Stranded

Potatoes.

I had wondered what I would find in the storage compartment of my capsule vessel, the Trinity of Deceit. It baffled me that the engineers of the imperium had even named her much less given actual thought to the name. Trinity’s intended use case comprised of a one-way subspace jump to an uncolonized habitat world (randomized vectors), after which her Lemmings-Hyder drive would permanently deactivate, leaving me stranded upon one of the thousands of unstudied rocks at the edges of Caerleon space, with nothing but the items in her storage unit for survival.

A storage unit, in my case, filled with lumpy potatoes.

You may be wondering why would I, Princess Elaine Greymoor, fiance to Prince Arthur Pendragon, son of His Majesty Uther Pendragon, King of Caerleon and its thousands year imperium, may the gleam of the imperial stars never dull, so on and so forth ad Infinitum, be subjected to the disgrace of tilling potatoes alone on an uncolonized planet till Death decided to put me out of my misery.

The answer’s quite simple. I had been exiled. The emerald planet looming below the Trinity was my final destination, a death sentence disguised as an open air prison.

As to whether or not I deserved this punishment, let us set the stage. You can decide for yourself.

Three nights ago, there was a banquet held aboard the military transport, Convivial Judgment. Imagine the most festive, extravagant party that could be hosted by a theocratic monarchy bleeding territory to rebels and pirates at the fringes, and you have the banquet. Bright lights and fruity cocktails to help those forget the darkness. The belly of the ship was refurbished with paintings, classical architecture, and a swaying chandelier. A pianist, the famous, wandering Mephisto, dazzled an audience with his mastery of an old harpsichord. Men and women alike dressed in all sorts of gaudy regalia, for this party was exclusive to members of the Royal Court.

In one corner of the great hall, standing beside a table of pastries and refreshments, was a woman with striking silver hair and red eyes. Her hair was tied up in a braid starting at her nape, where an ashen dress designed by Ligotti waterfalled down her body. It was a simple but effective outfit. There was no need for any ostentatious display, for she was already beautiful beyond compare.

That woman was me, Elaine Greymoor. She carried herself with greater dignity than the sycophants circling the crowned, golden-haired prince, his entourage of knights, and of course his lover, Lady Guinevere, whose hands graced, but never touched, her prince’s white sleeves.

Elaine was also alone. She heard the whispers everywhere. “Oh, look! How graceful their love,” everyone beamed at the princess and his lover. Of course she heard. The gossip was meant for her. The end of her engagement to Prince Pendragon seemed mere formality, an afterthought, to the banquet guests.

But Prince Pendragon possessed a different idea that night. While the guests indulged in court drama as gleeful spectators, Elaine’s engagement to the crown prince remained a personal thorn in his side, a barrier in matters of royal succession between him and his sister.

Elaine was… I… was foolish. I hadn’t realized the extent to which things had escalated.

I believed I could convince Arthur that annulling our marriage would prove politically disastrous, that a scandal would delegitimize his claim to the throne, that House Greymoor, yes, was fetid and unraveling, I would never deny this, but that there was still strength there, enough strength in my bloodline to save the imperium.

I was still there. Wasn’t I enough?

The crowd following Prince Pendragon made its way across the main hall and towards the dessert tables where I had been stuffing my face with these delicious chocolate muffins. It took me too long to notice that the crowd began to organize itself less like a band of admirers and more like a lynching mob. I should have attempted some sort of escape.

“Miss Greymoor,” Prince Pendragon declared. “May we have a word?”

“Do you mean in private, Arthur?” I asked, nodding to the audience behind him.

Arthur shook his head.

“I’m afraid everyone needs to hear about what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done?” I set down my pastry and motioned at Lady Guinevere. “Surely everyone is more curious about your new bedding arrangements?”

“They’ve heard plenty tonight,” Prince Pendragon ignored the murmurs. “What they haven’t heard about are the insidious plots you’ve been devising against me. And against Lady Guinevere too. I cannot believe you’d ever stoop so low.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sir Gawain?”

A gallant looking fellow, a full head and a half taller than Arthur, approached from behind the prince. Unlike Arthur’s smooth features that seemed carved out of an angel, Gawain hoisted a thin beard and battle worn expressions. A dark scar curved down his nose. The knight clapped his hands and the lights of the banquet hall dimmed.

A terminal rose out of a socket by the pastry stand. It projected a hologram next to Arthur. Pictures of me flooded the display, and the mob feigned a gasp. I didn’t understand their surprise. The images seemed, if anything, too ordinary to describe. They were snapped at discrete angles, with my back often turned towards the lens, and I could not recognize the context behind most of them.

“You’ve been spying on me,” I said.

“So you admit to your crimes?” Arthur asked.

“You’re making no sense. What crimes?”

“See how she denies it even when she’s been caught?” Arthur announced to the mob. “I told you all, didn’t I?”

The crowd agreed amongst themselves. Arthur motioned to the first picture on the holo. It was a picture of me at my study at home, bent over a pestle and mortar and a thick textbook. Arthur must have commissioned someone to hijack the security cameras.

“Pray tell, what are you brewing here?” Arthur asked. “Princess Greymoor? Brewing herbs in her study in the dead of night?”

“I don’t know, probably a new tea infusion to help me sleep,” I shrugged. “Why don’t you tell me, Arthur, since you seem to already know?”

“She doesn’t know!” the prince scoffed, “Merlin?”

A silhouette appeared on the holographic display. It took on the appearance of an old man dressed in wizardry robes. It possessed a long beard, which it proceeded to stroke with a slow, dignified pace. The hologram, however, wasn’t built for animated movement, and the strands of Merlin’s hair twitched in and out of view.

“Yes, Arthur?” said the AI.

“Enhance the book in this image.”

I knew then what was transpiring. I cursed myself for not seeing it sooner. The hologram blurred as it zoomed in. I didn’t need the resolution to stabilize to know what I would see. My heart pounded as Merlin deciphered the hazy text at the top of the page. The crowd gasped again. Even I couldn’t help widening my eyes.

“Cryotoxin,” Arthur read aloud. “What were you doing brewing illegal venoms, Miss Greymoor?”

“A digital forgery?” I coughed out a nervous laugh. “Arthur, surely, you couldn’t be tricked by this. Who brews lethal concoctions in their study? Where they eat? Would they risk breathing in the chemical fumes while they sleep? Merlin, please run a scan. Look for lingering artifacts and traces of textual renderings. This is a mistake.”

“Merlin doesn’t answer to you,” Arthur replied. “Please show us the next slide.”

The next set of images featured footage of me purchasing items from a select number of stores. Merlin enhanced each image to the point of transaction, where the shopkeeper handed me my items. Acids, spores, extracts, all of them Merlin labeled as ingredients for cryotoxin.

“You visited distinct shops to procure ingredients for cryotoxin over the last few months,” Arthur explained. “Staggered purchases, always done with portable currency, never digital transactions. Had I not harbored suspicions, you would have never been caught in the act.”

“How convenient,” I murmur, “That the only items I purchase are for dangerous poisons. Is that what I eat nowadays all alone? And what suspicions could you possibly have of me, Arthur? You haven’t spent time with me since you and Lady Guinevere exchanged pleasantries.”

“It only looks that way because you’ve been caught red-handed.”

“Of course,” I said. “And the poison was meant for your lover over here.”

“Finally, you admit it,” Arthur smirked.

“No,” I sighed. “But since you’re insistent on this charade, you might as well read out the rest of my crimes now and get it over with.”

“An attempted assassination of Lady Guinevere is treacherous enough,” Arthur listed. “But other targets, listed by a manifesto that we’ve discovered in your bedroom include myself, Knight Captain Gawain–”

“Seriously? A manifesto.”

My indignation aside, I felt helpless, even in spite of the fact that Arthur’s claims were such transparent falsehoods. No, it might have been because the claims were obvious lies, and yet the crowd and Arthur paid no heed to their inconsistencies. Were they only interested in my punishment, were they just here to witness my disgrace?

Why did I even ask the question when the answer was obvious?

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Arthur finished.

This entire time, I wanted to believe that Arthur had been misled. Maybe it was his subjects, like Merlin or Knight Captain Gawain, who had presented him with false evidence. Perhaps Lady Guinevere devised the plot in a bid to rid herself of me.

“I cared about you, Arthur,” I said. “I never knew you hated me this much. My feelings for you blinded me to all this, I suppose.”

Arthur hated what I had said, because it was the truth. He hated that I had not yet begged or cried for forgiveness. I could see the emotion in his face, the way his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth flinched. I watched his fingers flicker towards his hidden sidearm holstered inside his white jacket as he contemplated executing me to get it all over with.

In a way, this was confirmation that he had never known me, had never loved me, that my engagement to him was pure politics and that Lady Guinevere, who hailed from a more prestigious family, was simple calculus in the royal game. That stung more than any of the fabricated accusations on the hologram, because I knew this was real.

“Pathetic,” Arthur spat. “That you would still try to manipulate me before the others, when the evidence against you is overwhelming.”

Still, I refused to allow Arthur the pleasure of seeing me distraught.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you by not groveling before Your Highness.”

“Perhaps you should have. Knight Captain Gawain,” Arthur ordered. “Get her out of my sight.”

“Fine. Where am I being escorted to?” I snorted. “If I’m going to be living in obscurity, I hope you’ve prepared a nice resort for me at least.”

“Exile,” Arthur answered. “To the fringes of the imperium. A desolate planet awaits you and your rotten soul.”

His words hung in the air like a fresh corpse. My body froze for half a minute before I mustered a response. Half a minute where I could feel the sinister stares of Arthur’s sycophants licking the shock off my skin.

“I must have not heard that right,” I choked on another anxious chuckle. “Exile?”

“What other punishment is more fitting for such treason? Consider yourself lucky you weren’t hanged.”

“Maybe I need to remind everyone how baseless your c-claims are,” I stuttered. “This was all theatrics to end our engagement, no? You haven’t proved a thing. Surely exile is excessive, wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite the contrary. What I’ve proven will rid the guests here of the delusion that I’ve been unfaithful to you with Lady Guinevere.”

“Really? You haven’t been unfaithful?”

“And officially,” Arthur ignored me. “I’ve already received approval of your sentence from the royal courts and my father.”

“...You’re serious about all this.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Arthur asked. “Sir Gawain, seize her already.”

Something inside me snapped.

This wasn’t fair. This had not played like a classic Caerleon political game. Call me a sore loser, but Arthur had followed none of the rules. This wasn’t even a proper romantic betrayal, with Arthur leveraging his position as prince to marry a woman he loved. Had it just been that, I might have even yielded to Lady Guinevere.

It all began, I suspect, when Arthur bristled at my defiance. He knew then that he could not drag me out the hall as a frenzied, wailing woman, with tears that dampened her mascara. He could not make a clean example of me, crucify what remained of my family’s reputation, rid himself of the thorn that undermined his authority. His sycophants might believe our theatrics, but Arthur could never believe it himself, would not rest until he had “bested” me in some way.

Knight Captain Gawain approached. His hands held a pair of magnetized handcuffs. I cast a dainty smile and held out my wrists.

“Ever the loyal lapdog for him, aren’t you, Gawain, the supposed hero of the Siege of Caerleon?” I sneered. “How long have you known about all this? Did you collude with him? It will hurt my heart to hear if you’ve known since the beginning.”

“You’d best be quiet, Lady Greymoor,” Gawain murmured. “You’ve already caused enough trouble.”

Not yet I hadn’t. When the knight reached out with the restraining cuffs, I stepped forward and thrust my hands into his coat. The fingers on my left flipped open the leather buckle holstering his pistol, while my right released the safety and brandished the sidearm. Gawain’s eyes stared down the barrel of his own gun. Arthur flinched, while his followers gasped and retreated. Lady Guinevere remained unperturbed. She looked past me as if I was invisible.

Well, fuck her. I wasn’t interested in her, anyway.

“Now how loyal are you, exactly, Knight Captain Gawain?” I grinned. “Will you roll over and die for Arty’s petty grudges?”

“Bitch!” Arthur shrieked. “Knights!”

A mesh of lasers crisscrossed the length of the hall. They dotted my arms and chest. A pair of metallic clicks rested themselves against my temples.

“Careful boys My dead fingers might still squeeze the trigger.”

“Let’s not do anything hasty, Lady Greymoor,” Gawain breathed. “I humbly ask that you return my weapon to me.”

“Is this all you can ever do, Arthur?” I laughed, “Beg your knights to bail you out of your messes? Don’t you feel the slightest shame that had I been slightly less of mind, I would have stained the deck with this man’s blood?”

“Exile isn’t enough for the likes of you,” Arthur seethed.

I shook my head.

“You’re wrong. It will have to be enough for you,” I said. “You wouldn’t dare have it any other way. Not until you truly think you’ve defeated me. Not until I’ve paid for this humiliation. I know Arthur, because I took the time to get to know you. What do you know about me?”

I thumbed the safety and flipped the weapon back towards its mutt of a master.

“Pray that I die in exile, Arthur, because you’ll see me again if I don’t,” I glared. “And retribution favors neither honor nor pride.”

The two knights behind me cuffed my hands with magnetic bindings. Gawain escorted me to the Trinity of Deceit, which they must have prepared well in advance, because it had been docked in the hangar bay one deck above the banquet hall. Gawain powered up the faster-than-light engines and, in spite of our history, did not even grant me the courtesy of a farewell as the capsule doors closed.

Three days later, Trinity of Deceit decelerated out of subspace, arriving at a lush green planet in the middle of nowhere.

During the flight, I tried not to think too hard about what had happened. I cried a little on the first day, more the first night, and less at the beginning of the second day. I then spent the remainder of the trip feeling disenchanted about the whole affair. I wondered how House Greymoor’s benefactors would react to the news of my exile or what would become of my private study. When I discovered that I had been left with only potatoes for sustenance, I laughed.

“What retribution,” I cackled. “I’ll die of malnutrition first.”

It was at that moment, in the middle of my addle-brained thoughts on all the different ways to till and prepare potatoes until the end of my days, when an alarm sounded inside the capsule.

“Warning,” came the voice of the automated adjutant. “Spacetime distortions detected in the nautical bearings above the capsule.”

I looked up. A pocket of space contracted, outlined by gray shimmers and blue rippling lights resembling electric discharge. Spacetime folded together. The density of the blur blending my view of the stars grew stronger and stronger until, like a scale pressed with too much weight, the distortion collapsed. In its place emerged an expanding tunnel, its interior flooded with swirling rays and nebulous silhouettes, an unintelligible glimpse into the realm we call subspace. From within, I spotted the faint contours of space faring vessels, cruising against waves of fractaled light.

In my naivety, when I first heard the onboard adjutant, I thought that perhaps Arthur had changed his mind. He had commissioned a fleet shortly after my exile, or maybe he had even come himself, to return me to imperial space. I was so deluded with the idea, I almost missed hearing the second message.

“Warning,” repeated the adjutant. “Unidentified vessels exiting subspace.”

On the far side of the planet, where its jade circumference kissed the outline of a local star, another subspace dimension materialized, its background smeared with sunlight. Maelstroms swept aside the clouds in the planet’s atmosphere. Red storms brewed above the planet’s jungles, followed by a third message.

“Warning. Additional unidentified subspace signatures detected.”

The remainder of the vast expanse behaved like parchment lying beneath a storm. Splashes of metallic gray coiled along black film. First came the shallow depressions, followed next by the microtears, and then the veil of space burst apart.

A gallery of subterranean gateways, each of them the size of small moons, swallowed my view of the galaxy.