“Of course!”
“Then I’ll start writing as soon as I get home…” The boy stopped himself in mid-stride. “After I’m done running the harvester, of course.”
“Good boy.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re most welcome. Enjoy the book.”
The rest of the day was unusually quiet, even for this library. Rose Harrington was hosting a benefit for orphans of the Spiral Arm War up in Twokay City so book club had been postponed for the week, and by some minor miracle Larce Noel’s tractor made it through a full rotation without losing any of its vital engine parts. Syd decided to close up early and see if he could wheedle some extra feed time at the Relay Station, which was just down the boulevard from the library. Back when the planet had first been settled it made sense to situate the official buildings—including the library—as close to the tachyon relay as possible, as it represented the official lines of communications between the Empire and its periphery; after several generations, however, the ranchers had developed their own communications infrastructure which satisfied their own market needs, which meant that the Imperial Relay was often idle for long stretches of time, affording Syd myriad opportunities to browse the data feeds, upload correspondence with other librarians, and of course download promising new books.
As the librarian trudged up the gravel road towards the massive spire this evening, however, he noticed that there was an unusual amount of activity at the Relay. Three official-looking grav cars were hovering just outside the entrance, and although there was usually some kind of casual sentry on duty at the door Syd could see that the regular guard had been replaced by two Imperial soldiers clad in plastisteel armor with their particle rifles at the ready. Something was clearly amiss, but Syd continued up the driveway, albeit a little more slowly.
“Hello there, friends.” The librarian recognized neither of the armed men. “Does either of you gentlemen know what all the hubbub is about?”
“Identification,” one of the soldiers said as the other kept his firearm leveled. Syd had never served in the military, but he had seen holovids of what these weapons could do to unprotected human flesh, so he reached for his ID as gingerly as he could.
The soldier who spoke before looked at the bars and grunted, as if he were almost disappointed. “He’s clear. Imperial Grade 7 Access.”
The other guard shrugged and let Syd pass inside the relay station—no sooner had he done so, however, than a woman was rushing to intercept him in the marble lobby. “Syd! This is not a good time…”
“You don’t say, Tess! I couldn’t tell, what with the goon squad at the front door.”
Tessamyn Osterbur winced. She was as old as Syd, but whereas the librarian had allowed himself to grow increasingly rumpled over the years Tess seemed only to become more poised and proper. Tonight even she looked a little out of sorts, though—her long red hair, normally pulled tightly into a bun, was down and a bit unruly, and Syd couldn’t help but notice that Tess also had dark circles under her normally sparkling emerald eyes.
“Sorry about that,” she sighed. “It’s just a precaution.”
“Precaution?” Syd didn’t mean to raise his voice, but it echoed throughout the atrium nonetheless as if he’d been shouting. “Against what—rabid zombie rhinocattle!”
Tess didn’t even chuckle. “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” Syd felt a lump in his throat.
“It’s Jon Devlin. He’s invaded the Garden Cluster.”
Of all the names in the Outer Worlds, it was that of Jon Devlin that provoked the most fear. A disaffected captain in the Imperial Navy turned pirate, Devlin had successfully carved an empire of his own out of the galactic periphery, outwitting his former colleagues at every naval engagement so far. The Outer Worlds had never seen this much chaos in centuries as time-honored trade and communication routes broke down, with Devlin’s pirate armada sweeping through star systems like a plague of insects in a field. Some worlds attempted to fight, only to find their cities bombarded with nuclear fire; those who did surrender were only slightly better off as the armada took everything that they could cram into the holds of their ships—wealth, wine, and women.
If Devlin’s armada had reached the Garden Cluster, not only did that put them less than ten parsecs from their current location, but it gave Jon Devlin possession of the Imperial relay stations in that sector as well as whatever other resources had been left unprotected.
“But I heard that Jon Devlin was light years away from here. How did he end up in the Garden all of a sudden?”
Tess couldn’t help but smile despite the grim situation. “That’s the thing. No one knows how he did it. One day the fleet wasn’t there and the next moment it was. People are saying it’s magic, or that Devlin discovered some alien technology or found an uncharted wormhole.”
Syd snorted. “Or maybe he made a deal with You Know Who…”
“Cute. Try that joke on him when he gets here, I’m sure he hasn’t heard that one a million times before.”
“What do you mean, when he gets here? Surely the Empire isn’t going to let him take the Garden without a fight!”
“You don’t understand, Syd.” Tess looked around, then drew the librarian closer. “I picked up some of the communiqués before the soldiers showed up and classified everything. Devlin didn’t take the Garden—it invited him in!”
“What?” Syd’s ears were ringing. “That’s preposterous! Why would they do such a thing? His armada will just rape and plunder there like they’re done everywhere else.”
“I heard what I heard,” Tess said, her voice still a whisper but defiant nonetheless. “Anyway, they’ve shot the pulse network to hell. If Devlin hasn’t destroyed the relay stations, he sure isn’t allowing them to carry Imperial traffic.”
Syd considered this. “That’s why I was having so much trouble trying to download that Hesprus book last night.”
“Yep,” Tess said. “You probably got the last gasp of bandwidth from the Garden before Jon Devlin shut it down.”
The librarian suddenly felt faint. “Does this mean we’re cut off?”
Tess shook her head. “No. There are ancillary nodes that we can tap into, but because they’re further away the signal will degrade inversely proportionate—“
“Inversely proportionate to distance,” Syd finished her science lecture, worried that she was forestalling the inevitable. “Yes, I know my basic electromagnetism. But what does that mean for the Relay? What does that mean for the library?”
“Syd, I’m so sorry.” Tess put her hand on the librarian’s shoulder. “As long as the Imperial Navy is in the area they’ll be in charge of the relay system, not me. And they’re likely not to want to waste any of the bandwidth we have left on books.”
Syd shrugged off Tess’s hand, agitated all of a sudden. “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘waste’?”
“From their perspective, of course!”
“Of course.” Syd had always wondered what Tess made of his long hours in the Relay station, often spending as much time combing the data feeds for new acquisitions than he did behind the desk of his own library. Although he considered it time well-spent, he couldn’t help but notice that Tess would often regard his late-night information binges with equal parts amusement and pity.
Tess pushed back a stray lock of fiery hair and sighed. “Look, Syd. I haven’t had a moment’s peace and quiet since these guys rolled up the drive. Cut me some slack, will you?”
Syd let his shoulders drop. “Fine. So no feeds for the time being. Maybe the ranchers will let me use their repeater network instead. Rose… er, Mrs. Harrington… said they used to rely on the repeaters for local borrowing and lending when they had the branch up in Twokay City.”