A Halloween tale presented by His Majesty The Emperor RKB

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Confederacy of Earth Nations, Earth

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The dream began as it always began.

With smoke.

With rubble.

With silence.

The Rose Garden was awash in flame as he passed it by, the trees and bushes consumed by orange, hungry fire that blackened everything it touched. Flurries of ash whipped through the air, whipped up by gusts of wind. Behind him the western face of the Residence was stained black with smoke for the second time in its history. The ground shook violently. With each great shake the ceiling of the West Colonnade spilled bits of dust and plaster. In some sections it caved in before him, falling to the floor in great chunks.

And yet all was silent. He heard not the crackle of flames, nor the disintegration of the ceiling above him. He did not hear it, and he did not fear it.

For Jonathan Harris, there was nothing to fear. This had once been his domain. But he had grown beyond it. One nation hadn't been enough for him. For nearly twenty years the entire world had been his, to do with as he pleased. He had molded humanity in his image. And now, he was safe. He was secure. His way was the only way.

There was nothing to fear.

Except for them.

Them.

They stood lined up on both sides of the Colonnade, from the door to the Palm Room in the Residence to the door of the Oval Office. His predecessors, forty-seven in all, stared at him as he walked slowly down the pathway.

They stood there.

Watching him.

They never said a word.

They were all the same. Their clothes, once fine and rich, were now threadbare and ragged. Their faces were pale and sunken, their hair brittle, and as he passed them by he could feel the horrible chill radiating off of them. They shimmered in the fiery light revealing their translucence. Like specters they haunted him. A distant memory flickered in the back of his mind of a time when his parents took him to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion and similar ghosts had spooked the park visitors of his youth. It made no sense. Everything was on fire, and yet he was so cold in their presence.

It was not this that bothered him. It was their eyes. Their eyes were black; a black so deep and consuming that all light was enveloped by it. Small wisps of black smoke poured from the edges of those chilling apertures. Those dark eyes followed him, and he knew he was being judged.

There was no particular order in which they were arranged. At least, none that he could determine. Each had a different reaction when he passed them by.

Grant, festooned in the General's uniform of the Army of the Potomac, glowered at him, his hand gripping the handle of a revolver so tightly that he thought the pistol itself might break in the specter's grip. Eisenhower, bedecked in a tattered SHAEF army uniform, stood nearby. He said nothing, but placed a calming hand on Grant's shoulder. That Eisenhower himself was resting his free hand over the Colt M1911 pistol on his own belt did little to reassure Harris.

The Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin, huddled together and whispered to one another as they watched him pass. FDR stood without a wheelchair in sight, while his cousin appeared ready to storm San Juan Hill. He couldn't make out what they said, but their tone was far from pleasant.

Kennedy leaned on a cracked marble column, folded his arms across his chest, and glared as he walked by. Harris couldn't bare to look at the horrific head wound of the Bostonian President.

Jackson sat on the broken stump of a fallen column with a hickory cane in his hands. As Harris approached Jackson repeatedly raised the cane's handle into the air before slamming it down into the open palm of his right hand. Once, he had beaten a would be assassin within an inch of his life with such a cane, and now it looked like old King Andrew wanted nothing more than to do it again.

Reagan looked at Harris briefly before he closed his eyes, scrunched up his face in disgust, and turned his back on him as he passed.

Lincoln doffed his silk top hat and bowed his head. The wound of another assassin's bullet was barely visible in the tall man's mane. In the flickering light Harris thought he saw a tear streaking down the old man's cheek.

Clinton, the two Bushes, and Obama stood in a half circle. Each had a full glass of bourbon in their hands. Their heads were bowed as they whispered to one another. They looked up as he approached. Bush Sr. heaved a melancholy sigh. Clinton sarcastically raised his glass in a toast as Harris passed. Obama took a long drag from the cigarette dangling from his lips and let the smoke waft into Harris's face. George W. Bush stared intently at his drink, looked to Harris, and looked back to his drink before raising the glass to his lips and downing its contents in one gulp.

One look at Harris, it seemed, was enough to make the old alcoholic fall of the wagon.

Nixon alone did not condemn him. He did not condone, but he did not condemn. Instead, as Harris approached, the 37th President gave the 49th a sad half smile and the briefest of nods. What did that mean?

The rest were more subdued. They clenched their teeth. They balled their hands into fists. They stared. They judged. And not one of them said a word.

They were a peculiar lot; an assorted collection of dreamers and schemers. They were a mingled association of brilliant geniuses and talent-less hacks. They were a group of men who had changed the world, for better and for worse. All of them ambitious. All of them hungry for glory, for themselves and for the nation.

Together they represented nearly two hundred and sixty years of history before his allotted time, the combined weight of a republic now a mere page in a history book.

They judged him, and found him wanting.

At the end of the Colonnade two men stood just outside the doors to the Oval Office. Henry Ackerman and Edward Galloway, his two immediate predecessors, flanked him as he passed through the door. Galloway sneered at him as he always had, the sanctimonious prick. Ackerman, the lone former President still living amongst all his predecessors, refused to look at Harris even once. The two had been allies, joined at the hip during the Americas War when Harris had been a Senator. It had been so long ago that it felt like another lifetime. Harris paused briefly outside the door and stared before continuing forward. Why wouldn't Ackerman look at him? Alone amongst the assembled, Ackerman had been the only one to really know Harris when he had just been starting out.

Perhaps that was why he refused to look at Harris, instead preferring to look out at the burning Rose Garden. He would not, could not, acknowledge him. But he held the door open for Harris nonetheless. His face was pained, and he closed his eyes as tears dripped down his cheeks.

"First the Mayhew girl, now New Thyfeeria. Looks like you're letting things slip Jon." Galloway said smugly, ushering Harris through the open door with a sarcastic wave of his hand. "Back in our last debate, way back in '32, you remember what I said? I said you'd crack under pressure. But even I didn't think you'd crack this badly."

Harris hurried past his predecessor without acknowledging him. His fingers curled into fists as he passed, his teeth grinding as he passed the ghost of the insufferable fool he'd trounced at the polls all those years ago.

Galloway didn't matter. He was dead.

The dead couldn't hurt him.

He had nothing to fear.

Nothing.

"What's the matter Johnny Boy?" Galloway called after him. "Choking on your aspirations?"

Harris turned, grabbed the handle, and slammed the door in Galloway's grinning face.

As the door closed with finality the room shook. Bits of plaster crumbled down in streams from the ceiling above.

The Oval Office looked as though it had been ransacked. A couch on the far side of the room burned. The back wall, where the fire place had been, that connected to his Secretary's outer office had completely collapsed, leaving only a pile of rubble. Harris looked down at the carpet, at the Great Seal of the United States in its center. It was singed and burned, barely recognizable.

Soot and ash flickered down from above like snow. He looked up and beheld that the office's ceiling had caved in. Far above, amongst the churning black clouds, the knife-like hull of an Imperial Star Destroyer hung overhead.

This isn't how it was, Harris thought. By all accounts the White House had been vaporized in a single shot on the first day of the Empire-Earth War.

Then again, the White House hadn't been populated by ghosts either.

This was not how it had been. This was how he imagined it to be.

Harris looked down from the ash choked sky, and before him he saw them. To the left and the right of the cracked and charred Resolute Desk stood two men. The one on the right was a portly, short man with blue eyes and brown hair. The one on the left was tall and thin, his angular nose turned up in contempt as his hazel eyes flickered in the dancing light of the flames.

Seated between them directly behind the desk was a man with the posture of a steel beam. He was broad shouldered, dour in expression, and unflinching as he met Harris's gaze and refused to break it. The man in the center grimaced, as though he were in physical pain. The three, the first three, looked to the last, and for a time there was silence.

"Oh posterity!" Said the man on the right, his voice a rasping, unhappy New England drawl. "You will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

The man on the right stepped out from behind the desk and limped towards Harris, his hands clutching importantly at the lapels of his 18th century suit.

"I wrote those words nearly 300 years ago." The man shook his head and frowned as he spoke. "I confess there were times when I did indeed repent most heavily, having seen the direction in which the nation went. But never did I regret the pain and anguish I endured for our Republic's independence more than during your time in office, sir."

"You rule with base fear." Said the man on the left. "The crowned heads of Europe, with all their privilege and ego, even at the depths of their depravity, were but rank amateurs when compared to you."

"Were our ideals so cheap that you could sell them so easily?" The man in the center asked slowly. Each word felt like it had its own weight to it.

Harris smirked as he spread out his hands, affecting an incredulous expression. "Is this really to be my judge and jury? Two slaveholders and a pompous blowhard? I hardly think you are fit to damn me."

"You judge us by the standards of your own time sir." Said the man in the center.

"And yet you cannot even hold yourself to those same standards." The fat man sneered. "A billion free men and women were made into slaves by your designs. We, at least, had the excuse, poor though it may be, that we were born into a world where it was common. And we had the decency to recognize slavery for the evil it was and call for its abolition."

"You called, and did nothing. I snap my fingers, and millions work to forge the world in my own image." Harris declared.

"On that matter we did not act. Instead we made an odious compromise to preserve our fragile republic." The man on the left confessed. "But we had faith that those who would come after us would continue to build the more perfect Union we had called for. They would do what we could not, when the nation had grown stronger. You have no faith in your fellow man."

"And your faith was misplaced." Harris shot back. "People must be governed, or else there is chaos and devastation."

"Is that what you call your rule?" The man on the left asked, a smirk tracing its way across his aristocratic features. "You do not govern. Your tyranny brutalizes the people and destroys the land. Your cities are a blight. Your contempt poisons the souls of men."

"I am necessary." Harris asserted.

"You are a broken child in an old man's body, desperate for the safety of his mother's arms." The man on the right retorted. "Power is a poor substitute for love, Jonathan."

Harris felt his cheeks burn. "I don't need anyone! They need me! I'm indispensable."

"A revolution dependent on an indispensable man is damned to fail. The people need freedom." Asserted the man in the center. "Without freedom there can be no creativity, no innovation, no growth. Leaders should guide and serve, not dominate."

"The war made freedom into a luxury." Harris insisted. "Too many people were free to choose the wrong way. They would have dragged us all down with them if they'd been allowed to continue. My way is the only way."

"You over corrected. And now, in your conceit, you look down on the world and all who inhabit it like Icarus rising into the heavens, ignoring all the while your melting wings." The man on the right noted.

Harris grinned as he gestured to them. "You don't get to be President by being meek and humble. Where do you get off lecturing me about conceit? You all saw your chance and took it."

The man in the center regarded him calmly. "It is true, we were not as selfless as our more devoted followers would have the people believe. I was concerned with my reputation when I resigned my commission. I wished to be seen as an American Cincinnatus, and in that I succeeded. But my ambition, to be remembered well by posterity, led me to aid others in the creation of a new manner of governance."

"We built." The man on the right said.

"We dreamed great dreams and forged the bedrock of a better tomorrow." The man on the left added.

"We planned and fought and struggled." The man in the center finished. "We created and inspired. You destroy and intimidate. That which you have created will not long outlive you."

"Our ambitions had their limits." The man on the left said. "You want more than respect. You wish to be adored, worshiped."

"I am the father of my country." Harris declared before pointing to the man in the center. "Just like you. It is only right that I be respected as such."

"We were revered by those who came after us. But we were just men. Our works, though great, were limited. We always knew this." The one in the center said as he rose from his seat like a sturdy oak. "You sir, act as though you thought yourself a god."

"Your estimation of yourself vastly outpaces your own abilities." The man on the left noted.

"You're nothing more than a modern day Nero!" Exclaimed the man on the right. "Fiddling all while Rome burns."

"The Confederacy will survive this war." Harris asserted. The three men specters smiled derisively.

Harris's lips curled. "We will be victorious." He asserted. They didn't seem convinced.

"Hamilton once urged me to wage war with France." Said the man on the right. "But I knew then what I know now. Wars do not strengthen a nation. Wars sap nations of their health and vitality. War after war after war, fought to soothe petty egos, have been the downfall of great countries since time immemorial. You dream of Empire, Mr. Harris. You think you are Augustus, come again. But Rome fell, victim of its own arrogance even as it suffered defeat after defeat."

"You're no different." Chided the man on the left. "You've read the reports. You've seen the figures. Your allies can prattle all they like that victory is just around the corner, but you know in your bones that victory is much less certain now."

"It's just a temporary setback on the road to triumph." Harris said, unhappy at the trace of defensiveness that crept into his own voice.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. The people know now that the Confederacy is not invincible. You cannot hide that from them forever. Soon the enemy may very well be at the gates, and you have led them here with your hubris." The man on the left said. "With their approach your fate is sealed."

"The campaign for Judicar will set everything right." Harris insisted. "By this time next year Palpatine Prime will be ours."

"A people at war can only be pushed so far. I learned that well enough myself at Valley Forge." Said the man in the center. "If you continue to treat them like fighting dogs, the people will rise."

"The people?" Harris asked, disbelieving. "The people know what I tell them. Nothing more. I had to push them onward in the last war. I'll do it again. I won't be stopped by some mewling cowards. I will win this war, no matter the cost!"

"No matter the cost?" The man on the right asked, his voice quiet, but laced with an undercurrent of venom. "Have you any idea of the price that's been paid already?"

"I think we should remind him." The man on the left said, his tone equally frigid.

A terrible howl tore through the air as the room shook. A chorus of wails bubbled and rose with an intensity that made his heart pound in his chest.

Harris clapped his hands over his ears. The three specters stood, unshaken, as though they hadn't even heard the screams.

The shrieking grew louder and louder. Harris grit his teeth and bowed his head, his eyes screwed shut as he tried desperately to block out the growing cacophony. "What is that godawful noise?!" He demanded.

The noise stopped.

"Why, Jonathan, don't you know?" Asked the man in the center mildly.

Harris opened his eyes and looked around.

There were dozens of them. Standing in the wreckage of the Oval Office, shoulder to shoulder, packed tightly around Harris and the three specters. Harris looked beyond them, outside the window, and saw more.

So many more.

He looked up; up at the gaping hole where the roof should have been, and he saw them. They appeared made of decayed flesh and black smoke, with piercing, glowing violet eyes. They hung atop the cracked walls and broken scaffolding like vultures over a dying animal in the desert. There were so many of them.

"These are but a few." Said the man on the left sadly, his eyes flickering about, not unkindly, as he took them in.

"There are so many more where they came from." The man on the right added.

Harris's face twisted as a horrible stench assaulted his nostrils. It was a smell he'd grown well accustomed to in the time since he'd first fled Washington D.C. all those decades ago.

It was the sickly sweet aroma of death.

The smoky army of corpses stared at him. Men. Women. Children. Old. Young. Black. White. Asian. Latino. From every nation, from every creed, from every background, they stood there and stared at him.

They stood there with nooses round their necks, with bullet holes and stab wounds in their chests. Black ichor leaked from their eyes and from their mouths. Maggots scuttled over their faces and hands. Their skin was rotted and stretched on exposed bones.

"I don't understand." Harris said.

The man in the center walked towards him. He looked at Jonathan Harris with something akin to pity.

He placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward to whisper in Harris's ear.

"These are your victims, Jonathan."

The man in the center backed away, raising his hands to gesture to the mob of the dead. "And they want to thank you for your leadership."

Harris's breath, shallow and rapid, caught in his throat. He didn't know what to say, what to do.

"You said you'd save us." A corpse called out, his voice a wet gurgle.

"You said you'd protect us from the monsters in the stars." Another corpse said sadly, her voice like sandpaper to his ears.

"You lied." A small, weak voice said. A tiny figure stepped out of the crowd. A boy, no older than ten, staring up at him with wide, glassy eyes riddled with cataracts.

A worm wriggled and writhed in the bullet hole in the boy's forehead and Harris felt himself grow nauseous.

"You lied." The boy said again. "You did all the things you said the aliens would do."

"You took our freedom." Said one.

"You put us in chains." Said another.

"You took our lives."

"You took our humanity."

The room, which had been growing colder and colder, suddenly grew warmer. As more corpses raised their complaints, they grew more animated, more lively. They muttered to themselves, their voices growing louder and louder as one by one accusations were barked out.

"Murderer!"

"Thief!"

"Liar!"

"Hypocrite!"

"NO!" Harris screamed.

Silence.

Silence fell over the room.

The silence of the grave.

Jonathan's head turned rapidly from one corpse to the next, his chest rising and falling as he began to hyperventilate. There were so many of them. And he was so alone. Where were his guards? Where were his loyal Legionnaires?

Why was he so alone?

So helpless?

Where was his power? Where had it gone?

"I...I had to do it." Harris stuttered, kneading his hands in fear.

The corpses said nothing.

"Don't you understand?" Harris begged. "It was the only way. My way is the only way! If I could have done it any other way, I would have. I swear! I promise!"

A low hum emerged from the back of the crowd.

Harris turned desperately to the three specters. "Tell them." Harris demanded, gesticulating desperately for the three to assist him. "You know the burden of leadership. Hard choices had to be made."

"And you made the easier choice every single time. You took the path of least resistance." Said John Adams.

The hum was now a low drone.

"No, they were the hardest choices I ever had to make. I swear." Harris said.

"It wasn't fair, what happened to you." Said Thomas Jefferson sadly. "You were made to choose between one terrible outcome and another, time and time again. But you let your choices numb you. Your empathy for your fellow man withered away. You were so afraid of being overcome with despair that you cut yourself off from the very humanity you purport to champion. And when the danger passed you continued on, uncaring and concerned with naught but your own safety."

The drone was now a growl, low and warbling, spreading through the crowd.

"There are greater monsters in this vast universe than you, Jonathan Harris." Intoned George Washington. "But the cruelty of others does not excuse you."

The growl grew louder now, its pitch deepening and growing as the corpses began slowly to shuffle towards him. Their flashing, glowing violet eyes, were locked onto him, their arms outstretched, their bony, claw like hands grasping.

"No." Harris whimpered pitifully, looking wildly from side to side as the crowd inched closer and closer, the growl rising to a howl of rage. "No, no, no, please, I...I..."

As one, the crowd lunged at him, the howl so loud that it was practically deafening.

Harris ran forward to the cracked, burnt Resolute Desk where Washington, Adams, and Jefferson stood in judgement.

Harris threw his hands forward, hoping to grab Washington's arm.

"Please, no!" Harris screamed as dozens of dead hands grabbed his arms, legs, shoulders and head. Their touch burned and froze.

"Please, don't let them hurt me!" Harris begged. "Please, have mercy! Make them stop!"

"Strange." Mused Jefferson as the crowd began to drag Harris away. "It's always the merciless who want mercy most."

More hands now. Hundreds clawing, scratching, tearing, hitting; the howl so loud now that Harris thought his ears would bleed.

And then a mighty roar arose from outside the Oval Office. Its bombast reverberated through the halls and nearly shook Harris to his knees. The wall crumbled to reveal a sea of walking corpses approaching the White House. A half dozen Star Destroyers hung in the sky while TIE Fighters raced across the horizon, blasting down the F-22 and F-35s that rose to challenge them.

A massive figure bellowed and rose from the horde. As the giant stood to its full height the dead fell from the figure like water from a shower.. The figure stood the height of a football field. As it turned it roared and stomped on the dead. They didn't seem to react as they stood back up and continued in their approach towards the embattled Confederate President.

Harris locked eyes with the monster and recognized who it was. The towering visage of Aveo Yos stared down at him. With a nightmarish howl, the Emperor's features mutated and twisted into the calculating face of Grand Admiral Yutu. As the monster took a step forward he changed once again into the much copied face of Clone Admiral Commander Bacara and with another earth-shaking trod he transformed into the mechanical monstrosity of the Imperial traitor Eritech. Eritech, despite the bio-life helmet and mask appeared to take exceptional glee in stomping the horde of zombies beneath his feet.

As Eritech reached the Oval Office it was like another sun erupted overhead. The colossus morphed once more into the armored form of Vala Ren. The towering alien ignited her laser-sword, whose red light glowed brighter than the fires now consuming the walls of the Presidential mansion. Vala Ren laughed, but the chortle was not hers. It came from an older, more maniacal source, and as Harris watched the monumental figure changed one last time.

Gone was the armor of Vala Ren. In its place were robes dark as night. A black hood covered the top of an ancient face, whose grin was filled with rotten teeth. Its face was made of rotting, sagged skin as white and scarred as a Bram Stoker nightmare brought to life. Bright yellow eyes glared down at the President as the unknown figure brought up his fist. With a bone-chilling cackle the giant swung his fist down like a battering ram.

This was it. This was the end. There was no escape. This was...

This was the part where he woke up.

Jonathan Harris bolted upright in the four poster, king sized bed of his private quarters. The President's chest heaved as he sucked down mouthfuls of air. He clasped at his chest as he tried to steady his breathing, loosening the button at the collar of his dark blue pajamas. He withdrew his hand from his chest to note that it was covered in sweat.

Harris kicked back the covers and threw himself out of bed. He pulled on the round rim glasses on his bedside table. He threw on a bathrobe hanging from a hook next to his bed, went to the door and flung it open, wincing at the sudden light from the hallway. He stuck his head out the door and looked up one end of the long hallway and down the other. Two Secret Service Agents flanked the entrance to his room. Down the hall another guard stood watch.

One of the agents looked at him, his expression guarded. "Is everything alright Mr. President? Your wake up call isn't for another hour."

"Is everything fine?" Harris asked abruptly, working to get his breathing even more under control. The agent who'd spoken (Harris hadn't bothered to learn his name) turned to his partner before looking back to Harris.

"Yes sir, to the best of my knowledge, everything is secure." The agent said.

Harris grunted, his index finger nervously tapping on the door as he paused to let his thoughts settle. "Have my meeting with the Joint Chiefs delayed by an hour. I've had a bad night."

"Yes sir." The agent said as Harris slammed the door closed.

Harris closed his eyes and leaned against the door. He took a deep, shuddering breath as he stared up at the ceiling.

A dream, he thought. It was just a dream. A stupid dream. The same damn dream he'd been having since...

He didn't really remember.

He blinked rapidly as he ran his hand through his graying hair.

The same dream...save for that last part. The hooded figure...that was new.

Harris shook his head and let out a soft grunt of annoyance. It was just stress. Dreams didn't mean anything.

He padded across the dark room to his bed and sat down. He glanced over to the empty side of the bed where Jill normally slept. She was gone. Off on another one of her goodwill missions. She was gone so often now.

Harris sighed as he ran a hand over the empty side of the bed. Poor Jill. Loyal Jill. They'd drifted apart, these last few years. When it was all over, when the the aliens were crushed and true humanity stood resplendent astride the stars, he'd finally have time to patch things up with her.

He reached over to the mahogany bedside table and switched on the lamp. He pulled open a drawer and fished out a bottle of downers. The President rubbed his temple before he popped open the cap, and tossed a pill into his mouth. He dry swallowed with a grunt, wincing as the pill slid unpleasantly down the side of his esophagus. Soon enough his heartbeat began to slow, and the dark room seemed to take on a more cheerful candor, the shadows retreating from the growing light from under the main door.

Everything is going to be alright, he thought as he moved to the walk in closet on the far end of the room. He wouldn't be getting back to sleep anytime soon, so he decided to pick out his clothes for the day.

I'm safe. He thought to himself as he switched on the closet light. He started looking through his tie rack for a suitable match to the charcoal gray suit he'd picked out the night before.

So what if there had been setbacks? So what if the Empire had stopped the allied advance cold? Superior Terran will had broken them in the last war, and it would break them this time around as well. Setbacks were to be expected. He'd outsmart Phasma this time, just like he had the last time. Everything would be fine so long as he stuck to the course he'd chosen. No one could get to him. He had his guards, his soldiers, all loyal and true to him. He couldn't be hurt with his power intact.

Everything was going to be alright.

He had nothing to fear.

The Judicar campaign would set everything right.

He took another downer, and stuffed the bottle in his suit pocket.

He'd need them for the meeting with the Joint Chiefs.

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Up Next- A Traitor Among Brothers