Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed

Using the immediate double-blink technique, made possible by the use of a double-charge generator developed by the Blink Space Works, New Austin, the Texican fleet, blinking in one at a time, spent milliseconds in real space, just long enough, as the instruments of the Cassiopeians registered the momentary presence of ship after ship, to send the Cassiopeian fleets into Red Emergency Status and cause a flurry of movement along the Empire-Cassiopeian line.

Forming in columns abreast in Empire space, the fleet moved, Darlenes activated and ready, to a rendezvous with a single Empire Vandy, where contact was made and instructions given.

The transfer was made in emptiness, between the scattered stars, a long, tedious process of lock and empty, one Texas ship at a time becoming vulnerable by locking with an Empire freighter, the others ringed, at varying distances, on battle alert. As each Texas ship was emptied of frozen meat, it locked with a second Empire freighter to take on ingots of pure metals, then blinked, alone, into the emptiness. At no time was the number of Empire ships present allowed to approach the total number of Texican ships lying in wait to be unloaded.

Not every Texas ship was followed, but an unlucky few had to take evasive action, blinking in and out of Cassiopeian space to lose the Empire scouts and Vandys and, once, a freighter disguised as a Texican.

Then it was over. The flagship, laden, as were the others, with frozen meat, locked with a pitted Empire freighter and Lex watched, suited and ready, as the cargo disappeared through the lock tunnel into the Empire hull. Only one transfer was remaining. A sleek Middleguard cruiser approached, locks clanked. Lex stood aside and let the Lady Gwyn, bulky in her L.S.A., cross the flexible floor of the tunnel first. He shook hands with the unloading crew, thanked the Admiral, who was suited and present to say his goodbyes, held his shoulders back and left Texas behind with a sadness which was almost physical.

Into an Empire which stretched out in a long oval from the old Earth, extending eight thousand parsecs toward the core, skirting it, pushing into opposite side stars for another four thousand parsecs until it ended, bounded there by the opposite extent of the Cassiopeian dictatorships, the oval sweeping out the periphery to extend into extra-galactic space and isolated clusters of semi-autonomous nations and groupings of worlds, man having spread far, far in six hundred years, flying the wings of the blink generator through the cold void between stars, charting, building complicated patterns of starways along which blinked the commerce of Empire, millions of starships, billions of people all paying homage to a man who sat his throne in the heights of Galaxy City atop the old Earth's highest mountain.

It was to be discovered by Lexington Burns, Gunner Basic, Emperor's Battle Fleet, that Empire was an accomplishment not to be despised, but admiration, however grudging, was last in line behind more immediate concerns.

"Lexington Burns, of the Planet Texas, you stand accused—"

The judge, wizened, stern-faced, his voice strident in Lex's ears, speaking fast, words lost in the swiftness, around him the packed room with the vivid colors, the scant coverings, the foppish, foolish, modish clothing of Empire in contrast to his space blues. The judge robed in purple. Beside Lex, coming to his chest, a young attorney.

"Answer direct questions as briefly as possible. Don't volunteer anything. Say sir to the judge."

The training planet, marginal life zone, cold, cold as space itself, metal huts atop the ice and struggling through deep drifts thinking of her . Emily. Home. All that was Texas was embodied in a mental picture of

dark hair and flashing eyes and soft, soft arms and—

He was, of course, singled out. At first they tried to break him with physical strain. However, although he was unused to the cold, the snow, the eternal ice, he was a Texican and when he carried home an instructor on his broad shoulders, after a march which was supposed to drop him, panting and whining, into the snow to be picked up by the ski-mounted meat wagon, they gave up on that.

"Shit-eater, give me the table of organization." Face close to Lex's, the instructor almost as tall, breath issuing in freezing clouds from behind the cold mask.

"Sir. The Emperor, the Emperor's Prime Minister, the Joint Admirals of the Emperor's fleet, the—" Endless rote, crammed into his head at late night sessions, punishment tours in the library and that slow growth of the grudging realization that the organization of the Empire was a wonder on the order of a variable star.

"Shit-eater, give me the prime purpose of the Emperor's Battle Fleet."

"Sir, to preserve the status quo, to protect the citizens of the Empire and the citizens' property, to extend the glory of the Emperor into the galaxy."

It was a stern, rigorous life with food which, at first, made his stomach protest the lack of juicy meacr steaks and fruit and green vegetables fresh from the rich, black dirt of Texas. Bulk pills to fill the void in his stomach, synthetic protein, tasteless, glutinous, eaten in haste with back straight and shoulders back, one hand held daintily on his lap. Endless harassment.

"Texas, you're latrine orderly. Hit it."

"Texas, you're disposal detail. Hit it." The wastes of the training camp open to freeze solid and be transported to dumps with the ski-car bumping and the waste sloshing until it solidified.

Instants of deep satisfaction. In hand-to-hand combat, a burly instructor, Lex's height, a big man for an Empireite. "I don't want to hurt you, shit-eater, so when you feel force, give."

Standing, resisting, driven to it. Straining muscles and a sudden move which sent the instructor cold mask first into a crusted drift to come up with hate in his eyes and hands dealing blows which, if landed, would have maimed, and Lex dancing, always just out of reach, until, in self-defense, he had to level the man to stand over him, chest heaving, as a silence hung over the parade ground and trainees stood fearfully at attention waiting for a lightning bolt to strike down the man who had dared best an instructor.,

"Scrub, shit-eater. Every inch of it. Anything I hate it's a smart-assed recruit. They tell me all Texicans eat meat, shit-eater. Is it true?"

"Yessir."

"Here's about seven inches, shit-eater, eat it."

"Sir, show me that in regulations."

"You're learning, shit-eater. Scrub." The floor extending for endless yards, an indoor parade of time-worn plastic, impossible to clean, his hands, his knees, his arms and legs protesting as he scrubbed and remembered soft lips and the winds of the plains and looked ahead with a despair which was a physical pain in his gut.

"I sentence you to a labor planet for a period not to exceed twenty years and not less than ten years." His voice harsh and alien in Lex's ears, the room a-rustle with approving sounds.

"For to seize one of the Emperor's subjects, to carry her against her will far from the benevolent rule of the Emperor and all it stands for, is a crime of serious degree."

That wasn't all I did to her, Lex was thinking, standing straight and tall.

"Let not the leniency of this sentence influence future wrongdoers," the Judge continued, "for it is to be noted that the Emperor's agent herself," a glance toward a box seat where the Lady Gwyn sat in regal splendor, "has appealed for temperance. Thus, I am pleased to say that the Emperor is willing, subject to consent by the convicted, to commute the sentence to an equal term of service in the Emperor's battle fleet."

On an icy flatness, protected from drifting snow by heat shields, a grounded fleet: the hull of a Vanguard destroyer salvaged after the Battle of Wolfs Star, an aged middleguard cruiser and a Rearguard battle cruiser, huge, as long as three blocks in Dallas City, a city known for its spaciousness, weapons in place, engines deactivated but there, endless hours, in battle gear, at station behind the controls of the weapons, mucking in lubricants to test mechanical aptitude, assembling and disassembling, doing it by the book even when it took, obviously, longer. Empire life support armor was heavy and awkward, and finding a suit to fit Lex was not, seemingly, within the capacity of the Emperor's battle fleet. Tight joints chafed his skin, limited his movements, but the tedium of basic was over and he was oblivious to the harassment as he devoted himself to learning as much as he could possibly learn about weapons, ships, hardware, techniques, even the thinking of the Emperor's defenders.