David Weber - Empire from the Ashes

"What function?"

"Mother may be the guardian of the Imperium, Colin, but I am the guardian of our family. I shall not forget that."

"Thank you, Dahak," Colin said very, very softly, and Jiltanith nodded against his shoulder once more.

It wasn't a large room, but it seemed huge to Sean MacIntyre as he stood waiting at the foot of the narrow bed, and his anxious eyes swept it again and again, scanning every surface for the tiniest trace of dust.

Sean had spent all his seventeen and a half years knowing he was Academy-bound, yet despite the vantage point his lofty birth should have given him, he hadn't really understood what that meant. Now he knew... and his worst nightmares had fallen far short of the reality.

He was a "plebe," the lowest form of military life and the legitimate prey of any higher member of the food chain. He remembered dinner conversations in which Adrienne Robbins had assured his father she'd eliminated most of the hazing the Emperor had recalled from his own days at the US Navy's academy. Sean would never dream of disputing her word, of course, but it seemed unlikely to him that she could have eliminated very much of it after all.

Intellectually, he understood a plebe's unenviable lot was a necessary part of teaching future officers to function under pressure and knew it wasn't personal—or not, at least, for most people. All of which made no difference to his sweaty palms as he awaited quarters inspection, for this was a subject upon which his intellect and the rest of him were hardly on speaking terms. He'd embarrassed Mid/4 Malinovsky, his divisional officer, before her peers. The fact that he'd embarrassed himself even worse cut no ice with her, and understanding why she'd set her flinty little heart on making his life a living hell was no help at all.

He'd felt, to use one of his father's favorite deflating phrases, as proud as a peacock as he stood in the front rank of the newest Academy class, awaiting the Commandant's first inspection. Every detail of his appearance had been perfect—God knew he'd worked hard enough to make it so!—and he'd been excited and happy despite the butterflies in his midsection. And because he'd felt and been all those things, he'd done an incredibly stupid thing.

He'd smiled at Admiral Robbins. Worse, he'd forgotten to stare straight before him as she inspected the ranks. He'd actually turned his head to meet her eyes and grinned at her!

Lady Nergal hadn't said a word, but her brown eyes had held no trace of "Aunt Adrienne's" twinkle. Their temperature had hovered somewhere a bit below that of liquid helium as they considered him like some particularly repulsive amoeba, and the parade ground's silence had been... profound.

It only lasted a century or so, and then his eyes whipped back to their appointed position, his ramrod-straight spine turned straighter still, and his smile vanished. But the damage had been done, and Christina Malinovsky intended to make him pay.

The click of a heel warned him, and he snapped to rigid attention, thumbs against his trouser seams, as Mid/4 Malinovsky entered his quarters.

There were no domestic robots at the Academy. Some of the Fleet and Marine officers had pointed out that their own pre-Imperial military academies had provided their midshipmen and cadets with servants in order to free them from domestic concerns and let them concentrate on their studies. Admiral Robbins, however, was a product of the US military tradition. She was a great believer in the virtues of sweat, and no one had quite had the nerve to argue with her when she began designing the Academy's syllabus and traditions. The fact that His Imperial Majesty Colin I sprang from the same tradition as Admiral Robbins may also have had a little something to do with that, but the mechanics behind the decision meant little to the plebes faced with its consequences, and Sean had labored manfully against this dreadful moment. Now he stood silent, buttons gleaming like tiny suns, boots so brightly polished it was difficult to tell they were black, and used the full enhancement he'd finally received to keep from sweating bullets.

Mid/4 Malinovsky prowled around the room, running white-gloved fingers over shelves and dresser top, regarding her stony face in the lavatory mirror as she checked his tooth glass for water spots. She opened his locker to examine its contents and his tiny closet to check the hangered garments and study the polish of his second pair of boots. Her perfectly turned out exec stood in the door, traditional clipboard tucked under his arm, watching her, and Sean could almost feel the sadistic glee with which he waited to inscribe Mid/1 MacIntyre's name on his gig list. But Malinovsky said nothing, and Sean fought down a sense of relief and reminded himself she wasn't done yet.

She straightened and closed the closet, looked about the room one more time, and crossed to his bed. She stopped where he could see her—not, he was certain, by accident—and reached into her pocket. She took her time, making an elaborate ritual of it, as she withdrew a shiny disk Sean recognized after a moment as an antique U.S. silver dollar. She balanced it consideringly on her crooked index finger and thumb, then flipped it.

The coin flashed through the air, then arced down to land precisely in the center of the bunk... and lie there.

Malinovsky's gray eyes glittered as it failed to bounce, and Sean's heart fell. He kept his face impassive—with an effort—as she reclaimed the coin and weighed it in her palm a moment before pocketing it once more. Then she reached down, gripped the blanket and sheets, and stripped the mattress bare with a single jerk.

She turned on her heel, and her exec's stylus was poised.

"Five demerits," she said flatly, and stalked away.

Colin MacIntyre looked around the gleaming conference table at the members of his Imperial Council. Two of them were absent, for Lawrence Jefferson had been called in as a last-minute substitute for Horus, and Life Councilor Geb, the Minister of Reconstruction was seldom on Birhat. For the most part, that was because he spent his time following close on the heels of Survey Command, but Geb was also the last surviving citizen of the original Birhat, and the monumental changes his home world had suffered hurt.

That was one reason Colin had recalled Vlad Chernikov from his post as Geb's assistant. Tsien and Horus had needed an engineer on Birhat, so Colin had created the Ministry of Engineering and Vlad had agreed to accept it. Now the blond, blue-eyed ex-cosmonaut finished his summary of the Bia System's ongoing civilian projects, and Colin nodded approval.

"Sounds like you're on top of things, Vlad... as usual." Vlad smiled, and Colin smiled back. "Having said that, how's Earth's shield coming?"

"Quite well," Vlad said. "The only real problem is the task's simple magnitude. We have emplaced forty percent of the primary generators and work is beginning on the subordinate stations. I fear the asteroid belt has all but vanished, but the Centauris freighters are keeping pace."

Colin nodded. Spaceborne Imperial "smelters" could render almost any material down to its basic elements to synthesize the composites and alloys Imperial industry needed, like the battle steel which formed Battle Fleet's planetoids, but even Imperial synthetics required some starting point. The raw materials to build things the size of Mother or Dahak had to come from somewhere, and the huge freighters of the Imperium's "mining expeditions" could—and did—transport the rubble of entire planets to the fabrication centers. The Centauris System, unfortunately for it, was conveniently close to Sol, and its original eleven planets had already been reduced to nine. Soon there would be only eight as gravitonic warheads blew yet another to splinters to feed the insatiable appetite of Earth's orbital shipyards.