Tag Archives: Oracle

Watch how Tesla Cybertruck performs in a crash safety test against ICE pickup trucks – Tesla Oracle – Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX News

  1. Watch how Tesla Cybertruck performs in a crash safety test against ICE pickup trucks Tesla Oracle – Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX News
  2. Honesty, Journalism And The Perils Of Access: A Defense Of Jason Cammisa’s Cybertruck ‘Review’ The Autopian
  3. Marques Brownlee reveals biggest concern with Telsa Cybertruck after testing Dexerto
  4. Tesla’s VP of Investor Relations Defends MKBHD’s Cybertruck Review Against “He Should Stay in His Lane” Comments & Production Quality Concerns Torque News
  5. Tesla CyberTruck Demolished Online After Crash Test Footage Shows It Could Turn You Into Pancake Pedestrian.TV
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Microsoft and Oracle expand partnership to deliver Oracle Database Services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Microsoft Azure – Stories – Microsoft

  1. Microsoft and Oracle expand partnership to deliver Oracle Database Services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Microsoft Azure – Stories Microsoft
  2. Microsoft, Oracle Deepen Cloud Integration – WSJ The Wall Street Journal
  3. Larry Ellison makes first-ever visit to Redmond to announce Oracle databases in Microsoft cloud GeekWire
  4. Oracle founder Larry Ellison makes first-ever trip to Microsoft headquarters for cloud announcement CNBC
  5. Microsoft CEO Nadella Calls Joint Oracle Offering A ‘Profound’ Moment For AI CRN
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Microsoft Targets Enterprise Application Players Oracle, Salesforce, SAP With Latest AI Offerings – Yahoo Finance

  1. Microsoft Targets Enterprise Application Players Oracle, Salesforce, SAP With Latest AI Offerings Yahoo Finance
  2. Microsoft aims to reduce “tedious” business tasks with new AI tools Ars Technica
  3. Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first copilot in both CRM and ERP, that brings next-generation AI to every line of business – The Official Microsoft Blog blogs.microsoft.com
  4. Microsoft brings an AI-powered Copilot to its business app suite TechCrunch
  5. Microsoft is holding a ‘future of work’ AI event on March 16th Engadget
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Microsoft Targets Enterprise Application Players Oracle, Salesforce, SAP With Latest AI Offerings – Yahoo Finance

  1. Microsoft Targets Enterprise Application Players Oracle, Salesforce, SAP With Latest AI Offerings Yahoo Finance
  2. Microsoft aims to reduce “tedious” business tasks with new AI tools Ars Technica
  3. Microsoft wants there to be no escape from OpenAI in your business TechRadar
  4. Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first copilot in both CRM and ERP, that brings next-generation AI to every line of business – The Official Microsoft Blog blogs.microsoft.com
  5. Microsoft is holding a ‘future of work’ AI event on March 16th Engadget
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Pentagon splits $9 billion cloud contract among Google, Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft

Dec 7 (Reuters) – The Pentagon awarded $9 billion worth of cloud computing contracts to Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon Web Services Inc (AMZN.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Oracle Corp on Wednesday.

The Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) is the multi-cloud successor to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which was an IT modernization project to build a large, common commercial cloud for the Department of Defense.

The separate contracts, which carry a notional top line of $9 billion, run until 2028 and will provide the Department of Defense with enterprise-wide, globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels, the contract announcement said.

U.S. flag hangs during a ceremony to honor victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks at the Pentagon in Washington, U.S., September 11, 2022. REUTERS/Cheriss May

U.S. Navy Commander Jessica McNulty, a Department of Defense spokesperson, said in a statement the JWCC was a multiple-award procurement composed of four contracts with a shared ceiling of $9 billion.

The move comes months after the Pentagon had delayed its decision to award an enterprise-wide JWCC contract.

The Pentagon attempted to move to the cloud several years ago using the JEDI concept, but the proposal died after litigation stopped the procurement process.

This deal could put the military more in line with private-sector companies, many of whom split up their cloud computing work among multiple vendors.

Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru and Mike Stone in Washington D.C.; Editing by Stephen Coates and Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle get $9 billion Pentagon cloud deals

The Pentagon building in Washington, D.C.

Staff | AFP | Getty Images

The Pentagon said Wednesday that Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle each received a cloud-computing contract that can reach as high as $9 billion each through 2028.

The outcome of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, effort is in line with the U.S. Defense Department’s effort to rely on multiple providers of remotely operated infrastructure technology, as opposed to relying on a single company, a strategy promoted during the Trump Administration.

An increasing tally of businesses have also sought to rely on more than one cloud provider. In some cases they rely on specialized capabilities on one and the majority of front-end and back-end workloads on another. At other times, they come down to cost. Having more than one cloud might make organizations more confident that they can withstand service disruptions brought on by outages.

Originally, the Pentagon had awarded the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, to Microsoft in 2019. A legal battle ensued as Amazon, the top player in the cloud infrastructure market, challenged the Pentagon’s decision. Oracle challenged the Pentagon’s pick as well.

In 2020, the Pentagon’s watchdog conducted a review and ruled that there was no evidence to conclude that the Trump Administration had intervened in the process of awarding the contract. Months later the Pentagon announced it would stick with Microsoft for the JEDI deal.

Last year the Pentagon changed its approach, asking for bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle to address cloud needs. But the General Services Administration stated at the time that only Amazon and Microsoft seemed to be able to meet the Pentagon’s requirements.

Wednesday’s result is a boon in particular for Oracle, which analysts don’t see in the top tier of companies offering cloud-based computing services. Oracle generated $900 million in cloud infrastructure revenue in the quarter that ended Aug. 31, a small fraction of the $20.5 billion total for Amazon’s cloud subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, in the third quarter.

All four of the technology companies have won indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or IDIQ, contracts, meaning that they can involve an indefinite amount of services for a specific period of time.

“The purpose of this contract is to provide the Department of Defense with enterprise-wide globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels, from the strategic level to the tactical edge,” the Defense Department said.

WATCH: Roughly 75% of our customers use multi-cloud and data centers, says VMware CEO

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The oracle who predicted SLS’s launch in 2023 has thoughts about Artemis III

Enlarge / NASA’s Artemis I mission is due to launch this year. But will Artemis III also fly on the Space Launch System rocket?

Trevor Mahlmann

On a chilly night in early December 2017, I met a couple of industry sources at a southeast Houston restaurant called Nobi. Located just down the road from Johnson Space Center, Nobi serves Vietnamese cuisine and has an amazing range of beers on tap. We partook.

These space industry figures are not well known outside the business, but they are very informed and shrewd observers of spaceflight. And perhaps most importantly to me as a reporter, they were particularly candid in this setting.

They were in town for a space conference, so we gossiped and chatted and talked shop. Deep into our cups, speculation turned toward NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. When, I asked, do you really think the big rocket will launch?

One of these sources responded with a surprising prediction. “Probably around 2023,” he said.

At the time, NASA was planning a 2019 launch date for the rocket, just two years hence. The hardware was nearly completed. So a prediction of six years of work remaining seemed pretty out of left field. But I was mildly drunk, and what’s Twitter for if not a little kibbitzing? So I grabbed my phone and tweeted his prediction:

The prediction did not garner all that much attention at the time, and it was largely dismissed as a bad joke. But as the years have gone by, in certain small corners of the web, this tweet has become something of an Internet legend, a wild prediction that might come true.

It has also spurred anger from supporters of the large NASA rocket. In 2020, the r/SpaceLaunchSystem subreddit discovered the tweet, and some readers were downright angry. User “insane_gravy” wrote, “Eric Berger once again proves that anyone can be a space ‘journalist’ because there are no standards.” Well, I hope insane_gravy really likes gravy because the Space Launch System rocket and its Artemis I mission are now scheduled to launch on Wednesday, just eight days before Thanksgiving.

However improbably, the source has been proven to be correct. Given that we are less than two months from the new year, it is already “around” 2023. Moreover, fiscal year 2023 began five weeks ago.

A second prediction

Three years later, in October 2020, this same source made another pronouncement wild enough that I decided to again tweet about it. The prediction concerned NASA’s forthcoming decision on a contractor to build a “Human Landing System” to take its astronauts down to the Moon as part of the Artemis Program.

At the time, SpaceX, a Blue Origin-led “National Team,” and a third bidder led by Dynetics were competing for one or two NASA contracts. The conventional thinking in the space industry was that Blue Origin would win the primary contract since it led a team of new and traditional aerospace companies and proposed a design tailored to NASA’s specifications. It was thought that maybe Dynetics or SpaceX would get a secondary contract.

Far from proposing a conventional lunar lander, SpaceX wanted to use its massive Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. This option was somewhat discounted by the space industry because Starship was an experimental, risky approach. There were also concerns that if NASA selected SpaceX, it would put Starship on the critical path for the Artemis Moon Program. This meant that for the Artemis Program to succeed, Starship had to work. And if Starship worked, it would mean that NASA had funded a rocket that was better than its own expendable and costly Space Launch System rocket.



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Elden Ring Gets Big Combat Overhaul To Make Way For DLC UPDATE

Screenshot: FromSoftware

Another major update is shaking up the world of Elden Ring, and this time FromSoftware is calibrating the changes differently depending on whether you’re playing the main game or dunking on strangers in PVP. That addresses a longtime request by fans to balance the two sides of the game separately, and just in time for new clues about the upcoming expansion recently discovered by Elden Ring dataminers.

Patch 1.07 went live early on Thursday, and its biggest change is that it added separate damage scaling for PvP. This feature allows separate damage scaling for Weapons, Skills, Spells, and Incantations when playing against other players,” FromSoftware writes. “In the future, this feature may be used to balance weapons, Art, Spell, and Incantation in invading/PvP mode.

What this means is that players can enjoy their broken builds while playing solo without worrying about FromSoftware nerfing them to try and make things more fair in online multiplayer. This was previously an issue with the bloodletting Rivers of Blood loadouts, which FromSoftware fixed in PVP only to provoke outrage by solo players who could no longer rely on certain methods to trounce some of Elden Ring’s hardest bosses.

For example, patch 1.07 lowered the power of Ashes of War across the board, but only in PVP. It did the same for incantations like Ekzykes’s Decay and Agheel’s Flame, while simultaneously improving poise damage and stamina attack power. The result should be a more balanced multiplayer experience without undermining the ways people have fun in the main game.

Read More: Eight Ways To Make Elden Ring Feel New Again While You Wait For DLC

The rest of the update includes a sprawling list of changes and balance adjustments for weapon combat, magic, incantations, and skills, as well as a host of bug fixes. Mage builds in particular will see a huge benefit from this patch, with a ton of abilities now costing less FP than before. A large number of moves also have faster casting times, and armor nearly across the board now has better poise. It’s good news for all the folks wearing that ugly goat armor for the defense, as now there are a wider variety of options for fashion souls aficionados. One thing that did get nerfed, though, is crouch poking. At least colossal sword users are having a good time right now, though. It’s one of the biggest re-works the game has gotten in some time, and could possibly be setting up the next stage of Elden Ring ahead of some long-awaited DLC.

Veteran Souls-watcher Lance McDonald reported the discovery of two new map references in the latest update files for the game. “The new maps are m20, and m45…m20 has same numbering as Legacy dungeons, m45 is brand new…” tweeted Elden Ring dataminer Sekiro Dubi. The thinking among some fans is that this is paving the way for the game’s first DLC, which would presumably add new locations as part of the additional content. Perhaps we’ll finally get to see some of those dream-related cut content quests that appear to be tied to Miquella, a major character we never get to formally meet. There’s also mention of raytracing in these files, which is a fancy graphics rendering technique that could make the game look prettier once it’s actually added.

Update 10/14/22 10:40 a.m.: Since the update has rolled out, data miners have been poring through the files and finding more assets, if not potentially more clues about where the DLC could lead. Might we for example get more customization options soon?

The juiciest discovery so far is the addition of files related to the in-game colosseums. Elden Ring players know that the map is littered with giant colosseums that the player currently can’t enter, though early on after the game’s release, modders were able to clip inside the map files and restore the associated content. What they found at the time was a storyline that suggested we might get a blast to the past.

Restoring some of the content that was already in the files, data miners saw that the insides featured battles between beasts and gladiators, which were internally referenced with names like “Old Lions of the Arena.” Actual Elden Ring descriptions note the colosseums went out of use with the age of Radagon, and were considered an artifact of a more brutal time. The going theory at the time was that perhaps at some point FromSoftware would either use time travel or somehow place us in an older version of The Lands Between. Plenty of other circumstantial evidence, such as cut files, suggested the developer initially conceived of the entire story with time fuckery in mind. The start of the game originally began with audio of Godfrey telling the player to “be ready” once the ring was shattered and to heed the call when the time came, as if it hadn’t happened yet.

With October 2022’s update, the colosseums themselves were updated behind the scenes, and data miners found files that suggest the eventual addition of a new legacy dungeon.

Hopefully, we’ll know what’s what soon enough.

In an interview earlier this year, director Hidetaka Miyazaki confirmed that more updates for the game were on the way, but didn’t specify what they would contain exactly. He also mentioned that he’s already moved onto his next project, and that FromSoftware’s next game, believed to possibly be a new Armored Core, is already pretty much finished.

Here are the full Elden Ring version 1.07 patch notes:

Additional features

  • Added separate damage scaling for PvP.

This feature allows separate damage scaling for Weapons, Skills, Spells, and Incantations when playing against other players.

In the future, this feature may be used to balance weapons, Art, Spell, and Incantation in invading/PvP mode.

Balance adjustments made within this feature will not impact single-player and cooperative play.

PvP Exclusive balance adjustments

The adjustments in this section do not affect single-player or cooperative play.

  • Increased stamina attack power in PvP for all attacks against guarded foes, except for long-ranged weapons.
  • Improved poise damage in PvP for every weapon’s normal attack, except for Skills and long-ranged weapons.
  • With a few exceptions, the power of Ashes of War in PvP has been lowered across the board.
  • The power of the following incantations in PvP has been decreased:Dragonfire / Agheel’s Flame / Glintstone Breath / Smarag’s Glintstone Breath / Rotten Breath / Ekzykes’s Decay / Dragonice / Borealis’s Mist / Unendurable Frenzy

General balance adjustments

The adjustments in this section affect both PvE and PvP aspects of the game.

  • Increased poise damage when using two-handed normal attacks.
  • Increased the speed of some Colossal Sword attacks.
  • The speed and hit detection of Colossal Sword crouching and rolling attacks have been decreased.
  • Increased the speed of some Colossal Weapon attacks.
  • Decreased recovery time for Colossal Swords and Colossal Weapons, except for jump attacks, dual wielded attacks, and attacks while riding.
  • Increased poise damage of Hammers, Great Hammers and some Colossal Weapons.
  • Increased guard penetration for the following weapons:Celebrant’s Sickle / Nox Flowing Sword / Shotel / Eclipse Shotel / Vulgar Militia Shotel / Scythe / Grave Scythe / Halo Scythe / Winged Scythe
  • The poise rating of some attacks has been increased for the following weapons:Greatswords / Colossal Swords / Curved Greatswords / Greataxes / Great Hammers / Great Spears / Halberds
  • With some exceptions, poise of all armor has been increased.
  • The effects of the Greatshield Talisman and Hammer Talisman have been increased.
  • Some effects of the spell Scholar’s Shield, the Barricade Shield skill and the Shield Grease item have been adjusted as follows.The effects on shields with low guard boost have been adjusted upward.The effects on shields with high guard boost have been adjusted downward.
  • The guard strength of the Fingerprint Stone Shield has been decreased.
  • Decreased the status buildup done by dual wielded weapons.

Balance adjustments for Magic and Incantations

Upward adjustments

Glintstone Pebble / Shard Spiral

Lightning Spear / Flame Sling

  • Increased attack power when charged.

Rejection / Wrath of Gold / Black Flame

  • Increased stamina attack power against guarded enemies.

Crystal Burst / Triple Rings of Light

Assassin’s Approach / Law of Causality

Glintstone Icecrag / Freezing Mist / Frozen Armament

  • Increased frostbite status buildup.

Poison Mist / Poison Armament

  • Increased poison status buildup.

Glintstone Arc / Glintblade Phalanx / Carian Phalanx / Greatblade Phalanx / Magic Downpour / Loretta’s Greatbow / Loretta’s Mastery / Rennala’s Full Moon / Ranni’s Dark Moon / Ambush Shard / Night Shard / Unseen Blade / Roiling Magma / Rykard’s Rancor / Darkness / Elden Stars / Lightning Strike / Lansseax’s Glaive / Death Lightning / Giantsflame Take Thee / Bloodflame Talons / Unendurable Frenzy / Greyoll’s Roar

  • Decreased FP consumption.

Glintstone Stars / Magma Shot / Bloodboon

  • Decreased FP consumption and increased attack power.

Aspects of the Crucible: Tail / Aspects of the Crucible: Horn / Ancient Dragons’ Lightning Spear / Fortissax’s Lightning Spear / Flame, Fall Upon Them

  • Decreased FP consumption and increased stamina attack power against guarded enemies.

Glintstone Cometshard / Comet / Cannon of Haima / Carian Greatsword

  • Decreased FP consumption, increased attack power and stamina attack power against guarded enemies.

Rancorcall / Ancient Death Rancor

  • Decreased FP consumption and extended the lifespan of all vengeful spirits.

Briars of Sin / Briars of Punishment

  • Decreased the FP consumption and increased the blood loss status buildup on enemies.
  • Increased casting speed.

Gavel of Haima

  • Reduced FP and stamina consumption, increased stamina attack power against guards and the power of the hammer portion of the attack.

Shatter Earth

  • Reduced FP consumption, increased poise damage and stamina attack power against guards.
  • Increased certain portions of the spell’s hitbox and shortened recovery time.

Rock Blaster

  • Reduced FP consumption, increased poise damage and stamina attack power against guards.
  • Increased certain portions of the spell’s hitbox.

Starlight

  • Reduced FP consumption and extended the duration of effect.

Stars of Ruin

  • Reduced FP and stamina consumption.
  • Increased power when charged.

Founding Rain of Stars

  • Reduced FP and stamina consumption.
  • Shortened time before damage is dealt.
  • Extended the range of the star rain.

Magic Glintblade

  • Increased poise damage, attack power, and stamina attack power against guarded enemies when charged.

Carian Piercer

  • Reduced FP consumption, increased attack power, and stamina attack power against guarded enemies.
  • Shortened the recovery time.

Adula’s Moonblade

  • Reduced FP consumption, and increased stamina attack power, and frostbite status buildup against guarded enemies with the sword’s slash portion.

Gelmir’s Fury

  • Reduced FP consumption and increased attack power.
  • Increased casting speed and shortened recovery time.
  • Adjusted the direction of the lava projectiles to make it easier to hit enemies located in front of the spell.
  • Increased the damage dealt by the first part of the spell, and greatly increased the ability to stagger enemies.

Zamor Ice Storm

  • Increased attack power and frostbite status buildup.
  • Increased casting speed and shortened recovery time.

Shattering Crystal

  • Reduced FP and stamina consumption.
  • Increased poise damage and stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Increased power when charged.
  • Increased casting speed.

Crystal Release

  • Reduced FP consumption, increased poise damage and stamina attack power against guarded enemies.
  • Increased casting speed and shortened the recovery time.
  • Increased attack range.
  • Adjusted the poise increase timing during activation.

Oracle Bubbles

  • Can now be used while in motion.
  • Streamlined attack range and increased attack power when charged.
  • Extended the time it takes for the bubble to burst when not charged.
  • Damage hitbox has been adjusted to be larger against players.
  • Reduced the number of projectiles that can appear at the same time.

Great Oracular Bubble

  • Can now be used while in motion.
  • Increased attack power.
  • Increased tracking performance.
  • Increased stamina attack power against guarded enemies.

Explosive Ghostflame

  • Increased attack power and stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Increased frostbite status buildup of the explosion.
  • Range of the residual flame has been slightly increased, damage detection time has been reduced.

Tibia’s Summons

  • Reduced FP consumption and increased attack power.
  • Increased casting speed, reduced recovery time.

Discus of Light

  • Reduced FP and stamina consumption.
  • Increased the range, speed, and duration of the halo.
  • Increased casting speed.

Radagon’s Rings of Light

  • Reduced FP consumption and recovery time.

Frozen Lightning Spear

  • Reduced FP consumption and increased the frostbite status buildup.

Flame of the Fell God

  • Reduced FP consumption, increased stamina attack power against guarded enemies.
  • Increased attack power when charged.
  • Shortened damage detection time of residual fire.

Whirl, O Flame!

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Increased stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Increased ability to stagger enemies.

Burn, O Flame!

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Shortened the time it takes for a flame pillar to be generated.

Scouring Black Flame

  • Increased stamina attack power against guarding enemies and increased poise damage when charged.

Noble Presence

  • Increased stamina consumption and increased stamina attack power against guarded enemies.
  • Shortened recovery time.

Beast Claw

  • Increased the range of the shockwave.

Gurranq’s Beast Claw

  • Added a hitbox to the first part of the spell.
  • Increased attack power when charged.

Stone of Gurranq

  • Reduced stamina consumption.
  • Increased attack power and stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Extended the impact area of projectiles.

Scarlet Aeonia

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Increased attack power, poise damage and stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Landing attack range has been increased and its recovery time decreased.
  • Adjusted the poise increase timing during activation.

Frenzied Burst

  • Increased poise damage and attack power when charged.

Howl of Shabriri

  • Extended the duration of the effect that increases attack power and lowers defensive power.

Inescapable Frenzy

  • Reduced FP and stamina consumption.
  • Shortened recovery time.
  • Increased grapple range.

Dragonclaw

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Increased stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Improved directional control.

Dragonmaw

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Increased stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • The hitbox around dragon’s neck area has been enlarged to make it easier to hit enemies at close range.

Upward and downward adjustments

Black Blade

  • Reduced stamina consumption.
  • Improved turning performance and shortened recovery time.
  • The sword and the wave attack have been changed so that they hit at the same time.
  • Attack power, stamina attack power and poise damage of each part have been decreased.
  • Decreased the number of times the wave part hits large enemies.

Bestial Sling

  • Reduced the stone fragment scatter randomness.
  • Increased stamina attack power against guarding enemies.
  • Reduced between two hits and adjusted the detection so that two hits are always made at close range.
  • Decreased poise damage.

Downward adjustments

Rotten Breath / Ekzykes’s Decay

  • Reduced Scarlet Rot status effect buildup.

Balance adjustment of Skills

Upward adjustments

Glintstone Pebble / Surge of Faith / Gold Breaker / Regal Beastclaw / Nebula / Sacred Phalanx

Sword Dance / Vow of the Indomitable / Eochaid’s Dancing Blade

  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Sacred Order / Shared Order / Soul Stifler / Knowledge Above All / Barricade Shield

Taker’s Flames / Miquella’s Ring of Light

  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Prayerful Strike / Great-Serpent Hunt

  • Increased power and poise damage

Wild Strikes / Spinning Strikes

  • Shortened the time between various actions and the activation of skills
  • Slightly increased attack power.

Ground Slam / Golden Slam / Erdtree Slam

  • Reduced the time between using the skill and being able to roll.
  • Increased attack power.

Stamp (Upward Cut) / Stamp (Sweep)

  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.
  • Increased attack power.
  • Reduced the timing between the end of the skill and performing actions other than the strong attack.

Impaling Thrust

  • Increased motion speed and attack power.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill
  • Reduced the timing between the end of the skill and being able to attack and to roll.

Piercing Fang

  • Increased motion speed, attack power and poise damage.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.
  • Reduced the timing between the end of the skill and being able to attack and to roll.

Spinning Slash

  • Increased poise damage against enemies when used with the following weapons: Greatsword, Curved Greatsword, Twinblade, Greataxe, Spear, Great Spear, Halberd, and Reaper.

Charge Forth

  • Increased directional control and motion speed.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Blood Tax

  • Increased motion speed and attack power.
  • Increased HP deprivation effect.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Repeating Thrust

  • Increased motion speed. Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Giant Hunt

  • Increased poise damage.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Loretta’s Slash

  • Increased poise damage for the first attack.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Poison Moth Flight

  • Increased poison status buildup and its power against poisoned enemies.
  • Increased the duration and damage of poison.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Stormcaller

  • Increased motion speed, attack power and poise damage.
  • Increased skill size and poise damage.

Sacred Blade

  • Increased motion speed and range of the blade.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.
  • Increased effect duration and attack power that gives the weapon holy power.

Bloody Slash

  • Increased status buildup and attack power.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Lifesteal Fist

  • Increased motion speed and attack power.
  • Increased attack range against other players.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Eruption

  • Increased the range and duration of lava.
  • Added a hitbox to the part of the attack where the weapon is slammed.
  • Fixed the timing of the poise increase during activation.

Gravitas

  • Increased poise during casting.

Storm Blade

  • Increased motion speed and range of the blade.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Flaming Strike

  • Increased attack power.
  • Increased duration and attack power that grants the weapon a fire attribute.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Lightning Slash

  • Increased duration and attack power that grants the weapon a lightning attribute.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.
  • Reduced the delay between using the skill and being able to attack.

Vacuum Slice

  • Increased motion speed and range of the blade.
  • Reduced FP consumption
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Sacred Ring of Light

  • Increased range and speed of the projectile halo have been increased.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Blood Blade

  • Increased power.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Phantom Slash

  • Improved directional control.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Spectral Lance

  • Increased attack power.
  • Reduced long range damage falloff.

Chilling Mist

  • Increased motion speed.
  • Increased the duration of the weapon’s frostbite effect.

Poisonous Mist

  • Increased motion speed.
  • Increased the duration of the weapon’s poison effect.

Shield Bash

  • Increased stamina attack power against guarded enemies.

Enchanted Shot

Kick

  • Increased poise damage and stamina attack power against guarding enemies.

Cragblade

  • Extended effect duration.
  • Increased attack power, poise damage and stamina attack power against guarding enemies.

War Cry

  • Extended effect duration.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.
  • The power of strong attacks during the duration of the effect has been increased when using the following weapons:

Straight Sword / Curved Sword / Katana / Axe / Hammer / Flail / Spear / Great Spear / Halberd / Reaper / Fist (one-handed) / Claw (one-handed)

Troll’s Roar

  • Increased attack power.
  • Fixed the timing of the poise increase during activation.

Braggart’s Roar

  • Extended the duration of the effect.
  • Increased attack power, defense, and stamina recovery speed.

Endure

  • Extended effect duration.
  • Added an effect that prevents staggers caused by blood loss and frostbite status effects.
  • Extended effect duration.
  • Reduced the time between skill activation and being able to perform actions other than attacking.

Holy Ground

  • Increased HP recovery amount.

Raptor of the Mists

Flame Spit

  • Improved projectile range.

Tongues of Fire

  • Reduced stamina consumption.

Great Oracular Bubble

  • Extended the amount of time that the large bubble stays in place.
  • Tracking performance and range of the large bubble have been improved.

Viper Bite

  • Increased attack power and poison status buildup.
  • Extended poison effect duration and increased damage caused by poison.

Moonlight Greatsword

  • Reduced stamina consumption for strong and charged attacks.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Siluria’s Woe

  • Increased motion speed, attack power and poise during activation.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.
  • The projectile now penetrates enemies and some objects when charged.

Reduvia Blood Blade

  • Increased attack power.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Glintstone Dart

  • Increased range, speed and attack power of magic attacks.
  • Magic attacks now penetrate enemies when not charged.

Night-and-Flame Stance

  • Increased attack power.
  • The attack direction may now be adjusted up and down when using a normal attack.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Ruinous Ghostflame

  • Increased the duration, attack power and poise damage of the effect that gives the weapon a magic attribute.
  • Shortened the time between various actions and the activation of the skill.
  • Reduced time between the skill activation and being able to perform actions.

Spearcall Ritual

  • Increased attack power.
  • Reduced damage detection time.

Wolf’s Assault

  • Increased poise during casting.

Thundercloud Form

  • Increased directional control.

Regal Roar

  • Extended effect duration.
  • Reduced the time between strong attacks while under the effect.
  • Reduced time between the skill activation and being able to perform actions.

Blade of Death

  • Increased effect duration that reduces maximum HP.

Destined Death

  • Increased motion speed
  • Extended the duration of the effect that reduces maximum HP.

Alabaster Lords’ Pull

  • Increased attack power.
  • Increased poise during casting.

Onyx Lords’ Repulsion

  • Increased repelling effect power.
  • Increased poise during casting.

Oath of Vengeance

  • Extended effect
  • Added an effect that prevents staggers caused by blood loss and frostbite status effects.

Ice Lightning Sword

  • Increased weapon attack power.
  • Increased the duration and attack power of the effect that grants the weapon a lightning attribute.
  • Reduced time between the skill activation and being able to perform actions.

Claw Flick

  • Increased attack power.
  • Increased poise damage of the finger expansion.

Golden Tempering

  • Added a timing for interrupting the attack during a series of strong attacks while under the effect.
  • Increased strong attack motion speed, poise damage, and stamina attack power against guarding enemies during the effect.
  • Increased the duration and attack power of the effect that grants the weapon a holy attribute.
  • Reduced time between the skill activation and being able to perform actions.

Last Rites

  • Increased effect duration.
  • Increased attack power.
  • Effect against Those Who Live in Death has been revised upward.

Unblockable Blade

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Increased motion speed.

Loretta’s Slash (Loretta’s War Sickle Ash of War)

  • Increased attack power.
  • Increased damage of the first attack
  • Increased poise damage.

Corpse Wax Cutter

  • Reduced FP consumption.
  • Increased motion speed, range and speed of the blade.
  • Added damage detection to the weapon part.

Zamor Ice Storm

  • Increased attack power.
  • Increased attack power to the weapon part.

Dynast’s Finesse

  • The directional control of the follow up strong attack has been improved.

Death Flare

  • Increased the duration and attack power of the effect that grants the weapon a holy attribute.

Magma Guillotine

  • Increased poise damage and stamina attack power against guarding enemies for the first attack.

Corpse Piler

  • Slightly increased attack power.

Bloodblade Dance

  • Added damage detection immediately after activating the skill.

Devourer of Worlds

Familial Rancor

  • Increased range of the vengeful spirits that chase down foes.

Rosus’s Summons

Thunderstorm

  • Increased motion speed.
  • Increased the duration and attack power of the effect that grants the weapon a lightning attribute.

Unblockable Blade

  • Increased attack power.
  • Reduced time between the skill activation and being able to perform actions.

Ordovis’s Vortex

  • Increased attack power, motion speed and poise damage.
  • Increased poise during casting.
  • Reduced the delay between the end of various actions (such as using items or attack animations) and being able to perform the skill.

Upward and downward adjustments

Barbaric Roar

  • Extended effect duration.
  • Reduced the time between using the skill and performing various actions.
  • Increased strong attack power when used with Claw or Fist weapons during the effect.
  • Reduced strong attack power when used with Twinblade weapons during the effect.

Downward adjustments

Shield Crash

  • Reduced the amount of status buildup when used with weapons that have status effects.

Seppuku

  • Increased damage taken upon activation.
  • Reduced the bleed status buildup effect granted to weapons.

Bloodboon Ritual

  • Reduced the range of the damage animation trigger on other players. Damage is unchanged.

Bug Fixes

  • Added a process to remove the Ash of War from weapons that cannot normally be combined with certain Ashes of War.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented users from obtaining items such as Great Runes, Crystal Tears, Cracked Pots, and Ritual Pots when the number of items in the inventory and the storage had reached the maximum limit.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented users from obtaining Crystal Tear. If you fail to obtain a Crystal Tear, the item will be added to your inventory when moving within the vicinity of the place where you should have obtained it.
  • Adjusted player character control when under certain damage animations.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented charging some Incantations while casting them with a left-handed Sacred Seal in mid-air.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented performing a normal attack from a dash immediately after landing from a jump when the weapon is two-handed.
  • Fixed a bug where various action inputs were ignored when changing weapons while moving.
  • Corrected the description of the Colossal Sword’s physical attack attribute.
  • Fixed a bug where the timing to change the attack direction was narrower than expected for some attacks with Greataxes.
  • Fixed a bug where the attack direction could not be changed when performing a charged attack with the Ruins Greatsword weapon.
  • Fixed a bug where the Highland Axe’s effect was not applied to the skill Shriek of Milos.
  • Fixed a bug where the effects of the Warrior Jar Shard and the Shard of Alexander were not applied to the skill Sorcery of the Crozier.
  • Fixed a bug where the effect of the Roar Medallion was not applied to the Regal Roar Ash of War.
  • Fixed a bug where the skill Viper Bite could inflict poison instead of deadly poison.
  • Fixed a bug where the range of one of the three rocks was longer than expected when casting the Spell Rock Sling with a left-hand staff.
  • Fixed a bug where recovery time after casting Beast Claw could not be shortened by magic or incantations.
  • Fixed a bug where when attacking an enemy who cannot be grabbed by the incantation Inescapable Frenzy, the attack will be repelled if the enemy is holding a shield.
  • Fixed a bug where HP or FP could be recovered when changing equipment to certain types of armor under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause death and result in the player becoming stuck in some locations.
  • Fixed some terrain bugs that allowed users to reach unexpected locations with certain procedures.
  • Fixed a bug where the rendering and collision detection of some maps were different from expected.
  • Fixed a bug where bolts fired with the Hand Ballista weapon missed the lock-on target when the game was running at a frame rate below a certain level.
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent online multiplayer from working properly on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions.
  • Several other performance improvements and bug fixes.



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Oracle Fined $23 Million For Bribing Officials In India, Turkey And UAE

Oracle used slush funds to bribe officials in India, United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

Oracle’s employees at its India unit used an excessive discount scheme linked to a transaction with a transportation company owned by the ministry of railways, US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has imposed a fine of more than $23 million on tech giant Oracle for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Oracle used slush funds to bribe officials in India, United Arab Emirates and Turkey in return for business between 2016 and 2019, according to the SEC.

“The creation of off-book slush funds inherently gives rise to the risk those funds will be used improperly, which is exactly what happened here at Oracle’s Turkey, UAE, and India subsidiaries. This matter highlights the critical need for effective internal accounting controls throughout the entirety of a company’s operations,” said Charles Cain, the SEC’s FCPA Unit Chief.

Oracle has agreed to pay $8 million in disgorgement and the rest of $15 million is the penalty out of the total $23 million, according to SEC. Though it did not admit or deny wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.

“The conduct outlined by the SEC is contrary to our core values and clear policies, and if we identify such behavior, we will take appropriate action,” Oracle spokesman Michael Egbert told news agency Reuters.

Oracle’s employees at its India unit used an excessive discount scheme linked to a transaction with a transportation company owned by the ministry of railways, according to SEC. The employees offered a heavy discount of 70% on software deals to keep competitors away, the market watchdog added.  

The SEC discovered that there was no competition as the procurement website of the Indian railway ministry clearly mandated the use of Oracle products for the project. According to the SEC order, one of the employees involved in the transaction maintained a spreadsheet that indicated that a buffer of $67,000 was available to potentially make payments to Indian officials of the state-owned enterprise (SOE).   

“A total of approximately $330,000 was funnelled to an entity with a reputation for paying SOE officials and another $62,000 was paid to an entity controlled by the sales employees responsible for the transaction,” said the order.

This is the second time Oracle has been charged by the SEC for bribing officials in India.

In 2012 Oracle’s India unit was found guilty of keeping unauthorized side funds at distributors from 2005 to 2007. Oracle had agreed to pay $2 million to settle SEC’s charges of violating FCPA provisions.

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Scifi Debut by Emery Robin

Image: Orbit

The Stars Undying, the upcoming sci-fi debut from Emery Robin, introduces an interstellar princess forced into circumstances that’ll require every bit of royal strength she can muster to overcome. It’ll be released in November, but io9 is thrilled to share a generous excerpt from the book today.

Here’s a description of the book, followed by its first two chapters.

Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed both the crown of their planet, Szayet, and the Pearl of its prophecy: a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet’s god.

So when the interstellar Empire of Ceiao turns its conquering eye toward Szayet, Gracia sees an opportunity. To regain her planet, Gracia places herself in the hands of the empire and its dangerous commander, Matheus Ceirran.

But winning over Matheus, to say nothing of his mercurial and compelling captain Anita, is no easy feat. And in trying to secure her planet’s sovereignty and future, Gracia will find herself torn between Matheus’s ambitions, Anita’s unpredictable desires, and the demands of the Pearl that whispers in her ear.

For Szayet’s sake and her own, she will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before.


Chapter One — Gracia

In the first year of the Thirty-Third Dynasty, when He came to the planet where I was born and made of it a wasteland for glory’s sake, my ten-times-great grandfather’s king and lover Alekso Undying built on the ruins of the gods who had lived before Him Alectelo, the City of Endless Pearl, the Bride of Szayet, the Star of the Swordbelt Arm, the Ever-Living God’s Empty Grave.

He caught fever and filled that grave, ten months later. You can’t believe in names.

Three hundred years is a long time to call anything Endless, for one thing. Alectelo is no different, and the pearl of the harbor-gate was cracked and flaking when I ran my hand up it, and its shine had long since worn away. It had only ever been inlay, anyway. Beneath it was brass, solid and warm, and browning like bread at the edges where the air was creeping through.

“It needs repairs,” said Zorione, just behind my shoulder.

I curled my fingers against the metal. “It needs money,” I said.

“She won’t give it,” Zorione said. She was sitting on a nearby crate already, stretching her legs out in front of her. She had complained of her old bones and aching feet through every back alley and tunnel in the city, and been silent only when we passed under markets, where the noise might have carried to the street. “Why would she?” she went on, without looking at me. “She never comes to the harbor. Are the captains and generals kept in wine and honey-cakes? Yes? That keeps her happy.”

I said nothing. After a moment she said, “Of course—it’s not hers,” and subsided.

I had not meant her to mistake my silence for offense, but I knew I ought to be grateful for her devotion. Nevertheless it was not a question of possession that stirred me, looking at the curling rust on that gate framing the white inlet where our island broke to the endless sea. Nor was it a question of reverence, though it might have been, in better times. It was the deepest anger I had ever felt, and one of the few angers I had never found myself able to put aside. It was the second time in my life the queen of my planet had been careless with something beautiful.

“It wouldn’t matter, anyway,” I said, and let my hand fall. “This is quicksilver pearl. It only grows in Ceiao these days.”

It was a cool day at the edge of the only world I had ever known. The trade winds were coming up from the ocean, smelling of brine and exhaust, and the half-moon-studded sky was a clear and cloudless blue. At the edge of my hearing was the distant hum of rockets from across the water, a low roar like the sound of the lions my people had once worshiped. I took it as an omen, and hoped it a good one. Alectelans had made no sacrifices to mindless beasts, these last three centuries. If Alekso heard my prayers, though, it was months since He had answered them, and I needed all the succor I could get.

“How long until the ship?” I said.

I had asked three times in the last half-hour, but she said patiently, “Ten minutes,” as if it were the first time. “If she hasn’t caught it yet,” and she made a sign against bad luck in the air, and spit over her shoulder. It made me smile, though I tried not to let him see it. She was a true Alectelan, Sintian in name and in parentage but in heart half orthodoxy and half heathenism, in that peculiar fanatical blend that every born resident of the city held close. And though she carried all unhappiness as unfailingly as she carried my remaining possessions, I had no interest in offending her. She had shown no sign, as yet, of being capable of disloyalty. Still: I had so little left to lose.

The water was white-green and choppy with the wind, and so when our ship came skipping across the sea at last only the sparks gave it away, meandering orange and red towards the concrete shore like moths. It slowed at the very last moment, and skidded onto the runway in a cloud of exhaust, coming to a stop just yards from our feet.

My maid was coughing. I held still, and listened for the creak of a hatch. When the smuggler appeared through the drifting grey particulates a moment later, shaven-headed and crooked-toothed and grinning, Zorione jumped.

“Good morning,” I said. “Anastazia Szaradya? We spoke earlier. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” she said in Szayeti-accented Sintian. Her eyes took me in— cotton dress, dust-grey sandals, bare face, bare arms—before they flicked to Zorione, behind me. “This is the backer, yes?”

I kept my smile wide and pleasant. “One of them,” I said. “The rest are expecting our report from the satellite in—I’m sorry, was it three hours? Four?”

“By nightfall, madam,” Zorione said, looking deeply uncomfortable.

I gave her an apologetic look behind the smuggler’s back. If I had had choice in who to play the role of the backer, I would not have chosen Zorione, who as long as I had known her had despised deception almost as fiercely as rule-breaking, and rule-breaking like blasphemy. But she knew as well as I did what a luxury choice had become. “By nightfall,” I repeated. “Shall we board the ship?”

The smuggler narrowed her eyes at me. “And how long after will the pearls be sent to the satellite?” she said. “You said three days?”

I flicked my eyes to Zorione, who cleared her throat. “A week,” she said. “The transport ship will bring them, if they find her safe and sound. Only if,” she added, in a burst of improvisation. I gave her a quick encouraging nod.

“A week?” said the smuggler. “For a piece of walking bad luck? Better I should be holding a bomb! Was this what we agreed to?”

Zorione’s face went blank. “You know,” I said hastily, “you’re very right—speed is of the essence. I would personally prefer to leave the system as soon as possible. Madam Buquista, might your consortium abandon the precautionary measures we discussed? I understand the concern that the army not trace the payment back to Madam Szaradaya—of course the Ceians might, too, and come to investigate her—but is that really my highest priority? Perhaps instead—”

The smuggler snorted. “Hush,” she said. “Fine. Keep your precautions. You, girl, can keep your patience. Meanwhile,” she nodded at Zorione’s outraged face, “when your ship comes for her, we will discuss what delay fees I collect, hmm?”

Zorione looked admirably more unhappy at this, and I would have nodded at her to put up a lengthy and losing argument, when there was a low, dull hum, akin to the noise of an insect.

The sky wiped dark from horizon to horizon. The sea, which had been glittering with daylight, went black at once; the shadow of the smuggler’s ship swelled, swept over us, leaving in darkness. The smuggler swore—I whispered a prayer, and I could see Zorione’s silhouetted hands moving in a charm against ill fortune—and above us, just where the sun had been and twenty times its size, the face of the Queen of Szayet opened up like an eye.

She was smiling down at us. She was a lovely woman, the queen, and though holos had a peculiar quality that always seemed to make it impossible to meet anyone’s eyes, her gaze felt heavy and prickling as it swept over the concrete and the sea and the pearl of the harbor-gate below. She had braided her hair in the high Ceian style, and she had thrown on a military coat and hat that I was almost certain had belonged to the king who was dead, and she had painted her mouth, hastily enough that it smeared at the corner, and dripped there as if she had just bitten into a raw piece of meat. Around her left ear, stretching up to her hairline, curled a dozen golden wires, pressed so closely to her skin they might have been a tattoo. An artfully draped braid hid where I knew they slipped through her temple, into her skull. In her earlobe, at the base of the wires, sat a shining silver pearl.

She said, sweetly and very slowly—I could hear it echo, as I knew it was doing on docks and in cathedrals, in marketplaces and alleyways, across the whole city of Alectelo, and though I had seen the machines in the markets that threw these images into sky, though I had had laid hands on them and shown them my own face, my breath caught, my heart hammered, I wanted to fall to my knees—

—“Do you think the Oracle blind?”

She paused as if for a response. There was none, of course. She added, even more sweetly, “Or perhaps you think her stupid?”

“Time to go,” said the smuggler.

We scrabbled ourselves up the ladder into the hole at the top of the ship as best we could: the smuggler first, then me, Zorione taking the rear with the handles of my bags clenched in her bony fingers. Above me, the queen’s voice was rising: “Did you think I would not see,” she said, “did you think the tongue and eyes of Alekso Undying would not know? I have heard—I will be told—where the liar Altagracia Caviro is hiding. I will be told in what harbor she dares to stand, I will be told in what ship she dares to fly. You are bound to do her harm, all you who worship the Undying—you are bound to do her harm, Alekso wishes it so—”

Zorione, swaying on the rungs, made another elaborate sign in the air, this time against blasphemy. “Please don’t fall,” I called down to her. “I can’t afford to lose you. But I appreciate the piety.” She huffed, and seized hold of the ladder again.

When we had all tumbled into the cramped confines of the ship, the smuggler slammed the hatch shut above my head, and shoved lumps of bread and a pinch of salt into our waiting hands. The bread was hard as stone, and tasted like lint—it must have come out of her pocket, a thought I immediately decided not to contemplate—but I swallowed it as best I could, and smeared the salt onto my tongue with my thumb. The queen’s voice was echoing even through the walls, muffled and metallic. I heard worship a lying and demand by right and levy upon you, and turned my head away.

The smuggler had gone ahead of me, through the bowels of the ship. I made to push past Zorione, but she caught my arm at the last moment, and stood on her tiptoes to whisper into my ear, “Madam, I’m afraid—”

“I know,” I said, “but we knew she would only be a step behind—we have to go,” but she shook her head frantically, leaned closer, and hissed:

“What is this thief going to do to us when she finds out there isn’t any consortium?”

My first, absurd impulse was to laugh, and I had to clap my hand over my mouth to stifle it. When I had myself under control, I shook my head, and bent to whisper back: “Zorione, how can it be worse than what would have happened if we hadn’t told her that there was?”

She let me go, then, her face pinched with worry. I wished I knew what to say to her—but I had a week to find an answer, and here and now I made my way through sputtering wires and hissing pipes through the little hallway where the smuggler had disappeared.

I found her in a worn chair at what I presumed to be the ship’s only control panel, laid out in red lights before a dark viewscreen not four handspans wide. “How long until we’re out of the atmosphere?” I said.

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” said the smuggler. “If you have any service complaints, you’ve got three guesses who you can complain to.”

Three guesses seemed excessive, but it was more munificence than I had been offered in months. “If I stand here behind you,” I said, “will I be in your way?”

“You’re in my way wherever you are,” she said, and shoved a lever forward, and beneath us the engines coughed irritably to life. “Don’t go into the back, it’s full of Szayeti falcon jars. Eighteenth dynasty.”

I would remember that. I let it settle to the floor of my mind for now, though, and tucked myself into what little space there was behind the smuggler’s chair. We had begun our journey back across the water, now, bouncing over the flickering waves. The spray threw rainbows around us, so bright I found myself blinking and missed our arrival at the launch spot entirely, and my first notice that we had begun to rise into the air was a hum in my ears, low and then louder—and then a pain in my head, as sharp as if someone had clapped their hands to my ears and squeezed. The smuggler was mouthing something—I thought it was here we go—

—and then the sky was fading, blue into a pale colorlessness, and the ocean was shrinking below us, dotted by scudding clouds. The floor of the ship shook, then coughed. My ears popped.

“Simple part done,” said the smuggler. I was beginning to believe she liked having someone to talk to.

That, at least, I knew how to indulge. “Simple part?” I said, as bewildered as if I did not already know the answer. “What comes next?”

“That,” said the smuggler, pointing with grim satisfaction. I allowed myself a moment of pride—it had been excellent timing—and looked past her pointing finger to where the Ceian-bought warship sat black and seething like an anthill in the center of my sky.

“We can’t answer a royal customs holo,” I said, making myself sound surprised.

“Wasn’t planning to,” said the smuggler. “Primitive little fucks already gave the queen my face. Three decades ago, I flew from here to Muntiru and back through twenty ports without telling any man my name. Now every asteroid twenty feet across is full of barbarians in blue, asking for the order of every gene my mother gave me.” She paused. “Wonder whose fault that is.”

It took much faith to attribute that kind of influence to any Oracle, let alone the Oracle she meant. But faith, unlike warships, had never been in short supply on Szayet.

“What will we do?” I said. “Speed through the army’s radar?”

“Better,” said the smuggler. “We outweave it. Hold on.”

That was the only warning I got. In the back, I could hear Zorione yelp as the ship spun like a top, suddenly and violently. The smuggler shoved a lever forward, yanked it to the left, and pushed three sliders on the control board up to their highest positions. A holo had sprung to life on the dashboard, a glittering spiderweb of yellow lines delineated by a wide black curve at their edge. Within it was a single white dot: our ship, I guessed, and the edge of the atmosphere.

“What’s that?” I said, anyway, and let the smuggler explain. She liked explaining, and it distracted me, which I knew after only a few seconds I would badly need. Flying with the smuggler was not unlike being a piece of soap dropped in the bath. She might have lost control of the ship entirely and I would never have known the difference, except for the unwavering fierceness of her smile. “How many times have you done this?” I attempted to ask through my rattling teeth as we swiveled and plummeted through empty air.

“At least twice!” she said, with malicious cheer.

It was difficult to tell when we passed the warship. Certainly the smuggler did not seem to know. I think she must have thought that, were I sufficiently bumped and jolted, I would give up and go join my nursemaid in the back, but I hung on stubbornly to the back of her chair, and stared from the control panel to the viewscreen to the holo and back again, matching each to each in my mind. It was an old trick I had, when fighting off illness or pain or plain misery, to focus on something at which I felt very stupid, and learn each detail as if it were another tongue. At other times it had served me well. Now, hungry and tired and nauseous all at once, it was more difficult, and by the time the ship turned once final time and settled at last into stillness, I was clinging to the smuggler’s chair as if it were my father alive again.

The smuggler smirked. “Twenty minutes,” she said. “New record. Hey,” she added in Szayeti, mostly to herself, “maybe she carries good luck after all.”

“I try to,” I said, in the same language, and caught the flicker of her first true smile. Below us, I could see the broad white edge of the planet, beginning to shrink against the darkness. I had seen it from this distance only once before in my life.

My people are a people of prophecy. Long before Alekso Undying came from old Sintia to our shores, long before my ten-times-great-grandfather carried His body weeping from the palace at Kutayet to the tomb where I grew up, my people spoke with the voices of serpents and lions, falcons and foxes, who roamed this world and who saw the future written in blood. The people then said what was, what is, and what will be; and though Alekso’s beloved and his descendants are their rulers now, and though they have had no god but their conqueror for three hundred years, they have not forgotten that they once told the future as freely as any queen. They never will.

The Queen of Szayet had prophesied, these last six months, that she was the only and rightful bearer of the Pearl of the Dead. She had prophesied herself the heir to the voice of Alekso our conqueror, the Undying who had died those centuries ago. She had prophesied her words were His words, and her words were the future, and that there was no future in them for Altagracia Caviro Patramata, father-beloved lady of Alectelo, seeker of the God and friend to the people, her only rival, her only enemy, her only and her best-beloved sister.

As the rust-green coin of Szayet receded before me, and the night crept in from every corner of the viewscreen, I leaned across the smuggler’s shoulder and pressed my fingers to the glass as I had to the arch at the harbor, and I whispered: “I will see you again.”

My sister had called me a liar today.

I am a liar, of course. But I meant to be a prophet, too.


Chapter Two — Ceirran

I had loved Quinha, more’s the trouble.

In the whole empire of Ceiao, for all its rabble and reputation, there’s only a fistful of citizens who have the born-or-bred true talent of a military general. Fewer with the charisma and the money to handle the populace, and fewer still who have any head for politic, and only a sprinkling, only enough for me to count on the fingers of my good right hand, are that rarest of things: a damn fine pilot. Quinha had been all of these, and a friend beside. I’d fought with her, and plotted with her. I’d cared for her. I hadn’t wanted to kill her.

Nevertheless.

She was coming up the meteor bank when her ship slipped into our sights: an imperial dreadnought twenty klicks wide, blooming on our radar screens as a mass of shifting yellows and reds. In the darkness of the accretion-tide she was hardly visible. If I’d been in my fighter I might have caught her, and picked off her cannons, one by one, and my fingers itched for the controls. But those days were gone and had been for many years, and I had my governorship to think of, and my dignity besides.

“Let me at her,” said Ana, who had neither. She was sprawled in a curved white chair at my right hand. She liked that sort of thing, Ana did. If she had ever been able to find the patience for subtlety, she wouldn’t have looked for it.

I considered the thought. Ana was no ace, but she was a quick draw and a vicious brute in battle, and it paid to indulge her, more often than not. But I shook my head in the end.

“I want her pinned to a planet,” I said, “and coming out ground-fighting. Bring the soldiers their force-shields, and pull around Laureathan to port. We’ll drive her up the bank towards the star-well.”

“Like conquerors we’ll do it,” said Ana. “Bring her corpse before us to the city gates.”

That wasn’t why. Quinha’s ship was borrowed, a colony-made pirate thing, but I feared her guns. If I had no choice but to fight her in open space, I’d send in a dozen fair-size destroyers, and do her damage enough to make her hesitate at coming within our cannon range. For now, though, there was choice, and I would have been a fool not to notice it. And there was another reason beside this, which Ana would have had no stomach to hear. “Yes,” I said, anyway. “She’ll try to find safe harbor on some near planet. We’ll carry her in the brig for the home journey.”

I had not known, at the time, what planet she would seek out. Even had I known, would I have cared? The hand of the Empire reaches far and wide, from old Cherekku’s stone mazes to the sulfide-storms of Madinabia, and I had not been to this arm of the galaxy since my childhood. We make a point, in Ceiao, not to be overcome by decadence. Even the name of Alekso of Sintia means little to us.

It meant little to me, in any case, at the time.

We surged after her. It was a great ship that I was riding, built under my eye at Ceiao’s own river-docks by a thousand trained workmen. Quinha’s wasn’t, and she knew it: we could see her struggling to dart and weave among the asteroid storms, her aching-slow banks and turns up the gravity curves. If she’d charmed the builders, or bribed the navy, or besieged the dockyards, or had her men installed among the magistrates—but she hadn’t. She hadn’t, and I had, and she had lost Ceiao, and I had won the war.

It made me ashamed to watch her fly. She was the one who had taught me, all those years ago, never to respect a commander whose fighting begins on the battlefield.

When she gunned her engines I hesitated. This was her corner of local space, and she knew it like the back of her hand. She might have been leading me into the path of a comet, or some trick of local gravity that would have sent half the fleet tumbling into a newborn star. But her dreadnought was shrinking in our sights, and Ana had risen from her seat and was pacing the viewscreen like a lion.

“Chase her,” I said, and shut my eyes as the great warship shuddered underneath me. Betting against Quinha’s long experience had failed me in the Merchant’s Council once. Betting against it a second time on the battlefield had won me a city. Best of three, as they said in Ceiao, made fortune.

I needn’t have worried.

The system rose up in our viewscreen all at once. It was an old star we were looking at—life-bearing, naturally, but reddening and rusted around the edges. There were only a few planets, idly flung out beside it at haphazard angles. Nearly all were ringed; only one, a little blue-green thing with a patchwork of cloud atop its surface, was surrounded by a sprinkling of moons, and even they were peculiar and knobbled, jagged at odd edges. I thought of a rogue planet plowing through the orbit-path, until Captain Galvão Orcadan said behind me: “Szayet, sir.”

Szayet! I exhaled. “Prepare the rafts,” I said, and a few lieutenants sprang into life and disappeared down the ladders. “Get ahead of her, if you can, shunt her towards Medveyet—but if you can’t, press her in hard. The less time she has to disembark the better. She’s got ocean-ships in that hold, and provisions for weeks. I don’t want her hiding on the water out there.”

“She’ll need to make landfall, sir,” said Galvão, “or try to exit the atmosphere again, and we’re sure to see if she does. She can hide, but she can’t hide for long. We may not need to chase her down at all.” His voice crept up at the end, uncertain.

“I have no intention of letting every cynic in Ceiao watch me spend thirty days blockading the richest treasury in the Swordbelt Arm,” I said.

Galvão subsided at once. He was right, of course, and if I could, I would have told him so. But there was a reason I wanted to meet Quinha planetside, and it was a reason I had kept from Ana.

There was a veneer of ships overlaying the planet, thicker than I had expected. If I hadn’t known better I might have thought she had steered us into a trap after all—they were our make, each of them, good Ceian steel gunboats and galleons and blue destroyers dodging in and out of the ports like flies—but they were the local government’s, of course. Bought at a premium, most likely. I might even have sold some of them myself, back in my magistrate days.

Nevertheless I held up a hand, and the ship slowed and pulled up into a reluctant orbit. Quinha was barreling forward, of course, past the gunners, towards the thick, drifting air of the planet. The ships made no move to stop her as she grew smaller and smaller, like dust, and finally popped out of eyesight. Still I watched, and still I waited, and when Galvão grew restless and said “Commander Ceirran, you said—” I held up a hand again.

“I know,” I said. “One moment more.”

Ana had gone dead still. Only her eyes were moving: from me to the viewscreen, from the viewscreen to me, her head cocked like a dog that had scented prey. I caught her gaze and held it, telling her: Wait, and: Yes, and her lips parted slightly—

There it was. I took a step forward, involuntary, and Ana’s head whipped round: a Szayeti destroyer, peeled away from the nearest warship, was dropping like a stone towards the planet.

“Is it—” said Galvão.

“It is,” I said. “They’re going after her. Someone find the lieutenants and tell them to hold our ships.”

Ana said nothing. She followed me back to my quarters, though, as I had known she would do, and when we arrived she shut the door behind her and threw herself into the chair across from my desk.

“Fortune’s tits,” she said. “You’ll give up a prize we’ve chased down half this spiral arm? And for what—politic?”

“Will I?” I said mildly, easing myself down across from her.

“She’ll raise an army,” said Ana, “and stretch out this war for another three months, and send half my men to the void, and they will rake you over the coals at home, and I’ll be stuck on the inside of a cruiser, poking at radar screens and driving you mad with complaining. Not a chance! Let me at her, and to hell with Szayeti sovereignty—what good has it ever done them anyway?”

“Your grasp of foreign policy is remarkable,” I said. “Tell me, what is your opinion of the Oracle of Szayet?”

“The girl?” said Ana. “I’ll tell you this much, I’d have bet my captain’s pin she’d be a poor strategist, but it turns out I was wrong. Another reason you should let me take twenty men and—yes, all right. Good-looking. Parochial. A bit of a complainer, to my mind. Young to be queen. Hope she’s more careful about eating rotten meat than her father was. Why?”

“I met her father, once,” I said, “but never her.”

“Well, I never met her either,” said Ana. “What of it?”

“I know,” I said, and picked up a tablet pen and rolled it over my fingers thoughtfully, knuckle to knuckle. “Has Quinha?”

That stopped Ana in her tracks. She leaned back in her chair and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You think she hasn’t,” she said. “You think Quinha can’t manage her?”

“I am not,” I said, “entirely sure that Quinha knows what she is managing.”

“How old is she, fourteen?” said Ana, who knew very well Casimiro Caviro Faifisto’s daughters were only a few years younger than she. “That’d be old enough to go to war at home. How childish can she be?”

Back the tablet pen went, over the same four knuckles. “Are you in debt, Anita?” I said.

“That’s a personal question,” said Ana, and when I looked at her, “Yes, and you know the amount to the centono.”

“So is Szayet,” I said. “By several orders of magnitude more than you, I hope. From simply buying the Ceian ships they needed to defend themselves, at first, and then from buying Ceian weapons, and then her advice, and then her aid. Faifisto nearly tripled the debts in his lifetime, but he inherited them from his aunt, who inherited them from her mother, who inherited them from her grandfather, and he used Szayet itself as collateral against them when he put down a civil war.” I tapped the tablet pen on my desk, and it woke into a shivering sea of maps and paperwork and waiting holos. “Quinha bought the bulk of them,” I said, “not long after we met.”

Ana stared a moment, then swore.

“Then you will give up the prize,” she said. “She won’t need to raise an army—the queen will raise one for her! What in the world are you thinking?”

“I am thinking,” I said, “about diplomacy. Do you have your dress uniform?”


Image: Orbit

Excerpt from Emery Robin’s The Stars Undying reprinted by permission of Orbit.

The Stars Undying is currently available for preorder and will be released on November 8.


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