A Confusion of Princes Read Online Free PDF Page A

think deeply on any matters save my own immediate concerns. Even there, I lacked the knowledge to properly evaluate my position and prospects. Perhaps it was just as well.
    Instead, I dreamed, fantasising about my future life, setting my own no doubt glorious exploits against a background of how I imagined the galaxy was, rather than on its actuality. The next year, which I would necessarily spend as an officer cadet in the Navy, occupied only a few minutes of my imagining, because I knew nothing at all about that life. Instead, I skipped over this immediate future and dreamed of something very like the first episode of Prince Garikm’s Achievements , with me being the heroic singleship pilot, intervening at just the right moment to win a titanic battle against the Naknuk, leading to honours, the adulation of my peers, and in Garikm’s case (in episode 39) becoming the youngest ever grand admiral of the Imperial Fleet. Naturally, this would then lead to the Imperial Throne. I would be Emperor, master of the greatest interstellar Empire of all time!
    As with so much else, my fantasies were built on ignorance. It took me some time to learn that the ranks and honours so eagerly sought by Princes often did not bring the adulation of peers, but instead jealousy, resentment, and a great increase in backstabbing.
    Wrapped in dreams, I found the time passed slowly. Every now and then I had to correct the manta’s course and velocity, with suitable bursts of gas from its glands and vents, keeping station behind Haddad, who led the way.
    Then, almost as if the twenty-eight hours had been but a blink of the eye, we were entering the thin and gloomy atmosphere of the planet. The mantas went into automatic reentry mode, and as instructed, I drew in my arms and legs to huddle in the most thermally protected portion of the manta, in the centre of its back.
    The ride down was faster and much more difficult than I had expected. The manta bucked and spun, and several times I was almost thrown off as a sudden tilt threatened to upset the manta and make me the recipient of white-hot lances of superheated air rather than its ablative silicon underbelly.
    But the manta’s design was good, Haddad had grown it well, and my balance and strength were of course far better than any normal human’s. I held on, kept the trim, and like a falling star I shot through the heavens, until at ten thousand metres the manta and I parted company, me into free fall and it into a long glide that would end in a not very spectacular explosion somewhere on the horizon.
    Haddad had separated some distance away. Though I had never skydived, my body knew how to do it, one of the many basic skills programmed into mind and muscle memory. As with all such programmed skills, while I possessed the basics, I had neither style nor noticeable flair. Nevertheless, I starfished to correct my spin and put my contragrav harness on standby as Haddad speared toward me, matching my descent rate with real skill and experience.
    :Activate harness:
    My harness suddenly bit into my flesh as the antigravity coils warmed up. But still I plummeted down, the thin air hardly slowing my fall, the antigrav slow to build. The dark ground beneath grew closer and closer . . . a lot closer a lot faster than I thought it should be. I was just about to scream out something both verbally and in mindspeech when Haddad’s mental voice sounded calmly inside my head.
    :Emergency full reversal on my mark: sent Haddad, and then a moment later :Mark:
    My harness whined, the straps cut deeper still, and suddenly I felt as if I were no longer falling, though my internal instrumentation recorded that I was in fact still descending, albeit slowly. The ground was close enough to discern some details, though only through augmented eyes. Kwanantil Nine was a long way from its star, and neither of its two moons had yet been turned into an auxiliary sun, so the light was akin to a dim twilight on a world shaped to