Free The Emperor's New Clothes (Royce Ree #1) by Aldous Mercer

“ The Empire has survived wars,
supernovae, democracy, and the collapse of a neighborhood universe.
Let us hope it survives the good intentions of Agent Royce
Ree.”
    -personal communication to the
Emperor
    Author unknown
INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT, NESSDAR, BALDESSH
    Royce crouched behind a molecular
analyzer in the basement of the planet’s most secure laboratory.
The Baldasshi workday had ended a while ago, and now the only
people in the building were the guards—armed, vigilant,
un-bribable.
    The laboratory’s network power-cycled
just once every two months, giving Royce a half-minute window to
retrieve the data he was looking for.
    He was two hours overdue at the orbital
transfer station, where mission specifications dictated he should
be. But it would be a cold day on Prion-5 before anyone at HQ
acknowledged that the mission specifications were utterly
stupid.
    The network would power-cycle in fifteen
seconds.
    Fourteen.
    The lab’s bright lights flickered once,
imperceptibly, their spectrum uncomfortably rich in UV. If he was
captured, it would embroil three civilizations in one of the
nastiest diplomatic incidents in recent memory.
    Nine .
    The legalities of extraditing him would
take years . And that was if anyone at HQ even
acknowledged Royce as an Imperial Agent, after this little
self-assigned break-and-enter exercise.
    Five.
    The Imperial tattoo on the inside of his
wrist glowed a pale blue under the UV; it might get him shot on
sight. A clean, fatal, shot, if he was lucky. It’d be easier to
take than the Spymaster’s caustic sarcasm during the post-mission
debriefing.
    Death was certainly preferable to
returning home without the one thing he had come to this planet
for.
    Two .
    Royce darted out onto the floor, towards
the lead scientist’s console.
    One .
    “Ree?”
    Royce whirled around, drawing out his
ballistic without conscious thought. And stopped shock-still, a
hairsbreadth from pulling the trigger.
    Because in the doorway, dressed in a
Baldasshi lab-technician’s uniform, stood the man Imperial Agent
Royce Ree had once been married to.

“ The moment a planet discovers
Faster-Than-Light travel, it attracts the attentions of every other
civilization in the universe. We descend like vultures, to pick
clean any unique tech the planet has managed to accumulate in its
pre-FTL isolation. Some consider it a rite of passage for the poor
world.”
    -Commentary on First Contact
    Cytus Solei’el, left-wing historian
VENTILATION DUCT, INSTITUTE OF
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, BALDESSH
    Royce decided that a ventilation duct
was the absolute worst place in the universe to have a post-marital
argument.
    “Six months working my way up
that lab’s hierarchy,” Les snarled, “and the one night you decide
to drop by is the night I’m stealing their damned tech ?”
    Royce felt a passing regret for the
canapés he could have been eating right now in the spacestation’s
VIP lounge.
    “Look,” he said, “it wasn’t personal. HQ
had to assign someone to another tech-acquisition, I was in the
area.”
    Les looked at him through narrowed
eyes.
    “And the last time anyone gave me an
update,” continued Royce, “ you were running a desk on
Trinity.”
    “Fine,” said Les, then immediately
started shucking off his lab coat. The space was narrow, and Les
had to contort himself into unnatural shapes to accomplish the
task. Les hadn’t lost any of his flexibility in the past three
years.
    Royce gritted his teeth and turned away,
continuing his crawl up the ducts to street level. His ex followed,
the air quickly taking on the overtones of Les’s scent. Cloves,
dipped in sugar.
    Royce cleared his throat. “I thought,”
he began, “that you left fieldwork to be closer to civilization.” Like you left me .
    Les, perceptive as always, heard the
unspoken thought. “ You left me ,” he hissed. “On a
backwater outpost so far away from home that…that it took my family
four months to convince a