Guardian of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘What about the offer for a relationship after she transitions?’ Marque said.

  I sat back and stroked Bartlett’s head. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Good, I was worried that you’d rush back to her,’ Mum said. ‘That Household business sounds awful – it would kill you.’

  ‘It’s been a long time, Mum,’ I said. ‘Others have come and gone for both of us. People change. Aki’s happy, and I don’t want to ruin that for her. As she said: we’re both effectively immortal. We have plenty of time. Probably the kindest thing I can do is to let her enjoy family life without the complication of a polyamorous relationship.’

  ‘Do you have a message for her?’ Marque said. ‘I could pass it on.’

  I stroked Bartlett’s head and he licked my hand. ‘I suppose . . . what I just said. If they want me, I can come visit after Aki transitions. See how we feel about each other.’ I felt a pang as I thought of my small, round, fierce and intelligent wife, and lowered my head. ‘I do miss her.’

  *

  The dragon Empress lay on the floor of her quarters as her servant decked her out in jewels. She checked herself in the mirror. ‘That’s enough, Kiko, the Captain’s here. Thank you.’

  ‘Majesty,’ the servant said, and set to work collecting the jewellery and putting it away.

  The Empress turned to me and nodded. ‘Time to head out?’

  ‘A crowd’s gathered on the avenue to see you to the elevator.’

  ‘Let’s give them a show.’

  I straightened my uniform collar. ‘Ma’am.’

  Four more guards met us as we took the elevator from her quarters to ground level and escorted her through the Palace to the front. A crowd of a few hundred people had gathered in the square to see her off and cheered when she appeared.

  She stopped on the veranda, waved to them, and indicated with a flick of her claw that she wished to address them.

  ‘My darling subjects,’ she said, and Marque amplified her voice. ‘I am about to visit the border with the cats to see Marque’s new method for turning them back and preventing them from invading our space. In the past we were forced to follow their ships and attack them with chilli when they dropped out of warp inside the Empire. With this new method we can turn them back at the border and retain full control of Empire space. I’ll send back visuals of the process for you when I get there.’

  The crowd cheered again, and we stepped from the veranda onto a floating transparent disk. The disk rose and carried us down the broad avenue that surrounded the square, past the Imperial Palace towards its rear and the elevator platform. Scattered small groups of people lined the avenue to catch a glimpse of the Empress, some of them cheering. We reached the platform, a white-paved area fifty metres to a side with a single car in the centre. The door opened and we went inside, then stationed ourselves around the edge as the Empress reclined in the centre. The car took us up to the base station for the space elevator a thousand metres above, and we stepped out onto the massive platform. The main elevator car, as big as a small town, wasn’t present, so the centre of the platform just held the shining ribbon that carried it up to the nexus. Private cars sat around the edge of the platform, and the Empress’ own car was waiting for us. We went inside to travel up to the folding nexus.

  We left the car at the folding nexus and followed the Empress through the specially-enlarged nexus tube to her own ship. The ship itself wasn’t one of the larger dragon ships as the Empress didn’t travel and collect spouses. I stayed with her while the rest of the guards checked it over and gave us the all clear to depart. She folded onto the nose of the ship and carried us to the blockade at the edge of cat space.

  We arrived at the border where a dragon ship was stationed, with more dragon ships on either side and above and below visible as glowing blobs in the distance.

  The Empress folded us onto Chiharu’s ship, where the dragon and her human crew were waiting for us. Chiharu was a senior daughter of the Empress, and her scales appeared grey to me, their ultra-violet colour outside my visual spectrum. She had six legs, no wings, and a red soulstone.

  Admiral Blake was with her and he stepped forward. ‘Glad to have you here, Majesty. There’s a cat ship within an hour’s travel and we’re ready for it to cross the border into our space.’

  The Empress nodded. ‘Have you done this many times before?’

  Blake grinned. ‘This will be the twelfth time for Chiharu’s ship, but nearly the hundredth cat ship overall. The fleet they sent out fifteen years ago is approaching the border, and there’s well over a thousand of them. The process has become so routine that we felt it was safe to share how it works with the rest of the Empire.’

  ‘This is excellent,’ the Empress said with satisfaction.

  ‘The cat ship is visible,’ Marque said, and a glowing circle appeared on the floor of our ship. It was coming from below us; we were parked at ninety degrees to the border.

  ‘Move out,’ the Admiral said, and the team of humans went to the back of Chiharu’s ship and into a pod. Chiharu folded the pod near to the border, and folded back onto her own ship. The pod gathered a glowing cloud around it as it went into warp.

  ‘I want a better view,’ the Empress said, and swung her head to see me. ‘Jian, I want to see this from the outside.’

  ‘Me and Six, Marque,’ I said, and put my hand on the Empress’ shoulder. ‘Six?’

  ‘I’m waiting outside the ship, on a wavelength outside your visual range,’ Six said through comms.

  ‘You in uniform, Six?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, it’s at the cleaners.’

  The Empress folded us into space below the ship, and Marque surrounded me with a spacesuit and put a gravity platform under my feet to make me feel more secure. The space around me was filled with distant stars, and a brilliantly glowing nebula shone pink and purple below my feet. I’d been in raw space enough times that I didn’t panic, and I felt a bolt of satisfaction at my reaction. About time I could handle it. The Empress floated next to me, shining pink in the reflected light of the nebula, and glanced at me.

  ‘You okay, Captain?’

  ‘Just fine,’ I said.

  She nodded and turned back to the border. The dragon pod in its warp field floated towards the border. The border wasn’t marked, but both sides knew exactly where it was. The pod waited on the dragon side of the border and didn’t move.

  A cat teleport portal grew organically on their side of the border, and Marque showed it to me in the heads-up display. It was less than a metre tall, and a tiny sensory probe, only twenty centimetres in diameter, floated out of it and hovered next to it, watching as well.

  ‘Without Marque’s assistance I would never know that teleporter was there,’ Six said through comms, its form a vague outline of energy next to me. ‘I’m not surprised we never saw them and were wondering how they communicated.’

  ‘I should have realised,’ Marque said. ‘Everybody has rejected the use of teleporters in the past because they kill the organic life inside them. It never occurred to me to use them to transport inorganic life like me.’

  ‘Does teleporting damage you?’ I said.

  Marque hesitated, then said, ‘I hate losing instances of myself, so I’ve never had the courage to try. I have dragons to carry me around, so I don’t think I ever will. The cat ship is now officially in Empire space. Here we go.’

  The cat ship was one of its smaller exploration ships, fifty metres long and with elegant fins along its length to channel the warp field. The dragon pod – a utilitarian cube containing the team – approached it and their warp fields merged into a single glowing cloud.

  ‘Filters please, Marque,’ the Empress said.

  The warp glow around the ships faded to give me a clearer view. The pod and cat ship were now locked together inside the warp field, and the cat was unable to fire on the pod without damaging the field and destroying both of them.

  The warp field began to fade into nothingness
as the Marque instance inside the pod reached into the cat ship and disabled the engine.

  ‘This is the tricky part,’ Marque said. ‘I have to power down the pod’s engine at the same rate as the cat one. I’ve messed it up a couple of times, and needed the humans to board the cat ship, disable them with chilli, and power down the warp engine from inside.’

  The warp field gradually dissipated, and the two ships fell into normal space. Chiharu folded on top of the cat ship, folded it back to the cat homeworld, then reappeared on top of the pod and folded it back onto her ship.

  The little cat sensory probe went into its teleport portal, then re-emerged.

  ‘This is an act of war,’ it broadcast, then went back into the portal. The portal self-destructed into a cloud of pale grey nanos.

  ‘Not much of a war when you can’t even enter our space,’ the Empress said. She put her claw on my shoulder and folded me back onto Chiharu’s ship. The team were smiling and embracing each other.

  ‘That was magnificent,’ the Empress said. ‘Thank you for sharing.’

  ‘I’m glad our team is the one demonstrating for the Empire,’ Chiharu said. ‘People have been asking us for a while what the strategy will be when the cats reach the border and start to attack us again. It will be good to show them that we’re ready and we can protect the Empire.’

  ‘Let’s head home, and notify the rest of the Empire,’ the Empress said. ‘I cannot wait to share with everybody. We’ve all been concerned about the cats returning to our space and attacking us. This is excellent news.’

  *

  I led Bartlett out of my quarters and into the garden at the base of the Empress’ own residential tower. Marque had a capsule waiting for us, and I sat inside. Bartlett whuffed and curled up on the seat next to me. We lifted off, and Bartlett whined, then banged his tail on the seat back. He didn’t like the height, but he enjoyed the trip anyway.

  We sailed over the Imperial Palace’s white spires with their multicoloured banners, and through the buildings of Sky City. The buildings became taller as we moved further from the Palace complex, but they were never permitted to be more than about five storeys tall, in order to maintain Sky City’s unique celestial view.

  I put my hand on Bartlett’s furry head to reassure him as we reached the edge of Sky City and Marque floated us down towards the surface of the planet below. The white sides of the floating city were carved in an enormous depiction of dragons going about their colonising ways, talking to many different species, in a frieze that was more than three hundred metres high. We dipped below the edge and the massive, ancient anti-grav engines that held up the city came into view, glowing blue-white beneath it. Marque had often complained that they were severely out of date and asked the Empress to land the city so they could be replaced with ones that weren’t visible, and the Empress always said no because she liked the shinies.

  The surface of the planet was covered in blue-green grass and a forest of trees with bright orange leaves. We travelled five kilometres in the capsule out from under the shadow of the massive city to Oliver’s rural estate with its two-storey villa constructed cat-style in polished clay that shone gold in the blue-white sun. Oliver was waiting for us in his front garden, a grass-covered area littered with children’s toys. His daughter, Annie, was next to him, jumping up and down with excitement.

  We landed and Bartlett tested the edge of the capsule with his nose. The wall was gone, so he shot out and bounded to Annie, who squealed and ran in circles with him. They raced off together to find a ball to throw. Annie was five years old now, a cat dragonscales, and already as tall as a twelve-year-old human. Her fur on her little naked form was a mix of Oliver’s black with orange patches from a ginger ancestor making her a pretty tortoiseshell colour. She had green scales on her forehead from Runa, her dragonfather.

  ‘Hey, say hello to your grandma!’ Oliver shouted at her.

  ‘Hello, Grandma!’ Annie squealed, breathless, then ran away again.

  I embraced Oliver and we touched cheeks. ‘Thanks for looking after him.’

  Ollie waved his hand at the delighted child and dog. ‘She’ll hate it when you come back to take him home. I think I’ll have to get her a puppy of her own.’ He turned to me, serious. ‘Is it really working? The cats are being turned back from the border?’

  ‘It works.’

  ‘A triumph of my ingenuity,’ Marque said.

  ‘Good. How soon before you leave?’ Oliver said.

  ‘I have time to catch up with my favourite son,’ I said, and he led me inside with Annie still squealing with laughter behind us.

  ‘Jian, the Empress needs you back at the Palace,’ Marque said.

  I raised my head. ‘I just got here! How urgent is this?’

  ‘Extremely.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Classified.’

  ‘Even from me?’ Oliver said. ‘I thought I had access to everything.’

  ‘I would be able to tell you if you were in the Palace,’ Marque said. ‘Down here: no.’

  Oliver and I shared a look.

  ‘Leave Bartlett here for a while, and go,’ Oliver said.

  I embraced my son and rode the capsule back up to the Palace.

  ‘We received signals from one of the scales on the cat homeworld,’ the Empress said when I arrived at her office.

  ‘They’re not moving the scale again, are they?’ I said.

  ‘It’s a definite message code,’ Marque said. ‘It took us nearly half an hour to sort out a communications protocol, and here’s the message we received once I’d established it: “We wish to negotiate safe passage through dragon space under terms of peace”.’

  ‘Oh, that’s excellent!’ I said.

  ‘My response was: “We are willing to negotiate treaty terms for long-lasting peace between our two civilisations”,’ the Empress said. ‘That was ten minutes ago, and we’re waiting for a reply.’

  ‘They occasionally tap the scale to keep the channel open, but they haven’t sent a proper message through . . .’ Marque said. ‘Here it is. “Come to our homeworld and we will begin the discussions”.’

  ‘I’d prefer to send our envoy to a neutral area that is in neither empire,’ the Empress said. ‘Is that acceptable?’

  Somewhere where their damn nanos are out of the picture, she said to me, and I nodded.

  ‘A neutral area is acceptable,’ the cats said through Marque. ‘You may send one ship. We will send our flagship. I am transferring co-ordinates. Are these acceptable?’

  ‘Marque?’ the Empress said.

  ‘The location works,’ Marque said. ‘It’s a small orphan planet circling a massive black hole, with nothing else around it for light years. It’s a good space, and it will take about six weeks for one of their warp ships to reach it from the edge of their space.’

  ‘Done,’ the Empress said. ‘May I send my oldest daughter as emissary?’

  ‘Yes. We will send the second to our council,’ the cats said. ‘The terms are acceptable. The meeting will occur at the time we are sending. Bring one ship only.’

  The Empress filled with joyful triumph. ‘I am looking forward to moving together towards peace,’ she said.

  ‘They’ve stopped comms. I don’t think they heard that last bit,’ Marque said.

  ‘They are so rude,’ she said. ‘I bet they land on planets before they’re ready and cause irreparable emotional damage to the populations.’ She turned to me. ‘I want you leading security to guard Masako. Marque, can you finish the new flagship in the time frame?’

  ‘Yes, it’s nearly done,’ Marque said. ‘Can I make it dragon-shaped for the negotiations? A big silver dragon with blue eyes?’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a little over the top?’

  ‘I want to,’ Marque said, sounding like a four-year-old.

  ‘I love you too, Marque,’ the Empress said. ‘No. Keep it as the standard dragon streamlined shape; let’s show some class here. W
here is Masako?’

  ‘She and Haruka are supervising the stocking of the tuna on the new human colony.’

  ‘Tell her to get her little brown tail here quick-smart; we have a lot of work to do before this meeting.’

  ‘She just folded into the orbital nexus, and she’ll be down in an hour.’

  ‘Where is Oliver?’

  ‘On his estate with his daughter,’ I said.

  ‘Let him know what happened and that we may need his advice, but he doesn’t need to come up.’ She checked her displays. ‘Six human weeks isn’t nearly enough time to make a plan for universal peace – particularly when I do not trust the cats to negotiate in good faith. I would not be surprised if they have a new secret weapon to use against us.’ She looked up. ‘I need to speak to parliament about this. Should we make an announcement to the Empire? Let our people know that we finally may have peace? Everybody will be thrilled to bits.’

  ‘I think we should, to ensure a general ceasefire at the border,’ Marque said. ‘The last thing we need is for someone to attack a cat ship and ruin everything.’

  ‘Agreed.’ She swung her head to see me. ‘We’ll do a small announcement now, and if the ceasefire holds we’ll have a big four-sector party to see them off in six weeks. Start the arrangements while I talk to Parliament. Make sure that Masako and that worthless husband of hers are here soon, because those two freeloaders are doing the negotiations, and I don’t want them to mess it up.’

  ‘I don’t think she should take Haruka at all,’ I said. ‘He will mess it up.’

  ‘I agree. Making Masako agree is another matter.’ Her emotions filled with mischief. ‘I have an idea that will keep him busy and out of the way.’

  19

  The double doors opened and I fixed the sleeves of my dress uniform, stood straighter, and strode into the Princess’ apartments. I stopped on the grey carpet that covered most of the floor in the huge, high-ceilinged white room, and bowed to the royal couple.