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Updated: May 25, 2025
"I'm surprised we saved so many," Lanze Degbrend said. He still wore combat coveralls, and a pistol-belt lay beside his chair. "Most of them were killed in the first hour." And that had been before the landing-craft from the ships had gotten down, and there had only been seven hundred men and forty vehicles available.
"Well thought of, Colonel. I suppose the Citadel teems with bureaucrats and such low life-forms?" "Bulging with them. Literally thousands. Lanze Degbrend and Commander Douvrin and a few others are trying to get some sensible answers out of some of them." "This delegation; how had you thought of sending them up?" "Landing-craft to Isobel; Isobel will bring them the rest of the way."
"Ravney's having trouble. That is the word he used," Degbrend said. In Pyairr Ravney's lexicon, trouble meant shooting. "The news of the Emancipation Act is leaking all over the place. Some of the troops in the north who haven't been disarmed yet are mutinying, and there are slave insurrections in a number of places." "They think the Masters have forsaken them, and it's every slave for himself."
After he had tasted his second drink and puffed on the cigarette, he said: "I was so proud. I thought they were learning democracy." "We don't, any of us, have too much to be proud about," Degbrend told him. "They must have been planning and preparing this for a couple of months, and we never caught a whisper of it." That was correct.
You and Colonel Ravney can decide what interpolations are needed to fit the situation." "Number Five; the really tough one," Degbrend considered. "I take it that by interpolations you do not mean dilutions?" "Oh, no; don't water the drink. Spike it." Lanze Degbrend grinned at him. Then he snapped down the visor of his helmet, unslung his carbine, and presented it.
"You know, sir, I'm afraid I am, for this planet," Degbrend said. "Colonel Ravney insisted on it. He says the situation downstairs is still fluid, which I take to mean that everybody is shooting at everybody. He says he has the main telecast station, in the big building the locals call the Citadel." "Oh, good. Get our announcement out as quickly as you can. Number Five.
Vann Shatrak summoned a robot to furnish him with a cold beer and another cigar. Erskyll was drumming an impatient devil's tattoo with his fingernails on the gold-encrusted table in front of him. Lanze Degbrend began interpolating sarcastic comments. And finally, Pyairr Ravney, who came from Lugaluru, reverted to the idiom of his planet's favorite sport: "Come on, come on; turn out the bull!
Lanze Degbrend, at the screen, twisted the dial again, and this time the screen flickered and cleared, and they were looking into the Convocation Chamber from the extreme rear, above the double doors. Far away, in front, Olvir Nikkolon was rising behind the gold and onyx bench, and from the speaker the call bell tolled slowly, and the buzz of over two thousand whispering voices diminished.
I am a noble of the Galactic Empire, and on this pigpen of a planet I represent his Imperial Majesty. You will respect, and address, me accordingly." Khreggor Chmidd no longer wore the gorget of servility, but, as Lanze Degbrend had once remarked, it was still tattooed on his soul. He gulped. "Y-yes, Lord-Master Proconsul!"
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