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Laurent Zai sighed A life spent in service of tradition, but he was apparently not destined to die cleanly

He opened his palesture taught to children

The senatorial seal expanded before him, cut with the crimson bar sinister of Vasthold Nara Oxhaht

"Captain Laurent Zai," he said to it

The seal didn&039;t break Its security AI wasn&039;t satisfied yet Thin lasers fro the the lasers read the whorls of his fingertips and palms Then they moved up and played across his eyes

Still the seal remained

"Godspite!" he swore Senatorial security was far more cautious than the ainst the signet on his left shoulder The s his skin and sweat There was a pause as DNA was sequenced, pheromones sniffed, blood latticed

Finally the seal broke

The ainst the depthless black of space It hovered there, text only, absolutely still and silent, as clear as soe said:

Don&039;t

Zai blinked, then shook his head

He had the feeling that this would not be easy That nothing would ever be easy again

EXECUTIVE OFFICER Katherie Hobbes felt small in the shipmaster&039;s chair

She had called the co her senior staff at their stations when the battle-stations clarion sounded None of them questioned her As they arrived, they noted her position at the con, met her eyes briefly, and silently took their positions

Hobbes wondered howcaptain She had never fit in with the other officers on board Zai&039;s ship Her Utopian upbringing was inescapably obvious; the cosery that was common on her horay Lynx

The staff looked duly serious, at least Hobbes had set the ten that every member of Zai&039;s creell Their breaths were phanto She knew there would be nothe body recovery However the politicals had screwed up the rescue, this crew felt they had failed their captain once They were all deterain, Hobbes was confident

But the shipantic The airscreens that surrounded her were fewer than at the ExO&039;s station, but they were more complex, croith overrides, feedback shunts, and command icons The airscreens at her old position were si These had power From this chair, Hobbes could exercise control over every aspect of the Lynx

Such potential power at her fingertips felt perilous It was like standing at the edge of a cliff, or aie to the controls, one sudden movement, and far too much would happen Irrecoverably

Froe, she could see the entirety of the huge bridge airscreen It showed the Lynx, scaled small but ready to come into sudden bloom when Captain Zai unleashed his blade of error The deployy-sink manifold alone would increase the vessel&039;s size by an order of nitude The Lynx would bristle like so into weapons and shields, geysers of plasma readied, ranks of drones prihed off, alrity field snapped off, the observation blister would explode like a toy balloon

Her captain would tumble out into naked space, and die

Hobbes reviewed the steps she&039;d taken to try to save her captain The iht still played in her mind when she closed her eyes She and the tactical staff had even synthed a physical ly traced thethe encounter Hobbes had known that therethere to absolve Zai of responsibility, if only she could search harder, longer, build more models and si to find, that the situation was hopeless, had never crossed her mind

But now she remembered the look on Laurent&039;s face as he had dressed her down, and Hobbes despaired His anger had broken so she hadn&039;t realized was there, that she had foolishly allowed to grow And the bitter shaht save himself for her: Katherie Hobbes

But that foolishness would be lost forever in the next few ers grasped the wide arms of the con All this poithin arm&039;s reach, and she had never felt more helpless She looked down at the Lynx in the airscreen Soon, it would unfold into battle configuration, suddenly and terribly beautiful The deed would be done Hobbes almost

wanted the clarion to sound At least then this waiting would be over

"Executive Officer"

The voice came from behind her

"I&039;ll take the chair now"

Even as her mind seemed to crash, the imperatives of duty and habit took over her body Hobbes stood and turned, taking one respectful step away from the station that wasn&039;t hers Vision reddened at the edges, as if an acceleration blackout were closing in

"Captain on the bridge," she e crew snapped to attention

He nodded and took the shipmaster&039;s chair, and she took careful steps back toward her usual station She slipped into its familiar contours still in shock

She looked up at Zai

"The drill we spoke of is canceled, Hobbes," he said quietly "Not postponed Canceled"

She nodded duard the airscreen, and Hobbes saw the other officers quickly turn their startled faces to their own stations A few looked at her questioningly She could only s and stare at her captain

Zai looked down at the ie of the Lynx, and smiled

If Hobbes understood him correctly, Laurent Zai had just throay all honor, all dignity, every tradition he had been raised upon

And he lookedhappy

Her words had e aze from the captain&039;s face

Then a troubled look calanced sharply down at her

"Hobbes?"

"Sir?"

"Pray tell e?" TEN YEARS EARLIER

(IMPERIAL ABSOLUTE)

SENATOR-ELECT

Laurent began talking about Dhantu quite suddenly

Nara could feel his injuries, the strange absences in his body The prosthetics were lifeless and invisible to her e like nervous ghosts Laurent Zai&039;s body was still whole in his own s, even the cavity of the artificial digestive tract glowed hyperreal, as if Laurent were a photograph garishly retouched by hand

The apathy in Nara&039;s syste filtered froer by the hour Oxham&039;s abilities recovered froes: first with a sudden rush of increased sensitivity, thenafter a store of her polar house, thousands of kilometers from the nearest city, Nara was anxious about complete withdrawal Laurent&039;s presence in this sanctuuest here at the polar estate, and the first person in whose presence she had totally freed her e to the Imperial home world

She wondered what had possessed her to bring the gray warrior here Why had she been so open about her childhood? He was, after all, one of the ene discussion of her ownof Laurent&039;s words: That&039;s insane

She was silent now, letting her mind drift while the hearthfire burned itself low

Nara&039;s polar estate was a kingdom of silence In the unpopulated south, her unleashed e for hu water It sohts of the plants in the house&039;s s, she felt transported back to the empty expanses of Vasthold

But when Lieutenant-Coan his tale, her empathy pulled itself back from the wastelands and came to a focus on this quiet, intense man, and on the old pain deep inside him

"The Dhantu punitive expedition was requested by a local governor," Zai said, his eyes on a distant snowlacier that approached the house fro a overnor was a sympathizer, it was later discovered," he said "She ca the first allies of the Ehts since childhood She wrote about it before her execution, bragging that she had achieved the office of Governor Prefectural on the power of hatred alone A household nanny had raised her from birth to despise the Emperor and the Occupation"

"The hand that rocks the cradle," Oxham observed

Laurent nodded

"We have no servants on Vada"

"Nor on Vasthold, Laurent"

He s that the spartan ways of his gray planet were not too different froh polar opposites politically, neither of them were Utopians Both monks and atheists trod on bare floors

Nara realized that Laurent had used the word occupation to describe as officially known as the "Ongoing Liberation of Dhantu" Of course, he had seen firsthand the excesses of direct Imperial rule, and its effect on the Dhantu heart He was beyond euphemisms

Zai sed, and Nara felt a chill in hih the phantom limbs