Rhajani chapter 1

         Rhajani felt embarrassed. He was a grown man, and not given to such feelings, but he could not manage to suppress the sense of awe that took him upon his first sight of the planet Naldel.

         He drew some comfort from the fact that the other passengers in the ship’s main cabin seemed to share his reaction of quiet reverence. Naldel was nowhere near as beautiful as Nyst - none could rival his homeworld for that - but the Imperial Throne world still was unlike any the Nystri Crown Prince had ever personally seen. This was why his father, King Sulwen, had sent a Royal Delegation to Naldel. The King hoped to forge an alliance, or failing that a working agreement, with the newly crowned Emperor. Rhajani himself had advocated a move like this eight years earlier, but his father had overruled him. Sulwen did not like or particularly trust the regent Choriel Du; he had never met the man, but something about him just seemed wrong.

         In a way, Rhajani admitted his father’s courage and strength in sending this delegation now and not earlier. Imperial regents were not full Emperors, bound both by law and custom to a strictly defined set of powers and authorities, but the power they did hold was still formidable. Choriel Du was a skilled administrator who was quite successful at maintaining the Empire, and the kid replacing him - Emperor, Rhajani thought to himself. He was the Emperor now, not just a child, and his name was Leren. The Emperor replacing Regent Du was still only a child. The scars marking his ritual ascension to the Imperial Throne were still fresh, the scabs from the last of them only now starting to disappear. Leren could not hope to be as politically nuanced as Choriel Du, and Rhajani did not like what that might possibly imply for the people depending on his success in this mission.

         A murmur coming from the person next to him brought him out of his contemplations. He turned his head to regard his sister, Rhenna, who herself was looking out the main viewport at the planet ahead of them. “What was that, Rhen?” he asked.

         She shook her head softly. “I said it was remarkable,” she said as she gestured with one hand toward Naldel.

         He could not argue with her there. The planet did not appeal to his aesthetic senses, and it seemed far too mechanical to him, but the sheer scope of it was enough to earn it that description.

         Unlike any of the other major planets in the Empire, or anywhere else in the known universe, Naldel was completely artificial. The constant stream of vessels coming and going made it appear as if it were some morsel of food left on the floor being savaged by a swarm of insects, but the sheer scale of it could just as easily have represented a vacuum sucking in those very same insects.

         Rhajani felt the ship tremble slightly as control of its navigational array was transferred to the controllers directing the organized chaos in the system. A network of supercomputers was necessary to handle the volume of traffic entering and exiting Naldel every day, ranging from freight to commercial to even military transportation. Imperial law had required this remote control for longer than anybody could remember, so most pilots used the time to make sure that their landing checklists could be completed early. Rhajani himself did not have to bother with such tasks, so he spent the approach time observing Naldel in all its precise, mechanical glory.

         Perhaps mechanical was not quite the right word for it. It may have been an artificial construct, but the planet was still alive. Nobody knew how Naldel was created, but the Imperial Throne had been continuing construction of the Throne world for the past two thousand years. The original surface was buried beneath three outer layers, with the fourth layer nearly complete. The layers were not solid shells; instead, they were a roughly spherical pattern of connecting hexagons, with pentagonal gates in between the plates to allow traffic into the next level. These gates were arranged in such a way that it was impossible to reach the surface of Naldel from the outermost orbit, except at one corridor: the Imperial Well, directly above Throne Palace. Passage through the Well was reserved exclusively for the Emperor, his appointed representatives, and selected guests of the Throne - the Nystri Delegation qualified under the third category.

         The Well was the only direct path to the surface in practice, but in theory the shells could be manipulated so that any point on the surface could be opened up to orbit. The shells were anchored into place with a number of methods, the most obvious of which were the massive black transport tubes that formed the umbilicals for cargo depots beyond the outermost layer. Magnetic fields were also used, as were gravity fields. These were the most delicate and least used, due to their design complexity and the power consumed by each generator. One of the gravity field generators controlled the linear path to Throne Palace, and its effects on the shuttle were palpable. Rhajani felt his body grow momentarily heavier as he was drawn into his seat, only to return to his normal position when they emerged into the space between the third and fourth shells, or Fourth Gap.

         He expected the spaceward surfaces of each shell to be covered, but it caught him by surprise to see that the planetward surfaces were being developed as well. He had heard that Naldel was home to several trillion people, but he had not spent a great deal of time considering the implications of this or even how it was possible. The fourth layer had not yet been completed, but it seemed that warehouses and storage centers were already popping up on the inside of the shell. The environment did not look particularly hospitable, but light sources were readily available and workers could be seen busily loading and unloading cargo. By tradition, as so many other things in the Empire were dictated, the cargo centers were kept on the outermost shell, closest to the orbital depots. This was meant to keep the supermassive freight ships out of the planetary approach lanes and outside of Naldel itself. Several bad experiences with freighters losing control inside the first and second shells had led Imperial designers to this solution, and it had worked ever since.

         The outside of the third shell was quite different. It appeared mostly residential, with artificial swathes of green breaking up the monotony of greyscale buildings. Environmental fields provided all the atmosphere and ambient light that was required by the residents, rendering life as close to reasonably normal as the Throne could provide. Rhajani felt the momentary press again as they passed through the shell and into Third Gap, and saw more of the same. Both the inside of the third shell and the outside of the second were residential districts, but with a larger proportion of commercial buildings.

         Rhenna broke the silence first. “Where do they get their food? I see no farms.”

         He considered this question, mentally searching the briefing notes he had been reading in transit to Naldel. The material had not directly answered this question, but there was enough supporting information that he could piece things together.

         “Apparently,” he began, “they don’t grow it. They make it artificially instead. It was the last breakthrough by an Imperial scientist named Roland Edano. He figured out how to duplicate the molecular structures of a few different kinds of food, and it wasn’t long after that that one of the corporations took it upon themselves to profit from it.”

         “Really? How do they do that?”

         He smirked. “The production, or the profit?”

         She rolled her eyes.

         Silence returned to the cabin as they passed through the second shell. The makeup of this layer was almost totally industrial, as the original residents had moved out to the other side of the second shell hundreds of years ago. The air here was slightly smoky, a byproduct of the factories covering every available surface. The factories themselves were massive, most hundreds of stories high, with their own local ports to accommodate the freight shuttles coming in from orbit. An extra computer network was dedicate to organizing traffic pattern in Second Gap, since accidents here were likely to cause the greatest amount of chaos. However, as with the shells above them, no traffic came through the Well.

         As they neared the first shell, Rhajani looked ahead at their destination: Throne Palace, the seat of Imperial power. The entire structure was a bright silver color, reflecting nearly everything. The intended effect was to impress upon the viewer that the Throne was always in motion, never resting. The lighting was subtle, giving off an indistinct gleam. The building alone was probably worth a trillion credits, if not more, and that was not counting anything inside it or any of the network of security systems protecting it from outside. He could not see the weapons emplacements covering the approach from the Well, but they certainly had to be there.

         The shuttle passed through the first shell, and the momentary pressure did not let up this time. Rhajani figured this was probably an intentional design, and found himself fighting against the forced submission. He managed to prop himself up enough to look out the viewport, into First Gap. The space around Throne Palace was like a giant sphere in its own right, defined by the imperceptible curve of Naldel’s surface on one side and the Well on the other. But the open space he expected to see like in the other Gaps simply was not here. The entire width of First Gap, from Naldel’s surface to the inside of the first shell, was a massive network of buildings. Not just buildings, either, but massive complexes that served a variety of functions. First Gap contained the headquarters of every major Imperial body, as well as housing for Imperial servants. The network was so massive that it managed to dwarf Throne Palace, which almost certainly would have appeared far larger under different circumstances.

         The airspace around Throne Palace, as throughout the rest of the Well, was empty save for a few patrol ships. One of these ships paired with their shuttle, escorting it to Throne’s port. They touched down smoothly, still under remote control, then the pilot entered the cabin. He briefly checked a status display, then came over to Rhajani. “We’re ready to disembark, sir.”

         The Crown Prince nodded. Nearly lost in the wonder at their approach to Naldel and Throne Palace was the reason they had come in the first place: they had a job to do.