THE LEGEND OF GRAND MECHAPOLIS

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO/GALAXY EXPRESS 999

Founding of the Dual Monarchy and Galaxy Express System

By: Frederick P. Kopetz

Chapter NINETEEN:  …Starsha’s Stab in the Back…

Thanks to Bells of Nevermore, Gail Kopetz, Margaret Diviney, Michelle Nutter-Lynd, Steven Diviney and Andrea Lyon for Advice and inspiration.

Bells of Nevermore’s Characters are used by permission. However, by mutual agreement, they may be written differently in the Galaxy Visions Saga than in Bells’ own works…

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I. A MOST UNWANTED BIRTH

Planet Iscandar

Mother Town

April 20, 2235

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“You can push now, Starsha,” Yuki said brusquely as she, three Iscandarian doctors and nurses and two robots stood near the bed where Starsha was in labor. “Sit up. It will be easier that way. I know from experience.”

“You would, you stupid cow!” Starsha yelled as she wriggled her toes.

“You know what I mean, damn you!” Yuki snapped. “Stop acting like a child!”

Yuki squeezed Starsha’s hand as Starsha sat up. “I can’t push! It burns! I’m so tired…”

“You’re dilated quite far enough, Majesty,” said one of the Iscandarian doctors.

“Push, damn you,” Yuki said. “NOW!”

Starsha gritted her teeth. The pain that ran through her sweaty, nude body was agonizing for a moment.

Then, Yuki’s hand and the hands of others caught the wet baby girl as she emerged from her mother.

Soon, there was a lusty cry.

“Your new daughter,” Yuki said, smiling with joy under her surgical mask despite the unpleasantness between them. “Look at her kicking!” Yuki just liked life; especially an innocent new life.

“Look at her horrid blue skin,” snarled Starsha as Yuki worked together with a nurse to cut the cord. A nurse bathed little Shasta and weighed her.

“Four kilos,” the nurse said. “She’s a tough little one!”

“Horrid?” Yuki said as she held her up, wrapped in a blanket. “She’s adorable. She looks like her father!”

Starsha snapped, "I never want to see that horrid THING again! She’s blue, Yuki! That thing is blue.”

“Why is that an issue?” Yuki said, in utter shock.

“It’s obvious. I can’t have a half-Gamilon succeed me to the throne after I die,” Starsha snapped. Then, she touched the child’s forehead. “And mentally, she is too aggressive. The Gamilon blood she inherited from you and the Pellian and Terron blood inherited from, shamefully, myself and you, my aggressive half-breed mother and barbarian Terron father have made her hardly Iscandarian at all. I do not want her on Iscandar. She is not one of us. She is a THING. She disgusts me.”

Yuki snarled and replied, “Starsha, how the fuck can you talk about your own daughter as a THING!?! Babies are precious! I sing to my coming son in my womb, as I sang to you…ONCE UPON A TIME! When you were a decent person!”

“Because she is, because she was a mistake!” Starsha said, almost spitting on her mother. “All unborn babies are THINGS. Do you want to know how I took form, Yuki? Do you really want to know?”

“Tell me,” Yuki said in great anger.

“There was an unborn female zygote in your womb, a few minutes old, when I was commanded by Promethium to reincarnate. I killed your daughter, you idiot!” Starsha laughed.

Yuki asked a robot to hold Shasta, and then to the surprise of all, she slapped Starsha across the face. “You HYPOCRITE! You MURDERER! YOU monster! You will never see your child again, as you ask, nor me since I break all relations with Iscandar as of now and I am recalling my Commonwealth Ambassador and Embassy Staff,” Yuki said as she took Shasta, and sent to her Ambassador, Leave Iscandar. NOW! It is hostile territory. Report to me on Gamilon within two hours. Destroy all files and papers!

“Miss Lekina,” Yuki said to one of the robots. “Fly me to Gamilon. Now. I need to comfort this poor child and let her father see her,” Yuki said.

In the shuttle, Yuki pulled off her bloody scrub top and lab coat and sat topless in her slacks and sandals, holding Shasta, feeding her, and crying and cursing as they flew to Gamilon.

“Do you need a mommy?” said Yuki in her sobs. “Atirangi and I will be your mothers now. You poor child. You…poor…poor child,” Yuki sobbed.

Yuki’s shuttle landed near the Palace a few minutes later. Talan was waiting with an Imperial limo.

Yuki walked off the shuttle, in shock, wearing her lab coat over her bare chest and her scrub pants as she carried and nursed Shasta. Her own slight baby bump was in evidence at her bare stomach.

“Your Majesty!” said Talan. “What happened?”

She turned to Talan. “Starsha rejected her own child. I’m nursing her because Starsha wouldn’t even do THAT for her. She called her…a THING. Please have the driver take me straight to the Palace I must introduce Desslar to his daughter and Atirangi to her stepdaughter…and I pray it goes better than her introduction to her own mother.”

“Of course,” Talan said. He was crying himself as he helped Yuki into the limo and gently put Shasta in a waiting baby suspensor seat.

Then, the limo took off.

Desslok nodded at the Kodais’ guards, and he strode into their lounge with Yuki behind him.

To his relief, she immediately saw Susumu in their lounge. Kodai had on a turtleneck sweater, jeans, and house slippers. Yuki stood holding Shasta and played with her.

Susumu stood and saluted Abelt as Atrirangi came in, wearing a black tank top, jeans with the knees torn out, and bare feet.

“What the fuck happened?” Ati said.

“She rejected her. This is Shasta. Princess Shasta. Our child,” Desslar said after Yuki whispered to him.

“And she didn’t even want to see her,” Yuki said as she fed her and wept.

“She’s…beautiful,” said Ati. “Yuki, you know I’m pregnant. Can you give me a hormone shot so I can begin nursing her right away? If Starsha does not want her…this will be our daughter, Abelt.”

“Of course! I’ll do a hormone shot for you right away! When she goes to sleep, that is,” Yuki said, half-crying, half laughing. “You know I’m expecting…I’ll stay here and help you with her if you like.”

“We’re not going anywhere son,” Susumu said. “We’re still in these negotiations…”

The ground began to shake under their feet.

Shasta was half-asleep as Yuki handed her to Atirangi, and she pulled her lab coat closed and gritted her teeth. “Let me stop this God-damned garbage with Starsha’s earthquakes!” Yuki began to gleam as she gritted her teeth and put up her hands in prayer. The tremors stopped, and Yuki ran to a window, put up her hands, screamed as loudly as she could, and shot the energy back at Iscandar, aiming right for Mother Town.

“Starsha!” she yelled out loud in a strong voice that reached Starsha’s ears. “How do you like THAT, you bitch? Right back at you! Enjoy YOUR earthquake!!!”

Starsha promptly called and her image appeared on a screen. She had no shame. She spoke to them sitting nude in her bed. “How dare you start this aggression against us, you bitch?”

“Aggression?” Yuki said after whispering with Talan who had just put down a phone. “Aggression? You have been hitting Gamilas with earthquakes? Including one that just hit the Northern District Children’s Hospital? I can feel and I can hear the screaming of the dead and dying there. You have just killed two thousand innocent children, doctors, nurses, orderlies, and people running the cafeteria. You have just killed Gamilas…Terron…Pellian…Gatlantean…even Iscandarian children and health workers. For what reason?”

Zworder then slowly walked into the room. “As is her nature. As was always her nature,” he growled. “She even deceived you and Her Majesty Yuki, Kodai. I have felt it for a while. It is the only time I have ever felt sorry for you, boy!”

“What do you mean?” snapped Susumu.

“I will be happy to explain it if you would shut up, Zworder,” snapped Starsha.

“Starsha, Dude….you shut the fuck up!” said Ati in rage. “Your Majesty, tell us.”

“Yes, tell us, Your Majesty,” said Kodai, gritting his teeth and making a fist. But Zworder noticed his rage was not directed at him.

“I hate to recite this, Desslar…Yuki,” growled Zworder as he walked past them squeezing their hands in gestures of comfort. “But I must. Starsha. You call ME a genocidal maniac? You are the one who practiced a worse genocide under the subterfuge of righteousness! You know your history, bitch! You remember it all! You began to become energy beings, while having slaughtered trillions when you and your forebears were running your Empire. You began to become Godlike, wanting to become energy beings and rule the spirit world as well as the natural world. YOU took the Gamilas people from Galman and settled them here on this geologically unstable hell so they could labor as your slaves and worship you. Yes, Desslar. That is the reason for the so-called honor of Iscandar. However, some of your people renounced your disgusting path and chose not to become energy beings, mere simulacrums of life, unlike YOU, Starsha,” said Zworder as her put his great hands, one each, on Yuki’s shoulder and Ati’s shoulder. He continued. “The Pellians you condemn as barbarians, that you claim turned from your path of universal peace…they were the ones who had the courage to rebel, fight you, and then fight the Dark Lord Ekogaru who stole the Matrix Technology that the ancient Queen Pellas, before even my time, stole from you like the legendary Prometheus stealing the Fire of the Gods. So Pellas’ descendants told me, and so, inside Yuki, rests the Fire of the Gods that Yuki, as a descendant of those proud rebels who spit on you, uses for great good.”

Abelt made fists and gritted his teeth, trying to hold back sobs as Zworder spoke. We were used, he thought. She used us. She played me for a fool…than…and NOW.

Starsha snarled as Zworder continued. “And your sister Sasha. You sent her to Terra with your candy-coated message of salvation, but you did not know that Sasha decided to renounce your mock-life of being an energy being and again became physical and mortal? And that the true heritage of Iscandar, all that was good about your race once upon a time, that dwells inside Atirangi now…a True Empress, just as Yuki is an Empress of her honored rebel people and of Terra and many others. I prophecy now that if you attempt to harm either of them, Starsha, that will be your DEATH!” Zworder roared.

Zworder paced. “And you played the heroine while pretending to fight Ekogaru and Promethium, pretending to be Promethium’s enemy with one hand while you sold your soul, Iscandar, and Gamilas to her with the other hand, base traitor! Kodai! Yuki!” Zworder said as he walked past Yuki and Susumu, and quickly squeezed their hands in sympathy…Susumu was shocked; for it was the first sympathy Zworder had ever shown him. “You two were innocent parents. This woman returned to life as your child, only after slaughtering in the womb the true daughter that your love after Yuki’s return from a most honorable death created. Starsha. YOU are a killer, a monster, and the left hand of Promethium. I am at war with you as of now, as you have taken my diplomats hostage…”

“I never did any such thing…” Starsha began to protest.

“LIAR!” roared Zworder. “Abelt…Atirangi, your diplomats are also hostages. Yuki…Kodai…your diplomats are also hostages, and she has already begun to slaughter them, starting with your Pellians, Yuki. Do you deny it, bitch?” he roared at Starsha.

“I cannot,” she said. “The rest of you would do well to hold off on any warlike gestures against me, since I will deal with all of them just as…”

Desslar cut her off. “Atirangi. I must speak to my General Staff on the morrow. I will declare war on her and rescue those who are mine!”

“I will aid you,” Yuki said. “I will call together my Parliament in emergency session tonight and request a declaration of war upon Iscandar. They will surely give it to me…and Abelt, Zworder…our forces will move together to rescue the hostages.”

“And then,” Ati said. “THEN, we shall deal with Starsha in the manner she deserves. The bitch! The fucking BITCH!”

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LATER THAT NIGHT….

The full Commonwealth Parliament had been called together on two hours’ notice in the City of Beltane on Pellias.

The Avenida March played as Yuki, in full Commonwealth uniform in black peacoat, white skirt, and brown sandals, strode slowly down the center aisle, with Susumu holding her hand, also clad in full uniform; black peacoat, white slacks, and brown boots. Both of them carried their covers and had serious, angry expressions on their faces since they had teleported straight from Gamilas to their Palace and then Parliament, with Yuki driving her restored pink 1962 Cadillac Biarritz convertible herself at high speed behind a police escort from her Palace to Parliament House.

The entire assembly gave them a standing ovation as they reached the podium. Susumu hugged and kissed Yuki. She hugged back, and then he sat down while she said. “As you see, in spite of the lies and rumors of the paparazzi, Susumu and I are in as much love as ever. I am also carrying his newest child.”

Applause picked up again, but Yuki raised her hand and said, “I have more serious and upsetting news to share with you, the Commonwealth Press, and our allies and friends; Abelt Desslar, the Emperor of the Gamilas Empire, his new spouse and beloved, Empress Atirangi Rapahango. I blessed their marriage on my own authority before I left Gamilas, this witnessed by Susumu and by Emperor Zworder himself. A second Royal Wedding will soon follow under Gamilas Law. I also include our Ally and friend Emperor Zworder of Gatlantis in this honored assembly. I do NOT include Queen Starsha of Iscandar, for reasons which shall become obvious. It is true! She used Abelt and issued him a bill of divorce and had the utter racist gall to reject the daughter their love made because she has blue skin as a Gamilas subject. Abelt has remarried, remarrying the great star and composer, Atirangi Rapahango, who is of Iscandarian and Rapa Nui descent.”

A great uproar filled Parliament Hall, with some Pellians, who were themselves blue, having Gamilas blood, stood and raised their fists and chanted curses at Starsha.

Yuki let the curses die out on their own. “That is how I feel,” Yuki said, as she shouted out “STASHA D’ESTRANGA!” loudly in Pellian. “For any here not conversant in Pellian, I just called out, “Starsha, you Motherfucker! Susumu and I also disown you Starsha, as a daughter from this day forth, traitor and lover of Promethium!”

Zworder sat on Gamilas smiling while Atirangi said, “You go, girl. Let Starsha see you have a mouth, too!”

“We have discovered,” Yuki said. “That STARSHA is behind the quakes on Gamilas that are slowly destroying it. The so-called woman of peace, who played us on Terra like fools, summoning Yamato to Iscandar and then refusing to give us the Cosmo Cleaner because she felt ‘we were not worthy’ after we merely used it to defend ourselves against Gamilas attacks at the time. We bear Gamilas no hatred now. They are among our deepest friends and allies. After the Battle of Telezart, I feel the same about Emperor Zworder and the Gatlanteans. Abelt Desslar and Zworder are better men by far than Starsha ever has been. Why? She was once a warmonger of the worst sort, and she was the one who destroyed many civilizations, plundered their knowledge, and she then had the nerve to condemn our Pellian Ancestors as evil because we did not choose to become energy beings like the Iscandarians, with a semblance of life rather than the reality thereof. We had no need to retreat since our crusade against Ekogaru and even our humanitarian attempts to aid SOME OF STARSHA’S VERY OWN VICTIMS was nothing to be ashamed of and IS nothing to be ashamed of!” Yuki roared as she slammed her fists on the podium. “In fact, who was it that created the Gamilas people as their lapdogs? Starsha herself! She stole them from Galman and used them as slaves when more of her population died out and chose to become incorporeal. She showed the same kindness and mercy to the Gamilons that the Zemurian bastards showed to Zworder and his beloved and his beloved people! NONE!! NO MERCY WHATSOEVER!”

Zworder grabbed Ati’s hand and tears ran down his face as he thought, Yuki, how did you know that tragedy? I never told you…your Matrix? He sent to her.

“Zworder mentally asked me how I knew that. Yes. The Pellian Matrix preserved that. It is ancient history, but a few of our forebears aided Zworder millenia ago in his hour of need to help him rebel against the Zemurians…as we shall do so again against Iscandar! As of now, Starsha has taken hostages. She has invested the Gamilas Embassy and is holding hostages there. She has invested the Gatlantean Embassy and is holding them as hostages. And our Commonwealth Embassy? She has done the same. Dijira Shal. Miklas Nidras. Paul Helig. Astrena Megara Shonski. Remember those names well. Starsha has already murdered them like dogs. They were tortured. Our own people, from Pellias, from Terra! She has killed diplomats! And she caused many quakes on Gamilas. The latest of them destroyed a children’s’ hospital on Gamilas. It would have been worse had I not deflected her second attack myself, with the Power given to me. Also, she gained form as my daughter by evil means. Susumu had made me pregnant with a baby girl a few minutes old. I did not detect it at the time, but Starsha’s foul spirit moved into my very womb, killed our child and expelled the soul in a disgusting act of necromancy, and took form as our daughter. The bitch!”

Yuki was crying at that. Parliament was silent.

Susumu stood to embrace her. She took his embrace and said, “I need to finish.”

He nodded and stood beside her.

“For these acts of aggression and crimes against humanity of all interstellar nations, such as our own, Gamilas, Gatlantis, and many others, I have broken relations with Iscandar and I ask you to declare that a state of war now exists between the Commonwealth and Iscandar and that we end negotiations and enter at once into a new Iron Alliance with Gamilas and Gatlantis, good men and true! I thank you!”

Yuki and Susumu left arm in arm, walking down the aisle to great applause.

By the time they returned to Yuki’s Palace to share drinks, (albeit watered wine for Yuki due to her pregnancy) a phone call came in. “Yes?” Yuki said. “O, thank God. Thank you, Madame Speaker.”

Yuki immediately called Gamilas. “I see that you, Abelt, Ati, and you, dear Zworder, are still there.” She smiled.

“What was the verdict, dude?” said Ati.

“We are now at war with Iscandar. The decision was unanimous. No one voted against my motion. No one at all. Abelt, Ati, Zworder, the negotiations serve no purpose now, except maybe to set up logistics. I asked for the Iron Alliance to be approved. It was.” Yuki raised a glass to Abelt, Zworder, and Ati. “Drink with me, my allies. We fight together from this moment forth…against Starsha. And against Promethium. May the Gods bless us all, my dear friends,” Yuki said with a smile.

THE NEXT MORNING…

Abelt Dessler was speaking to his General Staff and the people of dying Gamilas with Ati beside him, and he said, “…as you have heard…and as you have felt, Starsha has changed from an ally to a traitor; from a so-called woman of peace into an open aggressor. She has declared open war upon us. She is using her power even now to cause quakes and to again pollute our homeland, which may have six to eight months left to live. She has caused endless death and suffering. Our allies, Emperor Zworder and High Queen Yuki Kodai the Third are already at war with Iscandar.” Desslar slammed down his scepter. “We can do no less! So, now, we are also at war with Starsha’s regime as well! The madness stops here and it stops now!”

Ati then whispered to Abelt as he left the podium. “As you know, the Black Mariah has some tremendous weapons. May I unleash our chronoentropic weapons on Mother Town?”

Abelt nodded without hesitation. “We shall speak with Zworder and with Kodai and Yuki. We shall attack within the next few hours.”

Ati nodded and kissed Abelt.

Starsha did not yet realize it, but her actions had just released an incredible vengeance upon her world.

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TO BE CONTINUED…