Planet America (9 page)

He went through this door alone, shutting it tightly behind him. The thousands of troops remained at attention and waited. These things never took very long. Sure enough, not thirty seconds later, the door opened, and O'Nay glided out again.

Mission accomplished.

Now the whole ceremonial process had to be reversed. O'Nay was surrounded by the Gold House Guards, who turned him over to the Plaza Guards, who gave him over to the Holy Street Guards, who marched him back up to the Imperial Palace, where the Concourse Guards delivered him back to the Tower Guards. Through it all, the music continued to play and more and more white, furry, flying things were sent aloft.

Only after O'Nay disappeared back into the palace did the pageantry die down. His glow was seen ascending the stairs back to the top of the tower, to the small meditation room, which by all reports did not contain a "favorite comfortable place" for O'Nay. Finally, the glow reached its apex, and the single light at the top of the tower blinked back to white again.

That's when the music finally stopped, and any remaining flying things were returned to their holding area. All around the floating city, soldiers and guards were ordered at ease. Things went back to normal as well down in Big Bright City. O'Nay was back in his tower, and all was right with the Universe.

Back at the Gold House, the two soldiers posted closest to the small room that had been O'Nay's destination eased themselves into standing regular guard duty again.

After a while, one looked at the other and shrugged.

"My guess, it was just a tinkle," he said.

Farther down the floating city's main street, all the way to the bright southern edge of Special Number One, there was an extremely futuristic building known as Blue Rock.

This was the main operations center for the Space Forces, the largest of the Empire's trinity of military services. The job of the SF was to project the Empire's policies to the far reaches of the Galaxy. Comprised of the Navy, the Army, and Air Service, the Space Forces were the Emperor's front-line troops, nearly twenty billion in all, with millions of spacecraft under flag to get them where they wanted to go. The SF was also the Empire's senior service; its roots went back more than a thousand years, a history that had somehow survived the last two Dark Ages. As such, its members liked to think of it as the most professional of the Empire's military units.

On this night, the SF building was lit up as always, each of its many levels glowing brightly. A full duty shift was inside, more than fifty thousand people. They were all working nonstop, lording over millions of superfast communications bubbles, the cells from which the reports of the nonstop comings and goings of the vast space service gurgled up.

At the exact opposite end of Special Number One, hanging off the floating city's northern tip, was another very futuristic building. It was built entirely of black superglass, and unlike the brightness of SF's Blue Rock, it was rarely seen emitting any light at all.

This was the operations center for the second service of the Empire's triad, the Inner Defense Forces. More readily known as the Solar Guards, they were about half as big as the Space Forces and were responsible for security within the Pluto Cloud, as the boundary of the Earth's solar system was known.

Or at least that's how it was supposed to be.

Truth was, the Solar Guards could be found in just about every corner of the Galaxy, while many vessels of the Space Forces fleet spent their time on assignments closer to Earth, where most of the Empire's major repair and training facilities were located. This disparity was one of the great ironies of the Empire, and it had been like this for longer than anyone could remember.

To say the two services did not get along was a ridiculous understatement. Their top officers never communicated with each other. They used different types of weapons and flew different types of starships. They had different orders of rank and even different style uniforms. The Space Forces wore blue with yellow trim; the Solar Guards wore black with red. Their missions were nothing alike. The Solar Guards were like an army of policemen. They cruised the Galaxy, working on countless investigations, some of them legitimate (like tracking down tax outlaws and criminal armies), but many not. As a result, the Solar Guards conducted their own wars and the Space Forces conducted theirs. The two services had never fought side by side against a common enemy.

The Solar Guards had been established just three hundred years before—or so they claimed. And while they boasted fewer men in arms than the Space Forces, their troops were considered more specialized, better trained, and more ruthless. They were also much closer to the inner workings of the Imperial Palace, the ultimate seat of power. While the Space Forces were never shy in making their views clear to the Emperor, by tradition they usually did so through normal channels of protocol. The Solar Guards, on the other hand, excelled in getting the Emperor's ear via back channels and well-practiced intrigues.

A difference in philosophy fueled the main conflict between the services. The SG believed the Empire's best path to success was to reclaim as many of the Galaxy's planets as possible, as quickly as possible, and bring them into the Empire's fold. The Space Forces were dedicated to the same goal but believed the way to accomplish this was to go after the troublesome planets first—those inhabited by pirates, criminals, and other interstellar lowlifes—and bring the more peaceful, law-abiding planets back in gradually.

So, it was not a question of expansion; that was everybody's objective. It was how quickly that expansion should be carried out.

The Solar Guards ops building was almost always covered in shadow. Even now, in the dead of night, no lights illuminated its main entrance. Barely two dozen people were on duty inside, and none was working very hard. Unlike their SF rivals, SG commanders rarely reported in on a regular basis—not officially, anyway. Anything of any importance they always sent in deeply coded layers of biosecrecy, the so-called "brain-proof cryptics that very few people could read, least of all the building's night shift. So while any bubble noise being transmitted to this place during the night was probably coming from the darker places in the Galaxy, the handful of communications beams received were simply stored away to be read by others in the morning.

Unlike the SF building, though, the Solar Guards had built a bunker below their ops center. It went down thirteen levels. In one section of the lowest level was a room restricted to everyone but a select few at the top of the Solar Guards' hierarchy.

In this room there was an ultrasecret communications beam selector, one that was always set to the same atomic band. This apparatus worked even less frequently than those in the upper levels of this shadowy place. But a message had come in through it this night.

It would make sense only to someone who understood exactly who was on the other end of the communicator.

"Post-Fringe Five Mission, Day 3," the encoded message bubbles read. "Nothing new to report...."

The Expeditionary and Exploratory Forces, known more simply as the X-Forces, was the third service of the Empire's trinity.

It had about one-tenth the number of troops as the SF; way less than half that of the Solar Guards. The X-Forces' mandate was to fly to the Outer Fringe—meaning all arms of the galactic spiral—and identify those planets lost since the last Dark Age and even beyond. In many ways, they were the scouts before the cavalry. Any planets they did not reclaim themselves were left for the Space Forces. The X-Force's starships carried highly trained troops but also professional humanitarians, scientists, physicians, and representatives of the Empire's diplomatic corps. Very often the first time the people of a reclaimed world saw the Empire's banner it was painted on the side of an X-Forces vessel. While the SF and SG battled each other for influence both on Earth and throughout the Galaxy, the X-Forces went about their far-flung jobs somewhat quietly.

As such, they had absolutely no political power anywhere in the Empire and least of all on the Imperial floating city.

In fact, they didn't even have a building up there.

All of the buildings immediately surrounding the Imperial Palace were brick-by-brick reconstructions of ancient dwellings found on Earth thousands of years before.

There were twelve of them in all, their interiors full of intricately carved oak, one of the rarest commodities in the Galaxy. These buildings had very few windows and many were made of stained glass. Though elegant, this made the buildings unnaturally dark inside. Full of shadows and dimly lit hallways, they were also honeycombed with secret passageways, and, it was rumored, dungeons.

These were the Holy Houses, the places where the Specials resided. And it was into a room on the top floor of one of them that Petz Calandrx suddenly popped in.

He hadn't traveled so fast in years. One moment he was standing in his foyer talking to the spy; the next, he was here, in this dark place, his head throbbing with pain, his skin still emitting a greenish glow. He checked to make sure all of his vital parts had survived the transport process. They had, thank God. Then he studied his new surroundings. No windows, no furniture, not even a chair. He knew he was inside a Holy House though; the room's exquisite woodwork gave it away.

But
where
was he exactly? Which house? Whose room? These things he didn't know.

This had all happened so suddenly he'd not been given the opportunity to even change his clothes. Whatever member of the Imperial Family had summoned him, Calandrx would be greeting them in his smoking jacket and slippers!

And what shape had he left his house in? Had he extinguished his reading candles before answering the fateful knock? He couldn't remember—not that it mattered. He was sure the spy was rummaging through his things at that very moment, doing what spies do. He just hoped the man would blow out all the candles before he left.

Calandrx suddenly felt a bit claustrophobic. This room was very small by imperial standards. Why was he here? Who was he supposed to see? The Emperor? Hardly ... O'Nay would not have gone through the trouble of sending a spy for him. He could have simply willed it into the wind, and Calandrx would have been standing before him instantly. The Emperor's wacky son was a more likely suspect. The kid was a royal fuckup, known as much for his inability to handle slow-ship wine as the disrespectful way he treated real women, a rarity throughout the Empire. He also loved Starfighters and in the past had approached Calandrx to talk tactics. But Calandrx had always put him off, having little desire to spend even a minute in the presence of such an idiot. Could this be the Prince's method of revenge?

No, sending a spy did not seem like junior's style. A battalion of Earth Guards maybe. But not a spy.

This really left only the Empress, who was just as nutty as her son and well-known for her love of intrigue. Calandrx felt a chill go through him. What would the Empress want with him? He had nothing to hide. Or did he?

True, he was a man of honor and scruples, but that did not mean he hadn't slipped on occasion. Everyone had a bit of the rascal in him, especially these days. He began worrying that perhaps one of his latest adventures might be coming back to haunt him.

Suddenly there was a flash, and just like that, there were two more people in the room with him.

They almost looked like twins. Both were stout but powerful men of middle age, with shiny bald heads and huge, drooping mustaches. Battle scars were prominent on their hands and faces. Their uniforms were black with gold collar badges. The double crosses of the X-Forces were emblazoned on their chests.

The strange thing was, Calandrx knew them both. In fact, he was good friends with them. Their names were Erx and Berx. They were senior officers of the X-Forces and well-known in many parts of the Galaxy.

And they were as surprised to see him as he was to see them.

"Calandrx, our brother!" Erx cried. "They scooped you up, too?"

"Yes—in my nightclothes yet..."

"By a spy?" Berx asked. "With no explanation?"

"The same," Calandrx replied. "That only deepens the mystery as to why we have been called here."

Erx and Berx shook off the last of the green luminescence surrounding them, then began examining the room. They quickly took note of the woodwork, the shadows.

"Is this really a Holy House that we've been delivered to?" Erx asked, going over a wood carving like a detective.

"It is indeed," Calandrx said.

"Whose is it, brother?" Berx asked him. "Have you noodled that out yet?"

"My guess is the Empress," Calandrx whispered. "And to no good end, I fear."

"You see nothing positive in this, brother?" Berx asked him worriedly.

Calandrx shook his head. "I am no longer an expert in palace machinations. I just know they don't send out spies to summon people like us for any small reason."

The three men looked at each other. There had been one episode of mischief among them lately. Could that be why they were here?

"Where did you pop in from?" Calandrx asked them worriedly.

"We've been in the secret court of inquiry for the past six weeks!" Berx exclaimed; he was usually the more excitable of the two.

"Still?" Calandrx asked them. "That's way too long."

Erx and Berx nodded glumly. The secret inquiry was looking into what happened during the battle of Zazu-Zazu. The tiny moon at the end of the Five-Arm had come very close to being destroyed by a very mysterious military force using weapons never seen in the Galaxy before. The battle was finally won by the moon's inhabitants after, ironically enough, the Solar Guards came to their rescue. But the mysterious enemy departed in a very strange spaceship, again, not of a type ever seen in the Galaxy.

These were very disturbing events for the people at the top of the Empire. A number of bizarre episodes had been reported in various places around the Galaxy in the months leading up to Zazu-Zazu, but none so strange as the tiny war on the tiny moon so far out on the Fringe, you would fall off the edge if you went any farther.