A Confusion of Princes Read Online Free PDF
Author: Garth Nix
the standard of old Earth.
:We are being tracked: sent Haddad, a focused mind-send to me, which he immediately followed by a wider, more powerful cast.
:Prince Khemri <> and Master of Assassins Haddad <> landing by manta do not fire code Gorgon Head Five Six <
:We are being tracked: sent Haddad, a focused mind-send to me, which he immediately followed by a wider, more powerful cast.
:Prince Khemri <
> relay to Imperial Mind:
That was directed at the installation I could now see clearly below, a typical Imperial surface cube some two hundred meters a side, made of local dirt bonded together by Bitek agents, internally reinforced with Mektek armour and Psitek force shields. It would just be an entry building, with the Naval Academy proper located many hundreds of metres below. Sometimes a thick layer of earth and stone could prevail as a defence, even when Imperial tek failed.
The top of the cube bristled with various autoguns and launchers, many of which were now pointing at me. Faint orange flashes were cycling in the corner of my eyes, warning me of targeting lock-ons, till I noticed the warnings and turned them off. We were so close at that point that my internal systems would only be able to provide enough warning time for me to know I was going to be vapourised a microsecond before it happened.
Fortunately, Haddad’s mind-send worked, though the last part about relaying to the Imperial Mind wasn’t true, unless the priests in the Academy did it for us. I had no household priests to relay. I guessed Haddad had sent that so that any Prince who did think I was an easy target would have second thoughts, just in case I had an unseen vessel somewhere nearby loaded with priests relaying everything.
We landed a kilometre from the cube, my contragrav harness losing power in the last five metres so that my planned perfect landing ended up being rather less dignified as I sprawled in the dark-blue earth. I barely had time to stand up before we were ringed by mekbi troopers, the Bitek human-insect hybrid grunt infantry of the Empire, clad in their dark Mektek armour. I could sense their internal systems and active weapons, and could almost, but not quite, make out the mental chatter between them. But it was all a distant whisper, and I couldn’t hear their command channel, either, as that was locked into Naval service only and their immediate commander.
Who, as it turned out, was a senior cadet annoyed at having an unscheduled arrival during her final watch. She landed in front of me as if she had come down a single step, and her elegance wasn’t solely due to her vastly superior zero-G equipment. Her Master of Assassins, I noted, stayed above, and there were several other blips showing up in my Mektek and Psitek scans that suggested assassin apprentices in a standard formation above and behind the mekbi troopers.
‘Prince Khemri,’ she said with distaste, not even bothering to raise her gold-mirrored visor, as would have been polite. ‘State your business.’
‘Joining the Navy,’ I replied. I didn’t raise my visor either. ‘Who are you?’
I was just answering rudeness with rudeness, since I already knew who she was. Princes radiate their identity to Imperial friendlies through Psitek, via numerous wide and narrow Mektek comm bands and also, when in the appropriate atmosphere, via coded pheromones.
So I knew she was Prince Atalin, that she was three years older than me, an advanced cadet. Not only was she a cadet officer of this Naval Academy, but she was in fact the Senior Cadet Officer, winner of the Sword of Honour in her first year and holder of numerous prizes for coming in top in various subjects, all of this pretty much adding up to her being the best thing to deign to attend this academy since the foundation of the Empire.
And she was a member of House Jerrazis, a group of Princes led by Rear Admiral Prince Jerrazis the fifth, who I could look up if I chose to but didn’t right at that moment. Which was, of course, a mistake.
‘You know who I am,’ she said, and raised her visor, though it wasn’t out of
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