The Phoenix Darkness (11 page)

“Mr. Iwate you will report to the infirmary
at once,” said Summers. Her eyes were still focused ahead, looking
at the ops position, and so Shen, who had already walked past her,
was out of sight. He didn’t acknowledge her order and instead all
she heard was the sound of the elevator door open and close.
I’ll have to check on his condition later and then decide
whether or not to discipline him
, she thought, then returned
focus to the immediate present.

“Ops, given what we know about Zander and the
classification of his ship, is there any indication he is or was
here?” said Summers. Thinking there’d damn well better be, since
the last they’d heard from the informant working for the queen was
that Zander had not left the system.

“Yes, Commander,” said Nimoux, to Summers’
immediate relief. “This is a very small system with sparse traffic.
As such, there’s only one ship on the move. It appears to be
clearing a distance to jump for alteredspace, and it just so
happens to be an old Endelvian cruiser.”

“Get a fix on it,” ordered Summers.

“Yes, Commander, already working on it,” said
Nimoux.

“Is there any way to positively ID that ship
as Zander’s and not some other ship very similar to it?” asked
Summers.

“Not with perfect accuracy,” said Nimoux. “At
least not without more information about Zander’s ship. But we are
in Izar Ceti and this ship is the only Endelvian cruiser around. My
instincts tell me to trust this is the one.”

Summers nodded. “I agree.”

“They are clear to jump and appear to be
energizing their alteredspace drive,” said Nimoux.

“Do we have a fix on them and have we
identified their probable jump destination?”

“Affirmative, to both inquiries,” said
Nimoux. “Also, they have jumped into alteredspace.”

“Ops, feed your information to the helm. Lt.
Winters, follow that ship. Defense, keep us stealthed no matter
what, unless I say otherwise. If you need more power, then draw it
from any available system, including life support if
necessary.”

“Yes, sir,” they each acknowledged.

“Jump as soon as we’re clear.”

“Aye, aye,” said Sarah. “Able to jump in ten
seconds.”

“Excellent. Nimoux, whatever happens, don’t
lose sight of that ship. It’s time to finally rid the galaxy of
those goddamn weapons!”

***

Representative Addison Pandev, like many in
the Assembly from what she could gather, felt a divided and
confused sense of loyalty over whom to support in the ongoing
succession crisis.

She'd been shocked, like everyone else, when
King Hisato Akira had been gruesomely murdered right before her
eyes on the Assembly Floor! That horror still fueled her nightmares
and its immediate aftermath filled her with a sense of sympathy for
Kalila Akira, especially when it was discovered shortly thereafter
she’d lost not only her father but the rest of her immediate family
that day, each the result of an unrelated and unspeakable tragedy.
Such a chain of awful events, all centered around one person who
was left standing in the wake of so much terror and tragedy pulled
at Addison’s heartstrings and made it difficult to have anything
but sympathy and positive feelings toward Kalila. That, combined
with the long tradition of the Akiran name being practically
synonymous with Imperial patriotism made it nigh impossible for her
to harbor ill will toward the former princess, or to support
efforts meant to condemn or oppose her.

But on the other side of the coin, Addison
was legally obligated to support the Steward and help elect a new
monarch for the Empire. This electoral process had failed
repeatedly, hence the creation of Caerwyn Martel’s stewardship over
the Empire, but so long as no elected monarch had been duly chosen,
through process of law, a power belonging to the Assembly by powers
vested within the Imperial Charter, then anyone acting in the
capacity of monarch, or claiming to be the monarch, is,
necessarily, in open rebellion, according to the laws of the
Empire. There had been some debate as to whether or not Hisato
Akira was intending to step down as king once his powers had been
recalled or if he would try to retain them. But to have retained
his powers, and thus implying the legitimate succession by his
heirs, would have been to defy the laws of the Imperial Charter
itself, and would also constitute an unlawful act.

And so, by the sheer legal implications of
the laws as written, and according to their best current
understanding by the Assembly and the courts, Kalila Akira was not
the queen of the Empire. She was a renegade warlord who was
inciting insurrection across the many worlds of the Empire, leaving
any of the original three-hundred and seventy-eight
representatives, fewer now, in a confused and conflicted state. Of
course, there were some whose allegiances had been made clear early
on. Usually these belonged to political factions which either
supported the Akira family or the Martel family, and so for them
little conflict existed. But for the vast majority of
representatives, especially those like Addison, deciding whom to
support was a much more difficult equation, particularly when one
tried to consider the wishes and best interests of one's
constituent planet.

It had been hell sitting in sessions and
watching the nobles, the representatives belonging to the Great
Houses, repeatedly fail to elect a new king or queen, while the
hundreds of common representatives had been forced to watch, wait,
and wonder about the future of the nation. And what security would
be left of it, should the succession crisis erupt into war which,
unfortunately, had proven to be the case.

Now, though, with much of the Imperial fleet
destroyed or damaged at the battle of the Apollo Yards, with humans
slaughtering humans and allied planets aligned against each other,
the feeling among the common representatives was one of profound
and growing discomfort. Even Addison herself wondered if her
position here, as a seated member of the Assembly, ostensibly
lending support for the legal side of the argument, that Kalila was
no queen, was directly contributing to the violence and the civil
war happening abroad. And, since that was almost certainly the
case, was holding to such a legal standard worthy of sacrificing so
much human blood, especially with the actual threat of aliens
abroad, when the Assembly itself continued to fail to elect an
official monarch? Meanwhile, Kalila stood firmly in view,
commanding fleets and armies, holding the line like a mighty
bastion against an ever raging tempest, exactly as one would expect
a monarch to do. So while she might not have the legal right to the
throne, she had a kind of constructive claim upon it, especially in
the absence of any legitimate contenders.

Or so many of the common representatives were
beginning to see it, including Addison herself. She estimated a
third of just over three-hundred common representatives who still
sat the Assembly were having second thoughts or doubts about the
importance of the Assembly’s position in this war. A good hundred
strong, maybe more, were of the opposite view, and very loudly and
vocally opposed the former princess and feared that to acquiesce
and accept her as the monarch would be to create a dangerous
precedent whereby a great deal of power, including the right to
select and withdraw the monarch, would be transferred away from the
Assembly and permanently handed over to the monarchy. Creating,
perhaps of legitimate concern, the possibility of reigns of tyrants
and others whose powers would no longer be countered by the
commanding supervision of the Assembly itself. A fact which had
never been historically tested, until now, and whether or not the
Assembly held the power in practice or merely in theory was a
question being decided by bloodshed and civil war.

I, for one, will have no part in this
Addison had promised herself upon learning of the battle for
Apollo. She’d intended to resign her seat and allow someone else to
sit on the Assembly for her constituents. But then, as the days
went on and Kalila herself reached out to the Empire, the Assembly
in particular, and offered to create a new Assembly, a true one,
and allow the current representatives to sit in session before her,
an actual monarch, rather than as powerless figures before a
bloodthirsty steward…it had been hard for Addison to think of
reasons to refuse.

Yes
, perhaps Kalila was the tyrant a
third of the Assembly deeply feared she was. If Caerwyn Martel was
to be believed, any Assembly raised by the alleged queen would be
her puppets and have no power, legal or practical, and to go to her
would only seem to legitimize her unlawful claim.

Then again
, from where Addison was
sitting, watching these events unfold, it seemed Caerwyn, who was a
lead contender for election as king, had amassed a great deal of
power himself, much more than his station required. And this while
Kalila was ever the sympathetic monarch who sought to unite the
Empire once more under the banner and colors of her family, like
her great-great grandfather before her back when humanity was a
number of fledgling independent colonies which stood and fell alone
against the vast, organized alien hordes.

Rumors that Kalila was the spiritual
successor to her heroic ancestor had spread among the people. Many
rejected the idea, either thinking her a usurper or, at best, a
lesser version of her father, who’d been a lesser version of his
father, that the Akiran name stood for more than it was worth, and
the strength of kings had been watered down with each generation,
was not an uncommon view. No question King Hisato Akira had made
his share of blunders and shown his questionable leadership prowess
during The Great War.

Then again, had it not been for the Akira
family some hundred years ago, there would be no Empire, and
probably no humanity. Perhaps the Alliance would have survived in
its terrible, thought-policed, freedom-less state, but the glory
that was humankind would have been lost to ashes. And so to many,
Kalila personified that history, that vision, especially now that
she was all that remained of the great Akiran legacy.

Truthfully, Addison could not say whether it
was right to support Kalila in order to stabilize the nation and
support a monarch at the risk of upsetting the Imperial Charter, or
if it was better to stand behind the steward, as a unified
Assembly, and hope to raise a legitimate monarch who would crush
any rebellion swiftly and reunite all of humanity under a single,
lawful banner. So far at least, the latter was seeming to be more
of a legal idealist’s pipe-dream rather than a conceivable reality.
For no such lawful monarch existed, the Assembly could not produce
one, and even should one arise, it was hard to imagine he or she
might garner enough support to easily set aside the increasingly
popular self-declared queen.

No, it was not Kalila who was broken, Addison
had finally decided, not many days before, it was the law which had
proven imperfect. The situation that had arisen with a slain king,
a failure of succession, and the claim by his only living heir to
the throne, despite the king’s standing of being posthumously cast
into legal doubt, the Imperial Charter and its drafters had not
foreseen such an event. And so it was the document itself, the law,
without any precedent for such a thing, which was coming up dry and
empty and insufficient. The law itself was broken by a failure in
its design. Kalila was not broken and her claim to her father’s
throne was not broken, especially if many and more of the Imperial
star systems recognized her as the heir to the throne.

And so, with that reasoning, shared by many
in the Assembly but spoken of only in whispers, Addison had
convinced herself to abandon her seat on Capital World and instead
join the queen as a part of Kalila’s new Assembly, if she would be
received, and hope such an action would sway her otherwise neutral
planet onto the side of the queen. And, as others did the same, the
balance of the Empire would become clear. The Akiran name would be
restored to its original glory. And Kalila, like her great-great
grandfather before her, might lead the Empire, and all of humanity,
into another golden era of security and prosperity.

That had been the hope, anyway, when Addison
had discreetly arranged transport off of Capital World. She had no
intelligence training, but she knew others like her were
disappearing, or winding up dead, usually in apparent suicides. It
was only natural to expect if her intentions were discovered she
too might befall some sort of tragic accident. And so she kept
things as quiet as she possibly could. She sat her seat in the
Assembly Hall up until the day she’d arranged to disappear, so as
to deflect suspicion. And then, when the time came, she fled under
cover of darkness, abandoning her own son and husband without a
word, hoping to better protect the secret of her flight and also to
protect them from having any part of her conspiracy to defect.

She told no one of her plans or her
sympathies; she spoke to no one other than those necessary to
arrange passage off the planet, and she’d even quietly hired guards
to protect her person. Not too many; nothing to attract attention.
But two professional bodyguards who would see her safely away to
make certain no hired thugs kidnapped her and made her seem to have
hanged herself with her own belt, if such treachery was indeed
going on. One couldn’t be too careful.

In the dark of night, she took a redeye
shuttle to one of Capital World’s lesser trafficked starports.
There she took a starship away from the system, bringing her
bodyguards with her. That ship jumped to a nearby system where
again she found herself in a starport, this time surrounded by
people, which she decided was a good thing; more people meant more
witnesses, and before long she was on another ship, jumping for yet
another world. All steps along an irregular ladder which
ultimately, if the universe was kind, would lead her to the
queen.