“A hundred and fifty-nine trillion Imperial credits and change, Milady. That includes the current value of stock shares held in accounts with brokerage features.”
“Outstanding, Ms. Schneider. Simply outstanding.”
Hammer Blow and Retrenchment
Back in Ardmore’s office, Burke was sitting in the guest chair chuckling.
“You really enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Ardmore asked.
“Oh, you betcha, Jimmy. And don’t forget, it’s not over. We have another meeting in five minutes.”
“That’s right. I did forget. That’s in VR, too, right?”
“Yes. In the conference room. Channel 21.”
General Hargreaves, Imperial Guard, General Destin, Imperial Marines, and Admiral Presley, Imperial Navy, were waiting for them in channel 21, the simulation of a conference room when Ardmore and Burke logged in. They all stood.
“Your Majesties,” Presley said for all of them and they bowed their heads.
“Be seated, gentlemen,” Burke said. “I trust you have all prepared your service per the list and orders we sent you several days ago.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Presley said and the other two nodded.
“Very well, gentlemen. Implement those orders. That is all.”
Burke cut the channel.
The orders went out from Imperial Marine Headquarters Center, from Imperial Navy Fleet Headquarters Center, and from the Imperial Guard Office of the Commandant in the Imperial Palace to all corners of the Empire. With the chain of command no longer passing through the sector governors, there was no one to delay or question those orders, and they were carried out immediately.
Captain Clark Mettel was desperately trying to figure out what had happened to his bank accounts. His personal account gave a stark legend: ‘The funds in this account were seized as criminal proceeds by Imperial Decree.’ That was bad enough. But when he checked the account of Mark Kittel – his real name – he got the same notice. His funds, his stocks, all he had saved up in the Imperial Navy and the substantial sums he had been paid by his family and their friends, it was all gone.
There was a knock on his office door, and a lieutenant and two petty officers entered. They were wearing Military Police armbands and looked all business.
“Captain Mettel, you are under arrest,” the lieutenant said. “Come with us, please, Sir.”
Mettel followed the lieutenant down the corridor in a daze, followed by the two petty officers. He was taken to the office of Admiral Donald Fairview, commanding officer of Imperial Fleet Base Garland. He stood before Fairview, the MP squad at either side. He was not invited to sit.
“Captain Mettel, you are under arrest on an Imperial Warrant.”
“What are the charges?” Mettel managed to croak.
“Treason against the Throne. You will be dishonorably discharged and lose your pension rights. Your crime is subject to the death penalty, which has been imposed.”
Mettel sagged where he stood, and almost collapsed. The petty officers on either side caught him and held him upright.
“Their Majesties in their mercy have suspended the death sentence, and you are being paroled on good behavior. Any further actions on your part against the Throne or the public order will result in the death sentence being reinstated and carried out. You will be held in the brig overnight pending processing, and likely be released tomorrow.
“Dismissed.”
Mettel spent the night in the brig, and was released the next day in downtown Blossom. His uniforms had been confiscated, and he was wearing some of his civilian clothes. The rest of his personal items had been given to him in a canvas duffel.
He was penniless.
Travis Geary and Nathan Benton were in class in the Imperial Marine Academy. it was nearing the end of their first semester. Both had been doing well academically. In addition, Geary had done exceedingly well in his first-form leadership classes. Unbeknownst to him, he had been marked for leadership by the faculty.
They were sitting in a lecture hall, and Imperial Marine Colonel Noah Simpson was giving the last lecture of the semester in Logistics and Supply. During the middle of the lecture, a captain and two beefy sergeants in MDUs with MP armbands entered the speaker’s well from the side door.
“Colonel Simpson, you are under arrest,” the captain said. “Come with us, please.”
“Class dismissed,” Simpson said to the astonished cadets, then followed the captain out the side door, the two sergeants following along.
“What the hell?” Benton asked Geary.
“Interesting times,” was all Geary would say.
Benton did not follow the news, but Geary did. He had noted the changes in the attitudes toward the Throne of the more troublesome sector governors. He had also noted the smashing of the trade barriers, and the restructuring of the command chain of the armed services, which showed up in the Marines Daily newsfeed.
Their Majesties were shaking things up. This was just another example.
When the rumor later went around that Colonel Simpson had been charged with treason, and given a suspended death sentence, many doubted it. Geary didn’t, however. Whereas Piotr Shubin had been executed rather spectacularly for his assassination attempt on Augustus VI, no one had yet been held publicly accountable for the assassination attempt on Empress Arsinoe almost five months before.
That assassination attempt had not been a hastily drawn up affair. The construction and distribution of the murder-nanites had been a long-term effort. Geary had looked into how nanites worked, and he knew it wasn’t a hack. That had to have been built in, at hundreds of manufacturers all across the Empire.
The scope of the conspiracy that implied was staggering.
“Is that all you have to say? ‘Interesting times?’” Benton asked.
Geary nodded.
“You don’t even seem surprised.” Benton said.
Geary turned to Benton.
“I’m not, actually. I’ve been expecting it, or something like it.”
The cusp was coming. Geary was sure of it.
All across the Empire, officers in the Imperial service were arrested and summarily drummed out of the service. Each received a suspended death sentence. Each lost their retirement benefits. They also lost their savings accounts and the alias accounts through which the conspiracy of DP plutocrats had been paying them on the side.
There were a number of cadets dismissed from each of the Imperial service academies, including Imperial Marine Academy Center. Lieutenants, captains, majors, commanders, colonels and even admirals and generals were dismissed from the service. Those implicated who were already retired lost their pensions.
As all those dismissed had also had their alias accounts and personal accounts seized, they were turned out of the service onto the streets penniless. They contacted their families for help.
Some of them discovered to their shock their families had been rendered penniless as well.
“How bad is it?” Arthur Kunstler asked.
“Bad. Very bad,” Karl Weibel said.
Weibel took a deep breath, sighed.
“They had clearly penetrated the alias account network much more extensively than we suspected. They seized a number of accounts as something of a feint, and when the word ran through our ranks, everyone jumped in to get their money out and showed them the rest of them.
“Somehow they tied alias accounts to real persons. Some of that was from people trying to transfer money out of their alias accounts to their personal accounts. But they clearly did something we don’t understand to uncover the linkages.
“Since those accounts had brokerage features as well as being simple bank accounts, stocks held in those accounts were seized as well. The issue there is there were enough shares held in people’s personal accounts to put our controlling interest in some of our companies at risk.”
“What was the total of all the seizures?” Kunstler asked.
“I don’t know for sure yet.
It’s over a hundred trillion credits and still climbing.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t even end there,” Weibel said. “We spent decades building up a fifth column of our people within the Imperial services. When push came to shove, we hoped to have enough of the right people in enough of the right places to be able to affect the outcome. Knock off someone here, get someone demoted there. Make sure our people were in a position to take over large parts of the military, and at least hobble the other parts’ performance enough to tip the balance.”
“What happened there?”
“They found our people – tens of thousands of them – and cashiered them on the spot. Dishonorable discharge. No retirement benefits. Their assets had already been seized, and they turned them out onto the streets. Oh, and with a suspended death sentence, so they’re unlikely to risk it in the future. They’re a liability now rather than an asset, because we’re going to have to support them, at least for a while.”
“I heard about some of those,” Kunstler said. “You mean those weren’t isolated incidents?”
“I wish they were. They just about cleaned us out of the military. Oh, there are a few left – a few they didn’t find – but not enough to make our plans work out. Plans. Ha! There are no plans now. The whole thing is wreckage.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to step down, for one thing,” Weibel said. “The council will demand it, I’m sure, so I’m going to get out in front of it. Hopefully I survive the experience.”
“Really! You’re worried about that?”
“Some of the families relied rather too heavily on the alias network, or jumped in too quick to pull their funds out. The Empire seized their personal assets. Some of our families were cleaned out. It’s not just about our clandestine agents.”
“I thought that was just a rumor,” Kunstler said.
“No, it’s real all right. Some of the more vocal of them would like nothing more – and nothing less – than my head on a plate.”
“I was your number two through all this. I should probably step down, too. Give a chance for completely new leadership.”
“I think that’s smart,” Weibel said. “Head them off, because I think they’re going to do it anyway. It removes you as a target.”
The meeting was looking like it would turn into disaster. People were shouting – screaming at each other – everyone was talking at once, demanding to be heard.
Maire Kerrigan had had enough. She had a little VR trick up her sleeve. She set off a sound cannon, a huge artificial sound in the VR system that sounded like someone had fired a large caliber handgun.
As everyone at the meeting knew what a large-caliber handgun sounded like, they stopped and looked around, wondering who was the shooter and who the shootee. It took a moment to sink in that no such thing could happen in VR, and it was into that space Kerrigan spoke.
“We will now conduct a proper meeting, with people speaking in turns and generally acting like adults. We are all here in VR. We can turn our own volume controls up if we need to in order to hear you, so there is no need to shout.”
Kerrigan looked up and down the table. There were some scowls, but nobody was ready to trigger her disdain. She nodded.
“Thank you all. Mr. Weibel, you should probably speak first. I think many of the shouted questions were directed at you, so you should be given a chance to answer them.”
Weibel gave a summary of their losses, much along the lines he had given Kunstler earlier, fleshed out with the few more details that had come in within the last two hours.
“That’s our situation. I was the leader of this council during this period, and it is only proper for me to step down after a disaster of this magnitude.”
“Six months too late,” Nikos Mantzaris grumbled.
“I seem to recall this council approved the two major actions that obviously led to this disaster,” Kerrigan said. “The assassination attempt on the Empress and the murder by nanite of Mr. Bowdoin. Is my memory incorrect, Mr. Mantzaris, or did you in fact vote for both of those actions?”
Mantzaris had the good grace to look down at the table and say nothing. His family fortunes had been hit hard by the seizures.
“As a matter of fact, only one person in this council spoke against both of those actions,” Kerrigan went on. “Rather eloquently, I thought. I nominate Antonio Sciacca to be our new leader going forward. Mr. Sciacca, do you have anything to say?”
“Yes, Ms. Kerrigan, I did argue against both actions. I thought it needlessly exposed a capability we should have reserved for widespread use at the moment of greatest impact, before it could be understood and countered. I also have long argued against such a resource-intensive approach.”
“We will not be capable of such a resource-intensive approach going forward, Mr. Sciacca. Why don’t you take the time now to explain your approach in some depth and take questions on it.”
“Very well, Ms. Kerrigan. Thank you for the opportunity.
“Basically, we have been following the approach of taking high-value and expensive resources – our own family members – and placing them in large numbers within the Imperial organization. This in some ways is attacking them on their own battlefield, where they are strongest. We have seen spectacular evidence of their capabilities there in the last several months, and especially in the last week.
“Instead, I think we should develop and deploy cheap assets to strike at the Empire where they are weakest....”
The presentation and question & answer went on for an hour, at the end of which Antonio Sciacca was elected the leader of the council.
Settling Down
The Imperial Finance Department took possession of all the assets seized from the DP plutocrats. The overall amount wasn’t large by the standards of the Empire – just over three hundred million credits per planet – but dumping the assets into the market all at once would shock the markets. Particularly the shares in companies. They trickled the shares out in dribs and drabs so as not to overly drive the prices down.
It did not, however, escape the notice of Franz Becker. Some of the shares that were coming on the market were rarely traded in any quantity. Even more unusual, some of those shares were preferred shares – not just shares in the company, but voting shares. He tracked down who the seller of record was, and it was the Imperial government.
Becker knew what must have happened. It came to him in a flash. Without bothering to think too long about it, he started picking up shares. A rarely-traded company was off a lot of traders’ radar, and the bid-ask queue wasn’t very deep.
Becker posted bargain-basement buy orders on the shares, and was pleased when they started trading there. With the shares listed on the market now showing downward movement, other people started dumping what shares were out there. Becker lowered his bid price, and even those bids started clearing. He rode those stocks down, buying all the way.
He wasn’t going for appreciation on these shares.
He was going for control of the companies.
The cadet student body of the Imperial Marine Academy Center was organized as a brigade. Each class was organized as a regiment. Each class had a regimental commander, and the cadet student body had a brigade commander to whom all the regimental commanders reported. These commanders were selected through a complex process that took into account their scores in leadership classes, their overall academic performance, their merits/demerits ratio, and faculty write-ups and recommendations.
The regimental commander for the sophomore class, Third Regimental Commander Conner Norwood, was one of half a dozen cadets found guilty of treason against the Throne and dismissed from the service. Everyone was shocked. Everyone except Travis Geary.
What did shock Travis Geary was when he was selected as the replacement Third Regimental Commander. While he was a sophomore, he had no experience as a regimental commander of cadets. Of course, no other sophomore did either – N
orwood had been the Fourth Regimental Commander last year.
It was a difficult assignment, and the faculty knew it. Selecting Geary was a huge mark of their trust in him not to screw it up, and he intended to prove that trust had been well-placed.
Brigade Commander Joshua Potter knew it was a difficult assignment, too. Geary got orders to report to Potter no sooner than it was announced.
Geary was not yet eighteen, having gotten out of high school early and finishing his freshman year in VR before going to the Academy. Potter had already turned twenty-two. Geary was more than a little nervous when he reported to Potter’s office.
For his part, Potter was initially skeptical of his new regimental commander, but as they talked, he started to like the serious young history major. This could work out.
“All right, Mr. Geary. As I said, it’s a tough assignment. But your failure in this assignment would not just be a black mark on you, it would be a black mark on me as well. So I don’t intend to allow it to happen. I’ll help you out as much as I can, and so will the brigade command sergeant major. We’re on your side, and we’ll work with you. Just try not to screw it up before we can get you whipped into shape, all right?”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
“No problem, Mr. Geary. Dismissed.”
Geary went to Norwood’s office – his office now, he corrected – and started working through paperwork. He had a lot to catch up on, quickly, if he didn’t want to get caught out being unprepared.
Later, sitting in Geary’s living room, Benton was puzzled.
“What do I even call you now?” Benton asked.
“In private?”
“Yeah.”
“Travis, like before,” Geary said.
“And in public?”
“If we’re in civvies? Travis.”
“And in uniform?” Benton asked.
“In uniform, you call me Sir.”
“Yes, Sir.”
EMPIRE: Resistance Page 27
