Graham McNeill - I, Mengsk

"I'm flattered," said Juliana, but his father had already moved on to greet Charles Whittler and Master Miyamoto, playing the role of the approachable man of the people. Valerian saw the falseness of it and wandered how others could not. Perhaps he was more like his father than he knew, able to see through the charade as if it were his own.

At last his father stepped back and said. "You are all very dear to me, my friends, and it means a great deal, after all we have been through together, that we should meet like this in the wake of my great triumph."

Arcturus came forward and put his arm around Valerian, pulling him forward to stand at his side before the assembled onlookers.

"We live in momentous times," said Arcturus. "But going forward together, we can achieve anything we desire. Father and son, we will build a better world for everyone."

Polite applause rippled from the serving staff and Valerian dearly wanted to believe his father's words, feeling somewhat swept up in the grandeur of his vision for the future.

Only Master Miyamoto looked unimpressed, staring in consternation at the sky.

"Are those yours?" he said, shading his eyes from the sun.

Valerian followed Miyamoto's gaze, and a hot rush of adrenaline flooded his system.

Four Wraith fighters. Emblazoned with the flag of the Confederacy.

Diving in on an attack run.

"Everyone inside!" shouted Arcturus.

The assembled crowd needed no encouragement and bolted for the house.

The two Wraiths tasked with patrolling the skies above the emperor reacted as soon as their pilots realized the codes they were receiving on their IFF threat panels were a lie, but by then it was already too late. The first fighter exploded as a stream of bright laser bolts stitched a path over its fuselage and ripped off its right wing.

The second Wraith avoided the initial volley of gunfire and was able to return fire. Amazingly, the pilot's shots impacted on one of the attackers, blowing out the cockpit in a shower of superheated blood and glass.

The enemy fighter spiraled toward the ground, plowing into the grass in a spectacular fireball, cartwheeling across the lawn, and smashing into the house, drowning out the screams of panic that filled the air. Shattered glazing and buckled steel caved inward and black smoke billowed upward from the wreckage buried in the structure of the house.

The Dominion pilot's defiance was short-lived, however, as the remaining three Confederate fighters boxed him in and blew his craft араrt in a hall of laser fire.

Burning wreckage fell into the river, sending up huge spouts of water as it crashed.

Valerian grabbed his mother from her chair and carried her close to his chest as he ran for the house, knowing there wasn't time to get her to safety with more dignity. Sizzling bolts of energy sawed across the lawn as the first Wraith flew in low on a strafing run. Half a dozen of his grandfather's serving staff were scythed down, bodies blown apart from inside by the passage of violently hot lasers through their flesh.

Valerian dropped to the ground as the ruby bolts ripped up the ground on either side of him. He tasted earth and blood and smelted the stink of seared meat. His mother cried out in pain and he rolled onto his side, seeing her lying helpless next to him. The Confederate Wraiths screamed overhead, their wing-mounted weaponry firing upon the helpless targets below them.

His father's marines returned fire on the Wraiths as they fell back toward the house, but the pilots weren't worried about small-arms fire from the ground. Impaler spikes sparked from the fighters' fuselages or missed altogether, but they at least gave the semblance of a fight back.

The gun cutter that had brought his father to Umoja was powering up its engines, but before it could lift off it was struck by a withering salvo of gunfire from the predatory Wraiths. One of the engine nacelles exploded, spraying white-hot fragments in all directions.

Whickering, razor-edged shrapnel cut down fleeing men and women in a bloody storm as the gun cutter lurched sideways. It plowed a huge furrow in the ground, throwing up sprays of earth and clods of mud as its one remaining engine roared into life and spun it around on its axis.

The gun cutter lurched one last time and vanished from sight, tumbling down into the open shaft of the landing platform it had previously been too big to fit within.

With one of its engines blown off, that was no longer a problem.

Valerian heard someone shout his name and looked over the corpse-strewn lawn toward the house, seeing his father and grandfather crouched in the shelter of a recessed doorway. Both men were furiously beckoning to him as the Wraiths circled around for another strafing run.

Valerian didn't waste time looking up and simply scooped his mother off the ground and ran as fast as he could to safety.

"Oh God, Val. I'm so scared!" she cried.

"Don't worry," he gasped. "I won't let anything happen to you."

The house suddenly seemed impossibly far off, as though his every step carried it farther and farther away from him. His father's soldiers were painting the sky with Impaler fire, and Valerian risked a glance over his shoulder as he heard the distinctive, chopping-air sound of a dropship on a fast insertion run.

A heavy lander in the colors of the Confederacy was dropping rapidly through the clouds, a midsized assault boat capable of carrying around twenty to thirty soldiers, depending on their loadout. Valerian forced himself to run faster, and suddenly he was at the doorway.

His father grabbed him and hauled him into the house. The breath heaved in his lungs and his heart rate was racing like never before. From eight years of age, he had trained to fight with gun and sword, but this was the first time he'd been exposed to real combat. Valerian handed his mother off to Charles Whittler, who set her down on a carved wooden bench as Ailin Pasteur slammed the door shut and engaged the mag-lock.

They were in the east wing hallway, a terrazzo-floored vestibule that linked the main receiving rooms and the guest quarters. Along with his mother and father, Master Miyamoto, Whittler, and Ailin Pasteur, there were five soldiers and a handful of weeping domestics.

"What the hell is going on, Mengsk?" demanded Ailin Pasteur. "Who is trying to kill us?"

His father took a breath and placed his hands on Valerian's shoulders, his relief at his son's survival plain for all to see.

"There has been some... opposition to the institution of my reign," he said, turning and drawing his sword as his soldiers formed up around him. "I can only assume that this is a manifestation of that opposition."

"Opposition?" exploded Ailin. "This is more than bloody opposition—those men are going to kill us!"

Arcturus laughed in Pasteur's face. "Kill us? Don't be foolish, Ailin."

"This isn't a fortress, Arcturus. That door isn't going to keep them out for long."

"They're not going to kill us, Ailin," repeated Arcturus.

"You sound very sure," snapped Pasteur.

"I am," replied Arcturus. "I may die one day, but it won't be today. Not at the hands of fools who can't accept they're beaten. Charles, what's the comm situation? I need reinforcements."

Charles Whittler, still holding Juliana Pasteur upright, had one hand pressed to his ear, in which was nestled the blinking light of a comm bead.

"All the local networks are jammed, sir," he said. "Our assailants appear to have cast an electromagnetic pulse net around us, and I do not believe any of the house comm units are strong enough to burn through it, at least not before we are dead. Also, I'm picking up hundreds of channels of white noise across a wide spectrum. Even if someone could pick up our broadcast, there's too much interference for anyone to understand the signal."