Read Online The View from the Imperium by Jody Lynn Nye - Free Book Online

as demanding an electronic customs invoice. We’re just lucky we are so far away from galactic center no one wants to conquer us for our resources alone. It’s not financially worthwhile. You’ve all watched the digitavids . . .”
    “You watch the digitavids?” shrilled Councillor Thirteen, a blunt-faced man with bulging blue eyes staring out of a mask of dark blue curlicues. “You know they are filled with mind-control rays. They’ll put you into a trance, and insert subliminal messages into your subconscious!”
    “And how do you know that, Tross?” Zembke asked, narrowing his small piggish eyes around his somewhat bulbous nose.
    Tross wavered. “Well, I saw this digitavid . . .”
    “Order!” the first councillor insisted, bringing her jade gavel down on the tabletop. “What are we to do about the Imperium?”
    “Question is,” Councillor Twenty-Seven, an attractive woman with milk chocolate-colored hair and caramel skin, mused, “what are they going to do about us? The Emperor has sent us a courteous message via an equally courteous envoy that is on her way here, asking us please can they come by and take over our government again. What if we say no? Are we going to be overrun with warships if we refuse them and choose to remain independent?”
    “We are independent!” Zembke bellowed, bringing his hand down hard on the stone tabletop. It didn’t make a sound. Zembke clenched his fist. DeKarn could tell he hoped none of them could tell how much he had hurt it. In sympathy she curled her toes tightly inside her boots. “Do we need a history lesson here? It was they who abandoned us. I can date it, can’t you? On the fifth of the seventh month, two hundred and nine years ago, we on Carstairs Three sent for an Imperial Fleet contingent to capture and defeat the Trade Union buccaneers who had just accepted delivery of six months’ worth of refined heavy metals, then declined to transfer payment for it. They attempted to leave our system. As we scrambled enforcement vessels to follow them, they fired upon us, and not just to deter chase—to destroy!” His hand flicked over the controls before him, and the screens all around them showed recordings of the event taken by drone satellites in orbit around the disputatious planet. “There, see them! They stole from us!”
    “Cosmic shoplifting!” crowed Councillor Six.
    “No, stiffing the server,” chortled Eighteen, another youthful council member, her tattoos very modern in pink and orange. With humorous reproach, she turned to Twenty-Nine. “They walked out without paying. Your merchants were at fault, Zembke. They should have demanded payment in advance.” Behind him the screen lit up with the image of a diner striding out of an eatery with uniformed flunkies pursuing him. Zembke reddened. “You’ve brought this up, as Carstairs representatives have for twenty long decades. It was a minor infraction, scarcely worthy of calling in the fleet. They might have refused to come deal with it anyhow. Why didn’t your planetary defenses just blast the TU ships out of the skies, if they were using deadly force? The TU couldn’t have gone into ultra-drive within the confines of the system. You had plenty of time. It would have had the right result without putting another Imperial life in danger. Certainly without wailing ‘wolf!’ to the skies.”
    “That’s hardly the point!”
    “Which is?” Eighteen asked, bored.
    Zembke snorted. “The point is that the Imperium didn’t come. Not then, not ever. They didn’t even reply to our urgent plea. It was as if no one existed at the end of the circuit. No subsequent message got so much as a ‘Sorry, but there is no one at home right now . . . ’ message. They turned their backs on us. It wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was happening. They couldn’t turn off the digital feeds. We got their news broadcasts. The core of the Imperium was under attack, and they pulled in all of their resources to