The plunder wasn't made up solely of precious metal and stones. There were millions of pieces of artwork, 3-D sculpture, and holographic reliefs. Some of these objects were more than two thousand years old. Some were ancient before humans ever went into space. Most of it, too, was withering away in the brutal heat.
The holding area for this tiny universe of spoils was an island so large it was once called Long Island. It was located just east of New York, one hundred miles long, twenty miles wide, hundreds of square miles. To say every foot of it was covered with some sort of boodle, paid as a tax, taken as part of a fine, or simply taken, was not an overstatement. The truth was, the looters were running out of space to put their loot. The soldiers of the fledgling Second Empire had done their jobs too well.
The means by which all this ill-gotten gain made it to Mother Earth was, of course, by spaceship. In this era, the first year of the Second Empire, the first spaceships made by electron torches had appeared. They were enormous, clumsy, sometimes dangerous vessels. They needed a large area to land in, required many hours of maintenance, and had a tendency to blow up on takeoff if their delicate early-model ion-ballast engines were not stoked correctly. Few were built to the same standard, but most were 2,500 feet in length, bulbous and bullet-shaped, weighed more than 500,000 tons, and carried enormous amounts of raw ion-ballast fuel. If one lit off incorrectly, the resulting explosion usually obliterated a good chunk of real estate around its takeoff spot. Anyone within a mile of the blast usually went up with it.
This shaky fleet built by the crude craftsmen of the early Second Empire grew exponentially as more planets were reclaimed after the fierce civil war, and more electron torches got into the hands of people just learning how to use them. There were at least a million ships operating inside the One Arm alone. Many more were flying around the Galaxy, full of imperial soldiers terrorizing the locals, plundering entire star systems, spreading fear, causing instability.
Rape, on a galactic scale.
This was the first legacy of the new Emperor, the man that just about everyone had taken to calling Brother Michael.
The miles of largesse ended, so to speak, at the huge arena recently built near the eastern edge of the monstrous, un-scrubbed city of New York.
The arena was meant to fit about a hundred thousand comfortably. There were nearly twice that number jammed into it on this grimly historic day. Most of them were intoxicated on something. Clouds of can-can hung over the oval stadium. Wine was spilling everywhere. The distinctively sour smell of jamma sweat was much in evidence, too. These were the most important people on the planet, the most bloodthirsty commanders of the recently concluded galactic civil war. Uneducated except in the ways of murder and mayhem, they came out of the celestial woodwork once Michael had made his call to arms against Emperor Jimmy simply on the claim that he was "too weak" to rule the Galaxy. Having emerged victorious but no less brutal, these neo-barbarians were now the elite of the newly formed Second Empire.
Most of those in attendance were men; that's just how these guys were. Literally thousands of different battle suits and uniforms were in evidence, a perfect if badly stained mosaic of the disparate groups that had banded together to overthrow the First Empire. Chaos and violence had reigned inside the arena since midnight, and in the streets outside as well. Hundreds murdered certainly: shot, stabbed, poisoned, suffocated. Old disputes settled, new ones begun. Thousands more were wounded or maimed. The noon hour was approaching, and in this era before absolute atmospheric engineering had been discovered, it was a brutally hot day.
At the stroke of noon, a large orange air car appeared over the stadium. The crowd quieted down some, but in no way did it lapse into silence. The arrival of the air car was just a minor distraction to the roughhousing going on in the stands. Even when the air car descended to the small landing platform set up at midarena, and its doors opened, the crowd took only a passing notice. Only when the Emperor himself stepped out of the vehicle did the crowd finally fall silent.
This was Brother Michael in the flesh. The new caesar of the Galaxy. The crowd let out a thunderous cheer at first sight of him. He was short, stocky, muscular, a red face with an even redder nose. He was surrounded, as always, by a small army of personal bodyguards. Some bald, some hairy, many missing eyes, ears, fingers, toes, they were all thugs and very dangerous. These men were taken to wearing tight uniforms made of black faux leather, draped with thin chains between front and rear pockets, and always with a short, five-inch dagger hanging in a sheath held on the right side of their belts. Many also carried razor blades on the tips of their jackboots.
Those in attendance maintained the drunken ovation for five minutes. They knew it was wise to give Brother Michael and his gang their props. The stands were thick with Michael's hated undercover security teams, on hand with only one mission: to identify anyone who might not be showing the requisite amount of respect toward the new regime. These security men were well-known for meting out their own kind of instant justice, on the spot, for anyone displaying even a sniff of disloyalty toward the new boss. The means of execution was not by electric pistol or crude blaster but by stabbing the victim with knives, usually more than once, always from behind. The victims rarely had a chance to fight back.
With this a fact of life here on Earth as well as every planet in the Galaxy, for Michael's reach now touched every swirl, every arm and inward to the Ball, cheering long and loud served as a way of prolonging one's own life in this dangerous gathering, a song of self-preservation.
When the cheering finally calmed down, though, it petered out in a strangely cautious way. The new Emperor was heard to belch and then seen to spit. He was as intoxicated as those around him. Staggering up the steps as opposed to ascending them, it took him some effort to reach the throne erected nearby. Once there, he fell into the seat in a very nonimperial manner. No sooner was he down when he stood again and performed a mock bow to the crowd. The place erupted again in a chorus of grunts and laughter.
A trio of frightened, scantily clad girls was brought out. Each was bearing a golden tray with a full cup of wine on it. At the first appearance of the girls, many of the cronies of Brother Michael quietly slipped their daggers from their sheathes. A whiff of misogyny mixed with lust wafted through the imperial reviewing stand.
The first girl was pushed toward Michael, shaking and alone. Anything could happen at this point, and she knew it. The Emperor, however, only saw yet another cup of wine coming his way. He grabbed it and downed it in one noisy gulp, perhaps forgetting that drinking this cup was the signal to begin the first of two big events that were to take place this day.
There was a large form standing, covered, in the middle of the arena's oval racetrack, right across from the reviewing stand. Seeing Michael drain this first cup of wine, those people out on the infield took their cue and lifted the covering from this form. Beneath was a block of burned glass, a material that had absolute clarity with a strength approaching that of ion steel. It had been built right into the body of a small ion-ballast rocket. Locked inside the chunk of burned glass was a man. He was still alive, even though there was no air inside the glassica, nothing that could support any life at all. That didn't make any difference. The man inside had always claimed to be immortal, though he'd been known to tell a tall tale or two in his long lifetime.
It was Jimmy, former Emperor of the former First Empire, the man who first settled the Galaxy and then lost it. The deposed brother of the new man in charge.