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Like all the others, Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak wore shipboard battle-dress; his coveralls were black, splashed on breast and between shoulders with the gold insignia of his rank. His head was completely bald, and almost spherical; a beaklike nose carried down the curve of his brow, and the straight lines of mouth and chin chopped under it enhanced rather than spoiled the effect.
"They tell me slaves are never permitted to enter it. Maybe, but they have the place bugged to the ceiling all around." "Bugged? What with?" Shatrak asked, and Erskyll was wanting to know what he meant. No doubt he thought Ravney was talking about things crawling out of the woodwork. "Screen pickups, radio pickups, wired microphones; you name it and it's there.
Shatrak nodded; Morvill made a hand-signal and vanished in a flicker of rainbow colors; when the screen cleared, a young Landing-Troop lieutenant in battle-dress was looking out of it. He saluted and gave his name, rank and unit. "This missile-launching site I'm occupying, sir; it's twenty miles north-west of the city. We took it thirty minutes ago; no resistance whatever.
I'll bet every slave in the Citadel knows everything that happens in there while it's happening." Shatrak wanted to know if he had done anything about them. Ravney shook his head. "If that's how they want to run a government, that's how they have a right to run it. Commander Douvrin put in a few of our own, a little better camouflaged than theirs." There were more troops on the third stage down.
Any person disobeying the orders of the Mastership will be dealt with most severely." "Static, too. No spaceships into this system for the last five hundred years; the Convocation equals Parliament, I assume hasn't been in special session for two hundred and fifty." "Yes. I've taken over planets with that kind of government before," Shatrak said. "You can't argue with them.
No doubt he was about to tell Shatrak, cuttingly, that he didn't want an easy Proconsulate, but an opportunity to help these people. He was saved from this by the buzzing of Shatrak's communication-screen. It was Colonel Pyairr Ravney, the Navy Landing-Troop commander.
Why don't they rebel?" "Well, I can think of three good reasons," Douvrin said. "Three square meals a day." "And no responsibilities; no need to make decisions," Degbrend added. "They've been slaves for seven and a half centuries. They don't even know the meaning of freedom, and it would frighten them if they did." "Chain of command," Shatrak said.
"Do we want to talk to them?" Shatrak asked. "Well, we should only talk to the actual, titular, heads of the government Mastership," Erskyll, suddenly protocol-conscious, objected. "We can't negotiate with subordinates." "Oh, who's talking about negotiating; there isn't anything to negotiate. Aditya is now a part of the Galactic Empire.
Rovard Javasan, he suspected, had just asked the sixtifor. Of course, Obray, Count Erskyll, Planetary Proconsul of Aditya, didn't realize that. He didn't even know what Javasan meant. Just free them. Commodore Vann Shatrak couldn't see much of a problem, either. He would have answered, Just free them, and then shoot down the first two or three thousand who took it seriously.
Shatrak was back at the screen to the Empress Eulalie. "Patrique, get a jam-beam focussed on that telecast station at the Citadel; get it off the air. Then broadcast on the same wavelength; announce that anybody claiming sanctuary at the Proconsular Palace will be taken in and protected. And start getting troops down, and all the spacemen you can spare."