The Empress

Twenty-Six

It was the hatch that defeated Garth in the end. None of Ornth’s arguments had swayed him. He did not care if every being on the planet expired, save for himself. But once he understood the hatch was impossible to open from the inside for a person of his strength, he gave up. He almost allowed himself to slide back down the shaft and fall to his death. But instead, he wearily crawled back down into the steamy chambers beneath and despaired on the hexagonal grid. Vapors rushed over him, blurring his vision and burning him in spots.

He’d almost fallen asleep in exhaustion, but something sent alarms through his tattered nervous system. Ornth was on the move, quietly burrowing nerve threads back into Garth’s spinal cord.

Garth’s eyes snapped open. He grabbed up the sliver of metal and pressed it against the back rim of his skull.

“Don’t,” he said. “Withdraw, or I will be rid of you forever.”

The stinging sensation at the base of his skull diminished. Ornth despaired. We cannot leave. We cannot survive. Why not help your species and mine survive in the future?

Garth considered the request. “I have only one act left within me,” he said. “I will decide what it will be.”

Repair the Great Machine. If you do so, I will exit your body. You may smash me with your boot upon the floor afterward, if you so desire.

Garth was startled and moved by this statement. “That does not sound like any Tulk I know.”

As I’ve told you, I’m not like most of my species.

Garth reflected on the past events with Ornth. He was certainly a creature apart from the self-centered Fryx.

“Perhaps I’ve judged you too harshly,” he said. “You serve not only yourself, but claim a higher purpose?”

Isn’t that abundantly clear?

Garth nodded slowly, wearily. “Very well. I’ll do what I can. But so much of the machine is damaged. I’m afraid my people’s miners have done their work too well. Possibly, I could shunt all remaining power to a single lens. If I could open the great shutters to expose it, and there is enough power to ignite the actuators…”

Yes! Yes! Try it!

Garth groaned and struggled to his feet. By shunting every functional source to this single branch of the great network-the branch he currently stood within-he was able to gather sufficient power to expose one set of lenses.

This heartened both the beings that resided in Garth’s body, and they set about gathering as much power as possible into a central reservoir of capacitance. They would charge it as long as they dared before firing. If they failed, they would have revealed themselves to the enemy. Once located, they could not survive for long.

As Garth worked, he found he felt a new freedom and energy in accepting he was not getting out of this place alive. Knowing that, all his nagging worries slid away and his mind operated unfettered by thoughts of survival. He worked the controls like a man possessed, and with each passing minute, he began to believe the ancient device would fire-at least once.

There would not be enough power to reach the stars, not even a fraction of it. But that wasn’t necessary, as the enemy was right here in the system. Yes-it might just work.

The Duchess Embrak soon wished with all her heart and soul she’d taken her own life. Nude and badly wounded, she was transported on the heaving, warm back of a trach to a waiting landing ship. There she was shoved aboard with a hundred other screeching, weeping individuals. A few of them seemed to recognize her, but none addressed her. They were all female and mature of age, but not elderly. The Duchess tried to reason out why they would been sorted into such a category-none of the reasons she could think of were positive, so she stopped thinking about it.

When the ship launched, it did so with such sudden force the captive women were hurled back against the rear bulkhead. They screamed and groaned in pain. Bones snapped audibly, and some vomited. A few at the bottom of the pile died, crushed to death.

The liftoff thrust soon subsided, and they found themselves floating briefly. She realized in shock they must be in orbit. A few of the women sought to open the exits, but it was hopeless. The Duchess worried that even if they succeeded, they would all be sucked out into space, but she didn’t try to stop them. Perhaps mass asphyxiation would be for the best at this point.

A thumping clang signaled the docking process. The sounds of heavy machinery rang and whirred all around the huddled women. At last, the hatches opened and trachs began collecting them for transport. Having learned her lesson the last time, the Duchess went willingly. The trachs were far from gentle, but they were brutal with those who resisted. Extra limbs were often snipped off and placed beside the squirming, bleeding victim.

The next stage of her journey was far from heartening. She’d expected the ship to be cold and metallic. But the walls were festooned with fleshy growths and the air was warm and humid. She rode on a long train of trachs to a larger chamber. There, at the entrance, a fresh horror met her eyes. She contained her screams only by clamping her lips shut over her mouth.

This new thing resembled a giant, bulbous squid, complete with tentacles and eyes on stalks. It had a grossly bloated body behind its limbs and sensory organs, and there was a terrifying intellect evident in its manner. Somehow its intelligence was the worst part of it-knowing she faced a thinking creature with cruel intentions of its own.

The swollen monster tapped and probed at each woman as they passed. Many who screamed were silenced with a powerful thump of a tentacle. Sometimes, this blow cracked the skull of the victim. Duchess Embrak endeavored to make as little noise as possible when her turn came. She endured those groping, probing tentacles as quietly as possible. She whimpered and squirmed, but kept her eyes shut and did not scream.

She felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. Gasping in shock, she tried to see what it was-there was as lump attached to her. Similar to the gray thing that clasped her wrist stump to stop it from bleeding, this thing plastered to her belly seemed alive and it pulsated. Inside it, she could see a metal box of some kind. She peered in the half-light, but could not identify the box. It did seem to be of human origin, however, not alien. She had no idea what it was, or why it had been attached to her person.

Riding on the trach’s back, her body was racked with quiet sobs.

The Parent fluffed herself as best she was able and summoned two trachs to help transport her to the throne room. She’d been urgently summoned into the Empress’ presence, and she wanted to look her best.

She knew she might be experiencing the final moments of her existence. She did what she could to erase that reality from her mind. She could only hope her preparations had all gone well, and that her moment of triumph was near.

When she arrived at the throne room, her estimation of her odds soared. There was a new throne present-a fifth throne. All of them stood around the Empress’ nest in a semi-circle. The other Parents had already taken their places when the eldest Parent arrived.

“There you are,” the Empress boomed. She’d grown even larger now as a result of her diet of continuous fresh meats, and her pronouncements were commensurately louder when she broadcast them. Her vast person now overflowed the nest she squatted within.

“Please, eldest Parent, take your place on the newest, largest throne. Feast with us.”

Proudly, the Parent did so. She noted with relish the other younger Parents were silent today. None of them twittered at her obscene body. No matter how things turned out today, this single victory was sweet enough to be savored.

“Please note our sixth guest,” the Empress said, gesturing toward a broken stick-figure that stood before her.

The Parent peered, then recoiled in horror. At first, she’d thought it was a human, being of more or less the same general size and configuration. But now she recognized the fallen stalks and permanently closed orbs. It was the nife, and he’d been staked in front of the Empress.

“Too bad you missed the first order of business,” the Empress said unconcernedly.

“I take it the campaign is not going well?” the Parent asked.

“Indeed, but that isn’t the sole reason for the nife’s extermination. He was far worse than a failure-he was a traitor.”

“Really?” asked the Parent, doing her best to sound aghast. “How is such a thing possible?”

“Hubris,” the Empress said. “Pure and simple. He believed himself so expert in military matters that he took it upon himself-well, you know.”

The Parent hesitated, uncertain how much of the story the Empress knew. “I’m sure he deserved it,” she said.

The feasting began then, and a long series of human tidbits were brought in on the backs of trachs. The food was dumped into a scooped-out region in the midst of the group, known as the ‘dish’. The higher forms sampled the screeching creatures. The Empress took first choice, naturally. She had recently gained a new habit: she liked to suck out the entrails and then throw aside the rest of the flopping body for the Parents to enjoy.

“The sweetmeats are the best,” the Empress broadcast. When the edge had been taken off her hunger, she directed a question to the Parent. “Just how much did you know of the nife’s plans-about bombarding the human city without my permission?”

The Parent felt tendrils of fear. Suddenly, the Empress’ newfound friendliness had taken on a sinister aspect. Perhaps she knew the nife had been in league with her. Could this all be an elaborate setup?

The Parent reached out with her longest tentacle and probed the squirming humans. They were mouth-watering. “Ah, look at this,” she said, finding the one she wanted. “A prime specimen indeed. Could I have the first taste of this one’s organs, Empress?”

The Empress took on a stern, piggy expression. “Certainly not! I didn’t realize I’d missed one. Hand that over, please.”

With a blatting sound of mild disappointment, the Parent stretched to give her the wriggling food.

“What’s this thing then on its abdomen?” asked the Empress.

“I believe it was injured. See? It has another such patch on its wrist. The trachs do that to keep the food alive when it is transported aloft.”

“Humph,” the Empress said. “Very well.”

The Empress extended her massive foodtube, which now was as thick as a human’s leg. She plunged it into the food creature’s belly and began to suckle. “Flavor seems good,” she said. “Now, you were about to tell me what you knew of the nife’s plans.”

“Yes,” said the Parent, watching closely. She waited for a second longer-then actuated the detonator.

The Empress’ maw exploded. Purple masses of flesh flew in every direction. The foodtube itself launched like a missile, with strings of gooey liquid attached.

“Assassination!” shouted the Parent. She was off her throne and advancing to the Empress in an instant. The others sat frozen on their thrones in shock.

“The Empress has been slain!” she said. “The humans must have done this, placing a bomb inside one of their own. Imagine the evil ingenuity of such an act. They shall not be allowed to strike us with impunity, the Empress shall be avenged!”

“She’s not dead,” said one of the younger Parents. “She’s trying to signal us with her tentacle.”

The Parent turned and realized to her disgust, it was true. The Empress was so vast, so full of horrible vigor, that she had survived the massive wound in her mastication organs. She seemed to be looking around with her remaining functional eyes and flapping her auxiliary tentacles. Fortunately, her primary tentacles were inoperable and her voice was silent. She’d lost her transmitter in the explosion.

The Parent put on a show of applying emergency patches to the ruptured body of the Empress and pretended to soothe her with gentle touches.

“You’re right,” the Parent said. “Perhaps she can yet be saved. No matter, the feast is at an end. I order you all to your birthing rooms. We need a fresh army. Each of you is to produce a squad of juggers.”

“All at once?” asked one in shock. None of them had ever been tasked with producing even a single painful jugger.

“Yes, it can’t be helped. We must rebuild the Imperial army.”

“Who put you in charge?” asked another of the young Parents.

The Parent whirled on her daughters. “Have you not been taught the hierarchy of our species? I’m your progenitor. You are all my offspring. Until the Empress recovers, you will follow my orders or be spaced instantly. Is that clear?”

Reluctantly, they all slithered away, grumbling about their new duties. The Parent watched them with growing delight. They were all going to endure many hardships in the near future.

Then she turned her eyes back toward the badly wounded Empress. “We will care for you, and I’m sure you will regrow your faculties. I’ll send emergency forms to tend to your every need.”

The operating eye clusters stared at her venomously. The Empress reached out and tried to restrain the Parent, but she was too weak to exert her will physically. She was close to losing consciousness.

As she left the throne room the Parent ordered a dozen trachs to repair the Empress. The Empress shifted and flailed when she heard this-everyone knew hests were much smarter and more capable when it came to medical matters. Trachs were clumsy at best, and were as likely to pop an organ with their heavy, groping claws as they were to repair it.

“Can’t be helped,” the Parent said happily as she exited. “The hests are all needed elsewhere.”

The Empress released commanding scents-but to no avail. The situation was clear. The Parent was in charge.

The Parent left two killbeasts at the entrance, ordering them to prevent all visitors save for herself and trach servants. The first trachs to arrive she commandeered, using them to carry her sagging form down the tubes toward the command module. She realized as she left she was something of an assassin-but she reflected she was probably not the first one in the history of her species.

She soon reached the command module. There was little time to spare, if this campaign was to reach a successful conclusion. The nife had had the right plan after all, of course. He had nearly completed it, but the Parent had made his plans public and quietly sent hests to inform the Empress. The nife had expired soon thereafter, but the humans still remained and must be dealt with.

She would blast their entire city to dust. It was the only way to be sure. She would burn them and their army out of that crevice in the sandstone, and then this planet would be hers to rule. She had no qualms about disappointing the Empress by the loss of so much meat-the Empress was hardly in a position to eat it, anyway.

Garth and Ornth were both fatigued to the point of exhaustion, and now they worked in a semi-stupor. The labor became a fevered blur during the final hours. They’d slowed down, and begun to communicate less as time went on. They had no food, and the only droplets of water they consumed were those they managed to lick from the elbows of hot pipes.

We must make the attempt, Ornth said.

“The system isn’t ready. We have nothing like a full charge. No single vessel contains enough power to ignite the core.”

I know, Ornth said. But we must make the attempt before we lose consciousness and expire in this chamber. I’ve been monitoring your vitals-your core temperature is up to one hundred three degrees. We are burning up with fever.

Garth licked his parched lips. His tongue rasped over scabs. “All right,” he said, “we’ll try to open the lens.”

That will expose us to enemy detection.

“Yes, but if we can’t even do that, we have failed in any case.”

Ornth mulled this over. Agreed.

Garth half-slumped over the controls as he worked them. His fingers felt rubbery, and he could barely open the heavy valves. Perhaps Ornth was right. Perhaps in a few hours, it would be too late.

They watched the meters and gauges. At last, the system groaned and something huge shifted. Garth staggered as the vibration almost knocked him from his unsteady feet.

The vapor that had been rising around him for so long shut off over the next minute or so.

“It must be working,” he said.

Check the power levels. We must have at least six percent in a single cell to ignite the core.

Garth steered his eyes to the appropriate measurements. They displayed a capacitance. “We have just under five percent power.”

No! Ornth howled. Not enough! We have failed.

Garth wiped his face, but it was dry. He felt like sobbing, but no liquid came from his tear ducts, they merely stung.

Suddenly, he had an idea. He eyed the other coils, and their relative positions.

What are you doing?

“If we could short these leads together…” he said. “The first battery has five percent, the second has about three.”

Short them together? But how? We have no couplings.

“We have a conductive material at hand. But there will be some loss of power and the connection will be brief.”

What connective material?

“My body.”

The Tulk was silent for a few moments. I am willing to make this sacrifice.

“I am as well, because we are going to die here anyway.”

Garth set the controls to fire. The firing chamber filled with gases. After a minute or so, it attempted to fire, and a dry repetitive banging sound began. He knew that was the ignition system, trying to ignite the core. There wasn’t a sufficient charge-not yet.

Together, Garth and Ornth stripped down to their bare skin and placed themselves between the two hot leads.

You are the best mount a rider could ask for, Ornth said.

“And you are the bravest little devil who’s ever shared my skull.”

Garth laid his hands across the power leads. He found his personal oblivion a nanosecond later. He learned that for him, it was big, sudden, and blindingly bright.

#

A vast beam tore up from Nightside, blazing into the sky. Firing at a target so near the planetary surface, the angle of the projected radiation struck the crest of a frozen mountain. Nearly a second was spent burning through this obstacle, which was made up mostly of glacial ice. In that short time, the landscape of Nightside lit up with a brilliance the dark side of the world had never seen. Frost bats and iron-head owls fell to the tundra with smoking wings and steaming eye sockets.

The beam burned through the icy mountaintop and plunged onward through cloud cover and out into the open void. It had lost much of its power by then, and the cells were nearly empty, but still the beam lanced up into orbit. It was unstoppable. Gladius buckled and twisted when the beam struck. A hole a mile wide was driven through the waist of the ship. The energy did not dissipate until it had punched out the far side of the hull and left the vessel mortally wounded.

The great beam died, and the ship died with it. For nearly a minute, it drifted, a twisted hulk. Then came a secondary explosion. When the great ship finally blossomed white over Lavender City, thousands of eyes stared and thousands of mouths gaped. A few minutes later, they ran for shelter as burning debris came raining down. This new kind of bombardment went on for hours as the ship slowly broke up and fell in burning chunks to the ground.

Eventually, the survivors in Lavender City came to realize the enemy was gone from their world. There were final pockets of resistance, but these were quickly overcome. Without Parents churning out fresh replacements, each alien slain was a final death.

#

A long ten-day later, when victory was declared, Aldo and Nina fell to celebrating. Every standing tavern in the city opened its doors to the knights who had fought the enemy in these same streets. Everyone exulted in the expulsion of the aliens from Ignis Glace.

They lifted cups together and saluted the living and the dead alike. They felt joy in their hearts, but it was tempered by harsh facts. Countless victims had been dragged into the great ship above or slain outright.

Sixty-Two came to stand at the entrance of the ruined pub where the two humans celebrated. Lizett trailed him. Aldo called to them and asked if they would join them in a toast. They approached, but Nina Droad stood as they did so.

“I must see to my knights,” she said in a glum voice. She did not even glance at the mechs.

Aldo reached up and placed his hand on her wrist.

“Have a care, Aldo,” she said.

“I do care, Baroness. I ask that you sit with those who have saved countless lives today. The mechs risked and sacrificed themselves as completely as your knights did. They died here like everyone else. They chose to do that-or at least the thinking ones like Sixty-Two did. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Nina slid her eyes from one of them to the other. The mechs stood, silent and hulking. They both had battle scars on their metal bodies.

“I cannot forget my brother’s death so easily,” Nina said. “Nor the deaths of so many innocents at Dolleren.”

Aldo drew in a deep breath. “I was sent here to guard the life of a diplomat. I failed in that mission. I have since attempted to replace him-and done rather poorly. I am a duelist, not a peacemaker. But I will try to do what does not come naturally to me now.”

Nina looked at him warily. He could tell she was at least listening.

“It seems to me this world could use a little peace,” Aldo said. “For all we know, these aliens are not entirely finished. If they come again, they will find you are easy prey if you can’t work together as you did today.”

He turned to stare at Nina. She still said nothing.

“Baroness Droad, I know your father-as you do not. He is like you, but wiser.”

The Baroness stiffened. “An insult? This is your idea of diplomacy?”

Aldo shrugged. “Today I speak truth. If it is insulting, I can’t fix it. Lucas Droad gathers strength to him, and shapes his enemies into comrades to achieve his goals, rather than attempting to run roughshod over everyone in his path.”

Aldo next turned his attention to Sixty-Two. “I commend your efforts to free the mechs. But I can’t help but notice that very few of your people have emotions, and fewer still have real memories of their past lives. Can you explain that discrepancy?”

“Right,” chimed in the Baroness. “Are you not simply a new master who has replaced their former rightful human lords?”

“Your criticism is well-stated,” Sixty-Two said. “I learned that when I freed the mind of individual mechs, not all of them were, well-stable. The unfortunate events at Dolleren are directly related to that reality. You see, most of us actually were criminals. Once put into a mechanical body and removed from our humanity, the criminal element seems to magnify in some personalities. I stopped freeing minds because I feared to lead an army of angry mechs, many of whom might be unbalanced.”

The conversation continued into the night. Soon, they all sat around a table together, and began to drink. Lizett and Sixty-Two sipped light motor oil and glucose. Aldo and Nina drank fine red wine.

Aldo didn’t know if the peaceful discussion would last, but it was a beginning.