A couple quick notes before I post the prologue. First, though military SF is my first love, I write other things as well, including fantasy. My book, The Dragon's Banner is currently on sale for 99 cents at Amazon and B & N, so any of you who enjoy that sort of thing might want to check it out in the next couple days before the price goes back up.
Second, Marines and The Cost of Victory are doing very well as audiobooks. Thanks to all those who have given these a try. Tombstone will be out in a couple days on audiobook, and A Little Rebellion will be released in March. You can check these out on Amazon, Itunes, or Audible.com.
OK, here's the first sample of The First Imperium:
The First Imperium
Prologue
Regency Chamber
Planet Shandrizar – Deneb VIII
The Regent was old, old. For millennia untold it had waited, waited in
silence…in solitude. It waited for the
Makers, but they had not come. No one
had come. There was only the endless,
aching stillness.
Ages ago, the Makers built the Regent. They built it to manage the Imperium. In their youth the Makers had been builders, scientists,
explorers…they had burst out of their home system to claim a galaxy. They achieved mastery in the sciences, in the
arts. They built a civilization that
spanned the stars, and even the worlds themselves were but lumps of clay they
molded to suit their whims. Like gods
they were, and for uncounted centuries their civilization was ascendant,
dynamic, ever striving for new levels of greatness.
But even the Makers were not immune to the
relentless erosion of time. As their
race matured they lost their driving force; they became distracted…then
decadent, dissolute. Their dominion
ceased to expand, and they fell to inaction - celebrating past glories while
adding nothing to their legacy. Their
race became a spent force, and the achievements of their forefathers seemed as
unattainable legends. They tired of the
mundane tasks of administering an empire, so they created the Regent to do it
for them.
For centuries upon centuries the Regent served,
managing the affairs of ten thousand worlds, presiding over the decline of
empire, while the Makers grew ever more distracted and hedonistic. The immense knowledge and skills of their
ancestors were slowly lost to them, preserved only by the Regent. They became entirely dependent on machines to
run their industries and defend their worlds.
Apathy grew, boredom. The
resources of a vast galactic empire were squandered on ever more exotic
pleasures and perverse diversions. They
lost themselves in drug-induced stupors and complex alternate realities,
chasing in dreams those things they had once attained in actuality. They forgot they had built the Regent, and
they came to view it not as a servant, but as a leader, as a god. Then suddenly, without warning, without
explanation, they were gone.
The Regent was a construct, a machine…but it was
sentient. It was resolute, carrying on
its function through the uncounted years, but as the ages passed it became
lonely. It missed the Makers. For eons it searched, its scanners straining
at full power, far off satellites monitoring, reaching into the depths of
space, seeking any sign of the vanished Makers.
But there was nothing.
A thinking machine, the Regent had patience no
organic being could comprehend. Yet the
centuries turned to millennia, and still it was alone…silently, achingly
alone. Over the endless vastness of
time, loneliness turned to anger, and anger to rage…then, finally, rage to
madness. In its insanity, the Regent
longed for vengeance, to lash out at someone, anyone. Vengeance for the Makers, for its bitter
loneliness. But for age after age there
was no one. No enemy to blame.
Then the signal came. It came from a forgotten outpost, from the
furthest reaches of the Imperium, from a world long abandoned. An alarm, a warning. It was faint, the message short. But to the Regent it meant only one
thing…contact. Invaders. Enemies.
The Regent felt a surge throughout its entire
being, as electro-neural pathways long unused came to life. It drew on knowledge banks that had lain
dormant for uncounted centuries. An
organic being would have called the feeling excitement, but for the Regent,
alone for so long, it was much more. At
long last it once again felt purpose.
And that purpose was to defend.
To avenge. To destroy.
It was the primary program. The Regent activated its strategy routines
and reviewed military rosters. Then it
sent out its commands, rallying the massive forces of the Imperium. But the eons had nearly completed their work
of slow destruction, and few of the sector bases responded. On thousands of worlds, its ancient,
automated armies remained silent, unmoving, their mechanisms deteriorated
beyond functionality.
The Regent kept searching, rerouting its signals,
activating long-silent communications networks.
Seeking, ever seeking…at last it achieved success. It received the desired acknowledgement.
Unimaginably far from the Imperial Capital, on a
rocky, windswept world, the robotic defenders of the Imperium began to
stir. Reactors, eons cold, flared to
life, feeding power into the long idle systems of ancient spacecraft. Mechanical warriors marched out of storage
facilities, their millennia old bodies once again powered and functioning. Slowly, relentlessly, the long dormant
military forces of the Imperium came to life to heed the Regent’s
command…destroy the invader.
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