The View from the Imperium Read Online Free PDF Page A

she could be, what with modern technology, “. . . and with my lady mother, too. Who’s in command of this vessel anyhow? Her or me?”
    “Technically neither, sir,” Parsons said, palming the door plate. “This is Admiral Podesta’s flagship, the I.S. Wedjet . Your cutter is aboard this one.”
    “Yes, well, a technicality,” I said, giving myself another look, and my admiration knew no bounds. I was the best product of tailoring and breeding that I had ever seen. “I outrank him where it counts, don’t I? Eh? He’s of good family, but not in the line of descent at all. Is he?”
    Parsons didn’t reply. He could not deny it, and I knew it. I might be a lowly brevet lieutenant, field-promoted from my commission rank of ensign so I could command the cutter in question on a mission that yet of which I knew nothing, but Parsons had confirmed for me that not one of the officers in command of either the dreadnought or its many small craft in the launch bays were a cousin of the Imperial house or any kind of court noble close to my own lofty birth. Parsons himself held the naval rank of commander, but here he was serving as my personal attache. Let the average Steve, Josephine or Sergei try to top that! Ah, the glorious traditions of the Space Navy!
    “I am sure you enjoy the distinction,” Parsons intoned. “Would it perhaps not be more tactful to avoid rubbing the difference between your stations in the lord admiral’s face in his own mess hall? After all, sir, courtesy is the force that has held the Imperium together for many millennia, and your deck rank is that of ensign.”
    “I shall be the picture of civility,” I promised him. A thought struck me suddenly, and I glanced over my shoulder to meet his eyes directly. “By the way, why am I the only one like me on board?”
    “May I say, without fear of contradiction, that you are the only one like you in the universe. Sir.”
    I cocked my head, trying to figure out if the statement was an insult or a compliment, and had to light upon compliment. Parsons was not given to blatant mud-throwing. I pressed my point. “You know what I mean, Parsons. I went all the way through Academy with dozens—no, hundreds—of my distant cousins and friends of friends. People I’ve known since I could crawl. Class of ’049. When we all got our orders on graduation day and compared notes I very nearly dropped my teeth out of my head. They’re all on the same three or four ships doing escort duty around the Core Worlds. I’m the only one assigned out here on the perimeter. What am I doing out here by myself?”
    No clue could be gleaned from my aide’s face. It was as unreadable as the bulkhead just behind him. “Your specific assignment will be given to you in good time, sir. Are any of your classmates in incipient command of a cutter?”
    “Well, no,” I acknowledged, pleased all over again as the warm feeling the thought engendered washed over me. Not that I had seen the vessel in question yet, but it did exist, Parsons had confirmed for me, and was safely aboard the Wedjet, awaiting that mysterious assignment. The shuttle that had conveyed me aboard from the surface of the Imperium’s capital world of Keinolt had come aboard in one of the other landing bays of the vast destroyer. The Wedjet itself was thousands of meters long, shaped like an angel, wings slightly spread, nose of the navigation section forward pointed purposefully toward deep space, its long, slender underside gleaming white from reflected light from the planet’s atmosphere. It was so lovely one had to recall deliberately that it was also deadly. The 836 weapons emplacements, I recalled from lessons in the Academy, were well concealed behind panels and in the curves of her hull. My barely adequate quarters were situated where one of the angel’s knees might have been. “But it might get a little lonely, won’t it?”
    “There are over two thousand people on this ship, comprising sixteen races