Her face fell; her pretty features seemed to disappear. For the first time in recent memory, she actually looked all of her 375 years.
"This… has never happened before," she whispered.
She turned to back to the bodyguards.
"Where is my husband?"
The chief bodyguard stepped forward again. "He was transferred to the secure location over the pole, my lady," the man told her nervously. "Which is why we want—"
"I could care less what you want," she snapped back at him. "Has everyone cleared out up here? Is there no one left in the city?"
The officer looked around at his men. One whispered something in his ear.
"The military staffs are still in their headquarters," the officer reported. "And some of the diplomats are still here. But they, too, seem to be intent on leaving quickly. Apparently no one knows how the Solar Guards are going to react, especially after what's happened out on the Two Arm."
"They'll react like everyone else," she spat back at him. "Like scared children."
The officer took a step closer to the Empress. "My lady, I feel I must remind you that some elements within the SG might be best described as unpredictable at a time like this. It is obvious that the situation is unstable. That's why I must insist that—"
She held up her hand and cut him off in midsentence. "You said some high military officers are still on hand up here?"
"True, my lady…"
"Who is the highest?"
The officer consulted with his men again. There was a burst of quadtrol activity. Then he came back with an answer. "The Secretary of SF Intelligence is still here. He is in his office at SF headquarters."
The Empress was surprised to hear this. The head of SF Intelligence was near the top of this privileged heap on Special Number One. He held advantages nearly as high as the imperial family itself.
That he had stuck around after the others had obviously fled to safer, if not higher ground was fairly amazing. The Empress smiled. Her beautiful features made a brief reappearance.
"Fetch the Secretary, and bring him to my quarters," she ordered the bodyguards. "He'll know what's going on…"
There were hundreds of SF special forces troops surrounding Blue Rock when the Imperial Guards arrived. The elite SF soldiers were armed with dozens of mobile sonic guns, their gigantic barrels pointed directly toward the opposite end of the floating city, where the Solar Guards headquarters lay.
Special troops were also stationed on every floor of the soaring SF headquarters. No less than a hundred of the elite soldiers were guarding the SF3 floor alone. They bristled when the Imperial Guards showed up, bearing their order from the Empress. They were neutrals here, both sides wary of the Solar Guards. But the SF troopers were very reluctant to let the SF Intelligence Secretary out of their sight.
However, they could not refuse a direct order from a member of the Imperial Family and so had no choice but to let him go.
The Imperial Guards found the Secretary sitting in his suite on the ninety-ninth floor, calmly listening to star music. Unlike most of the people who lived and worked on the immense floating city, the Secretary's bags were not packed, nor was he was planning on leaving any time soon. Besides running the vast SF Intelligence networks, he was also brilliant in the areas of diplomacy, history, military matters and, most valuable, in the ways of intrigue around the Palace, and around the Empire itself. Thus, he felt he was most needed here.
He was somewhat surprised to see the Imperial Guards walk through his door, though, surprised to hear he was wanted in the Empress's private quarters. He made a rare joke: that maybe this wasn't the thing to do; being alone in the Empress's secret bedroom while her husband was far up north might start the tongues wagging. But not one of the Imperial Guards even cracked a smile.
So the Secretary donned his artificial-feather cap and simply told them to lead the way.
They reached the pair of enormous oak doors that led to the Empress's private quarters ten minutes later.
One guard pushed the doors open, but his expression made it clear that the Secretary was on his own from here.
He bowed to them, and the guards disappeared. The Secretary took one step in. The room was huge, and done in dark wood, a rare commodity on Earth or anywhere in the Galaxy these days. Yet there was a small conflagration in the fireplace, logs of both ash and pines were crackling away, and the place felt warm, if just a little too mysterious. Of course, this is exactly how the Empress liked it.
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."