Now, the only means of contact with the mind was through the slender connection it had established with Herd. The Rixwoman spoke for it like some ancient oracle: as expressionless and miraculous as a bleeding statue, an intermediary with the deity.
But Zai knew that this prophylaxis couldn't be maintained forever. The object was too tenacious and resourceful, too capable of unanticipated configurations. And the Lynx was too porous: It was fundamentally a scout ship, designed to gather information in a thousand ways. The object would get in sooner or later, would reach Zai's crew just as it had reached Herd.
He would have to tell them. The crew knew that Zai had disarmed thp nnlitirals on board, so thev would eventually have to know about the Emperor's Secret and the coming civil war. Their native worlds would be thrown into chaos soon. Zai and his lover had lit a match that would consume millions of lives.
Laurent watched Home's bright star rise slowly on his left, still two subjective years away, and wondered what was going on at the Forum. Nara would have made her speech a few hours ago, threatening sixteen hundred years of stability. The Apparatus's reaction would be swift and desperate, but Nara Oxham was a Senator, and would not be easily silenced.
Laurent Zai had burned seven percent of the Lynx's entanglement reserve trying to keep track of the developments, and he knew that the Empire was already shaking. If the signs were to be believed, the Emperor had acted directly against the Senate. Zai hoped that the other messages he had sent, warnings to old colleagues and confidants within the military, would help Nara come through this unharmed. She and the Senate would certainly need allies to survive the next months. But in the long term, Zai believed, victory would be theirs.
The Apparatus would do what it could to forestall the spread of the Secret, but their efforts could only be stopgap. The data on pilgrimages were public; once examined, rumors would turn swiftly into accepted fact. And the Secret revealed would strain even the greatest loyalty. Few religions could withstand the news that heaven was, in fact, a lie. Temporary.
Zai wondered what had led the Emperor down this path. Five hundred extra years of life was hardly a trivial boon. Presumably, the sovereign had simply been mistaken at first, thinking that the symbiant was permanently stable, and a religion had been built on the concept that the Old Enemy had been beaten. When the first signs of the error had been detected, perhaps it had been too late for such a massive revision in scripture.
Well, a revision was coming now.
If the sovereign chose to fight, the Empire might remain divided for a long time. The Apparatus could easily keep a few warships, perhaps even a majority of the fleet, in the dark for years. Vessels could be ordered into deep cover for decades, receiving only censored information from the outside universe. But slowly, the truth would chip away at the loyalists, the conditioned, the willfully blind. Though some of the military would certainly remain loyal to the Emperor regardless of his lies, the Eighty Worlds would turn against him one by one. And what would follow this civil war? A republic? A new sovereign? It might take decades to resolve the question of succession.
The Lynx's problem was more immediate, however. As Nara had warned, the vessels pursuing them were under orders to destroy the object, Zai, and his ship. One had to assume that they'd been under deep cover from the start of their mission--and Imperial writs were difficult code to subvert. In a few years Absolute, they would be closing with the Lynx, their velocities almost matched. With the extra mass of the object in tow, the frigate could not outrun them. Outnumbered, with a half-untrained crew and an imperfectly repaired ship, Zai would have to fight again.
He needed an ally, and he was alone in deep space.
All he had was the object.
He reached down toward the absence below him, looked at his gloved hand against the absolute blackness of the thing. He pulled off the glove, and gazed upon the smooth metal of his hand. If the Rix were at long last arriving in the Empire, they had begun with the right man. Laurent Zai knew what it was to be half machine.
And he wanted to return to Home; that was all that mattered. That was what had moved him from the start. Now that everything else-- honor, tradition, sovereign, and immortality itself--was stripped away, he had love to return to.
Nara.
"Bridge."
"Captain?" Hobbes's voice came.
"Assemble the senior staff in one hour."
"Yes, sir. Command bridge?"
"As good a place as any."
"Any prep, Captain?"
"Consider contact with the object, Hobbes, an alliance of convenience with the Rix. Consider how to fight a guerrilla war in a crumbling Empire. Consider how best to explain to our crew that death is final, and that we all may die soon."
There was a pause, but not a long one. "On it, sir."
Senator
The four officers entered the Great Forum slowly, as warily as a pack of predators trespassing in another's territory. They clearly didn't want to be here, committing this transgression.
The rows of white-clad senators watched the four descend the steps toward the dais. A murmur rose up, a sound halfway between defiance and fear. Nara Oxham felt the two emotions collide and mix, creating a strange discomfort that was almost like embarrassment. In their black uniforms, one might have mistaken the officers as guests arriving at a ball wearing tragically confused dress--fantastical masks at a white-tie function.
But then the fear grew, displacing everything else. These four had thousands of soldiers under their command, who surrounded the Forum even now, dozens of ships in the skies above.
"President," the most senior officer said, nodding a small bow.
Drexler looked down upon the four with undisguised anger.
"You have broken the covenant, Admiral. Would you destroy the Empire?"
The woman looked surprised. With the Forum infostructure down, Oxham had no prompts, but Nara recognized her from official parties. It was Admiral Rencer Fowler IX. She had been on Home for some time, and had aged the last ten years at full Absolute.
"We are unarmed, President Drexler. We meant no violation of the Pale."
The old man scowled. "No Imperial soldier has ever come inside the Forum before, Admiral, and your troops threaten us even now."
"These are strange times, President," she said simply, as if in somber agreement. "The four of us wished to speak in private with you, but the secure lines crossing the Pale seem to be in disrepair."