Chapter VII (Well developed but not quite finished)

VII

 

            The battle above the prison camp was won, and Sean and I were back in orbit.  Michelson had escaped, and Richter was leaving to continue his pursuit.  Sean was in the bridge.  He put the flagship on manual control and steered us toward the UGC forces.  When they didn’t deactivate their weaponry, he powered down ship’s beams.  The other ships in the division followed the flagship’s lead.  We saw a high-profile prisoner transport ship emerge from one of the ships.  It approached the flagship and docked with us.  Sean had already MPTed to the docking station and was walking toward the ship when a boarding team poured out and stormed the ship, not even noticing the Commodore’s presence.  When they reached the bridge, I considered for the shortest of moments brandishing my gravity sword, but quickly decided against it.  Sean kept walking toward the transport ship.  When its crew noticed him, the boarding team was recalled and he was put into restraints, his gravity sword confiscated.  All the captains in the division but I were taken in a similar manner, each guilty of obeying their Commodore’s orders, and all the ships were given alternative commanders.  I gave up control of the ANS Ad Astra and went over to the ship to which Sean was being taken.

            Thanks to the Commodore’s cooperation, he was spared the brig, and instead merely locked in an absent officer’s quarters.  I was allowed to enter.  Many drank wine as a sort of nepenthe, but, as much as he enjoyed the drink, Sean never did so.  He’d always preferred to face and overcome his woes.  If any aid were necessary, it would almost always be some music.  Wine was obviously unavailable anyway.  If he had requested it, Kent may have been able to convince a guard to bring him some, but this would have been unlikely.  Upon my request, a piano was MPTed into the room.  Sean was sitting on a couch, clearly very distressed.

I had been rather torn up by the news myself.  He’d been a good friend.  Ultimately, I think I was more angry with Michelson than I was sad, which was unlike me.  I was becoming more like Kent.  This was an attitude he would normally display.  One may have concluded that the commodore’s current state was partially a result of the trauma from being declared a criminal by the nation he had loved and dutifully served his entire life, but this was not the case.  The criminal charges were nothing next to the loss of a friend.  As military men, we both were forced to accept death, but that did not mean it was any more acceptable.

Sean had remained mute since he’d received word of Stewart, through the arrest and my entrance.  I likewise said nothing, but began playing the Appassionata.  Through the first movement, the music sympathized with him.  It reflected his directionless anger.

            During the second movement, I looked more closely at the tormented man, and noticed that some of the anguish had left his face, and that the tears had dried.  He was leaning back, his hands on his lap, with his eyes closed.  He’d allowed himself to be enchanted by the melody.  Indeed, it was a very enchanting melody.  He was somewhere else, in another place and time, in a fantasy, away from his troubles.  I imagined him walking through marshland near his home, on our native planet, before the Plontian wars.  He was with his father.  The sun had set, but the water continued to reflect is last warm rays.  It was autumn, and a flock of geese was flying south.  Their honking filled the air.  It was a pleasant sound, because it was of what memories were made.  He was nearing his house.  His dog, a good natured yellow Labrador, ran to meet him.  Inside, his mother was baking an apple pie.  I think he may have spent more time dreaming than living, but he lived most when he was dreaming.  I continued to play.

            The final chord of the second movement brought him back, and the third movement’s intensity forced him to deal with reality.  When I had finished playing twenty five minutes after I had begun, he stood up and said, “Thank you.”

            It was unquestionably a beautiful piece.  It had real feeling to it.  To play those warm, gentle cords, one must have a kind, caressing hand with which to execute them.  Beyond almost all else, I am proud that I can play the piece as I can.  I imagine Sean would have felt the same about the violin concerto.  It would certainly be justified.  The concerto is more grandiose, while I think of the sonata as more personal, portraying the struggles within.  When I wished for the august, I opted for Brahms’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra no. 2.  Sean was interesting.  He was an introvert, but also had a flair for the glorious.  These two aspects did not exist independently, manifesting themselves in two different “sides” of his personality.  Instead, they mingled simultaneously within him.  He saw grandeur where others saw triviality, and his introversion focused the feelings within himself.  He found limited external expression, but the internal was sufficient.

We arrived at the capital planet around seven hundred hours.  This was where most court marshals were held.  When we landed, Sean was immediately brought before seven judges for the preliminary hearing.  The thought of dishonestly attempting to repudiate the charge against him never crossed his mind, and he immediately pled guilty.  He was to be put under house arrest while sentencing was carried out, not at his home, but on the capital planet.  Because he owned no residences there, he would have to rent a residence.

            Sean was never actually placed under house arrest, however.  Directly after the hearing, Emperor Priscus approached us and invited us to his palace.  Sean seemed to first think that the Emperor was inviting him to stay in the palace for his house arrest, which was not really necessary, because anyone with the pay of a Commodore in the Augustonian Navy could easily afford to rent something for a few days.  He was extremely honored and grateful, but Priscus explained to him that this was not for his house arrest.

            Tullius asked us into the Imperial Chariot, technically a “ship” due to its interstellar capability, but closer to the size of a flightcraft.  It was a hectometer long, and a bit over a decameter up and around thirty three meters down and across.  Naturally, it was quite luxurious.  It was also very heavily armed, with eight torpedo bays and ten beam weapon turrets, and had very powerful shield generators.  In addition to this, whenever it was part of an interplanetary journey, it was escorted by a division of warships.  It could fly quickly from star to star, planet to planet, continent to continent, or even simply city to city.  Our flight lasted only ten minutes.

            The Imperial Palace was really like a sort of Augustonian Versailles.  The front gate was of granite, as were the exteriors of most of the buildings.  Behind these, before the palace proper, were a number of inviting gardens.  Trellises supporting morning glories surrounded them.  Because we flew over them, we could see inside.  There were tea roses and other such flowers.  Looking down at the gardens, Sean noted that they could never be the meadows of his home.  The roses would never be as beautiful as lupines.  Priscus agreed.

            The main palace was a beautiful example of baroque style architecture, adorned with many sculptures and ornaments, but few enough that it was not ostentatious.  There were only five floors to the palace, only four of which were above ground, and only three of which were very significant, as the fourth was only present in a few towers.  We landed in front of it and entered.  Inside, marble replaced granite.  Grace remained present; excess remained absent.  There was an MPT terminal, but Tullius walked toward a flight of stairs.  When Sean looked inquisitively at it, Tullius explained that he preferred walking, and that he almost never used this to go to our intended destination.  Up two flights, we began walking down what was the geometric center of the main palace, which was just short of perfectly symmetrical.  When we came to two large oak doors, I knew immediately where we were going.

            Everyone knew of the Hall of Emperors, but almost no one had seen it.  The baroque-style architecture was particularly evident in this hallway.  The walk was lined with artfully sculpted pillars, and the floor was artfully tiled.  Between the pillars, spaced evenly and directly across from each other, hand sculpted busts of every Emperor to rule the Augustonian Empire looked down at us.  Some smiled; some scowled.  There had been a few co-regencies, and these were represented by two busts side by side.  When we reached the end, there was Emperor Tullius, frozen in marble.  He neither smiled nor frowned.  His features were calm, his brow unwrinkled, but his eyes were somehow pensive.  Depending upon the beholder, he may have judged, sympathized, patronized, or scorned.  We passed under his gaze, into the section of the palace normally reserved for the royal family.

The first room was a bit of an informal office.  Three more doors in addition to the set we had just come through led to different wings.  There was a couch and a few comfortable chairs, and a table.  On the table was a paper and pen.  It was a pardon in the name of the Emperor for Commodore Sean Charles Kent, charged with dereliction of duty, a term carrying a more serious connotation than it had in the past.  In our society, a reprieve was no more than a reprieve, while a pardon was the equivalent of an encomium.  It not only excused the recipient’s actions, but rewarded him or her with honorary recognition.

Sean’s eyes were once again on the brink of tears, but they remained no more than glossy wells.  He bowed before the Emperor and accepted the pardon with both gratitude beyond words and grave regret for the wrong he had indeed done.

“That resolves the Augustonian charges against you.  Because you were part of a UGC fleet, however, you face UGC charges as well.  For these, we will be returning to the Feraustan capital planet.  Emperor Tullius awaits you in his own palace.  It is the same as the one in which you served as principle violinist and conductor for that ball celebrating the creation of the war you are presently fighting.”

Sean managed to keep his composure during the trip to the Feraustan capital.  The trip there was much the same as the trip to the Augustonian capital had been, but Sean was not so restrained a prisoner, he was no longer grieving so openly, and I was playing Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata.  When we arrived, the ceremony was a similar one.

After issuing the pardon, Tullius turned toward Kent and paternally put his hand on the naval officer’s shoulder.  “Commodore, through the door to the right is someone awaiting a visitor from another empire.  The honor of your presence has been requested again,” Tullius informed him.

Sean seemed a little surprised.  Who could it be?  I thought I knew.  When he walked through the door, I saw that I was right.  I did not enter the room with them, but Princess Irene later told me about her second meeting with Sean.

Words were absent through most of the reunion.  It was clear to me that the two were interested in each other, but it was even clearer that the ball, to which Sean had presented himself most reluctantly, nothing had had the opportunity to develop.  Things, therefore, started off a little awkwardly, but any tension that may have been present soon slipped away.  Few words were exchanged, even once the two were feeling more comfortable with each other.  After some brief consolation from the princess, she rose, taking the commodore by the hand.  A short walk took them to an MPT terminal, which in turn took them to the tip of the central tower of the palace.

“I always loved this tower,” the princess explained.  “Flying scared me when I was little.  I still get a little worried about it, as silly as it is.  It’s because my father exposed me so much to that awful war with the Plontians.  Seeing all those fighters crashing to the ground, and all those people dying…  It didn’t matter that they were only holograms.  I was still seeing them.  But I did always love being high up, seeing the land around me.  And it’s so beautiful in the clouds.  It’s like a dream.  I come up here to think, and to watch the birds and the flightcraft.  I get all the serenity of the sky while I’m still anchored to the ground through the tower.”

Sean nodded, appreciating, though only in part relating to, the feelings just presented.

Kent looked around the space.  The circular room was small; perhaps only one hundred ten square feet.  There was a writing desk, not too unlike the one in Sean’s study at his home.  Papers covered it.  A balalaika lay on top of these.  Sean walked over to the desk, moved the instrument with care, and examined the papers.

“Some of those are father’s,” Irene mentioned.  Sean nodded in acknowledgement.  All those to the left seemed to be the emperor’s, while those to the right belonged to Tullius’s only child.  “Mother doesn’t come up here much.  She’s got it even worse than me.  She’s not only afraid of flying; she’s afraid of heights.  It’s so silly that the royal family of the Feraustan Empire doesn’t take full advantage of their nation’s own technology to cure things like these phobias, but we don’t.”

“Well, there’s nothing to cure.  There’s only something to change.”

This statement received no response, but it said much about Sean’s character.  Irene walked slowly toward him.  Kent had been studying two works of art she had done.  One was pencil on paper.  It was a night scene.  A narrow, poorly defined path crept unendingly through a dark wood.  The trees, mostly elms, oaks, and chestnuts, all lacking their leaves, were all spaced far enough apart so as not to over-compete for resources, but with enough proximity to nauseate a claustrophobe.  None of the trunks grew straight up; all slanted one way or another.  The sky was lit by the moon and stars.  There were only a few clouds.  It was a cold, early winter night, but early enough that there was not yet any snow.  A wind moved through to the right, blowing a few dead leaves with it.  An owl rose on the current, in the upper right of the picture, just to the right and below the moon.  In its mouth was a mouse.  The pencil strokes were rapid, concise, of measured weight, and detailed.  The pencil had been kept very sharp.

The second was a bright sunrise, done in watercolor.  The brush had been small and the strokes patient.  The paint had not been allowed to run, and the detail was impressive.  The sky was a fiery yellow.  Clouds were everywhere, and the viewer seemed to be well above the ground.  The land at the very bottom of the canvas seemed distant.  There was beach, and then what appeared to be an ocean.  It was neither stormy nor calm.  Waves rose high and crashed against the beach, but not so high as to give any impression of excessive atmospheric disturbance.  The way the rays of sunlight bounced off the moving water was, in a word, beautiful.  Flecks of foam flew up from the water.  There was a sense of motion, but not quite of chaos.  Individual seashells could be seen on the shore.  The sea itself was the most important.  The glimmers in the troughs, the shadows of the breakers, and the shine of the whitecaps were captivating.

Upon her approach, Sean raised his head and smiled.  “You’re landscapes are wonderful.  I could never draw or paint myself, but I’ve always loved art.”  He pointed to the watercolor.  “Alexei would like that one.  Well, maybe not.  It could be too dynamic for him.  It’s not what I would call dynamic, but his tastes are much more boring.”

The princess smiled and picked up the triangular string instrument.  “My father taught me to play when I was young.  I love the sound.”  She looked at the neck.  “Some of these have six strings, but I like the simplicity of the two.  There are only three courses for the six strings anyway, so it’s just a frill to change the sound.”  The fingers of her left hand, soft and feminine but not entirely slender, caressed the strings.  “I was taught to play the prima first, but this is an alto.  I like the alto the best.”  She began to strum, and sang a pretty Feraustan folk tune.  Sean closed his eyes, and could imagine the same song being sung five hundred years ago in the Pravium Republic.  The foreign quality of it was charming.  These were emotions expressed by a different people, with different instruments, through a different language and in a different culture, and yet they were the same emotions as the ones he experienced.  He reopened his eyes and watched Irene.  Modern day Feraustans did not seem so foreign to him, especially since they were coming to run the galaxy.  In fact, there were plenty of ways he could relate to the princess.  The two understood each other.  Sean realized that his shoulders, which had been held upright and had formed right angles in his commodore’s uniform when he’d been addressed by his emperor, had relaxed and now slumped down.

 

Perhaps more enrapture here

 

Irene finished playing, laid down the balalaika, and put her hand on his shoulder.  Their eyes met.  The frozen blue of his was melted by the warm brown of hers.

Before Sean MPTed back down to meet again with the two emperors, they parted with a simple but sincere kiss.

 

Later

 

            “I nearly forgot.  Sir, they jammed our communications.”

            “What?”

            “They jammed our neutrino communication system.”

            “Who?  Who could do it?  We can’t do it!  And why would they use it first for such a small battle?  Why not set a trap and cripple us?”

            “We can’t do it because we haven’t been trying hard enough to do it.  We’ve been overconfident.  I don’t know who it was, but I know that whoever it was very probably employing the mercenaries that captured Alexei.  I imagine they thought us easily destroyed and decided to use the situation to test the technology in combat.  It didn’t work well, of course.  Richter served as our messenger before we joined up, and after that, we were all together.  It was no more than an inconvenience.  There were not sophisticated plans to synchronize.”

            Priscus nodded.  “Tullius, the other commanders, and I will discuss this soon, but not now.  It will certainly be before our next planned major operation.  You may be called upon to describe the phenomenon.  In the mean time, I would suggest –”

            Kent broke in with a matter that had been bothering him.  “Sir, I request one week’s liberty for my division and me.”

            “You request liberty?  You know this is not the way a military works.  And besides, liberty for your division does not mean your division continues to obey you while you get a holiday from imperial commands and do your own thing.  What kind of organized military is that?”

            “I also know that missing a division for a week won’t lose us the war.  And, with all due respect, war is not exactly what I am trying to make at the moment.”

            “Every bit counts, Commodore, and your division is more than a little bit.  But no, I suppose you wouldn’t call it war, would you?”

            Sean  picked up the pardon he had just received and moved to hand it back to Priscus.  “If my intended actions are not warrantable, my past actions are not forgivable.”

            This was a step too far.  “Commodore Kent, I am your emperor!  I am not going to be sapped into this… this goose chase.”

            Sean straightened himself up, saluted to his superior, and exited the room.  He would have seemed defeated if he had taken the pardons with him.

My emperor turned to me.  “Damn him!” he exclaimed.  Priscus then picked up the papers and help them in front of Tullius.

            “You see what kind of officers we have in our navy?” he lamented.

            “I’ve never seen anyone refuse a pardon before.”

            “Yes, well, our constitution gives me the power to grant pardons, but it says nothing as to whether or not they must be accepted.”  He sighed.  “You’ll have to excuse me, my friend.  I’ve got orders to issue.”

            “Orders?”

            “You’ve got a missing operative, haven’t you?  He’ll need to be found.  I’ve got a man to do it.  And he’ll need an escort too, if he plans on carrying out his mission, won’t he?”

            Tullius only shook his head and muttered in Feraustan about “those senseless Augustonians”.

 

Later

 

            There was an explosion, a great tremor, a feeling of weightlessness, a second crash, and stillness.  Sean and I were unharmed – transportation flightcraft were very safe – but we were a bit disoriented.  We were stranded in a deciduous forest devoid of its leaves, owing, quite naturally, to the time of year.

            The woods in which we found ourselves after the crash were strikingly similar to what Irene’s drawing would have looked like, with the possible exception of significantly increased fog.  They, in all probability, had been where she had done some of her artwork.  The fog was so dense that, at points, we had difficulty piercing more than a few meters of it with the naked eye.  When a flightcraft would fly over, the light emitted from it would drift down eerily through the suspended droplets, refracted everywhere.  The area directly in front of trees would remain entirely black, while the spots between would glow with an artificial light.  The lights would slowly drift to the East or West; North or South.  The angle would change, and different sections of the ground would be illuminated in the unnatural beams, defined by such jagged boundaries as the arbitrary, overlapping, and exceedingly forking branches and twigs of the trees.  Everything on the ground was covered with moisture, and the light would be reflected toward us with greater intensity.  Decaying twigs glowed with innumerable beads of water and the last few leaves on the ground holding pools of water glinted brightly up at us.

            The distant hooting of an owl was broken by the equally distant sound of bodies moving through brush.  The sound grew increasingly closer.  Sean and I were largely unaware of what was going on, and took cover.  The only weapons we had were our gravity swords, so we activated them.

            I had positioned myself behind a log.  Kent was concealed in some moderately thick brush.  When the sound was upon us, Sean gave me a signal and jumped to his feet, as did I.  To my surprise, I saw the Commodore’s blade suspended a millimeter away from a man wearing the uniform of a Feraustan army lieutenant first class.  Behind him were a number of enlisted men, pointing their assault weapons at us.

            “What are you doing here?” Kent demanded.

            The Feraustan was very startled.  “Rescuing your countrymen, judging by your gravity sword.  Where is your commander?”  He had responded before noticing the insignia we were wearing.

            “I report to my Emperor.”

            Though not expecting this reply, the lieutenant had realized to whom he was speaking.  “My apologies.  I suppose it is you I’m saving, if you’ll allow me.”  He indicated the blade with his eyes, afraid to move anything else.  Sean lowered it.

            “So what has happened?  Why do we find ourselves here?”

            “The unconfirmed rumor is that it was a computer attack.  Some sort of drill had attack ships in the air, and the virus or whatever had one veer off course, continue projecting the correct location, and then it detonated its torpedoes and anything else it could have used to blow itself up.  That was the start, and the one that would have hit Tullius.  But anyone smart enough to write a computer program like that is also smart enough not to launch an attack without backing it up.  More very precisely placed and planned computers go rogue, and we’ve got chaos.  As you know, all our military computer systems are independent of one another.  That’s responsible for loads of benefits, but it also did allow this to happen.  Honestly, I don’t know exactly how it all went down.  There are so many security catches we have in place, it’d be pretty difficult.  I imagine some were bypassed via careful planning and execution, and others didn’t have time to go into effect, things happened so quickly.  Or maybe I’m a little mixed up.  Feel free to rearrange the facts into a more realistic scenario.”  He winked.  “Then, the rebels materialize out of nowhere.  Theirs was a suicide mission, but such are they that they can be offered enough money to give up their lives.  Futile, and pitifully idiotic, but, unfortunately, they still went through with it.”  The lieutenant was very talkative.

            “So, in other words, very little is certain,” Kent summarized.

            “Well, I guess not.  But it does seem to have been a computer thing.”  The lieutenant was looking around, visibly so, moving his head left and right, up and down, surveying every aspect of our situation, and taking in none of it.  Like Kent, he was a preoccupied man, but he was not nearly as thoughtful.

            “Right.  Well, where exactly are we headed?”  Sean’s gaze was slightly downward, mostly forward, and only a little roving.

            “A military base to our South East.  Without too much trouble, we’ll reach it in twenty minutes on foot.”

            “On foot?  And twenty minutes?  One would think time would be more valuable in such a situation.  You are planning on getting us into ships, are you not?  Why not just airlift us?”

            “We’re hoping it’ll all be over in twenty minutes.  I guess that answers all those questions.”

            “What’s that?” Sean inquired.  The question was directed at me.

            “Hmm?”

            “That tune.  What’s that tune you’re humming.”  I had begun to hum.  It must have been louder than I was aware of it being for Kent to have noticed.

            “It’s Brahms; the second piano concerto,” I replied.

            “Oh?  Yes, that it is a good piece.  The performer?”

            “Well, me.  And the Augustonian Imperial Philharmonic.  It’s my own recording.  But yes, it is among my favorites.”

            Sean cracked a knowing smile.  “Your own recording?  Odd, no?   To listen to yourself seems a little silly.  It’s nothing new.  You already know what you sound like.”

            “That’s nothing to do with it.  I know what I sound like, and I also know what the piece sounds like.  I don’t listen to music for something new.  It’s more than that, and that I know that you can relate very well, and that in itself deprives this interrogation of meaning.”

            “No, no, it doesn’t.  You must understand that conversation can have more significance than merely something new.”

            “Touché.  Then I shall humor you.  I listen to myself because I know best how to console myself with a melody.  The music I hear is music I played when I was not confronted with the problems I am at present.  I was calm.  I did not know what the future would hold and I did not know that I would be in this situation now.  My music is at once a connection to a calmer time and a way to distance myself from the present through memory of the past.  Naturally, I can connect best to music that I myself performed.”

            “That sounds more like me than you.  Sean the escapist, right?  Not practical Alexei.”

            “Well, I’ve hung around you long enough, haven’t I?”

            “Indeed.  Do you know, I do the same thing, and for the same reason?”

            I admired how efficiently Kent had cut the lieutenant out of the conversation.