Page 3 of The Imperial

“You’re more important. I want to make sure you understand about Rakkur’s journey to Loros.”

“I understand perfectly. He’s almost twenty-one now, so both you and Mikos can’t wait to put him in harm’s way, completely ignoring the fact that he’s still my baby.”

Rakkur groaned. “You see what I have to put up with!”

“Watch your mouth and don’t be disrespectful to your omak,” Davos said, shaking his head at me.

“Oh, it’s not just him I’m talking to.”

“I blame you for this bad attitude, Blake. As you can see, he’s not a baby, is he?” He turned back to Blake. “I’ve had a hard time with all this too, because of the way he looks. So small and delicate.”

“I’m not small,” Rakkur said. “Except here on Tygeria. And there’s nothing delicate about me.”

“He’s right,” Blake replied, finally landing back on my side again. “He’s the same size as the Lorians, and they’re actually a bit larger than most humans,” my omak agreed.

“But he’s half Tygerian.”

“Tygerians are freakishly large.” Blake smiled up at him. “So, you’re sure a royal guard will be enough to travel with him?”

“Yes. One of our best men, or so Mikos says, and I trust his judgment. Besides that, there will be a small unit of Imperials traveling to Loros on that same ship. Surely their presence will be enough to reassure even you.”

The Imperial guards were an elite corps that consisted of only highly decorated, battle- tested officers from the prestigious warrior class. They would be en route to Loros on the same ship I was traveling on to create a similar corps on that planet. Kalen had admired them greatly when he’d last been on Tygeria, and he wanted to create something similar on his own world. Since the threat from the Pton was ongoing, the king thought it justified the expense.

The Imperials had been formed cycles earlier by General Haggoz, and to be named an Imperial was an honor and a distinction meant to cap off a distinguished career after these men left regular service. There were about fifty of them now, and they were higher in rank than royal guards or even noblemen. They were in a class all by themselves, in fact, and ranked just below the Royal family on this planet that loved and revered courage and warlike behavior. These weren’t just “old soldiers,” resting on their laurels, however.

Because of how young Tygerians often were when they first went to war, the average age of an Imperial guard was only thirty-five. They were in their prime, and each and every one of them was a bona fide war hero. They wore short beards, which set them apart from most other Tygerians, who were clean shaven. The idea was that men with beards were perceived as more aggressive, dominant, older and more formidable. It was just another mark of their masculinity. Their rank was earned on the field and not behind a desk, and they also lived by the strictest code of honor.

“But only the Major, who is a Royal guard, will be guarding Rakkur, right?”

“As his bodyguard, yes. Others will be on board the ship, of course, including the Imperials, like I said, and you’ve seen them in action.”

The entire family had. Not only when they participated in the Games, where I had to admit, they were damned impressive, but we’d all witnessed what they could do personally, almost five cycles ago, when I had been attending the Training Academy. I’d been about sixteen, and some of the family, including my parents and Mikos and his consort had come to attend an awards ceremony and give out some of the more prestigious ones. Normally, the king and the crown prince didn’t usually attend public events together, but since I was one of the recipients, an exception had been made. I had a seat up front, along with the other trainees being honored that day, and I remember feeling proud that my family was there to see me receive my award.

My father was standing on the dais, giving out a trophy of some kind, when loud shouting suddenly erupted from the audience and several men wearing dark hoods over their faces rushed forward, discharging their weapons in the direction of the king. He’d reacted quickly, grabbing the young cadet in my class that he was standing with and pulling him down to the floor, while the royal guards swarmed on stage and threw themselves over them both to protect the king. Mikos leaped onto the closest assassin, who had made it the farthest and wrestled him to the ground, while his weapon was still discharging wildly. Shots were flying in every direction, and because I’d had the not-very-bright idea of making sure my omak and my brother-in-law were safe, I stood up and got hit by one of the stray shots. Before I had even been able to straighten all the way up from my seat, a disrupter discharge had slammed into my ribs, and pain like I’d never known before knocked me back to the floor. The agony began to spread sickeningly over my chest and side.

It took my breath away, and I was flailing, trying to sit up, and gasping for air. “Stay down!” came a harsh voice over me, but I had started struggling in earnest, not to get up anymore, but just to draw in one decent breath of air. I couldn’t seem to do it, and panic hit me hard.

My only excuse was that I was very young, and I thought I was dying. Someone was leaning over me, pulling roughly at my uniform tunic to see what damage had been done, urging me to stay calm. The shot had been glancing, or else it would have killed me outright, but I later learned that it had still crushed several of my ribs. I had the idea that if I could stand or at least sit up, I could save myself and catch a breath for my air-starved lungs, so I fought to get loose from the hands that were restraining me. Black dots swarmed in front of my eyes and to my everlasting shame, I could feel my eyes filling with tears. The pain was bad, and I desperately needed comfort. The sun was in my eyes, but in my mind I thought my omak was kneeling over me, speaking to me in that calm, soothing voice and telling me to calm down. I flung my arms around his neck in relief and kissed him full on the lips. I hadn’t done that since I was a baby, but in my defense, I really thought I must be dying.

For some reason, he was pushing me gently away and making me lie flat, tilting my head back as he tipped up my chin. What was happening? I was too weak to keep fighting it, so I gave in, and let him move me around like he wanted to. My strength was ebbing away fast. My last conscious thought was that Omak was going to be so mad at me for dying.

I woke up in the hospital, hours later, packed in ice on one side of my body and full of pain killers. One of the broken ribs had punctured a lung, so I’d had surgery, and I spent the next few days in bed, with ice being applied to my fractured ribs. I was still in so much pain that medicine was administered directly in my veins. So much I barely knew my own name. It was Mikos who finally put his foot down and insisted I be given less drugs, I found out much later, but those first few days were only a blur.

As it turned out, it was an Imperial who had saved my life. In all the panic, he alone had noticed I was hit and couldn’t breathe. He had given me breathing resuscitation and kept enough air moving in my body to save me until the emergency crews arrived. I never really knew all the details, and he’d disappeared soon after with no one even getting his name.

He never stepped forward, although the king tried to find out who he was so he could thank him for my life. It wasn’t unusual for an Imperial to remain anonymous. They didn’t like the attention, and eventually, the whole thing was more or less forgotten.

Imperials were a special breed, whose fighting skills were fierce, but who truly believed in selfless service, and preferred to stay out of the limelight. I was familiar with all types of guards, having had all kinds assigned to me since I was born, and Imperials were by far the best.

Blake, who had his own hand-picked guards, always said it was difficult being human on Tygeria. I believed it, even for one as ornamental as my omak had always been. But being half-human wasn’t much better. Omak was a source of great pride and even greater consternation to my father, who worried aloud that he wouldn’t always be able to adequately protect him and the other humans in our family. Considering the histories of his other sons, though they all looked more like the king, it was understandable, but still annoying. Even now, most Tygerians considered humans to be little more than pretty dolls they liked to dress up—or down as the case may be—and use for sex.

According to the family stories, Omak had been a victim of that kind of thinking for years after he first came to Tygeria, and I suffered from it now, though I was determined not to complain about it and handle it myself. Because Blake hadn’t been able to take the drugs to suppress his human DNA when he became pregnant with me, I was born naturally and had always greatly favored him in looks. That part had been a double-edged sword.

People said I was “beautiful” and “desirable,” which was flattering, but also embarrassing. It was why I’d had guards attached to me since I was a child—though some were better than others, as I’d come to find out. In fact, some of them were downright intolerable. Sometimes I felt as if I were respected by the Tygerian people despite my heritage, rather than because of it.

“I’m not averse to having Major Venkarr as Rakkur’s personal guard, if Rakkur’s has no objection,” Blake said. “It’s just…well, the last thing we need is a repeat of what happened with Nicarr and Major Soran.”

Years ago, the guard of my brother Nicarr, a man named Soran, had fallen desperately in love with him, and it had made Soran crazy with jealousy when Nicarr married—enough that he decided to kill my brother, in the worst tradition of “if I can’t have him, nobody can.”

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