Princess of the Void ch 6.28 - Lion King (Patreon)

The Taiikari ship hovers over Manhattan.

Grant stares at the rising cityscape as their shuttle’s shadow flickers by the skyscrapers. The Pike is visible faintly in the blue above, like a splinter beneath the skin of the sky.

“Can’t quite believe you’re back, hmm?”

Grant turns to his wife, who’s sitting with him in the vessel’s silk-lined Regality Cabin. Across from them, Narika hunches over a compact mirror, redoing her lashes.

“Seeing it from this angle has to be quite the head trip,” Sykora says.

“Grant’s people do have aircraft, you know.” Narika snaps her compact shut. “We’re not bringing these cave-dwellers fire.”

“I know that,” Sykora snaps. “I meant metaphorically.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I did.”

“I know what you mean, babe.” Grant rubs the shoulder her scintillating dress-of-state reveals. “This was always how it would be. It’s not surprise I’m feeling and it shouldn’t be disbelief. But the world’s recontextualized itself. The aliens have come to Earth.”

“Returned to it, in my case.” Sykora stands on her seat to reach his circlet—they’ve gone for a subtle-enough band of platinum. “And you’ve returned too, Dove.”

“I’ve never been to New York, actually,” he says. “Hell of a way to be a first-timer. Wonder if we’ll get the chance to go see Lion King.”

“When I heard that Maekyon had a populace of eight billion I was surprised at how sparse so many of the settlements were,” Narika says. “Now I somewhat understand. Looks rather cramped down there.”

“It’s, well…” Grant can’t exactly argue otherwise. “Well, to my species it’s actually pretty impressive. Like, there’s the Empire State.”

“Which? Ohh. That one.” Sykora leans into the window. “That’s the famous one, isn’t it? Like in Independence Day.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“In Independence Day they blew that one up,” Sykora says to Narika, clearly smug in her knowledge.

“Who’s they?”

“The aliens. Us, I suppose. It’s a Maekyonite film. You really ought to bone up, if you intend to steward them.”

Grant points. “And there’s Central Park. And that’s the One World Trade.”

Sykora rubs her chin. “That glass one? It looks newer.”

“Yeah,” Grant says. “Twenty… fourteen? I think? I was a kid when it was built, and it was the tallest in the country. The hemisphere, even. Still is.”

“Ah.” Narika peers closer. “That?”

“Be nice,” Sykora says.

“They are fine constructions,” Narika says. “Far better than I could personally design, I’m sure. From below, I’m sure they’re quite majestic.”

“Quite majestic,” Sykora agrees. “If you’d like, dove, we can make sure our Embassy City is on the opposite hemisphere. So that your One World can keep its title.”

Grant grins. “You are such little stinkers, Majesties.”

“I am not,” Sykora gasps, in faux-outrage. “Agreed on Narika.”

Their sleek silvery ship is too large, of course, for the helipad on the UN building’s roof. A gangplank descends instead, down which Hyax is first, with Brigadier Malus of the Glory Banner at her side. Then four marines in mechanical unison, their service rifles stowed. Then the Royal retinue—officers, Majordomos, the Princess-in-Waiting, functionaries in Pike crimson and Banner black—and then the Royal family.

Grant is keenly aware that, behind the wall of stern HAK-suited space warriors, he is the only member of said family visible. As they’re ushered from the rooftop by humans in gray security uniforms and enviably blank composures, he gets a glance at the streets below.

Traffic is stopped. A massive rippling crowd of humanity below. The New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in triplicate, staring up at the alien ship. From this distance no faces are visible. Grant wonders what is being said.

The crowd waiting for them inside, in a curiously plain hallway, is smaller, better-dressed, and their faces are easy to see, if not to read. The United Nations security council have mastered their polite poker faces. The press around them are doing a much worse job; gasps greet the Taiikari congregation, and the stern servicemen keeping them in the periphery push back against the sudden fascinated contraction.

“Welcome, Majesties, to Earth.” The bald, stern-browed man at the prow of the ambassadors takes one step forward and executes something akin to the Taiikari quarter-bow. Hopefully he didn’t mean to actually imply equity with that. “And to one of its brightest cultural capitals. I am Laurent Fournier, Permanent Representative to the United Nations and president of the UN Security Council.”

Sykora steps out of the Taiikari crowd. Murmurs greet her. Her smile is captured by a firefly fleet of flashbulbs that strobe across her blue skin. “It is a rarefied pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ambassador.”

The Taiikari delegation are objects of unalloyed fascination to the humans, caught in a net of analog and digital gazes. But to Grant’s warm-faced displeasure he’s the most gawked-at member of the crowd. He’s the tallest of them, he supposes, taller by a full foot than Master Sergeant Ajax standing beside him, and the only human in the sleek and sleeveless Taiikari uniform.

He has been in front of far more people than this. And far more important people, to be sure. Hell, it’s the UN. It’s not like he’s meeting the actual President. But the scrutiny of humans, at human height and in human suits and human middle age, is uniquely unnerving. He’s lived in splendor and returned to Earth at the fore of an invasion fleet (as abortive as that invasion ended up). And yet a piece of him still feels like that college dropout who’d be parking these people’s cars if they cared to hire him at all. He has a queer sense of vertigo.

“I would like, Majesty, if the custom is agreeable, to shake your hand,” says Ambassador Fournier. Sykora extends her hand. He pauses to consider the spatial challenge this meeting has unexpectedly thrown his way, then bends forward gamely to close the shake. A flurry of photo shutters and flash bulbs. Fournier’s looking a little bit down the Princess’s neckline, but it’s difficult not to at this angle, and it’s an extremely interesting neckline, so Grant refrains from interplanetary incidents.

“Six miles to our South,” Fournier intones, with the solemnity of a memorized script, “upon Liberty Island, there stands a great monument to the free movement and boundless potential offered by a new world, and the possibility and belonging of a new home. The epigraph on its base reads, in part, I lift my lamp beside the golden door. Let this, our first encounter, prove the golden door to the cosmos.”

“Thank you, Ambassador. It’s a lovely statue. We saw it from the air. A bit smaller in the flesh than I had expected, but…” Sykora gestures to herself. “I’m not one to talk, am I?”

“That—” Fournier lets out a surprised laugh. “That’s true enough. If you will follow me, Your Majesty, the Security Council chamber awaits us.”

“People of Earth,” the recorded Sykora says. “We come in peace. We are the Taiikari empire, your neighbors and stewards in the cosmos. We welcome you into a trillion-strong community of a size and speciation wider than you--”

“We can skip most of this,” Narika says, from atop the stack of books an apologetic office boy set upon a chair for her. “You’ve watched my sister’s speech enough times by now.”

Sykora flicks a brief dagger glare to her sister, but nods assent. “Skip to a minute in.”

“—husband is the first of your kind to live among us,” screen-Sykora says. “He will not be the last. Every living human now has the unprecedented opportunity to claim their Imperial citizenship, and with it their place in the stars. Beside us.”

The humans in the room, seated at a wraparound crescent desk facing the projection screen, shift and murmur to one another.

“We bring this offer contingent entirely on your election,” Sykora says, her accented English bringing a hard, purring edge to her R’s. “And we urge every human to make this choice with the utmost care, placing it beyond the reach of any outside authority, whether human or Taiikari. Should every human claim their Imperial destiny, there is room for all of you. Should no human do so, we will depart in contrition.”

Grant hears the subtle squeak of a shifting seat as flesh-and-blood Sykora’s tail wags. She’s proud of that word, contrition.

“In the busy days to come, the world as you know it will undergo a great transformation,” the recording goes on. “The Empire will transform alongside you. When the time comes to make your choice, I will apppear to you again, with instructions for claiming your citizenship. Until then, I part with the love of a distant relation reunited, discovering the common joy of family, recovered.”

His wife’s lovely face is replaced by a screen bearing the Black Pike sigil, with the Glory Banner’s in the corner. Narika’s mouth twists. She argued vociferously about that logo size.

“A lovely sentiment, your Majesty,” pipes up a woman in a kente cloth.

“Indeed,” Fournier says, turning on his swivel chair back to the council at large. “But I am afraid it has caused consternation. Global consternation.”

“We presumed it would,” Sykora says. “Great change always does.”

“It may seem, gentlemen, that we are attempting some sort of—my brother taught me the right word—gotcha upon you, gentlemen,” Narika says. “You have our solemn vow that this is not true. We understand that humanity requires freedom as it requires air. This our fellow nobleman Grant Hyde instructed us in. And we must tell you that the mandate is offered strictly under these terms.”

The American ambassador, a smiling Texan with a powder-blue pocket square, leans on his elbows. “Now in what way do you mean strict?”

“Any governing body that moves to limit the right of its citizens to take the Imperial option will not be recognized as legitimate by the Taiikari Empire,” Sykora says.

“So you intend to bring war, after all.” This from one of the electeds, a man with a chevron stache and a Central American accent. “Just selectively.”

Sykora shakes her head. “We will not move for any regime change, but we will facilitate voluntary extradition by whatever means we can. And governments that refuse to cooperate will have the opportunity to deal directly with Taiikari technologists and firms revoked. Your president’s health has been a matter of speculation, Ambassador Gonzalez, hasn’t it?”

The Ambassador’s eyes narrow. “I fail to understand your implication, Majesty.”

“While our full longevity suite is available only to our citizens, there are medical advances we’re authorized to share within the Mandate, sir. Provided the party leadership assents to citizen self-extradition.”

“You mean then to blackmail him with your medical miracles?”

Sykora steeples her hands in front of her on the desk. They’re so small. She’s so small, before this crowd. An absurdly protective piece of Grant wants to step in and shield her. “I am only roughly schooled in your language, sir,” she says. “And the technology of our translators is new and not wholly reliable. But if this new idiom you have taught me means coercion, then yes. We mean to coerce.”

“But here is opportunity as recompense alongside it, for anyone willing to reach for it.” Narika steps smoothly in. They’ve practiced this. “In one kan—er, let’s call it two weeks, Earthling time—we will begin settlement and construction of the Taiikari Embassy City. Whichever nation furnishes the grounds for it will be first and foremost partner of the Empire. Yours will be the country that acts as galactic gateway to your planet.”

A shared inhalation of intent. They’ve gotten the hook in. Grant can tell.

“We will not require manpower, materials, or any other commitment of resources,” Narika says. “Only the land on which to build. No arability or survivability needed—give us whatever inhospitable wastes you please. In fact, any suggestion involving the displacement of extant human communities will be dismissed.”

"Ma’am—Princess—Majesty, you don’t even need to move the ship out of the country.” The American ambassador’s grin grows. “We’ve got a lovely little spot called Death Valley that’d be just perfect.”

Sykora gives the man a formal smile-of-state. “We’ll be collecting proposals for the next seven days.”

“I assure you,” the Texan says. “Ours will be extremely competitive.”

There are questions coming in on a turned-tap stream now. “Would you make us aware of any Earthbound resources that might turn our bid in your favor?” someone calls. “Energy requirements, rare minerals—”

“None of these,” Sykora says. “Nothing in your ground or in your oceans or in your sky. Only your partnership, Ambassadors. The strongest contenders will be those who demonstrate as deep a commitment to this strange new alliance as we bring.”

Her tail taps Grant’s knee. His cue. “It sounds like we’ve given you all much to talk about,” he says. “The Empire proposes a brief recess. All in favor?”

Fournier bristles at this hijacking. “With respect, your Majesty—” A multinational collection of raised hands shuts him up.

The councilmembers hurry to corners, to phones and followers and urgent whispers.

“Superbly stentorian, dove.” Sykora flows into Taiikari as she squeezes his hand. “Dare I investigate what a Maekyonite bathroom looks like?”

Grant chuckles. “I’ll keep you from falling in. We—”

“Excuse me, please.”

The Prince and Princess of the Pike turn to the Ambassador from Portugal, whose thick fingers worry the rolex on his wrist.

“The advances you’ve told us about,” he says, barely above a whisper. “The medical ones.”

Grant puts his choppy English back on. “Yes?”

“My daughter has ALS.” The man’s face is a portrait of fear and humiliation and hope. “Can you cure that?”