Democracy's Light

Chapter Fifteen

“You know,” Daria remarked as she entered the room, “we really should have invested in a smoke generator.”

“I beg your pardon?” Tiberius asked. There were nine people coming to the meeting, each one of them important enough to merit their own security — which meant that keeping the meeting secret would be sheer hell — and organising it was incredibly difficult. It was a challenge, one that in the old days he would have relished, but perhaps not when the Empire itself was at stake. “Why would we want to fill the room full of smoke?”

“An old tradition,” Daria said, deadpan. “The best conspiracies are always practiced in smoke-filled backrooms.”

“I see,” Tiberius said. He didn’t. Daria was the strangest person he had met. At one point, she could be a strategic genius, with over ninety years of experience to draw on, and at others she could be almost kittenishly playful. He’d studied the classified records for Janice Windsor, as she’d been seventy years ago when she’d taken the throne for the first time, and he found it hard to believe that Imperial Intelligence had missed such a considerable threat. His father and the others of his little conspiracy had certainly ensured that Janice remained unmolested to carry out their plan… even if, in the end, it had failed. “Do you think that this is a conspiracy?”

Daria shrugged. “If treason prospers, it is never called treason,” she said dryly. She ran one hand through her long red hair. “I dare say that if we succeed in our plan, no one will dare call us traitors as well.”

Tiberius looked up as the Butler escorted the first of his guests into the room. Lord Pompey Cicero, who somehow gave an impression of indolence despite his slim form, took the comfortable chair that Tiberius waved him to and accepted a drink from one of the pleasure slaves. He was the security expert of the Family — as a Family member, the only one who could be trusted not to have an agenda that would harm the Family — and one of the people Tiberius had sent to Harmony, two years ago. Lady Gwendolyn Cicero entered next, having paused long enough to ensure that she entered alone, and took her chair as if it were a throne. She shared a look with Daria — the discovery that she had been working for the Empress for years had chilled Tiberius when he’d finally learned the truth — and leaned back to wait.

“An interesting gathering,” a droll voice said, as Admiral Wachter and Captain Penny Quick were shown into the room. Joshua was wearing the same civilian outfit he’d worn when Tiberius had pulled him away from his Norwegian cabin and sent him to Morrison, to the war. Penny, a blonde-haired woman with an apparent age of twenty-one, was wearing a simple tight-fitting outfit with a beret, which she passed to one of the pleasure slaves as she sat down next to Joshua. If she was intimidated by the surroundings, by being so close to so much wealth and power, she didn’t show it.

Or maybe that’s Joshua’s influence, Tiberius thought. There were many unanswered questions surrounding Joshua’s role in the final days of the war, including the rebel ambush of the fleet sent to scorch Gaul, and some investigative reporters had even suggested that Joshua had betrayed the fleet. Ironically, it had made him more of a hero than ever and firmly cemented his position as the Chief of Naval Operations, effectively the Imperial Navy’s uniformed head. It might not have been as powerful a position as it once was — Colin controlled the Shadow Fleet and one of his allies from the beginning controlled the new Home Fleet — but it was still influential. I wonder if they really are lovers?

“I like to think so, yes,” he said, as Joshua frowned at him. He looked more composed than he had been back in Norway, when he had lectured Tiberius on the flaws within the Empire that had made the rebellion inevitable, before accepting command of the Main Strike Fleet. It dawned on Tiberius that Joshua had to be happier now than when he’d been commanding the fleet at Morrison, which suggested that he might not be willing to support them all the way. It might pose a problem. Joshua, as the only real hero from the Imperial side of the war, wasn’t someone who could be easily disposed of without too many questions being asked in the wrong places. “Thank you for coming.”

Finally, fashionably late, came the remainder of the original council. Lord Bolivar, Lady Hashim, Lord Rothschild and Lady Ngyuen. Their Families had benefited from the new order, which was more than could be said for most of them, and they still wielded enormous influence. Their influence was fading, however, as their industries were steadily taken over by their workers, or by the planets that hosted them, and they were growing desperate. Once the masters of the universe, their whims and fancies altering the destinies of billions, they had become shadows of their former selves.

Tiberius smiled. It was going to be an interesting meeting.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said, once the final pleasure slave had left the room. He had once trusted them implicitly, but after one of them had murdered Lord Roosevelt, apparently on the Empress’s orders, he no longer trusted them. Several very quiet investigations hadn’t managed to find anything out of the ordinary about the pleasure slaves, which Daria herself had given his father permission to manufacture, but they might have been programmed to do anything. They were the perfect assassins. No one, until Lord Roosevelt had been killed, had suspected them in the slightest. “I apologise for rushing you slightly, but there is a great deal of ground that we must cover and, I fear, very little time. We cannot afford for this meeting to become public knowledge.”

“You mean this conspiracy,” Joshua said, calmly. He nodded across at Daria. “Dare I assume that the presence of the Empress has something to do with the secret of this meeting?”

The Clan Heads gaped. They hadn’t known. Tiberius forced his face to remain blank, although he was surprised to learn that Joshua knew — and perhaps had always known — just who the Empress actually was. Gwendolyn had known, but had Joshua also been a member of her conspiracy, even though he’d been a junior officer at the time?

Daria smiled, her face relaxing slightly. “So you do know,” she said, calmly. Suddenly, it was easy to see the aura of command around her, the calm certainty that her orders would be obeyed. She’d probably found running the Freebooters League relaxing after running the Empire. “I wondered if you had realised the truth.”

“Elementary, my dear Tiberius,” Joshua said, speaking more to him that to Daria. “There were rumours of the return of the Empress on Earth. You told me about them yourselves. There weren’t many possible candidates for the role once I started studying them in earnest and she was the most logical candidate. The others could all be accounted for, one way or the other, and I could eliminate them.”

He paused. “And besides, you didn’t change your face that much,” he added dispassionately, speaking directly to Daria. “Once I was thinking along those lines, it was easy to recognise you for who you were.”

“Of course,” Daria agreed. “A genetic test would have revealed the truth, if compared to the Imperial Registry. Someone who looked radically different from the Empress Janice would actually gain more suspicion that someone who looked almost like her, so…”

She smiled, and it was a cold and calculating smile. “And now you know,” she said. “Where do you stand?”

Joshua leaned forward. “I stand for what I’ve always stood for,” he said. “The reformation of the Empire and a unified humanity. I believe that that is hardly a secret to you, Your Majesty.” He took an unhurried look around the room. “And what does this… gathering of the Clans stand for?”

Tiberius spoke into the stunned silence. “Colin Harper, the founder of the rebellion and the guiding presence behind the Empire, is on the verge of making a pair of colossal mistakes,” he said, calmly. He could still feel the tension in the air. The Clan Heads had reason to distrust anyone who tried for the Imperial Throne… and Joshua and Penny were rogue elements. It would be irony indeed if the conspiracy fell apart because they couldn’t stand the thought of being involved with the Empress. “We have to decide upon a response…”

“You mean a way of seizing power for yourselves,” Joshua said, his voice cutting through the bullshit like a knife through butter. “Let us not mince words here, Tiberius. There’s nobody here, but us traitors.”

He leaned back and relaxed. “And it’s interesting to note who isn’t here,” he said. “What about Lady Kathy? What about Jason Cordova? What about some of the MPs? What about Ambassador Wilhelm?”

“Kathy Tyler is very firmly on Colin’s side,” Daria said, her voice almost expressionless. “She has been handed a thankless task, but she is determined to complete it successfully. In effect, whatever loyalties she had to the Thousand Families have been completely lost. Jason Cordova is a different matter, but he is not a person to feel much loyalty towards his Family. The MPs are unimportant, whatever Colin may happen to think, while Ambassador Wilhelm represents a warlord we cannot compromise with. Her presence here would be far too revealing, in any case.”

Tiberius, silently relieved that Joshua hadn’t blurted out the truth about Cordova’s Family, leaned forward. “Colin intends to grant the alien races effective independence from the Empire, and, for those that work for us, full civil rights,” he said. “He also intends to push through a devolution of government, with the net result that most worlds will wind up with first-rank status in a few years and hopefully simply the Empire. It will not, however, achieve his aims. It will tear the Empire apart.”

“Because the descendents of those you tricked into debts don’t want to keep paying interest on debts they didn’t incur?”

“Among other matters, yes,” Tiberius conceded. There was little wrong with Joshua’s mind, but he was starting to wonder if inviting him had been the wisest decision. God only knew what side he was really on, in his head. “At the moment, we have a serious problem with Cottbus Sector. I have spoken to Ambassador Wilhelm myself and while she talks a good game, she isn’t going to budge on the important issues. She wants Cottbus to be recognised as a completely independent state as a precondition of any further negotiations and she has been signing deals left, right and centre to ensure that she has thousands of supporters.”

“And the Cicero Clan has been attempting to see what it can get out of her,” Lord Rothschild said, stroking his lips with a tissue.

“As has the Rothschild Clan,” Lady Ngyuen said. Lord Rothschild nodded without emotion. “We have all attempted to deal with her since the moment she set up shop in her… so-called Embassy. What other choice did we have?”

“I think that we can safely assume that there is going to be a war with Cottbus,” Daria said, calmly. “The unity of the Empire demands such a war. Even if Admiral Wilhelm doesn’t take his own shot at the Imperial Throne, we — the Empire — cannot allow an entire sector to break away. Colin knows this as well as we do. His representatives may attempt to sweeten the pot for Admiral Wilhelm, but the bottom line is that the breakaway cannot be tolerated. That means war.”

“A war you have been pressing for,” Joshua pointed out. He smiled thinly at her expression. “I don’t think that we want to do anything to weaken Colin, or the Empire, further when we might find ourselves at the wrong side of a firing squad if Admiral Wilhelm actually wins the war.”

“He has one sector fleet,” Tiberius said, sharply. “Colin can call on much more firepower than he can…”

“So could the Empire when fighting Colin and the rebels,” Joshua said. He sounded as if he were enjoying himself. “You should know, Your Majesty, that having deployable firepower isn’t quite the same thing as having that firepower somewhere where it actually can be used. The Empire had plenty of superdreadnaughts that never saw combat against the rebels.”

He shared a long glance with Penny, and then leaned forward again. “And it seems to be based on an assumption,” he continued. “How do you know that Admiral Wilhelm is alone? There are seven sectors near Cottbus that are probably barely aware that there’s been a change in government. If they decide to get organised as a third power on their own, behind Admiral Wilhelm, we would be facing parity at the very least.”

“They will not have the new weapons,” Daria objected.

“Won’t they?” Joshua asked. “The Empire’s research and development might have been a few years behind the Geeks and Nerds, but they were able to duplicate most of their tricks after they saw them in action. It wasn’t as if they were inventing completely new technologies, merely improvements or refinements on technologies that already existed and were well understood. I see no reason why Admiral Wilhelm can’t have arsenal ships, or multiple-warhead missiles, or even shield-busters. The technology isn’t exactly a quantum leap into the unknown, is it?”

He looked up at Tiberius. “Depending on the exact assumptions, the 2^nd fleet could be badly outgunned by the enemy,” he said. “If they have the combined firepower of all eight sectors, massed in one place, the Shadow Fleet would be facing parity, as I said. Our intelligence is poor. We don’t know exactly what they will be facing. I may be a mere tactician, but in Admiral Wilhelm’s place, I would punch out 2^nd fleet and move directly on Earth. The destruction of the Provisional Government would effectively tip the Empire into his hands.”

There was a long pause. “That isn’t something we can deal with at the moment,” Tiberius said. “The real issue is holding the Empire together…”

“Which will not be possible if Admiral Wilhelm decides that Earth is a suitable target for his class anger and scorches the planet,” Joshua said dryly. He smiled thinly. “Very well. Cards on the table. What do you want?”

Daria spoke into the silence. “The same reform program I began fifty years ago,” she said, calmly. “We will begin a gradual process of reform that will allow the Empire and it’s economy room to breathe, while preventing collapse and disunion from tearing the Empire apart. You, if you chose to join us, would be tasked with reforming the Imperial Navy, creating an environment that would allow competent officers to flourish, regardless of their social origins.”

“And you don’t feel that Colin will proceed down that path?”

“Colin intends to devolve as much as possible onto the individual worlds,” Daria said. “The Empire didn’t solve all of the problems from the days of the Federation. It merely kept a firm lid on them. A hands-off policy from Earth would cause nothing, but war and suffering, on a cosmic scale. The Imperial Navy kept the peace for generations. Now, with the Imperial Navy weakened and the new government unsure of its path, strife is already raising its ugly head. How many more billions would die before Colin realises that he’s made a mistake and moves to crush it? How much harder will that be because he has indicated that it is permissible?”

She met Joshua’s eyes. “How many more are you willing to allow to die because Colin doesn’t realise the consequences of his actions?”

Joshua started to speak, but she overrode him. “And autonomous status won’t be enough,” she continued. “There will be hundreds and thousands of worlds that will seek complete independence from the Empire. Some, such as New Kabul or Eden, will seek to impose intolerable rules on their own people, others will try to engage in trade wars or worse with their neighbours. The Empire enforced fair play across the galaxy, but without it, what will happen to interstellar trade? How many will be improvised, or worse, because the Empire is no longer acting as the umpire?”

“You make a convincing case,” Joshua agreed, calmly. “That still leaves you with the problem of actually removing Colin. He’s protected by armed and very loyal Marines. Home Fleet is no longer under your command, Your Majesty, but that of one of Colin’s closest allies. You don’t even have your Household Troops any more, do you?”

“Leave that to us,” Daria said, calmly. The confidence in her voice made Joshua blink. It was easy to forget, looking at her, that she had once been a respected and experienced commanding officer. “We have another role for you.”

She told him. “Clever,” Joshua agreed.

“Our rights will be respected?” Lord Rothschild asked. “There will be no purge of our people?”

“There will be no purge,” Daria said. Tiberius smiled. The Family members who might have been a problem, such as the late unlamented Admiral Percival, had already been removed from positions of power. Not all of Colin’s reforms had been bad ones. He suspected that Joshua would never allow the Families to slip incompetents into positions of power again. “Will you all commit to joining us?”

She held out a hand. A moment later, Tiberius and the Lords grasped it… and finally Joshua joined them. “If this works, it should be interesting,” Joshua said. His voice hardened enough to make Tiberius shiver. “If not, I’ll kill the whole lot of you myself.”

“If this fails,” Daria said, tartly, “there won’t be enough of us left to pick up with an electron microscope.”

She waited until the last of the visitors had vanished outside, back into the main building. “Get in touch with Jason Cordova,” she ordered flatly. There was an utterly uncompromising tone in her voice. “Tell him its time for him to pay his debts to society.”