Page 137

Gallien leans against the counter of the desk, positioning himself so he has a view of the entrance and me as I follow her directions and enter the washroom. It’s made in human proportions, which is reassuring. This office tower must have been created for business between my species and theirs, in a time past. I get cleaned up as best as I can at the sink, freshening up and splashing water on my flushed face.

Worry gnaws. My legal team sent the message at four in the morning to come in. They’ve been up all night on whatever pressing issue threatens us.

The brief interlude with Gallien was an escape. Turning my mind off, letting my body surrender to the alien prince. Now, reality is coming back, and I steel myself as I leave the bathroom, striding quickly to the long row of elevators that lay dormant. Gallien and I enter, and as the doors close, I look at us in the mirror. Him, towering and noble, his features sharp, angular, me, with bags under my eyes in the drab beige uniform that looks so dull next to the pure white of his robes.

The elevator shoots us up in an instant, and we get out on the sixtieth floor. There’s a desk with no one manning it. “Could you wait for me here? There won’t be any threat, it’s just my staff.”

Gallien pauses for a moment, thinking. Then he nods, glancing through the offices to the walkway that rings the building. Being in a building in the heart of the Empire is below his risk parameter to need to always be an inch away from me, as long as he can constantly watch me.

I steel myself, staring down the door to the offices where my legal team is set up. It looks claustrophobic, but only because I have been used to spaces designed for the towering alien species.

Since leaving Pentaris space, I’ve felt different. My world has been less filled with the daily irritations of leading the herd of cats that are the five planets and more focused on the one thing that matters: ending this war and restoring the universe to peace. When I was on the Imperator, cut off from all communications, I had the time and mental space to trulybefor the first time in years.

Now the mantle of responsibility and the drudgery of leadership is back. I wave my watch, which has my security credentials stored, and the doors hiss open, giving me a view of the workspace. It’s open concept, more like a library than an office building.

The floor is covered by thick ivory shag carpet seemingly designed to trip you up, impractical for a workspace, especially next to a counter featuring an eclectic mix of nearly a dozen coffee makers. They range from a contraption that looks like it comes from Italy in Old-Earth, a region famed for its coffee, to a replicator system that would have been modern a century ago. I hope they worked out the issues with the black brew coming out chewy. I’ve walked into the surrealness of an office designed for my species by another.

They did figure out that we’ve loved coffee for nearly the entire history of our species, and designed the space accordingly, but the carpeting is impractical. One spilt cup would stain the ivory rug for eternity. It hits me as I wade through the thick shag.

Aurelians don’t spill or slip up. Not when they spend the first hundred years of their life getting mistakes beaten out of them. The final decade of their training, squiring in pure white robes, where a drop of red wine staining their garments would warrant a whipping, was undertaken by every Aurelian, even the architect who designed the office buildings for visiting humans.

The ceiling is high, desks in neat rows with computing link ups, and the rear of the sprawling room has an oval window which lets in natural light.

Hunched in the corner, as if vampirically avoiding the sun, is my staff. They are crowded around a table with half-filled mugs of what must now be stagnant brew. The Administrative legal council, the finest minds of Pentaris. They don’t just have legal knowledge. To get this high, they’ve got to be skilled at politicking as well. I think of them as my staff, but they are representatives of the independent body that interpret actions of government through our founding constitution, the governing documents that have kept us alive and sovereign over countless millennia surrounded on all sides by Toads, Aurelians, and wild, pirate space.

They’ve seen Prime Ministers come and go. Three are present at the table. Helena, the most senior, with pure white hair in a no-nonsense bun—who I’ve never seen smile—terrified me during my clerkship. Caius, fleshy, has hospitably ruddy cheeks and a perfectly groomed mustache of inky black, dyed at the first sign of grey. He would fit in as the proprietor of a comfortable pub, and that appearance has lulled many into a false sense of security.

Finally, Martin, in his late twenties but who still looks like a teenager to me. He’s from Virelia, with a long, lanky body he still hasn’t filled in. He finished his clerkship on the eve of war and was brought up to the big leagues. His expression is permanently haunted, and his gaunt facial structure has become skeletal since we went through the Rift. As he hears my soft footsteps approaching, he jolts up to his feet, knocking over the mug in front of him onto a stack of papers. It’s miraculously empty, and he wilts under Helena’s glance, the slight tightening of her eyes the equivalent of a loud chewing out from anyone else. Martin plunks his butt back into the seat and tries to make himself small, which isn’t easy for the awkwardly gangly young lad.

They all three look tired, worn down, determined. The conversation of the fourth of the council, Lineta, short and fiery from Magnar, travels in through the oval window. She’s pacing the terrace, which rings each floor of the office building, yelling at a holo-vid coming up from her smart-watch.

When she hears me, she glances in through the oval window and cuts her call off curtly. An angry wave of her hand at the sensor to the sliding doors, and they open, a gust of wind entering the library as she storms in. The sky outside is growing dark, black clouds forming out of nowhere, and the air has a sharpness to it.

“We’ve got a fucking problem,” she spits out as she walks in on the thick carpet, then with a violent motion, kicks off her heels and throws them aside, before she trips in the impractical carpeting. Even when she wears them, she barely comes up to my chest, but every time she enters a room it feels small.

If she was up all night, there’s no indication of it. Her thick black brows are furrowed, and she looks like she’s ready to solve with her fists whatever crisis came up. She strides to me, looking up with her jaw set.

“Fill me in.”

She cocks her head, motioning me to sit at the table. I shake my head. I prefer to take my blows standing.

“A new political party.Sovereign Dawn.Yeah, very fucking original. More extremist than any we’ve seen so far, hyper-nationalistic. This is the first time the worst nationalist groups from each planet are coming together. They’ve got one goal: expelling Aurelians from Pentaris soil. We’ve been coordinating with local law enforcement and the intelligence service as best as we can, but it’s a fucking volcano building up, and we’re jamming our fingers into holes the second before they burst.”

I nod. “It was inevitable. We knew it was coming. I’m surprised it took so long.”

Lineta grinds her teeth. “We’ve avoided some dangerous situations by the skin of our teeth. Young men who don’t like Aurelian boots on their streets. There’s four teenagers on Virelia in jail right now who were plotting to blow up a ship transporting med-bays, for the sake of the Gods.”

“I wouldn’t be so glib,” snaps Helena as she looks me up and down, standing and smoothing her uniform. The legal council all wear plain grey uniforms that match my own in everything but color. Theirs are dull grey, to show their impartiality. “They’ve got the backing of Edmus Freehold.”

Her tone is jarring. I’ve gotten used to something else: bowed heads of Aurelians, respectful nods when I come near, the shared endurance of my staff, all of us who have been through hell together and come out. The frankness puts me off balance.

“Edmus? Good old Edmus? There must be a mistake. He’s the reason I’m Prime Minister. My biggest donor is backing a hyper-nationalist fringe party?”

Helena’s expression sours. Her lips purse. “You’ve been… out of the loop. Spending your time with the triad, instead of reading the reports your staff brings you. Lineta,” she finishes, motioning to the Magnarian to brief me.

“Was. He was your biggest supporter, because you ran on a nationalistic platform which coincidentally had massive tariffs and a trade embargo on almost all Aurelian military tech. Mr. Freehold feels betrayed, and his stockholders do as well. He’s been loudly stating on all major media platforms that you’ve sold out our planet’s industrial bases… and that you’re letting in violent, hmm, what was the word he used? Ah yes. Violent, sex-crazed aliens roam the streets.”

Fuck him.