Free Battle for Earth by Keith Mansfield Page A

sail for Andromeda and meet the Nameless One head on. When the fight is joined, I will not allow our Milky Way to be the battlefield again.”
    â€œYou really think Nymac’s dead?” asked Clara. Her eyes had almost returned to normal.
    â€œWithout a doubt,” Bram replied, still gazing lovingly upward. “His once great forces have been routed.”
    â€œYou know he was our brother?” she said.
    The Emperor turned to Johnny, who nodded awkwardly. He’d always assumed Bram knew everything. Now, when the ruler of the galaxy spoke, it was as if choosing his words carefully.
    â€œClara, Johnny … I’m so sorry. I knew Nicky had been taken … more than a decade ago. I deeply regret it. There wasalways the possibility that the Nameless One had turned him. With the success that Nymac had, it seems suddenly obvious.”
    â€œIt wasn’t his fault—it was that mask,” said Johnny. “The Nameless One welded it to his face—could see through it—made him do all those things. He tried to break free.”
    Bram stood, wrapped his arms around himself and gazed at the spiral above, though the link between him and it was no longer visible. “The fault was not your brother’s—he was a child. The fault was mine.” His face looked so creased it was as if the soaking in the Fountain of Time had never happened. “Truly, I share your loss and travel to Andromeda to avenge you.”
    â€œBut won’t that take forever?” Johnny asked, also standing. “The Andromeda Galaxy’s two and a half million light years away.”
    The Emperor smiled again, if weakly, and threw his second handful of chronons into the sky. Now there were two spirals swirling above them, the Milky Way joined by her larger sister, the Andromeda Galaxy. “You ask, yet we have seen Andromedan troops in the Milky Way. How did they come here? Never forget that all of us here are the lawmakers,” said the Emperor. “You, Clara, can bend the very fabric of space. Johnny—it is nothing for you to command the movement of charge across great distance. The speed of light, too, can be molded, stretched or, perhaps, even broken. It is we who have allowed it to remain fixed for so long, but now I choose otherwise.” Bram placed his palm in the gap between the two whirlpools of tiny stars. “In this great void dividing the galaxies, where there is nothing to take hold of to fold space, I shall decree a far faster speed. The journey will still be long, but it will be measured in months—not millions of years.”
    â€œHe’s still alive,” said Clara, as though she’d stopped listening after Bram’s pronouncement about Nicky. “He has to be.”
    â€œCome here, Clara,” said the Emperor, holding both hands out to pick her off the ground and pull her into his arms, where he held her close. It looked to Johnny as though they might both be crying. “While I can stretch the speed of light, I cannot remake the past. I do not know for certain what fate befell your brother. Use the thought chamber.” He nodded over her head to the transparent dome on the plinth behind. “It is the truest place to look, although we do not always enjoy what it shows us.”
    â€œBut if you go,” said Johnny, keen to change the subject away from Nicky, “what happens on Melania? What about the Empire?”
    At that, Bram’s eyes sparkled again and his face once more shone with a little youth. “At least there I am confident. After the death of the last Regent, Chancellor Gronack fled—the troops loyal to it were not as loyal as it believed. The capital, my homeworld, is at peace. I confess I thought long and hard over someone to entrust it to. Happily, I drew a total blank.”
    â€œAnd that’s a good thing, why?” asked Johnny.
    â€œIf you can’t find anyone qualified,” said Bram, “what