It was not flattering. It was not unflattering. It just… was. Archon was fairly certain that if Brimsley could have made the staff literally invisible, he would have.
“What species are you?”
“Human, your highness.”
That term sounded familiar. “Human. Is that a kind of Martian?”
“We’re often confused with Martians. But we come from a different planet, sire.”
“How old are you?”
“I will be sixty-four in the coming weeks.”
“Too old to reproduce, then.”
“Too old,” the wash maid agreed.
“They’ve had me looking at every single female they could dredge up from every corner of the kingdom,” Archon sighed, floating his fingers through the water. “All twenty-four tribes of my people, all of the women with their own agendas, trying to politically seduce me.” He let his hand swish through the acidic water. “I’m supposed to find that attractive, Anna. The desperate gyrations of what amount to concubines.”
“You know your own mind, sire,” Anna said, bustling about for a fresh bottle of hydrochloric acid. “You’ll know your mate when you meet her.”
“That I do. Why is it that a wash maid understands that which thirty generals, forty advisors, and endless lackeys do not?”
“I have a simpler life. Less to gain, less to loose,” Anna replied. “Do you want a towel?”
“No, thank you. I’ll drip dry.”
Archon rose from the bath, gently dripping acid from his massive musculature. It dissolved various parts of the flooring not worthy of bearing the weight of the king, creating a scarred and pocked rocky surface which served to exfoliate the royal feet.
In Archon’s father’s time, baths had been taken with water and soap in rooms sealed ceramic tiles. Archon had that all ripped out. Even if they were on a warship larger than most planets, there was no need to lose contact with the old ways. Acid baths, stone tubs, the gentle fumes of reactive material released to be inhaled into the lungs. It was all part of the experience of proper existence as far as Archon was concerned.
Too much had been taken away, whittled down by the advent of technology, and the insistence of the nobles who all insisted that they should have warships of their own. Now half the nobility spent their time whizzing around in space, barely setting foot on anything resembling solid land.
Archon hated space. He hated how it amounted to nothing much besides the absence of everything. He hated the way it was dark all the time, except for the parts which were on fire. As far as he was concerned, space was a necessary evil from getting from one battlefield to another. It had been far too long since the clash of spears, metal on flesh, blood spilled, all the glories and delights of proper war.
He retired to a bed covered in furs, closed his eyes, and wished for war.
“Your highness!”
Archon opened his eyes. He did not know what time it was, but that was because space did not really have time. It wasn’t morning. It wasn’t evening. Anna would sometimes insist that it was teatime, and that he should eat something, but she was wrong about that too.
“What is it, Smithers?”
Smithers was one of many officials who conducted official affairs. He was one of ten or so at the top of the food chain, and probably the only one who had the necessary testicular fortitude to interrupt the king’s sleep.
“I have news of great importance.”
Archon sat up, throwing back the fur to reveal a great throbbing erection which had established itself while he was asleep. Smithers did his best not to stare at it as the king strutted naked across the chamber to fetch his preferred attire, a titanium reinforced kilt which he wrapped around his waist, hiding the impressive nether regions of his body.
“Are you going to tell me what is so important you had to come screaming in here like a pig on fire?”
Smithers licked his lips, forked tongue flickering nervously. Nobody liked hearing the king talk about food. He had a tendency to turn things which were not food, into food. There was a rumor he’d eaten an official when he became unexpectedly hungry.
It was, however, just a rumor. Archon was a large king with brutal tastes, but courtiers were stringy at the best of times. They tended to be old and therefore rather bland and tasteless.
“There is a rebellion among the peasants of Zeta Reticuli!” Smithers declared.
Archon turned, head cocked. “You’re just saying that to cheer me up.”
“I am not. They’re refusing to pay taxes, and they have locked their grain stores away from the collectors. Word has been sent regarding the siege, and royal assistance has been humbly requested with great urgency. They beg your presence, your highness.”
Archon enjoyed being begged, but a rebellion over grain was hardly the sort of thing which made his blood run hot with passion. Peasants were, by definition, not very good opponents. Their resistance was, in a word: futile.
“May I inform the local magistrates that you will be putting in an appearance?”
Archon made a vague grumbling sound and waved his hand in a non-committal fashion. “Surely the local soldiers can handle the matter. I am more of a grand invasion against a worthy enemy sort of king.”
“This is more important than it may seem. Word of the rebellion is spreading. Other colonies are considering their own refusals. And there is a lack of grain.”
Archon signed internally. There were far too many things to care about. A whole universe of things to care for. Sometimes he forgot about important things. Other times he remembered unimportant things. For the life of him, he could not begin to think why he would care about grain.
“Does this ship run on grain?”
“Indirectly, yes,” Smithers explained, bowing his green scaled head. “We pay for the fuel by refining and selling the grain in various products. The planet is famous for cake.”
“So we’re going to war for cake.”
“If you wish to put it that way, sire.”
Archon did not want to put it that way. He wanted to do battle with a real enemy, not put down a rebellion of peasants refusing to make gateaux.
“I heard we’re going to war for cake,” Adrianna said, bustling in with a big tea pot full of tea. She was obsessed with tea. Archon had never drunk a drop of tea in his life, but it didn’t stop her from bringing it every what she considered to be afternoon.
Smithers gave her a vicious look. She was an old servant, and should not be speaking to the king at all. In Archon’s fathers time, servants laid on their faces when the king was present. It was proper and correct, though it made dinner time service rather slow.
“You have to stop confiding in the servants,” Smithers hissed, rather unfairly, as Archon obviously had not so much confided in Anna as been overheard by her.
“I would trust the woman who drains my
bath a thousand times more than the politician who seeks to marry his daughter to me. I also trust the man who sharpens my sword over the one who begs me to plunge it into the flesh of his enemy. My servants are the ones who are the closest to me, and I trust them implicitly.”
“You do everything backwards, Archon.”
“Do I.”
“You do,” Smithers said. “I credit it for your survival thus far. Nobody is able to predict your next move. They never see you coming, because even you don’t know what you will do next.”
“Save me the analysis, Smithers. Get me to this rebel planet.”
Chapter 3
A bright star appeared in the sky over Zeta, a planet with an old legend about the end of days beginning with a bright star appearing in the sky.
Archon was not aware of that legend, and if anybody on the planet had actually noticed the arrival of a new star, he didn’t care. This journey was boring. The reason for it was boring. The outcome would no doubt be boring.
His only hope was that the rebellious villagers would actually be putting on a proper rebellion, and that there might be some sport in quashing it, but he had his doubts. It was hardly going to be a fair fight, and unfair fights were tedious.
Still, he had nothing else going on, and this was the closest thing to a fight, so he took it.
Archon and his war crew detached from the main warship in a smaller shuttle, and descended to the planet’s government buildings which were constructed suspiciously like a castle. There was no need for a government building to have ramparts, but this one did. It also had turrets and two towers, a rather obnoxious spire, and a flag with a crown on it. The crown of Archaeus. Archon was familiar with it because he’d worn it rather recently. The entire construction filled him with a dubious sense of deep misgiving. Could a building be arrogant and smug? Apparently so.
“Who lives here?”
“This is the home of General Naxus. He is the magistrate of this colony, and commander of your armies here.”
“And he built this place?”
“He did, I suppose. I’m not sure.”
“I’d like to know who was responsible for this.”
“Responsible for the building, sire?”
“Yes.”
Smithers gave Archon a searching, curious look. He clearly did not understand why Archon was fixated on the building. Perhaps he thought it represented an outpost of the monarchy. But Archon did not consider it that way. Especially not when he entered the building and found himself looking at multiple portraits of a particularly dubious looking personage who had shaved all the hair off his head to reveal a single scale right at the top of it. It was considered desperate to have to remove hair to show scales in Archon’s realm, but apparently this fellow did not care about appearing desperate. He simply cared about appearing everywhere.
While Archon was thinking these thoughts, he was being lead into a great room with many windows. It looked a lot like the room with great many windows Archon had recently held his ill-fated fuck banquet in.
Standing in the very middle of the unfurnished space was a fellow wearing Archon’s colors. It was the same lizar from the paintings, and he was even more smug and punchable in person than he was in his portraits.
“This Is General Naxus,” Smithers said. “He has been in command of this colony and its armies for the past ten years.”
Naxus bowed, but not very deeply. Archon did not bother with a greeting. He had taken an instinctive and immediate dislike to Naxus.
“In command? There is a rebellion.”
“Humans are rebellious,” Naxus said calmly, appearing not to notice the king’s insult coming in place of any customary pleasantries.
“They're humans? I didn’t know we had humans in the kingdom.”
“They are serfs. They farm. Humans are excellent farmers, but they are also excellent tax evaders. We’ve found it very difficult to extract what is owed. They have tendencies to hide their products, or sometimes not bother to harvest at all if they feel the taxes are too high.”
Smithers shifted uncomfortably.
This once again harkened to the scurrilous court myth that Archon’s mother had been part human. It was a ridiculous lie, no doubt concocted by detractors who wanted his cousin to take the throne instead of him when his many older brothers died. The argument became moot when his cousin happened to fall off a bridge with a rope wrapped around a fairly important body part.
“I don’t like the idea of killing humans. They are poor sport. Too soft. Too fleshy. Too weak,” Archon mused. “And yet I suppose I may as well do something about the situation, having come all this way…”
There was a long silence.
“Alright,” Archon said. “I’ve got it. We pretend.”
“Pretend, sire?” Naxus barely bothered to hide his derision.
Smithers shifted uncomfortably. It was one thing to have crowned Archon, and to have the officials and courtiers and nobles accept that he was king of all Archaeus. But it was something else for the king to earn the respect, or at least, fear, of the myriad of lesser officials, like Naxus, who had control over a vast number of small pieces of the kingdom. These remote outposts had a tendency to become unruly if the officials did not properly respect the king.
“We will put on a show for them,” Archon declared. “We will make it look good. Take every single one of the rebellious villagers, put them on the ship, then burn the village. Make it look good. The rest of the villages will not know any better, and they will behave themselves.”
“That is an excellent idea, your highness,” Naxus said. He sounded surprised.
“Yes. Almost the sort of idea you could have had yourself,” Archon remarked dryly.
Again, Naxus had the grace and good sense to avoid acknowledging the king’s tone.
“Did you bring the dragon, Smithers?”
They had left the obnoxious palace, and returned to the shuttle from which war could be waged. Or, in this case, the semblance of war.
“Always, sir. Always.”
Archon smiled for the first time in a very long time. He was looking forward to teaching the humans a lesson. They had dragged him a very long way, and he intended to make the most of it.
The dragon was modeled after the ancient dragon, Energon. It was, of course, not actually Energon. It was also not actually a dragon, but it definitely looked like one in the eyes of someone who didn’t know what a real dragon looked like. Archon imagined that applied to all the humans in the village below.
From the sky the village looked small. Because it was small. No more than a dozen or so hovels in a circle around a large central fire. It looked intimate and cozy, and for a moment Archon felt a strange pang of longing for something he had never actually experienced.
“We have surveillance, King Archon,” Smithers said. “We dispatched a spy drone, no bigger than a fly, to take images and relay them along with audio to the ship.”
“I know how surveillance works,” Archon reminded him. “There are primitives down there, not up here.”
“That’s debatable.”
Smithers said the words so softly under his breath that the king was able to pretend that he hadn’t heard them.
The surveillance feed was of far more interest to the king than the mutterings of his dubiously loyal courtier. Archon was a king without many allies, and that made him vulnerable. But it also made him strong. A king with many alliances never knew from which quarter betrayal would come, but a king who kept his own counsel could never be let down.
Smithers put the surveillance feed on screen, and a series of images appeared before their eyes. The village had been barricaded by several rows of wood palings, roughly hewn, pushed into the ground, and sharpened to dangerous points. They were impressive defenses for simple people, and apparently quite effective at keeping the tax man at bay.
Archon was well aware that Naxus could have crushed this rebellion with a flamethrower and a single tank. The fact th
at the general had chosen to drag the king into a petty local dispute pointed either to incompetence, or something akin to a trap.
Maybe he was here to be killed. Or maybe he was here because there was something else happening in the kingdom that they were conspiring to keep him from noticing. There were an infinite number of maybes, but one certainty: some very disobedient humans were about to be taught a lesson they would never forget by a creature they did not acknowledge as their king.
Archon took control of the cameras and panned them around the people in the village. The first thing that struck him was the relative youth of all those present. There was only one male who was of anything remotely resembling advanced age. The rest of them were either juveniles or the breeding young.
Something had happened to this village. Something had taken away the entire middle generation, and removed most of the elderly. It could have been illness, or perhaps something more sinister.
“They are so young,” the king murmured. “How beautiful it must be to be young.”
“You are not yet old,” Smithers noted. “You are the youngest king to ever take the throne of Archaeus, by a factor of several decades, if we discount Braxus the boy king, and he only lasted three hours before being murdered by a cousin twice-removed, so I tend not to count him in the royal lineage of succession.”
Smithers could be counted on to speak at length about royal history if he was allowed to. Archon did not fail to notice that Smithers’ sneering attitude was directed at him yet again. One of these days, Smithers was going to pay for his constant sniping, but for the moment he was at least predictable - and predictable was the closest thing to trustworthy if you couldn’t trust anybody.
“I am no longer that kind of young,” Archon said, gesturing at the screen. “The kind of young which allows a man to believe he is the master of his destiny, and that if he just fights hard enough he might change the world. These brats have something they don’t even know they possess: faith in themselves.” Archon smiled to himself, and shook his head. “Let’s destroy that. Start the dragon.”
