The astronaut rolled his eyes. "You could have given yourself a little more time. You know, built in some margin for error."
Hunter just shrugged. "Who knew?"
The astronaut thought for another long while.
"Well, all this means that I will have to help you," he said finally. "And that it was a good and brave and a lucky thing that you managed to make it here, and that you proved yourself to be trustworthy.
Tomm was wise to send you. Though he must have known that only the most precipitous and dire situation could make me get involved. But now that I am, we will have to move very quickly…"
Hunter looked around the very spare room. Again the question came back to him. This was a very old guy in the care of two nurses. What could he possibly do?
"I appreciate your advice and counsel," Hunter said. "But seriously, how can you help me?"
The astronaut brightened a little, then waved his hand in an unusual fashion. "I will conjure up all the powers of the Third Empire, of course…"
Hunter just shook his head. The Third Empire? What did that have to do with this? Of all the mysteries in the Galaxy, the Third Empire was one of the deepest. Almost no one knew anything about it, only that it disappeared into the void of time between the end of the Second Empire and the beginning of the Fourth, a span of at least two thousand years that had a number of smaller empires and several Dark Ages mixed in with it. That's why Hunter was surprised to even hear it brought up.
"You actually know about the Third Empire?" he asked the astronaut.
Everyone in the room laughed — the astronaut, the nurses. Everyone but Hunter.
The astronaut nodded to one of the nurses. She led Hunter over to the nearest window, the one that looked out on the vast valley of fields and grass.
Hunter couldn't believe his eyes. Where just moments before the sky had been empty, it was now filled with hundreds of ancient but powerful-looking starships. And the grassy fields that seemed to go for miles were now covered with formations of enormous soldiers; they also stretched for as far as the eye could see. All of this had suddenly appeared, with the wave of the ancient man's hand.
"Behold the mythical Star Legion," the astronaut declared from his bed with no little delight. "But they are not so mythical, as you can see. They are the bravest soldiers in the history of creation. And they will help you in your fight."
Hunter could barely speak.
"So you do know the secret of the Third Empire?" he asked numbly.
"The secret of the Third Empire?" the astronaut roared back. "My friend, we are the Third Empire!"
Part Four
War of the Angels
19
The three culverins breezed past the gauntlet of Solar Guards ships patrolling Earth orbit and fell easily through the atmosphere. Their destination was the floating city of Special Number One.
The entire Solar System was under de facto martial law. The Solar Guards were stopping, searching, and arresting the crews of any unauthorized vessel found moving inside the Pluto Cloud. Yet this trio of ships flew on through all the warnings, defying orders to stop or be shot down, and landed in the middle of the vast Imperial Plaza, practically on the steps of the Imperial Palace itself.
The three ships were immediately surrounded by SG shock troops — they had forcibly relieved the Imperial Guards of all their duties earlier that day. The Solar Guards blinked a number of heavy weapons to the scene, ready to blast to dust anyone who stepped off the ships. But there was an air of hesitation in their actions, too.
The hatchways on all three ships opened, and eventually people came tumbling out. The SG troops raised their weapons but did not fire. The intruders were not soldiers intent on attacking them. These were Specials, the very close relatives of the Imperial Family. This particular gang of three hundred or so had been flying around the Solar System ever since Venus cleared out, and they'd quickly become bored. Absolutely nothing was happening on any of the other original planets. With nowhere else to go, they'd flown back to Earth, hoping to resume their revelry.
Their timing couldn't have been worse. Confusion had reigned atop the imperial aeropolis for days.
Taking their emergency security edict to the extreme, the SG controlled all of Special Number One now, except for the northern tip, where a small army of Space Forces troops was still protecting the SF headquarters of Blue Rock. The two sides had been exchanging blaster fire off and on since that morning, and whispers of an SG coup were still thick in the air. Out among the stars, the war between the two military services was still going on, with rumors of atrocities happening all across the Galaxy. And with O'Nay reportedly riding around in a secret floating city up near the North Pole, there was a large power vacuum here, at the center of the Galaxy. It seemed inevitable that the Solar Guards would soon attempt to fill it
But none of these things had any effect on the Specials. Intoxicated and jammed-up, most of them, they spilled out onto the concourse to the amazement of the grizzled Solar Guards. The SG had orders to shoot anyone deemed a security threat, but even the most hardened SG trooper would never fire on a Special. Not only was it against every imperial law imaginable, it was also considered extremely unlucky, as there was a belief that Specials couldn't really die, not completely anyway, and thus had the power to haunt a person forever.
So the SG soldiers simply let them run wild.
A few of this drunken, privileged group had a mission in mind, though. They had to find the Empress, their soul leader. They hadn't seen her since the evacuation of La-Shangri, and they knew starting a good rave would be impossible without her.
So while the majority of new arrivals commenced frivolity in the imperial square, taunting and teasing the grim-faced SG troops surrounding them, a smaller contingent — three men, three women, all reeking of Holy Blood — headed for the Imperial bedrooms.
They didn't encounter the usual battalion of House Guards at the palace's front door. In fact, the doors weren't even locked. The hallways within were dark, empty, cold. No body-guards, no servants, no spies. There was even some debris strewn about the imperial corridors. Signs of a hasty departure by many people were everywhere.
The half-dozen Specials moved unchallenged through the long passageways until they reached the Empress's private quarters. They pushed in the door, expecting to find their shining light inside, surrounded by tankards of the best slow-ship wine — and maybe some jamma, too.
But while they did find her, she was not bathing in a sea of intoxicants. Nor was she in any kind of racy party uniform. Instead, she was in her dreary sitting room, packing a trans-dimensional bag. What's more, she was wearing a kafka, a long, black ceremonial dress usually worn only in the unlikely event that someone in her immediate family was about to pass away.
Her relatives were shocked to see her dressed like this.
"Who is dying, my lady?" was the first question they asked her.
She looked up at them for the first time. Her hair was tied back. She was not wearing makeup. She looked horribly plain. And for some reason, she had a drop of oil on her forehead.
" 'Who is dying?' " she asked in reply. 'Take a look around you, you fools. The Empire is dying…"
Then she looked each of them up and down and added, "And you're all dying along with it."