LotS/The Story/A Masterful Stratagem/Imperial Gardens
Imperial Gardens
"One of the drawbacks to autocracy (though of course this becomes a benefit if you happen to be the autocrat) is that they get to keep all the best stuff for themselves. The imperial gardens in Lanjin Cheng are a prime example of this. These gardens are supposedly built on land given to a former emperor by the noble families whose estates once bordered the palace (as a token of gratitude for the winning of some war or other), and are by all accounts the most beautiful in the whole empire. However, only the imperial family and those to whom they grant permission ever get to walk their paths. Even flying above them in an effort to catch a glimpse of their splendor is strictly forbidden -- and a complex network of detection devices in the airspace ensures that not even the smallest craft can enter unnoticed.
Naturally all this secrecy piqued my curiosity, and I tried several tricks to get inside the gardens -- from climbing over and tunneling under the wall to attempting to secure employment as a gardener. But every time I was thwarted and indeed pummeled for my troubles by the vigilant guardsmen. Until I came up with the idea of having myself flung into them by means of a makeshift catapult -- on a trajectory high enough to clear the wall but too low to trigger the aerial security sensors.
This final strategy succeeded in gaining me entrance, along with sundry bumps and bruises caused by my resulting collision with a tree.
Upon regaining my senses, I found myself staring up at a young man clad in gardening attire. He helped me to my feet, and addressed the guardsmen who were gathering around us -- brandishing their weapons and seeming completely unimpressed by my ingenuity. He spoke with them for a few moments in a language I didn't understand, at which point they departed without brutally killing me. I considered that to be something of a victory, and thanked my savior.
The gardener asked me why I'd been so keen to infiltrate the garden, and I explained to him about the book I was researching -- even going so far as to present him with a datapad containing what I'd written thus far. He seemed amused by what he saw, and told me that he'd escort me through the garden as his guest.
So it was that I got to feast my eyes on the multicolored cherry blossom trees, upon the legions of sumptuous blooming flowers, on the picturesque lake teeming with fish.
When the gardener was called away by a servant, to attend to some duty or other, he asked that servant to escort me safely off the premises (which was just as well, since I'm certain several of the guardsmen would have cheerfully torn me limb from limb).
As the two of us walked towards the gate I told her how marvelous a fellow the gardener was. She stopped in her tracks, and looked at me with wide eyes as she explained that the 'gardener' was in fact the Sian Emperor.
I was still reeling from that discovery when I arrived back at my hotel room, and prepared to write up an account of the day's exploits. It was then that I saw the line which had been added to my text, which I include below:
'Warn your readers not to attempt to emulate you. Anyone else who catapults themselves into my family's garden will be flogged.'"
-- Vagrant's Guide to the Cosmos
Even a ship as remarkable as the Silver Shadow isn't without its limitations. You discovered this during your training exercises, when you attempted to descend into a small-scale simulacrum of the imperial gardens.
Wilex and Lupin had together spent long hours replicating the detection beams and other such devices which guard the airspace above the palace and its gardens -- a long-established defense against spies and intruders. And to everyone's surprise, that technology -- as old as it was -- proved able to detect the landing of the invisible craft.
Had this discovery not been made until you descended into the genuine gardens, the results would have been catastrophic. For aerial mines are linked to those detection measures...
So one plan had to be abandoned, and another put in its place -- one which will make your task more challenging...
Sprint
"I hope everyone's feeling fit," Lupin says.
Beyond the exit hatch, across the expanse of tarmac rendered blue by a mixture of moonlight and artificial illumination, stands a sentry tower -- a ladder leading up to its roofed platform. Three more stand symmetrical vigil at the other corners of the landing pad.
Four sentry towers, each inhabited by a single guard. Four targets to eliminate, that you might pass from the palace's private landing area into the gardens undetected.
Lupin, Talia, and Kess stand with you at the hatch -- ready to put your fleetness of foot and agility to the test.
"Ready?" you ask.
Four confirmations sound in your ear. You signal for them to begin.
First the thief vanishes. Then the gunslinger. Then the assassin.
"Go!" the assassin's voice whispers from your implant.
You trigger your device, jump down onto the tarmac, and start running. The others left you the easiest of the targets -- that stationed right in front of the ship's exit, closer than the others. Just a straight sprint...
Your boots pound silent against the ground as you hurtle towards the tower.
Ways of Making You Talk
You clamber up the last rungs of the ladder and pull yourself onto the platform. Its lone tenant, a man clad in Centurian battle armor, turns in your direction -- alerted in spite of your silence, perhaps disturbed by the movement of the air which heralds your arrival.
There's surprise on his face as he sees that no one's there. It redoubles when the communicator is snatched from his belt and a fist crashes into his eye -- knocking him to the floor. One of the great things about being invisible is that your punches always catch people off guard.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions," you say, as invisibility falls from you like a discarded cloak. "The quicker you answer them, the less you'll get hurt."
He tries to rise. Your boot thuds against the side of his head, ensuring that he fails.
"First question: How often does someone call you on this thing?" You brandish the communicator.
Paradise Lost
You once heard a woman on a news broadcast protest against the use of torture by the military. She claimed that it's an ineffective means of getting information, that a person being tortured will simply tell you whatever you want to hear -- whether it's true or not.
But that only applies if the torturer is a moron. Someone who knows what they're doing, who can read people well enough to judge truth and lies, can beat information out of a victim quite effectively.
The Centurian on the floor is no hero. A little violence breaks his bones and his spirit. Soon he's spilling secrets along with his blood.
He seems startled when you draw your weapon. But leaving him alive would be foolish.
You meet the others back at the ship, upon tarmac darkening with the arrival of clouds -- a presentiment of a coming storm.
"Here," you say, passing Lu Bu your recording device and the guard's communicator.
He plugs them into himself in turn.
"We were lucky," Lupin says.
You nod. The next shift of guards isn't due for quite some time. Long enough for you to be done and gone, if all turns out well. You don't have to make arrangements for their destruction.
"It's done," Lu Bu says.
Once again your robotic friend may prove invaluable. If communicators belonging to the now deceased guards receive any transmissions, they'll reach Lu Bu's mechanical mind instead. And he'll be able to give an appropriate response in a perfect imitation of the relevant guard's voice. Moreover, he's passed the communicators' data to Wu Tenchu via the secure channel created by the Emperor's Voice -- giving the mandarin the power to neutralize enemy transmissions made on those frequencies as needed.
"Optical link check?" you ask.
You stare into Lu Bu's eyes.
"Confirmed," Wu Tenchu's voice says. "We can see you, captain. And I'll do my best to aid you with the satellite."
Your band of comrades moves across the open space, visible yet unobserved by hostile eyes now that the sentries are gone. No one will have expected a ship to touch down so brazenly upon the palace's private landing pad, and thus its security is lax. That oversight will cost the Centurians dear.
Nor is the wall which encircles the palace gardens any obstacle. Lupin simply vaults to the top, works his magic, and deactivates the explosive devices he finds there. In moments you're within its confines, gazing upon the ruins of imperial opulence.
The Princess sighs in your ear. The sight she sees through Lu Bu's eyes isn't a surprise to any of you after what you saw of the wider city. But it strikes deep nonetheless.
To walk the imperial gardens for the first time, granted the privilege because of your new status as one of the Princess' bodyguards, was to be flung back along the timeline of human history -- to the mythical place which is said to have been man's birthright before disobedience to divine will caused him to be hurled from its gates. Vivid memories fill your mind of that day, when you stared around in wonder at the many-colored cherry blossom trees which filled its sweeping expanse like crowds of ladies dressed in their finery, at the marble summerhouses and other edifices nestled within the gorgeous foliage that rose above the blossoms like little islands of man-made glory. Illaria came upon you amidst the trees and flowers, and it seemed to you that the universe had surrounded her with beauty worthy of her.
But now... It's like standing over a loved one's mutilated corpse.
The cherry blossom trees are bare and blackened, burned alive like martyrs at the stake. Their charred branches claw at the dark sky -- the hands of dying men grasping in vain for salvation. Isolated pillars and arches are all that have survived of the grand masonry, lonely orphans that mourn above the shattered fragments of their parents' bodies.
There's a distant rumble in the clouds, as though the heavens themselves are moved to tears.
With this sight before your eyes, you're glad when Kess returns from a scouting foray to report the discovery of a nearby Centurian patrol.
"Master Wu," you say, "can you silence their communicators?"
"I can."
"Then be so good as to do so."
Water Sports
They die in the darkness.
The Centurians, dressed in heavy, austere panoplies that echo the death of loveliness, sauntered into the ruins where you lay in ambush with the careless steps of those who reluctantly do their duty. Now they perish, their blood splashed on the overturned marble like that of ancient sacrifices daubing an altar.
Lives are scattered into the void by expert hands. Talia's pistols, Ragnar's axe, Lu Bu's metal, Telemachus' chainsaw, Kess' claws, Lupin's electric staff, your own weapons... Who could say which claims the greatest portion of the killing? Each drinks its fill of what seems more massacre than combat.
A woman wearing a sergeant's insignia on her thick pauldron is the last one left standing. She earns the pleasure of being interrogated for information, before the Niflung lifts her above his head and breaks her spine over his knee.
Three smaller patrols lurk out there in the darkness, stalking the paths of this desolate graveyard.
You send Talia and Kess to hunt for one. Lupin, Lu Bu, and Telemachus are dispatched to eradicate another. Ragnar accompanies you in search of the third. Each group drifts off into the night, confident in its ability to put an end to a mere half dozen Centurians.
Your own mission proves easy enough.
A woman's shriek and a man's laugh draw you and the Niflung towards the lake in the middle of the gardens. There, on the edge of the dark mass of water, stand six Centurians. One of them has a pink burden on his shoulder, a strange spot of color amidst the grayness and blackness. As you approach you see that it's a dress wrapped around the thrashing form of a screaming woman.
There's another round of laughter, this time from all of Centurians, when she's dropped into the water and her thrashing redoubles. The woman, her hair and clothing soaked and plastered to her, scrambles towards the bank -- crying out unintelligible pleas amidst her renewed shrieks. The man who dumped her into the lake responds by lashing out with his boot. She tumbles backwards with another splash.
Yet when the woman's head bobs above the water once more she again claws and plashes her way towards the bank and her tormenters -- as though less fearful of their violence than she is of the lake itself. Perhaps she can't swim...
The Niflung is already in motion -- his great bulk moving with no more noise than that of a prowling tiger. You break into a sprint to catch up with him.
Sludge Serpent
The machinegun roars silent death, tearing two Centurians apart before the one nearest to them turns round -- perhaps alerted by the faint noises which escaped the bullets' technological muffling. He completes the movement just in time to have his face cleaved by Ragnar's axe.
You fire twice before the others can raise their weapons -- each shot puncturing a soldier's helmet, skull, and brain. One falls on the grass, the second topples into the water with a soft splash.
Ragnar seizes the survivor -- the one who manhandled the woman -- as you help her from the water. A headbutt shatters his nose and turns his shout into a splutter.
Overhead the heavens boom their approval. Rain cascades from the looming clouds.
"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" she cries, the words tumbling from her mouth in such rapid succession that they're turned into something foreign and exotic -- and are almost incomprehensible against the roar of the sudden deluge. "The lake... The thing... It's..."
"There won't be any more Centurians in the garden," you say. "Can you find your way out?"
She nods, but continues to pour out a stream of words that resembles the water running in rivulets down her face.
"The lake... It's... It's..."
"It's okay," you say. "Go."
"It's..."
"Go!"
The woman takes one last look at you and Ragnar, bows, and runs off. Leaving the two of you alone with the Centurian...
"I've got this one," your companion shouts.
"All yours."
He drops his axe, grabs the each of the Centurian's wrists, braces his boot against the armored chest, and yanks. The man's scream is drowned by the blood which gushes from his ruined nose and fills his mouth. The Niflung releases the limbs, which dangle useless by the soldier's sides, and grins like a madman. Then he lifts the soldier above his head by throat and groin, and hurls him.
The Centurian travels a remarkable distance across the murky surface of the lake before gravity snatches him and drags him into its depths.
"That was-" Ragnar begins. But his assessment of his handiwork elapses into silence when the water erupts.
"Oh..."
That's all you can manage, as the gargantuan form breaks the surface of the lake where the Centurian disappeared -- sending waves of dark water cascading away from a monstrous saurian head. Cold eyes glare from a scaly black visage, rising into the rain atop a long, thick column of glistening flesh.
You stand there mesmerized for a moment, your gaze locked with the beast's reptilian stare. Then its jaws part, revealing savage teeth and half of Ragnar's victim, and its open maw rushes down towards you.
Just when you think you've experienced every murderous, seemingly deranged quirk the Niflung possesses, he goes and surprises you.
Even the serpent seems startled when Ragnar bellows a war cry and leaps -- straight into its mouth. It gulps as he bypasses its teeth, and is swallowed whole.
The monster's head rises at the end of its neck, ebon face turned up towards the rainy heavens as though seeking an answer there. When its entire great body shudders, it's as if it's fallen into a prophetic trance. Until the bloody wound appears at the top of its neck.
The rent in flesh and scales lengthens in the space of a second, slicing down the serpent's trunk in a neat, vertical line. The beast's underbelly opens outwards, torrents of crimson gushing in the wake of the still-growing wound.
Monstrous jaws open. They don't even have time to utter a death cry.
The immense body crashes down into the lake, where it thrashes for several moments -- hurling columns of dark water into the air. Then it falls still, and sinks into the black depths.
A splashing form cleaves its way from the beast's aquatic grave, cutting through the water towards you. When it nears the bank, Ragnar rises from the lake -- his powerful body smothered with gore.
"Best way to kill sea serpents," he says.