"You expect us to...to bow down to this.....Emperor?" Anne gasped. Aille abruptly turned to regard her, as the handmaiden went on. "But you're our Queen-"
"That's a meaningless title and you know it, Anne," Aille responded sharply, her voice muffled somewhat by the wraps that covered her lower face. "I'm no more a queen than I am a president, or a dictator, or a king for that matter. And I didn't say you had to bow to anyone. I said I expect you to show the same level of deference to him as you do to me."

Anne and Samantha exchanged glances, the two out of the five who were most opposed to this. But they both inclined their heads to Aille in agreement. "He's unified nearly all of the South," Sam conceeded. "And all the towns we've traveled through on this side of the Trench have had nothing but good to say of him." "Or perhaps they were all afraid of him," Anne countered, looking to the leaden sky. A few unfamiliar birds wheeled overhead, and they all brightened a little at the postitive sign. Seeing any animals alive and seemingly healthy was reassurance that the earth itself would survive.

Aille watched her four companions from the recesses of her protective cloak. Anne and Samanatha were younger, hotheaded and headstrong. Neither remembered as much of their lives before the invasion; Sanctuary was their whole life. Both were red-haired and freckled, sporting the pale skin of the Northerners. They were part of Aille's contingent because they were good guards, having gained strength and speed from their mutations. Lauren and Lital were both Aille's age, and like her had never forgotten the time before. Lital was short, black-haired and serious, and had some minor mastery over the elements. Lauren was tall and blond, and most valuable to her queen among the four. Lauren was a conductor, a person who amplified other people's powers. Aille would never have left without her assured help.

They all traveled bareheaded in the heat, unused to it, all except Aille, who was covered nearly head to toe in her cloak. They had been riding packhorses, shaggy and small but seemingly immune to the atmospheric changes. Even if they weren't, five sterile horses wouldn't deplenish the herd too much. All five of the women had to accept that they might become the same after all this exposure, although long experiments suggested that it was now safe. There was no other way to get to the Emperor's citadel except on foot.

And these last miles they had walked, to ease the burden on the animals, and partly because the buildings of the next town had come into view. It was more a bunker than a town, a small generated shield shimmering in the heavy sun. Lauren drew her lead horse to a halt and pulled free her folded map.

"This is where we stop," she announced.
Sam and Anne made sounds of disbelief, but Aille just regarded the small structure. It was clearly military in origin from what she could see, small and compact but obviously used and in good condition. No guards were visible as they approached the shield. Aille walked forward, almost touching it, as the others hung back. Her skin always reacted a bit to the fields, an offshoot of her own power, but it didn't bother her. Behind her, Lital said, "We stop for the night here? It hardly looks friendly, and we have hours of sunlight left-"
"No, we stop," Lauren said firmly, "because this is where the Emperor arranged to meet us."
Four pairs of eyes turned to regard her. "This isn't the citadel," Sam pointed out.
"Of course not," Aille said simply, still standing beside the shield. "Nor would you allow the Emperor into Sanctuary without knowing his intentions. It's precautionary, and it makes sense." The first figure drew up sharply just short of the barrier, wings beating hard to keep from smashing into it. Wings. Aille sucked in her breath, thankful that her surprise was largely concealed under the folds of cloth around her face. Her eyes were not deceiving her. Large, snowy-white wings extended from the man's back, bright contrast to the crimson tunic he was wearing.

(bunker..........Advisor present? diplomatic mission, etc..)

"Why not your own army?" he asked, pointedly. "You have a very large population in your own right, all people who follow your law as diligently as these people here follow mine. You could have brought them into this a long time ago."

"A decade ago, perhaps that could have happened. But in the first short six months that Sanctuary earned it's name, its fate was sealed." She held his eyes unflichingly, aware that several of his advisors were still listening to them. "Families came to us, and they sent their fighters to you. Many of your own warriors had wives and children they sent to me, thinking Sanctuary was the safe place they needed. In no time at all, the city was filled with women, children, and old men, although we did have our own share of fighters. Didn't you wonder why my assistants are all female?",p> "I wondered about more important matters first," he answered dryly. "Like why now you came here, what is your purpose in allying yourself at this point in time, and not sooner. Or later for that matter." His tone of voice did not change. "If we had been wiped out, you still could have come to an agreement with the Gath to spare Sanctuary."

He didn't miss the angry murmur that went through Aille's advisor's, but he didn't look away from the queen. Her expression changed very little, and if he hadn't been looking for it, he wouldn't have noticed the darkened hurt in her eyes. "I realize that in the years since we had last seen each other, you would expect me to change as much as anyone," she continued in the same even tone as before. "But I am still not the sort of ruler that would sell her people into slavery, in fear of war."

"Very well," he conceeded, "then what are your reasons?"
She shrugged. "They are many, and I think they'd be obvious. Those same children are now grown and have no fear of the Gath like their elders. They don't always remember the events that brought them to Sanctuary. They want to be a part of what they hear about down here." She paused, flicking a glance back to one of her handmaidens. "There are women who aren't content to be closed away in a place where the ratio of women to men is five to one. There are women who are fighters just like anyone else here and want to be a part of the army that is going to oppose the invasion." She sighed, looking at him directly again. "It's just time," she added, quieter. "Before now, they just all wanted to survive. They've done that. Now they're remembering that they were once part of something bigger, something they don't want crushed under alien heels. I've always supported you in this, Emperor, even if it was silently. But I couldn't make them all fight if they weren't prepared to do so."

"And now they are?" he asked. "Sanctuary would still have to defend itself, because I can't split my forces further to sent a regiment there. You have your own fighters, so you say, but they won't be able to come join my army in any great numbers, because once you've allied yourself under this empire, the Gath will be targeting you as well. You'll need your army there. Unification is all well and good for morale, for making us look more threatening than we are, but all I would seriously gain from this is-"

"Peace of mind," she finished for him.
"Yes," he said automatically. They watched each other for long minutes, their expressions inscrutable to the others in the room. Finally, Justinian cleared his throat and said, "The queen and I are going to talk in my quarters. Theo, Selina, see that her advisors are taken care of." He turned and exited the room, not waiting to see if Aille followed. She cut off the protests of her handmaidens with a gesture and left through the door after him.

The walk was long and surreal. The corridors were an amalgam of styles, whatever could be used best for protection, communication and appromixating forgotten vanities of the old life. Most here was solid stone, or brick, covered with cloth for warmth. Aille guessed that very little power was given over to heating, as wasteful as it was. Some lines were exposed, not completely imbedded in the wall, that were used to communicate through the smaller building. She wondered how different the citadel itself was, since it was enclosed in a shield farther south, perhaps not even the same style as this one. She wondered if Justinian would ever allow her to see it.

The top of his wings nearly brushed the ceiling, although they were folded in tightly against his back so he could walk unhindered down the hallway. His hair was still short, but chopped a bit ragged at the edges, as if done hastily and with no thought. Her own hair was more a product of added warmth than vanity, but she guessed they didn't worry about it as much in the warmer part of the hemisphere. As they approached a door and it slid open with an audible hiss, she felt fatigue sweep over her suddenly, as if she knew a confrontation was imminent and she just didn't have the energy for it. Part of her had been living on anticipation that she could finally see him again and tell him the truth. The other part had tried not to dwell on the fact that she wouldn't be welcome when she did so.

The door closed behind them, and she realized this part of the building was alien in structure, not manmade. Her trained eye picked out the telltale oblong shape of a Gath shuttle, with the mechanized lock beeping behind her. She didn't know if it was automatic or if the Emperor had locked it on command. The rest of the compound had been built around the shuttle, it seemed, which suggested that it had been damaged beyond salvaging. It would also be the safest place in the compound, with walls that were meant to withstand the rigors of space travel. It made sense that the Emperor would have it as his personal room.

He took two strides into the room and turned, his eyes raking her in a gaze that said he wouldn't be content with diplomatic phrasings now. "You knew all along that I regarded you and Sanctuary as a potential threat," he said sharply. "Your noninvolvement policy meant nothing, only that you hadn't chosen a side. You knew I would think that, Michelle," he continued, using her real name aloud for the first time since she'd entered the compound, and the emotion behind it made her wince. "What made you believe I would not decide to eliminate the danger and wipe out Sanctuary altogether?"

"Because we're human, not Gath," she answered immediately. "I know you, or I did at one time. You wouldn't look at us as enemies until we had publically allied ourselves with them. You wouldn't fight us until you had to, because you would choose humans over Gath any day."
"I might have decided that point would be too late," he said, his voice laced with anger and condemnation of her explanation. "I could have killed you, and your followers without ever knowing that it was you. It would have been a simple matter to tell me years ago-"
"I didn't know you had done all this, become the Emperor, for a long time," she said defensively. "We're isolated, cut off from your lands by the Trench, and going around on land leaves messengers exposed to the atmosphere for too long. We didn't connect to the network for so long because we didn't know all of it's origins. As for wiping us out, I knew that with your army, you would never take them so far from established lands for an unsure victory."
"What do you know about my army?" he snapped, eyes narrowing. "If your spies have been into my citadel so that you could determine just how strong our defenses were-"
"Justin, no," she breathed, instantly contrite. "That's not what I meant at all. I just knew..." She stopped, watching him, taking deep breaths to calm her ragged nerves. "I had hoped that you would rather believe good of us than evil, and that you would have concentrated on fighting the aliens rather than us."
"But you knew of me since.....since what? News Day? yet you didn't come, didn't send word through the network that you were......who you are." There was something close to betrayal in his gaze.
She shook her head once, quickly. "The network wasn't as secure, we know that now. At that time it was enough of a risk not to do it." She took a step closer, robes falling into place from long habit and skill, needing to explain and erase the angry pain in his eyes. "At first it was that no one could travel, not with them overhead, still planetside. Then, more and more people came looking for Sanctuary, and I found they were all looking to me." A strained smile flitted over her face, brief and ironic. "As I'm sure it happened to you. I didn't know if you would believe any messenger I sent anyway, that you might take it as a trap, so I felt I had to come myself. But I didn't think I could leave until Sanctuary ran under it's own power, til the inhabitants were secure enough that they wouldn't panic if I did leave."

"It's been ten years." The reproach in his voice was unmistakable, and for a moment, she saw the intimidation everyone else bowed down to. It didn't take ten years to make a colony self-reliant, to have others to step up to the task of protecting and governing it. They both were responsible for large populations now, and both were aware that a primary law was to have a successor trained and ready. "And after that, I suppose it was......fear."
His look changed abruptly, and she saw right away she'd hit a nerve. "Are you serious about that?" he asked, his voice quiet but thrumming with genuine hurt. "If you were allied with the Gath, if you brought an army against me, that would be one thing. But you alone, Michelle, you think I would-"
"Not that kind of fear," she interrupted quickly, putting her hand on his upper arm. It was an unfamiliar touch, and that bothered her. She had waited so long. "At Sanctuary, I was very needed, and very wanted. I had heard what you were doing here, all of your successes being sent out over the network nearly every day. The Gath are afraid of you because it seems like you cannot fail. I feared that if I did come here....I wouldn't be needed anymore. Not like I am to my own people." She bowed her head slightly. "I feared being useless if I came here. If nothing else, I could at least support your efforts from the North, and still be where I was most helpful."

He sighed deeply, the white pinions over his back lowering slightly with the effort, and she remembered enough to know that he was choosing the path of his words in the small space of time. Before he could speak, the door irised open, and the Advisor stepped in. Immediately, the white wings rose again over Justinian's back, and reflexively Aille dropped her hand from his arm to avoid being hit by them. Right away she understood that's what he intended to happen, how his body language changed to put a gulf of distance between them. She backed away as Advisor gave her a coldly assessing look. She couldn't tell if he was convinced by his Emperor's actions.
"The door was locked, Advisor," Justinian said simply, his words carrying enough censure without him having to say it aloud.
"I have the code for your own protection, Emperor," Advisor answered smoothly, "to come to your aid if you ever need it."
"And this time?" Justinian questioned him with an upraised eyebrow.

The silver-blue shield shimmered once, but held. Anne and the other pillars tried to control the urge to pace, to interfere with the rapid work on the generator, all four of them afraid to look at their queen, to see the terrible toll the psychic shield was exacting on her. Aille kept her arms outstretched, her back leaning against the waves of vibration like trying to hold the swell of the tides. Blood trickled from her ears, the drums shattered by the effort of holding the barrier in place. Her eyes were all for the work on the generator, as intent on it as any of her pillars.

"Anne!" she finally called, her voice ragged and thin. She managed it a second time before the pillar ran closer, careful not to touch the psychic waves encircling her. "The generator....how has it been sabotaged?" Anne clasped her hand tightly, forcibly keeping herself from dragging the queen out of the shield and to safety. Aille had chosen this, to help the Emperor. "It's the power source," she explained, limited in the knowledge of how the Gath machinery worked. "It was stolen, by the traitor. Advisor is trying other sources, anything to make it start." Aille shook her head in confusion, distracted by the pressure exerted by the shield, and opened her mouth as if to speak but nothing came out. When she stared at Anne again, her eyes begging, Anne felt cold fear steal over her.
Sam came running over, feeling Anne's distress as a linked pair. "What is it? What's happened to the queen?"
"She can't hear me!" Anne cried, her hands reaching out to touch Aille's face but stopping short, knowing she'd only be shocked as if struck by lightning. Aille's eyes went between them both, before a look of concentration came over her.
"The generator," she yelled, too loud, not able to hear herself. "What is wrong?"
Anne made her mouth move slowly and carefully, letting the queen decipher her lips. "No power," she said, desperately. "No power."
Only a handful of them had taken to the air, knowing they could be easier targets. But they had the advantage of the Gath having even less airborne soldiers, and the ground soldiers being too occupied to look up and guard from two sides instead of just one.

A roar erupted from the gun in Justinian's hand, a muted sound in the din of the battle below. The blast took off the arm of the approaching Gath, and with a pinion, Justinian knocked him down among the battlefield, not wanting to waste another shot of the gun. The power nacell was too hard to come by to waste it. Although others flew with him above the din, only he was winged; the rest relied on their own unique skills to fly with him. Wheeling with a skill honed over the past decade, he lashed out with the butt of his weapon and crushed in the skull of another Gath, one who had a human soldier in it's grasp.

The two dropped together, already intertwined from their struggle. Justinian pinned his wings flat against his back and dropped like a dead weight after them. The human soldier struggled free and pushed off the falling Gath. Justinian latched onto his arm, his wings opening suddenly like a snowy parachute. The sudden stop jerked both of them hard, but they watched with satisfaction as the Gath fell heavily into the alien complement, taking two more of his own down with him.

"My liege-," the soldier stammered, looking up against the bright light of the sun to recognize the wingspan of the Emperor holding him aloft. His satisfaction at surviving evaporated in the realization of who had saved him.

"Can you fly?" Justinian said in terse reply, already seeing a dozen more skirmishes to be joined. His wings beat in slow, steady movement, not betraying his impatience yet.
The soldier nodded, then lifted slightly, the grip on Justinian's hand slackening to show that he was under his own power. Without a backward glance, Justinian let go, the downward turn of one wing sending him spiraling into the next fight. It was war, and he couldn't waste time with any one soldier too long. With smoothness born of long practice, he brought the Gath gun around to bear, reflecting that the power source would soon be depleted, and his complement would have to resort to their own bladed weapons and makeshift gunnery.
Behind him, Aille's shield held, winking silver in the misleading twilight, as the turbolasers continually fired through it into the Gath army.

"Tell her it won't work," Anne pleaded, her fingers picking at Advisor’s sleeve nervously. "I can't do that," he answered, his voice reasonable but firm. "I don't know that it won't. If she thinks it will.."
"No!" Anne wailed. "She's already weak from maintaining the shield. This will kill her." "Then that's her choice," Advisor answered, his strides already taking him towards the joint where Aille was still holding the shield in place.
"She's our leader, Advisor. How can you be so cold about this, so...mercenary?" Anne stopped short in front of him, blocking his way.

"Because of that," he said, low and serious, putting his hands on Anne's shoulders and turning her around. They were within yards of the shield now, and through it the battle was visible, Gath and human, each raining blows upon the other, accompanied by the fire of lasers and other weapons. Above it, several figures hovered and dived, and Anne could make out the white wings that identified the Emperor that Advisor and the others deferred to. "They're dying," Advisor murmured in her ear, agonized. "The Gath are falling but so are our own soldiers, all humans who have to defend this place because this is our last chance, because we don't want to be exterminated by the aliens. Your queen knows already that she can't hold the shield up forever. It's impossible for anyone, even with the strongest ability." His hands squeezed her shoulders painfully tight. "She's going to fail, Anne, and she knows it. And she knows that we can't afford failure, not with our army out there. If the shield falls, they'll wipe us out, and we won't be able to defend ourselves. If she dies trying this, then she dies. But it could work, and the rest of them will survive, because she'll have drained all her power into the generator itself."

She didn't respond, couldn't bring words to her mouth because she couldn't argue with anything he said. Advisor dropped his hands from her shoulders, and silently walked around her. If they survived the battle, he'd comfort her then, when there was time and no threat loomed. If they died, then there was no point in last words now. He didn't look out at the battlefield again. He already was tortured by the images.

Aille was kneeling, and in the half-hour since he'd talked to her last, he saw the toll that the shield took. When she lifted her head to watch him approach, the twin rivers of blood stood out on her cheeks, dripping from the hollows of her ears. He knew what Anne said was true, that the queen could no longer hear him. Her eyes were fever-bright, sparkling unnaturally with over-exertion and pain. Her arms remained outstretched, enveloped in the silver-blue glow of the psychic shield she was emanating from her body.

Advisor knelt next to her, fully aware she was going to pay with her life for the plan they had hatched. The others were ready, waiting only on the transfer from Aille to the generator itself. They'd opened the roof over the generator housing, making sure there was no impediment between her and the machine. On the ground in front of them both, he spread out the simplified map of the area, showing her exactly where the machine lay. He was careful not to touch her, as Anne had warned him, but being so close made the skin on his arm vibrate. In a split-second of realization, he knew that her power was not psychic after all, not in the sense that they all believed. Aille's eyes were fixed on him, prepared to read any intructions from his lips, and she saw the comprehension dawn in his eyes. Nodding once, she smiled, a tired, wan slip of expression, and looked down to the map, fixing the point in her mind.

"It will work," he said, barely mouthing the words, waiting for her eyes to look up again to read the movements. She nodded again as he repeated it, then closed her eyes, jerking her chin at him to signal him to back up. He did, instinctively putting his fingers into his ears now that he understood what she had been doing all along.

Aille immersed herself completely into the shield, forming a ball of silver-blue around her. As Advisor watched, the ball seemed to spin and roil until it started to cackle with arcs of electricity. It swelled, the shield around it growing thinner and more transparent. Advisor saw that Aille wasn't immune to the effects of the ball, as the electricity branded her first on her arms then across the robes that protected her body. Her arms didn't waver until the ball stopped growing, then she flung her arms up towards the generator housing. Waves of sound followed after it like a comet's tail, knocking Advisor to the concrete ground, feeling the rush of sparks graze his skin as it passed. As soon as it had, he knew that it would start the massive shield generator. For the queen had simply made a giant ball of sound waves, vibrating it at a frequency to make it's own electrical field, feeding on itself. Once it hit the jury-rigged spark alternator that he and Will had put into the machine, it would maintain itself on it's own energy. All this time, they had been hiding under a shield of plain, disrupting electricity. As the ball disappeared into the center of the compound, the bluish shield shattered out of existence like glass, accompanied by Aille's shortened scream.

Advisor rolled onto his feet, automatically shying away from the bright sunlight streaming down on him, unhindered now. Behind him, he heard from far away the tell-tale whine of the generator powering itself up, of it's smooth gears laboring to send out it's own protective disruptor shield. But for a long moment, the battle seemed to pause outside, no one person sure what this meant, if they were staring at certain death or at a signal that the citadel was doing something new, something unexpected. The seconds were eternity as the generator worked, and Advisor had a moment to look to Anne's queen.

If they won this battle, he knew he would indeed be comforting Anne after it all. Aille's body was still and unmoving at the precipice, her cloaks blowing in the sudden wind, and her eyes staring sightlessly up at the bright sun. Turning away, Advisor made his feet carry him towards the main building, banishing the vision from his mind. She knew what she was doing, he told himself doggedly. She knew what she was doing.

Like any man, even any soldier, Justinian knew he had limits. But this time he couldn't obey them. There would be no next time if he did so. He had long ago abandoned his gun, depending partially on the longsword he'd unsheathed and partially on the searing energy blasts he could form at will from his free hand. It was an ability he still hadn't mastered, and had always kept in reserve in battle. It was capable of exhausting him too quickly if he wasn't careful. Anger made him lose control of it, or extreme pain, and the loss always burned his hand. So far, the seriousness of this battle had kept his mind sharp and clear, infusing him with a diamond-hard resolve. Another Gath transport exploded under the rapid blast, far enough away that it's explosion only enveloped more Gath. He turned hard on eddies of heated air, barely avoiding a shot from a gun in the fray down below. His wings could withstand a fair amount of damage and still function just as well, but he didn't want to take any chances and be earthbound for the rest of the fight. Seeing him in flight was what gave his army morale and spirit, and he would never let them see him defeated or hobbled.

The battle seemed unending, the enemy ceaseless in it's advancement, although he knew logically that the turbolasters were decimating them. His body didn't accept the reassurance, making it's own fatigure known. He could do nothing but ignore it. Another handful of soldiers fell to his sword, another machine of war destroyed by his will.

Out of the corner of his eye, Aille's ever-present blue shield flickered, then winked once and dissolved, exposing the citadel instantly and disastrously. In cold horror, Justinian half-turned towards the cluster of buildings, knowing with a sudden surge of grief what that meant. Aille would never have simply given up on the shield. His wings carried him two beats closer to the citadel before the futility of it asserted itself. He couldn't leave the field of battle, no matter what. The Advisor and the others still held the bastion, and it was up to them to pull victory from this. Justinian had to stop the Gath army here, once and for all, or they were lost. If Aille was dead, then returning to the citadel could do nothing about that.

Before he could turn fully back, something struck him hard in the right wing, breaking several pinions and the bones under them with a sharp crack. Howling in anger and pain, he wheeled about under the power of his left wing, laboring to hold him aloft. The right started to mend itself almost immediately, but he knew it would heal slightly off and it would impair his ablilty to maneuver in the air. It was something he'd dealt with before, and a crooked wing was better than no wing at all.

To be continued….

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