EMPIRE: Resistance

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Imperial Park West. That’s us,” Benton said, and led the way to the car.

  They boarded and waited. People kept coming into the car until the car was almost full, then a voice announced the car was full, and the doors closed. The car pulled out of the short siding onto the side track, crossed over to the main track, and accelerated hard.

  “Wow. This thing is a rocket,” Geary said.

  “Straight to our stop, too.”

  “It’s still accelerating.”

  It was only twenty minutes before the car started decelerating. Gentler than it accelerated, because everyone was facing forward. The car crossed over to a side track, then backed into a pocket siding, and stopped.

  “Imperial Park West,” the voice announced.

  They got out of the car and took a long escalator up and up. Geary’s ears popped, then again. They finally emerged into an arcade, sort of an underground street between shops on both sides. A cross-street – or cross-arcade – met there. There were slidewalks in all four directions, and Benton took a moment to get his bearings.

  Geary looked around. This area had that distinct look of someplace that had once been fancy, then took a turn at being down on its luck, and then was fancy again. There were new storefronts and cafes all around, built into much older epoxycrete structures. People walked purposefully here and there, or took the slidewalks. There was a vibrancy to the arcade, almost an electricity in the air, like something was about to happen.

  “A whole cityscape, underground,” Geary said.

  “Yeah,” Benton said. “The vehicles are all up top, but why walk around outside in the weather and noise of the traffic when you can walk around down here? Come on, it’s this way.”

  Benton led the way onto a slidewalk and they rode several blocks, transferring from slidewalk to slidewalk in the middle of the blocks and at the intersections. In the middle of one block Benton got off the slidewalk and didn’t get on the next. He stopped before a building entrance. There were shops on this level up and down the block, but this was the main entrance to the building. Above the multiple entrance doors, letters spelled out ‘Imperial University of Center Residence.’

  “Here we are,” Benton said, and headed into the building. He walked up to a service counter to one side of the lobby.

  “Yes, may I help you?” the clerk asked.

  He was a young man, probably a student.

  “Yes, two to sign in. Nathan Benton and Travis Geary.”

  “Very well. If you could push me your IDs, please.”

  They did, and he found them in his files.

  “We have you down as familiars. You both get single rooms, but we can give you single rooms with a communicating door between the living rooms if you wish. You can go back and forth without going out into the hall.”

  Benton raised an eyebrow to Geary, who nodded, then turned back to the clerk.

  “Sure. That sounds good.”

  The clerk nodded.

  “Nathan Benton, you’re in 147-32, and Travis Geary, you’re in 147-34. Those are adjacent rooms.”

  He pushed them a map of the building and a guide to building rules and services.

  “Good luck in your studies, gentlemen.”

  “Thanks!” Benton said and headed for the elevators.

  “Thank you,” Geary said.

  The clerk nodded.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Geary.”

  Geary headed off after Benton, who had pushed the call button in the short hall for the 121-150 elevators. A car was there, and dinged as the doors opened. Geary ran for it and got on right behind Benton.

  They rode up to the 147th floor, then followed the signs. They had to walk half a block down the corridor, and just around the corner. Theirs were the first two rooms on the left, toward the center of the building.

  “Looks like no windows for us,” Geary said.

  They went into his room. There was a kitchenette, a bath, a small living room with two armchairs and a coffee table, and an even smaller bedroom. The curtains were drawn, but there was daylight peeking from behind them.

  “What the heck?” Geary said.

  He went over and opened the curtains and was looking down into a courtyard. It looked like it was seven stories or so below. There was a cafeteria there, an area of cafeteria seating, and an area of plantings with a path through it. In the ceiling above, daylight-spectrum lights illuminated the space.

  “Huh. Look at that.”

  Benton came over and looked down into the courtyard.

  “That’s pretty nice. There’s plants and stuff. And we have windows.”

  Benton walked over to the door on the side of the living room opposite the bedroom and kitchenette.

  “I should be right through here, then.”

  He tried the door and it was locked. He found the controls in VR, then opened the door and walked through into his own room, the mirror-image of Geary’s.

  “Next-door neighbors, just like at home,” Benton said. “Same as yours, but backwards.”

  Geary poked his head in. Same layout, same furnishings, same everything. His stomach grumbled. By this point it had been a long time since brunch.

  “So when do we eat?” he asked Benton.

  Benton looked down into the courtyard.

  “Looks like the cafeteria just opened. Let’s go.”

  “Well, that was good. I hope the food is this good every day,” Geary said.

  “Can’t possibly be. But that’s neither here nor there. I like this cafeteria for other reasons.”

  Geary looked around and knew what he meant. One problem with school classes and all being in VR is you didn’t socialize with other kids as part of schooling. The town tried to make up for it with dances and musical events and such for the young people, to give them opportunities to get together. But this was totally different. Fully half the people seated around them in the cafeteria were women, students between seventeen and twenty-two years old.

  “Yeah, it’s gonna be different, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, the Imperial Marine Academy won’t be,” Benton said. “Almost all guys.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll still be different to be in live classes with so many other people.”

  “Travis. All guys. This, though. This is...”

  Benton swiveled his head to watch a girl walk past them.

  “... lovely.”

  “We need new clothes,” Geary said. “More clothes. We just have the outfits we took for the transit. We gonna hit those shops we saw on the way in?”

  “Nah. I’ve been writing back and forth with Fergy. You know, Justin Ferguson, the guy from down the street back home. He’s been here two years, and he said stuff is too expensive here, and kind of stuffy for style.”

  “Where, then?”

  “He said to go over to the other side of downtown, east, by the campus of Center Suburban University,” Benton said. “They have trendier styles and much cheaper.”

  “Sounds good. Tomorrow?”

  “Why the big hurry?”

  “Look around. You think we’re gonna get any action dressed like this?” Geary said.

  “Good point. Tomorrow, then.”

  They tarried until tables were getting scarce and then went back up to their rooms.

  The next morning they were eating breakfast before going out on their shopping trip.

  “Take a good look at the guys,” Geary said. “Especially the ones eating breakfast with girls.”

  “Why would I want to look at guys?” Benton asked.

  “Well, if the guy is eating breakfast with a girl, maybe we want to buy clothes like he’s wearing.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Good point.”

  They studied the guys eating around them, noting the difference in the styles they wore and the styles they were used to from back home. Geary wasn’t sure how much of the difference was Mandrake vs. Center, how much was provincial capital vs. Imperial capital, and how much was big city vs. suburban, but it didn
’t matter. The styles were different from what they were used to. If they were going to buy new clothes, they should buy what others here were wearing.

  When in Rome, and all that. Come to think of it, Rome was an Imperial capital, too, so the old saying was even more pointed than normal.

  “Oh my God, that was exhausting,” Benton said, setting down his shopping bags and collapsing on one of the armchairs in Geary’s apartment. “I don’t understand why women enjoy it.”

  “Sports is exhausting, too. Why do men play them for fun?”

  “That’s different. Sports has a point.”

  “Since when have you come home exhausted from playing some game and had anything to show for it?” Geary asked.

  “You know what I mean. Damn, that was brutal.”

  Geary just laughed.

  They dressed in their new clothes for lunch. Geary felt a little like a clown wearing the unfamiliar fashions. Benton, too, was a bit uncomfortable. When they walked into the cafeteria for lunch, though, a pretty young woman was walking out.

  “Hi, guys!” she said as she walked by.

  “Hi!” Geary said.

  Geary looked at Benton, who was turned around to watch her walk out.

  “Well, that worked,” Geary said.

  They walked on into the cafeteria feeling much better about their new clothes.

  Four Meetings

  They all used disguised avatars just in case a recording was made, but they all knew who each other was. They had been meeting in VR off and on for years. Decades. They had their own, very exclusive, club: the sixteen heirs by primogeniture of the last rulers of the Alliance hereditary monarchies.

  Of course, it only had fifteen current members. Whoever was Paul Bowdoin’s successor, they had not been informed yet, or contacted him.

  “I told Paul to be careful,” Alfred Rottenburg said. “He was losing his patience, and his temper came shining through. Clearly, he annoyed someone a great deal.”

  “You had a close call yourself,” said Genghis Khan XXIX of the Satrapy of Sirdon, still an independent protectorate of the Empire, per the promise of Emperor Trajan three and a half centuries ago.

  “It wasn’t that close. I shot him six times. He got one shot off and missed me by a mile. What about the rest of you?”

  “I’m no good at gunplay,” said Katherine Monroe of Preston. “My husband and my son-in-law checked the guards, and then the guards caught him. They shot it out, and he died.”

  “Same with me,” said John Devries of Garland. “He shot it out with the guards. He lost.”

  “Wait,” Rottenburg said. “Did anyone capture the fellow alive?”

  He looked around the round table of the simulation, at which there were sixteen chairs, with fifteen avatars seated. Everyone was shaking their head, looking around at the others.

  “Mine suicided when they were pounding on his door,” said Jin Jingyi of Jasmine. “He shot himself in the head.”

  “Mine was cornered on the roof and jumped off the building and died,” said Tristan Wendover of Cascade.

  “So none of them were captured alive,” Rottenburg said.

  “I wonder if any of the sector governors caught them alive,” Jin said.

  “News reports seem to indicate not,” Monroe said. “At least I haven’t heard of one.”

  “I wonder then if Their Majesties got any more information out of all of this,” Rottenburg said.

  “Why is that such a concern?” Khan asked.

  “Because I think we’re being played,” Rottenburg said. “The Throne has always been straight with us. We can’t say that about our ‘friends.’ Their agent killed Paul Bowdoin, their agent tried to kill me, and I don’t believe for one moment those actions were taken without orders from the top.”

  “What do you propose?” Jin asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Rottenburg said. “I don’t think we should go on as we have been, however. The Throne made our ancestors sector governors on annexation, and the Throne made it clear their heirs would be considered as sector governors as well. Some of them have, in fact, been sector governors. The requirement is they climb the public service ladder and learn the ropes.”

  “That’s unacceptable,” Wendover said.

  “Is it?” Rottenburg asked. “Isn’t that just what we would ask of our own heirs if we were in power? Isn’t that what our ancestors required of their own heirs? Public service in steadily more responsible positions? You know they did. How is it different?”

  “But even that’s not sovereignty,” Monroe said.

  “No, it’s not,” Rottenburg said. “Our ancestors gave up sovereignty to the Empire rather than be gobbled up by the plutocrats of the Democracy of Planets. After what we’ve just seen, do you think those plutocrats’ heirs have any different plans for us now?”

  “A sobering thought,” Jin said. “What do we do, then?”

  “I think we should all think about it and meet again in a couple weeks to see what sorts of ideas people have come up with,” Rottenburg said.

  He looked around the table, collecting votes. Two-thirds of the attendees had said nothing during the meeting, but everyone now voted. Most nodded their heads, indicating agreement with Rottenburg’s proposal.

  “The Ayes have it. We’ll see you all in a couple weeks,” he said.

  Manfred von Hesse’s core group of the dissident sector governors was also meeting. The recent discovery of agents on their staffs with nanite-murder transmitters was also a major topic.

  “I must say I find this all very disturbing,” von Hesse said. “It is one thing to do a little intelligence work on one’s friends. Such is expected after all. But to embed assassins on their staff is beyond the pale.”

  “In the case of Paul Bowdoin, they actually used the assassin,” said Earth Sector Governor Michael Porter.

  “Yes,” von Hesse said. “I talked to Charlie Price about this. He said Bowdoin could be a pain in the ass, and he was prone to shooting his mouth off. Our friends, it seems, had had enough.”

  “I’m wondering if ‘friends’ is the right term any longer,” said Norden Sector Governor Anders Karlsson.

  “What are we saying?” asked Pritani Sector Governor Joseph Gaskin. “That we’re happy with the situation as it is?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” von Hesse said. “I would prefer being a strong sector governor under a weak Throne to being a weak sector governor under a strong Throne. But I prefer either to being dead.”

  “The Throne killed Piotr Shubin, don’t forget,” said Gandon Sector Governor John Biederman Smith.

  “Yes,” Porter said, “after he tried to assassinate the Emperor.”

  Von Hesse nodded.

  “It has always been dangerous to strike at the king and fail,” he said. “But that was a little more provocation than merely being mouthy.”

  “I had a question for everyone,” said Midlothia Sector Governor Steven Adams. “Was your agent killed in the attempt to capture him?”

  All six of his fellows nodded.

  “No one took him alive?” Adams asked.

  They all looked around at each other.

  “Did you get VR ID scans?” he asked.

  Everyone nodded.

  “What did you do with them?” Adams asked.

  “I sent them to the Imperial Investigations Office,” von Hesse said.

  “You betrayed our ‘friends’?” Karlsson asked.

  “No, not at all,” von Hesse said. “This was an agent of some sinister group, identity unknown. Why, if my ‘friends’ had an agent here, wouldn’t they have told me? As friends?”

  There were nods from several around the table. Gaskin looked unmoved. Von Hesse addressed him directly.

  “Joseph, consider this,” von Hesse said. “Up until a few weeks ago, we were blissfully unaware of the fact our putative friends had developed and were maintaining a means by which to kill us all at a moment’s notice. This is the sort of activity that makes me question
whether our long-term goals, are, in fact, aligned.

  “This was not an isolated thing. This fellow here, that fellow there. No, it was every possible power center in the Empire. The Emperor and Empress, the sector governors, even the heirs of the former royal families of the Alliance, as clownish as some of them, such as Mr. Bowdoin, were.

  “They mean to take it all, Joseph. I’m convinced of that now. And, like I said, I would rather be a weak sector governor under a strong Emperor than dead.”

  “Are you going to cooperate with Their Majesties, then?” Gaskin asked.

  “On this investigation, yes. I do not, after all, know our putative friends were involved. If they were, and the Palace knew it, I would expect to see the fallout from that in the newsfeeds. Some press release from the Palace along the lines of ‘Two hundred executed for treason. List attached.’

  “But I haven’t seen that. I also haven’t seen anything from our friends. Something like, ‘Sorry, we shouldn’t have done that. We’re still your friends.’ Nothing from them, either. So all I know is there was a sinister agent on my staff with the means to kill me. So, yes, I will provide his VR IDs to the Imperial Investigations Office, and I encourage all of you to do the same if you haven’t already.”

  “And if the Palace finds out it was our friends?” Gaskin asked.

  “If it were proven, I would find that a very disturbing development,” von Hesse said.

  He nodded gravely before continuing.

  “Why, it might cause me to reconsider who my friends are.”

  Odessa Sector Governor Greta Feick was also taking part in a meeting. She had been invited into the core group of the sector governors loyal to the Throne, specifically because she was chosen directly by the Throne without the input of the sector governors. That and she knew Nederling Sector Governor Norman Conway, having served under him as a provincial governor. That was about as much eyes into the enemy camp as they had.