Battle at Zero Point (17 page)

He took another giant step in, and finally he saw her. She was reclining on the couch in front of the fire, a goblet of golden wine in her hand. The Secretary had known her for years, but he never failed to marvel just how beautiful she was, even though she was approaching her fourth century. Or was it her fifth?

That Holy Blood really does the trick
, he thought.

He bowed very deeply, removing his hat and sweeping it across his chest and under his left arm. As always, he was dressed in his long blue gown.

"My lady, I was told that you required my assistance," he said.

She indicated that he could rise from his bow.

"It is good to know that not everyone has abandoned me," she said. "Or has everyone just gone off on vacation at the same time?"

The Secretary regained his full height, put his boots together, and held his hat under his arm.

"If they be on vacation, my lady, they left at a most inopportune time," he said. "The Empire needs every heart and mind it owns to be here these troubled days, working for its preservation."

She smiled. "Please…" she said, indicating the extensive bar set up on the hovering table close by the fire.

The Secretary poured himself a modest goblet of gold slow-ship wine, then took a seat on a divan opposite from her. She was still dressed in her interplanetary party outfit: very short black dress, boots, plunging neckline. Stunning, still…

"You know what has happened, I assume?" she asked him. "Up in the Two Arm—between the Space Forces and the Solar Guards?"

He nodded once, deeply. "That huge battle? I certainly do. As a matter of fact, I have further reports, if it will not pain you too much to watch them."

"Pain is all too common today," she said.

He snapped his fingers. Suddenly, the room was filled with an enormous image of the Milky Way. It stretched for thirty feet. Every known star, every known planet, spinning, twirling, the Empire contained in a perfect holographic image before them.

It was jaw-dropping in its beauty—but all was not right here. Every few seconds, there would be a flash of light in among all the stars. First around the Three Arm. Then, over on the Four. Then, two more on the Five Arm, then on the Sixth. And the mid-Two Arm looked as if it was on fire.

"Those flashes?" the Empress asked. "What are they?"

"Those are battles between the Space Forces and the Solar Guards, my lady," he said.

The Empress just stared back at him. She had been expecting at the most a report of another incident between the two services somewhere inside the Two Arm. But not this…

"Quite simply, my lady," he began again, "heavy fighting has broken out between the Space Forces and the Solar Guards all over the Galaxy. Where these things have been isolated incidents over the past three weeks, we are now on the verge of an all-out war."

The Empress's alabaster face went even more pale, if that was possible. She began shaking her head violently.

"This can't be true!" she declared in a loud voice. "These reports you are getting must be wrong."

"If only that were die case, my lady," he replied calmly— he was too old for such extreme emotions.

"But these reports cannot be disputed. They are showing up on the strings, the bubblers. Even the Big Generator is showing a seismic fluctuation whenever a prop core blinks out. And that only happens when one of our ships—either Space Forces or Solar Guards—is destroyed."

She fell silent for a long time, staring into the fire. It seemed as if life itself was draining out of her.

"Did you ever foresee a day such as this?" she finally asked him sadly. "When our own troops would be fighting each other—and apparently with no way to stop them?"

"It is disturbing," the Secretary replied. "I know for a fact that orders to desist are flying out of every military and diplomatic post we have—but sad to say, they are being universally ignored."

The Empress sipped her drink. "I know there has been disdain between the two forces for many years. But…"

She let her voice trail off.

"As in other cases of history, my lady," the Secretary told her. "It usually doesn't take much to strike the match. Rivalry and distrust can last below the surface for only so long. Then they become combustible, just waiting for something to ignite them."

"It all seemed to start with that invasion a month ago-short-lived as it was," she fumed. "The Solar Guards did not react well to it."

The Secretary lowered his glass a moment. He wondered if he should level with her, at the same time knowing he had no other choice, as it was widely rumored, and on good authority, that the Empress could read minds.

"I'm sure you've heard the same whispers as I," he said.

"That the Solar Guards lied about what happened at the end of that curious action?" she asked.

"They
did
lie, my lady," the Secretary told her. "One of my men had to die to prove it, but prove it he did. We retrieved his readings. Nothing happened out there. The invaders vanished, and the REF had no idea where they went.

"But even stranger—the REF's activities out in the area since the supposed battle have been very curious, to say the least. While earlier in the month their search for answers had been intense, lately it seems just the opposite is true. In fact, I've seen some reports that indicate they are not out there at all for long periods of time—and then suddenly, the No-Fly area will be filled up with them again."

"Are you saying the REF is flying in and out of its own forbidden zone?" she asked, puzzled.

He shrugged. "Appearing and then disappearing is the better term for it. And zipping at quite high speed to other points in the realm, only to return to the Two Arm—and disappear again. Very strange behavior. But whatever the case, they certainly didn't want anyone to see what they are doing out there. As I said, the man we sent out to investigate it all paid with his life. It is his murder that led to this fighting."

The Empress went silent again. The fire paled a bit. Then she looked the Secretary straight in the eye and asked, "Is Hawk Hunter involved in this?"

Again, the Secretary knew he had to be careful with what he said here. "There is a good chance he is. And if I can be so bold, there are reports that your daughter, the very beautiful Xara, may have had liaisons with this rogue."

He paused. "Have you heard any news about her? Where she disappeared to? Or Vanex for that matter?"

The Empress shook her head. Her emotions were rising slowly to the surface, a rare occasion for her.

"They are still looking, or so they tell me," she said. "I'm hoping she is just off somewhere. In a snit. Furious for some reason. But safe…"

"I pray that is so, my lady," the Secretary said.

Another long silence.

"You can read tea leaves," she said to him. "Is it too much of a coincidence that all these things are happening to us? Missing people? This invasion out on the Two Arm. Now this war between our own forces—and even talk about a coup against the Imperial Court? Not that I think it wise to believe in coincidences, but…"

The Secretary bowed his head slightly. "My lady, a wise man once said, 'If coincidences don't mean anything, why do they happen so often?' I tend to agree with him."

"Then why didn't we see this coming?" she asked.

"Some people did," he replied. "It just wasn't anyone up here, on our lofty heights, who read the tea leaves, as you put it. Up here, we drank, we reveled, we swam in the riches that come as a result of this great empire that's been handed to us. Meanwhile, down there, in the back alleys of that great city below, out on the periphery of the periphery, where the thinkers, the prophets, and the poets reside, they saw this coming a long time ago."

He locked his eyes on to hers, trying to find something beyond the extralong eyelashes and gobs of atomic mascara. It was a futile search.

"Is that a surprise to you, my lady?" he asked her. "That things are so different down there?"

The Empress laughed darkly. "Down there? I haven't been 'down there' in more than two hundred years.' "

The Secretary just shook his head. "Well, if I might be so bold," he said, "therein might lie part of the problem."

With that, he stood up, turned on his heel, and left.

The Empress retreated to her bedroom and conjured up another bottle of slow-ship wine.

She felt very uncomfortable now—and not just because the Secretary had taken such an ungracious leave of her. She was now alone;
that
was the problem. She didn't particularly like her own company.

And all this uncertainty only made the isolation worse.

The Empire might be crumbling or it might not be, but one thing was for certain: it was changing, and she didn't like change, either. How would history see her role in all this? Certainly she would have no direct link to the Fourth Empire's fall—if indeed that's what was going to happen. That blame would be put on O'Nay's head alone. After all, what imperial wife has any impact on her husband's work? Not she.

Yet on thinking that, the empty feeling in her stomach became that much deeper.

She sank into her floating bed and sipped her first goblet of the new wine. What would she do if the Secretary was right? Where would she go if all this nonsense eventually did reach Earth? She couldn't return to Venus; she was sure her relatives were leaving that place in droves by now. And if the SG fleets really did take over the One Arm, then the Solar System, and maybe even Earth itself—well, absolutely no one of any merit or grace would want to be within one hundred light-years of this place.

Perhaps it was wise then to take the Imperial Guards' advice. Maybe she
should
go to one of the other arms. It would be a new experience for her. Even though she was Empress of the Galaxy and had been for more than 300 years, she'd never even left the Pluto Cloud, never mind venturing out beyond the One Arm. But where would she go, exactly? Not into the Ball, of course. Though she was adored by billions in the peaceful center of the Galaxy, the place was so boring, she'd rather die here than flee there.

No, it would have to be to one of the arms. But which one? She'd never heard anything good about the Two or the Three Arm and apparently the Five and Six arms were just dreadful, as were the Eight and the nearby Nine.

And the Seventh? No, there was nothing at all out there. Besides…

Suddenly, she felt a drop of water fall on her cheek. She reached up and touched it, only to find two more. Then another. And another. What was going on here? Water was spilling from her eyes. Her breath caught in her throat. She didn't realize it at first, only because it had been so long, but she was crying.

What kind of a mother are you
? a voice whispered in her ear. It was a good question and one that she never wanted to face. Her daughter was missing. Had been for a month. Yet practically all she had done in those four weeks was party on Zros. Had it ever occurred to her that Xara might actually be in peril? Or even dead?

No…

Not until now.

Suddenly, every bad thing she'd done in the past 375 years came back to her; it was a deluge, and the swiftness in which it arrived was startling by itself. There had been a lot of lying over those three-plus centuries, a lot of cheating, treachery, bigotry, and deceit. But no offense compared to the poor excuse of a mother she'd been to her daughter. In fact, she hadn't been a mother at all. A flood of tears came now; endless waves of repressed emotions exploded to the surface. Her entire life, she'd sought only to shine and not reflect, and now it was time to pay for that conceit. Her whole world was crumbling, within and without. The room seemed to spin black and become deathly cold, such was the turmoil she found herself in. She began looking for a knife, for if one was in her reach, she would plunge it into her heart and end all this right now.

But no dagger could be found; in fact, they were banned within the palace. So she simply buried her head in her pillow and let the tears flow unabated, ruining her makeup, soaking her covers, staining her sheets.

Suddenly, though, near the bottom of this seemingly bottomless pit, she felt an amazing warmth enter the room. Her dark emotions were being swept away by something even deeper. She stopped crying.

She wiped her eyes and looked up.

Two figures were next to her bed.

They were men—but then again, they weren't, at least not in the first moment of their arrival. She had no idea how they had entered her room. The doors were all locked and laser-sealed. Her chambers were surrounded by security beams that prevented anyone from materializing from other locations unless she alone had authorized it. Nor had these two dropped in from the nearby sixth dimension, the place where the dour sentinels existed. Those phantom butlers always announced their arrival before intruding on imperial space.

No, these two were just
suddenly there
, not something that happened ever, despite this day and age of people popping in and out for all occasions.

And in that first split second of their arrival, she saw a strange glow around both of them. And both seemed not to be standing but floating a bit above the floor, this, even though it was virtually impossible for anyone to levitate in her presence.

The Empress of course blamed the hallucination on her breakdown just moments before—and the large quantity of slow-ship wine she'dingested lately.

But then she realized that she recognized one of the two.

"Hero Petz?
Is that you
?"

Calandrx smiled warmly. Tomm was next to him. He smiled as well.

"You look so… different," she gasped. "Have you had your atoms recombined?"

Calandrx laughed a little. "Maybe," he replied.

She held her head in her hands. "I must have been drugged or spiked," she gasped. "Of all the souls I never expected to see again, you are among the top…"

She sat up and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

"But Petz, why are you here? You have become an enemy of the state. With one word this room will be swarming with guards, and you will be led away to the atomic gallows."