Teramar: The Gathering Night

by Thomas Michael Murray

  “Sir, did you say something?”

  “Good god. I must have been talking to myself again,” Metak worried. The admiral didn’t bother with a reply. The aid knew when to retreat. The quiet murmur of voices had a frenetic edge.

  With a startling speed, a pack of hovers raked the dome. Metak was known for bending technology to win a war. His pilots were running intense exercises that certainly pushed the engineer’s specifications. The plan was to exit light speed in the blink of an eye, moving to an immediate attack posture directly above earth. The prince and his one ship would be immediately overwhelmed – the planet held hostage.

  The main door to the bridge suddenly shushed open. Normally, the command center was an entirely secure location. One had to obtain clearance from inside. Metak turned and to his horror he saw her. The queen glided into the dome. The crier shouted, “Her serene majesty, Queen of Teramar, regent to the living throne.” She smiled benevolently at the crew who scrambled to their feet. Activity ceased. A dreary silence filled the room.

  “Metak, sorry to surprise you. You can pick up your jaw now. The family keeps a secret apartment in these larger vessels. My little sanctuary exists independent of ship’s systems. My husband used these to quietly transport himself from place to place. Officially, we came on board as luggage.” Her majesty chuckled indulgently. “Sorry to have not informed you earlier, but we felt the people should continue to think I am on Teramar.” After making eye contact with all the bridge officers, she flirtatiously said, “At ease gentlemen.”

  “The queen is on this ship,” flashed through his mind. “This is a terrible turn.” Metak moved toward her presence and delivered a curt bow. Livia’s guards flowed around her. “She’s aged.” The admiral had not seen the queen in person for quite some time.

  “Welcome to the bridge, your majesty.” Metak remained formal attempting to conceal true thoughts.

  The queen recognized the man’s obvious consternation. “Don’t get all worked up, Metak. You look like you are passing a stone. I’m not here to get in your way. There may come a time during the whole adventure where a personal appeal from a mother might help our cause.”

  “Of course, majesty. I would never question your purpose, but I am concerned for your safety. I know you are uncomfortable with space travel. We need to return you to Teramar. You are the rallying point. There are comfortable transport hovers on board that can ferry you to the home world.”

  “Metak, please. Don’t be ridiculous. The new head chamberlain is having the time of his life as my alias in halo-disguise. My lovers are probably more pleased fucking the fake me. The head chamberlain will certainly work harder for it. I wonder if they even notice their dicks come out brown? Now, we wouldn’t want to get in the way of that, would we?”

  Metak made a face. “She is truly a repulsive individual.”

  The queen admonished him, “Metak, don’t be such a prude. Can’t you have a little fun for once?” She stepped closer into his personal space. Perspiration appeared on his forehead. He only hoped the sweat hadn’t started to show through the uniform. He could smell her and she smelled good. “This monster knows how to play any man.”

  Livia looked at him with those unsettling green eyes. “I’ve reviewed your plan, Metak. It is a good one. The prince will capitulate when you hold hostage these precious earth people he has come to love. However, let’s be clear that I am your back-up plan. The influence of a mother may carry some import.” Her voice carried an edge.

  “Majesty blesses us with her wisdom.” Metak stammered, “Ma’am, would you care for a tour of the battle stations and to meet some of your crew?”

  “There is no rush, admiral. I would prefer that you deliver a review of our progress when I arise tomorrow. Would you care to dine with us this evening?”

  “I would be honored, majesty.”

  “I never thought I would ever say this, but I’ve had too much of these boys - looking side to side - and require the company of an adult. That would be you. Feel free to bring a chaperon.”

  Then, in hiss of swirling gossamer she was gone.

  The young guards lurched confidently after their mistress.

  “Good gods. Dinner.”

  Potato World

  The king’s tormentors rolled videos of Capet villages and towns razed by the merciless razor wire. The weapon mowed the buildings just as a royal gardener mows the royal lawn. Thereafter, Uriah storm troopers moved to eradicate the remaining Capet citizenry who cowered in their holes. Nothing was safe on the king’s home world. Remian children were regularly hunted – treated as animals. The videos were a horror to behold, far worse than any physical torture the king received in this place.

  When the lights screamed on again, and they always did, the king roused himself from a senseless consciousness. Intelligence slowly returned. He could see things again. Remember things. This time he noticed missing fingers. “Will I be able to weald a weapon again?” The king’s thoughts moved like a potato.

  Occasionally, he heard the scream of a woman. The desperate sound was distant and forlorn. He tried to discern if the voice was his Alian’s. The cries were always the same. A gigantic halo-screen would then bounce open with clockwork precision. His gaolers delighted in the presentation of the interrogation. “Alian, defiled by those animals,” the king raged. But the endless footage of rape and torture eventually blurred to monotone, harboring an isolated shout or bark here or there. The Uriah gaolers were never subtle, always over playing. A numb mind could forever escape into a numb mind.

  The king frequently visited the early days of his life. Those were easy to remember, when he was tall and strong and he could fight or couple with whomever he wanted. He vividly recalled his Livia was so beautiful then. Headstrong and independent, the Uriah men accepted her as an equal. During one of the few official visits to her father’s estate, Hypanis Uriah grandly entertained the then young king, dangling his daughter like an expensive bauble. After a long evening finally wound down, the king excused himself to return to his apartment.

  The sleeping room was chalk bright as the full moon crashed through an open window. Everything was hot to the touch. Climate control was off. Restless, he left the apartment and carefully negotiated a slippery grand stair for a sight of Hypanis Uriah’s clear blue lake. The water shimmered aquamarine in the distance. Livia, a night creature herself, saw the young king emerge from her own great balcony. She followed him. Without words, they coupled at the water’s edge. A humid sun started to rise before the king had finished his business with her. She was insatiable like a man. Covered in wet sand, he thereafter went to her father with a proposal of marriage. The young man was convinced his life with Livia Uriah would develop into a gratuitous roll of licentious pleasures that also produced many healthy heirs.

  After an extravagant state wedding, the king quickly learned that palace life did not agree with his young bride. Livia regularly displayed horrible tantrums where she abused his servants. Word came to him that they ran from her. He did not interfere. He believed his queen would eventually find a better path. But Livia never really accepted the role of a benevolent consort. On one occasion, he remembered her raging through the staterooms. As the young queen opened and slammed the large doors, creating a booming ricochet noise throughout the entire wing, Livia stumbled upon the family’s ancient diaper nurse, a revered retainer who had taken care of all the Capet babies for years. The woman was old now although her breasts still sagged with the sweet milk. Her kind was bred to feed the royal children – those babies that were allowed to live.

  Livia had never seen this woman among the hundreds of servants she supervised. Finding the old nurse confused and unresponsive, the young queen threatened to throw her to the streets of pleb city. In response, the deaf woman fearfully mumbled something quite unintelligible. Livia moved to strike the cowering servant with the back of her hand. The queen did not see her husband standing just behind. He caught the arm. He saw the eyes. That unquenchable
Uriah need. The king beat Livia afterwards to such an extent that she could not show herself for a week, although the king believed his wife’s convalescence was excessive.

  Word reached the Uriah home world where her father and the Uriah clansmen viewed the queen’s treatment as a great disrespect to the family. Their discontent became apparent on a second visit to her father’s estate. After a long hunt through their magnificent forest and ending in the great Uriah mountain lodge, when the exhausted runions were finally stabled and the day’s game cleaned, the king wished to speak privately with Livia’s father. Standing before Hypanis Uriah’s apartment, the household guard insolently refused admittance to the young king. More shocked than affronted, he instinctively reached for the long knife. The lord of all planets was within his right to take their lives like rabid animals.

  With venom in his voice, the king hissed, “Do you have the slightest idea with whom you are speaking? No one refuses me anything.” Livia slithered to him. He pushed her to the floor. She laughed indecently, waving encouragement to the guards. He had never seen such an expression on her. “Livia, what is wrong with you?” She laughed even harder, almost hysterically. A chill went up the king’s spine.

  “Where are my men?” He looked around the great atrium. They were alone except for the two men at the door. Superbly trained, the king knew he could easily kill both with bare hands. Examples needed to be made. Abruptly, Livia’s cruel brother then strode onto the scene – and too conveniently at that. The siblings shared knowing looks. The two resembled each other in their hawkish features but one was light and the other dark. The king had rather unpleasant memories of Charles Uriah from when they were children. As a boy, Charles built a sick laboratory where he hung small lizards from their limbs, gradually climbing the food chain with these experiments. The young king glared at his brother in law. One against three. Automatically, years of training took charge. The king took note of the hall with its columns and many recesses. Charles North disrespectfully winked at the king – almost a taunt. All four of them simultaneously drew their long knifes with an eerie scrape of metal. Livia nodded encouragement to her brother.

  “Shall we have some fun, Capet,” the cold-eyed sibling challenged him? He then sniffed and snorted the air like a dog. They encircled the young king.

  Steel clashed. His majesty easily parried Charles’s predictable assault. “Where are my men,” the king worried? He parried the next lazy thrust. Charles did not appear to be trying very hard, while the other two ineffectively poked at him. With the sound of a cannon, Hypanis Uriah’s grand door suddenly slammed opened and there was Livia’s father looking displeased. “Enough,” he bellowed! The two young men looked guiltily at the great lord.

  “I have been insulted, Hypanis,” cried the king. “By these three, which includes your son.” The great lord appeared unmoved. “I will need satisfaction,” the young king roared!

  Hypanis Uriah sneered, “Your majesty, will you always be picking fights under my roof? Outside my door? Bad manners – wouldn’t you say?” Angry green eyes flashed at him.

  “Picking fights,” the king seethed? “These three are hardly worth it.” He tried to calm furious emotions. “Where are my people,” the king frantically thought?

  Hypanis Uriah was obviously weighing the odds. “Four to one.” Livia retreated to the safety of a deep alcove, although she was still near enough to witness the unusual proceedings. Her tongue flickered with a snake’s persistence, tasting the smell of men.

  Just as the lord of the house appeared ready to draw his own sword, Archibald Cox and a phalanx of Capet guards clattered into the hall. The king uncomfortably looked at all concerned. If he ordered his men to seize the three, Hypanis Uriah might easily give his own order for an all out blood bath, letting fortune forge her own destiny. All of the Uriah men on the estate were armed to the teeth and were far more numerous than his. Hypanis smiled cruelly at the young king. His eyes said, “Your decision now?”

  The king’s body language gave the order. Many said the king saved countless lives that day. And yet on miserable reflection, that moment was the worst decision of his life.

  Later in the evening at the state banquet, his majesty then observed his royal wife stalking a darker version of their now grown Hadrian. The king didn’t mind infidelities. What enraged him was the publicity of the insatiable woman. Others at the fete tittered about the queen’s behavior. Furious, he stormed over, grabbed the long braid and dragged her screaming with an arm twisted behind the back. He wanted to stamp on the lily-white neck and hear it crunch. The next day he gave orders to leave for Teramar. As the hover raced away to his starship, and as the safety net of his own military enveloped him, the king looked down upon that planet with great relief that he was heading in the opposite direction.

  Hindsight makes it easy to see the truth in the past. The king miserably shook his head. “I should have crushed them with everything I had, after I returned to Teramar.” In reality, the king doubled down on appeasement and brought Lord Charles North to the capital. “Keep your enemies close” was his father’s motto. He genuinely hoped to end the endless wars but in trying to do so he created a terrible one.

  Bang. Bang. The noise shook the king out of his reverie. The sounds of food being served rose around him. In his most lucid movements, the king noted that his servers were not the usual gang. They were younger guards who were still intimidated by the king’s sacred presence. Occasionally, he endeavored to pitch his voice in a perfect command. The servers would initially jerk to the sound, but their training would then take over. The bosses of the jail knew of these experiments and usually ordered the most uncomfortable retaliations.

  Clang went the shift change. He heard the clicks and salutes. The building had become a person to him, or rather a dying person. “Yes, the building was getting sick just like me.”

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  The Great Lawn

  Hadrian spent many earth minutes considering his wardrobe for this visit to the White House. He hoped to fulfill every earth person’s expectation for his appearance as alien prince. He therefore pulled out a well-worn uniform he hadn’t touched in a long time. Tastefully cut, the vestment had the feel of an earth poncho but with a deep line at the chest. “Respectable enough,” he thought. The costume was something he would have normally worn at an important event on Teramar. Shayne stood opposite in a less exotic navy-jacket with his alma mater’s tie.

  Appreciating the younger man, “Wow… Sexy,” slipped out.

  “I’m not.”

  “You can’t help it.”

  “We don’t wear suits like earth people. Much of the time we hardly wear anything at all as you so often point out to me.”

  Shayne provided a reassuring smile. “You’ll impress them. That leafy shirt or whatever you call that personifies a woodsman prince.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment then. You look nice too.”

  “I’m a black basketball player trying to be a preppy Ivy League guy on a visit to the White House.” Hadrian smiled at that. Shayne’s sense of humor was making a comeback. Hadrian missed the bad jokes.

  The hover parked above the great lawn. As the ship’s shiny lift ferried them to the ground, a damp wind misted their faces. Crowds of people and news trucks massed beyond the gates. The police and military kept the straining mob at bay.

  “I guess word is out,” said the big man nervously.

  The smell of cut grass hung in the air. Ahead, Hadrian could see the president at the portico with his cabinet. Also present was the president of China, who had his own small retinue. The young men made the lonely walk to meet the prestigious gathering. Guards in dress uniform clicked and saluted as they passed. Hadrian thought the president appeared at ease, a man used to chaos. This gave Hadrian confidence.

  The prince obviously knew what a handshake was and he put one out there. “Hello. You can call me Hadrian.” He flashed the friendliest of smiles as he warmly s
hook each president’s hand with both of his hands.

  “Let me introduce my friend, Shayne Wright.”

  “Good to see you again,” the president said. Shayne had visited the White House when he won the college championship a few years back. Since the New York tabloids were a guilty pleasure for the leader of the free world, the president was current to the less than flattering news on these two. He had seen the famous photos. That was how the FBI ultimately found this Hadrian Capet. The president tried to push those images aside. Also present was the investigative team: Jolly Perkens, Justine Martin, Robert McNamara and even Kurt Huber. They solemnly stood in the back row. Following the introductions, the American president then put out his arm to show the way, “Through the door, your highness.” The leader of the free world was his formal self today, pruning back the old Virginian in him.

  As the important entourage entered the grand hallway, Hadrian felt oddly at home in the historic building. The famous mansion appeared smaller than what they presented on the television. An experienced host, the president slipped into a well-oiled routine and led his guests through an elegant foyer and up the marble stairs to the oval office. A small draft of wind ran through the newly formed hole that Jessica made just that morning. The White House grounds people had hurriedly erected a tarpline as cover. The other guests murmured noting the damage. The president insisted this first meeting occur here. He wanted to remind the young prince how they were first introduced.

  Taking stock of the spacious office, Hadrian moved to the head of the room and addressed the audience, “Nice to meet all of you. Please sit down and relax. I’ll stand here right in front of these couches. I come with prepared remarks and can take questions after.”

  Justine thought, “He’s just a boy.”

  “Something’s coming,” she whispered to Jolly. “Shhhhh,” the director hissed back. I can’t hear.”