Book 6: Chapter 6: Whenever You're Ready |
”What we should do, I think,” Grant says, as he places Kiar and Ziavra on the command table, “is just treat it like how we’re meant to treat it. Right? Just do it like when we learned about Eqtorans.”
“Good idea,” Vora says. “Maybe it’s not strictly necessary but there is a psychological whatsit to be found in following the steps.”
“It just seems so—” Sykora pauses to remove a lock of her hair from Aurora’s fist. “Invasive.”
Hyax ahems. “We are invading, majesty.”
“I know, Brigadier.” Sykora sighs. “If Grant’s comfortable with it, I can be. That’s Mama’s hair, Rory. It’s no fair pulling Mama’s hair before you’ve grown yours. I can’t properly fight back.”
“Bwoo,” Aurora says, in that solemn straight-faced way of hers, as if entering serious reflection on Sykora’s words.
“We could put clothes on the biological holoprojections this time, maybe,” Waian says. “No ovipositors. Would that help?”
“It might,” Sykora says.
“Shit,” Waian murmurs, and pulls a stylus from its slot on her tablet. “Kinda hoped you’d go like no, no, it’s cool.”
“All good. This’ll do.” Waian salutes her Princess. “Whenever you’re ready, boss.”
“Whenever you’re ready, Vora,” Sykora says
“Whenever you’re ready, Lomanza,” Vora says.
“Oh, right,” Sykora says.
“Today we’ll discuss our preliminary findings on Maekyonite biology and civilization,” Lomanza says. “The dominant species of Maekyon calls itself humanity. From—”
“Actually—pardon me, Lomanza.” Sykora looks apologetic. “Sometimes when Rory’s tuggy it means she’s hungry. Would anyone mind terribly?” Off the shaking of heads, she zips her uniform down, slips it to one side, and offers her ocean-blue nipple to Aurora. “There you are, little terrorist. Do go on, Majordomo.”
“From their origins as tropical apes, the Maekyonites hybridized and outcompeted their fellow primates and spread rapidly,” Lomanza says. “Their physiology, as you are all aware, is quite similar to the Taiikari at pre-engineered baseline.”
A pair of holoprojected humans appear in the air above the table. A man and a woman, staring out in bland tranquility. Scrawled over their genitals like puff paint are two pairs of rudimentary pants.
Kiar brightens and makes grabby hands up at the projection. “Baba!”
Grant scoots Kiar closer into his reach. “Nice shorts on these projections, Waian.”
Vora giggles. “She should quit and go into tailoring.”
Lomanza soldiers ahead. “The most striking aspects, of course, are their males’ blanket immunity to compulsion, and their overall physical attractiveness.”
Waian leans her elbows on the table. “I have got to fuck a Maekyonite.”
“Turning to the history of Maekyonite civilization, we quickly discover one of their key advantages as a species.” Lomanza continues, unruffled by the command group’s wisecracks. “Their frankly shocking rate of development. Maekyonites achieved food surplus and permanent settlements approximately one megacycle ago.”
“One megacycle.” Sykora shakes her head as her daughter tranquilly drinks from her. “That’s rather astonishing. Your people are young as hell, dove. I always forget.”
“A series of fortuitous environmental factors encouraged a shocking amount of diversification, intergroup conflict, and a profound adaptability to environment.” As Lomanza speaks, the figures disappear and a familiar globe emerges from holospace. Grant feels a twist of homesick apprehension at Earth’s coastlines. “As your husband has proven, a Maekyonite has the psychological and physical resilience to build a home wherever they go. Maekyonite civilization thus occurred independently across multiple points all over their homeworld.”
Golden points—ancient cities—appear across the projected planet and spread slowly across the polar blue landscape.
“Their progress and history bears resemblance to an interplanetary collection of cultures, confined to a single planet,” Lomanza says. “The breadth of development and competition sufficed to create a rapid, driven, and somewhat haphazard sprint through civilizational milestones at rates many kilocycles ahead of their comparable species.”
Sykora adjusts the baby at her breast and leans in. “Including Taiikari?”
“Yes, Majesty,” Lomanza says. “But it has come at a curious trade-off. Maekyon retains the uneven gait of that growth spurt today. Many of their technological advances have come not from unity but from a lack of unity. From competing nation-states, in other words. For example, their first successful landing on Maekyon II—their moon—was conducted roughly a kilocycle ago, as part of an effort of one superpower to achieve ideological superiority over another.”
“Wait, wait.” Waian waves Lomanza off. “You gals landed on the moon before you unified? You landed on the moon before you weaned yourselves off petroleum?”
“We used petroleum to get there,” Grant says. “Superpetroleum.”
Waian’s face is a mixture of admiration and horror. “Fuckin’ hell. Moon colonies before global concord.”
“Well, no,” Grant says. “No colonies. We didn’t go to the moon to live there. We’re nowhere near advanced enough for that, I think.”
“What did you do, then? Why did you…”
“We put a flag on it,” Grant says.
Waian shakes her head. “I have got to fuck a Maekyonite.”
“This is Maekyonite growth in a nutshell,” Lomanza says. “In fact, it is a common Maekyonite myth that without their nations’ hypercompetition, they would never have achieved the level of development they now have.”
“Well, do we know that’s a myth?” Grant asks. “Considering that acceleration you mentioned?”
“Uh, well.” Lomanza’s face colors at her Prince’s scrutiny. “It’s somewhat farfetched looking at Taiikari history, Majesty, or those of our fellow sapient civilizations. As a rule, though, development accelerates post-unification. But of course there are no two identical species. I’m hard pressed to think of another world that landed on its moon before it had resolved its internal wars, let alone because of one.”
“Myth or not, it’s a framing we’ll be working against,” Hyax says. “Maekyon’s leaders—you will pardon me for saying so, Majesty—are belligerent. I don’t want to call them warlike, since that spirit manifests in less destructive ways than war. But they’re always seeking superiority over one another.”
Grant is moved by an unexpected gust of annoyed defensiveness. “You’re here seeking superiority over us.”
“That you and us is interesting, boss,” Waian says.
Hyax shrugs. “He’s not wrong. We can act like it’s different, but I’m sure from Grantyde’s perspective we’re just a particularly huge and fortunate version of the same competitive nationalism that drives his former leaders.”
“More or less,” Grant says. “It’s basically Void Princesses, right? Just without the strictures that keep them from open war.”
“With that, let’s turn our attention to the current rulers of Maekyon.” Lomanza clears her throat. “Princess-in-Waiting Vorakaia has asked to handle this part.”
Vora nods. “I am afraid this is where we need to be a bit dismal about your former world, Majesty. I was honestly shocked at the reports I received. I had assumed from everything you’d said that… I don’t know. Can I be blunt with you, Grantyde?”
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Grant nods grimly. “I’m braced.”
“I’d, uh… I’d assumed the freedom you’d talked about was something your world had achieved.” Vora’s face is full of apology. “For a minority, I suppose it might be. But six in ten Maekyonites subsist on the equivalent of a single Imperial credit a day. These numbers were improving until recently, roughly a hectocycle ago; since then, they’ve frozen or backslid. Thousands of deaths of despair every day. Tens of thousands of deaths from hunger every day. Many times that in deaths to preventable disease. A distribution of resources that fails to keep the laboring classes healthy and content. Your nobles are incompetent.” She casts her eyes to the floor. “I don’t mean to harp on this. Really, I don’t. I’m just rather dismayed by it.”
“It’s in sorry shape,” Grant says. “I know it is. I guess…” He bounces Ziavra on his knee halfheartedly. “I guess all the stuff I’m always yammering about, the freedom stuff, it’s what I wish we had. What we aspire to. What I aspire to, anyway.”
Aspired, a tiny unwelcome voice corrects. Past tense.
“We’ve divided your planet broadly into two categories.” Vora gestures to the map; countries and continents lift from its surface in gold. “First are the underclass societies. These are places where the improvements we offer the lives of the populace will be so dramatic upon annexation, that the calculus to accede to Taiikari rule is fundamentally altered. Many of these leaders are despots or figureheads for other Maekyonite empires. Their infrastructure for population control often goes beyond national narrative and the flow of information to martial or material security. When we arrive and remove that vector, their subjects will be relatively easy to win over.”
“I hope you’re right,” Grant says.
“Well, relatively.” Waian puts it in scare quotes.
“Next comes the overclass.” Vora indicates another segment of the Earth. Grant watches his old home light up in gold. “These are imperial societies whose nobles benefit from the inexpensive labor of the first category. It’s a somewhat similar dynamic to the Imperial Core, but as far as I can tell, your nobility has abdicated governing responsibility for the affairs of the distant territories, which has led to the rather appalling conditions we’ve seen.”
It’s not that Vora is disappointed Earth has despots, Grant realizes. She’s upset that they’re bad at it.
“It’s not a perfect division by any means,” Vora says. “And we’re lumping many needy people in with the nobility. But the main differentiation is in vectors of control. There is a belief here that, uh…”
Quiet again on the command deck. Vora fidgets with the finery she’s only recently started wearing.
“That we’re free,” Grant says.
Vora nods.
Ziavra chirps and wraps her pudgy little baby fist around his finger. He fishes a colorful little bag of breadsticks from his baby bandolier. “I guess we’ll disabuse them of that, huh?”
“We have a strategy that will quickly capture much of your ruling class,” Vora says, “and with their allegiance we’ll be able to take advantage of the staggeringly vast shaped-information networks much of the technologically developed part of the world has been caught within.”
Grant furrows his brow. “What strategy?”
“Well, Majesty…” Vora’s tongue shifts below her cheek as she tries to puzzle her next words out. “You categorized your nation as a representative democracy, but while formuating our approach, we're starting from a baseline of oligarchic gerontocracy.”
“Your leaders are a bunch of evil, greedy, ancient assholes, and a heaping helping of them are a kilocycle or two away from the grave,” Hyax translates. “The biggest vulnerability in the Maekyonite peerage is succession. There’s such a reluctance in the passing-on of power, even to direct blooded heirs, that its members are mostly decrepit autocrats who are terrified of their own imminent deaths. And as soon as we touch down and tell them we can give them decades more life than they were expecting, they will absolutely sell the rest of you out.”
“They, uh…” Grant puts his chin in his hand. He’s run out of gas to even correct Hyax calling them a peerage. “Yeah. Probably.”
“This isn’t weird.” Vora practically trips over herself. “To be clear. Deference to elders is not abhorrent or stupid. I mean, Zithra XIX is older than anyone here. In terms of an optimized lifespan, your rulers would be quite young, even. This is not some Maekyonite insanity, I promise. There have been many societies we’ve annexed or observed that have faced such problems.”
“The Eqtorans didn’t face it,” Grant says.
“The Eqtorans have music and the peak,” Hyax says. “That’s their own set of weirdness.”
Sykora wipes Aurora’s chin. “What’s a peak, again?”
“It’s the Eqtoran word for the influence that music has on their psychology.” Hyax sits further up. “It’s quite fascinating, really, the comparison between how a casual listener and a keyed-in Eqtoran react. I’ve—”
She pauses as she catches sight of Waian’s shit-eating smile.
“Stop,” she says.
“Stop what?” Waian practically twiddles her thumbs. “I’m just glad we have an expert on the Eqtorans now. Someone who knows them inside and out.”
Grant offers a half-hearted laugh to the round that follows. Sykora takes quiet notice and slips closer to his side. “Is everything okay, dove?”
“I just… something in me thought Maekyon would be different, somehow.” Grant breaks a breadstick in half and pokes one end into Ziavra’s hands. “Something you hadn’t seen before. Like we’d be a particularly special annexation. Or a particularly hard one.”
“It will be special and hard,” Waian says. “As special and hard as you, Majesty.”
A juvenile giggle around the table. For all the gazing into his navel this has caused, Grant cracks a grin.
“There are many unique challenges we’ll need to surmount,” Lomanza says. “The compulsion immunity alone requires a massive playbook shift, especially should we come to ground tactics. And there will be vast public interest throughout the Empire as soon as it’s widely broadcasted, alongside images of your striking population.”
“Maekyon on its surface is disconcerting,” Vora says. “But I maintain that the true story is far less troublesome than it seems. Grantyde has readily shown us that a Maekyonite is as capable of loyal love as a Taiikari. The problem is that they lack a worthy target for it. Their leaders are so rarely loyal back. Therein is our opening.”
Ziavra removes the breadstick she’s been suckling from her mouth. “Gawa,” she says, and holds the slobbery tidbit up to Grant.
He chuckles. “Thanks, Zee, but no thanks.”
“Gawaa,” she repeats, clearly vexed that he doesn’t want her gummed-on treat. And then it happens:
Ziavra’s eyes flicker.
“Holy fuck.” Waian sits bolt upright. “Was that her first flash?”
“Gods of the Firmament.” Sykora stands on her chair and lowers her face to her daughter’s. “Did you just try to compel your daddy, Ziavra?”
Ziavra looks distraught. “Gwa.” She drops the breadstick on the table. Her eyes flash again, like they’re reflecting lightning. A gasp rises from the command group.
Grant’s mouth hangs open. Thorough confusion takes hold in his mind. Is this joyous? Is this bad? Is—
“Zee’s first flash.” Sykora hurriedly scoops Ziavra off the table. “Oh my God. Her little eyes.” Ziavra looks as confused as Grant feels; a shared coo of distraught adoration from the command group as she begins to fuss and cry.
Again Sykora seems to notice before anyone else the consternation in him. Her tail taps Grant’s elbow. “That is such an early flash, dove. That’s amazing.”
There was already a storm in him; now it’s brewing into a tempest. “Yeah?”
“Can we—we will get right back to this. Call it an early lunch.” Sykora hops from her seat. “The royal family needs a moment.”
“Her first flash.” Sykora holds the breadstick in her hands like it’s a saint’s shinbone. “We need to take this ridiculous spitty little thing and get it plated.” She paces excitedly back and forth from the kitchen to the couch upon which Grant sits with the kids. “Or wait, we’ll get a relief done. Don’t want ants.”
“I take it this is a big deal, then,” Grant says.
“This is such a big deal.” Sykora halts her stride to kiss Ziavra’s forehead. Then she hops onto the couch and kisses Grant’s. “I had—well, I had the silliest little fear that she wouldn’t. Or it would be late. But that’s such a strong, healthy flash for not even her first quarter-hecto. Oh, dove, it’s…”
The tension in him must have some kind of radiating aura in how it slows her joy down.
“It’s wonderful, Grantyde,” she says. “It is. It might happen a few more times. Maybe even at an age when she’s able to make herself understood. It’s a thing to be painstakingly careful about. But it’s also wonderful, Grant. I know it’s scary, but it’s wonderful.” Her fingers fidget with the piped braiding on his tunic’s waistcoat. She’s pleading with him, a little.
This is what you wanted. You wanted Taiikari kids. You wanted all of it. This is what that looks like.
“It’s, like, five percent scary.” Grant manages a grin, and as he pulls himself further out of the reflection pool he plunged into, it becomes a genuine one. “But her first compulsion attempt was wanting to share food with me. That’s a good sign, too, right?”
“It’s a fantastic sign. There’s augury in the first compulsion. It’s like a first word. And hers was selfless. This power she’s been given, this horrible, miraculous power.” Sykora crawls into the babypile with Grant and rests her head on his arm. “We’ll teach her to treat it with all the solemnity it deserves, and to wield it justly. To honor us and honor her servants. And it’ll help immensely that she’ll have a brother and a dad who can tell her to bite void-ice if she tries to flash her way out of them.” Her voice ratchets up a tone. “Do you want that, Rory? You want the flower?”
Aurora’s eyes widen as she reaches for a purple puffball flower in a vase by the end table. “Weeh,” she insists. Sykora plucks the flower with her tail and passes it to her daughter, who busily begins destroying it, crumpling the petals in her tiny fists.
“We have twenty minutes or so before we need to go back.” Sykora touches Grant’s arm. “And you can recuse yourself, if you want.”
“I’m handling it.”
“Are you?” She looks keenly at him. “Talk to me, dove.”
“Vora’s right. I didn’t even really think about how right she was.” He sighs. “When your little kid’s starving, or working in a factory at ten years old, or dragged off into some dickhead’s private army, it’s not really a question at all, is it? It’s just replacing the evil overlords with… nice overlords. I want to point at it and say well at least we’re…” He chews his lip. “But what are we?”
“The great sorrow of Maekyon is that we will never know.” Sykora twirls the destroyed flower’s stem absentmindedly against Grant’s middle. “We won’t know how you would have become without us. Whether you’d sink or you’d soar. Everything we’re talking about, it’s all growing pains. It’s entirely possible that Maekyon would’ve solved its ills. Worlds have rebounded from much worse. Especially if even a fraction of them are as prudent and dedicated as you are.”
“You brought me up here to be the angel on your shoulder,” he says. “But this whole time I’ve just been… I’ve been preaching these ethics, but I never really thought about those people at all when I was on Maekyon. The billions of people who have it so much worse than I did. I just… my brain wouldn’t really let me.”
“What does your brain say now?” Sykora asks, soft and patient. “Now that you’re in a position to do something about it?”
“My brain says…”
Grant rakes his hand through his hair.
“I think my brain says Glory to the Pike.”
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