Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Forgiveness of Friends

The Celzex imperial cruiser wasn't designed to travel in-atmosphere, it was far too large, and the amount of energy it would have required to keep it airborne was impractical. Not like there would have been any place to park it in the first place. The Celzex imperial cruiser was large, almost as large as the Empyrean Iris, and together, the two ships took up almost half the docking station of the Arcadia orbital spaceport .

Back on the ground, waiting on the tarmac of the Arcadia spaceport, Adam could have wriggled out of his own skin in impatience. You would certainly think that years as a fleet admiral, and UNSC officer would have given him some measure of patience, but that was not the case at all. The older he got the worse it got. He paced up and down the tarmac outside the spaceport, watched by several "handlers". With Arcadia grown in size and influence on the galactic stage, it had recently become imperative to the citizens of arcadia, that their representatives remain whole.

That meant babysitters.

They called themselves bodyguards, but Adam didn't buy it.

James, the King of Sparta had taken to calling his own detail his "honor guard" which sounded cool enough, and Adam would have done it, but he didn't want to seem like he was copying the other man. He was just angry he didn't think of it first.

"We'd be more comfortable if you waited inside, sir." One of the women said. She was human with short brown hair and brown eyes. If you had looked in the GA directory for HUMAN , you probably would have found a picture of her. She was certainly the most human looking human Adam had ever encountered.

"I think I'm fine here, thanks."

He knew he wasn't making their jobs any easier. The whole job of a security detail was to protect their principal. They looked for security threats that he didn't notice, maneuvered him to safety , helped him avoid locations that might prove hazardous due to certain conditions. Adam tried to see things from their perspective, but after years and years of doing stupid shit just because he could, it was hard not to rebel against the idea.

Personally he saw the whole protection detail as pointless. Where were they just a week or so ago when he had been tossed off a cliff on the Kree homeworld?

They protected him from stubbing his toe at home just so he could chuck himself into he abyss on his away trips.

He sighed and paced in a tight circle.

Speaking of the kree, they had gotten the eggs back to arcadia without any incident, or more accurately, they had brought the eggs to a scientific facility on an asteroid in the same system as Arcadia, scanned them for signs of void infection and THEN they had been brought to Arcadia proper. The little guys were not incubating in one of the biolaboratories in the city. Yebb, their resident trichar and microbiologist headed the biology division of Arcadia's science program, and she kept him appraised of the situation. In the event that the kree children survived, they already had plenty of volunteers willing to come forward and foster the creatures.

As usual there was a lot going on.

On top of running a government, raising his son, keeping himself in fighting form, preforming acts of diplomacy and much much more, he was constantly worrying about the eventual void death of the universe, which was seeming more and more possible with every moment.

Oh yes and how could he forget the constant visits back to Anin to sit with Naktan on his holy mountain to try and meditate his soul out his ass, which was not working so well by the way. So far only Naktan himself had managed any progress, but he practically spent all day meditating and getting in touch with his chakras or whatever. Attempts on the part of anyone else had been bunk.