Malaran's oldest brother, now Lord of House Ashoka and High King of Nuevo, stood in the command center and watched the status screens relaying the progress of war preparations. All the disrupter field emitters had been pulled from storage and deployed with ground troops. The reservists and militias had been activated when the starship had arrived and still remained in alert status, spending much of their time in training maneuvers trying to get up to speed with the regular military units. The regular troops were constantly on the move. Just today the 5th Infantry Battalion had redeployed to Epsilon Province while the 4th Cavalry Battalion had taken up position near Citadel Masaccio in Gamma Province. Aadi and his generals moved his chess pieces around, hoping to keep the enemy off-guard. Whoever the enemy was.
Following the tradition began several generations ago, Aadi dressed in a standard officer's uniform in the House Ashoka's colors of green and black; his only royal insignia were the bejeweled emblems of serpent and sword attached to his collar.
The command center of the secret underground bunker bustled with about fifteen officers relaying orders and latest intelligence while others monitored screens and displays of their own, all preparing for the other shoe to drop. They had lost a king on their watch, and they were determined not to let it happen again. The bunker had undergone a massive refit in the last few weeks, having gone unused for hundreds of years. The High Kings of Nuevo had put their faith in the citadels, but just recently that faith had faltered. A High King of Nuevo had been lost while supposedly secure in his citadel. Incinerated by nuclear fire.
And thus king-hood had been thrust upon Aadi.
Aadi had grown thinner the last couple of weeks, his body weight being shed to compensate for all the weight of the world that had burdened him since Father's death. His black hair and beard had suddenly blossomed streaks of gray. Even the soft green eyes he had inherited from his mother seemed to have hardened considerably in the last few weeks. When the first reports came in of the arrival of the starship, there had been so much hope that the Phoenix had finally risen. But instead, the starship brought death and destruction. And an Umpala.
Aadi would often lay awake at night trying to figure out what was happening.
So far the Intelligence Directorate had learned so little from the captured starship, the Menelaus. Interrogations of the captured starship crew hadn’t been particularly enlightening. Most of the crew had been recruited at Katla, a distant moon colony around the planet Skadi. The colony had been cutoff for centuries after the Umpala destroyed or chased away all the human starships. Not aware of the Mega Oikogeneia’s master plan to avoid attracting the Umpala’s attention, the colony had continued to rely on high technology and remained very proficient. And then one day a few years ago the Menelaus showed up and recruited volunteers to help rebuild the Empire of Man. They had no idea that the man calling himself Heracles Xander was working with an Umpala.
Heracles and the Menelaus had arrived at Katla with a skeleton crew, claiming to be the long-lost heir to the Emperor of Man. He had claimed that his ancestors had hidden away several battlecruisers and awaited the day to reclaim the Empire.
That story was more difficult to investigate. Heracles was dead, the computer files wiped or encrypted, and there had been difficulties interrogating the original skeleton crew that had come with Heracles. Several committed suicides. Several were murdered. And many were just missing, either hiding on the ship or hiding on Nuevo. Without being able to interrogate these missing members of Heracles inner-circle, there was very little to go on in figuring out Heracles' true agenda.
Which made things difficult for Aadi in deciding what to do next. And time was running out. Someone, or something, had moved against his sister, Malaran. Against the Anax-Hema. An attempt had been made on her life. But who was the enemy?
The Intelligence Directorate had swept the scene near where Malaran’s unconscious body had been found using certain technologies of the ancients. They detected DNA fragments that did not match anything on Nuevo or anything on record from the old Empire. Humans and Umpala and unknown aliens plotted against Nuevo.
And poor Malaran was caught in the middle yet again. It appeared that the unknown alien attempted to assassinate her there at Mount Tormenta. Aadi wished he could just lock Malaran away somewhere safe, but he didn't know if a safe place existed. Somehow Heracles seemed to have spies on the planet before the Menelaus was ever detected -- he had just known too much. He had even known about the Anax-Hema. On top of that, members of his inner circle were still on the loose. And somehow an alien had come to Nuevo undetected.
Aadi found it somewhat miraculous that Malaran had survived the assassination attempt. He still just tended to see Malaran as his little sister, an awkward kid, even though Malaran had saved his life once when his party had been ambushed, and by all accounts had been instrumental in capturing the Menelaus.
He just wished that Father had not manipulated her so much when she was little. Malaran had been an odd little girl to begin with, awkward with few friends, and Father had made it worse. Aadi wasn't sure what Father intended, but it did lead to Malaran being a lonely girl. Father told her all those tales of the heroic Calista and encouraged her interest in the Order of Calista and put her on her path. What little girl yearns to fight monsters?
It made him wonder if he was the right man to be king. Whether he could be as ruthless as Father. He had spent forty years preparing, learning to deal with the nobles, and the Colonistas, and the Miangaza, and the Cosaks, and the Boltamen, and the Democratists, and the Bhagavatas. But he didn't think he could ever manipulate his daughter, Dayan, the way Father seemed to have manipulated Malaran. Even if Dayan did bear the Anax-Hema, which she did not—she had already been tested, he still wasn’t sure he could have been as manipulative as Father.
But Malaran was his sister, not his daughter, and she would perhaps be the last person to ever bear the Anax-Hema. The implications could be dire if the Phoenix were ever to awaken.
"You must decide soon," said the wizened old Pivari of the Order of Calista as she appeared at his side out of nowhere. The Calistite emissary to the House Ashoka glanced at the screens detailing the status of the Menelaus. "Time is running short."
Aadi sighed. Sometimes the old Calistite brought him information, and sometimes she just seemed to come to badger him and interrupt his thoughts.
Pivari seemed to be one of the Calistite Elders, old with those mesmerizing eyes, but like much of their ways, their hierarchy seemed to be intentionally confusing to outsiders. In fact, Aadi was one of the few people on Nuevo that realized that the Order of Calista had splintered away from the Priestesses of the Void.
He didn't think the average person would notice much of a difference anyway. A bunch of overly mystical women being overly esoteric and cryptic while hinting at special powers much like magic. Pivari always wore a black dress with a black hood, trying to appear wise and mystical. He was pretty sure the Calistites were just as big of schemers and plotters as the Priestesses had ever been. The Priestesses had great power in the Empire since for all practical purposes they controlled interstellar travel, but they always seemed to crave more control and more power.
And one of the Calistite’s best schemers stood within him now. Whether she was officially an Elder or not, Pivari was definitely old -- gray-haired and wrinkled, but she also had the deep, mesmerizing eyes that seemed so common among the Calistite elite. Pivari's eyes were very light blue, something of a rarity among the general population on Nuevo. The common people, Colonista and Niyatian alike, tended to have brown eyes. The hildagos, the noble class among the colonistas, did tend to have dark blue eyes, but much darker than Pivari’s. In general, nobles on all the planets tended to have different eye color than the common people, an artifact from ancient genetic tinkering. The nobles among the Niyatians had green or gray eyes.
Yet oddities even more distinct than eye color popped up from time to time, probably as result of all the genetic tinkering t
hat took place back during the Cultural Reawakening. One of Aadi’s classmates at the military academy had an extra thumb on each hand. He had risen to lieutenant colonel and died at Citadel Donatello with Father.
The thought brought Aadi back into the moment. "Time always runs short when preparing for war," Aadi said without taking his eyes off the status screens. It aggravated him somewhat to be badgered by the Calistites, but since the Order had been instrumental in defeating the false emperor and capturing his starship, he had been forced into something of a power-sharing arrangement where the starship was concerned. And where Malaran was concerned.
Somehow the Calistites knew that Malaran bore the Anax-Hema. Too many people seemed to know that secret.
Aadi glanced at Pivari. "We still really have no idea who or what is conspiring against us,” he said with a hint of bitterness. The Calistites hadn’t shed much light on the issue. He didn’t expect them to be totally forthright, but he had expected more than what he got. They should have used some of their mystical powers and came up with at least a few useful bits of information.
"It doesn't matter," said Pivari. “Our enemies are legion. The Phoenix is the only hope.”
He sighed. It was an annoying to be lectured about the Phoenix by someone who didn’t bear the same weight. For centuries, the High Kings of Nuevo did their duty, keeping the planet stuck in a low technology society and of little interest to the Umpala. Even if it meant ruling with an iron fist. Even if it meant committing certain atrocities. The High Kings always felt the ends justified the means. Humanity had to survive if the Phoenix were to be of any good.
But the Phoenix was overdue. And time was running out. Malaran might be the last bearer ever of the Anax-Hema. All the fertilized eggs left by the Emperor of Man as part of one of his great contingency plans had been birthed. Mother was the last. And of her children, only Malaran bore the Anax-Hema. It was possible that she could pass the genetic marker down to one of her children in time, but the odds seemed against it. The genetic marker tended to get scrambled when Xander and Ashoka blood mixed.
Everything was just coming to a head, and he wasn’t sure what to do. The Calistites wanted him to send Malaran away on the Menelaus to search for the Phoenix. He was inclined to agree, but there were so many other things to consider first.
Was the ship even safe? Had all the booby-traps and sabotage been detected? Were there still Heracles loyalists on board in hidden compartments? For that matter, were there still more Umpala or other aliens on the ship. Technology could have changed so much in the last five hundred years, and his people might not even know what to look for. He wanted to make sure the ship was absolutely secure before he allowed the Anax-Hema to go aboard.
And was the new crew ready for star travel? Intensive training had been ongoing with select members of the old crew, but how much expertise can one gain in weeks? The more training they could get in, the better, but how long could he wait?
He just didn’t know, and there were so many unanswered questions. Why would an Umpala work with humans? What was their true goal? What does the alien assassin have to with it? Did they want to capture the Anax-Hema or did they want to kill it? How many more were out there, and how many more would be coming to Nuevo?
The interest in the Anax-Hema troubled him deeply. Were the Umpala using humans to try and sabotage or subvert the Phoenix? The Phoenix was humanity’s only hope. How did they learn of the Phoenix, and how could people in another star system have possibly known that Malaran bore the Anax-Hema? There had to be spies in his house, but so far none had been found.
Aadi felt the familiar burning sensation in his gut, and he reached into his pocket and slipped a pill into his mouth, the chalky, fruity flavor signaling the relief to come. He felt Pivari staring at him with a very judgmental eye, but he had grown used to it.
Aadi ignored Pivari and looked over the screens some more. His generals expected war. Most did not know about the Phoenix or the Anax-Hema, but what they did know was alarming enough. An Umpala had come. An unknown alien had landed undetected. Heracles had talked of possessing multiple battlecruisers. And Aadi’s generals counted on the Menelaus to anchor the defense of the planet. He wondered how long he would remain king if he sent the Menelaus off on a secret mission just before the planet was attacked.
“This planet matters little,” said Pivari, seeming to read his thoughts. Or maybe annoyed that he spent more attention to the status screens than to her badgering. “The Phoenix and the Anax-Hema is everything.” She stepped closer and glanced around the room, seeming to make sure all the command center personnel seemed occupied with their duties and not listening in. "Malaran will be key," she whispered. "Many within the Order see her only as a key, the bearer of the Anax-Hema.” Pivari's piercing blue eyes darted another quick glance around the command center, and her whisper softened even further. "A few among the Order, however, see her as so much more.”
That wasn’t a very convincing argument for Aadi. He plotted his little sister’s fate enough himself. He didn’t need everyone else doing so.
Pivari leaned closer, but instead of a soft whisper, her oddly-modulated voice seemed to reverberate through Aadi’s bones. “Put her on the Menelaus and let her fulfill her destiny."
Yes, thought Aadi. He should at least get her off the planet and ready to flee in case more starships arrived.
“Aadi,” said a different voice.
Aadi felt like someone had disturbed a daydream, and he looked to see Tarok, his next oldest brother and his chief of staff, standing there dressed in his general’s uniform. Tarok looked a younger version of himself, especially young since he chose to go clean-shaven. And his hard, green eyes were much more like Father’s.
“Yes?” said Aadi as he forced his mind back to the present. He noticed that Tarok didn’t seem too pleased to see Pivari, giving her dirty looks. Few people in the High Command were pleased with the Order’s involvement.
“I thought you should know,” said Tarok. “The Engineering Directorate discovered more sabotage on the Menelaus. The power systems to the Pilot’s Chamber had been set to overload.”
“I thought that had already been cleared,” said Aadi. All the critical systems had been checked weeks ago.
“It had. This is new sabotage.”
“Damn it,” said Aadi. How are these people evading capture? He turned to look at Pivari. He hated to change his mind, it almost made him sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t send Malaran to the Menelaus until he was sure it was secure. “Plans will have to wait.”
She showed no expression as she nodded her head to Aadi. She nodded to Tarok as well, and Aadi thought he could detect some disdain in her eyes then. Then she turned and walked from the command center. She paused after a few steps, and then she turned back to Aadi. “Hail Aadi, Lord Ashoka, last King of Nuevo.”
Aadi hated their stupid mysticism, but he found himself sucking in a big breath at the mention of "last king.”
Pivari turned, and as she walked from the room, she said, “The Umpala will arrive soon. Days perhaps.”
CHAPTER NINE
You can only fight the way you practice.
- Calistite maxim, taken from Miyamoto Musashi’s A Book of Five Rings