Chaos Quarter: Imperial Ambitions Read online

  “Come,” Gnaeus said. “Let’s have enough of this talk. Your empress has promised to ride out and meet us with a picnic lunch. And your nephews are eager for a rematch of yesterday’s wrestling bout.”

  A small smile creased Aetius’s face at the mention of his nephews. So far Gnaeus knew of no other uncles who would dare roughhouse with the rambunctious five-year-old heir to the throne and his scrappy little brother. Aetius had no such compunctions, much to the pleasure of the two boys.

  They rode up the adjacent ridge toward the palace, the accompanying warriors and serfs holding back slightly as trained. As they crested it, the massive royal palace came into view. It was impossible for it not too. The royal residence was gargantuan, nearly a kilometer in width. It sat atop a plateau that rose above the surrounding hills, the massive building stretching thirty stories into the sky, and half as many underground. The palace was impossibly ornate, its front covered in endless marble sculpture and ornamentation. Even from this distance he could see the glint of the gold and silver that traced its way through channels cut in the stone, weaving complex swirling patterns that highlighted the beauty of the rock. Above he could see the towering rooftop statues, each twenty feet high, each of one of the great emperors. Lines of windows, framed in ornate vegetative stone motifs, ran the whole width of the structure. At the center was a portico leading to the entrance. Two figures of Atlas, twenty-five stories tall, held the triangular roof above the massive front porch. On the pediment, though he couldn’t see it from this distance, was the seal of the emperor done in bas-relief, gilt with precious metals. Outbuildings surrounded the whole of it: the cavernous royal stables, the stately barracks of the house guard, smaller palaces for the emperor’s siblings to live in until larger estates fitting of their station opened up on newly terraformed worlds…

  Yet to his eyes, it was all familiar, so he paid it no heed. Instead he focused on a small party, about two hundred yards away. He smiled as they neared. It was his wife’s entourage. House guards rode on the outside, a half dozen of them. In the rear he could see two finely featured bronze-skinned male serfs, some of his wife’s bed serfs. She did have a taste for Lancelotti Full-Bores. In front of them rode her valet. His horse moved slowly next to a vehicle, a motor carriage. It was an open-air carriage on tank-like treads and moved easily over the terrain. Aboard he could see two nanny-serfs and his two sons.

  And ahead of all of them, on a splendidly mottled appaloosa, rode his wife. Domitia Cheseworth, born Baroness Domitia Rjicevic, was a vision of beauty. Her hair was golden; her eyes, sky blue; her legs, long; and her gaze, regal. She rode confidently, dressed in a simple white tunic and pants, bereft of the adornment of court. Gnaeus took a moment just to watch her. Unlike past emperors he had been fortunate enough to fall in love with his own wife. And to the amazement of every noble in the empire, she had taken to him. He was the first emperor to keep no permanent consorts in the palace. He had no need of them. His wife fulfilled not only his political desires, but his emotional ones as well.

  “What song could compare to a sight like that,” he said, half-lost in thought.

  “None, my lord,” Aetius replied dutifully.

  “Well, are you lords coming!” the empress cried as they neared. “Or shall the princes have the roast pheasant all to themselves?”

  Gnaeus smirked.

  “Roast pheasant is delicious,” noted Aetius.

  “And you know how those boys can eat,” added Gnaeus. He raised an eyebrow, and with a shout his horse sprinted forward, toward his wife. A moment later Aetius matched his yell and tore after him.

  ‘Don’t matter how many planets we terraform into new Earths, some people just wanna live in a big metal box.’

  —Senator Rowan Sinclain (C-Venus), shortly before an epic electoral defeat

  Since I have been here, and based on the Terran movies I watched on Rex’s ship, I’ve noticed a trend in your society. Many of your people have no secure sense of identity; they always question it. Who and what they are…it’s an ever-changing thing. I had heard of this “insecurity” as a nobleman and believed, like so many of my former countrymen, that this was a crippling weakness. In the empire there is no doubt as to who and what you are. From the moment you are born, you know what your place is. It is written out for you in our holy texts. It is sanctioned by God, and to move from that place without the sanction of God’s Own Servant, the emperor, is to break the order God set for us. The nobles were born to rule; the serfs, born to serve; the warriors, born to fight. Wherever you are born, that is what you are, what you do. And if you are not content with this Divine Order you are, to borrow one of your phrases, well and truly screwed.

  —Logs of the debriefing of Lucius Baliol, taken February to June 2507 Standard Date; Classified; Not for public release

  Elea Station, Paphlygonian Orbit, Lambda Aurigae System, Capellan Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 8/1/2507

  Rex sat in the dorsal turret of Longshot. The weapon was an automated thirty-millimeter rail-gun, so there was no need for a crew space. But the builders of this ship had decided that the turrets should be manually operable, should all of the ship’s thirty-five data-cores go down at once. Only one data-core was actually needed to run the computer and ship.

  Longshot sat at the long end of a dock, one of a dozen extending from the nonrotating part of Elea Station. Floating above him was the rotating part, a massive spinning cylinder three miles in length, and a half mile in diameter. Long ago, before gravatic generators had been perfected, rotation had been the only way to replicate gravity. The design had stuck, so even after three centuries of artificial gravity Commonwealth space stations were still giant spinning rods. Inside the dull metal form was a vast open chamber filled with parks and homes and low-lying buildings.

  Compared to Paphlygonia the cavernous interior of Elea was cramped. But compared to his ship, it was boundless. Sure, Longshot was much more spacious than Long Haul, his last vessel. But it was still a ship, and even the largest carriers and battleships became confining after a few weeks. And Longshot was no carrier. Just thinking of it made him wonder why he had chosen to contort himself inside this turret.

  So he slipped out, taking a ladder down a passage barely large enough for him to fit through. At the base he pressed a small panel. A section of ladder slid down, extending to the floor of the forward corridor. He descended, and the ladder retracted.

  Calling the forward corridor a corridor was something of a stretch. It was a short passage that led from the bridge to the common area/kitchen. At the end of the corridor, before it disappeared into the open common room, were doorways to his quarters on one side and the sick bay on the other. Longer corridors flanked both sides of the common room. Both led to cabins, another four. Storage closets waited at the end just before the doors to the cargo bay. It was similar to his old ship. Both models had been designed by the Dariel Combine, after all. But it was roomier with larger cabins that actually had private showers and a much larger sick bay.

  But what set this ship apart from his last, besides the weapons loadout, was that the crew compartment had two levels. When he’d served on huge warships in the navy, he’d never thought much about the joy of multiple levels. On Long Haul he had. What had counted for an engineering floor on that ship had been two maintenance closets next to the reactor, no larger than a stand-alone shower.

  Longshot had a lower floor dedicated to the ship’s various systems. Both of the main engines had rooms where they could be accessed internally, though the smaller dorsal engine didn’t. But two out of three was better than nothing. A machine shop waited nearby. Jake had already started to stake that out as his territory. A dedicated armory sat next to it, far larger than the closet where he’d been forced to stash his guns the last time out. The single corridor through the lower level emptied into the cargo bay.

  He moved forward to the bridge. Like most Dariel ships it was a basic two-tiered design with stations for a full crew
. The upper tier had spots for a scanner, communications officer, and a commander’s seat in the center. The next tier down held the pilot’s seat, flanked by weapon’s stations. He wouldn’t need most of this. The Commonwealth had automated his last ship with millions of dollars of computers. This one was no different.

  Rex dropped into the pilot’s seat. Sitting in the gunner’s station to his right was Lucius. He had a projection of the ship’s weapon systems floating over his console, which he seemed to be half-studying.

  “You see this,” Rex muttered, digging something out of his pocket. It was a currency card. “Damn bureaucrats tried to give me this for the expense account. I had to explain to them they don’t really use credit where we’re going.”

  He handed it to Lucius, who looked at it oddly.

  “I hope you succeeded in convincing them,” Lucius spoke. “I don’t think a pirate would react well to us handing this over for plunder.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We got gold; don’t worry,” said Rex.

  “If that is the case,” asked Lucius, “then why do we still have the card?”

  “Well, I convinced the EID to leave a few thousand dollars on it for any stops we might need to make before entering the Quarter.”

  “And what stops shall we making?”

  “Well, I’m thinking you and Jake could see that proper alcoholic provisions have been secured. No use drinking rotgut this whole trip.”

  Lucius grinned.

  “Any particular ‘provisions’?”

  “I trust your judgment. Just make sure to get some whiskey,” Rex said and then got back to his feet. “I’m gonna try and get Second habituated to our new home.”

  Lucius sighed. “Best of luck with that.”

  Rex chuckled and moved back through the ship. He passed the common room and then moved quickly left into the portside corridor. He stopped at the first door on his right, a cabin. The door was open. Second stood inside, her body still, her head turning this way and that to examine everything around her. He’d come to associate this behavior with her weeks ago. It was what she did whenever her ability to comprehend data was outpaced by the environment around her. This happened quite a lot. While the woman knew, academically, what everything around her was, she was still developing the ability to know how to relate to said things.

  “Like your room?” he asked.

  “If I am only to be in here temporarily…is it really mine?” she asked.

  “Yes, temporarily,” he replied.

  “Is it a possession if it’s temporary?” she repeated.

  “Yes, Second. You only possess food for a short time before eating it, but it still belongs to you,” he tried to explain.

  “But portions of food are used by the body to maintain homeostasis and do not leave. So some portions do remain with you permanently,” she reasoned.

  Her head turned suddenly, fixing on him.

  “Possession is always a question of time Second,” he said, trying a new tack. “Even things you have your entire life stop being yours when you die.”

  “This room would no longer be mine if I die?”

  “What? No, not…I mean, yes, were you to die this room wouldn’t be yours. But you’re not going to die,” he said.

  “You said no person can assure that,” she reminded.

  “Yes, I did. And nobody can. But the probability is…” he paused, realizing that out in the Quarter the probability was not so low that you could dismiss it.

  “Look, I’m just trying to tell you that possession can be a function of time—conditional. While we are on this ship, this room is under your control. When we’re done with it, the control ceases.”

  She blinked twice and then nodded.

  “Okay,” he spoke and then moved over to her bed and sat down. “You sure you don’t want to stay on Paphlygonia?”

  “Your sister makes me feel…unbalanced…not painful…uneasy. I do not think she likes me,” said Second.

  Rex couldn’t reply.

  “You do not ‘think’?”

  “No,” Second replied and then cocked her head quizzically. “I do not understand why you are surprised?”

  Rex smiled, “Because you just made a personal judgment of somebody.”

  She blinked again.

  “An assumption about aspects of a person’s character you don’t know from firsthand experience, inferred by prediction via utilizing limited amounts of known information and experience regarding the person, can be incorrect,” she recited.

  “Yes,” Rex said, nodding. “That is basically what judgment is.”

  “Should I refrain from it? My judgment could be incorrect,” she pushed.

  “So could mine. So could all of ours. There’s no way to keep your mind from making judgments Second, even if you wanted to,” he explained.

  She didn’t respond, just turned her head back to examining the cabin.

  “I like this possession,” she said and then turned to him with a questioning glance. “It creates a feeling of…safety?”

  “Describe what you’re feeling.”

  “Warmth, a lack of alertness, a decrease in muscle tension.”

  “Yep, that’s safety.”

  He got up and moved to leave. As he stepped out the door, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to find Second, concern etched into her face. For a second he just stared at her face. She looked, for a brief moment, like any normal woman worried about something.

  “What function am I to perform on this vessel?” she asked.

  “Function? Uh, I don’t know yet.”

  “Are not crews assembled to perform necessary functions on a vessel?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just haven’t found one for you yet. I will though. Rest assured.”

  “How can I rest assured if I am not assured of a position?”

  He stared at her for a long second, until he realized she was being quite literal. If she was unassured, then there was no way, to her mind at least, that she could physically rest in an assured state.

  “We’ll find you a purpose, Second,” he replied. “We will. Believe me on that.”

  She nodded once to herself, and abruptly walked back into her room.

  ***

  Bob Hadlock shifted in his seat at the security check-in of the Elea Docks. He had a seven-hour shift in front of him; boring work yes, but it was a job. Paphlygonia was not on the frontier, so they didn’t get illegal aliens trying to sneak in from the Quarter or smugglers. Occasionally some criminal worth noting would get caught, but most days involved sitting at his post and staring into space. Luckily Bob was a world-class daydreamer, so this was not altogether an unpleasant way to make a living, though not much of a living though.

  As he sat and stared something odd approached. It looked like a man, except it was a robot, sort of. The face looked human, and the way he chatted with the blond-haired man next to him seemed pretty normal. It was incongruous really. He didn’t expect a machine to engage in casual conversation. Nor did he expect a robot to be carrying paper bags full of liquor bottles.

  But as they approach his attention shifted, away from metal man to the figure next to him. As the blond man drew near Bob suddenly recognized him. He’d been shown this man’s image before, and he knew instantly what he needed to do.

  “We’re from Longshot,” said the blonde, as they walked by. They paused as the scanners ran them over and confirmed they were who they said they were. When they gave the all clear Bob waved them on, giving no indication that he recognized either of them. The two walked on, disappearing down a hallway toward their dock.

  Bob moved to his wrist console, bringing up a small holographic keyboard. He typed out a message quickly and sent it to Mr. Gareth, as he’d been instructed. He smiled as he sent the message and then leaned back in his chair. Gareth was a shady guy, but he always came through with the cash. And by the end of the night Bob would have ten grand in a secure account. Pleased by the thought, he started thinking up a
ll the things he could do with the money.

  ***

  Rex half-dozed in his chair at the pilot’s station. While technically the commander, he preferred being here, where he could actually fly his ship. And sitting closer to the viewscreen somehow made him feel closer to the void outside, not that there was anything to see right now—just boring blackness and a field of stars, the usual.

  He supposed he should be more alert to prepare himself for when they jumped into the Quarter and he would need to be alert. But there was little reason to at this point, with their ship still safely ensconced in Commonwealth space. What finally caught his attention was the sound of footsteps on metal, coming from behind him. He turned, seeing a serious-looking Lucius coming up the hall. Well, more serious-looking than usual at least. When he was on Earth, he’d seen Russians that smiled more than his gunner.

  “Can’t sleep?” Rex asked as his friend stepped onto the bridge.

  “It does not appear so,” Lucius replied, slipping into the weapons station to Rex’s right.

  “Yeah, Chaki said you had some trouble with that.”

  Lucius’s head turned suddenly.

  “Chakrika told you of that?” he asked, surprised.

  “She did. Sounded concerned about you, maybe even worried your head might not be in the right place.”

  “It is nothing,” Lucius declared. “Just unpleasant memories.”

  “They can be a bitch,” Rex said with a nod.

  “While they are nothing I can’t handle, they do inform the reason for why I came up here,” he explained.

  “Okay…” Rex said, not sure what Lucius meant.

  “There is something you should see,” Lucius said, digging something from the pocket of his cargo pants. It was a data-chit, one of the little rectangular squares you usually saw atop a piece of electronic paper. It was about the size of a cigarette and a third as thick. And while they were usually found on electronic paper, they could also be jacked into any old computer.