LotS/The Story/The Search for the Princess/Intro
The breeze whispers, sending ribbons of cloud scurrying across the soft blue sky. The surface of the lake, almost a perfect mirror of the heavens in shade and hue, trembles as it catches the words from the air, and passes them along its waters. They play against the side of the little boat, a wet, fluttering caress. The message reaches the Sian cherry blossoms on the distant banks. Their adornments, a resplendent riot of purple, blue, turquoise, and jade, quiver as they gossip over what they’ve heard.
Your gaze rests on the chattering blossoms, the finery of trees that exist only here in all the impossible vastness of the galaxy. Glories created for the imperial gardens, their beauty a secret kept from all but the Emperor’s family and those honored enough to be invited to share in their wonders.
The breeze shifts, twirling like a dancer. The lake murmurs in disapproval at this sudden and unseemly gyration, its waters undulating in quiet outrage. The trees lean in close to each other, the bright blossoms upon their heads mingling in clashing waves of color. It’s as though they’re coming together in silent congress, plotting the upstart breeze’s murder for the shocking breach of decorum. But overhead the clouds show no sign of joining in the general vexation. They’re enjoying the dance, sharing in its steps, twisting and turning into new shapes.
“What do you see?” she asks.
“Two dragons,” you reply, after a moment’s contemplation, “their bodies intertwined.”
“No…”
Your gaze drifts downwards, meeting hers as it too descends from the heavens. She leans back against the plush cushions at the prow and smiles, the slight movement of her lips completing her beauty like the final stroke of an artist’s brush.
“…it’s something else.”
“What?”
“Lean in close, and I’ll tell you.”
Her eyes sparkle with the promise of cosmic knowledge, something she wishes to divulge to you alone. You stand up, eager to share in whatever eldritch secret she possesses. But your legs tremble, groaning as though under some immense weight that they cannot hope to master. Their muscles are weak, drained of all the strength they possessed only a moment ago. You fall onto your hands and knees, the floor of the boat filling your vision.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
You open your mouth to reply, but no words find their way to your tongue. Only a meaningless mumble comes out.
You muster up all the energy you possess, willing your limbs to work, to lift you, to take you to her. And you rise. Her face flashes into your gaze, and you have a second to absorb the sorrow that mars her features. Then the boat rocks beneath you. You totter, desperately trying to keep your balance, though somehow you know it’s futile. You plunge over the side, and the water reaches out for you.
It’s all around you, grabbing hold of you, enveloping you. You try to thrash, to kick, to claw your way free. But your limbs are powerless, their movements stifled by the viscous liquid that surrounds them. Above you the bottom of the boat, framed by a burning halo of incandescent light, is growing smaller. You’re being dragged down into the depths, and there’s no escape.
No… This isn’t right… You’re not on Sian. This can’t… Your eyelids tremble. Of course… Not real. A dream. If you can just wake up…
Your eyelids are heavy. You struggle to lift them, to open them, to dispel this dream and return to whatever lies beyond. It’s a herculean task, a labor worthy of an ancient epic. But somehow you force them open a sliver, and…
There’s water all around you. You’re still drowning.
Your limbs try to thrash, but the viscous fluid encases them, throwing each movement into agonizing slow-motion. Your eyes sting, their vision blurry – smothered with green, punctured by flashes of brightness.
As your swimming senses start to realign themselves, you realize that there’s no water in your nose and mouth. There’s something else there instead… a respirator. There’s a strange sensation around your torso, weird but somehow familiar. It’s the tingling of flesh and bone being repaired at a rate nature never intended for the human body.
“The captain’s awake!”
Talia’s voice. It’s wobbly and distorted, but you’d recognize it anywhere. It cuts through all the confusion like a blast from one of her pistols.
The images before you slowly come into focus, assembling themselves into distinct shapes. Faces appear beyond a wall of glass, vaguely recognizable yet rendered alien by the green liquid that engulfs you. But one face is missing. Reality, bitter and brutal, rushes back into your consciousness.
For the first moment the voices are unnatural, mutated by their passage through the liquid. But then your aural implant begins to compensate. There’s a weird echoing effect as the artificially generated sound is superimposed on the natural one, but you hear their words rendered with perfect clarity.
You begin to speak, ignoring the twinges of discomfort from your chest that accompany each word, and hear your own voice reverberating back through the tank. There must be a microphone in the breathing apparatus on your face. Questions fly from your lips. You have to know…
Information is hurled at you in a barrage, your companions sometimes taking turns and at other times issuing a collective babble. It’s like listening to a chorus. They all know how desperate you are to learn what’s happened, and each of them wants to fill you in. Even when a woman in a medic’s uniform appears, and demands that her patient be left to heal in peace, they continue. Only Ragnar stops, just long enough to glare at the doctor and send her running from the room in mortal terror.
An emergency teleportation device. You’d heard of such things, though you’d never seen one used before. Alien technology. A gift from the Centurians’ allies. Talia manages a faint smile when she passes on what she’s heard from your TALOS allies. The devices have safety mechanisms. They’re designed to whisk people away to habitable worlds, not fling them wildly into the void. That means she’s out there somewhere, she and Rahn. That means there’s still a chance.
You try to struggle free, and yell in frustration. You should be out there, helping to find her. But they tell you that Wilex and his colleagues are trying to trace the energy signature created by the device. Until they learn more, there’s nothing you can do.
You force yourself to listen to everything else your friends have to tell you. It seems dull, meaningless in comparison. But to neglect your duty to the Sian Empire is to betray her. The fate of the war is dearer to Princess Illaria than her own life, and you cannot ignore it.
The Besalaad. They’re the power behind the Centurians – their machinations dragged from the shadows and hurled into the glaring light now that one of their number lies dead, having sacrificed himself to protect Rahn. You didn’t recognize the alien by sight in the frantic battle aboard the Zenith, but their name is known to you. As soon as you hear it, you understand the true threat the Sian Empire faces.
Over centuries that warlike race has carved out a vast dominion in their distant corner of the galaxy, conquering many other species and bringing them into their empire. In battle they can seem like animals, brutish and powerful. The tingling of your regenerating flesh is a testament to that. But they are advanced, intelligent beings – capable strategists and imperialists. It isn’t their way to destroy all before them, in the mindless genocides employed by the universe’s more savage inhabitants. Instead they subjugate, with force or threats, and over generations eradicate all traces of a conquered people’s culture – until their own ways are embraced instead. Through such means their empire has endured and expanded.
Until now the Besalaad have had little to do with mankind, their territory being so far away. But it seems that they’ve formed some kind of alliance with the Centurian Collective, and there can be no doubt of their ultimate goal: the annexation of human space. The aliens have made such arrangements in the past, a convenient means to subdue and rule by proxy. As for the Centurians, they’ve long called for the obliteration of Earth’s cultural trappings, for mankind to abandon its roots and enter into the future unencumbered by what they call the divisive snares of history. What better way to ensure that than to dominate the rest of humanity as the vassals of the Besalaad?
“TALOS’ diplomats are currently presenting our findings before the UHW Assembly,” Lu Bu tells you.
You give a slow nod, the movement stifled by the liquid. If anything can galvanize the other factions of mankind against the Centurians, this is it.
You discuss the possible results of this action with your companions, the potential political stances the various powers might adopt, and the maneuvers which could take place. All of you appear to welcome the distraction, as inadequate as it may be. And so the five of you talk, you suspended in the tank of green fluid, Talia, Ragnar, and Telemachus sprawled on the floor in front of it. Lu Bu remains standing as though at a military inspection, his robot body immune to needs of comfort.
Then a beeping sound fills the chamber, cutting you off in mid-discourse. Telemachus runs over to a terminal, and reaches for one of the buttons. A man’s face fills a holographic screen on the wall. After a moment you realize that it’s Chief Assembler Wilex.
“We’ve traced the energy signature,” he says. “We know where the Princess went.”