Democracy's Light

Chapter Nine

Carola had never actually entered the Parliament building before. Indeed, she couldn’t actually remember if she’d ever actually seen it, although she had spent years in the High City, once upon a time. She looked back on those years fondly, but with ultimate power within her grasp — and that of her husband — the memories were more a source of private amusement rather than something to keep her warm in the night. She’d spent four days on Earth, mainly chatting to old friends, and reading between the lines it was easy to see that they were scared. Their universe had turned upside down.

And some of them think that we’re going to be putting them back on top, she thought, remembering Stacy Roosevelt. The silly bitch hadn’t realised, unlike Lady Hohenzollern, that she was effectively in a trap, one of her own making. She had believed that Admiral Wilhelm would continue to serve them, and indeed Carola had encouraged her husband to keep up the pretence, but the truth was that the two aristocrats — and the rest of the reactionaries — would serve them now. They might be useful for their links to the remainder of the Thousand Families, or perhaps they could be used as scapegoats for the attack on the rebel cruisers. There were just so many possibilities.

The interior of Parliament showed the signs of a quick renovation, carried out by the High City’s staff of workers. It looked surprisingly low-key for such an important building, in stark contrast to the Imperial Palace where the Emperors and Empress had held court, or some of the mansions belonging to the Thousand Families, but no one had bothered to give Parliament a building fit for its status. Or, perhaps, they had. No one was used to thinking of Parliament as a real power, not yet. She wondered, with a half smile, how long it would be before the MPs started to factionalise. She would have been surprised if the process wasn’t already underway.

All men want power, she reminded herself, as her guide showed her into the main chamber. Given a chance, they will reach for that power without thinking of the possible consequences… or without caring.

The main chamber was larger than she had expected, although it also looked remarkably cramped. Parliament had originally had only three hundred MPs, representing the various worlds of the then-Empire through a complicated process that no one fully understood and was easy to game by someone unscrupulous. The Fall of Earth and the rise of the Provisional Government had ensured the creation of a new government, obeying new rules… and one of them was that each world would have an MP. Carola could see several flaws with that scheme, starting with the problem that the Empire’s different worlds had populations ranging between hundreds of thousands to the billions, but as an ideal it was understandable. It would also mean that they would have to fit, somehow, three thousand MPs into the chamber… and she doubted that that would be possible. The chamber only held five hundred MPs and it was already packed.

She allowed her gaze to swing over the MPs slowly, knowing that most of them would be studying her and for the same reason, know thy enemy. They were a mixed bunch, curiously dressed in the formal uniform for an MP, with long dark robes and white wigs that hung down their backs. At one time, it might have given them an aura of quiet dignity, but Carola found them vaguely ridiculous. They looked like butlers from one of the more traditionalist Families. The Great God Tradition might demand that they wore their formal outfits to all formal meetings, but she guessed that they were wearing really loose outfits underneath. The thought made her smile openly, even though some of the MPs would probably take that as a challenge.

The briefing packet hadn’t said much about how Parliament actually conducted its business, so she suspected that they were still working that out. Giving each of the MPs a say would take forever, so they would probably decide to go with a single voice vote for each question put before the House. The advantage of a new government, as she’d found back at Cottbus, was that the rules would be still very loose. The odds were that at least some of the MPs would take bribes, if they were offered, whatever the rules said. They probably weren’t getting paid very much for serving their people.

Their chairs were organised in a vast circle, positioned so that they could all see the speaker at one end of the room. Blondel Dupre was speaking, her voice carried through the entire room by a sound-effect field, and Carola studied her with interest. A person — a lady, no less — who had forsaken cosmetic treatments was either someone who didn’t care about their appearance, or knew what they were and had nothing to prove to anyone. Carola respected that. In another world, Blondel and her could have been friends. They had the same attitude to life.

Her guide tapped at her arm. “You’ll be standing there while you address Parliament,” he muttered, pointing to a platform. It was below Blondel’s position, much to Carola’s amusement, for it reflected how the original designers had seen people who spoke before Parliament. They were not coming as equals, but as supplicants, a deep irony to anyone who knew the role Parliament had held before the rebellion. “Do you have your speech prepared?”

“Of course,” Carola said, as if she were irritated. She tapped the side of her forehead with one long finger. “I am always prepared.”

She looked up at the Stranger’s Gallery, high overhead, and saw a handful of familiar faces. Colin Harper looked older than she had expected, in sprit if not in body, while the redheaded woman next to him seemed privately amused by the entire proceeding. A blonde-haired girl, hauntingly beautiful, was studying her; Carola recognised Gwendolyn Cicero with a jerk. That made the younger man sitting next to her Tiberius Cicero, the man that Lady Hohenzollern and Stacy Roosevelt blamed for everything. It was hard to see any ogre in his eyes. They were just that of a young man, worried for the future.

If I had a molecular dispensing field or even a bomb, I could wipe out the heart of the rebellion, she thought, coldly. It would have killed her as well, however, and security had been very tight. They hadn’t exactly strip-searched her — that would have been a deadly insult to an Ambassador — but they’d searched her handbag and run all kinds of sensors over her. If she’d been used to carrying weapons, she would have felt distinctly naked, but she didn’t even know how to fire a gun. It wasn’t a skill that was in demand in high society.

The thought made her smile again. There were some members of high society, as shallow as they were — or had been — that she would miss, but most of them would improve the human race enormously if they died. There were hundreds of men and women, snubbed by their social superiors, who threatened violence, but none ever had carried out their threats. There were times when Carola regretted that, even though she might have been a target herself; they could have cleaned up high society overnight. Now, of course, most of the really snooty ones were hiding in their mansions, trying desperately to prove to themselves that nothing had really changed.

Her guide nudged her forward as Blondel introduced her. “Ambassador Carola Wilhelm has come from Cottbus to speak before us,” she said. Carola stepped forwards, onto the dais, as the MPs rose briefly. She was surprised by that show of respect, but she wondered if Blondel fully appreciated what she’d done. By honouring her as an Ambassador, she’d ensured that Carola’s status was not in doubt.

Someone shouted, from the back. “And what happened to our ships?”

Carola ignored him, even thought she’d been surprised. Looking up into the faces of the massed MPs, something in her soul tried to cringe, even though she’d faced worse in high society. There was something about the building that focused all of their attention on her, pointing over a thousand eyes at her, and it was hugely intimidating. There were people who would sooner have fought the Dathi stark naked than speak in public and even though Carola had had that beaten out of her at an early age, it was still terrifying. If she hadn’t prepared most of her speech beforehand, using formalities so old that few even remembered they existed, she would have been completely tongue-tied.

“Honoured Members, Speaker of the House, thank you for welcoming me,” she said, carefully formal. Once she’d started to speak, it became much easier. It was crossing the first hurdle that was so hard. “I come to you as a representative of the Cottbus Sector, liberated by Admiral Wilhelm from the tyranny of the Hohenzollern Clan.”

We’ll have to arrest them after all, she thought, as gasps echoed through the room. The main disadvantage with the sound-effect field was that it picked up almost everything, despite the best filtration software money could buy, and projected it over the entire room. The MPs reactions would be painfully obvious, even if she could barely make out their faces. Some would believe her, some would refuse to believe her, and some would pretend to believe her. The contest was up and running…

“When we heard about the rebellion, we prepared our own plans, and struck after the Fall of Earth,” she continued. The irony was that she wasn’t really lying, even if it meant discarding Lady Hohenzollern and Stacy Roosevelt. Perhaps there would be an SD left to… entertain the latter. “We removed the handful of clients who refused to switch sides, deprogrammed the SD troopers and took control of everything within the sector, including the Type-I shipyard created by the Empire.”

There were more gasps — and a great deal of calculation — at that point. Type-I shipyards were rare — there were only three of them in the Empire, one of which had been seriously damaged during the rebellion — and they produced superdreadnaughts. Given time, of course, newer facilities could be constructed, but the Cottbus Sector would have a lead on anyone else. Admiral Wilhelm had started expanding the shipyard and its workforce at once, but the Hohenzollern Clan had left the entire system a ghastly mess. Merely sacking a handful of managers had improved efficiency by thirty percent. The rebels wanted — they had to want — that shipyard.

“While you were debating the formation of a new government, we were holding elections and producing a provisional government of our own,” she said. That was a flat lie, at least in part; the provisional government was effectively a military one, ruled by Admiral Wilhelm. “We were organising ourselves when your cruisers arrived and, owing to an unfortunate series of circumstances, we believed that they intended to ram our command fortress, which would have killed most of our government. We opened fire on the ships and destroyed them. It was a dreadful mistake for which we take full responsibility.”

She paused. “And now we have to make a decision about the future of the Empire.

“We have heard much through the ICN about the plans for a new Empire,” she said, hoping that her voice convoyed only what she wanted it to convoy. This was the delicate part. “We want no part of them. We organised ourselves, without help from you, and we deny your right to dictate to us what we should do. We do not wish to be part of an Empire where the Thousand Families continue to have a hand in government, or in running facilities against the will of their own workers, or where aliens are granted the freedom to prey on the human race again. This is the decision of the entire sector.”

And now we’re definitely going to have to shoot them, she thought, as the MPs came alive, some shouting, others calling out objections. The chaos would have been deafening without the sound-effect field compensating, but it was still painful to hear and showed, all too clearly, the weakness of the new government. They might have had their own doubts about the aliens, or about letting the former rulers of the Empire take a hand in the new Empire, but they wouldn’t appreciate her words, if only because they were so close to their own feelings.

Blondel pushed a button on her panel and the sound-effect field blanked out. Carola winced at the sudden deadness in her ear — the field was suppressing all sound — before it faded and was gone. It was, she recalled, sometimes used as a torture instrument by the SDs, something that had probably passed Parliament without being noticed. They wouldn’t have been happy to know that, with a few careful adjustments, it could be used to deliver tremendous pain, even if it would concentrate a few minds.

“May I remind the Honourable Members,” Blondel said, “that this is the Parliament of the Empire, not some debating society or spacers bar? The Empire expects its chosen leaders to comport themselves in a manner befitting their status. If you cannot control yourselves, I will have the room cleared until tempers have cooled.”

The MPs settled down, with a vague undercurrent of mass rebellion. “Ambassador, you may continue,” Blondel said, icily.

“You have illustrated my point,” Carola said. “You claim to represent the entire Empire, but I see no one from Cottbus in the room, apart from myself. How many sectors lack a representative? How far does your writ actually run?”

She peered around the room. “We — the people of Cottbus — do not, cannot, trust a government that includes representatives, far too many representatives, from the old order,” she said. “How can we trust them when they have looted, raped and exploited our worlds? We made a choice, Honourable Members, and that choice is to go our own way. The Cottbus Sector is formally declaring independence from the Empire.

“We will, of course, exchange Ambassadors and I see no reason for any immediate hostilities,” she concluded. She pushed a note of sincere regret into her voice. “We believe, however, that this is for the best.”

There was a long pause… and then there was a barrage of questions, each one more intimidating than a missile salvo. Why don’t you trust us? What proof do you have that this is what your people want? Why don’t you like the aliens? Why? Why? Why?

Blondel tapped for silence, again. “There is no precedent for having an Ambassador in the Chamber,” she said, “and we cannot force you to answer questions, but if you would consider…”

“Of course,” Carola said, scenting victory. The rebels were already unsure of their own ground. Ironically, if they dismissed Cottbus’s demand for independence out of hand, they called into question the very legitimacy of their own government. The Empire had been legitimate because it had been the only government for nearly a thousand years. The Provisional Government was barely six months old. “I would be honoured to serve the cause of truth and answer question.”

An MP pushed his buzzer. “Your government is led by a former Admiral in the Imperial Navy,” he said. “A Hohenzollern client, no less. How do we know that you are telling the truth?”

“Your government is led by a former Imperial Navy Commander,” Carola pointed out. She carefully resisted the temptation to look up and see how Colin was taking it. It would have made her point altogether too blatant. “I doubt that there is a one of you who has not, in the past, had some dealings with the Thousand Families — they were, after all, the only game in town. Markus had no choice, but to prostitute himself for the Hohenzollern Clan, until you offered him the chance to break their ties and lead an entire sector to liberation.”

“You haven’t answered the question,” another MP said. She was clearly a sharper customer than the last one. “You claim to have run a referendum on your worlds, but we have no independent verification of this fact. Why should we take your word for it?”

“Leaving aside the question of delivering an insult to us, which you have by questioning our word, we would be happy to allow you to survey our people,” Carola said. By the time the rebels got organised to do just that, it would be easy to rig things to show a false positive. Of course, the irony was that that might well be what the sector actually wanted. “I imagine that you could verify our words fairly quickly.”

“I don’t know much about verification, but I do know that you killed several hundred young men,” a third MP said. “How do you intend to recompense us for their loss, seeing as you claim it was an accident?”

“We will replace all eight of the cruisers with ships from our sector fleet and we will include a battlecruiser in payment for the men,” Carola said, pushing regret into her voice. “We cannot bring them back from the dead, but we can ensure that their deaths were not in vain.”

“And, assuming that we recognise you as independent, what about trade?”

Carola smiled as the bombardment of questions continued. They hadn’t noticed, but they were already accepting Cottbus as an independent state. Given enough time, she could ensure that there would be several dozen MPs who had a strong incentive to keep Cottbus independent, whatever the nature of its government. There would be representatives from worlds along the border, or from the Freebooters, or others… and they would all support her, willingly or no. She was enjoying herself.

Hah, she thought, carefully not looking at any of the rebel leaders. If the game wasn’t worth the candle, no one would play…