Affairs of State

1 The War Room

THE WAR ROOM

THE ROYAL GUARDS’ footsteps clicked on the hardwood floor.

They’d arrested me on another world this morning and marched me through a portal straight to this small, wood-paneled room.

I’d expected something like this ever since New Melbourne fell, but was too tired to care if they locked me up or shot me.

I only wondered what had taken them so long.

A military secretary in pressed undress blues sat behind a holographic display on an ornate antique desk. He glanced at my rumpled, filthy fatigues, his bright eyes boasting a full night’s sleep before returning to his screens. “Flight Lieutenant Levar Boylan, I presume?”

“Yes, sir.” I saluted, weary but precise. In the palace, even secretaries outranked me.

“They’re ready for you.” He gestured to the door, and I stepped through, eager to be done with the formalities and to get this sham trial over with.

The room beyond was dark and silent, save my footsteps.

I glimpsed three immaculate parade dress uniforms before the blast door gently whooshed closed to block the light behind me.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I stomped my heels and stood to attention, flaking dried mud as I awaited the presiding officer’s pleasure.

Would the court-martial give me a firing squad or be satisfied with a dishonorable discharge?

Either way, I’d be done with this damned war.

“Lieutenant Boylan,” a friendly voice said. “Glad you could join us. Care for a drink?”

I did not so much as blink in shock. Officers do not flinch – it demoralizes the troops.

“Sir?”

The voice, dark, smooth, and feminine, said, “At ease, Lieutenant Boylan. We’re not on parade here.” The three standing figures began to take on detail in the darkness, and despite the officer’s order, I could hardly imagine myself less at ease.

Three officers were the required minimum for a court-martial, but a lieutenant like me should be tried by captains or colonels.

I was facing three high marshals. They should have been overseeing planetary invasions or star system defense networks, not convicting a supply officer for dereliction of duty.

One of them, a shaven-headed woman whose ebony skin contrasted starkly with her pure white tunic, raised her eyebrows, waiting for a reply.

Not a high marshal, I corrected myself. A grand marshal, commanding at the absolute highest level, subject only to the Queen in military matters. And she had just offered me a drink.

The three had not introduced themselves.

They did not need to. I knew them all on sight.

High Marshal Dhahabu, the bronze-skinned, golden-haired woman on the left, had salvaged the failed surge of ’78 and averted total disaster.

The stout nut-brown man with the impressive silver mustache was High Marshal Fedha, the mastermind behind the Stelsylvanian Defense Zone.

And finally, Grand Marshal Olgolny, stellar strategist sans pareil, whose genius had kept the Royal Commonwealth from losing the war thus far.

Even more startling, seated in the corner in a tall, straight-backed chair, her left hand artlessly cradling a glass of brandy, was a figure I recognized from every royal broadcast I’d ever seen, a face emblazoned on every coin and banknote I’d ever held.

What the Fall is Queen Jadwiga doing here? I wondered.

“I don’t know what’s available,” I tentatively said.

Despite being ordered at ease, I could not force my body to relax.

Even without my sovereign staring silently at me from the corner, I was in the presence of more authority than I’d ever known in my life.

Through the fog of exhaustion, I was suddenly embarrassed by my stinking mud-stained fatigues.

I could smell sweat, engine oil, and burned flesh polluting the pleasant soap and perfumed scents gracing the court.

The grand marshal gestured to a cabinet. “Be a good chap and see for yourself. Fixings are in the bar.”

Wondering if this was real or a sleep-deprived hallucination, I walked to the bar. It was stocked with all the finest liquors available this side of Fallspace. It would be a crime to mix half of these, so I pulled out a bottle of whiskey older than my grandfather and poured it over ice.

This had to be a trick. Surely, high-ranking staff officers did not offer junior subalterns a royal-class drink before sentencing them to prison.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked out of habit. I would not have dared to so casually address such senior officers otherwise.

“Nothing for me.” High Marshal Fedha showed his mostly full champagne flute.

“I’ll take a tequila, straight. Three fingers.” High Marshal Dhahabu downed the contents of her glass to make room for a fresh drink.

Grand Marshal Olgolny smiled a small but warm smile. “Sake, hot.”

I glanced at the figure in the corner, but she merely sipped her brandy in silence, her eyes shrouded below her diamond circlet. The marshals were all ignoring her, and she had not spoken a word since I entered the room, so I decided to follow their lead.

“I’m afraid I’m horribly underdressed. The guards didn’t give me time to change,” I said.

I’d neither bathed nor changed in over a week.

Or maybe under. It was hard to keep track of days jumping through portals between worlds with different local times.

No matter how long it had been, I was filthy, fetid, haggard, and unshaven, my uniform stained with oil, mud, sap, and blood.

Had I not been escorted by royal guards, I was certain I wouldn’t have been allowed in the palace.

“No worries,” Marshal Fedha said. “We understand you’ve had a rough few weeks.”

Rough would be one way to describe the fighting retreat since New Melbourne.

It was the usual ugly post-defeat drill.

After-action reports. Restructuring. Strategic retreat to defensible worlds.

Re-entrenchment. Blowing portals. Abandoning rearguards to doomed last stands.

Doing our best to delay our nation’s inevitable defeat. Pretending we could still win this war.

I tried to act nonchalant. “No more than most, better than some. I was on Wallawalla tracking down ten thousand missing lancer carbines when the end came on New Melbourne.”

A moment later, with the sake flash-heated in a glazed ceramic flask, the tequila and whiskey in tumblers, I handed the two women their drinks, then started retreating to a respectful distance.

“What shall we drink to?” Fedha asked. All three looked at me.

“Confusion to the enemy?” I suggested, trying to keep my voice steady. It didn’t crack or break, so I think I did a remarkably good job.

Dhahabu snorted in amusement, raising her fresh glass.

“At least as much confusion as they give to us.” The other two raised their glasses, and I tentatively joined in, taking a respectful sip of Eire-style whiskey.

Even in my exhausted, petrified state, I could tell it was exquisite.

Olgolny and Fedha both sipped their drinks, but Dhahabu tossed her tequila back with abandon.

Tired of waiting for the inevitable, I decided to kick things off. “I suppose we should talk about New Melbourne.”

“We have your report on the loss of New Melbourne. That’s not why you’re here.”

“What do you know about the Empire’s nobility, Lieutenant?” Olgolny asked.

I considered this odd question, wondering how my knowledge of the enemy’s upper class outweighed the greatest Royal Commonwealth defeat since the Empire’s initial blitz.

One million soldiers lost, an entire defense sector compromised, three star systems captured and a dozen more rendered indefensible.

Worse, many threatened systems were within the Critical Defense Zone.

Should one of those worlds fall, the Empire’s jumpships could reach the capital.

Knowing the defensive forces on most of those worlds, I estimated the Empire would be in striking range within months, if not weeks, and then it would be all over.

Imperial forces would take the capital, the Royal Commonwealth would fall, and somewhere along the way, I would be slain.

This war was over. The Commonwealth was dead, even if it would take a few more months for the corpse to stop twitching.

It was a catastrophe beyond imagining, and they wanted to ask me about Imperial nobles?

“Not much, I’m afraid. Nobles tend to be heavily augmented, often demon princes or better. They’re fearsome warriors, lead their battalions from the front, and enjoy melee combat.”

“We know how they fight. We’re interested in how they function within the Empire’s political system,” Marshal Dhahabu interrupted as she poured herself another drink.

“Well, from what I’ve learned, they select their leaders in a sort of, ‘election via assassination.’ Strong rulers survive, and the weak, careless, and unpopular die.

I submitted a report to Military Intelligence after the outbreak of hostilities, to give our agents some useful info.

I’m certain I could find a copy.” I did my best to give a military-style report.

Marshal Fedha shook his head. “We know about your report. It was received ten years ago, circulated to a few departments that never made much use of it, then filed in a digital archive, catalogued, and forgotten…”

“… until we found it,” Grand Marshal Olgolny finished, looking intently at me over her sake. Her amber eyes bored through me.

I hesitated, then decided to lay all my cards on the table. “To be honest, if you have my report, then I don’t know what more I can tell you. I don’t know very much about the Empire’s nobility at all, only what I learned from the girl I dated during my Academy days.”

“Yes,” Olgolny said. “It’s her we’d like to speak to you about.”

“Astrid?” Her face flashed through my mind, and I suppressed the sudden flutter in my heart. “What could she have to do with anything? I haven’t spoken to her in almost twelve years, before the war…”