I Will Be Emperor (Book 1): A Space Adventure Progression Fantasy, page 1
Yuri Vinokuroff
I Will Be Emperor
Book 1
Published by Magic Dome Books
I Will Be Emperor
Book # 1
Copyright © Yuri Vinokuroff 2023
Cover Art © Nikolay Zakhvatkin 2023
Designer: Vladimir Manyukhin
English translation copyright © Mikhail Yagupov 2023
Editor: Neil P. Woodhead
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2023
ISBN: 978-80-7693-218-0
All Rights Reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
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Table of Contents:
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About The Author
Prologue
12 Years Ago
Year 9011 of the Empire’s Foundation
Planet: Adriana
Affiliation: Imperial
A LITTLE BOY SAT on the roof of the Imperial Orphanage, his feet dangling as he gazed at the city shrouded in night below him. The city was asleep. Well past midnight, only a smattering of lights from windows revealed the insomniacs who couldn't find rest. Each had their own reasons for being awake, and the boy was no exception. He shivered in the night's chill, wrapping himself more tightly in the thin blanket he had brought when he secretly left the communal sleeping room.
Breaking the rules like this could result in a flogging, but he couldn't care less about whippings when he had a dream. For that dream, he was willing to risk it all. Although he would turn five years old tomorrow, he had already made a deep-seated decision about how he would live his life.
His understanding of the world was limited, but one thought had troubled him ever since he became self-aware: Why is the world so unjust? Why did he and thousands of other unfortunate children struggle to survive while others lacked for nothing? Why couldn’t their kind caregiver, Sister Marianne, eat her fill even though she was an adult — and an elderly woman at that — while others wasted money indiscriminately? If the Empire was so wealthy and the Emperor so generous, why were there endless wars? Why did legions of orphans fill the orphanages, devoid of hope for a normal future?
Why were trillions of people subjugated by a select few arrogant Gifted, whose sole distinction was their boundless power — bestowed by birthright into a Lineage rather than earned through genuine merit before the Empire and the Emperor? Why did the Emperor allow this? Was he oblivious to the world’s injustices? Why were they incessantly told of his greatness and compelled to venerate him as though he were their own father? Maybe he was unaware of all this, and someone needed to enlighten him.
Most crucially, why was he, not even five years old yet, pondering such matters? How could he grasp them and be so keenly aware of them in the first place? The other children displayed no such insight; their concerns were entirely different and childlike.
The boy took a clean cloth from his pocket and carefully unwrapped his most treasured possession — a concealed crust of bread. He began to eat cautiously, relishing each small bite and holding the food in his mouth for an extended period before finally swallowing.
The boy took a clean cloth from his pocket and carefully unwrapped his most treasured possession — a concealed crust of bread. He began to eat cautiously, savoring each small bite and holding the food in his mouth for an extended period before finally swallowing.
Tomorrow loomed large. An Inquisitor, draped in forest green, had arrived at the orphanage on a singular mission — to test each orphan for the elusive Gift. Though the odds were slim, they weren’t zero. What better way to address the world’s injustices than from the elevated ranks of those haughty elites?
Lifting his eyes to the heavens, the boy studied the glowing constellations. Orbiting these celestial markers were countless planets, each brimming with lives crying out for help. Lives that could be profoundly altered by his intervention.
With his wiry, battered fists clenched tightly, he whispered a vow into the endless cosmic tapestry unfurled before him. “I will make this world better! I’ll create a world where children won’t go hungry! A world where the Gifted will serve the common people, not the other way around! I’ll establish my own Lineage, the strongest in the galaxy. And then I’ll become Emperor, whatever the cost!”
As a blood-red moon rose on the horizon, bathing the world in a hazy crimson glow, he glanced at a rain-fed puddle beside him. The reflection it held showed a face in transformation — his complexion shifting from pallid to flushed, eyes deepening into bottomless shadows, and his entire form becoming slightly blurred.
Chapter 1
“ATTENTION, TEN SECONDS until landing. Check your weapons and brace yourselves — we’re in for a hot reception down there. Don’t wet yourselves, grunts, we’ll break through!”
“Sir Cadet, sir.”
My eyes flicked open. A sense of utter calm washed over me before every battle, even tempting me toward sleep. Inquisitor Hawkus had mentioned that such tranquility was normal for a rookie. I cast a detached glance over my squad.
Twelve soldiers. Standard armor donned, helmets on but visors raised. Their faces were mostly calm. My gaze shifted downward.
Resting on my knees was the MK-14-SS assault rifle, a standard-issue weapon for the Imperial Army. The “SS” stood for “shortened stock” — an officers’ modification that housed a battery capable of ninety standard laser shots or nine enhanced ones. The weapon’s serial number was IPR56739071. My combat companion. Technically, the term “rifle” was a traditional misnomer for the laser gun.
“Cadet, disembark!” bellowed the burly bald man beside me. He was the only one without a helmet. First Sergeant Eric Carter — my assistant and babysitter, all in one. I nodded and gave a thumbs-up.
The front of the Hawk-44 dropship, which also doubled as the ramp, unhinged and thudded to the ground, raising a cloud of rust-colored dust. The first pair of infantrymen jumped out, quickly taking positions on either side of the landing zone.
They dropped to one knee and froze, their eyes darting as they scanned for targets.
I bolted out next, instinctively taking cover behind the nearest boulder, shielded from potential foes. And enemies were undeniably present, far from a mere hypothetical threat. A direct hit annihilated a dropship near ours. The ensuing explosion was massive, forcefully lifting one of my squad members into the air and slamming him against a rock.
As I pivoted my head, mentally cataloging the unfolding chaos, I realized we were in the first wave of the assault. Normally, cadets should be preserved for later stages, but the 134th Imperial Guard Regiment had suffered severe losses recently. Skilled commanders were simply nonexistent. While I might have lacked experience, a fledgling officer was better than none at all.
Dropships plummeted from the sky like iron birds. They roared with landing thrusters at full power just before touchdown, elongated metal containers with stubby wings and an elevated pilot’s cockpit at the back. The forward, slightly tilted wall simply dropped, and out rushed soldiers — and sometimes, vehicles.
Aerospace fighters skimmed through the sky, striving to suppress resistance from above. Rockets detached from pylons and shot toward an as-yet unseen enemy. The frenzied ballet in the heavens was mesmerizing. Alien aircraft were conspicuously absent — it seemed as though our aerial dominance was uncontested.
And yet it was evident that the invisible enemy fought back fiercely. A beam of coherent light flashed, splitting an ascending fighter in two; a nearby explosion severed the wing of another, sending it spiraling into the ground and taking several of our ground troops with it in the ensuing fireball.
The defensive fire from the anti-aircraft batteries caught our pilots off guard. Some released their payloads before entering the enemy's effective missile range, wasting ammunition. Others abruptly veered off course, abandoning the hazardous area. I found it hard to blame the pilots. “The flesh is weak
My thoughts were interrupted by First Sergeant Carter, who’d landed next to me. He was still helmetless. This bad habit had long since ceased to anger me, but I still found it irritating. Why be so cavalier about your safety? His only response was, “The helmet gets in the way. And, besides, I’m charmed. Ha-ha!”
It was hard to argue with that, although it smelled faintly of heresy. Over the course of the last few battles and a variety of various scrapes, bullets and shrapnel had indeed hit every part of Carter’s body except his head. Aside from one scar, whose origin he preferred to keep quiet about, his bald pate remained pristine.
“What’s our next move, Tony?” When there were no strangers’ ears around, the First Sergeant could afford a little familiarity.
I looked at him contemplatively, weighing our options. The hulking young man, around thirty years old, standing at eight feet and nine inches tall and weighing 269.5 pounds (I knew exactly, as we trained together), looked as grim and rugged as ever. His clean-shaven face, with its heavy jaw, broad cheekbones, broken nose, and scar across the left eye, was the face of a soldier. An experienced and very dangerous soldier.
First Sergeant Eric Carter was my Shadow. “Shadows” were veteran warriors assigned to Gifted cadets from the beginning of their training until the end of their service.
Pairs were assembled after extensive testing and received approval solely from the institution’s Spiritual Mentor. Generally, by the end of the training period, the Gifted and their Shadow had developed such a deep mental connection that they could act effectively and in unison without the need for spoken words.
Furthermore, the Shadow, after forming a “mental bond,” received a free energy channel without any use of Essentium, simply by virtue of the internal reserves of their Gifted counterpart. This also made Shadows somewhat superhuman. After completing their training, the Shadow followed the freshly-minted officer into active military service. They served together until one of them died. If the Shadow went first, the officer would choose another; if the officer died, the Shadow got executed — no exceptions. Though it may have seemed overly cruel, it was, in fact, an act of mercy. A Shadow who lost their Gifted would die in agonizing pain very soon. Their bodies, accustomed to being “boosted” and nurtured by the power of the Gifted over years of their service together, would simply burn themselves out, unable to adapt to the new reality. Eric, as I called my Shadow under ordinary circumstances, was my friend — and the very notion of such a friendship was anathema. Shadows were seen as mere tools for their Gifted masters, allowing the latter to focus on other matters than domestic affairs or personal security. Their role was that of a servant and bodyguard in one.
Making it into the ranks of Shadows was the pinnacle of a career for a commoner soldier, for only the best of the best were chosen. Every commoner in the Empire dreamed of coming into contact with the power of the Gifted, and Shadows got to do just that. They remained subhuman to the Gifted, just like the rest of the commoners. But I, too, was considered subhuman among the Gifted, in a way.
The Gift was hereditary. The chance of receiving the Gift if one of your parents came from an established Lineage was two percent. With two Lineage parents, the chance rose to three and a half percent. The likelihood of a child born to parents outside established Lineages receiving the Gift was infinitesimal, impossible to calculate even as a fraction of a percent — a statistical blip, if anything.
And I was that very “statistical blip.”
Allow me to introduce myself — Anton Noname, an orphanage-raised individual who knows neither his lineage nor his parents, nor even his real surname. I am Gifted, although not yet initiated. When I reached the age of five, a bored inquisitor conducted a procedure known as “Recognition” on me. I still recall how amazed his face had looked and how his disdainful indifference had vanished in a split second.
It was a miracle squared — or, perhaps, cubed. There were many orphanages, and the unceasing war regularly sent orphans into children’s homes. The Emperor’s directive to identify Gifted individuals was most often simply ignored due to lack of time and pervasive bureaucracy. The inquisitor who’d discovered my Gift was the first to visit our orphanage of St. Agnes in many years.
An incredible coincidence. And yes, it found me.
“Bravo, report the situation! Over!” The voice of the regiment commander, Baron Friedrich von Schager, was impossible to mistake for any other.
Colonel von Schager appeared to be in his mid-thirties, although he had already crossed the two-century mark. Since he was one of the Gifted, the circumstance wasn’t the least bit extraordinary. A grizzled veteran, he had outlasted many commanding officers but had never climbed the career ladder — thanks largely to his abrasive demeanor and opinions that often contradicted the higher-ups. Nonetheless, he was an excellent commander who knew his craft inside out and even looked after his troops. At least, as much as one of the Gifted could care for commoners.
In essence, he treated them like prized livestock. While they were, indeed, livestock in this context, one had to note that prized livestock was expensive and rare. Von Schager recognized that well-trained soldiers weren’t made quickly or cheaply. He may have been doing it grudgingly, but he aimed to minimize losses nevertheless. There was never a shortage of babies born on any of the worlds, but no one had yet figured out how to make mothers give birth to fully-grown and trained fighters with combat experience.
“Reporting. We’ve encountered fierce resistance. Over twenty percent losses upon landing. Requesting additional air support. Over,” Captain Steven McCarren, commander of the first battalion, radioed in. Being a commoner, he had hit his rank ceiling long ago, which happened to be the rank of captain. A forty-five-year-old who had risen through the ranks, McCarren was competent by any account. My company was part of his first battalion.
“Bravo! I’ve already sent you all we have left. We continue to lose pilots. Prepare a landing zone for Battalions Charlie and Delta. You have thirty minutes. Over!”
“Acknowledged, Alpha.”
“Bravo One and Bravo Two, why the hell are the enemy’s anti-aircraft batteries still operational? Destroy them immediately!” The timbre of the colonel’s voice shifted sharply as he switched from the regimental channel to the battalion officers’ communication, issuing orders to the commanders of the first and second companies. The tone of the captain’s voice changed as well, becoming darker and more irritated.
“Crap,” Eric cursed. He was also tuned in to the battalion officers’ channel, which made him well-informed and capable of reacting swiftly — that was precisely why Shadows like him were given such authority. “Vassya in command is a sure recipe for a SNAFU.”
Vassya — Lieutenant Vassily Kozyrev, commander of our second company — had earned himself the reputation of a young hothead, having replaced the late Prime Lieutenant Soros. He was characterized by high fighting spirit and a complete lack of common sense. This so-called “universal soldier” only recognized two commands: “attack” and “stop.” And the former had just been issued.
A chipper voice rang loudly over the company’s channel: “Charge, guys! For the Emperor!”
I carefully peeked out from behind a boulder. Vassya’s drop-bot had just landed about a hundred and fifty feet to the left and slightly closer to the enemy. Setting an example, the lieutenant rallied the infantry for an assault and sprinted toward the fortifications. A scant line of soldiers trailed him into battle. Some senselessly shot their hand weapons at concrete walls, while more seasoned troops tried to move in such a way that they were covered by the sparse natural obstacles.
