The View from the Imperium (33 page)

Besides, I had no time to do so. As soon as the ancient intelligence unit inside the wall had finished its lengthy grinding and chewing over of my identity, the gates swung wide to admit me. Beyond it stood a double file of men and women in dark blue uniform tunics and gold shoulder braid.

“Atten-shun!” a deep baritone voice barked. The uniformed officers pivoted so the two files were facing one another. “Preee-sent arms!”

With a mighty
snick!
the assembled drew swords from scabbards and held them high so that the tips of the blades crossed, forming an arcade of shining white steel against the pure blue of the sky.

“Music, cue!”

From the high walls of the courtyard, a fanfare brayed out and rolled into a military march. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, I strode forward through the arch, my back as straight as a laser beam. I knew every face, and loved them all. These were my cousins and friends, whom I had left behind to join the crew of the
Wedjet
. It had only been a few months since I had seen them, but to my surprise, they looked different. They weren’t the ones who had changed; I had. When I reached the end of the file, the voice, which I had recognized as belonging to my cousin Xanson Melies Kinago, barked out his final orders.

“At ease! Returning hero, greet!”

With practiced movement, the assembled sheathed their swords, and rushed to embrace me.

“You slug, we’ve been waiting here for hours!” Xanson laughed, beating me on the back. He was the tallest of the cousins, a centimeter or two taller than I, muscular and strong-chinned, with a lock of unruly dark brown hair that was almost always in his eyes. The grooming robots in basic training had to clip that lock every few days. It made him look raffish, a conceit that I know he enjoyed.

I embraced him back just as vigorously. “You know what it’s like, waiting for Customs to clear landing craft. Bureaucracy and more bureaucracy. It’s an art form, and not a felicitous one.”

“You should have pulled rank,” sniffed my cousin Erita Kinago Betain. She was a thin person with a protuberant, narrow, slightly reddened nose, well suited for sniffing.

“Ah, but I wasn’t alone on the shuttle,” I said.

She looked shocked. “You had to share a shuttle with commoners?”

“Fellow naval officers,” I corrected her.

“That’s what I said—commoners,” she sniffed. “Why you had an assignment out in the middle of nowhere with nobodies, I can’t guess. You should have come with us on the
Tirasiani
. We had a marvelous time, just marvelous!”

“The
Tirisiani
?” I asked.

“A new destroyer, named after Her late Majesty. Didn’t you read our files? It was commissioned just after you left. You would hardly have known we were on board a naval vessel! So different from the Academy. Not at all . . . utilitarian.” She used the word as if it tasted terrible. I laughed.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Xan said. “It wasn’t as though we had onerous duty. In and out through the system, around the Core Worlds. Twice, we made the jump to Leo’s Star.”

“The trip was dull,” Erita confided, “but we managed to keep busy.”

“I am sure you coped wonderfully,” I assured her politely. “Naval service suits you. You look well and fit.”

“But how dull, darling!” she said. “The muscles in my legs throw off the line of my trousers. I shall have to have them all altered.”

“And what is this?” demanded Scotlin Nalparadha Loche, a cousin on my mother’s side and one of my best friends since childhood. He had bright green eyes that glowed from a face the color of tawny port. His barrel chest went well with his broad shoulders and stocky legs. He poked at my chest.

“You mean my medal,” I said proudly.

“Yes—one medal! What’s the matter with your commander? Was he insane?”

I was taken aback. “No! Admiral Podesta was a great leader. Why would you suggest such a thing?”

Scot poked at his own chest.
Equal time,
I thought. “I have sixteen medals. Where are the rest of yours? Doesn’t he know you have rank to uphold?”

I had been so intent upon the faces of my relatives and comrades that I had scarcely looked below chin level. My gaze dropped, then so did my jaw.

Spread across the front of each of the blue tunics were rainbows of color. It would not be out of line to suggest that each of my peers wore
scads
of awards, commendations and recognitions of all types. Some boasted so many tiny pins that their uniform’s fabric stretched under the weight, suggesting that the display ought to be continued next tunic, or have a mobile framework scoot alongside them to take up the excess.

“What are all those?” I asked, astonished.

“Weekly attendance,” Scot ticked them off with a blunt forefinger, “grooming, courtesy, participation in training exercises, good behavior, oh, and service to the Imperium in guarding the Core Worlds.”

“Ah,” I said. I fear that I experienced unbecoming medal-envy. I would at least have qualified for grooming, if not any of the others. I feared my voice sounded weak as I forced out good wishes. “Congratulations, Scot. I am sure you earned every one.”

“I should think so! I sweated months for all that recognition, sucking up to His Grace Captain and Duke Ferdinand Muwaki Kinago for them. And what is that little pip for?”

“Well, ah,” I said, finding beginning the story more awkward than I thought it would be, “I captured a pirate vessel. I had help, of course, but I believe I can confidently say that the impetus came from me.”

The faces, screwed up in sympathy at my hesitation, blossomed into smiles of glee at my obvious prevarication. Xan guffawed.

“Oh, Thomas, go on!” If you’re not going to tell us what it’s for, then just say so!”

“Really!” I protested.

Xan scoffed. He had practiced scoffing for years, and could show scorn more readily and expertly than any of the rest of us. The right corner of his lip turned up. “
Pirates?
Pull the other one, and while you’re at it, spread marmalade on it!”

“He is telling the truth,” came a warm, rich voice. “And he can tell you all about it when I have had a chance to welcome my boy home.”

I turned.

It no doubt shocked brash new recruits to the Naval Academy that the highest authority in the service belonged to a dainty, beautiful woman with big, warm eyes of the same blue-green that I myself possessed. Naturally, I had received them from her. Her hair was a far more attractive shade than mine, a caramel bronze that owed nothing to art. Her complexion was lighter than mine, allowing the pink in the apples of her cheeks to bloom like roses. It was an old fashioned simile, but hers was an old-fashioned beauty. She wore civilian clothing that resembled her uniform but much more flattering: a tailored dark blue blouse that blossomed into wide ruffles at the wrist, and close-fitting eggshell-white silk trousers that stopped just above the gold, high-heeled sandals tied around her tiny ankles. She smiled, and the long lashes in the corners of her eyes crinkled around the sea-blue irises.

“Mother!” I hurried to embrace her.

“Thomas.” She reached up to pull my face down to hers for a kiss. I felt as awkward as I had as a teenager when I had hit the growth spurt that took me from just under her height all the way to my present state of outlandish loftiness. As a matter of courtesy, she never mentioned it, as I refrained from mentioning her lack of stature. Physical, of course. The moment she stepped aboard a ship, she outranked even the Emperor. She let me go, and my spine sprang back into alignment. “You look pale. Didn’t you take vitamin-D light therapy?”

I felt the familiar sense of being under authority. “Yes, mother. I followed my usual regimen as always. Parsons saw to it.”

She glanced behind me. “I can always count on Parsons. And where is he?”

“An appointment, he said. He will make his devoirs to you later on.”

She smiled up at me. “I forget occasionally how very busy he is. Come along, then, and let’s have a talk.” Tucking her hand into my elbow, she turned to the others. “Why don’t you all run along to wherever you were going, and Thomas will join you?”

“Of course, Aunt Tariana,” the cousins murmured.

“Don’t take too long, Thomas,” Xan said. “I rented Starling Island for the night. The whole place is ours.”

“My favorite resort!” I was delighted to know they had missed me, as I had missed them.

“He will be with you shortly,” Mother promised. “Go on, all of you. Have a good time. I’ll send a credit to Luigi for a case of the ’027 from my private stock.”

Her generosity elicited an enormous cheer from the assembled cousins and assorted relatives. They scooted off, shouting compliments to my mother. I made to follow, but no hope. Her grip was as powerful as any mechanical vise. She towed me in the direction of the family quarters. “Not so fast, my dragonlet. You and I are going to have a little conversation. I have just received a rather long recording from Admiral Podesta.”

* * *

I assumed an expression of contrition, but I knew it wouldn’t do much to abate the coming tirade. I was accustomed to them as, I feared, my dear mother was to having to dispense them. There was no doubt material for a lengthy book there, describing how she had been able to raise a family of healthy, self-actualized individuals while at the same time occupying one of the most important offices in the Imperium, and all without acquiring more than a thread or two of silver in her soft-looking hair, but I was not the one to write it. Serious literature was not to my taste, nor to any of my siblings or relatives that I could name.

She directed us into the great room that had been the center of the family’s goings-on for centuries. The ceiling, a vast and colorful mosaic in tiles smaller than the end of my little finger, portrayed ancestors of the Kinago family as heroes and heroines, crossing space, conquering worlds and embracing—though not in an intimate fashion—members of the non-human races that we had encountered first, before any of the other ancient human families. The first Thomas Kinago was there, the great engineer, a rangy man with black hair and sallow skin but whose large dark eyes were reputed to have won him the love of no fewer than five lovely women. His second wife was our ancestress. His brother Niall had discovered and claimed the ore of the burned out star Cassoborix, source of the wealth of the sixty-third generation of space-going Kinagos. The gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals in the mosaic, and much of what was still in our safe room deep underneath the building, came from that strike. That wealth had allowed the Kinago family to pursue its own interests without fear of want and to purchase influence when necessary for millennia. My allowance, as those of my siblings and cousins, came from the Imperial treasury, so the Kinago fortune went largely untapped except in emergencies.

“Where’s Father?” I asked, stumbling in the wake of my maternal tugboat.

“In his workshop, dear,” she said. “You must go and see him when we’ve finished our talk.”

I made as if to veer off. “Shouldn’t I go see him now, while he still remembers that I’m home?”

“Not a chance, Thomas,” Mother said, hauling me firmly into the room. With a turn of the wrist, she spun me off in the direction of my uncle Laurence’s favorite chair. My heels struck the base of the carved wooden frame and I tottered backwards into the embrace of its cushions. Once in, I would have to slither down to the floor to get out. Mother knew that. I wondered just how much trouble I was in.

She settled into her own chair and drew her feet up to one side of the broad, brick-red cushion. If one did not look at her too closely, one might believe she was an ingénue. She signaled, and an antique polished mahogany-clad servbot rolled toward us on padded wheels from the corner. Mother poured priceless pale gold wine, almost certainly the ’044 from our own vineyards in the north, into an equally priceless antique crystal flute.

“Now, son,” she said, holding the goblet out to me. “Talk. Tell me everything. I especially want to hear all about the pirates. Omar was very correct and polite, and I will bet that none of the juicy details made it into the official report.”

I tasted the excellent wine, and took in a deep breath.

“Well, Mother, I was assigned quarters on Deck Four Forward. Not what I expected, with little room for my wardrobe and other belongings . . .”

Chapter 20

My voice had ground down to a dry croak by the time I reached the end of my narrative. If I had left out anything, it was not because I meant to. Mother was a bugbear for detail and an excellent listener, with a knack for asking a leading question that reminded one of other parts of the story. She also laughed at all the funny bits. I could always count on Mother to get the jokes. I adored her.

“You actually marched into the mess hall wearing admiral’s trousers, on your very first day of duty?” Mother asked in a severe tone, but there was an unmistakable twinkle in her eyes. “You unbelievable fool, why did you do that?”

I hunched my shoulders. In retrospect it was not a moment of which I was proud. “Well, Mother, I do outrank everyone with whom I served.”

She shook her head. “Not on a ship! Didn’t you listen to a thing they taught you in the Academy? To that which I’ve devoted my entire life to upholding? You shouldn’t really twist Omar Podesta’s tail. He never could take teasing, even from teenage. He has no sense of humor whatsoever.”

“I had noticed that,” I said feelingly.

She regarded me thoughtfully. “I can’t believe you didn’t spend the entire tour in the brig, let alone take a tour of a colony world.”

“He did say he should clap me in irons . . .”

Mother scoffed. “Omar Podesta never said ‘clap you in irons’!”

I ducked my head. “No, he didn’t. He considered making the brig my permanent quarters for the duration of my service, but he thought he owed it to you to give me a second chance.”

She nodded. “Good of him. I will remember that should he ever need a favor. And you took that second chance.” It was not a question.

“I believe I served well,” I protested.

My mother scowled at me. “In what Navy? Certainly not mine.” I started to reply, but she cut me off with an upraised forefinger. “You obey the senior officer and all officers senior to you. If you have any powers of observation at all, you also obey the senior noncoms and anyone who might have a lesson to teach you. And believe me, my otherwise talented and personable son, all of them do.”