Guardian of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘Wait,’ the cat said.

  ‘We need a time frame—’ Blake said, but the cat interrupted him.

  ‘You will have your people back when we are satisfied that you will not attack us,’ the leader said.

  ‘How long?’ Admiral Blake said.

  ‘As long as necessary,’ the leader said.

  ‘As necessary?’ Blake said, but the leader interrupted him.

  ‘We have two dragon scales. We will contact you when we are ready to transfer the humans. Leave this system and cat space.’

  ‘Some of the hostages are injured. Hand them over to us, and we can care for them without straining your resources.’

  ‘No,’ the cat said.

  ‘Then we would like to give you some potatoes as a thank you gift,’ Blake said.

  The cat bared its teeth. ‘Stop trying to open negotiations. This is not negotiable. Leave. If you are not out of this system immediately, we will kill humans.’

  ‘You removed their soulstones,’ I said, trying to buy time with the first ridiculous reason I could think of. ‘Allow us to provide our people with new ones.’

  The cat leader hesitated, looked away, then turned back to the screen. ‘That may be acceptable.’

  Both of us were silenced for a moment at the unexpected response, then Blake quickly recovered.

  ‘We can provide as many soulstones as you want,’ he said. ‘You can fit them on yourselves as well—’

  The cat hissed and flattened its ears.

  ‘Or not,’ he said.

  ‘We will permit you to provide new stones for the humans,’ it said, its ears still flat.

  ‘We’ll have to bring some people down to implant them . . .’

  It waved us away. ‘We can do that. We understand the process. You may provide the stones, but a dragon is not to bring them.’ Its ears flicked forward again. ‘Choumali is to bring them.’

  ‘That is not possible,’ Blake said.

  ‘Then the stones will not be fitted to your people, and any who die will be dead for good.’

  ‘I’ll bring them,’ I said.

  ‘You personally,’ the cat said to me.

  I nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘Alone and unarmed.’

  ‘Choumali . . .’ Blake said.

  ‘Let’s build some goodwill, sir,’ I said. I know more about the cats than any human, I added telepathically. Let’s put this knowledge to good use.

  ‘Guarantee her safety. You threatened her earlier,’ Blake said to the cat.

  ‘She will not be harmed,’ the cat said. ‘You may bring stones, then return to the ship and leave this system. We will tell you when you can return and collect your people.’

  ‘They gave us surface co-ordinates,’ I said. ‘I assume that means we can land.’

  ‘Wonderful. No dragons, no Marque, no backup,’ he said, and turned to Masako. ‘We need something to carry her down. Do we have an alternate method for travelling short distances like this? Small craft?’

  ‘I’ll arrange for one to be manufactured and sent through with enough soulstones for everybody,’ Masako said.

  Blake lowered his voice. ‘They’d better keep their word about not hurting you, Jian, or we will drop more than chilli on them.’

  *

  Two hours later Masako fetched a small craft – a box with an anti-grav drive on the bottom. She nosed the shuttle towards us, then folded next to us on the gallery of her ship.

  ‘Here’s your transport,’ she said. ‘I’ll put you on it, and it will carry you down to the surface.’

  ‘Good luck, Colonel,’ Blake said, and saluted me.

  I put my hand on Masako and she folded me into the shuttle. The interior was a single empty space, with one row of basic seats and the cases full of soulstones stacked inside. Enough soulstones for over a thousand people almost completely filled the shuttle.

  I looked around. ‘There’s no helm?’

  ‘No need,’ she said. ‘It knows the co-ordinates and it will take you there, and bring you back up when you tell it to. Take a seat and strap in; this isn’t the most comfortable way to travel. Good luck, dear Jian, let’s bring your people home.’ She disappeared.

  I deliberately didn’t think about what was waiting for me as I strapped myself into the seat nearest the hatch. My stomach fell out as the ship moved. We had to get our people back, and David was down there.

  I grew increasingly nervous about the whole stupid idea for the next hour of noisy shuddering as the shuttle descended. I had no view outside the shuttle, no weapons, and no idea what was waiting for me when I landed. I tried to relax and clear my mind, and was jolted out of my trance when the shuttle landed with a perceptible bump. I unhooked myself as the door opened and a blast of hot, dry air, full of grit, blew into the cabin. I went to the opening, feeling slightly higher gravity than I was accustomed to, and looked out.

  The little ship was on a uniformly wide, flat platform that looked like textured white glass. The sun was setting and the lilac sky was reflected in its surface. The shuttle had landed close to the edge of the pad, and a magnificently blue lake to the left stretched to the horizon. The tan-coloured sand at the edge of the lake was damp where the water had evaporated and salt rimmed the periphery. The cat city filled the rest of the view from the edge of the lake to the horizon on the right. Most of the buildings were small, the human equivalent of five storeys or less, with uniformly ochre-coloured walls, polished to a metallic sheen that made the city appear to be constructed from a single lump of gold. The buildings were cylindrical, with dome-shaped tops, as wide as they were tall. Large, smooth, transparent stones, like black glass, ranging in size from twenty centimetres to more than three metres across were embedded in the walls. There were no windows, only the stones, and sections of complex decorative grillwork punched out of the burnished clay walls that probably guided and cooled the breeze through the buildings.

  The cat leader and a small entourage were waiting for me and walked stiffly across the landing pad to the shuttle. They went past me into the shuttle, ignoring me, and I followed the leader as it opened one of the cases full of soulstones, pulled a stone out and held it up to the light.

  ‘They’re the real thing,’ I said.

  ‘I know they are,’ the leader said. It gestured and said something in their own language, making me painfully aware of my reliance on Marque’s translation ability. I’d been so accustomed to Marque’s constant presence that I hadn’t even made the effort to learn any alien languages. The rest of the cats came into the shuttle, collected some of the soulstone boxes, and took them out. The cat leader gestured for me to sit on one of the shuttle’s chairs.

  I didn’t move, still standing near the hatch.

  ‘Can I take our people now?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even the injured ones? How about the youngest—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I see my son?’

  The other cats re-entered the shuttle and collected more stones.

  The cat leader sat sprawling over the chairs, but its emotions didn’t match the casual body language; it was full of aggression towards me. It spoke in flawless Euro, with a cultured accent. ‘Sit, Colonel Choumali. Let’s discuss terms.’

  I sat in one of the other chairs. ‘We transported all your ships. You don’t need to hold our people any more.’

  ‘On the contrary, we can’t trust you,’ the cat said. ‘The dragons have been invading other species for centuries. You say that they’ve stopped—’

  ‘They have!’ I said, interrupting.

  One of the cats carrying the soulstones stopped and stared at me, then lowered its head and carried the box out. That was the last of them, and the shuttle was empty.

  ‘Do not interrupt me,’ the cat leader said.

  I raised my hand. ‘I understand.’

  ‘We will implant the soulstones into your people, and then they will be our guests while the stones become attuned. We would like to obs
erve the process, so we will hold—’

  ‘That’s five years!’ I said.

  Its ears went flat. ‘I had not finished speaking.’

  I raised my hand again. ‘I apologise.’

  ‘They will stay with us while the stones are attuned. They will be our insurance against dragon aggression – although the dragons are so destructive, it may not be enough. We will study how the stones work, and your people will learn our ways. At the end of the attunement process, they will be free to leave here and return to the Dragon Empire.’

  ‘Why do you want to see how attunement works?’

  ‘To prove to our people that it doesn’t work,’ he said.

  I knew he was wrong, because I’d sensed the nature of the entity that inhabited the body when the stone was attached – even when the body was different, the soul was the same. But arguing with the cat was a waste of time.

  Instead I said, ‘Five years is a very long time.’

  It waved one hand. ‘Not when you’re effectively immortal.’

  I didn’t have much bargaining power, so I followed my diplomatic training – agree to their terms and hope that they could be negotiated down later. The diplomatic training didn’t cover one painful aspect of the situation.

  ‘Can I see my son before I leave?’ I said.

  It stretched its arms across the back of the seat. ‘I don’t know, can I see mine?’

  It did have the same colour fur and eyes as Oliver – the resemblance was uncanny, and I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. He was Oliver’s father.

  ‘He’s your son? I didn’t know. He’s well and happy . . .’

  ‘Ever since you killed his mother and took my son, I’ve been making extensive study of your language and customs. I am the most human-aware cat anywhere.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ I said. ‘Your grasp of our language is masterful.’

  He stopped and stared at me. ‘You’re not deliberately insulting me, are you? It’s all by accident.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said, bewildered. ‘I want to work with you as equals and hopefully one day friends.’

  ‘There it is again. Maybe you should stay with us and learn our ways, so that nobody shoots you for the insult you give.’

  ‘Maybe I should,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘Our first-born are living copies of ourselves,’ he said. ‘They are biologically identical to the parent.’

  ‘What we call clones?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He leaned towards me and spoke with quiet vehemence. ‘When we die, we move to the body of the copy – the child. By taking my son, you have effectively sentenced me to what you so coyly call the Real Death.’

  ‘How do you move to the body of the child?’ I said suspiciously.

  ‘I tell him the stories of my past lives as he lives beside me.’

  ‘That’s it?’ I said with disbelief. ‘You talk to him, and then you die, and everybody treats him as if he is you?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘That’s not very scientific.’

  ‘Nothing scientific about it. We are the sum of our memories. As long as he has my memories and my biological structure, I will live on.’

  ‘Soulstones—’

  He gestured dismissively towards the stone in my forehead as he interrupted me – obviously the rule about interruption only worked one way. ‘Those things don’t work. They’re a . . . what’s the word? Scam. The dragons just write the memory in a different body, and then treat it as if it is the same person. Our way is better – the body and the memories live on.’ He bared his teeth in a flash, then his face became mild again. ‘I want my life back. Return my immortality to me – return my son.’

  ‘Give us back our people, and I’ll talk to Oliver about it.’

  ‘No. How about . . .’ He stopped moving and studied me. ‘Your son for mine?’

  ‘They’re both my sons,’ I said.

  ‘Then they are brothers and he will have no problem taking David’s place,’ the cat said. ‘He’s been trying to spy on us for years. This is his opportunity to infiltrate us.’

  ‘Let me talk to Oliver,’ I said. ‘There’s a good chance he’ll agree, he wants to learn about your culture.’

  ‘Do not refer to him as Oliver! You should refer to him as . . .’ He bared his teeth again, and this time amusement radiated from him. ‘Your flat mouth can’t say it, can you?’

  ‘No. Giving him a name in my language is honouring him.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he snapped. He rose. ‘Go now. You know how to communicate with us.’ He walked out of the shuttle, then stopped and turned on the landing ramp. ‘You are the only non-cat who is permitted on this planet. If any other alien species attempt to land, or if a dragon attempts to fold here, humans will die. I want my son returned within two of your days. As soon as the exchange has taken place, I want that dragon ship out of our space, and all of you gone.’ He walked away.

  *

  The shuttle took me back up to Masako’s ship, where Oliver was already waiting with his new dragon partner, Runa, talking to Blake and Masako.

  ‘The shuttle relayed everything you said,’ Oliver said. ‘I’m ready to go down.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it’s a good idea!’ he said. ‘We can’t miss this opportunity. My father will give me a complete oral history of every generation since the first time they cloned themselves. The information is invaluable.’ He turned to Admiral Blake. ‘Tell her!’

  ‘I can’t force either of you to do anything,’ Blake said. ‘This is a decision only the two of you can make.’

  ‘Please let him,’ Masako said. ‘We need our people back.’

  ‘I’m going down to spend time with that black cat,’ Oliver said.

  ‘That black cat is your father—’ I said.

  ‘So he won’t hurt me,’ Oliver said. ‘He’ll care for me exceptionally well, because he thinks I’m him. I’ll get the rest of the hostages out . . . including David . . .’

  I winced. Both of us would do anything to get David out.

  ‘And move them home safely, and at the same time I’ll learn more about the cats than we have at any time in the past. We don’t know anything about their nanotechnology, or how they’re disabling Marque.’ He approached me and put his hand on my arm. ‘What if he’s a leader on their planet, Mum? What if he’s the king or something? When he dies, I inherit everything he has, including his identity. We could shut down their bullshit once and for all.’

  ‘What if they brainwash you against us?’

  He looked into my eyes, his own bright green ones the same as the cat leader’s. ‘Do you really think that’s possible? You raised me better than that, Mum.’

  I sighed and looked away. ‘He wants to hold the hostages for five years, until their stones are re-attuned. He wants to study the soulstone attunement process.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ he said. He tapped his forehead. ‘If they give our people back, I’ll let them study mine.’

  ‘Oliver . . .’ I was running out of objections, and I didn’t want to lose my son. My second son.

  ‘Let him go, Colonel,’ Runa said. ‘I can fold in and contact him telepathically. I will fold into orbit above the planet, talk to him, relay for him, and fold out again without the cats knowing. This is the chance we’ve been looking for.’

  ‘What do the dragon higher-ups say?’

  ‘I’m speaking to my mother right now,’ Masako said. ‘We both agree with him. Having someone on the ground to provide us with intelligence would be invaluable.’

  I made a gesture of helplessness. ‘Five years is a long time to be apart. I’ll miss you so much!’

  ‘He said you’re the only one allowed on the planet, and I’ll make sure you can visit,’ Oliver said. He pulled me into a fierce hug. ‘I love you, Mum, and I’ll be back in no time.’ He turned to Runa, and she took two-legged form. He went to her and put his hand on her face. ‘I
love you. I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘I know you will,’ she said.

  They rubbed cheeks, then she folded him onto the shuttle.

  I flopped to sit on a sofa in the gallery. I’d just lost my second son to the cats.

  ‘You’d better be safe down there,’ I said to the shuttle as it drifted down towards the surface.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s very capable,’ Masako said, studying the shuttle as it descended towards the surface. Runa folded back and stood with us.

  It seemed an eternity and I was pacing up and down the gallery of Masako’s ship with impatience when Runa spoke.

  ‘The shuttle’s on its way back up.’

  I went to the window and watched as the shuttle – a tiny, fragile box – grew from a dot and approached the ship. It came next to Masako’s ship and stopped.

  Runa disappeared, and reappeared with David. I ran to him as she placed him gently on the floor. His face was a mass of bruises, one eye swollen shut, and his soulstone was gone. The air filled with the horrible smell of charred flesh – they’d cut his legs off, and cauterised the stumps.

  He didn’t attempt to communicate. He seemed to be unconscious.

  ‘The cats are firing up a surface-based cannon,’ Marque said. ‘I suggest we leave.’

  ‘Has Oliver tapped his scale?’ I said.

  ‘He sent a human symbol – a check mark. I assume that means he’s okay,’ Runa said as Masako folded to the outside of the ship and took us back to dragon space.

  *

  I paced in the gallery of Masako’s ship as Marque worked on David. We were parked over the temporary dragon sanctuary world that had been used as a residence when the dragon homeworld had been evacuated. Now that the threat of the cat fleet was gone, dragon ships were folding in and out as residents returned to their homes. Masako had folded Admiral Blake to a meeting with the Empress to update her on the situation.

  ‘You put the soulstone in?’ I asked Marque. ‘It’s in?’

  ‘It’s in.’

  I sighed with relief and rubbed my forehead where my own soulstone sat. ‘What about brain damage?’

  ‘None that I can detect, but psychological damage is a definite possibility. He was new to military action, and this experience will have severely affected him. I think they cut off his legs without anaesthetic.’