It was my turn to grin. “Easy. He knew how tofight against bolts of energy, but had no clue about hand-to-hand,or in this case, staff-to-head combat,” I said proudly.
The Emperor laughed and said, “Mantis made awise choice.”
“Vydor, while he is in a good mood, nowwould be the time to ask for the Dark Talon,” silently promptedJerran.
“We have a favor to ask of the Empire. Weneed a vessel to operate as a mobile base,” I started. “Since weare already familiar with her, we would like to keep the DarkTalon.”
The Emperor thought about it for a momentthen said, “I appreciate the humility of your request, but thatship is far too small to support your operations acrossinterstellar space. I do see your need for a ship though, and Ihappen to have a Raven Mark II here ready for its maiden voyage. Ithink it would serve you much better.”
The Raven was a cruiser class vessel, muchlarger than the Dark Talon, and was designed to run solo missionsacross interstellar space. It was a far more powerful vessel than Ihad any right to expect, and I was thinking of humbly refusing theoffer, but then an image came to my mind. I pictured how we couldredesign the Raven to have sections dedicated to meeting our needto study and grow, and since it was equipped to grow food for itscrew we could travel great distances without support.
“A Mark II? I never heard of such a model,” Isaid. I was stalling; I needed more time to think about this. Therewas the problem, of course, that none of us had a clue how tooperate a Raven, but we had solved that before with the DarkTalon.
“Yes, this prototype is a new version of theRaven. The old design is to be retired soon, and this will replaceit throughout the fleet,” was his answer.
Over our connection I asked, “Okay, howdid you learn to fly the Dark Talon so fast? We may need that skillagain very soon.”
“I found a spell in Mantis’ library thatallows me to copy the knowledge of another. It does not copy anypersonal information or experience, just raw knowledge,” wasDarnath’s reply.
Well, that explained how the other Magi knewour technology so well. “So then all we would need is to getsome of his experts to allow us to cast that spell on them?” Iasked.
“We do not need them to be willing, butyes,” was his reply.
“No, I think Vydor is right. We reallyshould ask for permission before doing such a thing,” commentedKellyn.
I needed to say something soon before theEmperor thought we had fallen asleep. “We graciously and humblythank you for the Raven, but we are not trained on such a craft. Ifyou can find us the top ten people who are trained on it,especially all the key positions and changes, we can use our powersto learn directly from them. They must be willing to let us do it,but it is painless and noninvasive.”
The Emperor thought about that for a bit andsaid, “I think that can be arranged.”
“Thank you. Once the Raven is ready we willpark the Dark Talon in one of its bays and return it to the DragonClaw,” I said.
“What is your next move in this war?” heasked.
“Well, for the moment we are still far tooweak to take them on directly, so we will study and work onbuilding up an army to support us. While doing that we plan to huntdown the remaining four spies we know about and execute them. Thehope is that we can build up our forces before the sorcerersrecover from the blow that was dealt to them at Arken IV.”
“I would much prefer if you let us handle thespies. Just give me the list and I will see to it that it is done.Meanwhile there is still the issue of this weapon they are lookingfor, I assume?”
“Yes. Mantis’ people and we ourselves will belooking for it too, but I suspect that it will be either Mantis andhis wizards or the sorcerers who find it since we know nothingabout it.”
“It is in our best interests if we find itfirst. I will give you whatever you need to hunt it down.”
After that we wrapped up the meeting andheaded back to the Dark Talon. Once on board Kellyn had to pointout that, since we did the right thing by not forcing the Emperorto do our will, we got a much better ship and more information thanwe could have guessed possible.
I knew she was right. It was just hard to getused to doing the right thing because it is the right thing, andnot just blindly following orders. It was going to be a hardtransition to make, from just another soldier to grandmasterwizard. My rulings and decisions in this war would determine thefate of the entire realm. What standard does one use to judgedecisions by? It is easy to say just do the right thing, but whodetermines what is right? I used to think that was theresponsibility of the Emperor, since he was god.
Again I was hit with the question: if theEmperor was a fallible human just like the rest of us, who was god?What did it mean to be god? Was it just the most powerful personaround? I hoped not with all my heart, because I realized that thatmight very well be me. All through school and even in the Academywe were taught from the point of view that the Emperor was god. Infact, a lot of what we understood about how the universe worked didnot make sense if there was not a god. That would mean all of ourscience and understanding was wrong. But how could that be sinceeverything worked the way it should? Then again, this was the samescience that said magic did not exist.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It had been over a year since our firstmeeting with the Emperor and we had just finished refitting the newRaven to be our mobile headquarters. I was on board for one lastvisit to what had been our home. Today we would officially moveinto the Raven. I had decided to call it the “Nevermore” after anancient poem. It seemed fitting, as I would never again see theuniverse and the Empire in the same way.
I looked around the Dark Talon knowing thatthis would be the last time I stood on her bridge. I would missthis little ship. “We should repair all the recording systems wedisabled,” I said.
“Aye, we can work on that during the flightback to the Dragon Claw. It should not take long,” repliedLuke.
I sighed. Even though we had all been livingon the Nevermore for some time now, something about the fact thatwe would be launching the next day seemed to finalize thetransition from the Dark Talon to the Nevermore. Over the last yearso much had changed. When we came to this station we were all stillImperial soldiers at heart, doing the best we could to be the bestImperial soldiers we could be, and now we were leaving as theruling council of a new nation. The move from the Dark Talon to theNevermore seemed to symbolize that change in a way that wasdifficult for me to express.
I powered down the craft and made sure thateverything was properly stowed one last time. Soon the robotic armsof the station would be loading this vessel into the launch bay ofthe Nevermore and she would not fly again until we rendezvousedwith the Dragon Claw and her fleet. It would be good to return herto her family; there were still many Dark Knights left who wantedher back. I wondered what new impossible missions she would fly andif I would ever command her again.
“Vydor, just a reminder that you need tocontact the fleet soon,” came Kellyn’s sweet voice in myhead.
“Yes, you are right. I will go over now.Please meet me on the bridge,” I responded. I took one lastlook around, then left the Dark Talon and headed towards the liftthat would take me to the Nevermore.
This ship was much larger the Dark Talon, andmuch more intimidating to behold. Its shiny, black saucer-likeexterior with almost no external lights would normally make it hardto see in its native arena of interstellar space, but here in thebrightly-lit station its lack of color made it stand out. Most ofthe other craft here were silver and had prominent accent colorsand designs showing the pride of each crew. The bold statement madeby the lack of color on our ship made it feel almost alien, as ifit, and by implication we, did not really belong here.