My Friend the Emperor Read online

  “Well, it’s… ah, a new ship sir. Advanced stuff and all that.”

  “Can you tell me why half of the fire suppression equipment is missing from that locker?”

  “Uh no… I mean, I can tell you where it is but I don’t know why they had us move it. You’d have to ask the Chief about that.”

  “And where is the Chief?”

  “I don’t really know, Sir. He’s probably in his bunk. He works the D Watch.”

  “Your Chief works the graveyard? Why would he do that? No… Don’t tell me, I’ll find out for myself.”

  “Yes Sir. Did you need me for anything else, Sir? There are some loose deck plates on level E that I’d really like to finish before my lunch break.”

  “Crewmen, are you really trying to tell a Citizen that your lunch break is more important than his questions? Wait, don’t answer that either. Go about your duties.”

  “Yes Sir. Thank you Sir.”

  I hadn’t paid the closest attention to my fleet training at The Academy. I had been convinced that I would end up in civil service so many of the details of fleet life had probably escaped me, but I knew for a fact that the maintenance personnel’s first duty was to maintain its equipment in proper order and storage. There would be no time to rearrange things in an emergency.

  Another interesting thing I discovered was that the Medical Bay had no patients. Alarms immediately went off in my head. All crewmen abused sick bay privileges. It was a fact of life. There was even a course on it at The Academy. The truth was even Citizens were sometimes tempted to delay duties or responsibilities by claiming some sick time. On a ship of this size for there to be nobody here was unreasonable. Beyond belief.

  I found the doctor on duty. She was, of course, a Citizen. She was also an unusually short Citizen.

  Unlike some, I had never been biased towards physical abnormalities. The truth is, however, I had never been forced to work around much of it. Most humans, and almost all Citizens, were of just about the same height. Our professors had told us that in ancient times there were so many mutations in the human genome that people came in all different shapes and sizes. It was pretty hard to imagine and our current pleasing uniformity was simply another result of intermixing our genes for millennia. But now, within just a few days, I had already encountered two Citizens that didn’t fit the profile. The Captain was a tall man and the doctor was at least 8 to 12 inches shorter than any of her peers. Come to think of it, when I’d met the barbarically tattooed Switzer he’d been sitting down, but he was a big barrel-chested man and I now realized he was also probably much taller than normal.

  I might be able to accept some small percentage of divergence from the norm in any given crew, but to have this many abnormalities in the Citizens? Something was going on here.

  At any rate, I’d kind of put my foot into it when I first met the doctor. She had been standing behind a counter peering into a microscope when I walked into the Medical Bay. Since she was facing me I hadn’t had any idea she was standing on a stool. When she stepped down and walked around the counter I was shocked - and I think my face showed it. Okay, judging by the scowl on her face, I’m sure my face showed it.

  Trying to recover quickly I said, “Doctor, I wanted to introduce myself. I’m the new Captain’s Aide.”

  She just continued giving me a disapproving look.

  I tried to quickly think of something I would need her professional services for, an illness, a hangnail… But I was coming up short.

  “I, uh… Just wanted to stop by the medical Bay and see how the ship’s crew was doing.”

  After a few moments she spoke, “Yes Citizen, I know who you are. As you can see the Medical Bay is just fine and so is the ship’s crew. I’m rather busy right now; do you need anything else from me?”

  As I walked away from the Medical Bay I realized I’d totally forgotten to ask my original question; why was there no malingering on this crew?

  ΔΔΔ

  We were at the conference table, in the conference room, in the Captain’s suite.

  I had once again been invited to sit in on the strategy session for our arrival at Imperial Station 417.

  “I don’t want to split our forces,” Citizen Sergio was saying. We had briefly toyed with the idea of sending down two teams and entering the station from separate points.

  We hadn’t yet tried to hail the station. When I’d asked the Captain why we hadn’t done so immediately he gave me some distracted answer about wanting to surprise them.

  “I say we go in force directly through the main hangar bay,” he continued. “We’ll quickly spread out from there and if there’s trouble we’ll soon find it.”

  “Okay Sergio,” the Captain said. “I’ll leave the details to you.”

  He turned to an incredibly thin Citizen that I was meeting for the first time. He had been introduced to me as Rodrigues. The thing is, I don’t think I’d ever met a Citizen with severe acne problems, let alone one that was constantly in motion from nervous habits.

  “Rodrigues, how close can we get to the station before they realize we’re there?”

  “It depends Captain. We can rush up and make a splashy emergency entrance, or if we want to pretend everything is normal we will have to come in slower. Which approach are you thinking of?”

  “For now, let’s keep pretending everything is normal. So how long will we have from the time their sensors pick us up and we actually arrive at the station?”

  “That station’s sensors aren’t typically manned and there’s a lot of stellar dust in the system, it just depends on how sensitive the threshold settings are that they programmed the system with. All things being equal, and at normal approach speed, I’d expect them to pick us up at about six hours out.”

  “And how far out will we be before we can determine if there’s any other ships orbiting with the station?” The Captain asked.

  “We’ll have a little bit of advance warning, but not much. Somewhere between 45 and 90 minutes would be my guess,” replied Rodrigues.

  “Okay good. Sergio, as soon as the first shuttle lands I want a second shuttle packed full of reinforcements to head for the station.”

  I noticed the captain glancing at me with a big smile right before he said to the table, “And if the reinforcements aren’t needed, they can help bring back that station’s supply of cognac.”

  I think I was the only one in the room not to laugh.

  ΔΔΔ

  Our approach into the Arien system was normal.

  Imperial Station 417 was located on a small moon that orbited a gas giant, one of three planets in the system.

  The icy moon was habitable, but just barely.

  Later in my cabin I asked the ship’s computer to pull up all the information it had on IS 417. It was literally in the middle of nowhere.

  It had been well over a year since the Halcyon had visited the station because there was no strategic significance to its location. That I can determine, the station signifies nothing of import whatsoever. Other than being a ‘best of all bad options’ convenience for the crossing of a few obscure trade routes, I could see no purpose for it existing. Except, of course, that one of those trade routes was a source of our Captain’s favorite cognac.

  I finally did discover why the station had been built in the first place. It had something to do with an old treaty the Empire had entered into with a civilization whose name I didn’t recognize. A civilization that had probably been assimilated into the Empire centuries ago.

  Anyway, I wasn’t terribly surprised to see that only one Citizen was assigned to man the station. Presumably a few crewmen resided there too.

  Approaching the station would turn out to be one of the rare occasions when the Captain was on the bridge. Our target moon orbited the third planet from the star.

  We had just scanned the station and detected no other ships when the communications Citizen said, “Captain, we are within hailing range.”

  “Thank you Mar
ia. Hail the station.”

  “No response, Sir.”

  I should point out for the record that the Captain was sprawled out in his command chair, leaning back and seemingly totally at ease with the world. He was definitely not giving the situation the concern that I felt it called for.

  “Keep trying,” he said to her.

  Almost immediately she responded, “Captain, we do have a response.”

  “Put it on the screen Maria. Let’s find out what we’re dealing with.”

  An image of a scruffy noncitizen appeared on the screen. “Hello the Imperial Ship Halcyon,” he said. “Thank you for coming to our aid.”

  Finally sitting up in his seat our Captain said, “What is your situation?”

  “Our Citizen has taken sick and we don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. We thought it best to call for help.”

  “Fair enough,” the Captain said. “But why such a cryptic message? Why didn’t you tell us it was a medical emergency?”

  “Well, yeah… That probably would’ve been a good idea but we’re not exactly used to using the Imperial communication systems here. The Citizen usually does that.”

  Our Captain said nothing for a moment and then replied, “Very well, we will be there within a few hours. Please prepare your loading bay to receive our shuttle. Oh, and by the way, who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

  “I’m crewmen Torres,” he replied. “My wife Simone and I work here part-time. It’s usually one week on and two weeks off, but when we found the Citizen sick we knew we should stay with her.”

  “Thank you crewmen Torres, we appreciate your dedication to the Empire. You can expect us soon.”

  The Captain gave a nod to Maria and the connection was cut. He slowly swiveled his chair around and made eye contact with everyone on the bridge. Well, everyone except for me.

  He tapped the intercom and said, “Sergio, did you get that?”

  “I did Captain, and something’s wrong,” he replied.

  “We’re all in agreement then. We’ll continue our casual approach but once we enter the hanger it will be weapons hot.”

  “Understood Sir.”

  I was confused. I had been relieved that the emergency message cleared everything up. I had also been a little bit annoyed that our Captain hadn’t cared enough to question the seriousness of the Citizen’s illness. But now, everyone around me was acting like they’d heard a totally different conversation.

  “Captain? Can ask a question?”

  He swung around to face me with an expression that made me think he’d momentarily forgotten I was there. “What is it, Ensign?”

  “What’s going on, Sir? I feel like I’m missing something,” I admitted.

  I noticed a few grins amongst the bridge Citizens but at least nobody laughed out loud.

  “It’s a trap,” he said calmly.

  I guess I had a really stupid look on my face because he continued, “He knew the name of our ship but he never referred to me by name or title, nor did he ever ask. That’s enough by itself to know the situation is a little weird, but the real tell is that he didn’t demand extra compensation for having to stay over until we arrived.

  “Does that clear it up?” he concluded.

  I nodded and the Captain turned back around to his duties. I never would’ve picked up on that and I might even have entertained the thought that the Captain was having a delusional fantasy… except all the other Citizens seemed to have picked up on it as well. I had no choice but to realize that I had an awful lot to learn.

  ΔΔΔ

  I was stunned (I was really getting tired of feeling that way). Anyway, I was stunned to find out that the Captain planned on being on the first shuttle over to the station.

  “Why would you do that?” I said to him as he rummaged around in his cabin closet.

  I couldn’t let myself get sidetracked by the fact that the Captain seemed to be more concerned about what he was going to wear than the possible dangers of the visit. He was totally occupied looking for his formal uniform with all its decorations and bejeweled accoutrements. Apparently he rarely wore them because he was having trouble finding all of it.

  He was like a child excited to dress up for a costume party.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be doing this?” he said. “You are my aide after all.”

  I refused to be thrown off subject – and did he really want me to be his personal valet in addition to being his aide and his steward?

  “Captain, you yourself said this was a trap. You’re walking right into it. Don’t you think that’s a reckless risk?”

  “I didn’t know you cared, Ensign. But the ship is in good hands and a Captain’s got to have some fun, don’t you think?”

  There were so many things wrong with that statement that I didn’t know where to begin.

  “How can you say the ship’s in good hands when you don’t even have a First Officer? And you’re not just a captain; you’re part of the Imperial Family. Even if you were just a captain regulations are very clear…”

  “Ah Nikolay, you worry too much. My safety will be in Sergio’s good hands, and if I don’t get off the ship and have some fun I’m going to go crazy. Now help me find my sash and then get yourself ready.”

  “You want me to get ready? You mean I’m going too?”

  “Well, you’re my aide, aren’t you? Of course you’re coming with me. You probably don’t have a full Dress Uniform but you do need to wear that epaulet thingy that signifies you’re my aide, okay?”

  After a moment he added, “By the way, have you ever fired a side arm?”

  Chapter nine

  ENSIGN JACOBY NICOLAY

  Imperial Station 417

  The trip down to the moon’s surface revealed an icy hell. It was a rugged terrain and the only thing not covered by snow and ice were the occasional sharp jagged edges of stone that poked through. Oddly enough, the landscape was also interspersed with small smoking mounds of rock. I assumed they were volcanic, the snow having melted back around each one by about 10 feet; but that was the only surrender this harsh icy environment was going to give.

  The station itself finally came into view. The wind at ground level was ferocious and the blowing ice caused visibility to be minimal. We were hair-raisingly close before we could visually confirm that yes; the hanger’s blast doors were open. We entered through the hanger bay’s minimal force field - it was barely strong enough to keep the wind and ice out - and settled to the ground next to what looked to be the station’s loan shuttle and another that obviously wasn’t of Imperial make.

  There was apparently a tactical meeting that I’d been left out of because everybody seemed to know what to do except for me.

  Sergio turned and spoke to me for the first time ever, “Okay Ensign, stick close to the Captain and keep your mouth shut. Got it?”

  I nodded back at him. What else did he think I was going to do?

  I was once again somewhat surprised to discover that the Captain, myself, and four of Sergio’s men would be the first to exit the shuttle. The rest of them were to hang back for… something…

  We stepped out of the shuttle and I almost gagged. The smell of rotten eggs combined with something sickly sweet was thick. The Captain laughed and said, “Oh, I may have forgotten to mention it but this moonlet is the worst hellhole in the entire galaxy. If you think the smell is bad now don’t ever go through that force field.”

  As the six of us were making our way towards the hanger bay hatch, it opened.

  In walked crewmen Torres and the woman I assumed to be Simone, his wife. They greeted us with a wave and a smile.

  “Boy are we glad to see you,” he said. “We need to get the Citizen to your medical bay quickly, or it may be too late.”

  “By all means, take us to her,” the Captain responded. Torres answered by giving us a follow me wave of the hand.

  We walked through a maze of corridors until we finally ended up in a room that bore
no resemblance to a medical bay. I was just thinking that the smell of this moonlet permeated everything when I turned around just in time to see Torres and the woman raisingtheir weapons on us.

  Without energy the Captain said, “What’s going on?”

  I took my eyes off of the guns and turned to stare at my Captain. He’d asked that question in the oddest voice I’d ever heard him use. I didn’t think it was enough for Torres to pick up on, but I’d been around him long enough to detect a note of falseness, of gamesmanship.

  The Captain continued, “Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re getting yourself into?”