The Enemy of an Enemy

Chapter Twenty-Five

Once they were gone, the Emperor laid hisscepter down next to his throne and said, “Please relax, we areequals now. No need for such formality.”

Jerran took that as a cue to telekineticallylift some chairs and bring them to us. We all sat in them, and Ilowered my hood. It seemed the Emperor wanted to talk aboutsomething but was worried about how we would take it.

“I owe you all an apology, it seems,” hestarted. He seemed really distraught. “You see, many years ago Iordered the Black Adders to be formed and all who showed promise tobe sent to Arken IV. The official reason, as you know, was todiscover and perfect a defense against their powers, but thatrapidly changed.”

He paused there, and I could feel thesurprise ripple through everyone. What could he mean? I did notdare interrupt him. I just sat in silence.

“I was warned almost half a century ago aboutthis threat, and I was told their first move would be on Arken IV.At the time my plan was simple. By packing that planet with peoplewho had what I thought to be great power, it would make our Empirelook much stronger than it was, and hopefully deter any attack. Ifthat failed, I believed the Black Adders would be able to defeatthe invasion. To that end I expanded our search for anyone withpower and made the base a permanent residence for them. It seems Igrossly underestimated the power of our new enemy, and a lot ofgood people died because of it.”

He stopped there and seemed to be waiting fora reaction. I could barely think for my surprise, but I managed tosay, “Who warned you?”

He smiled. “Mantis, of course.”

That sneaky old fool! He could have told usthat, but no; he probably enjoyed how worried we were over allthis. In fact, I would not have been surprised if he was watchingus at that moment and laughing.

“Mantis is also the one behind you, Vydor,”he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“While the situation on Arken IV wasdeveloping, Mantis contacted me again. It was the first I had heardfrom him since his original contact, and he insisted that I assignyou to the Dragon Claw and send the fleet in.”

“So he has been behind all the oddcoincidences, then,” I said. “That ties up so many loose ends.” Irealized then that I had inadvertently stopped using the Emperor’sformal title. I was truly speaking to him as if he was one of myshipmates, not my god. Then a crushing thought rocked my world. Ifthe Emperor was not a god, who was? I did my best to put thatthought away for later. I had more important business to attend toin the present.

“I take it that he also told you of his planto make us the Council of Wizards for this realm?” I asked.

“No, that much I guessed by your show ofpower,” he said with a grin. “I must say you did very well. You hadHigh Command ready to follow you to war. Though I have to ask, whywould a wizard hit someone on the head with his staff instead ofusing a more civilized blast?”

It was my turn to grin. “Easy. He knew how tofight against bolts of energy, but had no clue about hand-to-hand,or in this case, staff-to-head combat,” I said proudly.

The Emperor laughed and said, “Mantis made awise choice.”

“Vydor, while he is in a good mood, nowwould be the time to ask for the Dark Talon,” silently promptedJerran.

“We have a favor to ask of the Empire. Weneed a vessel to operate as a mobile base,” I started. “Since weare already familiar with her, we would like to keep the DarkTalon.”

The Emperor thought about it for a momentthen said, “I appreciate the humility of your request, but thatship is far too small to support your operations acrossinterstellar space. I do see your need for a ship though, and Ihappen to have a Raven Mark II here ready for its maiden voyage. Ithink it would serve you much better.”

The Raven was a cruiser class vessel, muchlarger than the Dark Talon, and was designed to run solo missionsacross interstellar space. It was a far more powerful vessel than Ihad any right to expect, and I was thinking of humbly refusing theoffer, but then an image came to my mind. I pictured how we couldredesign the Raven to have sections dedicated to meeting our needto study and grow, and since it was equipped to grow food for itscrew we could travel great distances without support.

“A Mark II? I never heard of such a model,” Isaid. I was stalling; I needed more time to think about this. Therewas the problem, of course, that none of us had a clue how tooperate a Raven, but we had solved that before with the DarkTalon.

“Yes, this prototype is a new version of theRaven. The old design is to be retired soon, and this will replaceit throughout the fleet,” was his answer.

Over our connection I asked, “Okay, howdid you learn to fly the Dark Talon so fast? We may need that skillagain very soon.”

“I found a spell in Mantis’ library thatallows me to copy the knowledge of another. It does not copy anypersonal information or experience, just raw knowledge,” wasDarnath’s reply.

Well, that explained how the other Magi knewour technology so well. “So then all we would need is to getsome of his experts to allow us to cast that spell on them?” Iasked.

“We do not need them to be willing, butyes,” was his reply.

“No, I think Vydor is right. We reallyshould ask for permission before doing such a thing,” commentedKellyn.

I needed to say something soon before theEmperor thought we had fallen asleep. “We graciously and humblythank you for the Raven, but we are not trained on such a craft. Ifyou can find us the top ten people who are trained on it,especially all the key positions and changes, we can use our powersto learn directly from them. They must be willing to let us do it,but it is painless and noninvasive.”

The Emperor thought about that for a bit andsaid, “I think that can be arranged.”

“Thank you. Once the Raven is ready we willpark the Dark Talon in one of its bays and return it to the DragonClaw,” I said.

“What is your next move in this war?” heasked.

“Well, for the moment we are still far tooweak to take them on directly, so we will study and work onbuilding up an army to support us. While doing that we plan to huntdown the remaining four spies we know about and execute them. Thehope is that we can build up our forces before the sorcerersrecover from the blow that was dealt to them at Arken IV.”

“I would much prefer if you let us handle thespies. Just give me the list and I will see to it that it is done.Meanwhile there is still the issue of this weapon they are lookingfor, I assume?”

“Yes. Mantis’ people and we ourselves will belooking for it too, but I suspect that it will be either Mantis andhis wizards or the sorcerers who find it since we know nothingabout it.”

“It is in our best interests if we find itfirst. I will give you whatever you need to hunt it down.”

After that we wrapped up the meeting andheaded back to the Dark Talon. Once on board Kellyn had to pointout that, since we did the right thing by not forcing the Emperorto do our will, we got a much better ship and more information thanwe could have guessed possible.

I knew she was right. It was just hard to getused to doing the right thing because it is the right thing, andnot just blindly following orders. It was going to be a hardtransition to make, from just another soldier to grandmasterwizard. My rulings and decisions in this war would determine thefate of the entire realm. What standard does one use to judgedecisions by? It is easy to say just do the right thing, but whodetermines what is right? I used to think that was theresponsibility of the Emperor, since he was god.

Again I was hit with the question: if theEmperor was a fallible human just like the rest of us, who was god?What did it mean to be god? Was it just the most powerful personaround? I hoped not with all my heart, because I realized that thatmight very well be me. All through school and even in the Academywe were taught from the point of view that the Emperor was god. Infact, a lot of what we understood about how the universe worked didnot make sense if there was not a god. That would mean all of ourscience and understanding was wrong. But how could that be sinceeverything worked the way it should? Then again, this was the samescience that said magic did not exist.