My wife, some months back, expressed an interest to know more about Henge. I’ve mentioned here before that what I saw was sort of an Arwen/Elessar moment: Gary was dead and Henge gave up her life. I did not want to have my next collection in on that note, so I’ve brought her into the picture here, showing a glimpse of what a completely different form of life can do.

I’m almost finished with part 6/5 (yea, me), and am trying to condense what brought all of this to a head, while still sounding reasonable. Yes, reasonable people don’t don suicide vests but fanaticism does strange things to the mind. Ultimately, there is either a person or central committee behind this carnage. Driven by hate, sure, but a cold, rational hate to plan and execute something like this.

In Berserker and Regent, we have seen what Aurie can physically do when she thinks her friends are threatened. I think internal matters of the imperium are going to get worse before they get better.

Happy weekend, all.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

“Hush,” he said, using a knife to cut her uniform trousers open where her leg met her torso.  A split-second pause as his daughter fed the image of being shot into his mind, he pulled a scalpel from an already open emergency kit and sliced into her leg.

“Femoral artery, three-quarter damaged,” he said, used to speaking for the record in surgery.  “Clamping just above it.”  Which he did.  “We have to evac you…”

“Daddy?  Gary?” Aurelia’s tone was completely different.  “I am empress now.  Even before I am your daughter.  I must return to my subjects.  You can fix me, later.”

“You cannot walk around with a clamp hanging out of – !” he began, for him very angry.

“She won’t,” the new empress saw her mother, Henge, kneel next to her husband.  A Thinking Machine who for love of Gary became mortal, she was made of nanomaterials and fusion fire.

They watched her push her hand into her wounded daughter’s leg.  Always a bit brighter than those around her, her skin seemed to shine now.  Her golden eyes were as bright as the sun directly overhead.  For some reason, Aurelia imagined she had a halo.

“There,” she smiled, removing her hand.  “If you are comfortable with what you see, Husband, remove the clamp and tape her up.  We can take her to hospital, later.”

Gary looked first into his daughter’s wound, then sharply at his wife.

“What did you do?  What did that cost you?” he demanded.

“I passed part of myself to my daughter.  Again!” she laughed.  “Probably cost me a decade of my life, but being nearly immortal and not wanting to outlive you by too much, my love, it is of no matter.”

Aurie heard her dad mutter things that she had never expected from a man she had revered her entire life.  Some surgical tape applied, another set of trousers were produced and Nichole 5 pulled the new empress to her feet.

“Yikes,” Aurelia muttered, a little woozy from the blood loss.  “Support me, Nichole?”

“I have been supporting your family for nearly a century, Empress,” the android smiled.  “While there still may be some foes loose, let us four see to the wounded.”

“Now just a damn minute…!” Aurie’s human husband, Jimmy, began, immediately shushed by his wife.

“This must be,” she said.

Her father took charge of a team of paramedics and trotted back around the stage to where only those one hundred and sixty legionaries, two score medics, and one little blonde boy who was spattered in blood and brains, stood.  With Nichole’s arm about her waist, Aurelia and her mother followed.

Did you really lose some of your life for me, Mama? she asked.

Just a bit.  It’s what mothers are for, my beloved girl.  And Gary knows well my thoughts:  he has probably another hundred years, at most.  Once he passes to the Lord, I will not remain here without him.

Mama!  Please…!

Hush.  Guide me to who I should help, first.  Gary calls it triage.

Aurelia did.  As surprised as many of the injured were to see their new empress, this young-old woman with bright skin, purple hair, and gold eyes, whose touch made them better, was a shock.

Outside of some fans who obsess over our family, Mama and Daddy are almost unknown.  Retiring and hating politics, they live quiet, normal lives in Knoxville.  She looked around to see the less wounded take pictures.  I wonder if humans can see her halo?

“Focus up, Daughter Empress,” Henge said, moving to a man missing a foot and an eye.

Ivan’s android, after taking a walk of the established perimeter, wandered over and gave a polite bow.

“Empress,” he smiled.

“Ivan,” she replied.  “Thank you very much for your help today.  We, as in my family, welcome what you learned here.  Later, of course.”

“No worries, Emp-ralia!” he almost crowed, punning her name.  Only Reina’s son could ever get away with such behavior.  “This has mom very, very interested in some of the secret societies she has allowed to exist.  She viewed them as pressure valves to her rule, but now thinks to kill them all.”

“There were some, ‘Liberty,’ was their password, all the back fifty years ago,” Aurelia mused.  “Like your mother, Fussy regarded them as impotent.”

She looked about at the dead, maimed, and wounded.  “That is no longer the case.  I, too, shall take direct action.”

“You have always been a violent little girl,” the deadly scamp grinned at her.  “I look forward to seeing your work.  Until then, I’ll make another walkabout and see if there’s any more minds to devour.  Fret not:  you’ll get the info later.”

He waved an imperial salute and wandered off.

“That child is more dangerous than Reina, I think,” Henge said, holding onto her daughter’s shoulder.  “His mother is ruthless and his father, my uncle, was once insane, making my husband and his sister what they now are:  demi-human.  Yes, yes, he’s cured now.  But never think it may not be in Ivan’s code.”

She turned to touch her daughter’s face and thigh.

“You are holding up well enough.  Will you help me to help more?”

“I shall.  Here, let’s to that tent the medics just set up.”