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“You are not a citizen of the Confederation,” the leader said as if dismissing the claim.
Did a hint of Ba
No way to tell what the wily Capellan was thinking. Daoshen had perfect control, letting slip only that which he meant to. Ba
Daoshen slithered up to his full height. He stood at the edge of his dais, weaving back and forth just enough to curl the incense smoke around him. With crimson robes swirled tightly around his cadaverously thin body, and the wide mantle resting on his shoulders, he reminded Ba
“You are an ambitious man,” Daoshen finally said. “We have spoken enough this day. Perhaps it would be best for both of us to think on our positions.”
Ba
He spoke with interviewers, but refused to give up further information without mutual assurances from the Confederation. Military officers invited him to meals and meetings, working out different theories about how the Confederation Armed Forces and his commercial empire might best work together. At one point the Leader of Warrior House Imarra took Ba
It was meant to impress, and it did. How many such caches did Daoshen have at his disposal? Ba
He was treated cordially, and shown more entertainments. Eventually, the Maskirovka came with his papers for leaving Sian. Ba
It wasn’t until he was back within Republic space that he remembered Daoshen’s last words, and how they might be read in a completely different—and threatening—ma
Why had Daoshen allowed him to leave Sian? The more he considered it, the more certain he became that Daoshen Liao had pla
Maybe.
“So what’s he offering?” Ivan asked. Big, yes. Ferocious, certainly. But the man was not stupid. Ba
“He’s offering the world,” Ba
Ba
“I have a better question,” Jones finally said. Her rough-edged voice shattered Ba
Ba
5
Dark Descent
Marion, attached are field reports from Algot, Foot Fall, and Wei. As you will see, Menkar was only the first of several worlds to experience severe pro-Capellan uprisings. While the timing and focus of these events suggests an outside coordinating influence, nothing is proven as of yet.
DropShip Burning Petals
Above Liao
Prefecture V, The Republic
20 May 3134
The DropShip corridor was narrow, dusty warm and dimly lit—a seldom used translateral passage squeezed in as an afterthought between officers’ country and a power relay station. A short jump down half a flight of steep metal steps, remember to duck under the ventilation ductwork, and through an airlock quality hatch that opened onto the DropShip’s lower weather deck. A shortcut, if you knew your way around a converted Seeker–class vessel.
Major Ritter Michaelson, late of The Republic’s vaunted Tenth Hastati Sentinels, would know.
Michaelson wore dress blacks with enough salad on his left breast to back up his claim as one of The Republic’s elite soldiers. He pulled his service cap low so that the bill partially hid his contact-tinted eyes. Michaelson didn’t want to speak with anyone—he should have remained in his cabin. But the opportunity, forever his failing, was too great.
The weather deck, a holdover term from when naval vessels had sailed Terran oceans, was one of the Seeker’s three observation platforms. It opened onto ten meters of the curved outside hull where armor had been replaced with thick ferroglass. Ten centimeters separated Michaelson from the oblivion of space. With no atmosphere to fog his vision, the stars stood out in sharp, cruel splendor. He had the deck to himself because the ship was so close to planetfall. That was the way he wanted to come home, back to the word of Liao. Alone and repentant.
He got half of his wish.
The DropShip had started a port-side roll when a crewmember making his rounds slid down a vertical ladder with hands and feet clasped expertly to the outside rail. “Sir,” he said, spying Ritter Michaelson. Then, “Major. The Cap’n has sounded our atmospheric alarm. All passengers—”
He turned, letting the spacer see the ruined side of his face. Always a showstopper. “Should be webbed into their beds for landing,” Michaelson finished. He read the other man’s rank and name off his shipboard dungarees. “Petty Officer Samuels. I know. But I needed to see.”
Michaelson turned back to the ferroglass wall. Only four decks above the DropShip’s massive engines, he felt their deep, powerful thrum seeping up from the deckplates and warming the bottoms of his feet. He watched, waiting to see what the enlisted man would do, waiting for…
Liao.
The world rolled in from the left-hand side of the massive window, blotting out the stars like some great, shadowed curtain. Burning Petals fell into the darkside, though a dark green crescent brightened the rim of the planet where tinted sunlight bent just enough to reach around. Reflected light off of Elias’ Promise, the planet’s moon, allowed him to barely register the outlines of Nánlù and Beilù, the southern and northern continents, though right now they appeared more eastern and western given the DropShip’s equatorial approach angle.
“How long away?” the crewman asked, over his initial shock.
How long had it been since he’d set foot on his homeworld? In which life? “Several years.”
“They say Liao is one of the worlds—m’be a dozen or so—that if you know their history, you know most of the important events of the entire I