EMPIRE: Resistance

by Richard F. Weyand

  Books in the EMPIRE Series

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Reformer

  EMPIRE: Usurper

  EMPIRE: Tyrant

  EMPIRE: Commander

  EMPIRE: Warlord

  EMPIRE: Conqueror

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  EMPIRE: Imperial Police

  EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

  EMPIRE: Imperial Inspector

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Intervention

  EMPIRE: Investigation

  EMPIRE: Succession

  EMPIRE: Renewal

  EMPIRE: Resistance

  EMPIRE: Resurgence

  Books in the Childers Universe

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  Childers

  Childers: Absurd Proposals

  Galactic Mail: Revolution

  A Charter For The Commonwealth

  Campbell: The Problem With Bliss

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  Campbell: The Sigurdsen Incident

  EMPIRE

  Resistance

  by

  RICHARD F. WEYAND

  Copyright 2020 by Richard F. Weyand

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-1-7340758-9-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Credits

  Cover Art: Rotwang Studio

  Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk

  Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.

  Bloomington, Indiana, USA

  February 2021

  CONTENTS

  Coronation View

  The After Party

  Recovery

  Investigations

  Reports

  Becker

  The Warning

  Agenda

  Reactions

  Digging Deeper

  A Change Of Plans

  Thinking It Through

  A Longer-Range Plan

  First Results

  Waiting And Planning

  Departure

  Double-Cross

  Digital Legwork

  Confrontation

  More Unmaskings

  Interrogation

  Arrival

  Four Meetings

  Summary And Strategy

  The Zoo

  Rapprochement

  Consolidation

  Royalty And Power

  Back to the Zoo

  Follow The Money, Then Take It

  Hammer Blow and Retrenchment

  Settling Down

  Coronation View

  Travis Geary and his long-time friend and neighbor Nathan Benton got together to watch the coronation of the new Emperor and Empress. Since it was broadcast in VR in full immersive, they put their armchairs right on the floor of the Throne Room in front of the line of Imperial Guard who marked the front limits of the crowd. Their view of the proceedings was completely unblocked.

  They could actually get up and walk up on the dais and sit on the Throne if they wanted, and not get in trouble for it. That was the beauty of an immersive VR transmission. They weren’t transmitting or anything, so they weren’t visible to the audience or anyone else watching in VR. They could just pick their viewpoint, and they picked the one anyone would. Up in front.

  Geary was just seventeen, while Benton was eighteen. They had both finished high school and gone straight into college work. They each had their freshman year complete, before they even went away to college. Geary was an excellent student, and had received a merit-based scholarship to the Imperial University of Center, the best university in the Empire.

  Benton was a good student, but he had applied to the Imperial Marine Academy. He had hoped to get into the Imperial Marine Academy Lacomia, the sector capital, but he had actually made the cut for the Imperial Marine Academy Center, in Imperial City. The two friends were happy about it, because the Imperial Marine Academy on Center and the Imperial University of Center shared a campus in the Imperial Park West section of Imperial City. They would be together through their three remaining years of college.

  But heading off to school was two weeks away yet. In the meantime, the Imperial coronation was a huge event. Friday was an Imperial holiday, and everybody but everybody was watching the coronation. Everything was closed.

  Benton was excited because here were the leaders to whom he would swear oath when he entered the Imperial Marine Academy.

  Geary was excited because he was fascinated with Imperial history. He had been ten when the true history of the Empire was made available once more, with the dropping of all censorship. He had watched every one of the Imperial coronations from the Golden Age of the Empire. The handsome young Emperors, the beautiful young Empresses. Such a sharp contrast to the aged Emperors of the last hundred years.

  It had fueled an interest in history, especially government and military history. He had started with government history, but that led rapidly into the great wars of Trajan the Great, wars against the Alliance nations and the Democracy of Planets, which wars had led to the consolidation of the Galactic Empire.

  Now they sat in VR, in the nave of the great Throne Room itself. The difference watching this coronation, though, was it was live in real time.

  “See. Told you I could get good seats,” Benton said. “Front row.”

  Geary laughed.

  “All we need now is popcorn,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t it be something if you could do that in VR? Popcorn and a beer. That would be perfect.”

  Of course, Benton was eighteen, and he was now an adult in the Empire for all purposes, including purchasing and drinking alcohol legally.

  A trumpet fanfare sounded, and they turned their chairs in VR to watch the Co-Consul lead the sector governors up the aisle formed by the Imperial Guard. The Co-Consul walked toward them up the aisle, then stopped just a few feet in front of them. The sector governors, in two columns behind him, split off to either side, forming a line across the nave in front of the Imperial Guardsmen marking the front line of the crowd.

  “Almost all of them are here in projection,” Geary said.

  “Yeah,” Benton said. “That’s different than us. We’re not projecting and no one can see us.”

  “Good thing, too. We’d be in some serious trouble.”

  They turned their chairs back around to face the Throne. Benton checked the time in a side channel.

  “Couple minutes,” he said.

  “Next is General Hargreaves, I think,” Geary said.

  “Yeah. Imperial Guard commandant.”

  Geary looked up at the ceiling high above. There were skylights there, but they were aligned with skylights in the roof. Until the sun was in the proper position, the sunbeams would not make it through into the nave. They did light up the sides of the box connecting them, though, and a reflected illumination there was growing.

  Another trumpet fanfare sounded, and General Hargreaves entered from the right side door. Their chairs were to right of center in the front of the nave, so they could see him walk from the door to the dais and up the dais to the top. He walked to the center and addressed the crowd.

  “We are gathered here to witness the coronation of James Philip Ardmore and Gail Ann Burke as the Emperor Ptolemy and the Empress Arsinoe, the first ruling couple of the Galactic Empire.”

  Ptolemy and Arsinoe? Geary looked them up quickly in a side channel. The second of the Ptolemys and his sister-wife Arsinoe. The Ptolemys were Greek, not Egyptian, though they ruled Egypt after it was conquered by Alexander the Great for three hundred years, from Ptolemy I through Cleopatra.

  “Geez. Look at him,” Benton said.

  Walking toward them along the side of the dais was a mountain of a man. Squat, maybe five feet six inches
, he looked like he was three feet across the shoulders. He was dressed all in black, with short blond hair, and he rumbled toward them, then turned the corner of the dais in front of them to walk to the center.

  When Geary turned to watch him, he saw her coming toward the center from the other end of the dais..

  “Never mind him. Look at her,” he said.

  “Damn!” Benton said.

  Where the Emperor was very light complected, she was dark brown, like polished mahogany. Her black curly hair was piled up on her head, she was barefoot, and she wore the most amazing dress. It was like a cloud of smoke about her body. You could almost see through it, but not quite.

  She was the most beautiful woman Geary had ever seen. She wasn’t perfect. What grabbed at Geary was something other than mere perfection. She was the archetype for all women, everywhere. The essence, distilled.

  The Empress and Emperor met at the center of the dais and mounted the steps together. They knelt there, on some pillows, in front of Hargreaves. A sliver of light was now coming through the skylights above, landing to the west of the Throne in the center of the dais. It started to grow in width, reaching out to the Throne.

  The Emperor and Empress each recited the Pledge of the Emperor, one after the other, the Emperor first. Geary didn’t hear his, he was so focused on her. But he heard hers, her wonderful, rich voice ringing out clearly.

  “I, Gail Ann Burke, pledge to perform the duties and responsibilities of Empress, wielding authority with compassion, justice with mercy, and power with finesse, for the benefit and well-being of the people of the Galactic Empire and all humanity, now and into the future, until I die.”

  A woman in her early sixties, in a white dress, walked toward them from the right-side door, carrying a purple pillow with the crown on it. Geary wondered how they were going to handle that. She turned the corner in front of them and walked to the center of the front of the dais, then walked up the steps to this side of the Emperor.

  When Hargreaves lifted the crown, only the laurel wreath portion came off the pillow. Geary saw they’d separated the two portions of the crown. The laurel wreath had been added to the circlet of the Kings of Sintar when they declared Sintar an Empire. Hargreaves placed the laurel wreath on the Emperor’s head.

  Hargreaves then took the second portion of the crown, the circlet of the Kings of Sintar, with the Star of Humanity on it, maneuvered it over her piled-up hair and placed it on the Empress’s head. He arranged it so the Star of Humanity sat in the middle of her forehead.

  From the other side of the dais a man in a suit came carrying another purple pillow. On it were the crown jewels of Sintar. He mounted the stairs to the other side of the Empress, and Hargreaves took the crown jewels from the pillow. He reached around the Empress to fasten the necklace behind her neck. The man who brought them out and the woman who had brought out the crown backed down the stairs and stood at the bottom.

  Then the most amazing thing happened. The Empress pulled something out of her hair, and her hair came undone. She shook it out with her hands, and a mass of tightly curled, shiny black hair cascaded over the circlet and the necklace, down to the small of her back.

  The Emperor got up and offered the Empress his hand. She got up and they walked together to the Throne, which was now in full sunlight from the skylights above. They knelt before the Throne and bowed deeply to it. He kissed the end of the left arm of the Throne, then the right, then she did, left then right.

  The Emperor rose and held his hand out to the Empress. She rose and they both turned around to face down the nave, standing in the full sunshine from the skylights above. The sunlight went right through the gauzy dress, the merest wisp of smoke about her, and reflected off her naked body beneath.

  “Oh my God. I’m in love,” Benton said.

  “She’s more than a decade older than you,” Geary said.

  “I’ll make allowances.”

  Hargreaves called out, “The Emperor Ptolemy and the Empress Arsinoe.”

  The crowd all went down on one knee and bowed as the trumpets started the Imperial Fanfare. The Empress looked out over the crowd, head held high. At one point her gaze swept past them, and Geary felt like he was really there, and she was looking right at him.

  “She looks like an angel,” Benton said.

  “Or a goddess,” Geary said.

  “Yeah. That’s it. A goddess.”

  When the fanfare was finished, the Emperor held the Empress’s hand as she sat down on the Throne. He stood behind her, on the right. The Empress stretched her arms out along the arms of the Throne, her fingers curled over the front edges, the belled sleeves hanging over either side. She looked back and forth over the crowd in the nave, head held high, a goddess sitting in judgment.

  “Please rise,” she said.

  At her command, everyone rose. Hargreaves ran through the Call of the Sector Governors, beginning with the Co-Consul, and each, when called, came up the stairs to kneel on the pillow at the top of the stairs and pledge their obedience to Their Majesties.

  When the Call of the Sector Governors was complete, the Emperor held out his hand to the Empress and she stood. They walked forward down the first step, right in front of the Throne. The Empress pointed out over the crowd, then got down on her knees and bowed her head. The Emperor, too, got down on his knees and bowed his head.

  “What are they looking at?” Geary asked.

  Benton manipulated their view, turning their chairs around and lifting them several feet off the floor so they could see over the crowd. In the open doorway of the Throne Room – slightly off-center from their point of view – was the statue of the Empress Ilithyia II, bathed in sunlight from the reflectors on the outside buttresses of the Throne Room.

  “She’s paying homage to the Empress Ilithyia II,” Benton said.

  The crowd was all on their knees now, facing down the nave and out the doors toward the statue. The Imperial Fanfare sounded. As it played, the sunlight started to move on from the statue, and left it completely as the last notes faded.

  Only then did the Emperor rise and extend his hand to the Empress. She took it and rose. They turned to the side of the dais and walked down the stairs, then exited through the right side door.

  “Holy shit,” Benton said. “Now that is what I call a coronation.”

  “That is what I call an Empress,” Geary said.

  The After Party

  The Emperor Ptolemy and the Empress Regnant Arsinoe – James Philip Ardmore and Gail Ann Burke – entered the anteroom to one side of the Throne Room. The coronation had just concluded.

  The Head Seamstress – head of the Seamstress’s office in the Imperial Residence – was there with two of her assistants. They assisted Burke out of the chiffon caftan, and she put on a silk dressing gown and slippers they had for her.

  “Well, that’s over at least,” Burke said to Ardmore.

  “I think it went very well,” Ardmore said. “I wonder if the cameramen were able to get a shot of the statue of Ilithyia II, there at the end.”

  Burke had ad-libbed a final move during the coronation, falling to her knees to the statue of Ilithyia II – Ilithyia the Great – out on Palace Mall before they left the stage. Everyone had followed suit, but what had those watching in VR seen?

  “I saw at least one of the cameras pan out to Palace Mall at the end. I think they got it,” Burke said.

  “I hope so. That was a powerful moment.”

  With Burke dressed, at least enough to get through the Palace, they went out through the back door of the anteroom into the Imperial Palace behind the Throne Room. Multiple details of the Imperial Guard stood watch on the doors into the Throne Room there, and one detail followed them to the elevators, where another detail stood by.

  Burke and Ardmore entered the elevator and rode it express to the Imperial Residence on the top floor of the Imperial Palace. They went on through the elevator lobby and into the Emperor’s side of the floor, down the hallway,
and into the Imperial Apartment. Burke went on into the bedroom.

  “I’m going to get dressed for the after party. Greet our guests, would you please, dear?”

  “Of course.”

  Ardmore went back down the hallway to the formal living room. Paul Diener, the Co-Consul, and his wife Claire were just coming down the hall, followed by Imperial General Eric Hargreaves, the Commandant of the Imperial Guard, and his wife Dora, and Edward Moody, Their Majesties’ Personal Secretary, and his wife Maureen. They had all participated in the coronation, and were invited to come up to the Imperial Residence afterwards for a reception and dinner.

  On the Imperial Residence floor, everyone was on a first-name basis, the lasting legacy of the wife of the first Co-Consul, Suzanne Saaret, who had insisted even an Emperor needed a place where they could just be themselves, or pretend to be, anyway.

  “Hi, everybody. Come on in,” Ardmore said, waving everyone into the formal living room.

  Housekeeping staff were standing by with hors d'oeuvres and were manning the bar in the corner.

  Burke came in, wearing a simple business suit. It wouldn’t be polite to dress down with everyone else still dressed up from the coronation, but she wasn’t about to go to the after party in that sheer chiffon caftan, either.

  The after party was smaller than most coronation after parties, because there had been fewer participants. With only one Imperial cape to wear, they had left it out of the ceremony, and that normally added two Imperial Guard officers and their wives to the participants.

  “I was watching from the floor, and I think you got the effect you wanted,” Paul Diener told Burke. “Assuming, of course, the effect you wanted was of a Greek goddess come down from Olympus to rule over mortal men.”

  “Yeah, that was the play,” Burke said. “Jimmy thought it was the way to go, and the more I thought about it, something more ordinary just didn’t cut it.”

  “I don’t know if I could even do that, Gail,” Claire said. “I would be too self-conscious.”