The Princess of Caldris

by Dante D'Anthony

  “She was indeed researching the Arcturian Wars. Specifically New Galen. Had even funded a small expedition there, a couple bots,” Hammerstein looked at Mr. Gibbon who had been dutifully following, “No offense.”

  “None taken.” Gibbon lifted his chin.

  “A couple of bots, nothing Major. An analysis of the remains of ship building facilities on an outer moon had her convinced the Arcturian Fleet was far smaller than the Transhuman Imperials at Deneb IV have long asserted. Much of her research, however has been deleted from the Royal Archive.” he said.

  The doors opened and I felt the well of time like a vortex. I stepped back a moment and Captain Venkatesan held my shoulder. Hammerstein’s chin went forward like a fist, he stepped in ahead of me like a prize fighter, like he would protect me from the quantum streams. He still didn’t get it, I managed to muse with a smirk, that this wasn’t something he could find and wrestle to the ground.

  It was a vast circular room, many levels high. A multicolored skylight crowned its dome. In the center of the floor was a holomap of the galaxy. Built even before colonies had spread to the globular clusters.

  “Something dark she found.” I said. “A hatred and hunger!” I stepped back, away from the room.

  “Away, boy!” Hammerstein snapped. “You rescue no Princess if your wits fail you.”

  So I retreated, towards the fountains with their hologram sculptures. Away from the geometric doors, away from the room where the hologram of the galaxy glittered across the floor like a toy, like a barrel full of fish.

  Tokushima, for all her martial arts and weapons training, exuded nothing less than the same emotions my mother glowed with when I was sick or bruised. Men frame it in terms of “motherly love”, but there is something fierce and feral in it for all of that. Men would do better to think of Artemis; the ancient Greeks had it right with that. If one seeks to understand humanity, go to the Age of Bronze.

  Of course, even at twelve I was compelled, in the presence of such a female archetype, to find my center; my own archetype. Courage and duty and honor in the face of danger.

  So I looked back toward the room. Toward the darkness that had eaten the Princess in her search for truth. Caution sometimes the better part of valor, I was slow in my probing. A great lie had been foisted upon mankind. The Princess had discovered pieces of it, revealed like a beast too large for its camouflage. A wicked talon here, a fang there.

  “Hammerstein!” the captain of the guard snapped. “No more today! Get this child home or I will summon the King.”

  Hammerstein, for all his unbending determination of will, sought hard within himself to grasp and understand my weakness. Hammerstein would have walked into the dark, with not a thought to his comfort or safety. It is what he was. The warrior archetype; there was no retreat for him. It took him time, only moments really, to undue his lifetime of training and instinct to move in to battle. When he was able to detach long enough, he pulled me away from the room.

  It seemed like an eternity. The detective’s ethos, “death before dishonor”, almost undid us both. There was a place and time for his code; this was not that day. He struggled with the concept of retreat, found it, and retreated for my sake. We judge such men harshly, I think, in the realms of civility and safety. In their world such pauses more often than not cost life rather than save it. We must give them that much; born fighting it is not the charge into the fray that gives them pause, but the hesitation that garners an enemy time to reconnoiter.

  I had learned enough that day. Firstly, the Princess had found evidence that the official histories of the Arcturian Wars were in fact incomplete, which alone put her at odds with great powers in the far away Imperia. Secondly, a darker secret lay even behind that, vile, inhuman, and something not even considered. I slept in Hammerstein’s aircar, all the way back towards the Sole estate I was beyond tired, beyond rest, and beyond reach. Only Mr. Gibbons chromium assurances reached my consciousness, and with a joke at that.

  Gibbon’s jokes were not very good. I remember forcing a smile and then fading.

  We were high over the Tangerine Sea when I woke suddenly. Something was coming. Something bad. My impressions were of waspy things, cloaked things with bad intent. Dead things, then-no, not dead. Mechanical.

  “Assassin bots.” I said.

  Hammerstein was like a well oiled matter cannon. His attention snapped to his screen.

  “Defensive maneuvers, scan for cloaked bots.”

  Gabriel Montagudo

  The other Security aircars broke formation like in a floral geometry, spiraling and splining in different directions. High energy defensive shielding glimmering in the bright sun of Caldris, and I felt my seat come alive with emergency protocols; personal shielding. This was not one’s grand papa’s aircar.

  The world moved like a giant toy, first below us, then beside, then above; round and round

  Hammerstein dipped and dove. A gravity bubble saved us from hi-gee pulls in the dives. Over and over again he dodged, still unsure where the bots might be. The other Security aircars were doing the same.

  The bots finally revealed themselves in a sudden and impossible volley of disser fire. Had I not warned the Security team, we would have surely been killed. As it was I could see cuts and slashes of heat ripping at the body of our aircar.

  Sizzling, steaming. Wicked.

  Firing, however, they revealed their positions and now Hammerstein and his team paid back. The rapid click of modified guns sung like electronic dance music, a cool mechanical cursing, vengeance served up cold.

  Hammerstein's eyes gleamed and I sensed the thrill of a grown man in combat. Violent death winged about us with a clockwork impunity such are bots-and there was no fear in him, only an even, amazing sense of “now’ and “act” that precluded any of his life before or after.

  Now. Act. Respond. Win. Survive.

  Existence reduced to a sport, a contest, a ballet of destroying a menace. In the end, he and his team made short work of the bots. I had provided an unexpected ace in the hole for them; the warning they needed to act, to respond, to win-and they did what they were trained to do, flawlessly, beautifully in fact.

  I knew then, at twelve standard Caldris years something most civilized humans never truly understand; the place a warrior goes in combat, a timeless place where they are one with all their ancestors, outside the well of time-with all their descendants hanging in the balance.

  Now. Act. Respond. Win. Survive.

  “Hammerstein, this is Palace security. We’ve just recorded the attack and will have a CSI team on it stat!” a small holo-face spoke from Hammerstein’s screen. Suspicion ran dark and wild in his mind.

  “Sure, you do that. I’ll have our unit expect the results as soon as they come in”

  He wasn’t counting on any of the information being helpful. Whoever had sent the things were professionals. Their trails would be curled and Byzantine. He glanced at me and I sensed his gratitude, and passing curiosity if maybe I could find something even the CSI team had missed.

  “Thanks kid, you saved our-err, well…you know. Hope you had that disser ready, aye, Buck? Hit ‘em back, hit ‘em hard, and hit ‘em hot.”

  I placed my small hand on the disser. “Yeah!” For I am a Sole, and we are from a long line of those who go first, into the unknown; beyond the charted worlds, to settle and build, and fight if need be. That was the first time in my life a warrior had acknowledged me. I held the moment clear and bright, the thick of the fight, glory. My ancestors were with me that day.

  “Let’s get the kid home, people. Tokushima, staff that estate with a platoon of combat duty guards with tech support. Police orders.”

  He held back a very ugly and profane expletive, for my sake. I chuckled a little. The ribald words people invent to snap back at the madness of the universe. In a way, they’re art form unto themselves.

  Mother was furious when informed of the attack, of course. Father’s growing pride in his son, his stra
nge and inscrutable boy, well, it was something new and pleasant for me. No longer merely the child with “special needs” who couldn’t fit in to the ordinary world, I was instrumental in the search for the Princess. I had just preserved the lives of a number of Royal Detectives.

  He had discovered something he hadn’t sensed in me before, call it courage. I realized then too something I hadn’t sensed in him before, his mind so full of business and tasks, errands, responsibilities as it were. How profoundly he valued this thing. Courage. The essential virtue on which all others depend.

  I sensed then too how fragile that virtue-how years of it could be broken with a single moment of weakness, and how often it was so for otherwise brave and worthwhile people. Should that day ever come, should I succumb to fear and fail him, I hope he could find it within himself to forgive me.

  For even at twelve I was not fool enough to think the courageous were always so. Fear and doubt; on the edge of our universe always, ready to pull us in to shambling other-worlds of surreal nightmares. At the end of the day, we have no weapon but our courage, our faith. Woe the one that reaches such a state without a friend. Without a mighty Hammerstein ready to stand in the fire with you.

  Mother had a few expletives of her own withheld when she saw the disser marks on the aircars.

  I have no clue where Gibbons had gotten this bit of programming, but when we alighted from the aircars he surveyed the damage and amazingly, whistled. A long one too. Then he quipped, “Ayie, caramba!”

  Tokushima gave him a look of surprise. “Okay!” she said, “I’ll escort the boy to the kitchens?” she looked to my parents.

  “Crab cakes.” Father said, “he likes crab cakes.”

  I wore the disser in the kitchen while the Chef made the cakes. It made him uncomfortable, and I felt my first guilty pleasure of swaggering machismo. The Chef, an artist to his hypersensitive core, was thoroughly nonplussed.

  “Dissers in my kitchen? Nyet!” He swatted at me with a spatula.

  Tokushima leaned forward, “He saved us from assassins today.” She said softly. “Really nasty assassins. Probably from the Transhuman Imperials out of Deneb IV. Auto-bots with cloaking technology. Only he knew they were coming.”

  His eyes widened. “I see.” He turned the crab cakes. “It is, after all, a stylish disser of great antiquity and value. Perhaps worthy of my kitchen after all.”

  I beamed; glory.

  “Should they come again, please kill them cleanly and do not mess up my kitchen.” he added.

  Steve Moore

  II

  All the stars in a jewel box.

  “Not the fountains and holograms of the palace and its parapets, not the staid Royal Guard with pomp and ceremony deftly done, nay, not the silks and cashmere hauled through hyperspace by stalwart brave star trading guildsmen. Not elegant floating divans crafted in the minds of brilliant architects and engineers-nay, these are not the treasures as Princess of the realm I value most.

  Nay, but the library and art gallery-there is my greatest treasure. Histories upon histories; all the songs of divas tragic and triumphant, the orchestras of countless kingdoms, the fire lit bongos of hardscrabble settlers in steaming jungles, their ships still warm from the hyper-streams, the gallant calls of doomed officers singing their final charge on lonely strange last stands. The collected tales connecting all of humanity across time, their moments of dash and beauty and even their ignominious wretchedness when all was lost and stand they still did. These are my treasures. I never cross the threshold of the palace library without a moments pause to wonder, what soul shall share their insights and brave fortitude against the fading of their light with me that day? Creature comforts and possession; a room at the Inn at best, then gone with the fading of the light. Our stories as such, all that remains for us to forever whisper in the ears of our posterity, ‘Shine, delight, and rise-you are what you do this day.’”

  –Princess Clairissa Maggio, “All the stars a jewel box; come look.” Caldris.

  As fitting for a scholarly Princess, her name’s roots went back to ancient Earth Latin. Clairissa meant “brilliant”, and "Maggio" May, a month of Spring. Like the pure light of an impressionistic painting of flowering trees in the South of France, captured forever, her essays had been food to my young soul. I never told my father, or my mother, only Mr. Gibbons knew how eagerly I had awaited the posting of her journals. Now she was gone, my muse and light-absconded with by whatever short sighted fools, or worse-scoundrels.

  Hammerstein secured a small detail of agents around the Sole estate with combat droids. The palace put security satellites on alert and a station in geosynchronous orbit added another layer of surveillance. The estate secure, we gathered in my father’s study. It was time for me to reveal what I had sensed in the palace library. Night had long since fallen. An eventful day, to say the least.

  My father sat at his desk. Hammerstein and Tokushima took chairs on either side. I sat opposite them all. I could sense apprehension, eagerness, and dread. Beyond the large windows, volcanoes glowed in the distance; father and mothers massive company machinery working the lava.

  I remembered the library and the impressions that had struck me. The echoes in the quanta. “Her research regarding the Arcturian wars had been all consuming.” I began, “I could feel her paths to and fro-her mind’s echoes like a perfume lingering. Her first concern was of course the question of the war’s justification which the official Cyborgian Central Command Economies-the Transhumans-had given for the first strike they had made upon the Arcturian Colonies.”

  Recognition filled their minds. Memories of school days and history lessons regarding those wars. The official justification had been the Arcturians building a fleet of their own with intentions of a massive attack against the Deneb IV. The Cyborgian Central Command Economies-CCCE, had been mastering control of trade in the civilized portions of the galaxy through the building of interstellar gateways.

  The Arcturians stopped granting star gateway rights along the Sagittarius Spiral Arm. Claiming the settlements in the Arm, their frontier, as Arcturian territory, CCCE would not be allowed to extend its tariffs and hegemony. So CCCE leapfrogged ahead into the Spiral Arm and began establishing “settlements” of their own. Gateways began construction. The Arcturians defied them, fighting broke out.

  “The Arcturians had long established that CCCE in the Arm was not building legal settlements at all, which would have required settlers, but military outposts. Intergalactic law regarding settlements required civilian settlers.”

  Hammerstein’s emotions shot across to me, a cynical, grim understanding that indeed the CCCE settlements were a farce. CCCE’s command economies controlled all aspects of their citizen’s lives from the cradle to the grave. In such a culture, frontiersmen could not be created. There were no clamoring masses yearning to breathe free. I smiled back. He understood.

  Father looked apprehensively at the large windows. I felt he regretted their ostentatious openness now. He wished they were smaller. Menace lurked in his mind now at every large window. Would there be more cloaked assassin bots?

  I sensed none. I continued, “The Galaxy had long taken the official CCCE justifications of the war with guarded cynicism. No one wanted to be next. Clairissa felt a real answer to the history could be found among the ruins in the various Arcturian worlds. She requested the funding of some small archaeological expeditions and followed their research diligently.”

  I felt her excitement lingering at the palace. “Calculations of the ruined shipyards sizes and capacities didn’t match the official story. She was growing convinced the attack was unjustified.”

  “Motive.” Hammerstein interjected. “CCCE didn’t want their history soiled.”

  Father’s eyes darkened, “Motive enough to kidnap a Princess of a sovereign star system?”

  Hammerstein shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “There is more,” I said. “One of the expeditions had discovered a CCCE frigate.”

/>   “The invincible armada,” Tokushima said bitterly. “Which inexplicably, by the end of the war, was largely absent.”

  “Yes. The armada of Cyborg warriors which after the war was replaced with a new cast of non hive mind warriors, the new Spartans of CCCE. The irony being that civilization-from their Transhuman ruling caste and the population of citizens more or less under the influence of the hive, have long now been defended by a separate caste. Ordinary humans such as ourselves.”

  That strange combination and order now filled the room with perplexity. It was what it was, the CCCE Samurai defending an empire unlike themselves in every way. The galaxy’s civilizations and worlds taking it as matter of fact, its oddness however striking all, far and near, as a queer sort of arrangement.

  “And the ship the Princess’s expedition discovered?” I asked aloud.

  Now my eyes darkened for sure. “That is what I stepped back from. That is what killed your first empath and left the second in intensive care. The ships logs possessed a recording. In the recording is evil.”

  “You mean something evil?” Tokushima corrected my phrase.

  “No. I mean Evil. Evil itself.”

  They all smiled apologetically at what they perceived as my hyperbole. “Evil is not a thing, Winteroud.” My father said gently. It is an adjective, describing an action.”

  I remembered the impression that had assailed me. “No father, they had discovered Evil. As in a thing. A noun.”

  Discomfort continued among the adults. “Can you describe the nature of this Evil more?”

  “When you pulled me back, Officer Hammerstein, so I could not sense more of it, you were wise. As you noted when you gave me this assignment, my empathic powers have not progressed to the sensitivity of an older empath. But it has progressed enough to know when something is dangerous.”

  I could feel his frustration. So close to more clues, so delicate the search.

  “People describe predatory animals as evil. This is because of the destruction they wreak when humans accidentally fall prey to such things. However, I often feel the minds of such animals in zoological gardens or in the wild. They are not evil. They are merely meat machines going about their business of preying. They have no hatred of their prey, merely hunger. Sometimes a thrill of a hunt. No malice, no diabolical viciousness.”