Democracy's Light

Chapter Twenty-Four

Dathi!

Kathy felt herself recoil at the mere mention of the name. Dathi! The second alien race humanity had met and the first external enemy. The alien race that had introduced itself to the human race by trying to exterminate it. The implacable and unreasonable foe that had destroyed planets and habitats alike, ruthlessly unconcerned about casualties or even practicalities. The very picture of the hopelessly alien force, beyond all communication… and reason. The Dathi, humanity’s greatest enemy and humanity’s greatest victory, wiped out over a thousand years ago.

Or so everyone had thought.

She heard herself stammering even as she spoke. “They were destroyed,” she protested, numbly. She had braced herself for terrifying revelations involving rape, or child abuse, or something else that might have fitted the case, not this. No one could have even conceived of such a thing. “They’re all dead.”

“By now, I’m sure that they are,” Cordova said. He sounded oddly amused, and yet relieved, by her response. “They’ll have sent out someone with Admiral Percival’s level of intelligence and willingness to contemplate genocide. The world will have been scorched and then bombarded with asteroids and then declared off-limits, just to hide what happened there. They needn’t have bothered. Hardly anyone would have gone there in any case.”

Kathy stared at him. It all made a terrifying kind of sense. The Dathi were the nightmares that lurked in humanity’s past, the very backbone of the Empire’s campaign of fear against other alien races… and their sole claim to power. The histories she’d learned from her father and others from the Thousand Families, as opposed to the cut and dried histories spoon-fed to the commoners, showed that the Dathi had been the catalyst behind the Empire. The Federation and the Outsiders, united against the greater threat, had merged to become the Empire… and the Thousand Families, the massive corporations that had pushed humanity into space, had taken the helm. The Dathi were, quite literally, the Empire’s reason for being…

And one of their own had tried to spare Dathi lives.

The very concept shocked her, even though cold logic told her that Cordova had been right. A pastoral world, without any technology capable of reaching space, could be no threat to the Empire. Even if they had had spaceflight, they wouldn’t have had the sheer power required to shake the Empire, although Colin had proven that they wouldn’t have needed that much power… or perhaps they would. Colin had had popular appeal, speaking to those who had been pushed aside and trodden on by the Empire and the Dathi wouldn’t have had that. They were, very much, an equal-opportunity threat.

She’d prided herself on being capable of thinking even in a crisis and forced herself to think, coldly and logically. Tiberius had been right. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that he had been absolutely correct. If the news about Cordova and the Dathi got out into the Empire, the Provisional Government would be badly shaken. If there was one thing that united the human race, it was suspicion of aliens, even harmless creatures like the Rock-Monsters. They wouldn’t accept Cordova if they knew that he had spared a planet of Dathi, regardless of any abstract morality; they’d been brought up to believe that the Dathi were monsters and a permanent threat to humanity. She’d known, a day ago, that the threat had been largely manufactured by the Thousand Families — after all, the Dathi were dead, so they couldn’t complain — but now, now the threat might have been real after all. The Dathi could have a far more advanced world somewhere out past the Rim.

But it was a sword that cut both ways. There was no escaping the fact that Jason Cordova was actually Jason Cicero. Even if the precise Family remained a mystery, everyone knew that he had once been one of the Thousand Families. If the Empire learned that someone from the Families had spared Dathi lives, the Thousand Families would be badly shaken as well, even though they had been weakened by the rebellion. They might even lose what little grounds they had left to rule. The balance between the remainder of the Family-owned businesses and their workers wasn’t a stable one… and this could push it over the edge. The entire Empire might come apart at the seams.

Cordova stood up and started to pace, talking all the while. Kathy listened with half an ear, trying to decide what to do. Tiberius had used it mercilessly, knowing that it would always remain a loaded gun pointed at whoever ruled the Empire… which probably meant that he intended to dispose of Cordova once he had outlived his usefulness. There were other reasons as well, she decided; only a fool would take someone who had survived and prospered along the Rim for granted. Cordova might decide to take him down, just to prevent the secret from getting out, for she was morbidly certain that it wasn’t something known to the vast majority of the Cicero Clan. The more people who knew something, she knew, the harder it was to keep it a secret. Tiberius wouldn’t have shared it with just anyone, not unless he decided to use it.

“He could be bluffing, I suppose,” she said, unwillingly. She had enough experience of Family-level politics to feel certain that she was missing something. Tiberius’s blackmail information would do massive damage to his Clan if he wasn’t careful — talk about shooting himself in the foot, she thought wryly — and his enemies would certainly jump on him. Perhaps the entire Clan was rotten, they would say; if Roosevelt could go under, why not Cicero?

“He’s not bluffing,” Cordova said. Kathy silently cursed herself. She had forgotten, in her burst of oddly maternal feeling, that Cordova had a first-class brain. “I believe that if he told everyone, the remainder of the Thousand Families couldn’t jump on him without tipping off a general collapse. The Provisional Government might be different, but how could they hold Tiberius responsible for something I did?”

Kathy nodded slowly. “And they couldn’t charge you with genocide,” she added, thoughtfully. “You didn’t commit genocide.”

“They’re going to have to charge me with dereliction of duty, at the very least,” Cordova said. His voice weakened again. “Every Imperial Navy officer, at the Academy, is taught about the Dathi War and how close the human race came to being exterminated, leaving only a handful of humans fleeing the Federation in old ships. I believe that that was one of the reasons why the Macore Colony Fleet fled so far from Earth. They cannot afford to let me have a clear escape from the past, not with the entire Empire at stake.”

Kathy winced. He was right. If the news leaked out, the public outcry would become unmanageable. They already had enough problems with Admiral Wilhelm and the other warlords out along the Rim. If the news leaked out — and became exaggerated, as such rumours and stories often were — the Provisional Government would find itself under siege. The human race had become used to keeping aliens down, just so that they could have someone to look down upon to distract them from the miseries of their daily lives, and the very thought of a Dathi-lover in the heart of the Provisional Government would shock them. Colin could get away with a great deal, she knew, but she doubted he could get away with keeping Cordova in his government.

And his position would be very weak. He’d commanded the Volunteer Fleet and was respected along the Rim, but that would vanish in an instant when they learned he’d spared Dathi, not the reputed human colony world. The Rim’s inhabitants would become his most determined enemies, hunting the Random Numbers from asteroid to asteroid, until he was finally brought to battle. Every man’s hand would be turned against him. It dawned on her that the wisest thing to do would be to abandon him, now, but somehow she couldn’t do that. In a universe she’d grown to loathe a long time before she’d been sent out to the Rim, he was one of the few truly decent men and women she’d met. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit that she loved him, but she cared about him and she would not let him go.

She reached out and pulled him into a hug. “Don’t worry,” she said, as she kissed his cheek. It always felt different when he wasn’t wearing his beard. “We’ll find some way out of this, I promise.”

Cordova snorted. “We could change our names and run for the Rim,” he said, dryly. “I could come up with some faked papers that would give us some real options.”

Kathy shook her head. The Empire had been established for over a thousand years. One of the reasons why there had been no general rebellion before Colin had been that it had security measures everywhere, measures that largely remained in place. Parliament — or whoever won the power struggle on Earth — would be able to send out warrants for their arrest, coded with their DNA codes. They could have changed their appearances, even their genders, but they couldn’t change their DNA patterns… and if they went anywhere near a civilised world, they would be caught and arrested. The first-rank worlds wouldn’t hide them, not if they’d been involved in sparing Dathi lives… it was sickening, and it was part of the universe the Empire had built.

“That’s not an option,” she said, firmly. She grinned up at him and was dismayed to see the depression written on his face. “We have to beat Tiberius at his own game.”

“He wants me to prepare to kill Colin,” Cordova said, sharply. “If Colin is removed from the game, now, the Provisional Government will fall apart. No one else has the prestige to hold the government together. Tiberius and you are from the Families. The others are all from the first-rank worlds, or Macore, or even from the Freebooters. I doubt that even Joshua could hold the Empire together… and he doesn’t want the job.”

Kathy felt her eyes narrow. “And how do you know that?”

“He’s the only person who fought on the other side to emerge a hero from the war,” Cordova said. “He could have led the Morrison Sector Fleet against Home Fleet and kicked its butt from here to the Rim, making himself Emperor in the process, before offering Colin a deal for the future. No, he doesn’t want to be Emperor…”

“But it was Tiberius who nominated him for the role of Sector Fleet Commander,” Kathy said, thoughtfully. She’d gone through the records carefully, although many of the real decision-making meetings had been kept off the records. Tiberius had nominated Joshua to take the command and, in doing so, had risked his own power base. “He wouldn’t have done that unless…”

Something clicked in her mind. “Joshua is part of his conspiracy,” she said, grimly. She’d underestimated the scale of the problem. Tiberius wouldn’t be acting alone, if only to ensure that the blame would be spread thinly. He had to have allies… and Joshua made the most sense as a possible ally. Even if he didn’t want to be Emperor — and she had to admit that it would be a bit of a poisoned chalice while the Empire was on the verge of breaking apart — he would be the best person to take the throne, advised, of course, by Tiberius. “We can’t trust him either.”

“So, who does that leave?” Cordova asked, grimly. “Who can we trust?”

“The only person who stands to lose everything if they succeed,” Kathy said, firmly. “We have to take this to Colin himself.”

Cordova winced. “You want to tell him everything?” He asked, slowly. “What happens if he decides that I did the wrong thing?”

Kathy smiled wanly. “How can he decide that when he’s trying to give the aliens their freedom?” She asked. “He can’t just turn on you without weakening his own position… and, with Tiberius and the others burrowing away underneath him, he cannot afford to weaken himself any further.”

“The Dathi aren’t common aliens,” Cordova protested. “They were a very definite threat to all of humanity.”

“I know,” Kathy said. She looked over at him, fascinated despite herself. “Did you actually manage to talk to them?”

Cordova shook his head. The Dathi were unique in at least one respect; no one, in over a hundred years of war, had managed to establish communications between them and humanity. Their language was seemingly beyond the efforts of the most advanced translation software, mind-probes couldn’t reach into their brains and even the handful of prisoners the human race had taken had showed no interest in talking to their captors. They were the very picture of the soulless alien threat, dedicated to destroying the human race… and they had been laughably easy to demonise. Why not? They had done most of the vile things they were claimed to have done. The Empire’s propaganda and recruitment advertisements still used the Dathi as a recruiting tool.

“I always thought that we might manage to talk to them one day,” he said. There was an odd note of regret in his voice, when the warrior and starship captain gave way to the scholar. “We were trying to talk to them under the pressures of a war. It simply wasn’t possible to establish communications then, but I wondered if it could be done without the war, without any threats…”

Kathy nodded, sadly. She believed him, but he had been dangerously naive then. No one, not even a Family Member, could get away with hearsay on such a scale. The Empire’s internal politics demanded that the Dathi world be scorched and then firmly suppressed, just to avoid casting doubt on the success of the original genocide that had ended the war. After all, if one Dathi world had survived, why not others? Where was the guarantee that there were no other Dathi out there, waiting to spring on the human race? There was none. Humanity had spread far under the Empire… but space was effectively limitless. The Dathi might have travelled as far as the Clouds, or even the next galaxy…

Her lips twitched. It was impossible to prove that the race had been wiped out, so they remained a horrendously effective propaganda tool… and one that would never become overplayed, not until the entire galaxy had been brought under human control. They made such a perfect threat, all the better for being founded in reality… and one that no one could seriously oppose. How could they when the consequences could be so devastating? The rebellion, for all of its pent-up fury and violence, hadn’t been able to hold a candle to the Dathi War.

“Leave that for the moment,” she ordered, firmly. Her brain was racing into overdrive as she tried to think of different possibilities. They had little choice, but to go to Colin, but would that expose them to Tiberius? If he thought that they were plotting against him, and they were, he would have little choice, but to react as quickly and as violently as possible. How far could he go without betraying himself to Colin? He might have controlled his Family’s estate completely — she made a mental note to avoid any parties or entertainments offered there — but he certainly didn’t control the High City… or did he? The city might have been under the control of Colin’s security forces, but how complete was their control, really? The Families and Clans had fought their proxy wars in the city. They knew it perfectly.

Cordova shrugged. “You’re right,” he said, with a flicker of his old personality shining though. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it until it showed itself again. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Let’s go to Colin now and tell him what we know. If we can’t trust anyone, but him…”

“Not yet,” Kathy said, thinking hard. “Are you sure that he didn’t give you any date for the assassination?”

“Yes,” Cordova said, dryly. “I may be mad, bad and dangerous to know, but my memory is not that bad.”

“This isn’t the time for jokes,” Kathy said, although she was privately relieved to hear him cracking jokes again. “I don’t know much about assassinations, but if they don’t have a date in mind, they can’t expect you to set any traps for him, not where the Marines might find them. That would be rather revealing.”

“I know,” Cordova said, serious again. “I thought about it and I couldn’t think of a way of doing it, short of walking up to him and punching out his throat. Any weapon would be detected and removed a long time before I could get into his presence. They even make me hand over my cutlass and pistol before I enter the room.”

“Wise of them,” Kathy said, dryly. She had a private worry that one day he would hurt himself on his specially-made cutlass, although he’d told her, with a perfectly straight face, that he’d used it in boarding actions. She didn’t believe a word of it. “How do they expect you to succeed, then, if you can’t get a weapon into his presence?”

“I don’t know,” Cordova said, shaking his head. “The only method I was able to think of involved luring Colin onto my own ground, the Random Numbers, and assassinating him then.”

Kathy saw it clearly. If Cordova, one of Colin’s closest allies, had killed him… and had done so on his own ship, the Provisional Government would come apart… and the Thousand Families would step back into the breech, perhaps with Joshua as Emperor. It would also solve the problem of Tiberius’s own position being weakened…

She broke off as her communicator chimed. “Excuse me,” she said, and picked it up. “Yes?”

“Lady Kathy, the Cabinet has been called into emergency succession,” the voice on the other end said, grimly. “There have been… developments at Cottbus.”

“I’m on my way,” Kathy said. She looked over at Cordova. “I think its bad news.”