The Empress and the Ambassador
Page 1
THE EMPRESS AND THE AMBASSADOR
THE EMPIRE – BOOK 1
BY M. D. COOPER
Thanks to the Aeon 14
Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Readers
Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bruyn
Scott Reid
Copyright © 2019 M. D. Cooper
Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2019 M. D. Cooper
Version 1.0.0
Cover Art by Sarah Anderson
Editing by Jen McDonnell, Bird’s Eye Books
Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper
All rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PREVIOUSLY IN AEON 14…
THE SUM ADJUT
END OF AN ERA
CONCILIATION
REMEDIATION
FIONA
THINLY VEILED
NO CHANCE
ATLIOR PACEL
EXFIL
RECRIMINATION
HIDEY HOLE
A PAIR OF CONVERSATIONS
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
DECISIONS
A LITTLE TRIP
AN OLD LEASE
UNLIKELY ALLY
ABDUCTED
ALLIES
THE TABLE
WELL THEN
AFTERMATH
THE BOOKS OF AEON 14
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
When I first set out to write this book, it was with the intent of creating the first story in the Aeon 14 universe that was primarily a romance.
In hindsight, I probably should have picked a different time and setting for that, because Diana and Petra have so much baggage, and are so deep within a vast array of conspiracies and other nonsense, that it took this entire book just to clear the deck for them.
On the flipside, the book ended up being a bit of a political thriller, and I think that future books with these two are going to have some of that bent as well.
All in all, I’m very happy with The Empress and the Ambassador. It’s a bit of a divergence for me, and one that I enjoyed immensely.
So buckle up and see what Diana and Petra are about to get up to.
Michael Cooper
Danvers, 2019
PREVIOUSLY IN AEON 14…
If you are new to Aeon 14, you’re about to dip your toes into a galaxy-spanning story that follows dozens of characters as they struggle to bring peace to humanity in the far future. Don’t worry, though, this story is a nice way to ease into this great universe and get a feel for the tales it contains.
For those of you who have been reading the Orion War books, this story directly follows The Scipio Alliance. In that book, President Sera and Field Marshal Tanis of the Transcend brokered an alliance with the Scipian Empire. Afterward, they left for Silstrand, leaving Ambassador Petra to represent them.
The Alliance’s primary goal is to bring together the nations of the Inner Stars against the Transcend’s enemies and work to stabilize the region and bring about peace. Scipio’s foe is the Hegemony of Worlds, an alliance centered around humanity’s ancient home, the Sol System.
That is Empress Diana’s mandate: direct Scipio’s war machine at the Hegemony, and bring it to Sol’s heliopause.
It is Petra’s job to guide and aid Diana. For years, Petra has been a spy in the empress’s court, feigning a position as a minor ambassador. In reality, she is the Hand’s Regional Director, responsible for all of the covert agency’s operations in Scipio and beyond.
But when President Sera of the Transcend arrived to forge the alliance, she had to reveal who Petra really was. That unveiling greatly damaged Petra and Diana’s relationship—even more so because of their romantic involvement.
Now the Empress and the Ambassador must learn how to mend their broken bridges, while bringing Scipio and the Transcend together in order to make war on the Hegemony.
So long as they can manage not to make it on one another….
THE SUM ADJUT
STELLAR DATE: 10.05.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Imperial Palace
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
Chimellia was annoyed.
Her lips turned downward in her approximation of a smile as she let the feeling of displeasure suffuse her. Not that she minded; it was rare for the empress’s sum adjut to be pleased—enough that the emotion, on the occasions it did occur, was unsettling.
A slender finger tapped against her thigh as she strode down the long corridor, headed toward the empress’s dressing room. The current source of her ire was standing alongside the wall to her right. His uniform was that of a servitor technician, but he wasn’t working on a machine, nor engaged in any other task. Rather, the man stood slack-jawed, his gaze unfocused as he stared off into the distance.
With a single cough, she had the man’s attention. His eyes widened as he took in the personage walking past, noting Chimellia’s finger as it beat out a rhythm on her thigh. With a reddened face, he nodded and hurried off.
Chimellia made note of the man’s Link ident and sent a message to the palace’s dominus ianitor. It was unseemly for his people to be seen lost in the Link in public areas. Not only that, it was undesirable for a machine technician to be seen at all.
She supposed that if there was a measure of enjoyment to be gained from anything, it was the knowledge that, within the walls of the Imperial Palace, Adjut Chimellia reigned supreme.
As I should. Pity the ruin this place will fall into when I pass on. Fools, the lot of them.
Long strides continued to draw her forward, her sable robes fluttering behind, the snap of the cloth further emphasizing her continued annoyance as she spotted a pair of legatas rounding a corner ahead, voices raised in raucous laughter.
Their eyes widened as they caught sight of the sum adjut bearing down on them, and the two legislative electors fell silent, stepping aside to let Chimellia pass.
A smirk formed on her lips, one she let them see. An acknowledgement of their presence, and a reminder that they were beneath her. A message that never suffered for constant reinforcement.
She strode on, eventually reaching the Dome of Saros, a basilica that was once the throne room in an ancient incarnation of the Imperial Palace. Now it was merely an intersection, its kilometer-high vaulted dome—featuring the brooding visage of the Great King Saros—one of a hundred spread across the palace complex.
As she entered the chamber, a hush fell over the hundreds of people moving beneath the ancient king’s baleful gaze. The legatas in the hall behind her had likely put out an alert on the general network that Chimellia was approaching. Though she’d never looked at them, she knew that there were entire feeds dedicated to tracking her movements through the palace. Avid followers of her schedule and duties.
Laggards and sloughs thought they could avoid her gaze by avoiding her, but Chimellia had eyes everywhere in the palace. A door could be left ajar, and she’d know about it in minutes.
Cold smile fixed firmly on her lips, Chimellia strode across the chamber floor, every other person shifting their gait or path to avoid her.
I can only imagine how cumbersome life is for these, she thought as she reached a pedestal set near the center of the room. Always scurrying out of someone’s way.
Mounting the stairs, she stood atop the plinth and sent a signal to the a-grav column to take her up. A moment later, the sum adjut began to rise in the air, rapidly moving toward King Saros’s lidded eye as it roved over the people below.
Cleverly hidden within the façade was a small alcove and balcony; a minute later, the a-grav lift set Chimellia upon
its ledge.
She glanced over her shoulder and looked down at the crowds a kilometer below, appearing as little more than ants, scurrying about their daily tasks.
“As you were,” Chimellia whispered, and then she swept across the balcony and down the short hall toward one of the empress’s many dressing rooms.
Though the sum adjut had been awake for many hours and completed much, her day was finally about to begin in earnest.
As were her travails.
END OF AN ERA
STELLAR DATE: 10.05.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Scipio Diplomatic Complex
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
Petra stood at her office’s window for what would be the last time, taking in the familiar vista spread out below her.
To the right was the massive Imperial Palace, a complex that covered hundreds of square kilometers, punctuated by spires that reached up in an attempt to pierce the heavens, their peaks glittering points of light far above the atmosphere.
She pursed her lips, knowing that one of those gilded prisons would be her new residence before the day was out.
A sigh followed the thought, and she looked left, her eyes settling on the Hall of Heroes, a hulking edifice quite literally constructed from the bones of the empire’s enemies. The structure held a macabre fascination for her, but no real interest. Over Petra’s decades-long residence in Alexandria, she’d only been in the structure a handful of times.
Today, as with most days, neither the hall or the palace held any great inspiration for her. She preferred to look down on the square that lay between them. She supposed that ‘square’ might be too quaint a name for the space, given that it was over ten kilometers across, filled with gardens, a small forest, and dozens of twisting paths that she’d grown all too familiar with.
I’ll still visit you, I promise, she said to her favorite refuge.
She spent another minute tracing the paths with her eyes, spotting some of the regulars far below as they took their ease on the walkways and grassy hillocks.
Her mind full of the calm she would gain from such a walk herself, Petra’s gaze lifted to the view on the far side of the square’s boundary: the never-ending sprawl of Alexandria, the ecumenopolis, the world-city.
Alastar, the AI residing in Petra’s head, interrupted her thoughts.
Alastar sent a feeling into her mind that contained both agreement and mild admonishment.
Petra nodded silently. It was certainly unheard-of for someone in her position to be granted something so ostentatious.
She suspected it was just another way that Diana would attempt to exert control over her. The empress loved to give gifts that ended up being more attached strings than substance. Petra wanted to think that the appreciation from the empress was genuine, but it was difficult to be sure, so clouded were both their myriad duties and loyalties.
Being a former lover of the empress—something she would like to be again—and now representative of the empire’s most powerful ally were not things that helped to clarify motives and reactions.
Some days, Petra didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the hand life had dealt her.
‘The hand’. What an apropos designation, she thought.
Over the past four decades, Petra had masqueraded as an ambassador to Scipio from a distant, minor ally; a carefully manufactured and maintained fiction that allowed her to operate at the heart of one of the most powerful empires in existence.
Her real job was regional director for The Hand, a covert organization working within the Inner Stars—ostensibly for the betterment of humanity and AIs. Petra and the cadre of spies she managed were all from the Transcend, a nation situated far beyond the borders of known space—or what had been known.
That had changed two months prior, when Sera Tomlinson, president of the Transcend, had arrived in Alexandria. Her coming had been an act that sparked the Great Unveiling: the long-awaited event when the Transcend revealed its existence to the empires, alliances, and nations of the galaxy’s Orion Arm, otherwise known as the Inner Stars.
“Sera, Sera,” Petra whispered to herself. “You were always so bad with timing.”
“I know,” Petra replied, her voice quiet as she remembered the many passion-filled nights she had shared with the empress. “I deserved it too. I used her for intel for years.”
“You know, Alastar. There are a lot of things about this job that I really don’t like. The ‘your duty’ speech is one of them.”
“Maybe I’ve just been in the game for too long. Maybe I really just want to be me for once.”
“Right,” Petra said as she turned from the window to again face the now-empty room she’d worked out of for decades. “I just don’t know who she is anymore.”
<‘She’?> Alastar laughed.
“Is she?” Petra asked, trying to remember what she had done for fun before joining The Hand, what interests she’d held, the sorts of people she’d spent her free time with.
She was so naïve. Would I even want to be her again?
“Ma’am?” a voice said from the doorway, and she saw Kory, her head of security, standing at the entrance. “We’re done. The place is scrubbed clean.”
“Very good,” Petra replied aloud. “I’ll see you at our new digs in a bit. First, I need to go pay Diana a visit.”
A sympathetic look came over Kory’s face. “I wish you luck with that, ma’am.”
“Yeah,” Petra gave a self-deprecating laugh. “You know I’m going to need it.”
CONCILIATION
STELLAR DATE: 10.05.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Imperial Palace
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
“How many different outfits are you going to try on?” Chimellia asked, disdain for Diana’s vacillation clearly evident in her voice.
Diana glanced over her shoulder at her long-time sum adjut. “Don’t take that tone with me, Chimellia. I need to set the right precedent with her. Not casual, not too formal. She needs to properly understand the change in our relationship.”
“Someone should understand it,” Chimellia muttered.
The empress spun and fixed the other woman with a penetrating stare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you were lovers, then you learned she was a spy, and publicly humiliated her. Following which, you gave some modicum of apology—one that sounded like you were willing to reconsider a relationship—but then you gave her the cold shoulder for almost two months while President Tomlinson and Field Marshal Richards were ironing out the specifics of the accord.”
Tenna chimed in.
Diana pursed her lips, wishing her AI would keep silent around the sum adjut.
; Her being paired with a Transcend AI had upset Chimellia, making the woman feel like she was being replaced. Not only that, some in the imperial court had begun to whisper that Tenna had been implanted for the express purpose of controlling the empress.
In short, she was often more trouble than she was worth.
Diana ignored the AI and shrugged. “Well…I wasn’t ready to move into something more while her bosses were around. I felt like they were—” She stopped, not wanting to voice her feelings to her aide.
Even so, it was clear from the look in Chimellia’s eyes that she knew what the end of that unspoken sentence was.
‘Like they were judging me.’
Without another word, Diana spun on her heel to face the rack of clothing she’d selected—not that her attention was in any way focused on the attire hanging on the a-grav rods. Her thoughts were wrapped up in how her entire world had changed by the arrival of those two women.
Two months ago, Diana had thought herself to be one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. She’d believed that the Scipio Empire was preeminent in both scope and power. Only the Hegemony of Worlds had been a true rival, though not one that posed any real threat.
Now she knew better.
Both Scipio and the Hegemony were all but insignificant. Far greater empires lurked at the edges of human expansion: the Transcend and Orion. Juggernauts with technology that beggared belief. They were the scions of the ancient terraformers who had left the Sol System almost seven thousand years ago.
It had been believed that the terraformers long ago disappeared, lost in the wars of the interstellar dark ages. But that was not so. They were alive and well, and they were at war. A war that was catching the rest of humanity in the crossfire.
All of that had weighed heavily on Diana’s mind for the past few weeks while she ironed out the accord with the Transcend’s president and field marshal. Both women had exuded an unassailable strength, and while they’d been at the palace, Diana had felt unassailable herself, in the company of those two women who wielded power over half of humanity.