Chapter 5: Remembrance of Time Pt. 1
The reverse thrusters of the Emerald Order's Aetna were already firing when Dulan came up on the unmagnified viewer. At first it was little more than a slightly brighter star, that gradually grew larger and redder as the attack fleets approached. Tiny pinpricks of light surrounded it as a hundred red-prowed Dulanian warships fired up their thrusters to meet the invaders.
Miranda stood beside Her Lordship as the command space of the Aetna around them was filled with a ferment of noise. Officers shouted orders to the lower decks and to the other ships, maneuvering them into offensive formations with overlapping fire-lanes and pre-planned thrust vectors. Envoy officers maintained lines of communication with the Sapphire Order, drawing up firing solutions and target priorities. Voice chatter filled every vox-frequency and channel, and the Warp bubbled with psychic conveyance. Reactors growled, and energy conductors hissed to life as the ship's power reserves were drained into its lances and gunnery.
Above it all sat Uranus, a golden summit of stability over the churning sea of pre-battle preparation. Her hand gripped the hilt of her rapier, the Gathering Storm.
'Your Lordship,' Miranda spoke through a psychic missive. 'May I ask something of you before we go into battle?'
Uranus gave Miranda a brief, benevolent look.
'There's no need to be so formal in private like this Miranda. You can call me Uranus, or even Haruka if you want.'
'Ask me anything.'
Miranda straightened. 'I only wanted to ask our intentions in this battle. Are we going to battle to punish the Dulanians for their treacherous conduct when this all began?'
'Oh, is this what's been bothering you all this time?' asked Uranus. 'Why didn't you say something sooner? Well, at least I'll be able to put your mind at ease before the fighting starts.'
'You may not have been able to tell from the battle plans, but that's just how it is. We have to plan for everything. But Neptune and I have agreed that we should try to avoid having to invade the planet,' Uranus lifted a gloved finger and pointed to Dulan.
'That ring around their planet is the key. Without that, they won't be able to make any more of the reactors that they're totally reliant on. Once we take it, they'll have no choice but to give up. And when this is all finished, while we won't give them the terms that we gave at the start, we also won't try to make things miserable for them. The goal of all of this is unity, and a hand will work better than a fist if we can manage it. We aren't here to punish them. Does that help at all?'
Miranda tipped her head. 'Yes, thank you Your Lordship.'
The first blows were struck by the Sapphire fleet, long before the Dulanians came within conventional range. Sheltered behind the screening ranks of the Uranic cruisers, the Trishula and Triratna trembled as their accelerator coils charged. Their spines bore thick frames, each wrapped around a trio of nova cannon barrels. Their shells were the size of Titans. A misfire could devastate Dulan, but Neptune had promised precision, and Uranus trusted her completely.
The Trishula fired first, and her shots ran through the heart of the Dulanian formation. Esoteric, artisan devices at the heart of each shell drew upon the dark energy stored within the quantum fields that underlaid the universe. Energy became matter, and a trio of miniature black holes exploded to life amidst the Dulanian ships.
The closest warships were pulled apart, blowing out in explosions that streamed like ribbons into the event horizons. Others drove their engines to maximum, and were dragged close despite it, or flung far out of formation by the gravitational turbulence and their own propulsion. Seconds later, the gravity began to weaken, and the three holes brightened as they evaporated in bursts of relativistic particle flux.
The Triratna's shells were already on their way. With the Dulanian force pulled close by the Trishula's bombardment, the Triratna delivered devastation. Stars flashed amidst their formations, becoming fireballs joined by the overlapping blasts of catastrophic ship death. Dead hulks tumbled from the inferno, forming a pyre of tumbling, colliding wreckage.
It was a blow that had shattered whole armadas, that had broken the morale of enemy fleets so comprehensively that normally, surrender pleas would already be on their way. Here it left most of the enemy intact, and there was no capitulation forthcoming. Aegis shields fizzed, crackled, and blazed with neon light as the Dulanian ships powered out of their orbital sectors, their blood-red hulls blackened by plasma and debris impacts. Torpedoes spat from launch tubes, and jetted across the intervening space. The planetary ring strobed with actinic waves of interference build-up.
"Oh my, these Dulanians certainly are quite resilient, aren't they?" said Neptune through their shared channel.
"Didn't I tell you?" replied Uranus.
The two forces approached to lance range, to gunnery. The closing distance between them was filled with the blinding striations of lance fire, the sheeting blizzards of shells, and the twitching ghost-fire of void shield-discharge. Boarding actions spilled into the guts of the Moon Kingdom's ships as the bulky, shielded assault boats of the Dulanians drove themselves deep. Their fighters were especially dangerous. Shielded like all Dulanian war machines, they were hard to bring down, and their interference weapons could do harm even to the armor of a battleship. A brace of them swooped beneath the Aetna's shields and raked it along its spine, sending a lance turret spinning off, trailing scads of molten metal.
Further back, like a backdrop piece behind a close-up scene, the planetary ring rotated with stately slowness. Its defense grid ramped up, and long-ranged interference shots slashed out from its loops, cracking smaller vessels in single hits and cutting into the larger with disdainful ease.
"Uranus, we must silence that halo," said Neptune. "But I fear that conventional fire will not be enough to reduce an object of that size. I will order the Trishula to retarget, and end it with another volley."
Uranus froze. The Trishula could do it. Its grav-shells would turn the halo's mass against itself, tearing it apart with its own immense weight.
For an instant Uranus saw the scene that would unfold. She saw burning, mountain-sized fragments of the ring slamming down onto Dulan's continents. She saw skies slashed apart by streaks of fire. She saw the titanic explosions that created day from night, and the choking dust cloud that would steal the days thereafter. She saw the millions who would look up to see their end coming, and the billions more who would know nothing before their lives were ended by the fire, the shock, and the crushing collapse of their cities.
Unity. Not punishment. That was what she had come to deliver, what she had promised.
"No, that won't be needed," said Uranus. "I'll take the ring intact."
And then to her fleet, she announced, "prepare for a swordpoint."
The battling fleets drew in close, their front ranks overlapping and interpenetrating, then alternating with the rearguards held back to prevent breakthrough. Several times the Dulanians tried to punch out toward the flagships of the Sapphire Order that hovered at stand-off range, but each time the Emerald fleet hemmed them in, forced them to pull back their thrusts through the threat of overlapping fire. And yet, the attackers' offensives were repelled in turn as the Dulanians fought with disciplined tenacity despite their earlier losses.
"There," Uranus spoke to her crew, and indicated toward a spot amidst the flock of overlapping runes. At her mental command, a brighter rune overlaid itself at the designated point.
"The focal point will form there. They're holding a battleship in reserve that'll be fast enough to try and stop us, but it alone won't be enough. Start the approach and build power in the drives, but don't be too fast about the movements right now. We don't want them to suspect anything before we break through."
The Emerald fleet's maneuver patterns shifted ever so slightly. Assaults against the Dulanian positions began to falter, as if the invaders had committed half-heartedly, only to lose their nerve. Attack runs going away from the focal point were cut off closer, while those that went toward it were permitted to run long, but the slow concentration was disguised by the collapsing frontage. The Dulanians pressed forward.
"Now," said Uranus.
A roar filled the Aetna's command room as the drives kicked up into full force. The positional display blinked. All across the frontage, the Emerald fleet's formation was changing, every ship burning toward the focal point in simultaneous motion.
Overextended, the Dulanian vanguard was caught by a mass of escorts, and three hunter-killers were shredded in a hail of shellfire and las. Cruisers formed up behind them, adding mass and firepower to the forming breakthrough, wheeling and corkscrewing as they flew. Lone warships swinging in to intercept were hammered by broadside after broadside from the ships hurtling past. Their burning shells tumbled away as the Aetna pulled up to the front. Warning lights blinked along the displays, and were promptly disregarded with cheer by those who loved Uranus's methods, and with stoic resignation from the few who didn't and were dragged along anyway.
The battleship lay in the swordpoint's path. Clouds of shells pelted its shields, and it returned fire, punching las-beams out through its neon green corona at the vessels flying toward it. Its prow bubbled with interference buildup.
Lance beams scythed through the battleship's forward-facing shields, and carved a molten crevasse across its red and black prow. Another swept across its spine. A blast to a maneuvering thruster caused it to roll, venting plasma from its spine in incandescent ribbons. The Sapphire Order's battleship Scylla powered forward, its spiked forest of a spine vomiting lance beams in blazing concordance. The Faash battleship shook, rocked by internal explosions, then blew out from the inside in a blizzard of burning fragments.
The professional cohesion of the Dulanians was broken at last. Whoever was in overall command of the homeworld fleet seemed torn between choices, and different squadrons took contradictory actions. Some spun around in a belated attempt to strike at the swordpoint's fast-distancing flanks, while others pushed toward the Trishula and Triratna. Divided, they had not enough force for either, and even their high-powered drives seemed to move them with an ungainly slowness compared to the head-start attained by the plunging blade. The swordpoint had punched through the weak spot in the formation's armor. The planetary ring loomed ahead.
The Sapphire fleet wasted no time taking advantage of the enemy's indecision. Heavy capitals held in reserve now tore into the battle with shields still fresh. The Sthenius slid into the fray, its front smeared with fire as it rammed through Dulanian wreckage. Its heavy prow slid up toward its dorsal side, revealing the gun tube of its fleet-killer weapon. A lightning-phage, salvaged from one of Jupiter's moons and repaired to working order.
Violet light forked across the void like the tines of a great thorny tree. Where the blazing arcs struck shields, their journeys were ended. But where they touched bare hull they probed for weakness, stole the power from the victim's energy coils, then leapt again while leaving fiery destruction behind. But still the Dulanians fought on, spared from taking greater damages by the compartmentalized design of their ships. Victory for the Moon Kingdom would depend on the halo.
...
Miranda had only rarely seen an assault marshal in so much strength. To take the ring was a task for many millions, and the full panoply of Earth and the solar system were on display. Ironside soldiers wrapped in thick armor stood beside boxy, four-legged Albian Dreadnoughts. Darkly glittering seeker drones flitted the air inside the launch hangars.
Launches went off as the battleships finished cracking through a section of the halo's shielding, and reducing its gun batteries to molten ruins. Not every craft made it, as the adjacent segments swept the travel lanes with fire. At the same time, it was not possible for the Dulanians to lay down their anti-psychic fog across such a large area, and each transport was kept safe by a mix of psykers from each of the Orders. The task of reading the minds of the Dulanian gunners fell to the Order of Acumen, whose warnings of impending shot saved many craft. The Order of Omens looked forward for hints of danger. The Order of Protection deflected shots with telekinetic shields, and the Order of Mending did their work on the pilots; sharpening senses, speeding reactions, and mitigating the effects of high-g accelerations.
There was a rattle of impact, and the drop ramp crashed down. The ironsides were out first, hauling their long-barreled rail-rifles. A few lightly armored Faash troopers were shot through, but when the Scarabines pounded out from the darkness, the advance slowed. Automated gun turrets swept the halls, and trenches that were a perfect fit for the Faash mech-troopers were set at defensible points in the floor. Approaches to the command nodes were angled such that they offered little cover to anyone approaching, but that their sharp cutoffs created hiding places for the defenders. Every advance left behind heaps of ruined bodies.
As Miranda's company pushed forward, the Faash lines shrank back toward their command node, until hundreds of mech-troopers stood almost shoulder to shoulder inside their trenches and barricades. The air blistered with criss-crossing interference fire, lightning speared down and arced between defenders, and walls of fire rolled down the platform's halls in roaring waves. Everything was ear-splitting noise and heat, that tore up the ground in spinning strips and made the walls and ceiling melt and run like wax. Miranda's specialties lay not in the summoning of force and flame, and she found there was little she could do here. This was not a contest of finesse or maneuver. It was just who punched harder, and could take punches for longer.
And then all was silenced by a blast of wind; a warp-wind that rippled the air, swallowed the flames, and sent towering mech-troopers tumbling end over end.
'All forces at Node 22A, pull back,' came Uranus's command, her low voice making itself clearly heard amidst howling winds and hundreds of mechanized soldiers.
Uranus strode forward at the eye of the storm. Las-bolts and interference beams shot from quivering hands curved away as if afraid to touch her. She was a tall woman, but not incredibly so, and her slim armor gave her a stature smaller than many of the Moon Kingdom's regular troopers. And yet the whole space seemed to shrink toward her, matter pulled by a planet's gravity, insubstantial dross before a fundamental aspect of the universe. The Dulanian formation arrayed against her seemed all the smaller by comparison, and Uranus the greater.
The gunfire halted, and Uranus stopped before the line of mech-troopers. The symbol on her forehead flashed, filling Miranda with an upwelling of devotion. The Faash troopers stumbled beneath that light, stupefied. Guns slipped from nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor.
Uranus raised her sword, and pointed the end at the Scarabine line. The winds around her caught on its blade, and whirled around it in visible lines of distortion.
"Surrender and you will be spared," she said.
The ground shook. A section of wall bulged out, then toppled forward. A huge shape lumbered through, a red and black war machine like a Scarabine scaled up four times in dimensions. A single glowing sensor swiveled left and right from a slit in its chest, stopping on Uranus.
Whether from the natural confidence of controlling such a large machine, or some special protective property, the leviathan's pilot seemed to be resistant to being cowed by Uranus's presence.
"You're new," said Uranus. "Were you made just for us?"
"Kill the witch," boomed the leviathan's vox-emitters.
Launch tubes swept down from the leviathan's shoulders, sending a wave of missiles streaking at Uranus. Uranus simply ran forward. Miranda's eyes couldn't keep up, so she focused on her aether-sense to catch an idea of what was happening. She saw the winds pulling together behind Uranus, accelerating and amplifying to terrific strength. There was a crack of thunder, and the walls exploded as every rocket was deflected.
Uranus struck, faster than thought. Her blade thrust toward the leviathan with speed enough to trigger its shields, which pulsed around it in a layered and glimmering shell.
It was an unequal contest. The shields split with an electromagnetic shriek, and Uranus swept her blade to one side, dragging away the fading fronds of neon green energy.
"Surrender," Uranus spoke again.
The leviathan swiveled on its waist, bringing to bear its crackling, tree-trunk fist. Interference energies shrieked from its underslung barrels, and were sliced to ribbons by flicks of the guardian's sword.
Uranus swayed aside the thrust, making the veteran soldier's movement look like an overly telegraphed theatre punch. Her sword cut into the war machine's knee, causing it to stumble. Its other knee blew out too, parted by a stroke that stamped a dazzling, silver after-image on the retinas of all those who were watching.
The leviathan collapsed forward onto its arms. It twitched as the swordpoint stabbed into its armored shell. Golden light poured down the length of the blade, splitting plates and spiking up in a blazing column that swallowed guardian and machine.
The leviathan hit the ground with a deep boom, the upper half of its torso split by a molten fissure. Uranus stepped back as something bloody fell halfway from the broken shell, then hung there, tangled in a web of straps and wires. The pilot was already dead, but the imprint of his final thoughts lingered on his body.
Miranda read them. Fear. Anger. Confusion. And desperation borne of fighting with their backs against their homeworld by the aether-wielders that they so hated. Dulan was every bit the equivalent of Earth in their hearts, and they had nowhere else to go.
Miranda wanted to reassure him, to offer some tiny mote of parting comfort. The Moon Kingdom was not here to punish. The Dulanians would not be killed or driven out. But the man's soul was already gone, consciousness lost as it dissolved into the tides of the Warp, beyond the reach of all save for perhaps the queen, wherever she was.
...
The conquest of the halo took two more weeks to complete, gradually speeding up as more and more reinforcements were pushed into the fray. With the defenses cleared from one orbital zone, the more ungainly bulk landers could proceed safely, bringing tanks and heavy walkers that pushed forward from one command node to another. By the time the advance had proceeded a quarter across the structure's circumference, several of the Emerald Order's Titans had formed the tip of the spear, walking across the surface of the planetary structure with heavy footsteps. There had been one case of an Emerald Order psyker drawing so heavily on their powers that they breached the protection granted them by Uranus. It had been years since this had last happened. She would have to investigate later.
The void battle around Dulan had turned decisively as well. While the Dulanians were lethal at short distances, the Sapphire fleet boasted of superior range, and even one suppressed section of the halo was enough for them to shelter around. They moved into its shadow, where they lanced and shelled the Dulanians from stand-off until the defenders were forced to commit to an unassisted and unwinnable battle. More days of hunting down the last stragglers followed, until finally the orbital spaces were secured, and both fleets took up positions in overwatch formation. The void around them was tinged a slight shade of green, aether-spill from the storm summoned by Neptune and her Ancillae, a storm that cloaked the system's warp-perimeter in a bath of blinding turbulence. No reinforcements would be coming to Dulan.
Uranus took in the data from the planetary scans. The Dulanians had been taken by surprise by their sudden arrival in-system, and even the inward journey and the weeks spent fighting in the void had not been enough to prepare. Now they were mobilizing as quickly as they could beneath their theatre shields, which glimmered brilliant green against the planet's rust-red soil.
The Moon Kingdom's fleets did likewise. Shield strengths were held above fifty percent in case of surprise attack. Shuttles streamed between squadrons, preparing the armies for mass planetary invasion. The plowshare shapes of the armada's battleships parted as they were joined by the blunt-nosed figures of the Emerald Order's Titan Conveyors.
Greatest of them all, riding at high anchor, was the Tartarus. A black-hulled carrier gifted from Pluto's fleet, it alone housed the Psi-Titans of the Hecatonchires-class, giants among giants that made the Order's Battle Titans look like children by comparison. Out of over a hundred Titans present, only three were of this group. Neptune had a strange liking for one of them, but it was not something that Uranus shared, and just looking at their carrier filled Uranus's mouth with a sick aftertaste. In a manner of speaking they were some of her greatest designs, but the brutality that they dealt never ceased to make her feel that by creating them, she had gone too far in an effort to win. More than once she'd contemplated their destruction, but had always held back. But at the very least, she wanted to avoid using them if at all possible.
And it wouldn't have to come to it. After more than a year of war, surely the Dulanians were just as sick of this fighting as Uranus was. Though it was their actions that had led to this war, the war that now saw them teetering on the precipice of defeat, it was the time to extend the hand of reconciliation rather than push them over the cliff. She would give the Dulanians an address, and had prepared the fleets with instructions to pull back past geostationary orbit as a gesture of goodwill, should they respond positively.
As the fleet turned up their broadcasters, the skies across the red planet cleared, leaving sun and starlight to shine down through air as hard and still as a crystal lens.
"People of Dulan," said Uranus. Language was within her domain, and she spoke Dulanian not with the hesitation of someone who'd learned it over the past year, nor the halting pronunciation of a telepath who had pulled it out of a speaker's mind, but with the smooth fluency of someone to whom it was a native tongue.
"For too long have fear and misunderstanding led our kingdoms to war. What has happened this past year should not have happened. But the Moon Kingdom does not come with hostility in mind. There is still time for dialogue, for an understanding to be reached."
"Let us bring this conflict between us to an end tonight."
...
It wasn't long before Ami got permission for Usagi and Makoto to accompany her to the planets of Beta-Garmon, so the two of them packed what they needed for a trip and met with Ami at the docks.
"Hey Ami, what's this?" Usagi pointed at the flying metal box hovered close to Ami's shoulder. Tiny smooth plates at its corners made the air shimmer like mirages, and when Usagi reached out to stick her finger underneath one, she felt the thing pushing at her hand with some kind of invisible force.
"Oh, I made this on the way," said Ami. "He'll help you understand what we're saying if you haven't gotten the language here yet, and he can also translate the other way to let you talk to the people here."
"I remember a little of it from those books that we were given," Makoto looked up and scratched her chin. "Tsu- tsu-gal? That's how they say hello here right?"
"Um, I think that's goodbye," said Ami, leaving Makoto turning red.
"Well I don't remember one word of it," said Usagi, shamelessly. "So I'll be happy to count on our little robot buddy to tell us everything we need."
She leaned forward. "Come on, what's your name?"
The robot gave no response, and Ami interjected on its behalf.
"Sorry, he isn't ready to hold a conversation yet, and right now he can only repeat what someone says in Garmonite back to you in Earth, or the other way for you if I set him to do that in case you end up some place without me. But I hope that one day I'll be able to build one that can talk back."
"He?" Mako quirked up an eyebrow. "And wait, isn't making robots - like real smart ones - not allowed?"
Ami said nothing, and it was Usagi's turn to interject.
"Oh enough about that. C'mon! Show us what he can do!"
Ami nodded and cleared her throat, and said something incomprehensible in Garmonite. The robot seemed to come to life, and a light on its front blinked as it repeated her words in Earth.
"Greetings, and welcome to Beta-Garmon," it said in a synthesized male voice.
"More! More!" Usagi clapped.
"I will be assisting you in understanding the language spoken by the people here."
"Hey, I just remembered, you never told us your name," Mako pressed in closer. She was starting to get into it too.
"Yeah! Tell us! And how were you made?" repeated Usagi.
Ami nodded and said something in Garmonite. Her robot waited until she was done.
"As I was made from the body of a banana and the mind of a Carnosaurus, my name must be Bananasaurus Rex," said the robot.
There was a moment of silence that was broken by Usagi.
"Say what? Did you guys just hear that?" Usagi looked at Ami, whose face was quickly turning a bright shade of pink.
"Um, what I meant for him to say was that he was made from the Musa circuit board, based on the Lizard operating system," said Ami. She sighed, "It looks like there are still some mistakes in his semantics coding."
"Hey wait, aren't we still missing something?" Mako raised a finger for attention. "If each part was really a mistake in translation, then where did the 'rex' come from?"
Cottoning on to something, she leaned in. "What was your real name that you were trying to give him?"
The color of Ami's face was starting to verge on purple, "Um, I was trying to uh, have him name himself Rectangulus."
"Then it's settled!" declared Usagi. "The robot's name is Bananasaurus Rectangulus!"
"I like Rectangulus Rex better," said Mako. "Those two words just go well together."
"No! It has to be Rectangulus!" protested Ami. Then without warning, she broke down laughing, holding her sides while she giggled. Watching her, Usagi felt the urge rising within her too. Then Mako joined in, and for a moment it was like there was nothing more in the world than the silliness of them standing there, arguing about the name of Ami's talking robot.
Of course, they did in fact have something to do, so Ami led them on past the cargo port to the station's checkpoints. The whole process was really long, but Ami knew what to show and say to skip some of it, so Usagi and Mako just followed her through.
"Beta Garmon is one of those systems that was made to look like ours during the Silver Age," explained Ami. "So you can think of it as being kind of like the old Venus."
"Heee! I can't wait!" Usagi was barely managing to keep herself from jumping up and down. "Oh, if we go to Three next, does that mean it'll be Earth?"
"Actually they don't seem to have an Earth and Moon here," said Ami. "So when we go to Three, that will be Mars. And if we have enough time for Four, then that will be like Jupiter, although the planet is more like Earth in size."
They stopped to talk to security, and as Ami spoke to them in Garmonite, her robot drifted over to translate.
"This part of the station is being used by the Orders Hospitaller," said the robot, whose name was definitely settled.
"Orders Hospitaller? Sounds weird," said Usagi. "Are you sure you're not messing things up again, Mr. Bananasaurus Rectangulus robot?"
"No, I've heard of them," said Mako. "They're the space doctors right? Who go around helping any planet that needs them?"
"Yes," said Ami. "Sorry for all the wait, since I know you wanted to get off of this station. But we might be staying for a bit while I interview one of the vice directors, since the Order claims continuity from the Silver Age. We'll also have to pass through here to get a ride on one of their shuttles to Beta-Garmon III."
"Oh it's no problem. No problem at all..." Usagi's voice trailed off as she spotted something incredible. She stopped and craned her neck up, and the others followed her.
Before them was an arch, its every surface etched from top to bottom with words. They were mostly unreadable until Usagi found one set that said 'Order Hospitaller', and that had her grasp the meaning. There were so many, and all of them were different. It must've been the same thing written thousands of times in thousands of different languages.
And at the very top, blazing from the arch's capstone, was the golden necklace symbol of Venus.
"Venus huh? From the rumors going around about her, I didn't think she'd be involved in this kinda thing," said Mako.
"The Order is sometimes called the Angels of Venus," explained Ami. "It is said that in the long past, every one of our planets had a guardian, and that the Venus of that era represented love and charity between people. And that she was closest to the prophet Mars, and to Jupiter the great judge."
"The judge?" asked Usagi. "You mean like somebody who punishes people? I mean the Venus we have now is always beating up the bad people so I guess I get it, but why would the last Venus get along great with somebody like that?"
"There is a lot that we still don't know," said Ami. "And please keep in mind that these are all just myths now, and nobody alive remembers exactly what happened back then. So they might not be all accurate, or there might be some things missing."
As they left the arch, Usagi couldn't help glancing back over her shoulder at the Venus arch. She'd never been great at history in school, since it was always just blah battle this on date so-and-so, or Evil Kingdom Whocares got beaten by General Manperson. Everything would've been easier to remember if they taught it more like why somebody did something like this or that.
They traveled further, until it seemed like they had passed all of the security checks that they needed to. The space tapered into a long, high-walled hallway. There, embedded in the walls and reaching from floor to ceiling, rows of full body portraits at five times life size stared down at the crowds of onlookers that milled about them.
Usagi didn't consider herself to be anything like an expert on art, but even to her inexperienced eyes, the portraits looked to have been- well, portraits. As in, done by hand. Some depicted people dressed in grand fashion, draped in mantles of orange and white, with buttons made with real gemstones set into the canvas. Others were modest, dressed in simple robes. There were short people and tall people, thin and athletic and plump. Each one had a different them; some flowers and crops, others metal and industry. In their hands were held scrolls and data-slates, medicines and devices that Usagi had never seen before. Everything had been portrayed in loving detail, colors layered upon colors to create the finely rendered hues. These were the works of years, of whole lifetimes.
Names and brief descriptions sat before each portrait, gold lettering atop a violet backdrop, thankfully with a line translated into Earth. These were the Order's past directors, some of whom lived thousands of years ago.
Usagi stopped briefly before one of the portraits, one of a tall woman with a sharp chin, and an outfit that showed a mix of military severity and flared, colorful flamboyance. There was something different about this one- oh!
It was the symbol. Most of the other directors had the Venus symbol somewhere on their person, but this woman wore one that was different, one that looked kind of like a "4". Usagi racked her brains, trying to remember where she'd seen this. She'd definitely seen its like on a lot of ships here and there, and- oh right, that's the symbol of Jupiter! So somebody who was more tied to Jupiter was able to make it to the top of this thing huh?
Noticing the others waiting, Usagi pulled away and ran to catch up, but kept an eye out for any with symbols other than Venus's. Now that she was looking out for them, she noticed more than a few wearing the crossed-circle symbol of Earth, and three with the circle-and-arrow symbol of Mars.
"Wow, to be a director of a bunch of space doctors, they must all be super smart," Usagi said once she'd caught up
"Well, it's a little more than that," said Ami. She hesitated, a little sad in a way that Usagi couldn't immediately define.
"I get it. You can't force a patient to take their pills right?" said Mako. There seemed to be something on her mind too.
"Huh? They can't?" Usagi tilted her head to one side. "But that's what my doctors always did. You, drink this! Eat that!" she mimed with a hand to cheer her friends up. "Stop eating so much sugar!"
Mako and Ami laughed.
"I suppose they could," said Ami. "But it would've been better if they didn't. Wouldn't you have liked to see the doctor more if they could convince you to want to take your medicine?"
Usagi tried to picture in her head an image of herself wanting to take medicine. She struggled with it for a bit, until finally, noticing her difficulties, Ami interjected.
"You were a good patient Usagi, but not everyone will be like that," said Ami. "My mother is a doctor back home on Earth, and she mostly worked with soldiers."
"What's wrong with soldiers?" asked Usagi.
"Well nothing, but," Ami started. "A lot of them weren't well because of the things that they saw, or were having trouble adapting to a new way of life. And the worst were the ones whose genetic modifications were breaking down, so they were dying, and they didn't have much to live for."
Usagi nodded just slightly. She'd heard of that happening in the old wars, people making genetically modified giants and things like that, and just the thought of making a soldier for no reason other than to fight and die made her throat tighten. Yes, sometimes soldiers were needed, but even they should be fighting because they're hoping to share in what comes after right?
"Uh, so what did your mom do with them?" asked Usagi. Soldiers who came from places where it was probably the doctors who were doing those bad things to them, well, at the very least they weren't going to take their medicine just because another doctor said so.
"Mom just had a way," Ami's expression took on the peaceful quality of somebody sinking into good memories. "She let them ask her questions, and asked them what they wanted, and explained what everything meant. And just somehow, no matter who she saw, she made them feel like she wasn't judging them, that she wanted to listen to their problems. She made them believe that she really wanted the best for them."
Usagi smiled at the thought of these broken soldiers finally finding somebody who really cared about their well being. Her smile faded a little at the sight of Ami's expression taking on a tinge of melancholy.
"Ami, you really wanted to do that too, right?" Mako laid a hand on her shoulder.
Ami nodded, so Usagi put a hand on her other shoulder, then pulled her into a hug.
"Well we're really glad you're here Ami," said Usagi. "And I think what you're doing is also a lot of good. History is important right? But if you aren't okay staying like that, well, that's why we're out here in space! In a galaxy this big, there has to be a place that can make you happy."
Then she pulled away, and looked at the other speechless woman. Ami's lip quivered.
"Umm- I… thanks," Ami managed to choke out.
"Oh, but we really should hurry," she added, regaining a bit of composure. "We're meeting with one of the vice directors- um, well, I'll do my best to ask her to let you listen too. But anyway, we don't want to be late for this."
"Do we have to run to make it on time?" asked Usagi. "'Cuz I know what that's like."
They didn't run, but they picked up the pace, and soon the hall of directors came to an end. The last portrait in line was still incomplete, with lots of details along the body and background still yet to be filled in. Usagi could see the theme about it though, with a star chart in hand, and glimmering pinpoints in the background. The Order was going out into the stars again.
They passed a loading area, not much different from what Usagi was used to. Containers full of supplies were counted and sorted, then brought together and packed up to be loaded onto shuttles by lifters. Beyond that was a smaller personnel area, where a constant stream of shuttles flew in and out of the vacuum-shielded launch doors, carrying away or dropping off groups of people dressed in whites and grays.
Then Ami surprised Usagi by looking at her slate with its map, pointing to a small office at the side of the space, and announced that they were where they needed to be.
"Guess this vice director, whoever he or she is, likes to be close to the action," said Mako.
Ami tapped something on her slate. A moment later, the office door creaked open, and two women stepped out. One was tall and pale as chalk, with hair that hung down her back, as light as silverware and just as straight. The other was as dark as coffee, short and pudgy, with wiry hair that stuck close to her scalp. Her style of dress was plain, a long coat with just a silver necklace about her throat giving any indication of status. The two of them standing side by side were like examples showcasing the full spectrum of human variation.
"The vice director will see you now," translated Ami's robot as the taller woman spoke and gestured with a practiced air.
"Thank you," it then spoke after Ami for Usagi and Mako's benefit. "Vice Director Khalida, I have two, um, friends with me. May they join us?"
"Sure," said the vice director, in perfectly pronounced Earth Common. Oh, guess the robot won't be needed anymore.
"You're recording, so whatever I say is gonna get out eventually right?" the vice director shrugged. "You're not spending my time here just to keep all this to yourself, I hope. So what's the harm in letting a couple more pairs of ears listen in?"
"Oh! Thankyouthankyou!" Usagi started before she caught herself. Then, after self-consciously clearing her throat, she added as they were let in, "I mean, thank you for giving us your time today."
The vice director gave an amused snort, then turned for them to follow her in. The inside of the office was as casual as the outside had looked; just some electronics, and a few plain chairs surrounding a table that could've been hammered together ten minutes ago for all anybody knew.
"Had a good journey?" asked Khalida once they were all seated, and Ami had set up her recording.
"Yes," replied the three of them in unison. It wasn't maybe exactly true, but at least nobody had gotten seriously hurt.
The vice director leaned back and gestured toward the robot.
"That's an interesting toy that you have here," Khalida looked at Ami. "When you asked for this, you said you were working with the techno-archeologists. You build this yourself?"
"Yes, on the way here," Ami nodded.
"You sounded like you could speak Garmonite without help. What made you build this thing?"
"I-" Ami hesitated. "I wanted to give my friends a chance to see this system before we left, and I didn't want them to be left out in case I was occupied. So I built it to let them understand what people are saying here, and to be able to speak."
Usagi's heart skipped at the thought that Ami had done all this for them. Looking over at Ami, she mouthed a 'you're the best!', then straightened back up when the vice director's lips quirked to one side.
"Hrnmm," the vice director made a thoughtful noise in her throat. Usagi looked between her and Ami, trying to figure out whether this was a good 'hmm' or a bad 'hmm'. Her thoughts were interrupted when the vice director waved aimlessly with a hand.
"Let's start with the questions then."
And that they did. After starting her recording, Ami first asked about records. Khalida replied that most of them had been lost to the simple inability of the Garmonites to maintain the technology that had kept them, following the loss of the artificial intellects. Ami asked about psychics, and the vice director relayed some fragmentary information that they had saved about the rise in the system's population of psychics. When Earth had been intact, there had been no problems, but the fall of Earth had led to psychics becoming gateways for otherworldly entities. Most had been exiled to Beta-Garmon III, and while the Order Hospitaller still maintained a working relationship with them, there were others who did not feel the same way.
It wasn't long before Usagi felt her eyelids starting to grow heavy. Most of the questions now were things like dates and rates and boring things like that, and there also was something about the limiting of the area of operations to the cluster, until something about the storms had happened. But seeing Mako sitting practically ramrod straight at attention, and remembering that Ami went through all that trouble building a talking robot named Rex Rectangulus just to help them, Usagi willed herself to stay awake. Not making Ami look bad in front of somebody so important was the least she could do here. Still, if nothing else, the vice director seemed almost eager to talk about their history here.
Finally the interview started to wind down. Pushing her chair back, the vice director stood, then reached into a coat pocket and drew out an envelope.
"I have a letter for you," she laid the envelope down and slid it across the table to Ami.
"Show it at the Diviner's Needle to get yourselves in," she said, then looked over at Mako and Usagi.
"And you two, you don't have anything at all to ask me before we put an end to this?"
Usagi's eyes widened, and she and Mako traded looks, Usagi's probably the more bewildered of the two.
"Well, uh, I… might have something to ask you if you just give me a minute to think about it," Usagi said as she tried to avert her eyes.
"Actually, I have something," said Mako, giving Usagi a look that basically said 'I got this'. "The Order goes into active warzones right? We didn't see any soldiers or weapons on the way here. How do you protect yourselves in dangerous places?"
Vice Director Khalida sighed and sat back down. "The Order Hospitaller does not carry weapons. Our mandate is to fix the consequences of violence, not deal it, or to decide who is deserving of either help or harm. Anyone who is hurt is a patient, no matter where they came from, or who they follow."
She placed her hands flat on her lap. "But it can't be helped that you need to have some strength to be able to do this. Used to be the Fourth sent some of their people with us, but they don't want anything to do with us these days. Now we just have to depend on whoever's in command when we get there. Some of them see things our way. With some it's like trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. We make do. If we had the galaxy that we wanted, we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with."
"Wait, what about Venus?" asked Usagi. "We saw your pretty arch on the way here, and all of the old directors with the symbols. Venus could help you with that right?"
"Venus hasn't visited," said Khalida, plainly. "Uranus and Neptune passed through, and in exchange for some of our technology, they let this planet keep to its ways. But Venus has not been seen. Not here, not on the planet."
Usagi blinked. "Wha? Like, not at all? Not even over for dinner? But this planet's like Venus- or the old Venus planet right? More than our Venus planet anyway..."
Usagi let her voice trail off. Maybe this wasn't the best question to be asking, actually. 'Why doesn't the guardian that you represent or worship come visit you' was probably the kind of thing that might just make somebody angry around here.
The vice director just nodded.
"The Order exists to convey Venus's love to all who are in need of it," she said. "This has been our duty for thousands of years, and it won't change for a little thing like this."
She stood again, and smiled a smile that barely moved her mouth, but made her eyes shine.
"Venus has a good reason, I'm sure of it. And when she sees fit to come visit, the Order be here to welcome her."
The vice director and her assistant saw them out afterwards.
"If you passed through the portrait hall, then you know where your flight is," she said.
"And hey," she nodded at Ami. "If you ever get tired of digging for old toasters, come by again, and we can talk about getting a position here for you."
Ami's eyes widened, and Usagi stared at her, feeling a heady mix of sympathetic joy and loss.
"Ami, this is your chance!" Usagi whispered. Even if she wouldn't get to be a doctor herself, getting to work with a bunch of cool space doctors was like the same thing wasn't it?
They'd known each other for barely more than a month though, and their ship would definitely be a lot less fun if Ami were gone.
Ami folded her hands together and made a small bow.
"Thank you Vice Director Khalida, I'll definitely keep it in mind," she said. "But for now I think I'll continue with what I'm already doing."
Then she turned to Usagi and Mako.
"Come on, I made our schedule really tight to fit as much in as possible, so our shuttle to Beta-Garmon III should be leaving in a few hours. I hope you aren't too tired."
"Aww naww, I'm like, negative-tired," said Usagi. "Show us where it is!"
...
Uranus was on the Aetna's bridge when the reply from Dulan came. It had been several hours following the conclusion of her address. Holographic emitters scattered across the multi-tiered chamber turned the space into a three-dimensional image gallery. There were topographical maps, positional guides, heat blooms and troop movements and scrolling blocks of written data. They took everything apart layer by layer, dissected and scrutinized the happenings on Dulan's surface in fine-combed detail.
Dulan's military mobilizations had not stopped, not even slowed. The Moon Kingdom's fleets still held position over the planet's low orbit zone.
Uranus swallowed. Her arms were clamped to her sides. This was their last chance for a good resolution.
"Forces of the Faash!" came the tyrant's voice, played with deafening bombast from every augmitter across the planet. It was not for her.
"The invaders plead misunderstanding of their nature and motives, but there is nothing to misunderstand! We have seen the consequences of unchecked witchery; cities burned, populations enslaved, and monsters summoned from the immaterial realm. We all know the horrors of the Old Night, the horrors that generations on our homeworld have striven to keep back from our walls, horrors brought about by witchery!"
"Many of you have seen with your own eyes the powers wielded by these invaders. They conjure lightning from their flesh, and fire from their breath, and strike us with invisible force. They shape their appearances to their will, and snatch our homeworld's location from our minds! And for those who have not, now it is the time to know the true face of our foes."
Video images snapped up, showing a man chained within a cage, illuminated by flood-lights that threw everything around into shadow. He was dressed in the uniform of the Emerald Order, and Uranus recognized him at once; Bienor of the Dominions. His exposed skin showed signs of quick and brutal torture, and there was a large, oozing welt on his neck where it looked like something had been injected.
BIenor's skin writhed and bubbled. His joints swelled with sacs of fluid. His eyes were terrified globes of light. He was saying something, and though there was no audio of it, Uranus could read his lips as clearly as if they were speaking directly.
'Help me.'
Bienor's uniform was torn apart by a tide of swelling flesh. Bony spines stabbed up from the gaps, tipped with ghostly fires like torch flames. His face shimmered like a mirage between his own, and the horned, bestial visage of a daemonic possessor. Greasy sinews swam up and threaded through suddenly malleable skin. Screams turned to sharp barks of cruel laughter.
The hunched, feral thing that was Bienor leaned forward and snapped its chains, then tore at the bars of his cage with teeth and curved talons. There was a ripple of light from the surrounding shadows, and daemonhost disintegrated beneath a hail of interference fire. A belated mercy.
"The invaders who lay siege to Dulan claim to be from Old Earth, and if this is true, then we must consider Old Earth to be lost in the grip of sorcerous madness," continued the Tyrant. "We are the inheritors of the human legacy, and we will see this through to the end! Only ruin will follow from believing the lies of witches and warlocks! Beware the alien, the mutant, and the witch!"
Uranus's fingers curled into fists. A wave of heat rolled up her body, building in her head until it felt like it was on fire. Though her command bridge was still filled with a clamor of crews shouting targeting orders, organizing deployments, and planning contingencies, they were drowned out by the sound of her pulse thudding in her temples.
On the planet below, the skies darkened with rage, and thunder rumbled across the continental expanses.