‘But you think this is natural?’
She shrugged. A brass-framed optic slid down from her crested headdress, spearing data-light into her left eye so she could review the adept’s findings again.
‘I believe so. Yes, yes. It has to be. There’s no patterning. We have to accept we’ve entered a gravitationally unstable zone.’
‘I’ll inform the Chapter Master,’ said Severance.
He took the proffered speaker horn in his huge left hand and waited a moment for the vox-servitor to cue him that connection was established.
‘Speak,’ said Mirhen’s voice over the link.
‘Severance, Lotus Gate, Amkulon,’ said Severance. ‘We’re plotting increasing gravitational instability in the upper and outer orbital zone, sir. Routing all data to your bridge.’
He looked at Aquilinia, who nodded and began issuing orders to her data-adepts.
‘You should be receiving data now, sir,’ Severance began.
The deck shuddered. There was a dull, heavy sound of something vast and leaden colliding with something of equal mass. Hot, acrid smoke gusted across the bridge.
Alarms started to sound.
‘What was that?’ Severance asked.
The shipmistress was already yelling commands and requesting clarification. Bridge personnel dashed to their stations.
‘Amkulon? Severance, report.’ Mirhen’s voice scratched out of the vox-speakers.
‘Stand by,’ Severance replied. He looked at the shipmistress.
‘A gravity pocket spontaneously opened in our starboard reactor core,’ she said. ‘We’re ruptured and venting. I don’t know if we can contain the damage and maintain our position.’
‘There must be—’ Severance began.
‘Captain, please get your company and all auxiliaries off this ship now,’ said Aquilinia, ‘before we suffer catastrophic anchor-point failure and nosedive into that planet.’
Terra — the Imperial Palace
The Senatorum session had lasted for almost seven hours. Tedium had been etched on some faces by the time it drew to a close, and few had been able to disguise their dissatisfaction when Ekharth had announced that they would resume after a three-hour interval as there were still eighty-seven items remaining on the agenda.
Vangorich withdrew to his private suite to rest his mind. The problem as he saw it, and he believed he saw it very clearly, was that the instrument of governance was not as sharp as it had once been. The Old Twelve had met regularly, and had dealt specifically with high-order matters. Everything else had been delegated to the lower tiers of government and the Administratum. Any review of the parliamentary records showed how economically and concisely the Senatorum had dealt with state affairs in previous, greater ages. Greater ages, populated by greater men.
Now the Senatorum was bloated and fat, over-stuffed with hangers-on and minor officials, and it met on a whim, whenever Udo or any of the other core members felt that it should. Business piled up, most of it far too trivial to bother the dignity of a proper Senatorum. And as for the actual process! These people weren’t politicians. Procedure trudged along. No one knew how to debate properly. The most mindless committee vote took forever. At every touch and turn, the in-fighting and rivalries between the High Twelve spewed out and gnawed like acid into the gears of government, slowing everything down.
The decision taken on isotope shipments, for example. Utterly ridiculous. They had actually voted through a policy that would actively harm the Imperium by retarding the efficiency of shipbuilding in the Uranic shipyards. Did anyone dare see it that way? Of course not! Mesring had wanted the vote swayed to protect his family’s huge commercial interests in the Tang Sector, and he had called in favours from those in his power bloc. House Mesring had benefited. The Imperium had not.
Vangorich’s suite was quiet. His signet ring deactivated the pain door and rested the alarm systems. He went inside. The outer room was panelled in dark oak, and lined with couches dressed in gleaming black leather upholstery. On a lit display stand ancient fragments of pottery, pre-dating the Golden Age of Technology, hung in suspension fields.
