The Risen Empire Read Free Page A

referred to as the Second Rix Incursion. But he had never imagined death by his own hand, had never predicted an Error of Blood.
    But he had felt mortality stalking him. Everything was too precious now, too fragile not to be broken by some mischance, some callous joke of fate. This apprehension had plagued him since he had become, just under two years ago (in his relativistic time frame), suddenly, unexpectedly, and, for the first time in his life, absolutely certain that he was peerlessly ... happy.
    "Isn't love grand?" he murmured to himself.

    EXECUTIVE OFFICER

    Executive Officer Katherie Hobbes heard her captain mutter something under his breath. She glanced up at him, tracers from the blazing wireframe of the captured palace streaking her vision. On the captain's face was a strange expression, given the situation. The pressure was extraordinary, time was running out, and yet he looked ... oddly ecstatic. She felt a momentary thrill at the sight.
    "Does the captain require something?"
    He glanced down at her from the vantage of the shipmaster's chair, the usual ice returning to his eyes. "Where are those damned Intelligencers?"
    Hobbes gestured, data briefly sparkling on her gloved fingers, and a short blue line brightened below, the rest of the airscreen chaos fading in the reserved synesthesia channel she shared with the captain. A host of yellow annotations augmented the blue line, the sparse and unambiguous glyphs of military iconographics at the ready, should the captain wish more details.
    So far, Hobbes thought, the plan was working.
    Master Pilot Marx's squadron of small craft had been deployed from orbit two hours before, in a dropship the size of a fist. The handheld sensors of the Rix commandos had, as hoped, failed to notice this minuscule intrusion into the atmosphere. The dropship had ejected its payload before plunging with a dull thud into the soft earth of an Imperial meditation garden just within the palace. It had rained that day, so no dust cloud rose up from the impact. The ejected payload module landed softly through an open window, with an impact no greater than a champagne cork (which the payload module rather resembled in shape, size, and density) falling back to earth.
    A narrowcast array deployed from the module, spreading across the black marble of the palace floor in a concentric pattern, a fallen spiderweb.
    An uplink with the Lynx was quickly established. Two hundred kilometers above, five pilots sat in their command cockpits, and a small constellation of dust-motes rose up from the payload module, buoyed by the bare spring wind.
    The piloted small craft were followed by a host of support craft controlled by shipboard AI. There were fuelers to carry extra batteries, back-up Intelligencers to replace lost craft, and repeaters that fell behind like a trail of breadcrumbs, carrying the weak transmissions of the Intelligencers back to the payload module.
    The first elements of the rescue were on their way.
    At this moment, however, the small craft were in an evasive maneuver, running silent and blind. They were furled to their smallest size and falling, waiting for a command from space to come alive again.
    Executive Officer Hobbes turned back to the captain. She gestured toward the blue line on the wireframe, and it flared briefly.
    "They're halfway in, sir," she said. "One's been destroyed. The other four are running silent to avoid interception. Marx is in command, of course."
    "Get them back online, dammit. Explain to the master pilot there isn't time for caution. He'll have to forgo his usual finesse today."
    Hobbes nodded smartly. She gestured again....

    PILOT

    "Understood, Hobbes."
    As he settled back into the gelseat, Marx scowled at the executive officer's intrusion. This was his mission, and he'd been about to unfurl the squadron, anyway.
    But it wasn't surprising that the captain was getting jumpy.
    The whole squadron had stayed in their cockpits during the break, watching from