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SENATOR

This time, the journey to the Diamond Palace was by tunnel, a route Senator Oxham hadn&039;t known existed The trip lasted seconds; the acceleration registered by her middle ear seemed insufficient for the distance

Oxha aspirant in the Political Apparatus His black uniform creaked--new leather--as they walked down the broad hallway Although her apathy was set very low to allow her abilities full rein for the first session of the council, she felt nothing from the aspirant He must have been particularly susceptible to Apparatus conditioning Perhaps he had been chosen for that very reason His ibly barren; she sensed only tattered remainders of will, the cold stulad to reach the council chamber, if only to escape the chilly umbra of the man&039;s psychic absence

The chamber of the War Council, like most of the Diahout the palace&039;s crystalline walls were airscreen projectors, recording devices, and an Ie reserve of data It was rumored that within the structure&039;s expansive processors an entity with liency had arisen, a sort of ed The palace was abundant with devices and intelligence, and infused with thea focus of awesome power, but its floor had a mineral solidity under Senator Oxham&039;s feet It felt as dumb as stone

She was the last to arrive The others waited in silence as she took a seat

The chamber itself was small compared with the other Iardens, no high coluravity Not even a table A shallow, circular pit was cut into the glassy floor, and the nine counselors sat at its edge, like soathered around a disused fountain The floor of the pit was not the same hypercarbon as the rest of the palace It was opaque, an off-white, pearly horn

There was a si that Oxham had to admire

Her artificial secondary senses had faded as she approached the chamber; now she was cut off from the purr of newsfeed and politics, communications and data overlays As she sat down, the senator was struck by the sudden silence that was the absence of the suuished

It was quiet, here in this diamond hall

"War Council is in session," said the Emperor

Oxham&039;s eyes took in the council members, and she found that Niles&039;s predictions, as usual, had proved very accurate One counselor was present fro herself She&039;d been right about Raz i Loyalty The counselors from the Utopian Party and the Expansionists were both as Niles had predicted And his wildest guess also proved correct: an envoy froender concealed by the necessary biosuit, was seated at a lonely end of the circle

The two dead counselors were both eneral The wild card, as Niles called the traditionally nonpolitical and nonmilitary seat on the council, was held by the intellectual property nate Ax Milnk Oxham had never seen her in person; the woman&039;s truly extraordinary wealth kept her in a constant womb of security, usually on one of her private moons around Home&039;s sister planet, Sha reuards A rave

"To be absolutely precise," the dead general said, "we are not yet a war council proper The Senate doesn&039;t even know of our existence yet We act now only with the ordinary powers of the Risen E Will"

Power enough, thought Oxham The military, the political service, and the unfatho Will--the accumulated property of those who had been elevated, which illed to the E forces of the Eighty Worlds&039; rampant capitalism was that the very rich were aleneration had to start all over: inheritance was for the lower classes

"I am sure that once the Senate is inforiven full status," Raz i his lackey function He intoned the words prayerfully, like so his flock of heaven Oxham had to remind herself not to underestimate the man As she&039;d sensed in the last few sessions, Senator Henders had begun to take control of the Loyalty Party, even though he was only h his first ter between Secularist and Loyal representatives for the last three centuries He must be brilliant tactician, or a favorite of the Euard, bound by staid traditions of succession Henders was an anomaly to be carefully watched

"Perhaps we should leave the question of our status to the Senate," Oxham said Her brash words were rewarded by a flush of surprise from Henders Oxham let the ripple of her statement settle, then added, "As per tradition"

At this last word, Henders nodded reflexively

"True," the Risen E in the subtle muscles around his mouth After centuries of absolute power, His Majestythe tension of this mix "We may have mispoken ourselves The Provisional War Council is in session, then"

Henders settled himself visibly However keen a politician, the man was terribly easy to read He had been ruffled by the exchange; he couldn&039;t bear to hear the words of the Risen One contradicted, even on technical grounds

"The Senate will ratify us soon enough, when they learn what has happened on Legis XV," Henders said coldly

Nara Oxham felt her breath catch Here it was, news of the rescue atteuished, reduced to the helpless anxiety of a hospital waiting rooeneral who had spoken She searched his pallid, cold visage for clues, her empathy almost useless with this ancient, lifeless ao," the dead general continued, "we received confirmation that the Empress Anastasia was killed in cold blood by her captors, even as rescue reached her"

The cha in one temple, her own reaction reinforced by the empathic forces in the rooh Nara Ax Milnk&039;s reflexive fear of instability and chaos welled up in her like panic As if her teeth were biting glass, Nara experienced the grihout the chareat hurricane--the group realization that there was finally, irrevocably, certainly going to be war

As when she awoke from coldsleep, Oxham felt overwheled down again toward roup mind Even the voices of the capital&039;s billions intruded; the white-noise screa metal of the city&039;s ers fu The familiar hiss of transder on to until the e acted quickly She felt reality rush back into the roo demons as her ability dulled The awesome, so now, giving particulars of the rescue atteht sprawling across the great palace, and one last Rix co the Child Empress even as the battle on

The wordsto Nara Oxham All she kneas that her lover was a dead man, doomed by an Error of Blood He would settle his affairs, prepare his crew for his death, and then plunge a dull ceremonial blade into his belly The power of tradition, the relentless fixity of gray culture, his own sense of honor would compel hie remote from her sleeve pocket She felt its tinyher identity, it hummed with approval Nara pressed the device to her throat, unwatched as the council attended to the droning admiral

"Send," she said, at the threshold between voice and whisper

The device vibrated for a moment with life, then went still, its purpose expended

She i down the thread of its Rubicon gerryh the palace&039;s brilliant facets Then it would thrust into the torrent of the capital&039;s infostructure, a water-walking insect braving a raging river But the packet possessed senatorial privilege; it would exercise absolute priority, surging past the queue awaiting off-world transh the web of repeaters, as fleet as an Ilement facility somewhere buried under kiloers waited on Ihtspeed craft to other planets in the realm With unbelievable precision, certain photons suspended in a weakly interacting array would be collapsed, thrust from their coherent state into the surety of ers on the Lynx would react, also falling froe--the set of positions in the array that had discohered--would coe to the Lynx

Just reach him in time, she willed the missive

Then Senator Nara Oxham forced her attention back to the cold planes of the council chahts of Laurent Zai from her mind

She had a war to prosecute

CAPTAIN

The blade rested in Zai&039;s hand, black against black infinity, waiting only for hiesture would trigger Convulsions throughout the ship as it shifted into couration, the dash to battle stations of three hundredas AI searched vainly for incoht War was coood practice for the crew of the Lynx to run an unexpected battle-stations drill Perhaps perfor the EVA maneuvers of a body recovery--their captain&039;s corpse--would i on the front line of a new Rix incursion

Not that he&039;dthe ship to eency status was simply the only way to override the safeties that protected the observation blister

What a strange way to kill ht Laurent Zai wondered what perversity of spirit had led him to choose this particular blade of error Deco did it take a hu to die in hard vacuum? Ten seconds? Thirty? And those s, the bursting of blood vessels in the brain, the explosive expansion of nitrogen bubbles in the knee joints

Probably too ister, too many extraordinary violations of the body all at once At what point was a chorus of agonies overwhel he stood here facing the blackness and conte as about to happen, his nervous system was unlikely to be in any way prepared

Of course, the traditional cere as your pulse splattered onto a ritual mat--was hardly pleasant But as an elevated man, Laurent Zai could choose any means of suicide He didn&039;t have to suffer There were painless ways out, even quite pleasurable ones A century ago, the elevated Transbishop Mater Silver had killed herself with halcionide, gasping with orgasm as she went

But Zai wanted to feel the void However painful, he wanted to knohat had lurked all those years on the other side of the hullalloy He was in love with space, emptiness, always had been Noould meet it face to face

In any case, his decision was made Zai had chosen, and like all co oneself Besides, he had other things to think about

Laurent Zai closed his eyes and sighed The blister was sealed from the crew by his coer any need to show strength for the sake of his shipid controls he had forced upon his thoughts For the first time since his error had been co about her--Senator Nara Oxham

By Imperial Absolute, it had been ten years since he had last seen his lover But in the long acceleration spinward, the Ti Zai&039;s memory--the color of her eyes, the scent of her--still fresh And Nara also suspended herself in tiislative breaks in stasis sleep, enfolded in a cocoon of te for him, had sustained him for these last relative years He&039;d entertained the ro through the long, cold decades of separation, intact while the universe reeled forward

It had seemed that way Zai was elevated, iible for elevation once she renounced her Secularist deathwish Even the pinkest politicians sometimes did, ulties of ti separations by relativity itself

But time, it seearded the black remote before him

It was death, in his hand

Death was the real thief, of course It always had been Love was fragile and hapless coained self-awareness, they had been stalked by the specter of extinction, of nothingness And since the first humanlike primate had learned to smash another&039;s skull, death was the ultimate arbiter of power It was no wonder that the Risen Eod To those who served him faithfully, he offered salvation from humanity&039;s oldest enemy

And demanded death itself for those who failed hiht Tradition had to be served

Zai touched his hands together as if to pray

His stomach clenched He smelled it on his hands, that shame from childhood, when he had prayed to the Emperor for taller classmates He felt the bile that had risen on that afternoon at the soccer field, when he felt with childish surety that he hiue The heavy-handed Vadan propaganda still informed him somehow He s to the E the ritual words of suicide, he whispered, "Nara, I&039;ain

The remote was hard in his hand, but Laurent Zai didn&039;t reach for death Not yet

Message for Captain Laurent Zai, caht

He opened his eyes and shook his head in disbelief

"Hobbes" he sighed He had left specific orders Would the woman not let him die?

But his executive officer did not respond Zai lookedmissive, and sed It was eyes-only, under penalty of blood It had bypassed the bridge altogether, looking for him alone, under senatorial seal

Senatorial

Nara She knew

The situation here on Legis XV was subject to the highest order of secrecy The Lynx&039;s marines had locked down the planet in the first hours of the crisis, occupying the polar entangleht communication Even the ubiquitous Rix compoundthe Senate, only a select feould know that the Eanda machine of the Political Apparatus would prepare the body public very carefully for the news But evidently Nara knew Senator Oxhah in the ranks of her party these last ten years

Or could the e be a coincidence? Surely that was absurd; Nara wouldn&039;t contact hie sealed under penalty of blood She had to know about his error

He didn&039;t want to open the e, didn&039;t want to see Nara&039;s words borne by his defeat, his extinction Laurent Zai had promised to return, and had failed her Use the blade now, he told himself Spare yourself this pain

But a senatorial seal was an agent of soence It would know that it had reached the Lynx successfully, and that Zai wasn&039;t dead yet It would report back to Nara that he had rejected it, just as any intelligent missive would The seal would record his last betrayal

He had to read it Anything less would be cruel