The Emperor's conspiracy

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As I struggled toward consciousness, my first sensation was of overwhelming cold. The next was the smell and, yes, the sour taste of vomit.

I shook my head to clear it, and instantly regretted the action as the movement touched off a severe pounding. I groaned and cursed as I tried to examine my surroundings without moving my aching head.

The massive unpainted gray duracrete walls and barred grates, together with the uncomfortable cold, told me everything I needed to know. Jail, or whatever they called it on Haven. Depressed as I was about being in jail, it was as nothing to the knowledge that I was on Haven.

Weak sunlight did its feeble best to pour through the small, barred window. Haven is hardly the vacation spot of known space. Oh, it's about average size for a man-settled planet, and its gravity is only. 92 of standard. Unfortunately, though, while the system's primary is a class G0 dwarf, the same class as Prime's, Haven is slightly farther from it. More importantly, for the last thousand years or so, Haven has been emerging from an ice age. The glaciers have retreated enough that slightly over half the land between the poles and the equator are ice-free, at least part of the year. At the poles it's uninhabitable.

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