Chapter 44
"Again," I demanded.
"You heard your liege." Darlitor chuckled from the sideline. "Again, groups of four mimicking the width of a standard ship corridor."
"Make it five this time," I commanded.
The team began sliding the makeshift walls into a new position, widening the practice corridor so that it could accommodate five shoulder-to-shoulder.
They latched the walls into the new positions and set up the braces.
The walls would be able to take a body or two thrown into them.
The training room was set up to accommodate a large variety of exercises, and today I was working with my soldiers on ship boarding and defense techniques.
Right now I wanted to fight alone.
It was highly unlikely I would ever be in a fight without my soldiers. It was unlikely that I would ever have to fight at all. But just because something was unlikely didn't mean I should ignore the possibility.
I wasn't the Emperor because I waited for bad things to happen before I prepared for them.
I was the Emperor because I had the foresight to plan for many different possibilities.
"You heard him." Darlitor nodded.
None of them would be in any trouble for hurting me during our training sessions. I needed to know their skills just as they needed to know mine, because if I ever needed them to defend me, they needed to know how much they could trust me to take care of myself.
Even so, the small squad glanced at each other uneasily.
Up until this point, we'd been training four-on-four fights in the makeshift training corridor, but the urge to go see my little hoomon was overpowering. I needed something to distract me, and it had to hold all of my attention.
The scenario where the Emperor stands alone against a small squad would hold me in the present.
"Do as your squad commander commands," I ordered, as I flipped one of my ears at him, indicating I was ready. Darlitor nodded and called five of my elites over to him for a huddle.
I turned away to avoid seeing some of the conversation. If I was ever in a scenario like this, I likely wouldn't have the luxury of knowing what tactics my attackers would take. I would have to improvise.
All of the soldiers on my ship were hand chosen by me, selected from the best of the best, with commendations and personal recommendations from people I have known my whole life. As much as I wanted that to be enough, I added my own element to the mix.
My society wasn't immune to backstabbing.
Rulers, both in my own line and in the smaller planet based kingdoms, had traditionally had to fight to stay in power.
So, when picking the people who were closest to me, I made sure every single one of them had a very good reason to want to keep me alive and in power.
I made certain their families were secure and their finances were abundant.
They couldn't be bought or blackmailed.
The only people I kept around me were in the vice grip of my own power. No matter how gentle that grip was, it still wore on me. I could never fully let go.
Loyalty was something I captured and held tightly in my fist.
My little hoomon was different.
She had no family for me to protect or threaten, other than her friend, who she didn't seem to concern herself much with. She had been perfectly willing to walk away and leave her behind.
When she met me, she didn't know I was the Emperor.
She still didn't know, a fact that had driven me from her with my own frustration.
I needed to tell her, but that part of me that wanted to be seen didn't want to give up.
I wanted to be seen the way a normal person would be, loved for the intrinsic qualities of their nature, rather than for their job.
I was born to be the Emperor. Being the ruler, of multiple moons and planets, of a space fleet that was intimidating and effective, of a military that kept the borders of my empire safe - I had power.
But I didn’t have the power to make someone look past my power to the soul underneath. I wanted to be loved for both sides of me, who I could have been if I hadn’t been born into this position as well as who I was - the ruler of my domain.
I had been born into the role, but I had also earned it through study and through blood.
I studied other civilizations and the structures of power they offered.
There were civilizations that were organized with assemblies of civilians and families.
There were others that attempted a full-scale, true democracy, where every single individual vote was counted.
Then, there were others that had dissolved into corporate-run civilizations that devoured the natural resources of the solar systems they controlled without any balance.
Corporatocracies had a high risk of collapse due to corruption.
My Empire had found balance in some aspects and not in others. My word was law.
However, when I didn't feel like swinging around my authority in deciding the fate of the trillions of people under my control, I let a council do the work for me. The council was made up of a mixture of noble families, corporate leaders, citizens, and elected representatives.
It had been challenging to set up.
It wasn't perfect, but it was better than the mess that had been left to me.
Unfortunately, upending the status quo meant I had to take out the trash and execute a number of people responsible for its state when I came into power.
I hadn't started off with that intention.
But the death of my first mate made it clear that I could never have a family unless I secured the absolute loyalty of those around me. I could never pick a mate who was attracted to me because I was the Emperor.
After she was killed, the first decade of my reign was marked in blood.
I didn't leave it to my underlings. My mother had prepared me my whole life for such a transition in power, for the fact that I would have to fight to establish myself.
She did her best to ensure I was surrounded by loyal supporters, but part of that support was based on their certainty that I could hold my position.
I had learned to fight from the moment I could stand.
I survived. My throne survived.
I cleared the challenges and remade the system.
Now, there currently wasn't anyone who could legally challenge me, other than the individual planetary Kings and Queens. They were the only ones who could formally challenge me for the right to be Emperor, and they were all hand-selected by me.
I had secured my reign.
There were more changes I would bring to my Empire.
I didn't want my sons and daughters to inherit a bloody throne that required them to fully embrace the predator within, especially because it looked like the children of my heart were going to be half-breeds, children born to a species that seemed so much softer and weaker than my own.
But it wasn't just the body that had to be strong.
My children had to be willing to fight.
Without that strength of will, they would fail.
For that - I needed a mate who was loving, devoted, and vicious.
My mind snapped back to the present moment as my soldiers broke from their huddle and came at me without warning.
They rushed at me all at once, keeping together in a solid block, shoulder to shoulder. My one advantage was that I was just slightly faster, slightly quicker. A disadvantage was that they all had armor on, and I was shirtless.
This wasn't the Emperor, fully armored, fighting space marines who had boarded. This was the Emperor getting caught in his skivvies by fighters who had breached the surrounding security.
My first kick caught the leader in the chest as his arm came up a fraction too late to catch my leg. The blow knocked him back into the others, his shoulder catching them as he staggered, disrupting the formation.
I swept low and swift, trying to catch their legs.
One went down, but the other jumped, his fist coming down to catch the side of my head.
I moved with the blow, absorbing the impact and rolling to the side and backward, clearing space between us.
The first soldier lunged, eating up the space between us, aiming a haymaker at my head as he got ahead of the group. I smoothly ducked under the blow, countering with a rapid jab to his midsection. His armor protected him from the blow, but not the momentum behind it.
As he staggered, the second assailant closed in with a sweeping kick. I leaped, executing a mid-air somersault to evade the attack, landing behind him and delivering a precise kick to his head that sent him ricocheting off the wall and into the ground behind me.
The helmets would protect them from a lot of the force, but I could still knock them out if I used the harder surfaces around us against them.
My biggest advantage was their numbers.
It was hard to fight as a group in a corridor.
As long as I could keep them from straight up piling on me, I could do this.
I needed to take more of them out of the fight.
The third soldier, seizing the moment, unleashed a barrage of punches and kicks.
I blocked and parried, but one particularly forceful blow landed, momentarily stunning me with a sharp pain to my side.
I ignored it. The medical team standing by would take care of me afterward.
I retaliated with a quick series of strikes with open claws, forcing him into a defensive position as my reinforced claw tips tore through his armor in rapid slashes.
I was not above enhancing my own physical weaponry.
As he retreated, two others swarmed forward, forcing me back.
I stepped over the unconscious body of the soldier I'd knocked behind me as I moved backward, trading blows with the four remaining in front of me. They pummeled me with closed fists. I tried to rip through their armor.
The fight intensified as we weaved through the narrow confines of the corridors.
I executed a precision low sweep, sending a soldier off balance. However, in the close quarters, he managed a strike. Stumbling, I quickly regained my footing, dodging a follow-up kick.
A well-timed sidestep and a forceful shove sent the soldier into the corridor wall.
My focus narrowed, isolating each action in front of me.
My claws hooked into the front of another soldier's armor, giving me the leverage to slam him into the wall.
A foot landed in my ribs, causing me to stumble.
I turned the stumble into a dive roll, creating more space for myself.
We had run out of practice corridors.
I was now in the open space of the training room.
Three left.
They bounced in place, a moving mass of focused predatory muscle.
Instead of coming at me altogether this time, one lunged forward, swinging for my head. I ducked under, rushing towards the other two, staying low. The next swung down at my head and back as I slammed my fist into his gut. It barely registered with him as he brought his closed fist down on my back.
I grabbed the soft part of his armor behind his knee and ripped into it, heaving up as I tossed him back on top of one of the others.
A hand clamp around my tail as a foot hooked around my ankle.
I was yanked backward, my feet coming out from under me as I landed on my hands and knees.
Blows rained down as I twisted, trying to stand.
Then a scream rang out, harsh, feminine, and alien, and I was knocked to the side by the tail edge of a force blaster.
I heard the sound of my soldiers slamming into the ground as they took the full blow.
I looked up to see my mate standing there, a wild look on her face, with a force gun in her hand. The remaining soldiers pulled out their weapons.
"Hold your fire!" I snarled in the room.
The soldiers lowered their weapons.