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Jefferson had allowed his voice to drop for a moment, a note of weariness creeping in as he thought of the immense task of the Imperial Navy trying to reclaim the pieces of an Empire lost and shattered in the Secession Wars, the capital itself only reaching for the stars decades ago. His Majesty hoped to knit together the fragments before another war could send mankind staggering back to primitive conditions. There had been no wi
“The fu
“They don’t even know what it all is! Wouldn’t do them any good if they did, no technology to understand it anyway. And my sweet Savior, how they guard that stuff! Thought we’d never get any of it copied for the archives. If we’d taken just one of those cubes out — yeah, cubes, the library was geared to a computer. Not much like your books. Took a lot of work to get that fixed, I’ll tell you. And those priests watched every second we were there. Never did make copies of most of the stuff; we’ll get it some day. Be a great job for some historian. We had to sneak in, convince their bishops we were from the stars — they still haven’t told the people in the city about us. And the chaplain had to get in on the act, convince them we were religiously orthodox, gave them some song and dance about how we, too, believed that God spoke from their archives. The chaplain said it was all right, the first thing they copied was a Bible, so he didn’t lie about it. Couldn’t harm a thing copying the stuff or they’d have boiled up so thick it’d take a battleship to kill them all. Can’t do that, they’re good people. We’ll need everyone in this sector one day. Whoosh, I talk too much, pour me some more. That grua’s the best thing about this planet. Well,” he added, looking at the tall blond girl who stood at his elbow, “one of the best, anyway.”
Lieutenant Jefferson was not the only drunken officer in the Blue Bottle, but he would hardly have recognized the gray-eyed man in a plain kilt two tables away as a member of the officer class. Colonel Nathan MacKi
Hal Stark, MacKi
“Damn!” he muttered. “Hal, look at those drunken excuses for officers. And those sots are the rulers of Prince Samual’s World, the ‘representatives of civilization’ as they call themselves, the men who can decree what will be done and snuff out the independence of Orleans like a candle in a hurricane. Babbling, shouting, the overlords of everything we’ve ever known.”
“Yes, sir. Begging the colonel’s pardon, but I seem to recall a young lieutenant some years ago couldn’t hold his liquor no better than them, if it’s all right to say so.” It was difficult to tell just how much of Stark’s apologetic air was genuine.
Colonel MacKi
“Best at whatever the colonel wants me at, that the right answer? Where are we going next, Colonel?”
MacKi
“Worse for you than for me, Colonel. I never did know what we were after, not really anyway, not the way you did. Long as you know, it’s good enough for the troops.” Stark tossed down the last of his drink, then looked back at his officer. “Drink up, Colonel, there’s plenty to do somewhere. We could raise up a fair-sized regiment of men who’d follow you to hell. Tomorrow, I’ll round up some of the old headquarters company and we’ll go show the Southies what war’s really like.”
MacKi
It was no good, MacKi
Ten years of brilliant campaigning had insured that Orleans would not suffer the fate of his native Samand. No power or likely combination of powers could a