With the losses taken in the war against the Confederacy, he guessed his father could not afford to be too choosy when it came to weapons of war. The other two ships were Wraiths, sleek air-superiority fighters that could engage ground and air targets with equal lethality.
The gun cutter slowed its descent and rotated in to land, its ventral thrusters kicking in as it approached the ground. Its bulbous engine nacelles were too wide to allow the craft to fit into the underground hangar, but the pilot contented himself with landing next to the platform's open hatchway. The Wraiths continued to fly overhead patrols as the gun cutter settled its heavy bulk onto the ground.
"That's never going to grow back," grumbled Pasteur as the cutter's jets seared the grass.
"You use robots to tend the garden, so where's the harm?" said Valerian with a smile.
"Not the point," replied his grandfather. "Lack of respect for others is what it is."
Further discussion w as hailed as the side hatch of the gun cutter rumbled open in a haze of steam. Smoke swirled as a dozen soldiers in combat armor jagged down the assault ramp and took up the position of honor guard on either side of it.
A shape appeared in the smoke and Valerian smiled at the theatricality of his father's emergence into the Umojan sunlight.
Emperor Arcturus Mengsk wore a long brown duster edged in gold thread and a brocaded internal lining. His suit was styled like a marine's dress uniform and finished with a glittering, wolf-head belt buckle. His boots were polished and a long sword was buckled at a rakish angle on his hip.
As Arcturus marched down the ramp, Valerian saw his father had aged, the silver in his beard and hair more pronounced than when he had last seen him. Yet for all the signs of maturity, his father was still a year shy of forty and carried himself with the confidence and power of a man half his age.
Everything about him radiated his absolute belief in himself, and Valerian knew that though in any other man this would be arrogance, with his father it was simply a statement of fact.
The soldiers fell in behind Arcturus as he crossed the lawn toward them with a purposeful stride. Valerian noticed the shock in his eyes at the sight of Juliana. In that one, quickly masked window, Valerian caught a glimpse of his father's fear of infirmity and things he could not call on his fearsome intellect and power to fight.
Valerian's grandfather stepped forward to meet Arcturus, his ambassadorial mask slipping into place as he shook hands with a man with whom he had run the gamut of emotions: admiration, mistrust, anger, forgiveness, and finally mistrust again.
"Arcturus, welcome to Umoja."
"I remember the last time you said that to me, Ailin," said Arcturus. "You didn't mean it then and I suspect you don't entirely mean it now."
"So long as you are here in peace, then you are welcome," replied Pasteur.
"Ever the diplomat, eh?" said Arcturus, turning to greet Valerian.
His father came forward with his arms open and his face alight with genuine pleasure. "My boy, it does my heart good to see you. You look well, very well."
"I am, Father," said Valerian, embracing him and enduring a series of hearty slaps on the back for his trouble. His father was at his ease with such comradely gestures, but Valerian had always found them awkward and forced.
Valerian broke the embrace and his father turned to Juliana.
"If you dare say I look well, I'll take that sword and stick you with it," she said.
"I was going to say that it was good to see you," replied his father. "But you look better than I was led to believe, so that's good."
"I'm flattered," said Juliana, but his father had already moved on to greet Charles Whittler and Master Miyamoto, playing the role of the approachable man of the people. Valerian saw the falseness of it and wandered how others could not. Perhaps he was more like his father than he knew, able to see through the charade as if it were his own.
At last his father stepped back and said. "You are all very dear to me, my friends, and it means a great deal, after all we have been through together, that we should meet like this in the wake of my great triumph."
Arcturus came forward and put his arm around Valerian, pulling him forward to stand at his side before the assembled onlookers.
"We live in momentous times," said Arcturus. "But going forward together, we can achieve anything we desire. Father and son, we will build a better world for everyone."
Polite applause rippled from the serving staff and Valerian dearly wanted to believe his father's words, feeling somewhat swept up in the grandeur of his vision for the future.
Only Master Miyamoto looked unimpressed, staring in consternation at the sky.
"Are those yours?" he said, shading his eyes from the sun.
Valerian followed Miyamoto's gaze, and a hot rush of adrenaline flooded his system.
Four Wraith fighters. Emblazoned with the flag of the Confederacy.
Diving in on an attack run.
"Everyone inside!" shouted Arcturus.
The assembled crowd needed no encouragement and bolted for the house.
The two Wraiths tasked with patrolling the skies above the emperor reacted as soon as their pilots realized the codes they were receiving on their IFF threat panels were a lie, but by then it was already too late. The first fighter exploded as a stream of bright laser bolts stitched a path over its fuselage and ripped off its right wing.
The second Wraith avoided the initial volley of gunfire and was able to return fire. Amazingly, the pilot's shots impacted on one of the attackers, blowing out the cockpit in a shower of superheated blood and glass.
The enemy fighter spiraled toward the ground, plowing into the grass in a spectacular fireball, cartwheeling across the lawn, and smashing into the house, drowning out the screams of panic that filled the air. Shattered glazing and buckled steel caved inward and black smoke billowed upward from the wreckage buried in the structure of the house.
The Dominion pilot's defiance was short-lived, however, as the remaining three Confederate fighters boxed him in and blew his craft араrt in a hall of laser fire.
Burning wreckage fell into the river, sending up huge spouts of water as it crashed.
Valerian grabbed his mother from her chair and carried her close to his chest as he ran for the house, knowing there wasn't time to get her to safety with more dignity. Sizzling bolts of energy sawed across the lawn as the first Wraith flew in low on a strafing run. Half a dozen of his grandfather's serving staff were scythed down, bodies blown apart from inside by the passage of violently hot lasers through their flesh.
Valerian dropped to the ground as the ruby bolts ripped up the ground on either side of him. He tasted earth and blood and smelted the stink of seared meat. His mother cried out in pain and he rolled onto his side, seeing her lying helpless next to him. The Confederate Wraiths screamed overhead, their wing-mounted weaponry firing upon the helpless targets below them.
His father's marines returned fire on the Wraiths as they fell back toward the house, but the pilots weren't worried about small-arms fire from the ground. Impaler spikes sparked from the fighters' fuselages or missed altogether, but they at least gave the semblance of a fight back.
The gun cutter that had brought his father to Umoja was powering up its engines, but before it could lift off it was struck by a withering salvo of gunfire from the predatory Wraiths. One of the engine nacelles exploded, spraying white-hot fragments in all directions.
Whickering, razor-edged shrapnel cut down fleeing men and women in a bloody storm as the gun cutter lurched sideways. It plowed a huge furrow in the ground, throwing up sprays of earth and clods of mud as its one remaining engine roared into life and spun it around on its axis.