“###
## #### ### #...ter agreement. We the undersign#
####!%$& $%^# and Nadi########## ...”
Ilax teased the fragment of sentence out of
the oozing pile of charred and soaked data he’d pulled from the broken hut on
chicken feet, paused to draw a deep breath and rub his temples. His head and whole body ached with the effort
of even that little. Prime had been
virulently enraged by any planetary charter that was not under his personal
control and had done his best to make it all unreadable.
Terence had even said that what they had
found in their broken code was wildly different from the Charter, under blast-proof glass and on display
to everyone ... as it was required to be, apparently. It was Prime’s sop to legality because one
line identical in both this ruined and partial copy and in the public one, was
the line “This agreement shall be maintained in an open and freely accessible place
for any citizen’s perusal, at any time, to maintain as a legal document. Should
anyone attempt to hide or restrict access to this Charter, it shall be deemed to
be no longer in force, as a legal description of the ownership and stewardship
of the Planet ‘Chishiki’, fourth planet from the star “Kepler 2,488f”, renamed ‘Zaharat’
Second Diaspora 455.”
The Xanadu man, Terence, had laughed when Mom had
explained that there was an audio version available. “You mean one of the hundreds of red
buttons around the crystal case has to be pushed so someone with the inability
to read the Charter can hear it? Nobody
teaches the Illiterates that.”
“But it is still present,” Mom said. “So he
abides by the letter of the law he, himself, signed.”
“He’s interfering with the open and freely
accessible part, just by demanding that an entire sub-class of people can’t
read!”
“Indeed,” His Radiance had said.
Ilax took a moment to look over at his
husband and smiled. “Inam, bending the edge of the screen
with your bare hands will not help Terence or Mom should they be discovered.”
The emperor looked away from his screen, his neck crackling as he looked up at
the ceiling and stretched.
“I’m not bending or crushing the
screen. Maybe a little. I’m just intent. That CEO must have legal representation with
him.”
“We can hope. That would bring a lot of attention onto our
problem.” He couldn’t bring himself to understand the sheer amount of attention
that was, on a Galactic level. Ilax told
himself to stop thinking small. “Terence
has said that if our little war here is seen as newsworthy then it wouldn’t
just be the legals involved but other planetary populations.”
“It makes my head hurt enough thinking that
the Lainz empire is watching my every action through the Lin system that the old
man started, don’t make me try and even imagine whole planetary populations
watching.”
“You were just a warrior dying in the snow
a few years ago.”
“Stop it.
Just stop reminding me how ill-prepared I am for all this!” But Kyrus’s smile was in his voice as he
gazed across at his husband.
“All right.
I’ll just get back to this, and you can keep an eye on our...” The big
screen across the room lit up with the younger Kyrus’s code, the picture swinging wildly and they could hear the boy whooping and hollering.
“Ky?
What in Light and Dark are you...”
“Da! Da, this un... Oh fakkin’ sweet! This warbird...” His words were thin and hard to hear as if
the breath were being pulled out of him.
“This Old Man... whooooo hahahahahahaha... oh my sweet dracu... draculin’
fakkin’.... This Old Man can FLY!”
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