Imperium by Forever Jake
Chapter Two
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Like so many cattle, Mengsk thought. He took another step forward, his boots crunching on the dust that covered the landing pad as the helmsman and the rest of the crew filed out behind him. The crowd pressed in, constricting his movement. He could hear their unintelligible yelling rising like an animal cry over the square.
A bead of sweat was forming on his forehead; he raised an arm to wipe it, forcing himself to blink as the shadow crossed over his eyes. The combined heat of the desert city, the afternoon sunlight and the mass of bodies made his head swim. He wanted to turn and run, flee into the dark, cool depths of his space ship and fly away from this miserable planet forever.
But he had trained himself too well for that. This was the world whose death had given him his grand crusade; these were the people on whose behalf he had set out to topple an empire and make it his own. Without them, he had no base, no foundation.
And Arcturus Mengsk always knew how to play a crowd.
He flashed a smile up at those who floated by on news ships, his perfect white teeth reflecting the twin blinding suns up into the cameras. He waved his arm in welcome, and the crowd cheered.
The cheer was as he had first heard it – quite a lot like cattle mooing in deference as they spotted the farmer crossing the field. He might be out to kill them, cut them up into little pieces and sell them to meatpacking factories to be processed into millions of identical, unrecognizable bits of pulp; but then, so were all the other farmers. They needed someone to tell them where to line up. They wanted to be led.
What a miracle it was, then, that Arcturus Mengsk wanted to lead them.
There was a glint of light as the crowd shifted noticeably; they were parting to form a thin aisle, down which a middle-aged woman – presumably the Magistrate, Therese something – was rapidly moving, accompanied by a pair of blue-clad guards.
Mengsk smiled again, and stepped forward into a brisk walk and a smooth, outstretched hand. He barely paused to let the woman grab and shake the appendage before they were off at a near-jog down the long gap. The impossibly thick wall of humans stretched across the square from the landing pad to the nearest of the tall, spired structures he had spotted during their descent. They made for this building, crewmen and bodyguards in tow.
They had crossed the landing strip and stepped out into the main square before he realized that the woman was talking. He promptly began listening.
"... news crew ready for you in the council room. Still some Confederate resistance holed up in the lower levels of the palace, but security's more or less got them cornered – you'll be quite safe, Mister Mengsk. Soon as your people get situated, my aides and I are all ready for the handover. Which reminds me – have you chosen your title? Just what kind of position are you giving yourself, Mister Mengsk? Governor? President? Premier?"
"Emperor." The woman half paused where she was walking; she certainly not expected that. Mengsk continued at his full pace, however, and she was forced to swallow her surprise and increase her pace to keep up.
"Emperor, eh? Very well, very well... just how much is our empire–"
"Dominion."
"Just how much is this Dominion going to encompass, Emperor Mengsk?" Now it was his turn to stop. He did so very quickly, and the poor woman nearly plowed into him. He would be glad later that she hadn't; it would have been such awful publicity.
"Humanity, Magistrate."
She stopped where she stood, oblivious to the rows of men and woman brushing past her as they followed her glorious ruler-to-be into the palace. It presently occurred to her that things wouldn't ever be quite the same, now that Mister – er, Emperor Mengsk was here.
Mengsk didn't care that his answer had stupefied her; she could stand in that square, dumbfounded, until the planet was consumed by its own sun for all her existence influenced his future. He was Emperor Arcturus Mengsk the first, master of an entire galaxy, sovereign ruler of all humanity.
He had quite a bit of business to attend to.
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The interior of the palace was surprisingly quiet, given the deafening noise of the mob outside. Mengsk stood, pointed, in the center of the broad marble floor in what he was going to make his throne room. An elaborate and beautifully carved seat had been brought up out of storage (some past Magistrate had had it commissioned for his use, and his successors had apparently found it too gaudy), and this the Emperor had placed near the rear of the room, where cameras could zoom out far enough to capture both the throne and the rows of breathtaking windows on either side, through which the last beams of sunlight before dusk were desperately streaming.
"Right. We're ready, your Highness."
He turned. The Magistrate, whatever her name was, had collected herself and was standing in some sort of formal robe before the row of cameramen. Mengsk had found an old General's uniform – which, with its accompanying cape, he found suitably regal – and these he had donned in preparation for the film.
He smiled his wolfish smile and crossed towards her. The small red lights on each the camera blinked on.
With one arm, she held out a broad, flat scepter. He did not know or care for the object's significance; but protocol was protocol. He accepted it quickly and graciously.
"Emperor Arcturus Mengsk I," she announced.
He stepped away from her, then, and dropped his arm (and the ridiculous scepter) to his side. It was not important, anyway, and he wanted the viewers' eyes to be on him.
The cameras following him, he approached the massive white throne at the rear of the room. As he walked, slowly, coolly, with calculated speed and determination, he spoke.
"Fellow Terrans," he began, "I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue you a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our time. While we battle one another, divided by the petty strife of our common history, the tide of a greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished."
He paused, still a few feet from the throne, and turned to face the cameras full-on. "It is time," he said, his voice low and commanding, "for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite."
He could almost feel a live, electrical current running through the very air in the room. He surged on through the speech, unstoppable, an Ultralisk in a sea of Zerglings.
"The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us and we must seek refuge upon higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more. Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom - a memory. With our enemies left unchecked, whom will you turn to for protection?"
The world, the universe belonged to him... all he had to do was ask. His voice rose higher and higher in energy and volume as he climbed, rung by rung, into his subjects' hearts.
"The devastation wrought by the alien invaders is self-evident. We have seen our homes and communities destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss. We have seen first-hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time."
He stepped backwards, raised his foot, and climbed only half-sideways up the steps at the base of the throne.
"The time has come, my fellow Terrans, to rally to a new era. In unity relies strength. Already many of the disembodied factions have joined us."
His heart was racing. He sat; he could practically feel the cameras zooming in on his features, swallowing his every word like so much candy.
"Out of the many, we shall forge an indivisible home consisting only of a single throne... and from that throne..."
He swallowed, his eyes narrowing in conviction.
"... I shall watch over you."
He thought he heard a sigh, then – a gasp of air escaping the lungs of one of the cameramen, or perhaps the former Magistrate herself. It was the dying breath of the old order – the final end of the Confederacy. The future – their future – was now his.
"From this day forward," he breathed, "let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning, and let no human consort
with alien powers." His voice rose to towering crescendo as he neared the end.
"And to all the enemies of humanity – seek not to bar our way, for we shall win through – no matter the cost."
He let out his breath then, collapsing into the chair. The little red lights on the cameras winked off, one by one. There was a long moment of silence as he sat in his throne, taking in the nearest portion of his new Dominion. Finally, presently, he spoke again.
"There," he said, smiling contentedly. "We have begun."
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End of Chapter Two
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