The Empress i-3 Read online

  The Empress

  ( Imperium - 3 )

  B. V. Larson

  B. V. Larson

  The Empress

  “You can be a king or a street sweeper, but in the end, everyone dances with the Grim Reaper.”

  — Robert Alton Harris

  Prologue

  At the outer rim of the galaxy floated an arrangement of stars known collectively as the Faustian Chain. Colonized by Old Earth separatists during the Second Expansion, these stars were rich with human-habitable worlds in relative proximity. This span of sparkling suns occupied an ovoid volume of space some twenty lightyears in diameter. To the envious eyes of distant worlds, the Faustian Chain resembled a jellyfish-shaped constellation interlaced with plasma-streams, glowing nebulae and glimmering pinpoints of light.

  In the region of the Chain known as the Northern Arm, the local Nexus government officials from Neu Schweitz still held sway, while the majority of the southern colonies such as Mendelia and Tranquility existed in relative isolation-and in some cases anarchy.

  The most infamous of the worlds in the Northern Arm was Ignis Glace, a small planet that circled a miniscule, dim red dwarf. The ancient Latin word for fire is: ignis, and the word for ice is: glace. The world possessed a very odd climate that lived up to its name. It orbited tightly within the red star’s narrow band of habitable space and would normally have enjoyed a mean surface temperature slightly warmer than that of Old Earth. But the climate was much harsher on Ignis Glace. The pitiful planet was tidally-locked with its star, meaning that one side permanently faced its sun, while the other side endured everlasting darkness.

  Due to its unusual orbital configuration, the world was divided into three broad categories of landscape unknown to other colonies. Nightside was a vast region of dirty glaciers and darkness, Sunside was a place of unrelenting radiation, and Twilight was the relatively comfortable zone where most of the population resided. Twilight occupied a belt of land near the terminator line, where the sun hung forever on the horizon in a fixed location. In this hundred-mile wide region that circled the planet’s waist, the sun was visible and provided sufficient warmth, but did not beat down with unmerciful intensity.

  As with so many worlds living in isolation from their brethren colonies, Ignis Glace had developed a culture of its own which was shaped by the conditions of the planet. In coping with the unique difficulties of their environment, the colonists and their descendants had adapted a social structure most outsiders thought of as unpleasant. The structure came about due to the requirement of gathering resources from the Sunside and Nightside regions. Not everyone could work in the relative comfort of Twilight. Rich veins of metals, valuable radioactives and rare building materials were abundant, but few wished to labor where the sun could cook your eyeballs like eggs-or where the lack of it could freeze them solid.

  At first, honest rugged frontiersmen took on the difficult work. Legendary characters were spawned and entered the colony folklore within their own lifespans. Pioneering Sunside miners such as One-Eyed Otto, with his toasted, hairless and well-tumored skin, became as famous as fur-clad, goggle-wearing, toeless Nightsiders like Matilda Chenard. But over time, as the labor demands exceeded the supply of such individuals, prisoners came to be used instead. Those convicted of major crimes were given a virtual death sentence. They were ordered to work for years under grueling, dangerous conditions. Still, these gulags were not enough. The need for colony labor in the ice mines and sand-dredgers remained unquenched.

  By the end of the fifth decade after colonization, mechs became the universal answer to the labor shortage. Human brains were combined with artificial bodies, allowing survival under extreme conditions. After a goodly mind-scrub, these hybrids of flesh and machine worked happily enough in the most inhospitable of environments.

  At first, only the most heinous of crimes warranted permanent service as a mech, but over time the laws grew more strict, and almost any trespass would do. Prisoners were sentenced with regularity to this grim fate. Their fleshly bodies were removed and discarded like ragged clothing. Their minds were cleansed of negative thoughts, and they were reborn as industrious creatures of blended metal, polymers and submerged brain-tissue.

  By the end of the first century after colonization, as fateful events were unfolding on nearby worlds, the creation of new mechs by the ruling class had become a matter of course. The wealth flowing from the enslaved workers now seemed limitless. Privileged families had gone beyond the designation of ‘metals-merchant’ or ‘factory-owner’. They had taken titles for themselves which were now handed down in a hereditary chain. Likewise, the ranks of the laboring classes had become locked in their servile roles. Over the years, they came to provide the critical function of breeding stock for the express purpose of producing the next generation of mech laborers. While those at the bottom felt sullen and abused, those at the top warred among themselves.

  Among the mechs, few could be found that were anything but ecstatic with their role. Their minds had been conditioned and altered so that they experienced a rush of dopamine, serotonin and endorphins when their masters were pleased with them. Who could blame a mech guard, for example, if he were to feel ecstasy while collecting a harsh tax payment from a bleeding serf?

  There was a sole mech among them, however, who was made differently…

  One

  An individual awoke with a gasp. He opened his orbs for the first time, snapping polymer orb-shields in confusion. It seemed to him he had a tremendous headache, and felt a dozen other burning, itching sensations as well.

  He did not know much, but he knew he was in a strange place. He tried to recall how he had come to be here, but failed. Attempting to reach up to his face, he found himself restrained. Fear jolted his body-but he did not feel a heart racing in his chest.

  He looked downward to see what it was that restrained him. Fear changed to horror as he saw he was manacled to a metal table. His horror increased as he saw his hand was not a hand, but a gripper. The metal appendage clacked, its two opposing mandibles snapping together like the claws of a crab. Where had his hand gone?

  Sick despair filled him as he realized the truth: he was a mech. He could not recall who he had been, but he was certain he had begun life as a normal human. Confused, his eyes roamed his environment, which consisted of a dusty cubicle no more than a dozen paces wide in any direction. The walls resembled black iron. There were instruments suspended on retractable arms overhead. The arm directly above him terminated in a silent, motionless drill with a diamond point that sparkled no more than six inches from his face.

  “How could this have happened?” he asked no one. His voice reverberated in his audio implants, but he did not recognize it.

  He lay there, examining his environment and wondering about the crimes he must have committed, but which he could not recall. He did not cry out for help or make demands of his captors. Mechs were convicted prisoners, minds in metal bodies for which humans had little sympathy. Due to some great error in judgment on their part, every mech had passed on and become a servant. This fate was both a punishment and a form of redemption. Everyone on Ignis Glace understood mechs deserved their fate.

  He hesitated to call for help because he knew his mind had been wiped, but not yet conditioned. He did not relish the thought of accelerating the process to the final conclusive step. Once conditioned, he would probably enjoy lying here in a dirty room awaiting the pleasure of his new masters.

  So he waited quietly, listening. He savored the last of his mental freedoms. He was still half-human-at least on the inside, where it counted. He tried to soak in every moment.

  Time passed and he grew bored with listening and looking about. There was little in the way of input for his artific
ial senses. His wireless networking systems had not yet been activated, so he could not seek help that way.

  The wind blew harshly outside, that was the greatest single sound. It howled and lashed the exposed surface, but this was nothing new to a citizen of his world. On a planet that exhibited such climate extremes, the atmosphere shifted often.

  Growing more accustomed to his body, the newborn mech found he had a sensor that could measure the external temperature. It was hovering near one hundred forty degrees, even inside this shaded shelter.

  “Sunside,” he whispered to himself.

  He could scarcely believe his misfortune. Not even mechs lasted many years laboring in the sandblasted mines amidst the hottest wastelands of Ignis Glace.

  A dozen hours passed, then a dozen more. Cursed with an internal atomic clock, the newborn mech was able to count and chronicle every moment. The people of Ignis Glace did not measure time in days or weeks. There were no mornings or afternoons. The concept of a “day” was an abstract one here, as the sun never moved from its fixed location in the sky. There was only Sunside, Nightside and Twilight. The only way to see the sun crawl to a new angle was to physically move yourself over the surface of the planet.

  As there were no days or nights, the inhabitants had developed their own system to measure time. They used a methodical progression of ten-hour “days” which corresponded to the length of a standard day on Old Earth. Each hour, approximately 2.4 Earth hours long, was further divided into minutes that were longer than a minute on most worlds, but not impossibly so.

  When the howling sandstorm outside finally halted and quiet reigned, the abandoned creature on the hot metal table listened carefully, but heard nothing more than the ticks and creaks of steel surfaces reacting to the blazing heat of the red sun he knew hovered overhead. He imagined the red sun like a great malevolent eye, staying in its place in the heavens for millennia, forever surveying the deserts it had heartlessly created.

  Drifting clouds of dust and fleeting tendrils of moisture from other regions of the planet occasionally obscured the star’s glare, and in those blessed times the temperature on the ground quickly plummeted. The metal building the mech found himself trapped in clicked and groaned like a cooling oven in those respites.

  By the time twenty more long hours had past, the mech on the table had lost his complacency. He’d become annoyed with his predicament and wanted nothing more now than to call his keepers and demand they finish their grim task. At least, if his mind were fully erased, he could endure this long-term storage without boredom. Whoever ran this place, they’d already begun to treat him like one of the permanently happy mechs who might not have minded being left on this hot table for days. To them, he was a machine-a tool to be used as needed. Leaving him here was not a crime so much as an oversight, like leaving the power on at the office after retiring.

  Timidly at first, the mech began to cry out. He did so in a conversational tone to start with, but soon dialed up the volume of his voice, which was powered by speakers rather than fleshly lungs. By the end of the second hour of calling for help, he’d begun to bellow and slam his steel feet against one another like cymbals at the bottom of the table. This created an amazing din of sound-but still, no one came to check on him. There was no response at all.

  By the third day, the mech had come to understand he’d been abandoned. He had not thought his despair at awakening to find himself clothed in a metal body and consigned to a thoughtless life of servitude could be so quickly trumped by a new, worse fate-but it had. He realized that he was going to lie here indefinitely, slowly going mad.

  Mechs did not die easily, but they did require some sustenance. In his case, as he was a rugged model designed for labor in a harsh landscape, he was equipped with a fusion core generator that would keep his metal body operating for decades. The flesh that was his mind, however, required more than electricity. It required a source of glucose. Theoretically, a mech could starve to death after a long enough period. He did not know how long it would take, but it would take a very long time, of that he was sure.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t even have starvation to look forward to. He had been given a drip-line, which ran from the instrumentation in the ceiling to his chassis. It was feeding him the same boring, tasteless clear liquid in measured, hourly amounts. He didn’t know how big the storage tanks were, but it was very likely he was going to spend a very long time lying here on this table.

  It was not the hours or the days that the mech on the metal table feared, however. It was the ten-days, which consisted of ten, ten-hour days, and the months, which on this world were each ten ten-days long. The years on Ignis Glace were the only measurement of time that corresponded to a celestial event: the circling of the planet around its dim red star. It did so at a sedate pace, taking seventy-nine Earth years to do so. Years were made up of a hundred months. Therefore, it was not the hours or days that the captive feared. It was the months-and the terrifyingly long years.

  He tried to sleep, but there were no nights, and the orb-shields over his optic orbs did not shut out all the light. Besides, mechs didn’t need sleep often. Normally, they didn’t need to dream the way humans did. That part of their psyche was routinely deleted as part of the process of creating them. In his case, however, he had not undergone that final step. He found himself dozing and dreaming.

  He tried to weep, but only strange warbling sounds came from his speakers. His orbs were not structured to produce tears.

  #

  After the seventh day had passed he grew desperate. Whoever was running this place, they’d forgotten about him at the very least. He had tried to break his bonds, and failed despite many raging attempts.

  He had a new thought at the end of the eighth, long day. If he could not free himself or get anyone’s attention, perhaps terminating his own life was for the best. At least there would be an ending to this boring existence. He developed a plan, and carefully began to execute it.

  The drip-line that led down to his chassis could be touched by that portion of his metal anatomy that mostly closely resembled a chin. It was the bottom of his head section, to be precise, where his head met the neck. By extending this corner of metal to its fullest, he was able to brush the drip-line, and with careful contortions of his body, he managed to get the tube to catch there.

  Time and time again, as the more long days passed by, he worked to hook the drip-line with his chin and sever it. Always, it slipped away. Being made of plastic, however, it eventually lengthened, allowing him to catch it more firmly. When he finally did so-he tore it loose.

  He allowed his head to sag back down onto the table again, and an odd sound came from his speakers. He was not sure if he was laughing or crying.

  Yellow, oily glucose dribbled onto his casing, but he ignored it, unconcerned. Either an alarm would be sent to an operator who might remember the forgotten soul in this chamber-or no one would come, and he would eventually starve to death. Either way, an eventual end to his torment was assured.

  He’d finally gotten his grippers onto this tiny corner of his own fate, and he’d ripped it loose on his own terms. He’d altered his destiny significantly, turning onto a course of his own devising. Somehow, this tiny victory was immensely satisfying.

  Two days later the glucose finally ran out. It had dried into a sticky puddle that coated his chestplate, the table, and the dark metal grid that formed the floor below. No one had ever come to check on the ruptured line. The mech on the table did not care, however. He’d won, as far as he was concerned. He’d ended his miserable existence. All he had to do was wait it out. He hoped fervently that whatever junior operator was responsible for this situation would have to explain the mess on the table at some point. The operator would probably receive nothing more than a reprimand, but at least it was something. With luck, the man in charge would curse this crazy mech that had drained an entire tank of feed to starve itself.

  During this hours-long period of self-satisfactio
n, a new thought slowly formed. The mech came to wonder if he could apply the same approach he’d used with the drip-line to another endeavor. Brittle substances tended to break when flexed repeatedly-perhaps he could attempt a new depredation to further inconvenience his thoughtless masters. Like an angry abandoned pet that soils a fine carpet to avenge itself, he set about to do exactly that.

  He could not break his bonds, of that he was certain. They’d been built to hold a mech in place, and they were successful in this regard. However, damaging the bonds themselves was not his goal.

  He decided to break his own arm. He considered each in turn, and selected the right arm in the end. The left seemed more important to him somehow-possibly, he’d been born left-handed in his prior life. He broke his right by flexing it to its extremes, back and forth, through countless repetitions. Eventually, the temperature gauges from the arm structure signaled him they were hot with friction. He ignored the alarms, continuing the process.

  It took hours, but eventually, as a second sandstorm in as many ten-days raged outside, the arm broke. Cackling and exulting, the mech raised his right stump up and flapped it in front of his face. A thick, gray spring spiraled up from the square struts like a finger. This struck him as amusing.

  When he’d tired of pointless celebration, he suddenly realized he was light-headed. He supposed his internal reservoirs of glucose and oils must be running very low, and perhaps he’d begun to starve. It seemed a pity not to enjoy this new triumph, so he used the broken arm to catch the drip-line and push it into his mouth. Perhaps due to tradition, mechs could feed by drinking or masticating sustenance through a mechanical orifice located beneath the sensory equipment-approximately where the human mouth was located. Their chemical stomachs were poor at digesting anything other than liquids, but they could leech out enough sugars to keep the three-pound organic mass of their brains alive fairly easily.