By sheer chance it was Lord Chen’s chair that hit the Lord Senior, clipping Akzad on the side of the head and knocking him to his knees. A roar of approval went up from many of the convocates, and the loyalists surged forward.
At this threat the Naxids at last responded. Lord Chen, standing at the front of the amphitheater and staring in wonder at his own success, suddenly found himself flattened by a charging Naxid. He hit the ground and felt the grinding impact of the Naxid’s boots as the quadruped trampled him. Pain jolted him as he bit his own tongue.
All sense of unreality vanished. The taste of his own hot blood in his mouth, Lord Chen began to fight for his life.
Even though at least half the convocates either remained in their seats or had fled, the Naxids were still outnumbered by the loyalists. Chairs were inefficient weapons, but they were better than the Naxids’ bare hands.
Lord Chen nearly gagged on the overwhelming odor of rotting flesh, even though the flesh in question belonged to the chair-swinging Daimong who knocked the Naxid off him. There were shouts, screams, thuds, the screech of an outraged Torminel, the agitated chime of Daimong voices. Lord Chen managed to fight his way to his feet, and then the press of bodies threw him up against the dais.
Akzad was on his feet again, shouting and brandishing the wand, oblivious to the blood that poured from his head wound. Everything had gone far beyond his, or anyone’s, control. Even the sergeant-at-arms stood perplexed: he was supposed to guard the Convocation against intruders, not take part in a brawl of one group of convocates against another.
“To the terrace!” Lord Chen could still hear Saïd’s magnificent baritone carrying over the sound of the riot. “Take them to the terrace!”
Battered into submission and seized by the angry convocates, the Naxids were dragged through the wide side doors of the amphitheater. Terrace furniture was knocked and kicked aside as the Naxids were dragged to the stone parapet and tipped over the brink, to fall 150 paces down the stony cliff. Akzad, in his torn ceremonial cloak, was hurled down with the rest, as were a dozen loyalist convocates, accidentally knocked over by the crowd or dragged to their deaths by Naxids clinging to them in desperation.
Lord Chen, gasping for breath, leaned for support on the parapet. His head swam as he stared at the carnage below, the scatter of centauroid bodies lying broken on the stones. The furious anger that possessed him had faded, and he looked down at his dead colleagues with growing astonishment, not only at what had just happened, but at his own part in it.
He was Maurice, Lord Chen, of Clan Chen, which had been at the absolute top of imperial society for thousands of years. Chens had served in the Convocation for all of that time, representing themselves and the interests of their clients, all beneath the stabilizing power of the Praxis.
Not one of them had ever participated in a riot in the Convocation chamber. Not one had ever killed a fellow convocate with his bare hands. In all the long history of the empire, nothing like what happened today had ever occurred. This act was completely unprecedented.
Lord Chen thought that what he was seeing below him, broken on the stones, was not just the bodies of legislators, but the old order itself.
“We must reconvene!” Again Saïd was shouting. “The Convocation must reform!”
Lord Chen filed with the others into the Convocation. Smashed and scattered furniture lay on and around the speaker’s dais like a scattering of old bones. The convocates retrieved the usable furniture and borrowed more from colleagues who had fled or died. Lord Saïd was proclaimed temporary chairman, though he was forced to conduct the meeting without the Lord Senior’s wand, which had disappeared and was never to be found.
The Convocation immediately passed on a voice vote a measure outlawing the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis, whoever and wherever they might be. Another vote proclaimed that the penalty for belonging to the organization would be dismembering. Then someone else suggested flaying, and the merits of flaying and dismembering were debated. After which a Terran lady convocate with a torn uniform tunic and a blackened eye rose to suggest that since the first lot had been thrown off a cliff, the rest should be as well.
Of such fascination did the convocates find this debate, and the ten or so laws they passed that day, that it was fully an hour before anyone thought to call the Commandery and inform the Fleet of the menace to the empire. And, once Fleet Commander Jarlath was informed, it was another hour before anyone bothered to tell him of the Naxid squadrons’ disobedience.
The empire was as inexperienced at quelling rebellion as Elkizer had been at making it.
Jarlath immediately ordered his three cruiser squadrons in pursuit of Elkizer. They left the ring and blasted toward Vandrith at over ten gravities’ acceleration with only partial crews aboard, but were gone less than an hour before Jarlath realized the pursuit was fruitless and recalled the ships.
Jarlath had begun to realize that he might be in a much more dangerous position than he’d supposed. A little information about what Akzad had said about the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis had reached him, and he gathered that large numbers of Naxids were involved. He had also remembered Elkizer marching around the ring with a group of senior officers and military constables, and with a burst of amazement realized that Elkizer had been rehearsing the boarding and capture of all non-Naxid ships.
There were 341 warships in the Fleet. Of these, sixty-eight, or nearly twenty percent, were commanded and crewed by Naxids, eight entire squadrons of six to ten ships each plus the odd ship here and there on detached duty. Of these squadrons, two had been stationed at Zanshaa with the Home Fleet, two at Magaria with the Second Fleet, one with the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid, one with the Third Fleet at Felarus, one squadron at the Naxid home world of Naxas, and the last at Comador.
Communications lasers immediately burned with urgent messages directed to fleet and squadron commanders at Harzapid, Felarus, and Comador. Additional messages went to ships at more remote stations. It would take days for some of the answers to come back, even pulsed at the speed of light through the relay stations at the wormhole gates, and Jarlath suspected that when the answers came, he wouldn’t like them.
He hesitated before sending messages to Fanaghee at Magaria and to the commander at Naxas. But on further consideration, he decided there was nothing to be gained by remaining silent. He queried Naxas as to its status, and sent a message to Fanaghee telling her of the mutiny of his two squadrons, and ordering her to intercept them.
Then he added up the figures in his head again, and didn’t like them any better than he had the first time.
Magaria was the key, he decided. If Fanaghee and her force stayed loyal, then the empire would survive what was to come.
Ifnot …Well, Jarlath thought, he would try to maintain an air of confidence.
It was only then, nine hours after Elkizer had disobeyed orders and bypassed Vandrith, that Jarlath remembered that there was one Naxid warship remaining on the station, the brand new light cruiserDestiny, which was ten days from completion—or so the dockyard superintendent had maintained for over a month now.Destiny had its crew and officers aboard, but had yet to be towed to the completion arena to receive its missiles, defensive weapons, and to test its propulsion systems with their first charges of antimatter.
Jarlath ordered the Military Constabulary to seize the ship. They were met with small-arms fire from the ship’s officers.Destiny ‘s crew ran out of the ship into the dockyard, where they began hurling homemade explosives and incendiaries. It was two hours before they were all rounded up and shot. Eight million zeniths’ worth of stores and dockyard equipment had to be written off.