Democracy's Light

Chapter Three

Lord Wakefield was throwing a party and everyone who was anyone was invited.

Kathy Tyler, no longer Lady Kathy, watched from a balcony as the bright young things of the Thousand Families congregated below her. The party, one of hundreds that had been thrown ever since the Fall of Earth, was packed, with thousands of young men and women — and some who looked young, but weren’t — buzzing around and trying to pretend that nothing had changed. It was a costume party, which meant that there were all kinds of extraordinary outfits being worn, the more outrageous tickling the fancy of the young even as they shocked the old. Here, in the heart of Wakefield House, it was possible to forget the war.

There were seven young men wearing top hats and black suits, as if they were going to a wedding, dancing with ladies who wore skirts so wide that they had to reach out to their partners and looked to be permanently on the verge of toppling over. There were girls who wore harem outfits, held on by the eyes of every young man and not a few of the young women in the room, and young men wearing what they fondly imagined to be peasant outfits. There were men and women wearing Chinese, Japanese, Russian and even Arab outfits, while trying to outshine the remainder of the room. There was a girl wearing an outfit of shimmering light, held wrapped around her body by a force field that hinted rather than revealed, while her partner wore nothing, but an oversized codpiece. It said, Kathy decided after a moment’s thought, something about his insecurities. A penis that size would have caused serious harm to a girl.

Naked pleasure slaves, their dull eyes showing no trace of intelligence or even thought, wandered the room, carrying trays of the finest food and drink from a dozen worlds. The Thousand Families might not have been top dog any more, but no one would have known it from Lord Wakefield’s spread. The missing implanted slaves and even a handful of men and women who had survived Imperial Intelligence only to be enslaved by the Lords and Masters of the Empire were the only sign that anything had really changed… and few were sorry to see them go. As far as Kathy knew, no implant had ever lost its control over a slave, but it remained a persistent nightmare.

And besides, they had always given her the creeps.

Colin had, at her strong recommendation, created a whole new series of laws for the Thousand Families. Fathers could no longer have their children altered to fit their specifications. They could no longer scrabble and fight over pieces of an ever-shrinking pie. They could no longer use their connections and patronage to ensure that the aristocrats who wanted to enter the Imperial Navy rose well beyond the level of their competence. Perhaps, most important of all, the older and larger Families no longer dominated the social scene. Kathy hadn’t been surprised by how enthusiastically the younger members of the Families had embraced that particular change. The world of the Thousand Families had always been a dog-eat-dog world…

And she’d chosen to leave it, long ago, to travel to Sector 117 in hopes of earning a new fortune for her Family. Instead, she’d been kidnapped by Jason Cordova, an Imperial Navy renegade and found herself joining the rebellion. She didn’t regret it at all, not least because now she was Minister for Industry and all the bright young things whose idea of fun had been to grope her — the Tyler Family had never been very important — had to be polite to her. She hadn’t abused the position, much, but it had opened her eyes to the realities of the Empire. Lord Wakefield’s grand bash — she dreaded to think how much it had cost him, something she had never thought about before she had left for the Rim — wouldn’t change anything. The times were moving on and the Thousand Families would be left behind.

“Not going to be a wallflower all the time, I hope?” A voice said from behind her. “I’m sure that there’s at least one person who would want to dance with you.”

Kathy turned to see Jason Cordova himself, standing there, holding a pair of drinks in one hand. He wore a pirate’s outfit from the sixteenth century, up to and including the black hat with the skull and crossbones logo, but the difference between him and his former peers down below was that he wore flamboyant outfits all the time. When Kathy had first met him, he’d been wearing a golden and purple eyesore that drew all of the attention to the outfit… and away from the man wearing it. They’d been lovers for nearly two years and it still astonished her how much he changed when he undressed. No one would ever have mistaken the faintly patrician man for Jason Cordova… and that was exactly how he liked it.

“I’m just a little bored,” she said, as she took one of the drinks. Cordova had been more than a little distracted recently, even if he had been throwing himself into helping Colin cut out as many incompetent or untrustworthy officers from the remainder of the Imperial Navy as possible. “Was I one of those airheads down there five years ago?”

Cordova shrugged. “I was one of them thirty years ago, so I’m not in a position to throw stones,” he said. “That was just before they packed me off to the Imperial Navy, of course, and sent me out to learn a trade.”

Kathy smiled. Jason Cordova was a legend. A young man from the Thousand Families — although no one knew which Family — who had been given command of a starship and ordered to scorch a rebellious world, wiping all life from its surface in a fiery blaze. Cordova had refused to carry out the scorching and had fled to the Rim, barely minutes ahead of a furious Imperial Navy squadron intent on punishing him for refusing to commit mass murder. His crew, all very loyal to him, had followed him into exile and had stayed with him until he’d joined up with the Shadow Fleet and fought in the Battle of Earth.

“And now we’ve both come home,” she said, shaking her head. She hadn’t seen as much of him as she had hoped over the last two months. They’d both been awesomely busy. “Why did we even decide to come?”

Cordova looked out over the hordes of bright young things enjoying themselves and trying to pretend that nothing had changed. “I think we both wanted to know if we could still cut back and enjoy ourselves,” he said, surprising her with his insight. “I also think that we both found out the answer — no.”

Kathy nodded. She had attended too many such balls in her youth. She would have worn something pretty, although she wouldn’t have dared to complete with the senior girls, who would have squashed her socially if they had perceived any challenge, and danced and enjoyed herself until her body was aching. Perhaps, afterwards, she would have found a partner for the night and woken up in his bed, wondering what had happened to her clothes. She hated to think, now, how much her dresses and outfits had cost her father…

“We’ve grown up,” she agreed, and finished her drink. It was one of Lord Wakefield’s private concoctions, a pink fizzer or something like that, and she didn’t want to think about what he’d put in it. It was probably highly alcoholic, but she’d taken the precaution of taking a simple counter-agent before she’d disembarked from the aircar and she couldn’t get drunk. The most that could happen was that she would become a little tipsy. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

He allowed her to lead him through the chattering throngs, including a handful who called out to her, hoping to get into her good graces or pretending to be in her good graces. The High City worked, or had worked, on a system of patronage, where who you knew was more important than how good you were, but times had changed. She might not have the satisfaction of forcing self-important men and women to court her, repeatedly, but at least she wasn’t having to put up with their flawed products. Minister of Industry, it seemed, was a job with a very high turnover. The person who’d remained in the job the longest had been there for two years.

The outer hall was still bustling with guests arriving from other mansions. Someone, she saw, had vandalised an old painting with the words LONG LIVE THE EMPRESS, although two pleasure slaves were trying valiantly to remove the writing without damaging the priceless artwork. A pair of young men, barely entering their teens, were groping the slaves in public, laughing and giggling to one another. The slaves weren’t human — the production line that had created them saw to that — but it still bothered her. The Rim had had few moral principles, but she’d never seen anything like the casual creation of near-human slaves…

On the other hand, she thought morbidly, there’s rape and murder and endless struggles, out there far from the light of the Empire. Perhaps we’re not that different after all.

Cordova looked over at her after he’d helped her into the aircar. “How was your father?”

Kathy considered. She hadn’t visited her father at first, not after she’d read her own obituary. Her Family had been nice about her, although her father had been crushed at losing not only his daughter and Heir, but some of his dreams. Others hadn’t been so nice, with ‘nice piece of ass’ right next to ‘cock-tease,’ all from younger men who resented her reluctance to go to bed with them just because they were senior to her, socially. Stacy Roosevelt had been surprisingly harsh, not least because she should have known that Kathy was actually still alive, instead of being kidnapped, raped and held for ransom by a pirate band. Colin had looked hard for Stacy after discovering that she was still on Earth, but she’d vanished, probably somewhere where she thought that nothing had changed.

“He wanted to see what I could do to rebuild the Family fortune,” she said, finally. “After Roosevelt crashed and burnt” — Stacy styled herself the Roosevelt now, something that the remainder of the Family hadn’t opposed, not least because it made her responsible for their debts — “my Family went down with them. He was hoping that I might ensure that they got some good contracts to rebuild themselves.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll be going back there,” she added. “It just makes me look as bad as the last set of procurement officers.”

“Good,” Cordova said, deadpan. “Cordova’s wife must be above suspicion.”

Kathy elbowed him. “Twit,” she said. It was tempting to think that they might have a happy life together, one day, but for the moment their duties kept them apart. “And you? Have you thought about going back to your Family?”

Cordova looked uncomfortable. “They cut me out of the Family Tree,” he said, grimly. Kathy was about the only person who would have heard the pain under his sense that it was a vast joke. “I doubt they want to see me again, particularly now, not after I’ve helped take them down a peg or two. It would be nice to go up to them and say, look, here I am. Your prodigal son, come home. Kiss my hairy ass!” He laughed. “Yeah, it would be nice, until I started having to deal with the Family again.”

He shook his head. “Better, I think, to remain Jason Cordova and let sleeping tigers lie,” he finished. “I wasn’t born Jason Cordova, you know.”

Kathy shrugged as the aircar passed over the mountains and altered course, ghosting down at supersonic speed towards the High City. Earth’s population, even now, was barely over three million, mostly members of the Thousand Families and their clients. The darkness surrounding the aircar was unbroken by lights, or any sign of human habitation, allowing the stars to shine down freely on the planet below. She could look up and see the halo of asteroids and industrial modules orbiting the planet and, beyond them, the lights of orbital fortresses and starships, protecting the new order from its enemies. She’d joked, years ago, that if Earth were to be scorched, the Empire would run a lot smoother and have more money, but the joke didn’t seem so funny now. The Provisional Government had enemies. The odds were that Kathy, Colin and the rest of them were the most hated people on the planet.

She must have fallen asleep, for the next thing she felt was Cordova carrying her gently into the small townhouse she’d turned into her centre of operations and residence, while she was on Earth. She’d found herself dividing her time between Earth, Mars, Jupiter and AlphaCent, where massive shipyards circled the star and struggled to keep up with the new demand for starships. The Empire’s new construction program, intended to out-produce the Geeks and Nerds, had barely begun when the war ended, leaving Kathy to pick up the pieces. She’d been utterly ruthless, sacking managers who failed to deliver the goods, or abused their workforce, but it was like trying to bail out a river with a bucket and spade. The workers wanted rights, the managers wanted job security, the construction facilities were falling to pieces because no one had bothered to repair them… it was a nightmare. Only Colin’s backing and that of the Cicero Family had managed to keep the Empire moving, but there was an insatiable demand for new starships… and she couldn’t meet them all.

“You looked cute like that,” Cordova said, later. He’d carried her into bed and put her between the sheets as gently as a mother with her child. Kathy was rather amused that he had joined her without bothering to get undressed. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Surprisingly refreshed,” Kathy said, as she pulled herself out of bed, tore away the remains of her outfit, and staggered into the shower. “Are you coming to join me, then?”

Afterwards, they breakfasted on the balcony, looking out over the High City. Kathy had refused, on a matter of principle, to hire any servants, although she was technically entitled to hundreds of assistants. It was hard enough finding competent and trustworthy people to man her offices in the High City, let alone finding someone to keep her apartment in order, and so she tended to either make her own breakfast or eat in one of the office dining rooms. Cordova didn’t complain about her cooking — she rather enjoyed cooking, although she would never have admitted it to her family — and it provided a nice opportunity to be together. She knew that she should check her terminal, knowing that there would be hundreds of messages for her to wade through, but she couldn’t be bothered. In her experience, nine messages out of ten could wait, or could be passed on to a subordinate.

“I’m surprised you didn’t take the 5^th Squadron when Colin offered it to you,” she said, finally, having exhausted all other topics of conversation. “It did need a commanding officer who actually knows what he’s doing.”

“It’s been years since I commanded an Imperial Navy squadron,” Cordova said. “The Volunteer Fleet was much easier, not least because we all knew how far we could go with each other, but they’re now spilt up and helping to move goods from one side of the Empire to the other…”

Kathy nodded grimly. It was another problem. The Thousand Families had been working for years to bring all of the independent shippers under their control, not least because they forced the Family-owned shipping lines to keep their prices down. The early stages of the rebellion had seen thousands of freighters desert the Families and join the Shadow Fleet, serving as its logistics chain, and now that Earth had fallen, the shipping lines were coming apart at the seams. There might have been a few thousand Captains still willing to serve in the shipping lines, in exchange for better treatment and funding, but the vast majority preferred to work for themselves. The net result was that the shipping lanes were either crowded or almost deserted, hammering away at the economic links that bound the Empire together. The upsurge in piracy didn’t help. The Imperial Navy was running around, trying to establish a convoy system, but merchant skippers didn’t like running in convoys and preferred to trust their luck. It wasn’t a winning move.

“And besides, not all of the spit and polish brigade trust me,” Cordova added. “They’ve seen enough pirate ships to think that the Random Numbers would have been the same, so…”

He shrugged. “And besides, I’m more use here,” he concluded. He gave her a wink that would have had him jailed on some of the more repressive planets. “You’re here, after all.”

Kathy smiled, almost sadly. She knew, deep inside, that as far as Cordova was concerned, she was just a mistress. Space was his one true love and he couldn’t bear to be parted from her for long. One day, he would take his cruiser and set off to travel the depths of space again, leaving her behind. She didn’t hold it against him. She’d been the same herself once.

Her terminal buzzed before she could speak. “It’s probably someone with a hangnail,” she said, opening the small black unit and scanning the message when it blinked up in the holographic field. She’d sacked assistants who had sent her urgent messages before about nothing important. “I wonder…”

She scowled. “It’s an urgent summons to the Council,” she said, finally. “That probably means bad news.” She picked up her cup of tea and drank it quickly. “Coming?”