Senator Oxham was proud that her staff had created so complex a measure in less than an hour. The silver proposal cup at the center of the airscreen was barely visible through the dense, glittering forest of iconographics.
The edicts flowing from the Diamond Palace were a sledgehammer, an unambiguous step toward war. This legislation, however complex its point-clouds of legislative heiroglyphics, was in its own way just as simple: a sledgehammer swung in return, carefully balanced in force and angle to stop its counterpart dead with a single collision. Some of the other Secularist Party senators looked unhappy, as if imagining themselves caught between the two.
"Are we sure that we need to approach this so ... confrontationally?" asked Senator Pimir Wat. He pointed timidly at the sparkling line that represented a transport impost, as if it were a downed power line he'd discovered
on
his
front
stoop, buzzing and deadly with high voltage. Senator Oxham had cut back on her dosage of apathy in the last hour, tuning her sensitivity for this meeting. She felt Wat's nerves filling the room like static electricity, coruscating with every sudden movement or sharp word. Oxham knew this particular species of anxiety well; it was the particular paranoia of professional politicians. The legislation before them was, in fact, intended to induce exactly such an emotion, an anxiety that made politicians fragile, malleable.
"Perhaps we could express our concerns in a more symbolic way," Senator Verin suggested. "Reveal all that Senator Oxham has so vigilantly uncovered, and open the subject to debate."
"And give the Risen Father a chance to respond," Senator Wat added.
Oxham turned to face Wat, fixing him with the uncanny blue of her Vasthold eyes. "The Risen Father didn't offer
us
a symbolic gesture," she said. "We haven't been informed, consulted, or even forewarned. Our Empire has simply been moved toward war, our constituents put in harm's way while His military engages in this adventure."
At these last words, she looked at the third parliamentarian in the room. Senator An Mare, whose stridently Secularist homeworld lay in the midst of the Spinward Reaches and at the high water mark of the Rix Incursion, had helped draft the measure. The most lucrative exports of Mare's world had, of course, been exempted from Oxham's legislation.
"Yes, the people have been put in harm's way," Senator Mare said, in her eyes the distant look of someone listening to secondary audio. "And in a fashion that seems deliberately clandestine on the Emperor's part." Mare cocked her head, and her eyes grew sharp. "So I must disagree with the Honorable Verin when he proposes a symbolic gesture, a mere statement of intent. An unnecessary step, I think.
All
legislation is symbolic—rhetoric and signifiers, subjunction and intention—until voted upon, at least."
Oxham felt the tension go out of the room. This legislation can't
really
succeed, Wat and Verin were thinking with relief. It was a gauntlet thrown, a bluff, a signal flare for the rest of the Senate. The measure was sculpted precisely to mirror the Emperor's will, to reveal it in reverse, like a plaster cast. Oxham could have given a long speech listing the details that Niles had found, evidence of imperial intentions, but it would have gone unheard and unnoticed. Pending legislation with major party backing, however, was always carefully scrutinized. Oxham had long ago discovered that a truth cleverly hidden was quicker believed than one simply read into the record.
"True," said Wat. "This bill will send a signal."
Verin nodded his head. "A clarion call!"
Although she and Senator Mare had planned their exchange for exactly this effect, Oxham found herself a little annoyed at the other Senators' quick surrender. With a few modifications, she thought, the bill might pass. But Oxham was one of the youngest members of the Senate; and, of course, she was the Mad Senator. Her party's leaders sometimes underestimated her.
"So I have your backing?" she asked.
The three old solons glanced among themselves, possibly conversing on some private channel, or perhaps they merely knew each other very well. In any case, Oxham's heightened empathy registered the exact moment when agreement came, settling around her mind like a cool layer of mist onto the skin.
It was Senator Mare who nodded, reaching for the silver proposal cup and putting it to her lips. She passed it to Wat, her upper lip stained red by the nanos now greedily sequencing her DNA, mapping the shape of her teeth, listening to her voice before sending a verification code to the Senate's sergeant-at-arms AI. The machine was exquisitely paranoid. It was fast, though. Seconds after Verin had finished off the liquid in the cup, Oxham's legislation flickered for a moment and re-formed in the Secularist caucus airscreen.
Now the measure was rendered in the cooler, more dignified colors of pending law. It was a beautiful thing to behold.
Five minutes later, as Nara Oxham walked down one of the wide, senators-only corridors of the Secularist wing, enjoying the wash of politics and power in her ears and the chemicals of victory in her bloodstream, the summons came.
The Risen Emperor, Ruler of the Eighty Worlds, requested the presence of Senator Nara Oxham. With due respect, but without delay.
COMPOUND MIND
Alexander did what it could to forestall the invaders.
Legis XV's arsenal had been locked out from the compound mind, of course. No Imperial installation this close to the Rix would rely on the planetary infostructure to control its weaponry. Physical keys and panic shunts were in place to keep Alexander from using the capital's ground-to-space weapons against the
Lynx
or its landing craft. But Alexander could still play a role in the battle.
It moved through the palace, seeing through the eyes of security cameras, listening through the motion-detection system, following the progress of the Imperial troops as they stormed the council chamber. Alexander spoke through intercoms to the two Rix commandos left alive after the initial assault, sharing its intelligence, guiding them to harry the rescue effort.
But by now, this last stand was merely a game. The lives of the hostages were no longer important to Alexander. The rescue had come too late; it would be impossible for the Imperials to dislodge the compound mind from Legis XV without destroying the planet's infostructure.
The Rix had won.
Alexander noted the local militia flooding into the palace to reinforce the Imperials. The surviving commandos would soon be outnumbered hundreds to one. But the compound mind saw a narrow escape route. It sent its orders, using one of the commandos in a diversion, and carefully moving to disengage the other.
Alexander was secure, could no more be removed from Legis's infostructure than the oxygen from its biosphere, but the Imperials would not give up easily. Perhaps a lone soldier under its direct command would prove a useful asset later in this contest.
DOCTOR
Dr. Vecher felt hands clearing the goo from his eyes.
He coughed again, another oyster-sized, salty remnant of the stuff sputtering into his mouth. He spat it out, ran his tongue across his teeth. Foul slivers squirmed in the mass of green covering the floor below him.
He looked up, gasping, at whoever held his head.
A marine looked down at him through an open visor. Her aquiline face looked old for a jumper, composed and beautiful in the semidarkness. They were inside the hemisphere of a small stasis field.
The marine—a corporal, Vecher saw—clicked her tongue, and a synthesized voice said,
"Sir, heal."
She pointed at a form lying on the ground.
"Oh," Vecher said, his mind again grasping the dimensions of the situation, now that the imperative of emptying his lungs had been accomplished.
Before him, in the arms of a bloodsoaked Imperial officer, was the Child Empress. She was wracked by some sort of seizure. Saliva flecked the Empress's chin, and her eyes were wide and glassy. Her skin looked pale, even for a risen. The way the Empress's right arm grasped her rib cage made Vecher think:
heart attack.
That didn't make sense. The symbiant wouldn't allow anything as dangerous as a cardiac event.
Vecher reached into his pack and pulled out his medical dropcase. He twisted a polygraph around the Empress's wrist and flipped it on, preparing a derm of adrenalog while the little device booted. After a moment, the polygraph tightened, coiling like a tiny metal cobra, and two quickneedles popped into the Empress's veins. Synesthesia glyphs gave blood pressure and heart rate, and the polygraph ticked through a series of blood tests for poisons, nano checks, and antibody assays. The heart rate was bizarrely high; it wasn't an arrest. The bloodwork rolled past, all negative.
Vecher paused with his hypo in hand, unsure what to do. What was causing this? With one thumb, he pulled open the Empress's eyes. A blood vessel had burst in one, spreading a red stain. The Child Empress gurgled, bubbles rising from her lips.
When in doubt, treat for shock,
Vecher decided. He pulled a shock cocktail from his dropcase, pressing it to his patient's arm. The derm hissed, and the tension in the Empress's muscles seemed to slacken.
"It's working," the Imperial officer said hopefully. The man was an admiral, Vecher realized. An
admiral,
but just a bystander in this awful situation.
"That was only a generalized stabilizer," Vecher answered. "I have no idea what's happening here."
The doctor pulled an ultrasound wrap from the dropcase. The admiral helped him wind the thin, metallic blanket around the Empress. The wrap hummed to life, and an image began to form on its surface. Vague shapes, the Empress's organs, came into focus. Vecher saw the pounding heart, the segments of the symbiant along the spine, the shimmer of the nervous system, and ... something else, just below the heart. Something out of place.
He activated the link to the medical AI aboard the
Lynx,
but after a few seconds of humming it reported connection failure. Of course, the stasis field blocked transmission.
"I need help from diagnostics upstairs," he explained to the marine corporal. "Lower the field."
She looked at the admiral, chain of command reasserting itself. The old man nodded. The corporal shouldered her weapon and scanned the council chamber, then extended one arm toward the field generator's controls.
Before her fingers could reach them, a loud boom shook the room. The corporal dropped to one knee, searching for a target through the sudden rain of dust. Another explosion sounded, this time closer. The floor leapt beneath the doctor's feet, throwing him to the ground. Vecher's head struck the edge of the stasis field, and, looking down, he saw that the marble floor had cracked along the circumference of the field. Of course, Dr. Vecher realized: the field was a sphere, which passed through the floor in a circle around them. The last shockwave had been strong enough to rupture the marble where it was split by the field.
Another pair of blasts rocked the palace. Vecher hoped the floor was supported by something more elastic than stone. Otherwise, their neat little circle of marble floor was likely to fall through to the next level, however far down that was.
Screams from the hostages came dimly through the stasis field; a few decorative elements from the ornate ceiling had fallen among them. A chunk of rock bounced off the black hemisphere above Vecher's head.
"Those idiots!" cried the admiral. "Why are they still bombarding us?"
The marine corporal remained unflappable, nudging one booted toe against the cracked marble at the edge of the field. She looked up at the ceiling.
She pulled off her helmet and vomited professionally—as neatly as the most practiced alcoholic—the green goo in her lungs spilling onto the floor.
"Sorry, doctor," she said. "I can't lower the field. The ceiling could go any second. You'll have to do without any help for now."
Vecher rose shakily, nodding. A metallic taste had replaced the salty strawberry of the oxycompound. He spat into his hand and saw blood. He'd bitten his tongue.
"Perfect," he muttered, and turned toward his patient.
The ultrasound wrap was slowly getting the measure of the Child Empress's organs, shifting like a live thing, tightening around her. The shape below the Empress's heart was clearer now. Vecher stared in horror at it.
"Damn," he swore. "It's..."
"What?" the admiral asked. The marine took her eyes from the open council chamber's doors for a moment to look over his shoulder.
"Part of the symbiant, I think."
The palace shook again. Four tightly grouped blasts rained dust and stone fragments onto the field over their heads.
Vecher simply stared.
"But it shouldn't be
there..."
he said.
PRIVATE
Private Bassiritz, who came from a gray village where a single name sufficed, found himself regarding minute cracks in the stone floor of the palace of Child Empress Anastasia Vista Khaman.
A moment before, a hail of seeking bullets had rounded the corner before him, a flock of flaming birds that filled the hallway with light and high-pitched screams, driving him to the ground. Fortunately, Bassiritz's reflexes were rated in the top thousandth of the highest percentile of Imperial-ruled humanity, in that realm of professional athletes, stock market makers, and cobra handlers. This singular characteristic had given him passage through the classes in academy where he often struggled—not so much unintelligent as undersocialized, raised in a provincial sector of a gray planet where technology was treated with due respect, but the underlying science ridiculed for its strange words and suppositions. The academy teachers taught him what they could, and quietly promoted him, knowing he would be an asset in any sudden, explosive combat situation, such as the one in which he now found himself.
He was a very fast young man. None of the small, whining Rix projectiles had hit Bassiritz, nor had they, by the celeritous standards of the event, even come close.