Anyway.
It's more of a rewrite than a new piece, and yes, I do know how the story continues after this first chapter. It's designed to be about novella length (say 40,000 words), but it is not written, not even outlined, except inasmuch as it was outlined by Tacitus, from whom I have ripped it off. The working title is Colci or Colci Rebellion, but as you can see, it from the point of view of the Imperial Admiral, so that has to change. This first chapter is about 1700 words, and features more of a space navy than the soldiers Tacitus was more familiar with.
***
Admiral Zander left White Stadium as soon as it was decorous to do so. He walked rapidly into the cold night, hands behind his back, wishing that he could swing the vast bronze doors shut behind him to lock away the peculiar electric smell of spectacle.
A few others were leaving early with him, mostly naval veterans like himself. Perhaps, he thought, there's something about living a lifetime on a spaceship which vaccinates against the excitement that air shows and weapons displays invariably brought out in others. Certainly the mob seemed to like them well enough. They were in there still cheering the post flash-bang climax dregs – the parade of the Queen's Own 37th Auxiliary Crack Astrobicycle Blowpipe Team, or whatever it was. He found it remarkable that the Emperor had the spare capacity to fly these people in to show them off. Wasn’t there a war on? The settlers, the old soldiers, were in there cheering too. That thought precipitated a change of mood. They were presumably remembering old battle brothers. It reminded them of their service. It just looked like they were cheering a living river of killers.
The tall, dark-haired man in front of him slowed his steps to drop back and walk beside him. With some annoyance Zander realized that this was Athernati, a Magisterial General who had retired on this outpost planet. That wasn't unusual – there were more than three thousand veterans living on Occupied Colci. But Athernati was indigenous, a Colci native. It was unheard of for a high-ranking officer to accept land from the Emperor on his own, native planet. Something not quite honorable about that.
Zander stifled his annoyance and rearranged his features in their natural earnest, rather put-upon, configuration. The general slapped him heartily on the back, boosting Zander's displeasure level to maximum. When he looked up at the general's face, though, the irritation ebbed. It was difficult to be angry with a Colcian. Tall and well-featured as only those growing up on a lower-gee world could be, the men were lean, runner-muscled, ageless knights, and their women hour-glass damsels with haunting eyes. Even the taller Magisterials from one-gee core worlds looked like trolls beside them. Trolls with dwarf wives – except for Zander, who had (rather cleverly, now he came to think of it this way) never married during his service and so had married his own doe-eyed damsel when he settled on Colci. If the girls here liked anything better than tall, muscular, dark-haired knights, it was a Magisterial uniform. Which unpleasantly jerked him back to the here and now; Athernati combined both.
Athernati was speaking to him. " . . . everything the Emperor gave us to start out our lives here," he was saying. "Where the White Stadium now stands, there was a just grove of sugar trees on a plain near a muddy river. Now we have the stadium, and the city, the dam, and land under cultivation for hundreds of miles in either direction."
Zander's well-trained mind dug up a few hail-emperor platitudes. He reeled them off, but underneath, he was thinking, the grove of sugar trees was a holy place; the Empire always builds something showy on the local holy place. I know that, Athernati knows that. His father probably worshiped there. Either he's trying to clumsily affirm his loyalty to the Empire, having mistaken me for someone who cares–or he's as dumb as a post.
Athernati was not telepathic. He continued, "The courtiers have started a death vigil for King Tigus, I hear."
Zander was vaguely aware that the local civilian client society had ranks, but he had never troubled himself to learn them. "King . . . of Colci?"
Athernati shot him a grey-eyed glance that had more than a hint of the steel for which the general was celebrated. "King of the local cluster. Half of Consul Veran's sector."
"If this Tigus dies, will Veran bring us under direct rule of the Emperor?"
"Hardly. King Tigus has willed half his wealth to the Emperor. Tigus has two daughters who will succeed as client Queenlings. Why would the Emperor disturb a sector where he gets half of the output for nothing?"
Zander vaguely remembered that the local king had daughters. So, twelve-year old twin girls were to inherit half his wealth? He wondered why Athernati thought Veran would be satisfied with a mere half. Then again, Consul Veran was a sluggish individual who never moved until you poked him. Hopefully it would be enough to fund his continued inaction. He said nothing.
It was getting cold out here, away from the crowd. The stars were out, but they were partly obscured by the smoke from the thunder-flashes inside the stadium. The thin smell of burned fuses mingled with the almost-animal smell of jet fuel. He shivered.
Where the hell's my car?
One of those local tree-dwelling spirits must have been the patron of minor social miracles. Though the sacred grove was buried under six meters of landfill and topped with thick laser-cut marble, Zander's car arrived as soon as the thought was out. He heard it smoothly decelerate beside him. His lieutenant, Garvey, leaned over and pushed up the gull-wing passenger door. Zander was so relieved to see the car that he invited Athernati in for a ride, but the old general refused. Shame, really. Garvey could have told him a few jokes and lightened the atmosphere a little. Lieutenant Garvey was on active duty, his tour of Colci just a brief respite from a career of policing trouble spots. He seemed to know a story about every whorehouse in the galaxy, and if that wasn't to someone's taste, he had a thousand tales of places he'd lived that were so odd the people called their washing powder BURP, or their candy bars Spongy Joy.
The car sped silently down the jade-stone streets of the town, towards Zander's estate. Garvey recounted a long, filthy and anatomically improbable story about a borrowed orbital lifter and two girlfriends of his who'd always wanted to try zero-gee. It made Zander realize, for the first time, that youth really was wasted on the young. In the dark of the car he secretly pinched the skin on the back of his left hand and was astounded at the lack of elasticity. I'm only fifty-seven! he thought. Then he remembered he was wearing gloves.
He reached Villa Zander just before midnight. He swung his legs out. “Join us for cocktails?” he said, his words punctuated by the crunch of his boots on gravel.
The lieutenant nodded and drove away. Zander's walk to the entrance was overwhelmed by the shriek of cicadas. The lights blazing across the lawn kept them awake every summer night. The rose-red sandstone of the first pylon glowed as if lit from within. He looked up, instinctively, to see what traffic there might be above Colci and its valuable planetary neighbors, but he saw little; the beauty of his house was displayed at the cost of a riot of light pollution. He could make out a few ragged stars and the rapidly setting disc of Pasor, the distant gas giant. The haze didn't, strictly speaking, matter. One could get a thousand times more information from the informationweb. But something in the admiral's mind preferred the direct assessment of spatial distances. It had saved his life before, on the battleship Prometheus. It was easier, instinctual.
Tirisa had waited up for him. He found her in the reflecting room, sitting with a piece of needlework on her lap, watching the aurora play over the distant mountains. The villa was ray-shielded, so the stern vista of ice and glaciers gave only a brief mental feeling of chill.
Tirisa put the embroidery to one side and got up to greet him. She gave him a soft hug and a kiss full of promise, and then ruined his mood with her first sentence. "What was the rally like?"
He sighed, clicked his fingers and sat down. A small bot, cued by the signal, arrived with his cocktail and a matching one for Tirisa. "Tanks, technicals, lots of men looking determined and proud. Thunder-flashes." He took a drink of the sweet, woody liquor. "Dreadful stuff, but you should have gone, really. It looks bad when I'm unaccompanied. This 'I can't go because I have a women's impurity' excuse won't last forever. And anyway, the Magisterium doesn't care. It's a local custom, shutting up women on their impure days." He took another drink, and remembered something else, something altogether more pleasant. "Oh - There was a choir. A choir of little angels. Boys with the purest voices. We should have a son."
She came to sit beside him. "So that he can sing for the Glory of the Empire?"
"No, we should just have a son."
He was about to kiss her again when Lieutenant Garvey walked in and saluted.
"General Ragni's coming over," he said as he sat down. "He said he needed to talk."
Zander couldn't imagine the taciturn old soldier needing to talk. "It's midnight," he pointed out.
"It's always midnight somewhere, sir," said Garvey, and clicked for a drink.
Zander hoped the general hadn't discovered some sort of night-dwelling fish. When Zander had first arrived, as a gesture of friendship Ara Ragni had taken him out fishing on one of Colci's liquid oceans in some small local craft that seemed about as safe, and as maneuverable, as a rawhide coracle. The trip combined the nauseating pressure of planetary gravity hauling on every tissue of his body with the unpredictable rise and fall of the boat on the choppy swell. It had not been a happy combination for Zander. He had spent the day pale and silent, his eyes fixed on the chaotically bobbing horizon, while Ragni stalked around the deck, drank a lot, cursed continually, and eventually caught a fish. This was apparently the signal to go home, and Zander still remembered The Catch as one of the most cheering moments of his entire life.
General Ragni arrived momentarily, causing Garvey to jump to attention.
"I’m here about Consul Veran," Ragni began as he sat down and accepted a glass of wine from the bot.
"He's coming here?" Zander asked in alarm. Damn, that would mean shoring up the collection of hail-emperor junk. Impressing the Emperor’s personal envoy was no simple matter. He'd have to buy statues, maybe even tapestries. At current Colci prices that could empty the entire bank balance.
"No!" Ragni said. "Veran's dead. Happened yesterday."
***
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