Neptune's Massif (6 page)

Normally, this whole business would not even make it to his ears, but the Baron had taken one of the Imperial family as a wife, making the two girls in question Imperial princesses. Shalo, not knowing their true identity, had chosen them for his evening of relaxation. Mid-way through the evening, the Baron caught up with his daughters at the pleasure house while in bed with Shalo. He had Shalo arrested and thrown in the palace detention area pending punishment. From the sound of it, the Baron had been punishing Shalo quite a bit without even so much as a hearing.

The small group of people were escorted into the huge room by the armed Imperial Guards. The Baron and the woman that owned the pleasure house in question were noticeably nervous. The girls, however, seemed bored and rebellious. They were obviously irritated by something as trivial as an Imperial summons.

The Baron, possibly hoping to win the Emperor's support, began speaking as soon as the group knelt "Imperial Majesty, this case was never supposed to intrude upon your time. My house was handling..."

"Shut up, Baron," the Emperor said, stopping the whining rant the man was beginning. "Caleb et Shalo, we would pardon you of your crimes had you actually committed any. However, since you have not, all we can do is put an end to your current situation. That being said, this event has brought your name to my attention. I have need of you and your skills. I'll go into that in a few moments."

Shalo again bowed in gratitude to his Emperor. The Emperor chuckled. "Don't thank me yet, Shalo; when you hear what I need you for, you may wish I had executed you instead.

“Baron Hortes, it has become clear to the Empire that you have failed in your duty as parent and guide to these two girls. As members of the Imperial family, the actions you have allowed have not only brought shame to you and your family, but to the entire Imperial house. Punishment must be assigned.

"Madam Galtries," the Emperor turned to the business woman. "We wish to thank you for attending us this morning as we have a very large favor to ask of you. Would you be willing to take the two girls into your house and train them as you would any other apprentice, save for the primary duties of servicing clients? That enjoyment will be for their husband alone once they have completed their training. For your loss of revenue due to supporting two that are not producing, you will be compensated by Baron Hortes, as if they had been working every night equal to your top producers. We will assign to you two guards to provide security and to assist you in controlling your new charges."

"I would be honored, Majesty. However, how am I to train them? They are princesses are they not?" The madam asked. 

"They are, however, for you this will not be a consideration. You will treat them no differently than you would any common women that have contracted with you for employment. Just remember, they are not allowed to service anyone without their husband's permission. Since they are still underage and cannot be taken as wives, they do not have a husband as yet. Once they reach their majority, their husband may decide how they will serve him. Upon reaching majority, both girls will be given to Caleb et Shalo as compensation for the torture endured by him from the Baron. It will be up to him if they are to remain in the pleasure house, this time as working girls earning him more income, or if they will join him at his estate for more personal duties."

Baron Hortes had paled at the Emperor's decree and feared for his treasured daughters. "Majesty! They were only acting out as adolescents sometimes do! Is not this punishment overly harsh for such a minor indiscretion?"

The Emperor stood. "Look around you Baron! Do you think we deal with minor indiscretions? You have allowed these two far too much freedom, you have spoiled them and allowed them to become jaded and resentful of authority. Unfortunately, you are not the only member of the court that has done this, but you are the first one to get our attention. So we are setting a precedent with you. The Empire has no need for spoiled brats for nobles. You daughters are now the property of the man you had condemned for assuming that they were what they portrayed themselves to be. Yes, they will retain their titles as princesses, but they will be members of house Caleb from this time forward. We are tired of hearing of the follies of noble children running amok among the populations. This ends now. The noble children of this Empire will learn their place, and they will learn respect, or they will no longer be nobles, regardless of whose house they hail from! Now after you make arrangements to pay Madam Galtries, you are dismissed." He turned to the lead Guard. "Make sure the Madam is assigned two reliable guards for the duties I have outlined."

Instead of speaking, the guard simply bowed and escorted the Baron, the Madam, and her two stunned new charges out of the throne room. Leaving Shalo alone with the Emperor.

––––––––

"Now that we have handled that, we can get down to business. As we said before, we have urgent need of you, Shalo," the Emperor said.

"I live to serve, Majesty. Your will is my duty," Shalo replied, clearly relieved to still be alive.

"Shalo, once we heard of your incarceration for the lunacy we just dealt with, we had your records reviewed. You are not a normal, newly graduated student; before entering the Academy, you served in the military as a low level guard commander for your house. Is that correct?" the Emperor asked.

"It is Majesty. It was an honor to serve," Shalo replied proudly.

"Well, we're afraid what we are going to ask you to undertake now will seem more like punishment than a promotion. You have heard of our conquest of the Galaxy closest to ours?"

Shalo only nodded.

The Emperor smiled, stood and stepped down from the dais. Nodding to Shalo to follow him, he led the man around the throne to a small briefing room. "We have received some very troubling reports from our forces there. We would like to show you what we have seen." They had arrived in the small room and the Emperor clapped his hands once. "Display the report from the Benesian operation."

The room darkened and holograms of the report began to play, showing a single human ship playing with the Imperial forces invading a sector. Shalo understood from the report that the mission had been to secure the system for an assault on a minor race of the Alliance protecting the galaxy. When it finished the Emperor asked him for his opinion.

"Majesty, it is not my place to question this operation so far into Alliance space, I feel it should have worked. These tactics displayed by this human ship are the most important part of this report. So far, our involvement with the Alliance has been somewhat balanced. The human forces we have encountered prior to this point have not shown themselves to be superior fighters in any way. In fact, they show a notable lack of coordination, poor tactics, and disjointed, almost non-existent offensive ability.

The ship in this report did not operate as a typical human ship would; this display is very troubling. Was this a fluke in that one commander had a flash of insight that allowed him to so easily evade our forces, or is this a new breed of commanders? Our intelligence has shown that there is trouble within the civilian government of the humans which would lend itself as an explanation for the poor over-all fighting ability of their fleets.

"If this was not a fluke, and this is a new commander that has taken the field, he must be hunted down and destroyed at all costs. He must not be allowed to pass on his knowledge. He could very well cause us a lot of trouble in our conquest of the galaxy," Shalo said.

The Emperor nodded his agreement and acceptance of Shalo's evaluation. "There is a lot of this you have no knowledge of. What we are about to tell you cannot leave this room."

"I understand, Majesty," Shalo again bowed to his ruler.

"We have received spy reports from within the human faction that they have discovered a lost colony. This colony supposedly found a crashed warship and rebuilt it before the humans discovered them. In that time, they have made technological advances that we do not have any information on. However, there is a report that this new group of humans are nothing like the existing ones. They are ambitious and protective of each other. Much more so that the humans we are familiar with. Unfortunately, we have little knowledge of this new group, as they have refused to join the Talosian faction, thus denying our spies access to them. Even their location is a mystery to us.

“After reviewing this report, even before we could seek council from them, the priests came to us. They are greatly troubled by this development. They told me that this ‘new race’ of humans would bring an end to this war, and that they would eventually destroy the entire Empire. They told me they had a vision of this new race taking this city, of their warriors entering this palace while the city burned in the background.

"Shalo, this cannot be allowed to happen. We are sending you to take command of the forces in that galaxy. In addition to prosecuting this war, you will hunt down this new race of humans and destroy them utterly. They represent a danger to this Empire we cannot allow to come to fruition," the Emperor said firmly.

"I will, of course, do as you command, Majesty, however, are you sure I am the right person for this? Certainly there has to be many commanders on your staff that would be far more experienced for this," Shalo replied.

The Emperor nodded. "We understand your doubts, Shalo. There are a few we could send, but you have not been conditioned as they have. You are not afraid of failure and I suspect do not see such things as failures but opportunities. Above all, you are not afraid of us." The Emperor smiled. "If we sent one of the others, they would be so afraid of failure that they would not do what needs to be done. They feel we will have them executed for these failures, as we have done to our commanders in the past. They do not understand the situation as you do, Shalo. We could not order you executed for military setbacks because you do not give up when they happen! You get mad and immediately work to either correct it, or adjust your tactics and strategy to compensate for it. No, we need you to undertake this mission for us, Shalo. None of the others will do as well as you.

"We should also mention that you have been promoted, both in the military as well as in the noble listing. We have bestowed upon you the military rank of Fleet Admiral so you may perform your duty to us. However, the position also makes you our warden in this other galaxy. Because of the position, you must hold a rank no lower than Duke of the second circle. By making the two spoiled Hortes brats your wives, that allows us to assign you to the second circle, first tier of the nobility. From this day forward, you will be addressed as Lord Admiral, or Duke Caleb. Your immediate house will go with you. You will have to decide who to leave here to manage your affairs at court, and who you will take with you to manage your estates on Proferus Three," the Emperor explained.

"Majesty, you honor me greatly, but such a promotion is far above my family’s station! I do not believe we have anyone suitable to represent us in court. We are a poor house, which is why I joined the military; we have little fluid capitol and few retainers. I do not think we could even hire anyone for the job," Shalo explained, trying to think his way through all the implications of this promotion. No one had ever been elevated so far in such a short period of time.

"You have much more capital than you yet realize, Lord Admiral. As the warden for our new Galaxy, you receive the largest share of the profit gleaned in there. Come, there is much more that you will need to understand about your position. We have arranged for you to be briefed on your duties."

"If I may, Majesty, what happened to the last force commander?" Shalo asked.

Without turning to the new Admiral, the Emperor replied. "He surrendered to his fears and accepted his failure."

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A
RC Liaison Offices

Pleiades One Orbital Shipyard

High Orbit, Planet Atlas

Centauri System, Sol Sector

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A
dmiral Ian Williams smiled at the mannerisms of the ARC admiral that had been the commander of the fleet sent to the Rataac sector. The man was an ass of the highest order, but hid it well. He was condescending toward any human that was Talosian, but respectful toward
Terran
humans. Ian wondered, not for the first time, how he could tell the difference.

"All repairs are ahead of schedule, and our wounded will be returned to duty or at least to their own ships within the week," Fleet Admiral Broan T'rir said. "This is a truly amazing facility you have built here, Admiral. I would never have believed humans could achieve so much with so little in such a short amount of time. Servicing our entire fleet with only one station and still remaining ahead of schedule..." he shook his head. "I dare say that such a feat would not be possible even on an Alliance station."

"We are happy to help, Admiral. You have done us a great service, and we felt it only right to do everything we could to assist you," Ian replied.

The short, very muscular being nodded his acceptance of that comment. "I am most impressed with your Raptor Team Commandos. They are by far a superior fighting force. In all my experience I have never seen, nor heard of, such a small force single-handedly destroying or capturing an enemy capitol class ship. That is a most amazing feat."

"Forgive me, Admiral, but I would have thought you to find their methods to be less than honorable," Ian asked.

T'rir shook his head. "There is no dishonor in the exploitation of the weakness of a superior enemy. The dishonor is on the enemy for having them and not correcting them to begin with. I will be speaking to the Matriarch about this force of yours. Perhaps an agreement can be reached for us to learn these methods from you."

"We would be honored to instruct your people, Admiral. In fact, we have designed our training facility with the thought of offering training to the other races in the Alliance," Ian replied.

"I would like to tour this facility before we depart your sector, if that might be permitted, Admiral," T'rir asked.