EMPIRE: Resistance

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Another good idea, Mr. Becker,” Burke said. “So the first thing would be to get the warning out.”

  “Yes, Milady. My people are preparing a list of the large commercial players. If you can put together the list of the sector, provincial, and planetary governors, we should have the Imperial Palace put that warning out. Very soon. Tomorrow.”

  Burke looked to Ardmore, who nodded.

  “Very well, Mr. Becker. Put your list together. And let’s stay in touch.”

  “Thank you, Milady.”

  Ardmore cut the connection.

  “So what do you think?” Ardmore asked Burke after Becker had left.

  “I think he’s on the up and up, Jimmy. He rings true all the time. He even brought it up and addressed it.”

  “Which someone who was guilty and smart might do, Gail.”

  “Of course, but we don’t actually need to worry if he’s in the conspiracy or not at this point. His ideas are good ones from our point of view. I don’t see any way those could play into the conspirators’ hands, and a lot of ways they could hurt them.”

  “So you think we should go ahead with the warning.”

  “Let me sleep on it, Jimmy, but yes, right now I do.”

  Ardmore nodded.

  “I agree, so far at least.”

  Burke stared out the windows for several minutes.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just had a real unpleasant thought. What if there’s a backdoor in the basic nanites package as well, and we just don’t know about it?”

  “Oh, now that’s nasty.”

  “But there could be, right? How would we know, Jimmy?”

  “Wait. Dr. Clay said your basic nanite package tried to keep you alive.”

  “What if only the premium package got the orders? It could be a different sequence or something for the basic package, and they just didn’t know I had it or forgot about it.”

  “Yeah. Could be. I’ll make sure Mr. Pitney knows to ask that question of whomever he picks up for questioning.”

  “If so, we need to get everyone at risk off the health maintenance nanites of both kinds. I suppose for that matter there could be a backdoor into the VR nanites, too.”

  “That’s less likely, Gail, because those are typically different manufacturers. And those nanites don’t have the health maintenance functionality that would allow them to kill you. But I can ask Investigations to look for the same pattern of corruption among their executives.”

  “Let’s do that, Jimmy. Because otherwise, we just don’t know for sure.”

  The Warning

  Becker’s list came in to Ardmore’s mail queue overnight. It was a who’s who of commercial titans, the wealthiest and most powerful commercial people in the Empire, numbering almost three hundred thousand people. Ardmore and Burke’s list, which included the half a million planetary governors, several thousand provincial governors, and seventy-nine sector governors, was bigger yet.

  There was also a note from Investigations they should have an answer to the question about the executives for the companies that manufactured the VR nanites by mid-afternoon.

  Lina Schneider met in VR with the Emperor in channel 22 to pass on their findings. Burke attended by watching a display on the wall of the private living room as before.

  “We just don’t see it, Your Majesties. The same patterns of payment, whether through alias accounts or otherwise. And the retired executives live more modestly than those of the health maintenance nanite sector, and in houses purchased with their own funds and titled in their own names. They’re very nice houses, mind you. These people are generally well compensated. But nothing like the estates we saw for executives in the health maintenance nanite sector.”

  Later, Burke and Ardmore talked about it.

  “What do you think, Gail?”

  “Well, we have to do something soon, Jimmy, or they could strike at everyone while we dither. I think we should go ahead, but tell everyone to reinstall just VR nanites for now, until we can get the health maintenance nanites thing squared away.”

  “All right. I agree with that.”

  Ardmore sent the mail to the complete list. They all got the same message, broadcast to the list of mail addresses at an Emergency priority under an Imperial header:

  To: Commercial and Political Leaders

  From: Ptolemy and Arsinoe, Imp.

  Subject: WARNING!

  Criminal elements have hacked the premium health maintenance nanite package used throughout the Empire, and can remotely instruct your nanites to kill you. We recommend you IMMEDIATELY use a VR suppressor to block these signals, and flush your nanites using a commercial search-and-destroy package. Reloading just the VR nanites as a temporary measure is recommended.

  We are investigating the source of this hack, and will release details through normal Imperial Palace channels when more information is available.

  The Imperial Press Office also issued a press release that was, characteristically, briefer, though Their Majesties’ message was attached.

  PRESS RELEASE

  – For Immediate Release –

  IMPERIAL PALACE – A criminal hack into common health maintenance nanites has been discovered, allowing them to receive remote instructions to kill their host. People are urged to use VR suppressors until these nanites can be removed. See attachment.

  The uproar that attended this short announcement was hard to overstate. Their Majesties had just told two and a half quadrillion human beings they and their families were subject to being remotely murdered over VR, at any time, by persons unknown. When people looked for someone to blame, the health maintenance nanite companies were easy targets. And what Schneider and Schoenhorst had both discovered was just as easily uncovered by the press.

  “Now wait just a minute,” Joe Fender said. “You’re telling me this backdoor – that’s what you called it, right? – isn’t a hack, it was built in? On purpose?”

  The chief editor of Galactic News Services’ Investigative Reporting Division did not look convinced. He was, in general, hard to convince. It was part of the job.

  “That’s what I’m saying, Chief,” Sherry Atkins said. “It was built in, and somebody paid for it to be built in, and has been handsomely paying people to keep their mouths shut.”

  “But you don’t actually know that.”

  “I know the executives who would know – both the CEOs and the research directors – for the companies that manufacture health maintenance nanites make a hell of a lot of money, and have been for a long time.”

  “A lot of people make a hell of a lot of money, Sherry.”

  “Not like this, Chief. For one, their official salaries are in line with what CEOs and research directors for other nanite companies make. Like the VR nanite guys. Salaries are pretty much the same. But look at the houses these guys live in.”

  “Frugal types. Good investors. So what?”

  “Except the houses aren’t titled in their names, Chief.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said. The house was purchased by some other guy, is titled in the other guy’s name, the other guy pays all the staff, and utilities, and groceries, and all. And the other guy doesn’t live there. This guy does. For every one of the retired guys.”

  “Benefactors?”

  “Aliases. The guy who bought the house doesn’t exist. No birth records. No school records. No other records I can find. He doesn’t exist, or didn’t until these accounts were opened. And now there’s enough money in there to buy houses like this. And staff and maintain them.”

  “OK. And your next logical leap, Sherry?”

  “Somebody’s giving these people large amounts of money off the record, Chief. Really large. For what? Then along comes this press release from the Imperial Palace. And scuttlebutt is someone tried to off the Empress with this thing, but the docs caught it in time. There’s a medical clinic right in the Imperial Residence, you know.”

>   “Scuttlebutt?”

  “Someone on the Imperial Palace staff mentioned to someone else the Empress can’t use VR anymore. That sounds like they flushed her nanites, Chief.”

  “Someone here, someone else there. Hearsay. It’s not a story yet, Sherry.”

  “What about the aliases, Chief? The payments?”

  Fender rolled it around in his head, then grunted.

  “OK. That’s a story. Not the alias bit. But the fact these guys are living in someone else’s house, and someone else is paying the bills, and there’s no someone else around. That’s a story. Let the reader draw his own conclusions. Just report what you know.”

  “Not the alias bit?”

  “You can report you can’t find any records for anyone of that name – no birth record, no school records, that sort of thing – and you can raise the question, Are they alias accounts used to secretly transfer them money? But you can’t state it as fact.”

  “Other people will, Chief.”

  “Other people aren’t GNS, Sherry. And we need to keep it that way.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “And if we publish this story, you should probably flush your nanites, Sherry.”

  “How do we stay in touch, then, Chief? We’re five hundred light-years apart.”

  “Cameras and projectors and shit. You know. Have someone who isn’t on the byline transfer stuff for you.”

  “Someone who isn’t on the byline?”

  “Yeah. A clerk or an intern or something. Someone who hasn’t made themselves a target.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe it, Chief.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe it, Sherry. I said we couldn’t print it. Not yet. Good work, though. Keep digging.”

  “Well, well, well. This explains much,” Baden Sector Governor Manfred von Hesse said. He was in the Sector Governor’s Residence in downtown Heidelberg, not very far from Franz Becker’s city house.

  “How so, sir?” his chief of staff, Frank Portman, asked.

  “Consider. Do you recall the untimely demise of Vladimir Nekrasov?”

  “Piotr Shubin’s spymaster? Yes, sir. But the autopsy said he had a heart attack. Then the Imperial Palace claimed to have had him executed.”

  “Yes. So we were told. But what we know for sure is he cried out and fell. He was dead before he hit the floor. Perhaps someone initiated that unfortunate event, someone other than Their Majesties, and they simply took credit.”

  “But he was on our side, sir.”

  “Yes. He also knew a great deal, and Piotr had seriously angered the Emperor. Perhaps someone decided to tie up loose ends before His Majesty got around to arresting and questioning Mr. Nekrasov.”

  “That seems a little far-fetched, sir.”

  “Perhaps. There have been others as well. What’s most disturbing is our putative allies have not seen fit to let us know about this little capability of theirs. In any case, I think I would like to start wearing a personal VR suppressor while I consider my options.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And get a camera and projector kit set up in my office. One must be prepared to conduct business, after all.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Just down the street, Franz Becker had his family doctor in. His own staff had set up a camera and projector rig in his office already.

  He had the doctor give him the search-and-destroy nanites, as well as do his whole family – his wife, his sons, their wives, his grandchildren, his close staff, his senior executives. Everyone who could be used as leverage against him. It would be almost two weeks before they were back up on VR nanites and contraceptive nanites for his daughters-in-law and his granddaughters, but it was worth it.

  He couldn’t imagine he wasn’t a major target. He had had an itch between his shoulder blades about this whole business – like there was a target on his back – but didn’t want to act until Their Majesties went public. He didn’t want it to be inferred he had inside knowledge.

  That would just make him and his family even more of a target, and other, more conventional, means of murder existed.

  Paul Bowdoin read the press coverage with the same disdain he had accumulated toward most things over the years. The self-imagined King of Phalia considered himself above most things, and situations like this weren’t an exception.

  “Do you want to take any precautions, Sire?” Peter Hillier, his aide, asked.

  “Precautions? Against what?”

  “Against this hack of the health nanites, Sire.”

  “My nanites are not hacked. I have no concerns about this whatsoever.”

  “Are you sure, Sire? I’m kind of worried about it.”

  “Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. But I need do nothing.”

  “Yes, Sire. Thank you, Sire.”

  Bowdoin knew the truth behind the nanites ‘hack,’ and he was sure his own nanites were safe. It was his plan, after all. Well, his family’s, anyway. The kings of Phalia had been behind this whole conspiracy from the beginning, he knew, and his own nanites were not vulnerable.

  Several thousand light-years away, on the other side of the Empire, Karl Weibel read the news reports with increasing agitation.

  “Fuck. That’s the last move I expected from the Imperial Palace. They’re always so damned close-mouthed about everything. Them blasting it out to the galaxy wasn’t even on my radar.”

  Arthur Kunstler had joined him in VR to assess the situation.

  “What do we do now, Karl? Everybody is going to be immune to the nanites now, or try to be, anyway.”

  “We can always resort to more mechanical means. I’m more worried about the press. People will tell them things they shouldn’t, things they wouldn’t tell the Impies. Not without being interrogated under drugs, anyway. We probably need to do some housecleaning. Clean up some loose ends.”

  “But then what?”

  “Remember, the nanites were always only a means to an end,” Weibel said. “What I worry about more right now is the press. Our first duty is to keep the whole thing hidden, to protect the families, and protect the secret. Second is to carry out the plan. But the nanites were only a means to an end.”

  “All right. I see that. It’s just unnerving, is all.”

  “Yes. It is. But the plan lives on, and so far as we know we are as yet undiscovered.”

  “So we retrench, is that it?” Kunstler asked.

  “For a time, yes. I think we need to. Perhaps this is not the generation to pursue our goals. It does not pay to be hasty. But we certainly need to clean up some loose ends, whichever way we proceed.”

  Agenda

  It was after dinner Thursday, in the private living room of the Imperial Residence. The search-and-destroy nanites had run their course, and the doctors had confirmed there were no nanites left in Burke’s body. They had injected her with the VR nanites and the contraceptive nanites this afternoon. It would be about a week before both were up and functioning.

  “I have a question for you, Gail,” Ardmore said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Why now?”

  “Why now?” Burke asked.

  “Yes. Why now? This conspiracy has had the murder codes for the nanites for decades, apparently, and didn’t do anything until now. So why now?”

  “Well, they did kill the Empress Julia.”

  “Yes, they did, Gail,” Ardmore said. “But they had their operative in the Palace, and they didn’t kill Jonah. Why not? Why did they wait? And then, why did they act?”

  “OK. Let’s see. There was something they desperately wanted to stop, and they thought killing me would stop it.”

  “Yes. So far so good. Why you and not me?”

  “Well, if they killed both of us, there would be a new Emperor, who would be an unknown quantity,” Burke said. “But if they killed me, they got rid of the hardass Marine Empress, and had the soft, quiet academic Emperor.”

  “Right. And why after the coronation?”


  “Hmm. Oh. So you would be confirmed on the Throne – sworn to it – and carry on, rather than step aside.”

  “For another unknown quantity,” Ardmore said. “Right. Now. What were they desperately trying to stop?”

  “Has to be something they got from your book, right? Something they knew we would do. So what are the major remaining items, Jimmy? Limitations on taxes is one. The tax caps.”

  “Right.”

  “And re-establishing operational control of the military,” Burke said.

  “Right. What else?”

  “Free trade.”

  “Right. Now, which of those is it?” Ardmore asked.

  “That sort of depends on who the conspirators are, right? I mean, if it were the sector governors, you would expect it to be the tax caps and the control of the military. And if it’s the commercial interests, you would expect it to be free trade.”

  “Exactly right. Now, which of those is it, Gail? Do we have any clues?”

  “Killing me sort of points to control of the military, which would suggest the sector governors,” Burke said.

  “Let me ask it a different way. Of those three, which did I spend the least time covering in my book?”

  “Free trade. No question. Yours is mostly a political history, Jimmy. So you think it’s the commercial interests.”

  “I do,” Ardmore said.

  “So you think free trade should be first?”

  “Actually, I don’t. I do think it’s the thing they are most afraid of. But I think right now the tax caps are the better move. And we should do it soon.”

  “Why, Jimmy?” Burke asked. “If free trade is what they’re most afraid of, why go after the tax caps first?”

  “Because it will be wildly popular immediately. Right now there’s a lot of anger out there about the nanites hack. Arguably, the nanite manufacturers were poorly regulated by the Throne. And the Empire provided the basic nanites, remember. That anger could splash back on the Throne if it doesn’t find another outlet.”