The View from the Imperium Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a warship. The grandeur of the walnut-colored paneling had to take second place to durability and fireproofing, rendering it hopelessly artificial-looking. The carpets, while woven in an intricate and handsome pattern, needed to withstand the passage of thousands of feet a week. Some of the private rooms in the royal residence and compound had never been trodden by more than the current regnant, his or her personal secretary and the cleaning staff. Silk there was a possibility; here, synthetics were the rule. I tried hard not to feel snobbish as I reached for the control.
    The door of the wardroom slid open and emitted its little chime. With Parsons an undoubtedly chilly presence a pace behind my shoulder, I strode in without making the grand entrance that I’d dearly hoped to make, just to announce in a little way that I was aboard and eager to be of service. Sometimes it pained me that Parsons did not appreciate my sense of drama. The rest of the ship’s complement ought to be a little awed, perhaps even slightly agog.
    Maybe they were agog anyhow. Certainly eyes opened widely as I made my way into the handsome chamber. My spanking-new boots made a disconcerting clicking noise upon the shining composite floors. I tried not to count the number of steps, but it was difficult to ignore, since I was now making the only sounds in the room. Diners of many races in crisply pressed uniforms around the wide round tables set down their forks momentarily to watch me make my progress through the chamber. I flicked off my hat and tucked it underneath my left arm. After a month or so it seemed, I arrived at the board, an elegant blackwood three-pedestal table set with priceless antique crystal and china that appeared to hover just over the surface of a gleaming white damask tablecloth. I halted. Hoisting my back into its stiffest upright position, I saluted crisply to the spare man at the center of the table, and offered containing just slightly less starch to each of the four other captains seated behind it on either side of him. Admiral Podesta’s hawklike eyes traveled down from mine, over my uniformed chest, a slight dogleg to the left, to the side of my trousers, and back up again. When the eyes reached mine once more, I offered him a grave smile and a second salute to honor his flag rank. The thin black brows on his egg-shaped head rose a sound centimeter toward his fluffy, thin gray hair, and his eyes narrowed as if in deep thought.
    “Ensign Kinago reporting, Admiral,” I announced.
    “Dinner begins at twenty-hundred, Ensign,” the flag officer snapped out, then returned to his soup without another glance. Parsons sighed just loudly enough for me to hear him.
    “Apologize. Now.”
    “I apologize, Admiral,” I said at once. Podesta didn’t even look up. I hovered for a moment, wondering if I ought to enlarge upon my regrets. My Naval Academy training stressed courtesy, but never had the commandant of the college refused to maintain eye contact with me. I wavered.
    “Sit down now and stay out of trouble, sir,” Parsons muttered. He removed himself from his position at my shoulder and placed himself silently at a central table in between others who bore the same shoulder and wrist badges as he did.
    Stay out of trouble? I mused. I wasn’t in trouble. A trifle late, perhaps. But the entire room sat gawking at me. Couldn’t go on interrupting everyone else’s dinner. I smiled blandly around. Strangers didn’t deter me. I had always felt that unknown persons were just friends that one hadn’t met yet. My philosophy had served me well my first twenty-three years, and I saw no reason to doubt it now.
    “Right, see you later,” I told Parsons. Conscious of the number of eyes on me, I marched smoothly toward the only empty chair in the big room, at the table farthest from the door through which I had just entered. I put a hand on its back and smiled at my tablemates. Each of them wore an ensign’s bar on his, her or