Chapter 21: The Nation of Altora
Layla is sitting at one of her favorite dine-in eateries at the flagship. She is quick to finish her meal and drink. Hastily, the red fox makes her way to her room for a quick shower and changes into her normal uniform. A sudden glimpse of her power makes her double back and changes into her cold-weather uniform. From what she just saw, the moment of truth has come. Her communicator bracelet gives notification of an incoming text message. She reads it carefully, it was from Vexis; warning of the next attack in just a few weeks. "What!? That quick!?" She sits down at her bed of the texts, even doubles back and reads it again. Slightly unbelieved, she shakes her head and notices the captain that she is going to the planet's surface.
Immediately, she goes to the teleporter room with her governor; rerouted the normal teleportation location to the assembled projectile gate, and goes there. Layla emerges from the other side; her cold exhaled breath dissipates in the opposite direction of the wind. General Rokosovsky greeted her as he is at the established outpost nearby. "My lady, why have you come down here?" He asked while seeing the assembled cluster missile launcher far to her right and escorted her inside the outpost. "I have bad news general; the next attack will be in weeks. I want you to fortify this capital city drastically. If possible, create an underground complex for the civilians to take shelter in." Layla says to him while marking a few spots for him to use at the outpost command table. "We already have the materials; we will start right away." He saluted her and she immediately left to go to the castle. "What do you think Guv? Can you handle the other side of the planet of its defenses?" She looked at her governor. She is a silent cybran minor nobility and only answers with a short nod before separating ways.
Layla enters the castle, only to see Svidana directing the situation post-battle with Princess Fenya. The king is nowhere to be seen. She goes straight to Svidana, other guards try to stop her as seen by the princess. Layla activates her hook sword and pointed it at the guard that wanted to stop her while she keeps going to Svidana. "Valkyrie." She looks Layla straight in the eye. "I need to note you that the next attack will be around a month, from my feeling and probably able to see a glimpse of the future; 2 more weeks to be accurate. Can you evacuate the civilians to your space-faring ships?" The princess politely chimes in. "I am afraid the time alone is not enough, but we can try if you allow us to use your magic doors." Layla looked at her while she is speaking. She forgets to introduce herself and Svidana does it. "Regent Layla, this is Princess Fenya. What she meant is the portal that your soldiers are using." Layla gives a short; she puts her hand on her chin to think of it including the spacing for the people. "Alright, you can." She answers shortly while sending a text to the general, her governor, and the armada using her bracelet communicator. She types out the detail and uses finger signals; a quick finger snap sends it to them. This makes the princess curious about it. "What? You don't have one of these to communicate with your people?" Layla asked. "We used these." A digital tablet is presented to Layla. It reminds her of the old technology that the cybrans used when she was in the military academy.
"If it works, it works." Layla makes a short talk not to boast about their technology while another of the king's daughters arrives to speak at the red fox. The long arduous civilian evacuation took around a week to do so when she directed it on the ground with two of the Princesses taking a liking to her style of handling the process. As General Sokolovsky sets the final touches on the defenses, Layla was forced to attend the hangout that the king's daughters have made. They do it in one of the rooms inside the castle and treated Layla like she was the same as theirs. "Pretty sure that you are surprised by how we handle the heat distribution in our stone mixed metal castle," Fenrica says while watching the red fox who just shrugs it off. "The truth is; your people scare us, not in a bad way but how you vanquish those creatures and can coordinate everything while singing the hymn that gives us goosebumps," Fenris says with a drink in her hand and she was continued by her sister. "From our history, our planet is not this cold since we are a little bit closer to the sun. The dispute between our neighboring planet nation; well because our normal human father married mother makes them angry and war ensued."
This turns into a strong topic as they wanted her to at least know what have happened. "Our past away mother was a shapeshifter; a wolf to be precise, was a clan on the southern side of this planet. She saved our father from drowning in the cold water while he is trying to understand the shapeshifters more by traveling to its city. After the 'nameless' hear about breaking the sacred bloodline; they attacked both sides and are quick to retreat to their planet. Father reunited with mother and court her since both are of nobility." Layla hears what Princess Fenrusia explained. She stops there and looks at Fenya who wanted to continue the heavy topic.
"As the war goes on and our people are united together, mother gave birth to all of us different in one year. After that, all things went sideways. The nameless planning to assassinate our mother and force our father to remarry their family. They did it, our mother has perished and our father is wanting blood of vengeance for our mother. The long war continues and they deliberately rammed their warships to our planet and managed to push our sun circulation further away." Fenrir stopped her sister from continuing as they all well in tears of the memory. Being an understanding person, Layla did not question further.
Trying to understand their new allies, Fenrir changed the topic. "Um, Layla? Do you know your rulers more than the others?" She asked her. "Yes, I am; since I hold one of the most important titles in the empire." She answers while looking at King Zela peeking out from the unlocked door. One of his daughters noticed. "Father, go to bed already!" Fenrusia shoos her father away. "Okay, okay. My daughters are harsh…" He leaves them and Fenrusia locks the door. Fenris ask her to continue. "Master, I mean; Emperor Naiki Russ can be nice, normal, unpredicted, or just pure menace sometimes when handling the interaction against other nations. He is a human but not normal like your father, that is all I can tell; the other thing about him is extremely secretive. If you want to know, you better ask him or the Empress yourself. While his wife Empress Vexis Russ is a mythical nine-tailed arctic fox that has multiple forms. She once holds the title of the devourer of worlds and as the Emperor's weapon. But now after they married, she shares the burden of the emperor ruling the empire."
Layla stops there. Fenrica asked of her rank. "What about you, Regent Layla. Is your rank some sort of part nobility?" Layla gives a short chuckle as they eagerly wait for her to answer. "To make things simple explaining, the emperor and empress are at the top, the second is us the regents, the third are the guardians of the empire, the fourth is the guardian's children before they ascended to be the guardians and the fifth is the regent's governors and adjutants." All of them look at each other. "Are there more regents?" The curious Fenrusia says it. "Yes, Svidana managed to enter the core sectors of our empire. Our original plan is to establish an expanding sector for our empire. Splitting it up into four regents; regent of the north that is me, south, east, and a candidate of the west. Looks like the plan has to be renewed since the emperor let your country have the west." Layla looks over the room of the king and queen portrait while explaining it to them. "What? Father cannot handle governing a lot of planets. Even our population alone is mediocre." One of the princesses stated it to Layla. She only nods at it. "Well if you can't handle that much sector, we will give it step by step like how the main core sectors have done to the regent's sector. I'll leave the rest for you to think of…" Layla stands up from the chair and departs back to her flagship. The princesses discuss with each other what Layla just said to them.
Back at the seraphim prime capital spire, Naiki is handling some of the main ideas of more autonomous units that Zarck suggested to him while Vexis is taking a quick nap on his lap. Naiki finished off what he is doing since he can do it much faster while linked to the mainframe. He stroked Vexis's cheeks while looking at her face. Wanting to carry her back to the bedroom, Vexis suddenly grabbed his stroking hand and placed it at her breast. She pretended to wake up and looks at his hand. "What, you're not going to squeeze it?" She grinned after saying it to him. Naiki fondled it lightly to amuse her while she rubs her face in his right hand. "Get up Vexis, I need to take a warm and cozy bath," Naiki says in an irritated tone. "Can I wash your back and sit in the bathtub with you?" She bites her lip and makes a sexy face. Weirdly; Naiki agrees. While they clean themselves up, Vexis do it seriously and Naiki only enjoyed how they managed to get a downtime together of all of the workloads. Vexis sits on Naiki's side at the wide bath. Suddenly the communicator on her bracelet that she puts down in the drying area beeps. Without her knowledge, it was for direct communication and not text-type messages.
Vexis directed it to the bathtub console and clicked on it. "Oh f-" before he can finish or stop her. The comm turned on; Ilya, Layla, and Lena see what they are doing clearly. Ilya's mouth is wide open seeing it, Layla makes a half-hearted laugh while Lenora looks elsewhere. Naiki makes a regretful face for allowing his wife to bathe with him. "Vexis, what are you doing?" Ilya tries to pick a point for Vexis. "Hmm? We are taking a bath; can't you see these melons?" Vexis playfully lift her breast to them. "Have you ever thought that this might be our bridge communicator?" Ilya continues the argument. Vexis takes a second to process what she has done. "Bargh!" She blurted while diving her half-exposed body part into the bathwater. Layla laughed after seeing her face become fully red. "You are lucky that all of us are in our private rooms in our flagships before contacting you via encrypted channel; that 'we' only know," Layla reassured her as she bubbles her breath in the water. Naiki shakes his head while adjusting the angle of the projector higher. "Back to the main subject, what's wrong?" Naiki was able to ignore what Vexis has done and directly asked them. "Master, we got a problem. As explained, we planned to evacuate the Altoran civilians temporarily in our reserve armada. Some of the civilians refused and stays in the capital city." Layla reported normally, hoping that the emperor can provide a solution since the king also stubbornly wanted to remain on the planet. Vexis pops her mouth above the water. "You fortified the capital, right?" She asked Layla as she immediately nods. "Then focus on guarding the area that the king allows you to do so. Don't bite more than you can chew." Layla nods after hearing the empress's suggestion and snickers at her last statement. "Anything else?" Naiki asked. Ilya in turn speaks while her eyes look sharply at the emperor's face and not at the background. "Master, can I deploy some of my reserve armadas to do a sweep on our sectors? I am afraid if some of them slip through and infested our planets."
"Permission granted, Lenora?" Naiki asked about her situation. She shakes her head hard since she has nothing to report, Lenora only wanted to see him but was not expecting that much of a view. Naiki nods at them and they turned off the communication, he immediately looks at Vexis cold-heartedly. Vexis avoided eye contact with him and Naiki only patted her head. "Vexis, I know that you wanted to tease them but please be alert of where and what we are doing first; okay?" He speaks to her in a concerning voice. "Okay~" Vexis immediately turns to him smiling widely while hugging him. "I need to smack the shit out of the people that handle the electronics and communications department; they forget to put a filter for the visual and text alert for the communication devices, especially in the bathroom and toilet. Why the hell did they not do that!? Think of the casualties!" Naiki makes a statement about what just happened, Vexis gives a worrisome smile about what he wanted to do to them. They dried up and get dressed, Vexis returns to her duties to organize the ongoing army group transfer at Lenora's capital planet. Naiki however; stormed out to the Cybran Corp headquarters.
At Altora, the Cybran General enjoys the view of the far sunlight; marking the beginning of the daytime. He sees his soldiers taking their food intake and hydrating while some of them have a nice chat with the Altoran soldiers. "Pity that not all of them left the planet like mentor have asked them to do. If they did, we only need to focus on space battle and only do a drop assault on them later on." He speaks as his communicator to his brothers. "All of us love our home planets, I would do the same if I were them," Sokolovsky says to his older brother. They chatted a little more before Rokosovsky is interrupted by Svidana's footsteps. He makes a hand signal to his brothers and turns it off; he did not even look at her to know if it was her. "You are quite an early bird, Valkyrie." He stated. "Yes, I have an uneasy feeling and was not able to sleep quite well." She pauses before wanting to continue, the King steps in and says to the general. "We did not have anything of value to give you in return, what would the Imperial Cybran Empire Emperor and Empress want?" The General looks straight at the known ship he is looking at; it was Regent Layla's flagship orbiting the planet. "I cannot answer that on behalf of his and her majesties. We shall know soon. What's that matters are we perfectly executed Regent Layla's orders." He saluted sharply at his mentor's flagship before returning to his outpost, giving the Altorans a questionable answer.