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

courier ship to pick me up.”
    Royce decided it was time to change the
subject. “What did you steal anyway?”
    “Need to know.”
    Royce stopped, and half-turned to look
Les straight in the eye. “Considering the fact that were are
crawling through a ventilation duct while guards with a
vaporize-on-sight order look for us,” he said, “I think we can
safely assume that I am very much in the ‘Need to Know’.”
    Les’s shoulders slumped. He expelled one
shaky breath, then another, and he looked down at his fist, curled
tightly around a small object. He’d been clutching it since his
surprised exclamation of “ Ree ?” triggered the facility-wide
security claxons.
    Les’s fingers uncurled.
    Royce took in the glittering,
tightly-wound coils sitting on the palm of Les’s hand, and a cold
sweat broke out all over his body.
    “Are you insane ?” he whispered.
“Stealing another civ’s drive ?”
    “The Emperor commanded me,” said
Les.
    “Bullshit,” said Royce. “The Emperor
hasn’t issued an Imperial Command since—”
    “How would you know?”
    Royce snorted. “My classification’s
about as high as it can go without running out of air.”
    “Which means nothing on Trinity, and less than nothing in the Emperor’s social circle,” said Les.
“My mother dines with His Imperial Majesty on a regular basis.”
    “I know,” said Royce. “She reminded me
of that each time she came to our house.”
    Les had the grace to look away.
    “And it’s not a matter of being pals
with the Emperor,” continued Royce, “it’s a matter of Protocol.
Imperial Commands involve the do-or-die, trillions of lives on the
line sorts of missions, not tech-theft . Everyone who’s ever
seen a historical drama knows this, alright?”
    Silently, Les twisted his torso, then
drew his hair away from the nape of his neck.
    There, embedded into the flesh just
beneath Les’s hairline, was an implant bearing the Imperial Seal.
The do-or-die.
    Shit .

“ An Imperial Command has been put
into play…we feel the Emperor may be transcending his
Authority.”
    “ To what end?”
    “ To the only End there is, old
friend. Drivepolitik.”
    -Transcript, Casual Conversation,
Trinity Prime 20.1881.93
EMERGENCY EXIT, INSTUTITE OF
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, BALDESSH
    Despair curled around Les’s limbs,
leaden, made him want to curl up and sleep, right there in the
vent. My mother dines with the Emperor ? His ex-husband
should have seen that line for the bullshit it was. Royce hadn’t
twitched.
    Les had held out for months, waiting,
ignoring the increasingly strident commands from HQ to evacuate
Baldasshi Space. He smiled, bitterly, in the dark. He’d been
convinced the Imperial Command was a forgery. The Empire does
not play drivepolitik .
    The Merakavwi, a species of biped on the
other side of the universe, were a complex people, with a history
marked both by unspeakable atrocities and profound philosophy. They
had over a thousand definitions of ‘rape’. One of those, sandwiched
somewhere between coercive sterilization and mutagenic warfare, was Vanakhi - theft of a civilization’s FTL drive.
    He’d knew that if he didn’t return with
the drive, they—whoever “they” were—would send someone else to
retrieve it. It was just a matter of time before he came
face-to-face with a ballistic as he rounded a corner. He’d prepared
himself for that.
    But nothing could have prepared him for
Royce Ree. Who is a nightmare so detailed, so absorbing, that
you wake from him, gasping in remembered fear, then long to go back
to sleep so you can enter that twisted landscape again. Royce
was the Emperor’s man, heart and soul. No, I’m the
traitor here.
    “Why did you waste six months on
this retrieval anyway?” asked Royce, his voice both echoing and
muffled in the confined space. “Baldasshi security is crap.”
    So why did they send an agent of your caliber? Anger twisted, deep in Les’s stomach, turning
soul-weariness to energy