The View from the Imperium Read online

  I looked up in pleased anticipation as the waitstaff—no roboservers in the Admiral’s Mess—began to serve the table next to us from platters of savory delicacies. A broad-faced Blut server in a waist-length white jacket and black kilt glided toward us, guiding a floating tray of covered dishes. I was pleased to see him there; Bluts were placid beings, unsuited for the front line, but they wished to serve their Imperium as the rest of us did. They excelled as support staff. He met my eyes and nodded. Our dinner was coming next.

  “Shouldn’t you be served first when the food comes?” Anstruther asked, with a shy glance my way.

  “No, indeed,” I insisted. “I’m the most junior among you. I’ll be last. That is the correct protocol in the Navy.” I sat back, conscious of my courtesy and gallantry.

  When to my dismay, the flat-faced server arrived, he moved smoothly to my side. I began to protest that he should serve those more senior to me first, but instead, he reached around me from near my right elbow and began to pick up my cutlery!

  “Don’t take those!” I protested. “I haven’t dined yet!”

  In the vicinity of my other elbow, I heard a gentle “Hem!” as if someone had cleared his, her or its throat. I turned to behold a smaller, slighter and more impatient version of Parsons, smooth-faced, black-haired, complete down to the commander’s insignia at collar and sleeve. His name was Oin.

  “Admiral’s compliments, sir, but he’d like to see you in his study at once.”

  “Uh-oh,” Xinu groaned.

  I shifted my gaze in the direction of Parsons’s table. The glum look I spotted on my aide-de-camp’s face was uncalled for; the “old man” probably wanted to welcome the scion of a noble house to the fleet. I had scraped greetings to him from my mother, and this was as good a time as any to present them. I perceived that the admiral’s place at the table had been cleared. No doubt he had an intimate repast prepared for just the two of us, to make welcome the son of an old friend.

  “Back in a while!” I said to the others.

  Anstruther shook her head. “You’ll be swabbing out the food processors,” she promised.

  * * *

  I followed the small-framed commander into a narrow vac-lift that whooshed us upward with enough force to pull the planes of my face downward toward my neck. We came to an abrupt halt a few seconds later. My cheeks bobbed up and down before assuming their correct place. I straightened my collar and strode in the wake of my guide.

  Plain white enameled doorways offered themselves to either side of this new, plain white enameled corridor. Curiosity made me want to know what was behind them, but I didn’t ask. I was rehearsing to myself the exact phrasing that my mother had used when asking me to remember her to the admiral.

  A half-step behind the commander, I nearly walked onto his heels when he stopped a third of the way from the end of the hall and turned sharp right. He held his wrist insignia in the eye of a sensor concealed in the doorframe. Red, blue and green lights sparkled, and the door slid open. Directly in front of me, at a maroon-red antique wooden desk, Podesta sat bolt upright with his hands folded together. The commander peeled discreetly away and retreated from the chamber, leaving us alone.

  I saluted brightly, hoping the energy would transmit itself to the admiral’s downturned mouth and lift it. “Ensign-Lieutenant Kinago, Admiral!” I announced. “May I say how glad and honored I am to be aboard? My mother holds you in high esteem. She sends her regards to you, and wishes you good health and success.”

  The mention of my mother, rather than cheering him up, seemed to attach an anchor to the corners of Podesta’s mouth and drag them lower. He looked pale against the mostly black starmap of the Imperium that filled the entire wall of the office behind his large desk. He rose from the austerely padded chair and walked around his desk to meet me eye to eye. We were of a height, I was surprised to note. That meant he would have been a good deal taller than my maternal unit.

  “Tell me something frankly, Ensign,” the admiral said.

  I was eager to be of service. I straightened further, and my bones cracked in response.

  “Anything, sir.”

  The gaunt visage confronted me until our noses were almost touching. I presented the most open of countenances for his perusal. “Is Tariana angry with me? Did she set you up to throw a deliberate insult in my face?”

  “Why, no,” I replied, rather rocked back on the heels by the question. “She holds you in the very greatest of esteem. She told me that I ought to be proud to be assigned to your fleet for my very first assignment. And so I am!”

  “Then, it must have been your own concept,” the admiral retorted, the shaggy eyebrows ascending miraculously up the broad brow. A trifle of color tinged the pale cheeks. “To flaunt your birth rank, which has no place here. To make your own hours, instead of adhering to ship’s time. And that uniform! Did you have a problem coloring within the lines when you were in infant school, boy?”

  “I was rather neat, if you ask me,” I said, after a moment’s perusal of my memory. “My father’s influence, I believe. He’s very tidy in the art department, though his choice of subject is inexplicable, in my opinion—”

  “You young fool!” His query had apparently been a launching point for a line of thought, not a literal question, to judge by the rapidly increasing rubicundity of his complexion. “Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t spend the rest of your voyage in the bilge, scrubbing it with a nail brush?”

  “Waste of my talents?” I suggested with hope. I’d done a bit of that in the Academy, to the detriment of my uniform and my sense of smell.

  “Do you have any talents?”

  My mouth moved to say, “Quite a few,” but I judged that the reply would provoke a further angry outburst. I doubted he wanted a summing up of my successes at three-dimensional jai-alai or my crack ability of solving crossword puzzles, or my newfound brilliance at image capture and manipulation. My nerves quivererd. This is not how I anticipated meeting the admiral. I moved hastily onto another tack.

  “I apologize sincerely, sir,” I said, as meekly as I could. “It occurs to me that I suffered a severe lapse in judgment . . .”

  The indicator of the admiral’s visage went over the line from scarlet into infrared. “A lapse in judgment? Is that what you call that insult? Your duty is to obey the laws and rules of the Navy, and to be aware of your position in it. And that position, you should recall with some clarity—since you just left the Academy, and I’ve heard that they make you smart there, don’t they?—is ensign. That means that you are at the very bottom of the ranks of officers, which puts you below not only all other officers, but the noncommissioned ranks as well, who actually work for a living, and the enlisted personnel, who at least know why they are here because they volunteered to be! We are at war out here, Ensign. The defense of the Imperium relies upon our efforts. I should not have to tell you, the son of your mother and, yes, your father.”

  Figuratively speaking, my ears pricked up. My father? I couldn’t imagine what he meant, but now, with Podesta looking as if steam might pour out of the top of his head, was not the time to ask. I concentrated on standing absolutely at attention, eyes front and ears open, hoping for further enlightenment. None was forthcoming. I sensed he wished a reply from me. Nervously, I summoned one up from the sincerity of my heart.

  “Of course I wish to serve the Imperium, sir. How may I do that? I am at your orders, sir.”

  The kettle had gone off the boil, so to speak. Eyebrows and choler lowered, and Podesta withdrew from his fearsome posture. He returned to the chair behind his desk and sank into it. I did not relax. “You had best remember that, Ensign. Now, get out of here. Report to Lieutenant Wotun. Her office number is noted in your viewpad. At all other times than roll call, you will be in your quarters. I do not expect to see you at all except at mealtimes, during which I intend not to have to take any notice of you. Don’t lower my expectations any more than you already have.”

  “Ay
e, sir! I will be a model of propriety hereafter, sir!” Relieved, I saluted with all the style I could muster. But Admiral Podesta had swiveled his seat away from me to consult a viewtank. I spun on my heel and marched out of his office, feeling as if my tail was between my legs.

  * * *

  “He’s an idiot, Commander,” Podesta declared, as the hall door slid shut behind the lanky recruit and an interior hatch slid open onto the adjacent chamber that served the admiral as a private sitting room. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with him. Tariana must be so disappointed. He’s just like all of the others.”

  “Not so, sir,” Parsons demurred gently, stepping in. “We have been watching him since he was a boy. He has the required potential. All of the tests show it.”

  The admiral sighed and ran a hand over his thinning hair. “Nature knows we need such things, but you’re starting with rough material, you know.”

  Parsons offered a slight smile. “Not as bad as you may think on first meeting, sir. He has certain skills, well-honed. Natural talents, more than you would expect, though untrained. The attitude can be adjusted over time.”

  “Nature! I hope we have time!” Podesta exclaimed.

  “We’ll do our best, Admiral,” Parsons said, his face returning to smooth inscrutability. “That’s all we may do.”

  Chapter 2

  “Why now?” Fifteenth Councillor Marden demanded. His thin, wrinkled, yellowed face with its sharply angled green and black tattoos covering his cheeks was designed for emitting peevish questions. He shot a bony forefinger out of the full sleeve of his lime-colored velvet robe and tapped it on the black obsidian oval table. The other councillors—there should have been forty in all, five from each of the Castaway Systems, but one contingent was yet missing—frowned. “What in their overbred minds makes the Imperium think we want to deal with them now? Any of them? It’s like a dead spouse coming back and expecting to move back into the house once you’ve remarried! The Imperium!”

  “That’s lacking in taste, Vasily. And not really accurate in scope.” First Councillor Leese DeKarn, a plump-faced woman with silver-white curls and a pattern of light blue arabesques swirling over her cheekbones and nose, clad in Portent’s Star system’s official blue robes, cleared her throat and palmed a light relay in the tabletop.

  Within an envelope of blue light a sincere, round face surmounted by curly, graying hair, manifested itself, speaking with hazel eyes fixed solemnly and kindly upon the viewer. It appeared that no matter where one was in the room the eyes followed one. DeKarn found it uncanny and a little disturbing. “What their ambassador, Madam Hiranna Ben,” she shrugged toward the image, “tells us is that His current Imperiality, Shojan XII, is sorry for the neglect of our safety during the past two hundred years. He wishes to reestablish ‘loving ties’ with the Castaway Cluster, his former principality. The uprisings and disturbances closer to the center of the territory that have overwhelmed their resources are now under control, and he is prepared to give us the defense and consideration that we were supposed to have had from him. The ambassador awaits our pleasure to bring our word back to the Imperium that we are amenable to the restoration of those loving ties.”

  “Shojan?” asked Councillor Six, a tall young man with dark skin decorated with a mask of silver tattoos like lightning strokes. His sculpted hair was also decorated with silver. A member of the Carbon system contingent, he wore his brick-red robes with flair. He hated his given name and was always called Six, even in his private life. He frowned at the screen. “How long has he been on the throne?”

  “About six years, according to the accompanying material,” said DeKarn, bringing up the appropriate file. “He is still in his twenties.”

  “So young!” said Councillor Twenty-Three Bruke. He was the eldest of their number, a man with a very long nose and hollow cheeks, and small eyes nested in wrinkles. His brown and red tattoos almost disappeared in the cross-hatchings that time had etched upon his face. “I have seen so many Emperors and Empresses come and go. It is good of him to reach out to us. I am glad that we are not forgotten.”

  Twenty-Ninth Councillor Zembke made an impatient gesture. His face was a rock-solid oblong, made more impressive by a broad nose like a set of stairs. Black lines tempered only with a touch of yellow masked his cheeks. His flint-hard black eyes surveyed the room. He raised his grand, deep voice. “Is anyone at all falling for such a lie? The Imperium didn’t quell those uprisings. What they couldn’t blow up they walked away from. Like us. It is finished. It was finished long ago. Everyone has said so.”

  “Everyone?” Marden asked, with one raised brow.

  Zembke gestured with a broad hand. “Everyone who has studied the situation. You’ve seen the dispatches. The Imperium is beset from every side but galactic north. The Trade Union has been attacking on at least a dozen fronts while its merchants waft in and out of the most poorly guarded space lanes with no one so much as demanding an electronic customs invoice. We’re just lucky we are so far away from galactic center no one wants to conquer us for our resources alone. It’s not financially worthwhile. You’ve all watched the digitavids . . .”

  “You watch the digitavids?” shrilled Councillor Thirteen, a blunt-faced man with bulging blue eyes staring out of a mask of dark blue curlicues. “You know they are filled with mind-control rays. They’ll put you into a trance, and insert subliminal messages into your subconscious!”

  “And how do you know that, Tross?” Zembke asked, narrowing his small piggish eyes around his somewhat bulbous nose.

  Tross wavered. “Well, I saw this digitavid . . .”

  “Order!” the first councillor insisted, bringing her jade gavel down on the tabletop. “What are we to do about the Imperium?”

  “Question is,” Councillor Twenty-Seven, an attractive woman with milk chocolate-colored hair and caramel skin, mused, “what are they going to do about us? The Emperor has sent us a courteous message via an equally courteous envoy that is on her way here, asking us please can they come by and take over our government again. What if we say no? Are we going to be overrun with warships if we refuse them and choose to remain independent?”

  “We are independent!” Zembke bellowed, bringing his hand down hard on the stone tabletop. It didn’t make a sound. Zembke clenched his fist. DeKarn could tell he hoped none of them could tell how much he had hurt it. In sympathy she curled her toes tightly inside her boots. “Do we need a history lesson here? It was they who abandoned us. I can date it, can’t you? On the fifth of the seventh month, two hundred and nine years ago, we on Carstairs Three sent for an Imperial Fleet contingent to capture and defeat the Trade Union buccaneers who had just accepted delivery of six months’ worth of refined heavy metals, then declined to transfer payment for it. They attempted to leave our system. As we scrambled enforcement vessels to follow them, they fired upon us, and not just to deter chase—to destroy!” His hand flicked over the controls before him, and the screens all around them showed recordings of the event taken by drone satellites in orbit around the disputatious planet. “There, see them! They stole from us!”

  “Cosmic shoplifting!” crowed Councillor Six.

  “No, stiffing the server,” chortled Eighteen, another youthful council member, her tattoos very modern in pink and orange. With humorous reproach, she turned to Twenty-Nine. “They walked out without paying. Your merchants were at fault, Zembke. They should have demanded payment in advance.” Behind him the screen lit up with the image of a diner striding out of an eatery with uniformed flunkies pursuing him. Zembke reddened. “You’ve brought this up, as Carstairs representatives have for twenty long decades. It was a minor infraction, scarcely worthy of calling in the fleet. They might have refused to come deal with it anyhow. Why didn’t your planetary defenses just blast the TU ships out of the skies, if they were using deadly force? The TU couldn’t have gone into ultra-drive within the confines of the system. You had plenty of time. It would have had the right result without putting an
other Imperial life in danger. Certainly without wailing ‘wolf!’ to the skies.”

  “That’s hardly the point!”

  “Which is?” Eighteen asked, bored.

  Zembke snorted. “The point is that the Imperium didn’t come. Not then, not ever. They didn’t even reply to our urgent plea. It was as if no one existed at the end of the circuit. No subsequent message got so much as a ‘Sorry, but there is no one at home right now . . . ’ message. They turned their backs on us. It wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was happening. They couldn’t turn off the digital feeds. We got their news broadcasts. The core of the Imperium was under attack, and they pulled in all of their resources to protect it, and the rest of us could go throw ourselves into . . . into the black hole! It’s to the credit of the indomitable spirit—don’t laugh at me, you unpatriotic whelps!—that the Cluster has survived as well as it has.

  “For two hundred years, in the face of natural disaster, invasion, pirates, famine and shortages, we have had no one to rely upon but ourselves. The Imperium didn’t have enough interest in us even to collect taxes, let alone send defense ships out to patrol our space lanes. The Imperium long ago pulled out of its death spiral, but until now they seem utterly to have forgotten about us. My grandfather used to tell me stories of the bad days, just after the Imperium turned its back on us. No one living is old enough to recall how at first our ancestors couldn’t believe that no one answered our pleas for aid. We waited too long to come to our own defense.”

  “That’s not the Imperium’s fault,” Twenty-Two offered, calmingly.

  “Of course it was their fault!” Councillor Marden barked. “Where were they?”

  “They told us they weren’t coming,” Eighteen stated.

  “When?” Zembke demanded. “When did they tell us?”