(National Assembly Hall, Yokosaki, Nuevo Edo)
The crowd was rowdy, celebrating not just the victory over the X’thari that threatened them, but also the arrival of the Empress of the Terran Empire. For a people who had so long been cut off from their ancestral homeland, the arrival of the leader of Earth and her Empire was something that they had never hoped to see. The fact that she was a young woman, who cut a charismatic figure in both her well-tailored gowns and the (discretely distributed) photos of her as Captain of the Triumphant in her Navy uniform instantly propelled her to celebrity status on the still matriarchal planet.
By now, everyone knew that the fight in the skies over Nuevo Edo had been a closer thing than anyone dared speak of before the battle was done. Massively outnumbered and outgunned from the start, it was only the unconventional weapons and tactics that the Black Star forces had imparted to them as they helped build their Nuevo Edo Navy that they had gained even a ghost of a chance. And yet, with one section of the enemy fleet still unfought, the list of Black Star and Nuevo Edoan ships who were capable of continuing the battle was a fraction of the size it had been before, and amongst those, the number of ships that were undamaged was so small as to be counted upon a single hand, and all those ships were support vessels: the Carriers and the Nightforge.
Things had looked bleak, but then, in a burst of tachyons that lit the sky (figuratively speaking), the Triumphant appeared with her task force, and laid waste to the enemy ships, cutting through them like a scythe through wheat! It was a sight glorious to behold, especially when the vid captures from the Imperial fleet ‘leaked’ into the public, including a scene of the Empress herself, dressed in a Navy uniform without rank, standing upon the Flag Bridge of the Triumphant as it emerged from transition, and giving the order to open fire. Or what of the cockpit cameras of the imperial fighters, showing them on their attack runs against the X’thari ships?
And the Empress and her forces were not the only heroes made that day. Many were the stories told and retold of the fighting as those who fought, whether Black Star or Nuevo Edoan, shared their tales over drinks, while their friends laughed and mocked them when they exaggerated too much for polite company. Of particular note was the Last Charge of the Shinokage, as some were calling it, when Commodore Mollen ordered his command ship to launch what seemed to be a suicide run on the enemy dreadnought, braving the deadly fire of the enemy guns to gain a chance at victory as they turned and fired at the weak point in the X’thari defenses with their powerful twin railguns. Battered and broken, but never beaten, the Shinokage had managed to limp into port, with an honor guard of Assassins. The rumors said that her surviving crew were intent on waiting for their time in repair yards, so that the less damaged ships could be repaired first, but the outcry from the Black Star Fleet forced the Commodore to override them, and place the Shinokage as the first to enter the repair slips.
It was happy circumstance that today was Founder’s Day, marking the birth of the Nuevo Edo Colony after the Juan Ponce de Leon had emerged from an alien craft’s wake to find themselves in this system. Though those early years were filled with heroism and tragedy as well, they had come a long way since then, and fought through many hardships. Now, with the Amazons and the X’thari behind them, the crowd was exuberant, to say the least, as they prepared for the traditional festivities of Founder’s Day.
A change in the typical parade this year, was the addition of Commodore Mollen of the Black Star Fleet and Empress Vaughn of the Terran Empire as guests riding alongside Premier Fukuya in her place as the Mistress of Ceremonies. While the three smiled and waved to the cheering crowds, some might be surprised at the conversation that played out as they rode in the parade.
Merida laughed to herself as she waved, “I can only imagine the heartburn I’m giving my poor security team with this stunt. I fear they won’t allow me out of their sight for MONTHS after this!”
Talia laughed in return, from her spot in the center of the three (as it was her planet), and said, “Oh, I’m glad I won’t be the only one, then. Every year the security forces attempt to convince me to cancel the parade, as if doing something like that wouldn’t cause riots. The people need these demonstrations, and anyone who caused trouble here would quickly find themselves a pariah on the planet.”
Merida snorted. “Which would make you no less dead, as my guards like to inform me.”
“Mine say the same thing, but I ignore them just this once out of the year, in return for being a good little leader the rest of the time. Unless something interesting happens.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Mirikon laughed as he joined in the conversation. “Ah, so is that why all your guards were so upset when we ‘dangerous outsiders’ met you the first time at the quarry?”
Merida looked over, smiling. “Oh, I hear a story there!”
Talia smiled. “Oh, not much of one. You see, we had detected ships coming through the Gateway, but all our instruments were light-speed based, so we knew the ships had been there for hours before we detected the gate’s activation. We didn’t know anything other than the fact that they did not look like the Demons we had been fighting, so we sent them the standard ‘first contact’ package of mathematical series.” Seeing Merida nod her understanding of the old first contact protocols, she continued, “Well, imagine our surprise when the mystery ships answered back with the correct sequence, skipped to the final line of that sequence, and then proceeded to send out the first and last lines of all the other sequences in the protocol, in the exact order we would send them. And then signed off with ‘Hello Cousins. Nice to see the Children of the Juan Ponce de Leon weren’t lost as had been thought,’ in English, Spanish, and Japanese!”
Merida chortled. “Oh, that must have caused some consternation in your ranks!”
Mirikon nodded. “Indeed it did. Their internal communications spiked dramatically after that, and got very frantic for a while, until the Premier got to the bunker where they were going to make contact from.”
Talia’s head whipped around to look at Mirikon. “Wait, you were already in our systems? How? We had just sent you our translation data…”
“My dear Talia, I mean no disrespect, but we were in your systems before you first started those first contact protocols. Your encryption systems were actually primitive enough that if we had not found similar codes in the historical archives our modern codebreaking algorithms would likely not have been able to decipher them. There is a reason why the General and I quietly went over your communications system while we were upgrading your defenses.”
Merida patted Talia on the shoulder in consolation. “Don’t worry about it, my dear. Our Commodore here prefers the ‘beg forgiveness’ option rather than ‘asking permission’. But do continue with the story.”
“Hmph! We will be talking about this, Miri, the next time you want to meet and ‘discuss the evolving political situation’ over drinks in your suite!”
Merida almost choked, and said, “Are you two… together?”
Talia chuckled. “Oh, no. We’ve just had a few ‘liasons’. And yes, I know about his harem. But he is the most famous man on a planet of mostly women. I do not doubt that he has ‘enjoyed’ more than a few of the leaders on the planet by now.”
“It would be a crime, a true crime for me to look into the eyes of all those lovely and willing women, and turn them down. And so I make a sacrifice of my body, bringing pleasure to as many beauties as I can, and if they should offer me gifts, trade deals, or prime concessions, well, it would simply be rude to turn down all those tokens of their appreciation.”
Merida struggled to keep smiling for the crowd. “I feel like I’m in a bad movie or some novel on the net.”
“Ah, my dear Empress, if you are upset that I have not offered you my services in that regard, I must apologize, and I will gladly aid you if you call me to service in such a way. Say the word, and I shall bend all my skills as a cunning linguist to sending you to new heights of pleasure!”
Talia giggled as she watched the Empress’s face grow pink in embarrassment. “Proposition her after the parade, Miri. Unless your time with the leader of the ‘Free Use’ party has prompted you to gain a bit of an exhibitionist streak?” When no one spoke, she continued. “At any rate, the very scary outsiders who we believed to be from Earth asked to meet, revealing a fleet of stealth ships that we had completely been unable to detect, and they were already inside our defensive perimeter!”
Merida nodded. “And he chose a quarry, a nice, open place that your guards no doubt informed you offered nice firing lines if things turned nasty, and he needed to destroy you from the air. And he probably came down not in a shuttle, but with something big and obviously armed to make a point?”
Talia nodded. “His Starlight Raven and four of his Raptor fighters, flying in formation, before the fighters burst in a maneuver and then all landed in perfect synchronization.”
Merida sighed in mock consternation and said, “Pilots. They’re the same everywhere.”
“Then he stepped off his ship with his harem in armor, and had robots set up a building that grew out of the ground to serve as a meeting place! If it wasn’t painfully obvious that he could have overwhelmed us before, by that point even our troopers understood the situation.”
Mirikon shrugged. “We wished to make an impression. If that impression also included things that moved the cookie jar out of reach, rather than leaving it as a temptation for those with more greed and ambition than sense, well, that is best for everyone, now isn’t it?”
Talia turned to look at Merida. “You see what I’ve been putting up with? This is the kind of thing I’m constantly having to fight against!”
Merida simply smiled, and nodded. “Oh, let me tell you about the first time our dear Commodore was introduced to me!”
“This was during the Civil War, yes?”
“Yes, we were in a bad spot, frankly, and while the destruction of one of the Imperial colonies that refused to submit to Travis had fired up everyone, we were expecting the Usurper’s forces to regroup and attack at any moment. But then we started hearing about small rebel groups no one had heard of before, all in possession of mysterious ‘ghost ships’, which attacked Earth, as well as logistics supply points, crippling trade in the Empire.”
“Hmm. I think I see where this is going.”
“Well, I had ordered a small flotilla to make a raid on enemy supplies in order to help distract the Usurper’s forces, but they were suddenly joined by the ‘Ghost Fleet’ as everyone was calling them now, coming to help ‘redistribute’ a good portion of the stored product on that world. As a major producer of Coffee in the Empire, that would be tragic, yes?”
“A world without coffee is not worth living in, yes.”
“Well, according to my captains, here is how the encounter went…”
The rest of the parade went easily, as the three traded ‘war stories’ with eachother.