Weekly Drabble #231: Far From Divine (Patreon)

This week sees us return to the setting of Star-crossed, with 'icy depths' from William M. and 'forget' from Knightress. Originally, there was going to be more direct references to iciness and cold, but the conversation between Arina and Athun went in a different direction during re-drafting. Anyways, hope you all enjoy!

~

Far From Divine:

Arina Ysvera, Princess of the Akshari Empire and true heir to its throne, delicately cut off a piece of her MRE bar and ate it. Sitting across the very small table from her was Ship Prime Athun, Inheritor’s commander, with a sour expression on his face. It was naval tradition for the highest-ranking officer aboard a ship to dine with guests of a high station, but Arina was no guest. She was, in point of fact, a prisoner and she didn’t know why Athun arranged these infrequent encounters. Most of them were spent in sullen, hostile silence, interspersed by acrimonious barbs or heated arguments.

Perhaps adhering to this tradition, thereby acknowledging her noble status, was in some way an apology that he could not otherwise express. If it was, she was neither impressed nor receptive. If he truly felt bad about her circumstances, then he could free her. Otherwise, she had little time for the prime’s bruised conscience.

At the very least, he could allow her more than plastic utensils. Then again, it was probably wise of him not to allow her anything too hard or too sharp. Personal violence was still something she had no great experience with, but she would be willing to engage in hands-on experience, should the opportunity present itself.

“I cannot help but notice,” Arina began, noticing the way Athun tensed at the deceptively benign phrase, “that we are not yet in Imperial territory. Nor, do I believe, that we are within True Council space.”

“Did you have a point?” The ship prime picked at his own meal, another MRE block. Inheritor had sacrificed virtually every comfort for speed and stealth; even Arina’s cell was a repurposed janitorial storage room. Food synthesizers and the storage for the organic slurry they required would have taken up far too much space, so the Black Destiny stealth cutter’s crew and commando team had had to subsist on high-density food bricks. They provided all the necessary nutrition, though their taste left much to be desired. Indeed, Arina would have suspected that the food she was being served was some kind of low-level psychological gambit if she hadn’t observed the crew eating them as well.

As it was, she was left with the belief that they had been created by two separate individuals, each with wildly disparate views on the concept of ‘taste’; one who was aware of it in a theoretical sense but clearly saw no need to consider it in making their product, while the second apparently saw it as the equivalent of a playground, tossing various flavours together with little regard for the overall outcome. “No,” she said after taking another small bite of her meal. “But I am wondering how much longer this vessel’s reserves will last.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Prime,” she told him. “I am not worried about it at all.”

His bright green eyes narrowed. “Does this amuse you?” he demanded. “We are Akshari! You should be grateful to use for rescuing you from those frenarl and bringing you home.”

“You may indeed be Akshari,” she conceded. “But you are not my people and as long as that beast whose orders you follow stands behind the throne, the Empire is not my home.”

“It saddens me to see the king’s daughter spew such venom. Akshar will always be your home.”

“The king’s daughter, am I? Tell me, prime. Were you ever loyal to my father? Did your oaths ever matter to you, even the smallest amount?”

Athun’s dark pink features flushed angrily. “I have ever served the Empire.”

“The Empire? Or Black Destiny? No matter what that frenarl claims, those are not the same.”

“Nor is the throne synonymous with those who would sit upon it, princess.”

“And yet, you kneel to a king that you know is a mere puppet. Is that how you serve the Empire, prime? Allowing it to be perverted while you cast your eyes aside, insisting that you are serving with honour, even as you see all that you swore to uphold become corrupted?”

“I will not debate my loyalties with you.”

“You do not need to,” Arina calmly pointed out, looking around at her makeshift prison. “They are abundantly clear.”

“And what is it about the humans that has drawn your acclaim, princess? What about them has caught your eye? Is it their hatred of all non-humans? Did it make you feel special to be the exception? Because they coddled you to their breast like a pet, performing tricks for their amusement like denouncing your nation and people to the galaxy? Are you patted on the head and told what a good girl you are? Is that the price of your loyalty?”

“I am no one’s ‘pet’,” Arina replied, some anger leaking into her tone. “And I denounce the corruption and brutality in the Empire because it deserves to be called out, not for any reason. I would even argue that my loyalty was harder to acquire then yours. You sold your honour to be a stepping stone on someone else’s rise to power. I have not done a thing for the humans that I would not have done had they not demonstrated that they were more than savages.”

“And so now you feel they are without flaw?”

Arina smiled. “Only a fool would believe that the humans are without fault. I assure you, they are just as fallible as any other species in the galaxy, but in my time with them I have seen hope that they can be more than what they are. With my people, I have witnessed only the opposite. A devolution into naked ambition, unfettered by ethics or morality and often deliberately at odds with those concepts.”

“We are making Askahri strong. We’ve bent the knee to the other races for too long, letting two dozen different hands pull the Consolidation in two dozen different directions. With the Empire at the helm, our nation will be great once again.”

“And what is that greatness worth, prime?”

“Anything. If there was still something Akshari in you, you would recognize that. We have never let anything stand in our way. That is how we have gotten as far as we have as fast as we have. Ambition, and a willingness to pay its price, is a part of the Akshari soul.”

“And that ambition has split the galaxy in two. That ambition is why you had to be sent to bring your queen back home in chains. Is that a price you are comfortable with, prime? Is that part of your soul?”

“I will not be interrogated by you.”

“Of course not.” Arina took another small bite from her meal. “I have spoken of the flaws that I have seen in the Akshari soul. I will share one of the humans’, a trait I have recognized in our own people.”

“And that is?”

“They do not forget, and they most assuredly do not forgive. Black Destiny has pushed too hard for too long. You have become overconfident and arrogant. Your reach has exceeded your grasp and you are being made to pay for that.” Nikolai was making them pay for it. “But it is not too late for you or the Empire. This can end.”

“There is only one way this ends, princess.”

“No,” Arina corrected him. “I fear there are several potential outcomes.”

“They can’t win,” Athun said as he rose, swiping his code cylinder across the door. “No matter how warped your mind has become, or how fanatical the humans might be, you can’t possibly believe that they can actually win. We outnumber them hundreds to one.”

“The Consolidation does,” she corrected. “Not the Empire.” The Imperial Navy had been one of the larger Home Fleets in the Consolidation, and it had grown even larger with Black Destiny’s clandestine and highly illegal construction projects, but the Primality fleet was itself substantial.

“The Empire is the Consolidation. The Empire is deep inside True Council territory. The humans would have to cut their way across thousands of light-years to reach our homeworld. They don’t have the manpower or the resources to wage that kind of war.”

“Perhaps you are correct,” Arina admitted. “But then, you are missing an important part of that equation.”

“And what would that be?” Athun demanded scornfully, poised halfway through the open door.

“You seem to believe the Primality’s goal is to win,” she met her captor’s eyes levelly. “And not ensuring that you lose.”

~

Space was vast. In theory, it should be impossible to block any faster-than-light craft off from any other part of the galaxy. In practice, there were a great many more variables to making transit jumps than simply pointing your ship in a given direction and saying ‘engage’. Fuel consumption per jump, reactor energy output and endurance, FTL speed, accuracy of transitions and length of time a craft could remain in transit were just some of the variables that determined how capable a given vessel was at crossing light-years.

Larger vessels were often freed from most or all of these constraints, but Inheritor had been primarily built for stealth. It had been introduced to the contested territories via a carrier ship, the camouflaged freighter Gremkeil. After the ground teams had done their job and the package had been secured aboard the cutter, Inheritor’s goal had been to elude immediate pursuit and rendezvous with the larger vessel for exfiltration.

A human warship had been waiting for them, nestled up against Gremkeil’s hull like a parasite, wrapped in holo-imagers to prevent visual detection. No, not a parasite. Parasites didn’t kill their hosts and everyone aboard Gremkeil had either been dead or in human hands. Inheritor had barely escaped. It had taken multiple transitions to finally shake their pursuers, and in doing so they’d burned through much of the cutter’s minimal fuel reserves. Given time, the cutter could replenish its own fuel, but that system was tertiary at best. They didn’t have that kind of time.

The humans had built a profile on the cutter, incorporating every variable they could into that study and using it to fashion a noose that was, hour by hour, tightening around Athun’s throat. A bounty on the ship had been sent to every world, station and vessel across the region. Traitor worlds and militias were on high alert for Inheritor, many former allies could no longer be trusted and those whose loyalty had been more substantive had been targeted by the Primality. Even supposedly secure Black Destiny facilities like Tanagr had been destroyed or captured. Inheritor was running out of options.Their courses were predicted, plans were guessed and countermeasures avoided in a disturbingly prescient manner. They couldn’t have gotten that much information from the commando team or Gremkeil.

“I told you before,” Ysvera had smugly reminded Athun during one of their previous dinners. “That he is coming for me.” Her eyes had been alight with amusement.

Athun knew how dangerous the humans were, more than a band of uplifted apes had any right to be, but he had never been on the receiving end of the Butcher’s attention before now. He didn’t care for it. Inheritor should have been back in the Empire days ago, but every escape avenue or ally was a trap waiting to be sprung.

They were returning to the Kaln-Oppa system; they’d bartered for fuel from the pirates here a week and a half ago. The fringe trash had extorted a hefty sum in exchange for only a middling replenishment, enough to keep them going, but little else. Now they had to return as if they were beggars, offering themselves up to be fleeced like a drunken trader in a whorehouse. It was an intolerable insult, but one that Athun knew he had to endure.

Silence greeted them. Kaln-Oppa had been home to a half-dozen different pirate clans, all based out of a large hollowed-out asteroid. The radio waves should have been filled with inane fringe chatter. Instead, Kaln-Oppa was as quiet as a grave.

Soon enough, that metaphor proved all too accurate. Ruined, lifeless hulks and radiation scars greeted them in place of picket ships and transports.Nothing was left of the system’s asteroid colony but rubble. Athun didn’t even need to see the sensor analysis to know what had happened here. The humans had discovered what Kaln-Oppa had done. “Deploy our probe,” he ordered. “There might be something we can scavenge from the wreckage.” He didn’t dare bring Inheritor any farther in-system.

Looking at the debris field, Athun felt his chest tighten as one more hope of escape died, and the princess’s words came back to haunt him.

They do not forget, and they most assuredly do not forgive.