The Emperor Of The 7 Galaxies

by Dave Gordon

  I dreamt of Earth less often after that. Or rather, I dreamt less of the Earth that used to exist hundreds of years ago. The Earth of my time was an aberration, a vile corruption of nature; that's why I left. No forests, no birds, no streams. Lots of cement, lots of traffic, lots of people. The whole planet would have baked from the effects of “greenhouse” pollutants if it weren't for the crude climate control. There were lush and beautiful planets in the galaxy that had escaped that fate, Borial among them. Earth had followed its own worst instincts into a stinking pit of industrial pollution. The cities were encased in protective shields. Atmosphere generators and radiation protection kept people alive. Anybody caught outside for long suffered burns and sores. I joined the Fleet to avoid living inside an enclosed city.

  Earth faced a dilemma common to many mature worlds. Space technology became available about the same time society could not afford to sustain it. The lure of inexhaustible resources kept space technology alive. Earth Fleet was formed as a joint international venture in technological discovery and planetary exploitation. Contact with other civilizations brought a wealth of beneficial technology. Earth Fleet became a growing concern with good support.

  Earth Fleet's first mission outside the solar system was in the year 2387. That mission made contact with an Urian settlement. The Urians were in pretty much the same state as Earth at the time. They were eager to trade. They provided assistive technology for language translation and gravity control. We provided DNA of the Earth genome for reference. We also made a deal to sell off some of the water from the rings of Saturn. Word of the galaxy's new trading partner grew and soon many missions were finding their way to Earth. Earth was wealthy in heavy elements. The mineral iron, which had been almost worthless on Earth, suddenly became a valuable resource. Earth was finding a measure of prosperity.

  Space is not free from hazards, however. Planetary raiders sometimes attacked with deadly results. Earth Fleet took on a military role. Defending the Earth and its remote stations and settlements became its primary mission. Coordinating the fleet required a military command and control hierarchy.

  I was born in the northern megalopolis of Alberta, Canada. My mother was a medical technician, my father an anonymous sperm donor. That's not unusual what with the decline in the number of males being born. Some say there will be no more men in a thousand years. I say if we keep it up, there will not be any men OR women in a few hundred.

  Mom raised me to age five and then I was sent to boarding school like the rest of the children. Very few children stayed home. Only the very poor or very rich kept their children at home. The boarding school allowed us to go home a few days a month. Those were fun days. Mom would cook and we would play. Then it would be back to the mines, cranking out tests and working in the laundry. Oh yes, we worked our little butts off. They knew what our capabilities and limitations were thanks to genetic testing. We were assigned tasks according to our skills. That was not a good thing for me.

  * * * *

  The young men nervously shuffled their feet. They felt out of place, exposed. Anxiety creased their spotless young faces. The gleaming, anti-septic room was painfully brighter than the caves they inhabited. They wore shapeless gray jumpsuits that hung about their shoulders and puddled at their feet. None knew why they were there.

  They knew each other as they all came from the industrial services unit of the same school. They were from the laundry, kitchen, housekeeping, environmental, and janitorial services sections. All the most mundane and tedious parts of a school renowned for the brilliance of its economic studies graduates.

  No dreams of glory or success filled the heads of the subdued young men. They knew their futures as surely as they knew tomorrow. Their fate had been cast when sperm met egg. Their mothers had condemned them. Their merciful mothers knew of their deficiencies at conception but still chose to carry them to birth. Most women aborted these children of a lesser god. The stain of being male meant a life of servitude. Men were in high demand because the gleaming city needed their labor. Their welfare was assured but their happiness was not.

  No gleam of youthful exuberance flashed in their dull eyes. Any playful nature had been carefully medicated from them in the name of industrial efficiency. There were no wild dreams of adventure or romance. There were no dreams at all. “To sleep, perchance to dream.” God forbid. Some might require a touch of testosterone to encourage a limited competitive spirit. Not enough to divert their attentions from their duties, just enough to allow the best to rise. After all, someone had to oversee the work. Intellectual capital was too valuable to spend on simple societal maintenance.

  A beautiful blond woman emerged from the lift across the room. The brilliant white jumpsuit she wore highlighted her tan skin and deep green eyes. She slowly walked towards the waiting group, a light smile playing across her exquisite features. She walked up to the group and struck a pose, perfect teeth and radiant blond hair gleaming in the bright light.

  “Welcome to Technological Resources Services,” she said. Her full lips shaped the words perfectly. Her voice fell across them like glossy satin, smooth and light. Some faint feeling just out of reach beckoned them to her words. They yearned to hear her speak and again, to bless them with her rare and beautiful gift.

  Rare to them, perhaps. Her sort were abundant in the beautiful city under the protective dome. The dome protected the beautiful people from poisonous radiation and defined the prison that held the young men were captive. Mothers who were able to meet the price chose long legs and perfect figures at conception. The price of an immaculate conception was dear but very necessary. A successful child could only assure good care in old age. Society had no need of the aged but a well-cared for mother was the pride of the business class, a class dominated by women. Strong, wealthy women who demonstrated their superiority by providing for the comfort of their family. No such assurance awaited the young men who huddled in that brilliant hall.

  “Today you shall experience one of the true marvels of our age,” the perfect goddess said. “The future that belongs to you is waiting behind these walls,” she said as she swept her lithe arm across the scene. “Today is what you make it. It is yours for the taking. Do well and success will be yours. But you must focus on the job ahead,” she said with knitted brow and pursed lips. “This is the crossroad. The better you do here, the better you will do out there!” She struck another pose and thrust out her precious arm to point at the wall of diamond glass behind the group of boys. The boys turned as one to face the wall behind them. The white wall became transparent revealing the vast megalopolis below. A gasp of amazement escaped their lips as they beheld the sweeping vista of the glass city. The protective dome that shielded the life below reflected the image of the towering buildings under it. The young men stared in mute wonder at the glittering palaces of commerce rising into the air. Though they stood high above the ground, the buildings rose far above them. Most of the group had never been above the third floor of any building before. Theirs was a life underground. The messy business of catering to the privileged took place in darkened caverns. The roots of the city reached deep into the earth. The deep roots fed and sustained the city. The vital substance the city required was blood. The life blood that flowed underground was that of the young men who worked there. The city would no more raise them from below than it would rip the roots from the beautiful trees that flourished above. They were a commodity, an asset. Their numbers were determined by how many would be needed to take the garbage out. They were valued as a source of fresh linen. Now they stood upon the lofty heights of a world they might never see again.

  The boys stood in wonder of the beautiful glistening scene. All but one. One was filled with disgust. There was something wrong with it all. Something perverted and sick. The life below them was the life of a machine, a money machine that had no use of flesh and blood beyond producing profit. This was not life, this was death; a slow beautiful death among fields of concrete and flowers of steel. He
was going to try his very hardest today, striving as though his life depended on it. He would not feed the polished monster he beheld in the window. He would escape.

  * * * *

  After twelve years of servitude, I was ready to get out from under the dome. An aptitude test showed that I would be a fine candidate for a dull, routine job with a high degree of mortal danger so off to space I went. Space flight is not nearly as dangerous as it had once been but when something unexpected happens you had better be able to deal with it fast. Things tend to go from zero to nuts in nothing flat. One little rock the size of a pea goes through the hull and into a control panel and there is suddenly crisis. If you are unlucky, the rock goes through you. That happened to an engineer during my first mission. He was off-shift in his bunk. A rock went right through his liver and he bled to death before anybody could even get to him.

  It still beats Earth, though. Earth sucks. Back in the old days there were governments run by people. They voted on things, they had laws. Then business became law. Big companies grew larger and larger until they had swallowed everything up. They had thousands of subsidiaries and hundreds of millions of employees. Sure, there were tiny little businesses in the neighborhoods. Some monolithic giant with no face and no conscience would gobble up anything successful. Governments ceased to exist for the people and existed only for business. They say Earth used to look blue from space. Now it is brown. When I read about the Earth that existed three hundred years ago, it made me sick. Forests, rivers, fresh air. You could stand outside in the full sun in a t-shirt. I preferred to be in space where a good day is one where you did not die rather than be on Earth.

  That was before my liaison with the Tuya. A good day was one that Tuya and I were together. She stood at her nightstand brushing her hair. I made a guttural growl in the back of my throat from across the room and crouched. She turned on me with her eyes flashing. I knew she could not let the affront pass. She tensed and lightly sprang across the room planting her foot in my chest. The blow knocked me into the air and took the wind out of me. I fell hard flat on my back, wheezing. She paced above me snarling softly.

  “Oh, my little kitty, she is so pretty. Would she like a bowl of warm milk?” I gasped.

  She pounced on me and we grappled in each other's arms until we were spent.

  Space was a wonderful place.

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  * * *

  Chapter 4

  I was asleep in my bunk and Tuya was on-shift when I was tossed into the air by a ferocious jolt accompanied by a thundering boom. I landed on the floor hard not knowing what just happened. The ship began to yaw as I came to my senses. I threw on my clothes and raced through passageways that were crowded with people drunkenly lurching through the slanted halls. The ship took on a sickening fun-house aspect as the ship continued to roll onto its side. My heart raced with the knowledge that attitude control was off-line. Is life support going to go next? I thought to myself. The ship began to right itself just before it became impossible to walk. The people flooding the corridor relaxed a bit.

  I headed for the bridge. All personnel of the next shift reported to their stations in case of an emergency. That was to ensure adequate manning levels if there had been any casualties. The crew of the previous shift stood ready for further orders. I did not care about any of that, I was concerned for Tuya.

  I walked quickly to the lift hoping it was still working. A moment of fear passed when the door slid open. The lift made a painfully slow descent to centerline. I almost ran to the double-wide bulkhead labeled BRIDGE. The door slid open. The sight stunned me. The bridge was a mess. Everything not fastened down had been tossed into the air. Tuya was fine, she had probably reacted fast enough to avoid injury. Everybody else had suffered some degree of injury. Ensign Mayward at the Navigation console was bleeding from the head. Several people were lying on the deck not moving. Commander Alworth was trying to collect himself and having a difficult time of it. I believed he had a concussion. Lieutenant Commander Abbers ran through the door. She relieved Commander Alworth. He dropped from the Captain's chair and fell onto the deck.

  “Status!” Abbers shouted.

  “Engineering. Engines on-line, power 80%,” the Engineer reported from the power unit section. Eighty percent was enough power for essential systems but not much more.

  “Environmental,” said the graying man sitting next to Tuya. “Atmosphere 70% and holding, gravity on-line, attitude control re-established and stable, life support 100%.” The Environmental officer, Lieutenant Mason, was incapable of being rattled. He reported as if it were his standard shift log entry. He had seen a lot of action before this assignment and a minor life-threatening emergency did not bother him.

  “Navigation off-line,” Mayward managed to get out. He was close to unconsciousness. No good having him report to sick bay just to pass out midway. I relieved him with a wave and helped him lay down. Having navigation off-line is not a good thing, I started trying to find the problem.

  A medical team burst through the door and started to triage the wounded. I could sense that the people littering the floor were all alive. Nothing is quite as telepathically silent and eerie as a dead person.

  “Communications on-line,” Tuya said calmly. She and Mason would have been a good pair. I wondered again at my marvelous good fortune.

  “Medical,” the ship's doctor reported over the intercom. “Sick bay on-line. No known fatalities, maybe a hundred injuries.” The fatalities would be reported later.

  “Recreation. Lots of injuries, no fatalities to report. Yet,” the Rec. officer reported from main recreation room. There were probably a hundred people in there at any given time.

  A tense silence fell over the bridge while everyone tried to make sense of the situation. Tuya spoke without turning to face Lieutenant Commander Abbers. “No alien vessels within sensor range,” she said as if reporting today's lunch menu. An audile sigh of relief spread across the bridge. If we had sustained an attack of that magnitude, the next blow might have destroyed us. An alien ship nearby would have definitely qualified as “a moment of shear terror". Tuya sat at her station looking mildly interested. I wondered if she ever got scared. I was shaking and sweating like death was standing next to me. I knew that if it had been, Tuya would have slapped it silly. I never felt safer than when I was with her despite the injuries that sometimes resulted.

  The status report was pretty good news considering the blow we had taken. The only real damage, aside the injuries, was the Navigation station and a few metric tons of atmosphere. It would take just a couple of days to replace the atmosphere, but the Navigation computer was strangely quiet. I could not get anything out of it. The unit had power but it would not respond to any commands.

  Lieutenant Commander Abbers turned to me and said, “Well, Shipman Tular, any news for us?”

  It would have been a great time to be brilliant but I had nothing. “No sir,” I said while trying to think of something better. Since all the other stations rely on the same computer system, and there did not appear to be any local damage, the problem had to be between the computer in engineering and the sensor on the nose on the ship. I made a guess. “The symptoms indicate the problem may be the forward sensor array.”

  “Thank you, Shipman Tular,” Lieutenant Commander Abbers said. That bit of information was not very useful to her at that moment but she accepted it without comment.

  “Can anyone tell me what the hell happened?” she asked allowing the slightest bit of exasperation to show. “Environmental, where did the atmosphere loss happen?”

  Lieutenant Mason calmly ran through a series of screens. “Forward section one-zero,” he said.

  Forward section zero-zero would have been the most forward part of the ship. Section one-zero would be one hull plate back on the zero line, or keel, of the ship. Right where the navigational sensors are located. I had a feeling I was facing unemployment for a while. There was not much use for navigators without
a navigation unit. Worse than that, getting back home could be a bit of a problem.

  “Lieutenant Zhia!tu, Shipman Tular, get out there and see what happened!” Lieutenant Commander Abbers snapped. There was no better pilot than Tuya. Her uncanny reflexes and instincts were unbeatable. Our flourishing relationship was common knowledge throughout the ship. Things of that nature were about the only interesting news there was. My ability to withstand her affections had broken the endurance record. It was clear that we were somehow compatible, although the idea was bewildering to those that knew her. Sending her and me to check out the trouble made good sense. We both stood up to leave. The bird-like Ensign BacTang hovering at Tuya's shoulder sat down at the Communications station and the Navigation console went unmanned. I was thrilled to get duty with Tuya, ordinarily we barely spoke to each other while on-shift. An extra-vehicular survey would be fun.