The Princess of Caldris by Dante D'Anthony Page B

she held me safe again in her arms.
That day would come, I pledged. This was not that day, but I am an
Empath and I know: there are greater things in Cosmos and Worlds
than men imagine. That day would come.
    I knew the ride across the
Tangerine Sea well, straight to the Capitol, Cezanne Mons. The
tangerine is from the reefs, thousands of square kilometers of
them. I understood the name was from an Earth fruit. I had seen
them in a garden once, at the palaces in fact, where we were
headed. I had never tasted one. I had eaten oranges though, and
they too are an Earth fruit, similar it is said.
    Hammerstein’s angst
impinged on my senses like his soapy smell. He had his aircars
decked out with some serious weaponry. They were flying in military
formation. I picked up bits and pieces of his memories of Navy
days. Caldera Squadron, edge of the system duty. Hard duty, the
ships had gone into hyper then orbited the entire system. Over, and
over and over again. No communications with command. Silent.
Waiting.
    I sensed the man’s patience was like a
continental plate. Slow, persistent, and capable of volcanism when
pressed. I also sensed he cared about what happened to me. Didn’t
want me harmed, was determined to watch my back even if it cost him
his life. That was a good feeling, a rare one I was to learn. Few
people are willing to die for their comrades. Hammerstein wouldn’t
have blinked. He was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for his
duty. Any time, anywhere.
    His thoughts that morning, however, were
like a hover-tank in a moon battle; not about sacrificing his life
for his King and Star System, but about finding the kidnappers and
making them pay with theirs. It was the first time in my life I had
actually sensed an anger ready to take life. It was frightening.
Mother and Father’s minds had always been about the family estate.
The most anger I had felt from them was when they were ready to
fire an errant employee. Hammerstein wanted blood justice.
    I hoped it wasn’t clouding
his judgment. Even my young mind could sense an array of people he
suspected, all of them powerful across worlds, all of them
deadly-even for a battle hardened Navy veteran, even for a grisly
old detective.
    The aircars moved in unison
over the Tangerine Sea. The Detectives were silent, quiet as adults
often get when lost in their thoughts. How quickly they forget a
boy. A boy who can sense their thoughts even. Thus the quiet was
only broken by the hum of our flying machines, but in my mind their
thoughts and feelings were a symphony-sometimes sublime,
courageous, and determined. Sometimes dramatic, grim, and
portentous.
    When Cezanne Mons appeared
in this distance, swathed in clouds and even smoking that early
morn, I felt my usual excitement at visiting the capitol. The city
hugged the base of the huge volcano with the casual ease of a
people who had learned to ride and manage volcanoes like the pack
animals of some semi-primitive world.
    The Legislature buildings
stood biomorphic, with curving lines, a sweeping and
expressionistic architecture. The Palace buildings, smaller and on
a higher ridge, echoed the more formal and traditional symmetries
of palaces back through the ages, before the dawn of the space age.
They could be any palace perhaps, such as on ancient Earth before
mankind took to the planets beyond the world of our race’s
birth.

    Steve Allman
    The rest of the city,
private businesses and such, spread out along the shore lines in
various combinations of towers and conglomerations of buildings.
Haphazard, come as you are. Sometimes opulent, sometimes tawdry,
sometimes respectable. Sometimes-even I knew at twelve standard
years- sometimes very
naughty .
    People, they create new
generations, out among the stars, genetic copies of themselves, and
ever the same tawdry dramas replay. No wonder.
    The Detective’s aircar’s windshields were
graced with special displays-many of which not visible to the
ordinary aircar mind you-and I