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
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
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