Two days after my talk with Pompeyo, I got a call from William letting me know that the new law had been approved and that after discussing the issue, the Dominion had decided they were going to contact the leaders of the different governments. All I had to do was go to Pompeyo and convince him to talk to them. I knew that I had given him enough time to think about what I had said, and the fact that no order against the Light had been given was giving me hope that he was at least thinking about my words. Maddan has been visiting me and had promised to let me know the moment any order against them was issued, so I knew nothing had happened yet.
First of all I needed to ask for a meeting with Pompeyo, to my surprise, he accepted immediately, in just a few hours time, the same day. Trusting that things were going according to plan, I walked into the throne room and found that the group of people there was bigger than I expected, even Fedelm was there.
“Greetings, Emperor,” I thought it was best to start by showing at least some respect.
“Greetings, Kaiserin,” Pompeyo said, watching me with distrust, “I got your message saying you needed to talk to me.”
“That’s right. People in the Dominion decided to change their laws and start to show themselves to the rest of the world, they won’t be isolated anymore. The first step is for them to talk to the leaders of the different territories, and in the Dark Empire’s case, that means talk to you. If everything goes well, they are planning to be present during the next reunion with the clan leaders.”
“Meeting with me? Are they coming here?”
“We have different ways to have meetings between people in different places. All I need from you is to know if you agree to this meeting and I will take care of everything.”
“Are we going to trust her?” Alukah asked.
“There’s nothing to lose if we agree to meet the leaders of the Dominion,” Pompeyo said out loud, but then he stared at Alukah and I knew they were having another conversation, or maybe discussion that I wasn’t hearing. “Tomorrow afternoon I have free time for this meeting. I will send Maddan later today so you two can prepare everything.”
“Thank you, you won’t regret this,” I said.
“I hope you’re right,” Pompeyo said, pensively.
I needed to wait for Pompeyo’s instructions, but I knew that the time difference was going to make thinks a little more complicated, I needed to convince him to have the meeting late in the afternoon and then convince the people in the Dominion to have it early in the morning. But the first step was to talk to William and let him know so he could start setting everything for the meeting. Luckily, they were very eager to make sure everything well, and were willing to adapt to any situation, whichever it was.
“What is this and how does it work?” Maddan asked the next day while Fatima was setting the holographic projectors.
“This is what makes it possible for the leaders of the Dominion to be in this meeting, and those cameras right there will help the people in the Dominion to see people here.”
“I would like to bring a technopath, not because I don’t trust you,” he quickly assured me, “it’s just that this is unknown technology and I would like to have a better idea of what’s going on.”
“Sure, no problem, I want to make sure you all see that we are not planning anything bad,” I knew they wouldn’t find anything, most likely they wouldn’t even be able to completely understand what the machine was about. Of course, I didn’t know much about what a technopath was capable of, that was one of the powers I was less familiar with, even if it was one of Ethan’s favorites.
When the time for the meeting arrived, I realized that once again Pompeyo had all of his most important advisors with him, Fedelm again was part of the group, as well as Ratu and Alukah, others I knew like Inionri and Maddan, and others that I recognized but didn’t really had a chance to know.
“Is everything ready?” Pompeyo asked. “What is it supposed to happen now?”
“Now we just need to establish the connection,” I said. Luckily, Fatima was there to take care of it, because I wasn’t good with the technical part of it. In just a moment the first hologram appeared and I saw William’s hologram at the other side of the table, as if he was sitting there. A few moments later both the Prime Minister and the President appeared on either side of William.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again,” I greeted them, I knew that they were going to be able to see me and Pompeyo, but I wasn’t sure if the cameras were showing the rest of the people there. “Allow me to introduce you to Emperor Pompeyo from the Regal Family. Pompeyo, these are King William, Prime Minister Stone and President Yu, they are the leaders of the Dominion. The three of them work together for the good and the future of the Dominion.”
“Kaiserin,” the Prime Minister said, “I should have known that you would be involved in all this. Despite your words I knew that you weren’t going to settle with being the governor of a small community, now you are working with the Empire. What are you planning now?”
“I’m just here visiting family, and took the opportunity to start working on building bridges between the Empire and the Dominion.”
“What does this have to do with your family?”
“Well, Pompeyo is my nephew.”
“Again, I have to ask if this is a good idea,” the Prime Minister said. “I don’t like that she is involved in this, how do we know that this is not part of her plan for world domination?”
“Do you really believe those stupid rumors? She had her chance to control the Dominion and she let go of her power for the good of our people, why would she do now what he didn’t do when she had the chance?” the President asked.
“Are you planning on using us to take over the world?” William asked, and I felt the power behind his words.
“Of course not,” I answered automatically, not even trying to resist his power. I could see that my family and the others Imperialists were watching the exchange with curiosity and distrust.
“As if that meant something, your power doesn’t work at a distance, you need to be in person for it to work.”
“My powers work at several levels, in fact, most of the time just my tone of voice is enough to get results, of curse visual contact is preferred for better results, and being in person helps with some kind of psychic waves I emit, but that doesn’t mean my powers are useless through this media. Besides, this is not the first time I ask that question, and the answer is always the same. Kaiserin doesn’t have to lie to us, if she really wanted to get her power back, she would have already found a way to do it.”
“Then we have to trust your word.”
“Of course we can trust his word,” the President protested, “and we can trust in Kaiserin’s word. You have been so involved in the bad press her enemies create that you can’t see what’s in front of you. Anyway, we are not here to talk about Kaiserin’s possible plans for world domination, we are here for something far more important: to start a relationship with the Dark Empire. Both William and I decided this was the best course of action, and you know what that means.”
‘As interesting as this little chat seems, I would like to understand what’s going on,‘ Pompeyo said directly to my mind, and decided it was best to offer an explanation.
“The Dominion works under the principle of power division. The reason three people are in charge is because when an important decision has to be made, at least two of them have to agree. In this case, both the King and the President agreed to make contact with the Empire, so even if the Prime Minister does not agree, she has to accept what the others want.”
“You mean that three share the power and at least two of them have to agree for a decision to be made?” Alukah asked, and I knew that even if they couldn’t see her, they could at least hear her.
“King William is the one that has something that resembles a permanent job in the Dominion, his position is inherited, in part because his family has the power to find the truth behind every situation, and that makes them perfect for the Justice Department, he is in charge of making sure justice is met and that those who break the laws get punished. The ones that create those laws are the ones that work with the President, she is elected by the representatives. They all have the chance to vote for the one they think is best suited to guide them, and that person gets that position for four years. The Prime Minister is the one in charge of making sure everything works, following the laws written in Congress and sending those who break laws to be judged. The Prime Minister is chosen in a similar way as the President, the difference is that the ones who get to vote are the leaders of the different countries that are part of the Dominion.”
“That sounds unnecessarily complicated,” Pompeyo said.
“I thought the same at first, but it works most of the time,” I replied. “But enough, we are not here to know how the Dominion works, we are here to see if we can establish a relationship between our us. The other day I told you a little about the Dominion and how the countries in it relate to each other. In a way it is similar to how the clans are joined inside of the Empire, with the main difference being that, in the Dominion, is not one country ruling over the others, it’s a mix of people from all over setting the rules for the rest of them to follow.”
“The Dominion was created to avoid fighting, even if it hasn’t always worked as we expected, for the last few years we have been working on taking it back to its original function. We know that the Empire is all about fighting and conquering, but we also know that the last few years it was more about protecting than destroying. We want to open communication with you, help you understand our past and help you create your future. But because of our ideals, we can’t help if that means that someone else is going to suffer for that, we can’t allow our collaboration to end up with the destruction of someone else.”
“I’m not sure what you expect from us, we have always been a warrior nation, fighting and conquering is in our blood, and we are not going to change who we are for someone else’s wishes.”
“My nephew grew up in the Light Kingdom,” William said, “he arrived there when he was running away from the problems in the Dominion and spent most of his life there. I’m afraid that his time there created a connection that can’t be ignored. After all the problems the Dominion has gone through, we don’t want to be involved in any fights, we don’t want our actions to be misinterpreted by the countries that are part of the Dominion or for someone to think it’s ok to go back to the time when all the countries were under our control. We are going to offer our help to the Light in the best way we can, but that doesn’t mean we are going to fight for them, but neither are we going to let them defenseless if someone else tries to take advantage of them.”
“I feel like there is a threat hiding in those words.”
“It’s more like a warning,” William said.
“You control most of the resources in the region,” the President interrupted, “resources that are hard for us to get. One of the reasons we are willing to open communication with you, is the opportunity to get our hands on some of those resources.”
“I think that no negotiation will go well if we found out that those resources are being paid in blood. We can’t allow our people to benefit of other people’s pain,” the Prime Minister interrupted.
“What they are trying to say, is that they don’t support slavery of forced labor, and they are not willing to pay for products taken by force from others,” I explained.
“So far I’m not seeing the benefit to our people. All I see is that they are telling us there is another world that is out of our reach, with people who feel they can come and threaten us, and dictate how we do things. They say that they don’t want to interfere in how we do things, but they think it’s ok to manipulate us into doing what they want. Even if they say they don’t want to get involved, they made it clear that they are siding with the Light Ones and that they won’t let us take advantage of the opportunities we see,” Pompeyo said.
“Besides, they want our resources, but they even pretend to tell us how to get them,” Ratu added. “My brother is right, I don’t see how that would benefit us.”
“In the Dominion people has a skewed image of the Empire, they see our customs as barbaric, when they are not that different from theirs,” I tried to explain, “in reality we don’t have to change much of what we do in order to fulfill their demands, besides, we don’t really have to change if we don’t want to, we can just decide not to trade with them. But there are things in the Dominion that could be good for us. Even if some of the clans share their technological knowledge with the Empire, the Dominion has so much more they could give us. It’s just a matter of seeing what they have to offer before deciding if we should turn our backs on them.”
“I don’t like their attitude,” Pompeyo said, “I don’t like that they think they can come here and dictate how we do things. We haven’t decide what we are going to do about the Light, but we will take their words into account, not because we are scared of them, but because, despite what you may think, I worry about the Empire and what’s best for it above all. We will stay in contact to discuss the possible benefits of an alliance between us, but I want to make it clear that we are not going to be taken advantage of. We are warriors, and we bow to no one.”
With that, Pompeyo got out of his seat and left the room, followed by most of his entourage, only Maddan, Inionri, and surprisingly Alukah, decided to stay.
“Well, I have to say that went better than I expected,” the President said.
“Really?” the Prime Minister asked. “I’m pretty sure this was a mistake, we should have never tried to negotiate with them,” with that his hologram went off.
“I think that it’s better to give them some time to think about the situation, I trust that in the future you will be able to help them understand better our position and expectations,” the President said before going offline too.
“Are you ok?” William asked.
“Of course I am. I must say that I get Pompeyo’s attitude, I think we were all a little on edge during the meeting and things didn’t go well.”
“I think you were at the excellent, as always. From now on, you will be acting as the Dominion’s Ambassador, we will represent us in the Empire. Any doubt, you can talk directly with me,” with that, William also disappeared.
“That was interesting,” Alukah said. “It’s good to see that I’m not the only one who distrust you.”
“The thing is, it really doesn’t matter what the Prime Minister thinks about me, as long as the President and the King trusts me, I’m in. But what matters right now is what are you going to do about the knowledge of the Dominion and their offer to open trade between the territories.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, of course you can always tell us the possible benefits and try to convince us that it’s better for us to get an alliance with them than to try and conquer the Light.”
What she was saying was true, I needed to prove to them that what we had to offer was best for the Empire, but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Fortunately, I had a good idea of what the Dominion had to offer, and what the Empire could find interesting.
Kaiserin Novel 