“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”

―Booker T. Washington

“But while down, you remain firmly on top. Climbing up, on the other hand, you may discover the positions changed.”

―The King, at the Princess’s bedtime reading

“So are we for or against slavery? I’m confused, Papa.”

―The Princess, almost asleep

“Wage or cage, we are all slaves, Princess. Just some of us don’t have masters.”

―The King, to a sleeping Princess

Due to Von Schmidt’s arcane, if not downright eldritch, schedule, made even more incomprehensible by an endless array of regulations many of which, the Princess suspected, were mutually contradictory, Martina could not accompany the Princess to breakfast. However, she promised to rejoin the Princess in the downtime period between breakfast and dinner, which she described using an extremely long German word that the Princess forgot even before Martina finished uttering it. The Germans seemed to have a word for just about anything, but sadly almost none of those words were shorter than a nautical mile.

The housemaid in charge of escorting the Princess to the breakfast hall looked exactly like Martina save that her face was free of scars. However, she was not Martina (despite also being named Martina) and thus was treated by the Princess as a vile imposter who’d taken over her maid’s form to mock the Princess. On a rational level, the Princess understood that it was not fair to blame the girl for traits that were outside of her control and, if one was honest with oneself, were utterly harmless. However, on an even more rational level, the Princess understood that she was a princess and rationality was no concern of hers. That was her last remaining privilege and she intended to cherish it.

Deprived of his mobile home inside her spacesuit, Audric walked beside the Princess like a loyal dog. He bared his teeth at passing parlor maids and footmen but was utterly ignored by them on account of not actually being a dog. The sole person to react to his attempts at doggery was a young girl who grinned and shouted, “Katzenschlange!” with undisguised excitement. The Princess smiled at the girl, earning a disapproving glance from everyone capable of glancing.

Removed from her spacesuit as well, the Princess was diminished in size to the point of being the smallest person in the mansion in any dimension, ferrets and people chopped to bits notwithstanding. However, what she lost in quantity, she gained in quality as her perfect figure was no longer concealed under many centimeters of advanced polymers and alloys.

Due to Martina’s diligence, the old-fashioned uniform worn by the Princess was no less a marvel of engineering and science than her spacesuit was. A brief examination revealed that each brass button was a different device extracted from her unwieldy spacesuit and made accessible due to superior placement. These included an audiovisual recorder, an entertaining but deadly laser, a chemical analyzer, a communicator, a powerful microbomb, an EMP generator, and an excruciatingly slow-moving weapon capable of piercing any shield provided the target was courteous enough to stand still for half an hour or so. The latter was not a very useful weapon in the fields of war and honor, but very useful at informal parties and formal functions. The Princess had no issues with the aforementioned setback as the former statement could be applied to her person with the same degree of accuracy as it could be applied to the weapon.

The fabric was heat and pressure resistant and had a reflective layer only several molecules deep, followed by an equally thin ablative layer. The medals were the reactive portion of her defense. They were programmed to detect and destroy incoming objects with an assortment of nanomissiles and built-in lasers. Others were miniscule bodyguards with advanced artificial brains. They were designed to distance themselves from their charge as quickly as possible and challenge unorthodox attacks in a variety of original ways.

Her apparel probably had more useful properties. However, the Princess had never managed to read the user manual all the way through without falling asleep and mysteriously waking up in her pajamas in a different section of the palace. Furthermore, all of these technological wonders had failed to defend the Princess from the smothering hugs of her mother and cadre of aunts on her sixteenth birthday, including aunts who were stronger than she-bears and had chins more bristly than her father, a man who took great pride in his lavish beard. She suspected that the cause of this failure was an act of sabotage the night before by her tutor Henrico Swift, a fact to which he’d never confessed despite severe pouting and merciless prodding. Since her equipment was handled the previous night by no more trustworthy a character, she suspected it might fail her on this occasion as well.

The marks sewn onto her sleeves declared her to hold a lofty commission in the Old Brigade, a position she attained despite spending less time performing active military service than she did viewing images of dead horses, which she did only once, by mistake. Officially, however, she was enrolled in the brigade a week after her birth and received her first commission, or so she was told, on the day she made her first attempt at walking on her hind feet. It had taken her some time to master the technique, and by then she was already the commander of a nonexistent, but highly celebrated, company. For purposes of promotion, she was considered an active participant in every conflict involving her Crown or any allied crown, excluding France, whose crown was only considered an asset where matters of cheese were concerned.

Thus, at the tender age of sixteen, at a point in life when she still slept with a platoon of stuffed animals and considered a pet ferret to be her best friend, the Princess discovered she was a highly decorated colonel of the Old Brigade, the most celebrated fighting force in the history of mankind. This had impressed no one at all, herself included, but earned her a large cake with nine candles she remembered most fondly, and some more stuffed animals imported from exotic corners of the solar system. Alas, the rank of colonel was her glass ceiling, as brigadiers, whose identity was only revealed after their death, had to actually have a general idea of how to manage a brigade in space.

The Princess was the last person to arrive at the breakfast hall. The others were already seated, beaming with the smug superiority of the social elite, an air almost identical whether lavabathing on the golden beaches of Venus, or having a last meal before a destructive orbital bombardment. Trivial facts such as a ruinous alien invasion and various terrible fates befalling half their number were no excuse for low spirits.

While laden with plates, silverware, and fresh flowers, the table was entirely free of anything edible. Her royal stomach protested the scarcity with a growl.

Tanaka was in the process of quoting something ancient and irrelevant to this, or any other, conceivable situation. The Jeans were fiddling with their flexipads, paying him no attention whatsoever. Von Schmidt was discussing something in hushed and angry tones with Martin, who was nodding seriously. The floating Swiss banker was thankfully absent.

The Princess mumbled some generic pleasantries with as much disdain as she could master and seated herself by the conspicuously sparse breakfast table. After a prolonged period of awkward silence, Jean put down a flexipad and said, “Not to sound overly pedantic, but is not the object of breakfast to break one’s fast? A short delay is tantalizing, but too long a wait is paramount to torture.”

Von Schmidt tapped Martin’s shoulder, making the man hurry outside the room. “I do apologize, my sweet Jean, there has been an accident in the kitchen and it might take a short while until the cooking process can be fully resumed.” Von Schmidt’s thin smile was a credit to his dentist, but otherwise served no purpose. “I’m sure breakfast will be served forthwith.”

“An accident of what nature, may I ask?” the Princess inquired, excited by the prospect of some intrigue at the break of day.

“An accident of a medical nature,” Von Schmidt said coldly.

“To wit?” she pressed on, undaunted by the man’s reluctance.

“To wit,” Von Schmidt said slowly, “one of the kitchen maids dropped several platters of food on the floor on account of a sudden shortage of breath.”

“Not too severe, I hope,” Jean said.

“She’s quite dead, I’m afraid,” Von Schmidt replied.

“Death in the Emperor’s kitchen is no less honorable than on the battlefield,” Tanaka spoke at the wall, which was probably the only object in the room he held any respect for, and vice versa.

“Thank you for this delightfully exotic bit of trivia,” the Princess said in a tone reserved for responding to children keen to share their toilet adventures with their governesses. “Don’t you think we should investigate? Might be we’re experiencing another alien invasion even as we speak.”

The Princess felt ill at ease. It’d been some time since she saw Martina and it was not impossible for these miscreants to harm the poor woman simply to weaken the Princess’s composure. In fact, given their history, they could well do it simply because it was morning and they hadn’t killed anyone yet and they might as well get it over with before proceeding to more important affairs, such as killing more people before dinner.

“Two invasions in two days?” Von Schmidt chuckled. “Why, I cannot conceive of a more flattering prospect. Apparently, even the ancient city of Jerusalem was not as desired as my humble planetoid. But, to lay your hearts at ease, please, by all means, let’s go to the kitchen and pretend to investigate.”