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Updated: July 24, 2025
Until this morning, when history returned in the black ships of the Galactic Empire. He stubbed out the cigarette and summoned the robot to give him another. Shatrak was speaking: "You see, Count Erskyll, we really had to do it this way, for their own good."
The horror was not all on the visitors' side of the desk, either. Obray of Erskyll was staring at the delegation and saying, "Slaves!" under his breath. Obray of Erskyll had never, in his not-too-long life, seen a slave before. "They can't be," Tchall Hozhet replied. "A Lord-Master is one who owns slaves." He gave that a moment's consideration.
They've people working in places I wouldn't send an unshielded robot, and the hospital there is bulging with radiation-sickness cases. The equipment must have been brought here by the Space Vikings. What's left of it is the damnedest mess of goldbergery I ever saw. The whole thing ought to be shut down and completely rebuilt." Erskyll wanted to know who owned it. The Mastership, he was told.
He wouldn't have credited the commodore with such guile; anything was justified, according to Obray of Erskyll, if done for somebody else's good. "What we did, we just landed suddenly, knocked out their army, seized the center of government, before anybody could do anything.
Lanze Degbrend summoned a robot, had it pour a highball, and gave it to the Proconsul. "Go ahead, Count Erskyll; drink it down. Medicinal," he was saying. "Believe me you certainly need it." Erskyll gulped it down. "I think I could use another, if you please," he said, handing the glass back to Lanze. "And a cigarette."
Trevannion and Erskyll and Patrique Morvill and Lanze Degbrend joined these; subordinates guided the rest of the party a couple of Ravney's officers and Erskyll's numerous staff of advisors and specialists to distribute themselves with their opposite numbers in the Mastership.
Start with the four buildings closest to us, and get them cleared out. If the shaveheads give you any trouble, don't argue with them, just shoot them...." Erskyll, after his brief moment of decisiveness, was staring at the screen to the Convocation Chamber, where bodies were still being heaved into the lorries like black sacks of grain.
"This is a flagrant violation of the Imperial Constitution; our Emperor will not be pleased at this unjustified intervention in the affairs, and this interference with the planetary authority, of the People's Commonwealth of Aditya!" Obray of Erskyll must have realized, for the first time, that he was still holding a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Erskyll persisted. "How did the Lord Nikkolon get to be Chairman of the Presidium, and the Lord Javasan to be Chief of Administration?" That was very simple. The Convocation, consisting of the heads of all the Masterly families, actually small clans, numbered about twenty-five hundred. They elected the seven members of the Presidium, who drew lots for the Chairmanship. They served for life.
Erskyll thought he was anticipating resistance on the part of the Masters, and for once he approved the use of force. Ordinarily, force was a Bad Thing, but this was a Good Cause, which justified any means. They entertained the committee from the Convocation for dinner, that evening.
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