Democracy's Light

Chapter Forty

Daria ran.

She’d known, the minute that the Marines crashed into the estate, that the game was up. The odds still favoured Colin’s death, but there would no longer be any chance to place the blame for the disaster and the massacre on Cordova. That part of the plan had always been the weakest part and, evidently, Colin had managed to break it. The presence of his bodyguards had ensured that he would survive long enough for the truth to emerge. It was time to leave. She ran along darkened corridors, trusting in her hidden inserts to help guide her though corridors she barely knew, while listening to the Marine chatter through their communications systems. They would make their way directly to Colin’s position and save him, if they could.

And then the game would be up. Daria knew Colin well enough to know that he would never be satisfied with any pat explanation that blamed everything on Tiberius. There was no logical reason for the massacre under that explanation. Tiberius hadn’t even had the slightest idea that Daria intended to take his assassination plot and turn it into a bloody slaughter that would remove most of the other possible sources of opposition. Here and there, scattered through the estate, were Family heads, MPs and even commoners seeking advancement into the post-rebellion Empire. Tiberius, if nothing else, would never have sanctioned the slaughter of his own Family.

She concentrated on a code in her head as she reached the lower levels of the estate, passing through a security door that could have stood off a nuclear blast, before racing further down the corridors into the assembly lines. Colin’s decision to order the disbandment of most of the Household Troops, ironically, had come back to haunt him. Tiberius’s old guards would have known to prevent her from entering the very heart of the Family’s power, but now it was too late. It was time to improvise again.

A smile crossed her lips as she finally reached the core of the Cicero Family, the vast computers that protected the Family’s secrets, and threw herself into a chair. It was the work of a moment to bring up the main computer network, which was under attack from several Marine computers, and crash it. It would be useless to her now, but it would also be useless to the Marines, who would have to search the estate section by section, a monumental task under the best of circumstances. By the time they found Tiberius’s body — she silently cursed the shortage of time, for she would have preferred to vaporise it — she would be well away from the estate and climbing into space.

Time to leave, she thought, and headed down a long flight of stairs into the underground transport system. The Cicero Family had established their own network of transports for moving between the different parts of their estate, hidden from all outside observers, even the Empress. Daria would never have known about them if Tiberius’s father, eager to convince her that the Clan could keep secrets, had shown her the system one day, years before Tiberius had been born. The secret would serve her well this day.

She hadn’t planned perfectly, she admitted to herself, but there had been no choice. Her study of the Imperial Navy, back when she’d been an Admiral, had shown her the weakness of too much prior planning… and how many Admirals, Generals and bureaucrats had ridden their plans down to ruin, rather than admit that the plan was failing, or even flat-out wrong. She couldn’t have planned her return so spectacularly from the Rim, or even predicted Colin and his rebellion, but she had prepared possibilities she could use to improvise. There were people in high places, backdoors into all kinds of systems and all kinds elements that she could use to further her aims. The old thrill was back. Her very life would depend on what she did next. The game was far from over.

The small transport capsule was waiting in the tiny station when she entered, already primed to depart by the state of emergency. Red lights were flickering everywhere, casting the small station into a morass of shadows and eerie patches of darkness, but she ignored the lighting. The system was heavily supported and completely disconnected from the estate’s main system. It shouldn’t fail unless the Marines somehow cut the power to the whole planet. She climbed into one of the capsules and issued a simple command.

“Port Haven, now.”

There was a slight sense of acceleration as the capsule rocketed off into the tunnels, accelerating at a speed that would have squashed her back into the seat, if the compensators hadn’t been working. The entire system, she reflected, must have cost the Cicero Family more money than she cared to think about, while it was used so rarely, just to keep it a secret. There were worlds out there in the Empire that could have used such a system to develop their economic systems, but instead they were built for the rich and famous, who didn’t need them. It was something she had determined to change back when she’d been Empress… and, when she reclaimed her throne, she would change it. The sources of opposition, one by one, were being removed.

Port Haven stood on the coast, staring out towards an island that had once been called Britain, home of the McDonald and Hanover Families. The Cicero had built a small retreat there, one that happened to be very small by the standards of the Thousand Families — but still large enough to host over a hundred people in reasonable comfort — that he had used as a getaway estate. Daria, a few months ago, had taken the precaution of adding a shuttle to the small collection of old-fashioned air and space craft that Tiberius’s ancestors had assembled. She’d also rigged the IFF. No matter what alerts had been sent out from the Marines, the orbital defences would not seek to shoot her down, or force her to surrender. They would barely know that she was there.

There was still no time to lose. The shuttle’s systems were military-grade and they came online as soon as she keyed her code into the hatch and scrambled into the pilot’s seat, bringing up the flight program with a single command into the computers. She could have flown the shuttle herself, easily, but she didn’t have time to work out a proper program and nothing attracted attention like a shuttle without a proper flight plan. It was easy for experienced officers to tell the difference between the two states and if they decided to be officious, her plans would come crashing down in ruins.

She leaned back in her chair as the shuttle’s drive fields came online and the craft climbed for space. It wouldn’t be a long flight to the Moon, where she would pick up a small Freebooter starship that had been left there, waiting for her. Joshua and his fleet were bare hours from Earth… and, when Admiral Wilhelm attacked, she would be there to pick up the pieces. The game was far from over.

“Spread out,” Frandsen ordered, through his armour. “I want this entire blasted place mapped and searched. Anyone you find, cuff them and put them on the lawn. Move!”

He looked down at Colin, who had insisted on accompanying the Marines. Frandsen had tried to talk him out of it, but Colin had decided that he wanted to stay in the building under Tiberius was found, and it had proven impossible to dissuade him. Colin was now surrounded by a trio of armed Marines who eyed everyone near him cautiously and looked ready to commit bloody mayhem on anyone who stepped over the line and got too close. Frandsen, who would have preferred him on one of the Independence-class superdreadnaughts, had issued orders that if they ran into serious trouble, Colin was to be dragged out of the building rather than left exposed to serious danger.

The interior of the building was deathly quiet now. The Marines advanced cautiously, shining lights into rooms where the lighting had failed, along with most of the power. Someone had crashed the estates computers, rendering it impossible for the Marines to hack the systems from outside, although Frandsen suspected that it would be impossible to do so anyway. The Cicero Family had had access to the latest systems from their research labs, years before the Imperial Navy had ever seen them deployed, and their computers were seriously protected. Without support, without even a chart of the interior of the building, they were blind. They had to search the massive estate room by room.

He cursed as the internal HUD on his armour’s visor updated again. The Marine combat suits were sharing their sensor readings, allowing the Marines to build up a picture of the interior, but it was slow going. The entire building seemed to be full of bodies, from men and women who had died quickly and fairly cleanly to people who had died in screaming agony. The highest of the Thousand Families and the lowest of the low had died together. Death was very democratic.

“The pleasure slaves seem to be dying,” one of the Marines sent. The bursts of actual fighting — he had carefully steered Colin away from any known centres of enemy activity — were dying down as the pleasure slaves collapsed. There seemed to be no reason for their deaths, not even wounds or poison, but they were dying. Their faces remained chillingly dispassionate as they dropped to the ground and lay still. “Sir, we found seven survivors here, barricaded in a room.”

“Get them out onto the lawn,” Frandsen sent back, and left it. Marines weren’t SD Troopers or even enlisted men, although those stereotypes had been falling ever since Colin and Joshua had started reforming the Imperial Navy. The Shadow Fleet had always had a high percentage of mustangs, while the pre-revolution Imperial Navy had almost none. He could trust his men and women to handle the prisoners without further ado. “I wonder if…”

They turned into a new section before he could finish, revealing a very different layout. He knew, without thinking, that they had stumbled across the heart of the building, the nerve centre of the Cicero Family. There were fewer bodies here, mostly a handful of conditioned servants, but most of the servants would have been pleasure slaves. Whatever Tiberius had done to reprogram them and turn them into mindless killers had clearly been terrifyingly strong. He didn’t even know how he had slipped an assassin through the Roosevelt’s Clan’s security scans — and no one would have allowed a pleasure slave into their apartments without the most through scans imaginable — but it had worrying implications. What if ordinary men and women could be conditioned in the same way?

“Shit,” someone said, as they checked out a massive room. There was only one body there, a small child. It was a girl of barely seven years. Her throat had been torn open by superhuman strength. “Sir…”

“Focus,” Frandsen barked. He had seen the aftermath of pirate raids that had been cleaner and less horrific. “Check out the next room and…”

“We found Tiberius,” the point team sent. “Sir, he’s dead.”

Colin had half-expected to find Tiberius hiding somewhere within his estate. He’d decided to remain with the Marines, despite Frandsen’s increasingly urgent pleas and warnings, because he wanted to talk with Tiberius before they moved him to a detention centre, but there would be no information from Tiberius now. His body had two neat bullet holes, one through his chest and the other through his head. There was no question that he was dead. It might have been possible, with the prompt use of a stasis tube and a Imperial-grade medical centre, to save him if it had been attempted at once, but the body had been alone too long.

“A standard Thumper-XXI,” Frandsen said, softly. Colin was impressed. He’d been taught to use weapons in the Academy, but he couldn’t have named the weapon used to kill Tiberius without a full analysis. Frandsen sounded inhumanly confident. “It might have been something simpler, or older, but I suspect it was most likely a Thumper. The bullets went through the body and swelled up inside, ensuring certain death. Either of the two bullet wounds would have provided enough shock and trauma to kill him.”

He looked down at Colin. “You don’t have to be here now,” he said, seriously. “You could go back to the landing craft and get transport back to the High City.”

Colin shook his head. He had barely thought about the implications, but the more he considered what had happened as he calmed down, the odder it seemed. He could understand Tiberius trying to assassinate him and even sending a friend to carry out the deed, but why the massacre? Why slaughter thousands of people, including many of the members of his own Family, just to get at Colin. If the aim had been to destroy the government, it might have succeeded… hell, he wasn’t sure if he had a government any longer. How many of the MPs had attended the wedding? How many of them had survived?

The task of reforming the government seemed hopeless.

“Check around the area,” he ordered, knowing that Frandsen would already have seen to it. Hundreds of Marines had arrived and were spreading through the building. If there were any more survivors, they would be found and escorted out to the lawn, where they would wait until their role in events could be established. Many of them would be traumatised and shocked, but there was nothing that Colin could do for them. Earth hadn’t seen a bloody massacre since the last time humans had fought humans on the surface of their homeworld. The Dathi had never even come close to bombarding the planet.

We’re not going to recover from this, he thought, and felt something die within his soul. The Provisional Government had been almost destroyed. He would probably end up with the blame for the entire massacre, even though he hadn’t done anything, but risked himself in an attempt to obtain proof that Tiberius intended to turn on him. It had been a mistake, one that had risked lives; Cordova’s life, Kathy’s life and Colin’s himself… and, of course, everyone else in the building. His determination to uphold the rule of law, whatever the cost, had led to the deaths of thousands of people, many innocent.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Frandsen said, softly. The other Marines had scattered to secure the area. “You did what you thought you had to do.”

“That was the problem,” Colin replied, bitterly.

“If Tiberius wasn’t behind this — and that man didn’t commit suicide — then you have another enemy out there,” Frandsen said, ignoring Colin’s response. “I can’t think of any way in which he could have committed suicide — and in any case, the weapon is missing — so someone else killed him. Who?”

“I don’t know,” Colin said, forcing his mind to focus on the possibilities. Who else wanted to take over the government? It would be easier to come up with a list of people who didn’t want to take over the government. Had Admiral Wilhelm’s long reach reached all the way to Earth? Had Carola somehow planned the entire affair from her prison cell? “If…”

He broke off as Frandsen’s helmet buzzed. “Boss, we found Gwendolyn Cicero,” one of the Marines said. “She’s wounded, but otherwise unhurt.” Colin snorted inwardly at the comment. “She’s insisting on speaking to you personally.”

“Bring her here,” Frandsen ordered. “Colin, do you want to speak to her?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Colin said, savagely. “I want to know just what her role in all of this is.”

The door opened and two Marines escorted Gwendolyn into the room. Colin studied her as dispassionately as he could, noting the bleeding cut on her forehead and her limp. She had worn a flowing green dress, perfectly cut to show off her curves to best advantage, but now it was torn and coated with blood. Her hands were secured behind her back with a plastic tie, but her eyes were defiant as she walked between the two men.

“Colin, sir,” she said. Her voice lacked some of its earlier bite. Colin hadn’t talked to her more than a few times, but he remembered her as being confident and determined, as well as utterly ruthless. She looked broken and beaten now. “I want to trade information for a pardon.”

Colin scowled at her. “What kind of information?”

“I know who planned this… massacre,” Gwendolyn said, some of the old haughty tone returning to her voice. “I can give you that name in exchange for a pardon.”

Colin saw red. “You are in no position to bargain,” he said, remembering the pain as Cordova’s sword had struck his hidden armour. “Tell me the truth and you won’t have to go through a full interrogation.”

“There are other ways to get information out of unwilling donors,” Frandsen added. There was a cold tone Colin had never heard before in his voice. Marines were used to horror — they were often the first respondents to any disaster — but the death and destruction of Clan Cicero was horrifying by even their standards. “I can take her outside and start hurting her until she tells us what she knows.”

Gwendolyn wilted, perhaps understanding that there was no longer anywhere to run.

“Daria,” she said, simply. “She planned to kill us all.”

Colin’s eyes went wide. “You’re lying,” he protested, unwilling to believe it. Daria had been a comrade since before the first mutinies, the person who had introduced them to the Geeks, the Nerds and so many others. She had been a part of the Provisional Government and… and if Colin and so many others had died, she would have been the only person left of any statue. “Why?”

“Don’t you get it?” Gwendolyn said. She broke down into a bitter laugh. “She’s the missing Empress. She always has been. And now she’s clearing the path to the throne.”

She collapsed into helpless laughter.

Colin stared at her, stunned.