EMPIRE: Resistance

by Richard F. Weyand

  Becker was doing all this in the most primitive way, over a VR projector system, his nanites having been flushed the day before, but you couldn’t have everything.

  “They tried to kill her. Can you imagine?” Gene Moffat said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah. Not too smart. I wonder what genius thought that would be a good move,” Ben Gannon said. “You want another beer?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Gannon moved down the bar to the tap, pulling a fresh chilled glass from the freezer on the way.

  “We got enough geniuses to go around, though. Could have been damn near anybody,” Moffat continued.

  Gannon came back with a fresh beer and took Moffat’s empty glass.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But they’ll find ‘em. They always do, eventually. That Shubin guy found that out a few years back. And this Empress don’t look like she’ll have much of a sense of humor about shit like that.”

  “Yeah. I forgot about Shubin. Helluva way to go, gettin’ an RPG hit on your limousine.”

  “Well, it was quick, at least.”

  “Yeah,” Moffat said, and sipped at his beer. “What about the tax thing? That’s gonna be a big change. A welcome one for me. She’s been talking about putting a sun room on the house. That’s gonna be tax-free now.”

  “For you? My prices are gonna fall by a third or more. Beverages are exempt, too. You got any idea how high the taxes on alcohol are? That’s all gone, come next weekend.”

  “No shit.”

  “No shit,” Gannon said. “They always tax alcohol really heavy, because they know people will buy it anyway. It does put huge pressure on what I can charge, though. With beverages exempted, gonna make a big difference to me.”

  “Huh. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “Dammit! That bitch!” Paul Bowdoin said as he paced and fumed.

  “Well, this doesn’t really affect us, though, does it, Sire?” Peter Hillier, his aide, asked.

  “It doesn’t? Do you think Charlie Price is going to keep giving us tourism subsidies when she just whacked his income that hard?”

  “Ah. No, probably not, Sire.”

  “I don’t either. But that’s not even the worst of it. When we ultimately pulled away from the Empire, I planned to lower taxes immediately. ‘See how much better off you are without the Empire?’ That kinda shit. We could always edge them back up later. But how the hell do you lower taxes from ten percent? It’s not even possible. I was only going to lower them to fifteen percent.”

  “So what do we do now, Sire?”

  “I’m going to have to talk to that worthless piece of shit Weibel again. It’s a good thing for him he’s four thousand light-years away, or I would relieve myself of his services.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Karl Weibel was considering his next moves as well.

  “Another unexpected move,” Weibel said. “I had hoped that, even were the assassination attempt not successful, it would have deflected them from their agenda for a time, while they chased after the malefactors. Instead, they’ve used it as an opportunity to push the tax caps through.”

  “Did we underestimate them, Karl?” Arthur Kunstler asked.

  “Oh, without a doubt. I’d like to say we didn’t, but I don’t think you can credibly argue that. Maybe we’ve gotten too soft, always dealing with aged Emperors. Dealing with young, active rulers may require a change of strategy.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m not sure, Art. I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime, there are some loose ends we need to clean up. Speaking of which, I have an urgent meeting request from Paul Bowdoin. It may be time to deal with Mr. Bowdoin finally.”

  Kunstler nodded.

  “Very finally,” Weibel added.

  “Anything I can do to help on the strategy part of it, Karl?”

  “Yes. Start thinking about either accelerating our timetable to match the observed response time of our adversaries, or delaying our timetable, perhaps for decades, until we can sneak up on the situation again. Work out the plusses and minuses, who the essential personnel are, who we can afford to lose along the way, for both scenarios.”

  “All right, Karl. I’ll start working on it.”

  Every planet in the Empire ran on the same calendar, though the days were slightly different lengths on different planets. Leap days had to be added or days subtracted occasionally to stay on the same calendar, but that meant a planet could be nearly half a day off one way or another. In addition, different cities were in different time zones on each planet.

  The result was the Empress’s speech hit some planets at the beginning of the day Friday. One such was Odessa, where the news hit the capital of Voronezh at nine in the morning on Friday.

  Crowds gathered outside the headquarters of NanoHealth, the big pharmaceutical company. They got uglier during the day, as the newsfeeds started running analysis of the financial condition of the executives. Much of it was dismissed as speculation until the Empire’s premiere newsfeed, GNS, ran an article about the apparent corruption of the CEOs and research directors at the big health maintenance nanite manufacturers, NanoHealth prominent among them.

  The Planetary Governor deployed the Odessa Planetary Police to maintain order and keep the entrance and exit clear.

  Oleg Scharansky, NanoHealth’s Senior Vice President of Research, looked out the window of his office on the top floor of the headquarters building nervously. How was he going to get off the grounds? He had seen the GNS article as well, and that crowd looked ugly. If they knew he was in the groundcar, he was sure, they would go after him.

  He made a call to a local security company, and requested they send a groundcar to pick him up. They assured him they would be able to get him past the crowd, and would be out in about an hour. They would notify him when they were arriving.

  Victor Donleavy, the former Imperial Police operative, had used the alias Troy Donahue since leaving the Imperial Police. Here on Odessa, as an operative for Thomas Pitney’s Department, he was using the alias Barry Donnelly, a salesman for Galactic Holdings’ office furniture division, Premium Interiors, a position that had been arranged through Franz Becker. He was actually good at designing office interiors and selling furniture, and he enjoyed the work.

  On Odessa now for seven years, Donahue had insinuated himself into the small group of local security professionals who knew what they were doing. He had had an ‘in’ with the local group in Michael Odom, an old friend who had helped him get started as a private contractor when he left the IP.

  For his part, Odom respected Donahue a lot. A natural operator, the guy could be anybody, look like anybody. And he was good. Donahue never said anything, but Odom suspected Donahue had pulled off the ‘Shubin job’ five years back or so. He certainly didn’t know anybody else on Odessa who had either the balls or the skill to pull it off. And that was an Imperial job. Donahue was clearly a good guy to be on the right side of.

  “Donnelly.”

  “Yeah, Odom here.”

  “How you doin’?”

  “Good. Hey, didn’t you say you were watchin’ the NanoHealth guys?”

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  “We just got a request here for a groundcar to get one o’ the big shots out past the crowd. I guess it’s gettin’ ugly over there.”

  “Which one?”

  “Scharansky. That your guy?”

  “Yeah. Mind if I ride shotgun on this one?”

  “Nah. C’mon along. It’ll be fun. Like the old days.”

  They pulled up at the police checkpoint at the entrance to the NanoHealth property. An officer walked over, and Odom rolled down the driver’s window.

  “Hi, Mike. Not surprised to see you here.”

  “Yeah. I guess this crowd got some bigshot spooked. We gonna have any trouble?”

  “I don’t think so. They’re mad, but they haven’t started anything nasty yet.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “No
problem.”

  The cop waved them on through.

  Scharansky got a message when the groundcar was ten minutes out. He saw it pull into the headquarters grounds through the police line at the front gate. He got his briefcase and headed down to the front portico of the main building.

  The groundcar pulled up at the portico and stopped. The driver got out and walked around the groundcar to let Scharansky in while the shotgun stayed in position inside the groundcar.

  Scharansky got in the back of the groundcar. The driver walked back around the groundcar and re-entered.

  The shotgun said, “You might want to lay down on the seat until we’re clear, Dr. Scharansky. So the crowd can’t see you in the groundcar.”

  The groundcar’s windows were dark, but silhouetted against the windows on the other side, he might be visible.

  “Good idea. Thank you.”

  Scharansky lay down on the seat on his left side.

  “No problem, Dr. Scharansky.”

  A tranquilizer gun in the shotgun’s right hand appeared between the front seats and coughed once. The dart caught Scharansky in the right shoulder. He struggled to get up, but the fast-acting drug was too quick, and he fell back on the seat.

  “No problem at all.”

  The groundcar pulled away from the portico and down the drive, and the police waved it through their lines.

  “Well, that was about as clean as it gets,” Odom said.

  “Yeah. Thanks for the help,” Donahue said.

  “Where to?”

  “I got some interrogating to do, then some disposal work.”

  “I got just the place,” Odom said. “Question, though. This guy’s a big shot. Are we in trouble?”

  “No. Completely legit.”

  “Side job for the Impies?”

  Donahue shrugged.

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “I figured. All right. I got a farm about thirty miles out.”

  “I never took you for a farmer.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” Odom said. “I rent the land out. But you never know when you need someplace quiet and out of the way. Get me?”

  “Like now.”

  “Yeah. Like now.”

  “Sounds good,” Donahue said. “And I can compensate you on this job.”

  “I was hopin’. Tradin’ favors works, too, but this is cleaner.”

  Scharansky woke in a dim room. More a space, a large space, like a barn. Dark shapes of equipment lurked in the shadows. He couldn’t see very well, because there was a light in his eyes. He was handcuffed to a chair in the middle of the floor. There was a VR suppressor active, and he could not contact the VR system.

  Scharansky could just make out, behind the light, a man sitting in a chair facing him.

  “Where am I. What are you going to do with me?” Scharansky asked.

  “You are in a barn, Dr. Scharansky, out in the country, in a place where no one can hear you. What I am going to do is ask you a number of questions, which you will answer, and then I am going to execute you for treason, commercial fraud, and corruption.”

  “Execute? You make it sound like you’re acting in an official capacity.”

  “I have an Imperial death warrant for you, Dr. Scharansky. Signed by the Emperor himself. It seems you’ve been a very bad boy.”

  “If you’re going to kill me anyway, why should I answer your questions?”

  “Oh, you’ll answer the questions, Dr. Scharansky. Either voluntarily or under the influence of some very powerful drugs. If you answer voluntarily, you will die quickly and painlessly. If I have to use the drugs, you will still answer the questions, but you will die very painfully, after first losing your mind. It’s up to you.”

  Scharansky shuddered involuntarily. The tone of voice of his interrogator was more terrifying than anything he said. It was completely casual, as if he did this sort of thing every day, as if he was talking about doing some yard work.

  “I’ll tell you everything. Answer all your questions voluntarily. But I’ll ask a favor of you. If, when we’re done, you consider my story at all exculpatory, you send the recording of this interview to the Emperor and relay my request for his mercy.”

  “I need do nothing of the kind, Dr. Scharansky.”

  “Of course not. And it’s your decision whether you find my story exculpatory in the first place. I just want you to consider the possibility. Now, proceed with your questions. I’ll answer them the best I can.”

  When the questioning was finished, Donahue found himself in a quandary. He could just kill Scharansky. Was, in fact, under orders to do so. But it could wait. The limo was parked inside the barn over behind the combine, and so out of sight. There was no reason he and Odom couldn’t hole up here for the night.

  Donahue handcuffed Scharansky to the safety chain of a grain trailer. Odom and Donahue shared their supper with Scharansky, then bedded down for the night.

  Donahue had sent the recording of the interview off to Pitney, with a request to send it on to Their Majesties. Now they would wait for word to come back.

  Digging Deeper

  One of Their Majesties’ biggest advantages in fighting a battle like this was the sheer scale of the resources they could apply to it. They could undertake efforts that would be out of reach of their opponents.

  The last thing Ardmore and Burke did on Friday afternoon is meet with Lina Schneider of Investigations and Olivia Darden of the Zoo. Ardmore met with them personally in his office on the Imperial office floor. This far from the medical station, Ardmore was wearing a personal VR suppressor. Burke was monitoring with the VR camera and projector setup in the living room four floors above.

  “Ms. Schneider, Ms. Darden. Be seated.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “I have a couple of investigatory assignments. Both of them are large assignments, and I think it will take both of your teams to pull them off. So I thought I would talk these over with you and you could decide who’s going to do which.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  “The first assignment is to track people. I need the descendants tracked of two different groups of people. One is the one hundred and eleven people the Emperor Trajan had executed in 10 GE for the attempted assassination of the Emperor and his family. Every living descendant, where they are now, and if there are any that look like they might have been placed there to further a long-term plot against the Empire.”

  “That was three hundred and fifty years ago, Sire.”

  “Yes, Ms. Darden. Perhaps fifteen generations.”

  “Depending on the number of children per generation, Sire, that could be over a billion people in the current generation alone.”

  “I did say it was a large assignment, Ms. Schneider. That’s one part of it. The second part is to perform the same analysis for the monarchs of the Alliance nations. This is somewhat smaller, as there were only sixteen hereditary monarchies among the twenty Alliance nations. So that’s likely an additional hundred and fifty million people in the current generation by the same calculation.”

  “And the other assignment, Sire?” Schneider asked.

  “There is a large amount of money funding this conspiracy. We believe it may be held in alias accounts. What I want is someone to go through the banking records and find accounts with large amounts of money that don’t track to a person with a personal history in other databases. Birth databases, school databases, military databases, employment databases.”

  “OK, arguably that assignment is even worse, Sire,” Darden said. “Between corporate and personal accounts, there are literally four quadrillion current bank accounts in the Imperial Bank.”

  “Understood, Ms. Darden. But I only care about bank accounts with large amounts of money in them. Start with the biggest accounts. Maybe a hundred million credits or more. I think that would drop out ninety-nine point nine percent of them.”

  Darden was nodding.

  “Easily, Sire.
OK, then I think the Zoo should tackle the descendants problem. That’s purely a large-database problem, which we’re good at. I also don’t think I want to give the Zoo animals access to banking records. Not in the unstructured way we work.”

  “I agree, Sire. I think the banking problem is more up our alley in Investigations. And we’ve gotten a lot of experience already tracking down alias accounts.”

  “Very well. Those are your assignments.”

  “Timeframe, Sire?” Schneider asked.

  “Weeks, I think, Ms. Schneider. Not days or months.”

  “Very well, Sire.”

  “We’re on it, Sire.”

  “That is all for now, Ms. Schneider, Ms. Darden. You are dismissed.”

  “What do you think?” Ardmore asked the empty office.

  “They seemed a little overwhelmed by it at first, but I think they’ll manage,” Burke’s voice came back.

  “Me, too. I’m heading upstairs. I feel naked down here right now. Get myself back to where the doctors are.”

  Darden put out a call to the Zoo for an emergency meeting in channel 591. Even late on a Friday afternoon, she got almost everybody. The simulation kept expanding until everyone fit.

  “All right, everybody. We have a new assignment. This is a big one, and you’re not going to get it done in a couple days, so let’s not go ‘round the clock on this one.

  “Our assignment is to find every current living descendant of the sixteen hereditary monarchies of the Alliance nations of three hundred and fifty years ago. Where are they? What are they doing?”

  A murmur went around the room as people came to grips with that. Then Darden dropped the bomb.

  “The other part of the assignment is even bigger. Find every living descendant of the one hundred and eleven people Emperor Trajan executed for being involved in the assassination attempt of 10 GE. Also three hundred and fifty years ago. Same questions. Where are they now? What are they doing?