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Updated: June 22, 2025
"Well, just the same, I wish some reenforcements would get here from Odin," Shatrak said. Erskyll was busy, in the days before the Midyear Feasts, either conferring at the Citadel with the ex-slaves who were the functional heads of the Managements or at the Proconsular Palace with Hozhet and Chmidd and the chief-freedmen of the influential Convocation leaders and Presidium members.
"They are spacemen of the Imperial Navy," Shatrak roared. "Call one a slave to his face and you'll get a rifle-butt in yours. And I shan't lift a finger to stop it." He glared at Chmidd and Hozhet. "Who had the infernal impudence to send slaves to deal with the Empire? He needs to be taught a lesson." "Why, I was sent by the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, and...." "Tchall!" Chmidd hissed at him.
They were all crowded into one of the executive conference-rooms at the Proconsular Palace, the batteries of communication and recording equipment incongruously functional among the gold-encrusted luxury of the original Masterly furnishings. Shatrak swore. "Andrey, I thought your people had planted those pickups where they couldn't be found," he said to Commander Douvrin.
"Commodore Shatrak," he said sternly. "I hope that you will take severe disciplinary action; this is the most outrageous...." "I'll do nothing of the sort," Shatrak retorted. "The colonel is to be commended; did the best thing he could, under the circumstances. What are you going to do when slavery is abolished here, Colonel?"
While you're waiting, you might sort out whoever seems to be in charge and find out just what in Nifflheim he thinks that launching-station was maintained for." "I think I can tell you that, now, Commodore," Prince Trevannion said as Shatrak blanked the screen. "We have a petrified authoritarianism.
Shatrak transferred as many of his technicians as he could spare to the Mizar and sent her to recondition the shipyard and render the underground city inhabitable again so that the satellite could be used as a base for his ships.
He was a generation younger than Prince Trevannion, as Shatrak was a generation older; they were both smooth-faced. It was odd, how beards went in and out of fashion with alternate generations. He had been worried, too, during the landing, but for a different reason from the others. Now he was reacting with anger. "I told you, from the first, that it was unnecessary. You see?
Count Erskyll sat frozen, staring white-faced and horror-sick into the screen. Some of the others had begun to recover and were babbling excitedly. Vann Shatrak was at a communication-screen, talking to Commodore Patrique Morvill, aboard the Empress Eulalie: "All the Landing-Troops, and all the crewmen you can spare and arm. And every vehicle you have.
The gold and onyx bench was broken in a number of places; the Chiefs of Management in front of it, and the Presidium above, had vanished. Among the benches lay black-clad bodies, a few still moving. Smoke rose from burning clothing. Admiral Shatrak put on the sound again; from the screen came screams and cries of pain and fright.
"This thing they call the Convocation," Shatrak mentioned. "I wonder if the members have the business done entirely through their slaves." "Oh, no!" That shocked Chmidd into direct address. "No slave is allowed in the Convocation Chamber." He wondered how they kept the place swept out. Robots, no doubt. Or else, what happened when the Masters weren't there didn't count. "Very well.
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