Knights or Justice?
Chapter 1: "Court of Equity" part 1
by AstroCitizen
Imperial Palace, the City of Pendragon
Holy Empire of Britannia, mainland (a.k.a. Area 1)
Operation Wild Hunt plus one month, two weeks
(or, The Retaliation plus five days)
"It was a dark and stormy… mid-morning". Mmmm, no. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, he thought blithely. Or as blithely as Schneizel el Britannia, Second Prince and Chancellor of the Holy Empire of Britannia, ever thought. Actually, outside it was bright and sunny with nary a cloud in the sky. Cheerful really, as per usual with the local environs of Arizona.
How the sun-beaten province had changed since Europe's explorers and conquistadors had first set foot on the American continents, the old empires paving the way for the birth of a new one, Britannia. As its hold expanded with its borders moving ever westward before fanning out north and south, so too had the burgeoning empire's capital moved. The royal family originally made their homes in the Continental Congress's would-be capital, Philadelphia, chosen both for its geographic suitability and the obvious symbolism of Britannia's triumph over General Washington's pro-democratic uprising. Times changed, as did the moods of ensuing monarchs, and so the imperial center had moved as well.
Today, the seat of power was now shaded by the Superstition Mountains, as an artificial oasis which started as a novel summer home with a nearby village for housing the staff had inexplicably grown into a metropolis by any man's definition. Its centerpiece was the ruling sovereign's home, the Imperial Palace. A convergence of Gothic fairy tales settings with modern-day skyscraper techniques, it rose even higher thanks to an artificial plateau of glass, steel, and concrete, and was dwarfed only by the surrounding mountains.
The palace was surrounded twice more using the age-old system of an inner and an outer wall, albeit unobtrusively fashioned. First was a massive moat which practically formed a lake around the palace. Outside of that laid the district known as St. Darwin's Boulevard. A series of wooded areas, gardens, and villas, St. Darwin's also housed the imperial family, the crème de la crème of Britannia's aristocracy born literally from the Emperor's innumerable consorts.
Impressive and overpowering a sight as it was, the Empire's latest and ultimate capital had become a model for the colonial settlements – "concessions" in polite talk – that now dominated a score of conquered lands. From the ashes of fallen nations stood massive plinths laid upon with castles, military bases, and other facilities of varying necessity, which to behold was to gain a glimmer of the heart of Britannia itself. A model, a metropolis, and a monument all in one, Pendragon was the center to a worldwide power, determined to one day be the world itself, sure to stand for all time.
Today, however, if one were to walk its hallways, you wouldn't feel that you were in the heart of Earth's grandest kingdom. At present, "dark and stormy" would be an apt description for the prevailing mood of the royal court. Used as they were to being within a decade of standing tall as masters of the world in fact rather than assumption, the repercussions of the past few days had left their mark on the assembled princes and princesses.
Not helping matters was that they'd had to convene within the palace's main conference room. Dominated by a massive table vaguely shaped like an inverted U, this chamber with its high-vaulted ceiling and Spartan feel – relatively speaking given the ubiquitous rococo style of the palace and its grounds – was intended for televised events and photo ops. By the time such events took place, a general consensus had already been formed along with a de facto script for the assembled royals to follow. It was a set really, intended to project a sense of solidarity in purpose and strength to their audience, be they noble or commoner, friend or foe. In the past, it simply wouldn't have done to hold an actual meeting there.
This was not the past, however; in fact, there was a strong possibility that it was the beginning of a frightening new age. And for that reason, rather than a mere stage, today it was truly a war room… or at least trying to be one.
Breaking off from his mental meanderings over the capital's history, Schneizel took in the pale expressions plastered upon many of his half-brothers and sisters, and saw no less than what he'd expected: Fear. Odysseus, Guinevere, and several others stared unblinkingly at the massive overhead screen at the far end of the room. There was anger too though, evident as Carine and the small remainder shot accusing looks at the team of scientists Schneizel had assembled from Project Tarnhelm for the presentation.
Garnering the most scrutiny were Tarnhelm's two key members, one for having initiated the project, the other for having unknowingly sidetracked it. The unlikely latter was a teenaged girl in glasses, her olive-green hair gathered up into a professional-looking bun rather than her standard pigtails. Normally a lowly high school student, Nina Einstein squirmed self-consciously under their gaze, shooting the occasional glance beseeching help from either Schneizel or her former classmate beside him. Contrarily, the other, an Honorary Britannian late of the former Republic of Mexico, stood straight and tall, detached as ever in a way even the Chancellor couldn't achieve.
Over a year ago, Eddie Dorado had been just another Number slaving away for pocket change as a janitor in one of Area Three's more prestigious universities. That ended when he'd been uncovered as the mysterious prodigy who'd been accessing – and correcting – complicated equations that even the head of the physics department had been dithering over for months. Not unexpectedly, he was fired without preamble and chased off campus while those who benefited from his work tried to pass it off as their own. Fortunately, the truth had unfolded as a consequence of inter-departmental rivalry, and within a few weeks' time the former janitor was brought before His Highness. One glorified but deservedly difficult G.E.D. test later, and Eduardo Luis Dorado was a newly minted doctor of quantum physics, answering directly to the Second Prince.
Schneizel's gamble paid off almost immediately as Dr. Dorado approached him with a series of equations concerning faster-than-light subatomic particles, and their application. His ideas had fallen outside even Schneizel's understanding of the field, but a few sessions with other physicists on his speed dial – Osterman, Brown, Lizardo, etc. – showed that Dorado was within striking distance of a breakthrough in technology:
"Teleportation; (n.) the act of bypassing physical space to achieve instantaneous transportation of matter."
By all rights it should just be a flight of fancy, barely theoretical within the field of scientific possibility. And here this former mop-jockey had brought the key to achieving it within humanity's – or rather, Britannia's – grasp. Even those most opposed to the prince's sponsorship of the former Three had cheered it would begin a new era for the world.
And indeed it would, for it was the perfect delivery system, better even than the Damocles fortress he'd been drawing up. All Schneizel needed now was the appropriate weapon, and the world would be humbled and brought underneath his protective umbrella for life.
First things first, of course: They had to make it work.
A whole quadrant of Schneizel's personal research institute had been sealed off under high security for experimentation and development of Dorado's theories. Mounds of money were spent. Hundreds of equations were calculated to be either abandoned or refined. Sophisticated equipment and materials were assembled in ways their inventors could never have imagined. Such was the life of the program, named Tarnhelm in a typically Britannian bout of Norse mythology-lust, for five long months. With help coming from the most unlikeliest of places, the final hurdle in the theory phase was completed, and the experimental stage began. That was when things had gotten interesting.
The first experiment held great promise and yet seemed a disappointment all at once. For safety's sake, a section of their main lab was walled in with five-inch-thick rectangular plates of titanium- steel, one of them installed with an almost equally thick window of bulletproof glass, and another a vault-like door. These were assembled over and around the output couplers, a pair of medium-sized saucer dish-like contraptions hardwired into the institute's powerful supercollider. A half-foot cube of pure carbon was taken inside the so-called "Seven-League Booth" and left at a precisely equidistant point between the OC's. Here Dorado's theorized particles would meet and produce a quantum flux condition, spreading and affecting whatever body of matter occupied that same space.
Hunched around the viewing port with their sponsor standing in front, the scientists watched with baited breath as a switch was thrown and the room slowly filled with a high-pitched whine. Almost unexpectedly, the booth filled with light as the cube seemingly replicating itself with rows of a dozen or more copies expanding from it in all vertical directions. Like a series of afterimages, they were increasingly translucent but otherwise fully formed, these duplicates of the cube holding in place just for a moment before suddenly collapsing upon the original, which vanished in a flash of light.
That was the whole of this simple "test-firing" and the nine that followed it. The cube, regardless of what material they used, failed to rematerialize in the adjacent booth across the lab which was the calculated exit point. Hope was not lost however, for while it was apparent that the cubes were simply being disintegrated, all their hard work pointed to the cubes being sent somewhere.
To learn more, Dorado and some of Tarnhelm's more competent engineers tinkered for weeks, finally producing the first experimental return module. In essence a mini-IFF transponder, the module transmitted on the same quantum frequency the booth experiment was using after a timed delay. In the next experiment, the module was affixed to the cube and teleported along with it. A few minutes later, a follow-up experiment was performed with Dorado's particles now colliding upon unoccupied space, the intention that the resultant field of quantum fluctuation would draw the teleported cube and module back from its unknown destination. There was another flash and, sure enough, the cube and its module had reappeared, just scant millimeters off from where they had originally laid
With this one experiment, it was proven both that process worked and it could safely handle sophisticated machinery with a power source. With new life breathed into the project, further experiments continued at a brisk pace, and began to include organic life, starting with plants and followed by increasingly sophisticated animals. The module, now called a Tarnhelm itself, too was refined, eventually becoming in essence a miniaturized teleporter that stored Dorado's particles to achieve the effect by itself.
After a rhesus macaque, Peanut, had reappeared, bringing home with her a stick covered with ants she was happily munching on, it was finally decided to find out where everything had been going. Peanut was next equipped with a modified Tarnhelm that also functioned as GPS tracker, whose signal they failed to find after several experiments. Finally, in desperation an experiment sent Peanut along with both a Tarnhelm and a camcorder. The footage she returned with revealed that, while they hadn't actually been teleporting anything in their experiments after all, Schneizel and the project heads had stumbled upon a far grander discovery than they had ever anticipated.
A smile played across Schneizel's face at the memory. For the first time in quite awhile, he'd felt actual shock, overwhelmed by the weight of this discovery. A minute later, he'd been back in the saddle, ordering a few more experiments with Peanut, now equipped with instruments for receiving and recording radio and TV transmissions, before collating a report for his father, the Emperor Charles zi Britannia. He did no such thing out of respect or loyalty, only the knowledge that such a momentous discovery, if kept secret for too long a time, would be potential ammo for an accusation of disloyalty, if not outright treason. As much as he waved off most matters as trivial, His Majesty had made it a point that he always wanted to know when his children had stumbled upon something… interesting. And sooner, not later.
This self-same report now lay strewn across the conference table, copied multiple times and shared among the Second Prince's brothers and sisters. Not that many of them had even so much as flipped through it. More attention had been paid to the screen, where had played a PowerPoint presentation meant as a visual aid to the report. Its final sequence had shown a model graphic of Earth connected by arrows to a pair of duplicate Earths beneath it. Both of these in turn had their own set of descending Earths, from which branched yet another set, and another and another and another. The point of view eventually pulled back to show that the original model was itself one of a pair of Earths which belonged to an Earth in yet another set, forming a family tree of worlds that seemed to both ascend and descend into infinity. Silence had reigned since that last moment, explaining the fruits of Dorado's research and the unexpected detour that young Nina's equations had sent the project on.
Perhaps I should reveal world-shattering scientific discoveries more often, Schneizel thought to himself. It's made what should have been a chaotic meeting far more manageable than our standard get-togethers.
But it was not to be. A not-so-quiet shuffle of chair legs upon carpet drew the eyes of the gathered royals to Schneizel's slightly younger sister, Princess and Marshal Cornelia li Britannia, as she realigned her seat from where she'd been watching the screen. She already knew most of what the presentation had to say, having been the first and only of Schneizel's half-siblings to be brought into the fold by His Majesty. Casting one last side-glance at the schoolgirl, whose involvement had been news to the Goddess of the Battlefield, Cornelia then skewered the occupant of the seat to Schneizel's right with a glare.
"So, basically," she began with a disquieting low voice, "this is all your fault, Lelouch."
Tsk. Should I really be so surprised? thought Schneizel, frowning slightly as his beloved sister's attitude and antics continued before him.
With her free hand, Cornelia picked up then dropped loudly back onto the table a stack of other, much thicker reports. They were documentation summarizing the damage throughout the Empire, caused by an orgy of ruin and sabotage rent upon Sakuradite mines, military outposts, colonial concessions, and various other imperial holdings, not the least of which was the heart of Britannia itself.
The heart of Britannia… in more ways than one, he mused, if the remaining Knights of the Round conclude what is already widely speculated.
Disclaimer: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion is the property of Sunrise and Bandai Entertainment. Young Justice is the property of DC Comics, Inc. and AOL-Time-Warner.