Empire of Bones Read Online Free PDF

agricultural planets and mining systems where the asteroid belts made mineral recovery easy. Things would’ve been very different in the Core systems of the old Empire.”
    The pictures of Capitol told that tale effectively enough. Terra must’ve had tens of billions of people. Those not killed in the war would have starved. Oh, certainly, humans were hard to exterminate completely, but the death toll must’ve been staggering. He could see from their faces that the other two had some idea of what he was implying.
    His father nodded. “We were lucky. Society dropped back to pre-spaceflight technology, but now we’re expanding again. We’re still the same Terran Empire, our history and rule unbroken. Thanks to Lucien and Fleet’s sacrifice.”
    Princess Kelsey ate quietly for a while before coming back to the subject. “We’ve explored quite a ways, haven’t we? How far away do you think the Core Systems of the old Empire are?”
    Jared shrugged. “No one really knows. Frankly, we’re not even certain we’re exploring in the right direction. Avalon was a resort world with tall mountains for skiing and wilderness for the well to do. One far away from the rest of civilization. When the rebels took out our capitol and spaceport with a kinetic strike, it wiped away any computer that had that information. The global EMP strike did the same for the rest of the planet.
    “That seems to have been the pattern on all the worlds we’ve rediscovered. All orbitals and spaceports destroyed. The rebels seem to have used EMP weapons to fry any electronics left on the surface. A few very general maps survived, mostly in the few abandoned and overlooked asteroid mining facilities, but none of them showed our sector of space. That’s where our only remaining images of Terra come from.”
    He took a bite of his fish, letting the taste fill his mouth. “We might be exploring along the edges of the old Empire. We know it was huge. We’ve colonized dozens of systems. We’ve probed the flip points two or three hops beyond our borders, which means we’ve some knowledge of over a hundred other systems.”
    “Why don’t we go faster? We’ve had flip drives again for almost a hundred years.”
    Her father answered the question. “Because flip drives require very rare exotic elements to construct. Combined with the expense of building ships, that limits Fleet’s size. With the mines we found on Grathan a few years ago, the supply of those exotic elements is no longer an issue, however the cost to extract and ship them still is. Fleet is expanding now which frees up a few ships to explore. I’ve decided to have four of the older destroyers assigned to this exploration duty on a permanent basis.”
    He nodded his head toward Jared. “No disrespect to your ship, of course.”
    “None taken, sir. Athena is a magnificent ship, even if she isn’t the newest in Fleet anymore. And her crew is the best.”
    “Of course. The worlds we’ve settled had populations ranging from primitive hunter gathers to pre-industrial,” the Emperor said. “Incorporating them into society and raising their standard of living is a huge strain on our economy. We have an obligation to help any civilization we find. That creates a great strain on the Empire’s finances. However, we are working to streamline the process. We’ve been working with the universities over the last decade to train young scientists to accompany these expeditions, too. That doesn’t happen overnight.”
    The young woman nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. How far will you go?”
    “However far we can get in nine months,” Jared said. “We’ll explore well enough to bring a good record back. If we find something interesting that return date is subject to my discretion, so if we’re late it doesn’t automatically mean disaster.”
    “Is trouble likely?”
    “We didn’t lose any ships during the previous expedition, but that might have been luck. We really have no way