The Immortal Empire – Episode 19: Kaikaiteino
Author's Note: Rafe, an assistant to the prime minister, has been rewritten as an apprentice and not his nephew, reflecting in changes to past chapters.
"How do I look?"
"This again?" was the annoyed response.
Aisha Clan-Clan was still adjusting to Hokiyo's relatively high gravity of 1.3g when she emerged from a folding screen in a changing room in the Kaikaiteino, the common name for one of the smaller, squarish glass-lined buildings adjacent the ancient fortress that was the Imperial Hall of Assemblies. Kaikaiteino, by contrast, looked like a more modest and modern office block between the inner and outer walls, with its own small courtyard, and much less defensible should the need ever arise.
Kalin Clan-Clan, half-dressed in her formfitting flight suit, was standing against the wall next to one of the smartly-dressed staff, inspected her cousin in her blue uniform greatcoat with white-silver trim and a matching folding cap with an ornate metal badge pinned to it: the daily formal service uniform for a company grade officer in the Her Imperial Majesty's Starfleet. Under the coat she wore a high-collared tunic in the same collar and a pair of polished leather riding boots, common features of all branches of the Ctarl-Ctarl armed forces and distinguished by insignia and color scheme.
"You look fine, Aisha," she assured her younger cousin.
"I don't know about the hair," Aisha muttered, running a white-gloved hand through her long, unbound hair. Upon arriving at Kaikaiteino, the two had taken advantage of the guest room baths and showers, but the household government staff had pointed out the rather ragged appearance of Aisha's long, timberwolf gray hair in a long, thick braid that terminated in a large brass ring. The ring got thrown in with the rest of the laundry, and an on-site hairstylist did what she could for Aisha. "I can't remember the last time it was this straight."
"I take it outlaws don't bathe regularly?" Kalin asked, eyebrow raised. Aisha barked a laugh, then began fidgeting with the polished metal spaulder shoulder guards arrayed out on the nearby table, replacing the chipped, worn out pieces she'd worn over her breastplate for the last two years.
"Can't remember the last time I wore these over a coat. Could you help me out, I can't reach as well in these sleeves?"
Kalin maneuver behind her cousin and pushed her long, thick hair out of the way. "Yeah, the last two year haven't done any favors for your hair," she muttered, taking the fasteners for the spaulders from her hands and attempting to secure them underneath the coat's collar, as Aisha vainly groped the air behind her. "You know, you really don't need to wear these anyway."
Aisha's arms froze and she turned, eyes saucers. "What do you mean, I don't need to wear them?"
Kalin returned the fasteners to her hands and scratched her cheek with a long, pale fingernail. "I guess it was different two years ago for cruiser officers, but no one in the navy wears spaulders anymore, at least not without full combat armor," she explained. "At least, no one at the company grade. Maybe some flag officers do, but you know how they are."
Aisha cocked her head. "When did that happen?"
"Like…a year and a half ago, at least? Didn't you notice none of the other naval officers were wearing shoulder gear?" She gestured at herself. "I'm not wearing them."
"You're also topless," Aisha replied pointedly. Kalin glanced down at the strained athletic underwear covering part of her pale chest while her unzipped flight suit hung from her waist. "I thought all you pilots were horny! The moment you take off your helmet, you're basically naked as tight as that suit of yours is!" she snapped, awkwardly fidgeting with the segments of the spaulders.
Kalin grinned and bounced on the balls of her feet briefly. "Actually, yeah, pilots never wore them."
"Why didn't you tell me that earlier? How was I supposed to know that?"
"Right, you weren't in the navy for the last two years," she acknowledged. "What, did you wear your field dress spaulders every day for the last two years?"
"Not every day!" Aisha was struggling to take off the spaulders over the coat, until Kalin grasped the set again and pulled it off her, leaving her to smooth out the new creases in the wool cloth. "You coulda' told me that sooner-zona!" she yelled, her voice cracking.
"Relax. It's not a beauty contest, Aisha," Kalin instructed sternly before breaking out into giggling.
"No, it's just a debriefing with the Imperial prime minister. And then the Imperial navy brass. And then at some point, Her Imperial Highness the Empress of all Ctarl-Ctarl," Aisha bit back sarcastically. "You know, totally normal people, so maybe put those big jugs of yours back into your spacesuit-zona!"
Still giggling, Kalin pulled her flight suit over her shoulders, slid her arms through the sleeves, and raised the zipper closed before depressurizing it with an audible hiss from the small vents along her suit's rectangular backplate.
"Remind me not to rely on you the next time I go in front of the firing line," Aisha grunted before there was a knock at the door. Another member of the Kaikaiteino house staff entered, looked at both women, and seemed to hold back a sigh as she shook her head.
"The prime minister will see you now."
Kalin watched Aisha, without a single relaxed muscle in her body, stomped out of the changing room and down the hallway to the office at the end of it with a single, bored-looking sentry in civilian clothing standing in front of it, rigidly halting about a meter from him as he knocked on the door behind him.
"You don't have to be here, you know," Aisha hissed at her.
"Oh, you have no idea," Kalin replied, rolling her eyes.
"What does that mean-zona?"
"Nothing. What, I'm not allowed to be excited meet the Prime Minister of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire?" Kalin retorted quickly as the door opened.
Aisha was immediately surprised, and unimpressed, by what was through it: a small-ish, unimpressive office, a pair of potted trees in each opposite corner and almost all of its walls lined with heavily-loaded bookshelves, and a single desk in the middle with a smaller siting table dragged towards it. Sitting behind it, his eyes planted on an open notebook on his desk, was a lean, unimpressive man with charcoal-grey hair and a generous, long nose, dressed entirely in a very dark blue, almost black, suit, like a floating bruise surrounding by paperwork and oddly-arranged furniture. It was the same man who Aisha had seen more than a dozen times, in mass media broadcast, over the last two years since she left the Orta Honehone.
The man looked up at her from his notebook and she felt her long ears twitch, only to immediately return to his notebook. "The Clan-Clan cousins, Captain and Captain-Lieutenant. Give me just a moment before I give you my undivided attention." With thin fingers, the middle-aged man shifted his notebook to the corner of the desk, reached into a drawer under it, and produced an unfolded letter; after referencing something in the notebook, he scribbled something in pen at the bottom before signing it and raising it in his hand.
"Risley, would you?"
Aisha, standing a little head of her cousin, turned sharply to see a fair man about Kalin's age waiting in the blind spot of the room's corner, with brown hair in a more dapper civilian suit. The young man politely maneuver between the two Clan-Clans and took the document, reviewing it briefly before folding it.
"Excuse me. This is my legal clerk, Tomas Riosi-Riosi," he explained, noticing Aisha's surprised expression. "But people often have trouble with his name."
"Call me 'Risley'," Risley offered with a polite bow of his head to the military officers.
"Yo," Kalin responded, causing Aisha to stare daggers at her briefly.
"And I'm Tomas Koboro-Koboro, Her Highness's Prime Minister." Still watching both of them intently, Koboro-Koboro closed his notebook and began clearing some space on his desk. "Thank you for meeting me so soon after your return."
"I…Aisha Clan-Clan of the Orta Honehone, Your Excellency, sir! I mean, I'm Aisha Clan-Clan!" she managed to stutter out awkwardly before glancing over her shoulder. "And t-this is my cousin, Captain Kalin Clan-Clan!"
"Hi," Kalin added.
"Hello," the prime minister responded in kind, rising from behind his desk and gesturing to the two empty chairs. "There's no need to stand on ceremony, Lady Aisha, Lady Kalin, you're doing a favor to me after all. Please, sit."
The two took the empty chairs by the desk, Aisha on the left and Kalin on the right, as the prime minister gave a final nod to his clerk as he shut the door behind him.
"I apologize for the inelegant surroundings, but we're all business here at Kaikaiteino," he explained quietly before easing back into his armchair. "To tell you the truth, when I was in the naval bureaucracy we weren't much more graceful," he said, gesturing at the haphazard surroundings.
Aisha just stared back at him blankly. Kalin stared at her cousin out of the corner of her eyes before glancing at the prime minister. "Sorry, sir, but I think you'll need to start. She's still adjusting to civilized space."
Koboro-Koboro raised his busy eyebrows. "Of course, two years in Ban Guild space across the demilitarized zone must've been an ordeal, even though your reports indicated most of your time was based out of the commercial gateway in the Heifong system. I've been there myself more than once, before either of you were born."
"Really?" Kalin asked, feigning interest.
"Yes. Lady Aisha, given all you've experienced I'm sure you have a great deal to say that wasn't in your official reports, all twenty-two of them, but I thought you deserved a more undistinguished face to prepare you for what's coming next."
"And that's you, sir?" Kalin asked, eyebrow raised.
He barely nodded. "Lady Aisha, you were recalled because you are the only daughter of Admiral Dawid Clan-Clan, and Her Highness would like to see the daughter of a personal friend of her father, Anton, at court. Empress Kasara was not aware you were posted to an ambassadorship two years ago, or even in Terran space."
Aisha stared with her saucer-like eyes, unblinking.
The prime minister waited a few moments. "I hope your recall hasn't interrupted your duties too severely."
Still no response. Kalin stared at her cousin, then at the prime minister, and then back at her.
"Lady Aisha, can you hear me?" Koboro-Koboro asked finally.
"Yes, Prime Minister!" she blurted out loudly, her eyes shrinking to a more normal size.
Kalin heaved a deep sigh and the prime minister blinked twice. "Captain-Lieutenant Clan-Clan. Thank you for allowing us to meet before your official debriefing from the navy," he explained slowly, restarting the process.
"I think she's still taking all of this in, Your Excellency," Kalin explained, putting a hand against her face in exasperation.
"I understand, I am the highest-ranking civilian in the government, as well as Her Highness's chief minister," he offered in a self-deprecating tone. "This may be too much to ask for someone who hasn't been home in years. Lady Aisha, if you have anything you'd like to discuss with me—anything at all—I welcome the opportunity."
He rose to his feet, and Aisha and Kalin hurriedly did the same, while he maneuver to the door and opened it, calling through "Rafe! Rafe, could you please?"
In a few seconds, a young man a little older than Aisha appeared, thin and lanky under his civilian clothing and with spikey red-orange hair. Must've been waiting, Kalin thought, as he stood at the door obediently. "Sir?"
"This is Lady Kalin Clan-Clan. And that is Lady Aisha Clan-Clan, the same one whom Her Highness mentioned to you I'm sure."
"This isn't your son?" Kalin asked, skeptically.
An unexpectedly warm expression manifested on the prime minister's small, wrinkled features. "This is my…confidant, and friend, Mr. Rafe Sadono-Sadono," he explained, almost jovially. "He's a regular feature of the Her Highness's small council in the event of my absence."
"Congratulations!" Aisha blurted out awkwardly.
"Once you've settled your affairs, please reach out to either him or myself. Should you choose to take a more permanent presence at court, Rafe will be an invaluable resource on decorum, scheduling, and the like."
Similarly, the young man gave a self-effacing tip of his head before turning back to the prime minister. "Sir, will that be all?"
"I think so. It looks like all of this has been…bewildering for the captain-lieutenant."
With a long arm, Kalin reached over and smacked Aisha on the small of her back. The younger cousin jolted in place and saluted, as did she, and the prime minister favored them with a polite nod from behind his cluttered desk. Rafe escorted them back through Kaikaiteino, past rows of mindful household staff, to the exterior grounds where an armored limousine was waiting for them.
"Don't take it too hard, ma'am," Rafe offered politely. "We know that you've had a long trip, think nothing of it."
Aisha mumbled something under her breath as she knelt over and climbed into the low seat at the back of the car. Kalin followed her, turning outward and propping a hand up to keep an attendant from shutting the door. "Rafe Sadano-Sadano."
"Yes ma'am. You can call on me at any time, I assure you."
Kalin nodded at the short, unimpressive young man with spikey hair. "If you're here to spy on us, you're going to have to do better than that," she declared, before shutting the door herself.
Hoburn was practically in a meditative stance, staring into the void of space through the armored bay windows, when the call came through.
"You weren't expecting him?" a woman's voice asked from the corner, as a digital reproduction of Ron MacDougall's dossier photograph was projected onto the window directly in front of him.
"Not today, no." His large body visibly twitched as he pressed a switch on his armrest to answer the call. "Ron! To what do I owe the pleasure?" he declared in a radically different tone of voice, equal parts gregarious and attentive.
Whether due to transmission lag or something else, the response was delayed. "Sorry about this, Mr. Hoburn, I'm not interrupting anything am I?"
"Mr. Hoburn is was my father. Hoburn, please," he replied, still gregarious.
Ron seemed to chuckle on the other end. "I'm sending you an attachment over direct line. It'll make more sense if you see this for yourself."
Hoburn put his hands together under his chin and stared at the data readouts as an unseen assistant downloaded the attachment sent over incredibly expensive faster-than-light data transmission infrastructure. Due to the limited bandwidth, it still took almost a minute to send a single, relatively small data file that was revealed to be unencrypted video file.
Hoburn's eyes narrowed at the file's thumbnail after it was generated and projected on a corner of the window. "Looks like a mining asteroid. Not your home videos, I take it?"
Ron audibly smirked. "Unfortunately, no. This was taken on the Ctarl-Ctarl border regions."
A few seconds of exterior camera footage confirmed it: an abandoned protoplanet mining facility, with the distinctive circular logographic emblem of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire's Imperial Protoplanetary Consolidated Resources Corporation on one of the breached storage silos. The video feed than switched to an internal CCTV system, a main processing floor somewhere inside the facility, and interspersed among abandoned machinery and racks of aluminum tubing were humanoid figures in dark red-and-grey combat fatigues with heavy weapons. One by one, they were being picked off of by fast-moving white-and-purple blurs leaping on them, dodging gun and even rocket fire, until one dark red figure aimed a staff-like object which emitted a particularly bright circle of energy before that washed out the whole feed and leaving static.
Hoburn stood up in his chair, a sign of alertness that MacDougall wasn't present to see. "What was that?" he began after a sigh. "Who were they? Kei Pirates?"
"Partially. They called themselves the Black Hole Pathfinders."
"Ex-space forces?"
"On occasion. Don't make too much of it. The gang leader, Chiong, was an old collaborator of mine about ten years ago, before he went full-time for the Kei Pirates. Resourceful guy, reliable. That flash you saw was my gift for him from me, last time we met."
Hoburn rubbed one of the large scars running along his chin in an inquisitive fashion. "I see. Exotic energy-emission weapon?"
"More or less. Not enough to help them stop a pair of rabid Ctarl-Ctarl." Manipulating the controls on his right armrest, Hoburn navigated through the short video file, trying to find a frame where the two assailants were clearly visible: at best, about six second before the ending, it was possible to make out two shapely, feminine light-colored outlines against a partitional wall covered in peeling dark blue paint, and the shape of two sleek military spacesuit helmets with opaque visors. By themselves, their appearances made it impossible to discern their species, much less their appearance, but MacDougall's explanation was sound.
"So this Chiong, he set up this black box video? The only evidence that a pair of Ctarl-Ctarl military women had torn through their base if they didn't leave any witnesses." Hoburn gave another, deeper sigh, stroking his chin with one hand. "What did you have in mind, MacDougall?"
"You may've heard, but I look out for my friends. Even more so now that I don't have as many," Ron explained, more than a hint of malice in his voice.
"Ron, take some free advice from someone who might be one of those friends: you really don't want to cross the border, even to the Ctarl-Ctarl Outer Periphery, looking for trouble. I'm not sure how this friend of yours from the Kei Guild manage to get that far. One man? That's just asking for trouble."
"Duly noted. But Hoburn—I know you've got business out there. And I could make it worth your while." There was barely contained glee in Ron's voice now.
Hoburn cocked his head for a moment, turned to face the woman enveloped in darkness in the corner, then back at the soft light of the digital interface projected onto his window. "All right, Ron. Give me forty-eight hours before you go half-cocked. I think I have something that might work. And in return, you take a greater hand in the salvage business? Let's say, twenty-five percent?"
Ron smirked again. "Sure, Hoburn, I'll think about it. Just get back to me with something concrete."
"I will, Ron." Hoburn cut the line, pressed himself into the plush cushions of his chair, and reached for the crystal glass on a nearby table within arm's reach as the communications interface was replaced by periodic twinkles of mostly-empty space.
"That was too convenient, you know that," the woman purred from her corner.
Hoburn glanced at her over a broad shoulder. "What, you don't think Ron MacDougall is capable of having old friends? Because he's clearly got a thing for revenge."
The woman shifted in her own chair, and Hoburn could just barely make out the outline of two long, silk-stocking-clad legs terminating in white heels rubbing against one another as their owner shifted in her own seat. Above them, an unmistakably hostile pair of eyes leered back at him. "You really think a dead pirate friend would change his mind about taking the offer?"
He turned back to the window. "I hadn't made him the offer. I was biding my time."
"I repeat, too convenient," she repeated. "Will you take him up on it?"
Hoburn scoffed and drank down the contents of the glass, before studying its intricate, refracting surfaces in the light of the controls on his chair. "Of course I am. Ron MacDougall with an agenda is still Ron MacDougall. I didn't pull him out of some backwater in the Tenpa Empire just to have him salvage old guns." He looked at her obscured visage more directly, shifting in this chair. "And as previously agreed, we do this my way."
Terms to know:
Event Data Recorder – Incorrectly called "black box recorders" due to their function. With the proliferation of closed-circuit cameras, even a temporary pirate or outlaw field base can manage special recorder routine tied to a pre-programmed timer; if the system is not reset in time, the final events of the are transmitted (in sub-ether space) to preserve at least a partial log.
Hall of Assemblies (Holo-Kaiga-Dan) – Colloquially called "Parliament" or the Ctarl-Ctarl Legislature, a large section of land in the Imperial Capital formerly belonging to an ancient military fortress completed in the Warring States Period by the Tomoyo-Tomoyo dynasty; rebuilt several times after the homeworld's wars, it now houses the Ctarl-Ctarl bicameral legislature.