The Shadow of Cincinnatus

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Jonathon nodded politely, then left them to their plotting.

  “There’s some shouting outside,” Patty said, when he got back around the counter. Another line of students had appeared and were ordering takeaway, even though it cost an extra credit to eat outside the diner. “I think there’s going to be trouble.”

  Jonathon rubbed his ears. A lifetime of working in the diner – at least it felt like a lifetime – had left him deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other. It had its uses, particularly when his wife felt like nagging, but it was irritating. Now Patty mentioned it, though, he could hear someone shouting outside the diner. It almost sounded like they were chanting something over and over again, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  “They’re calling the students to strike,” Patty said. “For Great Justice or something like that.”

  “Get the cash out of sight and into the safe,” Jonathon ordered. “And then stay behind the counter. If rioters get in here, hit the screens and jump into the back.”

  Patty blinked in surprise. “What about the students?”

  Jonathon snorted. “What about them?”

  * * *

  Being a Campus Policeman was not an easy job, Constance McNamee considered. The students might not be as violent as people unfortunate enough to live in the lower-class parts of the city, where the police only went in armed squads if they went at all, but they could be incredibly argumentative. And they could get away with one hell of a lot, if they were careful or hired the right lawyers. Staff weren’t permitted to exclude or expel students for anything less than a truly dire crime, which meant that the campus policemen had very little effective power. She’d lost count of the number of times an open and shut case had become a multi-sided nightmare, thanks to political interference. It was a wonder to her that so many students kept coming to university. Didn’t they realize just how dangerous it could be?

  She heard the shouting as she walked down the streets, students chanting demands into the air. Protests were one thing – and fairly common on campus – but this sounded different, nastier. She gritted her teeth, then clicked her radio and started to make a report as the students came into view. They looked furious about something, but what?

  No change there, she thought, darkly. She’d once harbored the thought that university was supposed to be about education. Instead, the students seemed to spend half of their time getting drunk or chasing sexual relationships, while the rest of their time seemed to be spent on one political cause or another. She had never had any idea why the Grand Senate tolerated it. But then, the students were hardly a political threat. They didn’t have any weapons, for a start.

  “Freedom for strikers,” one of the students yelled. “Strike! Strike! Strike!”

  The mob swelled as more and more students emerged from campus buildings and joined the crowd, picking up the chant as it grew louder. Constance felt cold fear running down her spine as the mob advanced towards her, one hand playing with her stunner as the other fiddled with her radio. The students, damn them, had managed to convince the campus authorities to ban lethal weapons on campus, which hadn’t seemed a problem until now. But the more realistic part of her mind knew that a loaded gun wouldn’t have made a difference.

  Her radio bleeped. “Constance, pull back,” her supervisor ordered. “There are mobs forming everywhere. It looks as though every damn student in this whole damn campus is out on the streets.”

  “Or trying to hide,” Constance said, as she caught sight of a group of students distributing drugs and alcohol to the strikers. “They won’t want to be caught up in this...”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” her supervisor agreed. “Get out...”

  “Kill the pig,” someone yelled.

  Constance looked up, just in time to see the mob changing course and bearing down on her with terrifying speed. Some of them might have their doubts about attacking a campus policewoman, but they were being pushed on by the people behind them. And when it was over, they would have nowhere to go. She turned and ran, as fast as she could, but the mob grew louder and louder. And then she sprinted around a corner and ran straight into another mob. There was no way out.

  She reached for her stunner, but it was already too late.

  * * *

  “But damn it, Tony,” the dean protested. “You have to do something!”

  Director Tony Kingworm looked up, meeting the dean’s eyes. “Like what?”

  He sighed inwardly as the dean started to splutter. If only they’d been allowed to set up headquarters somewhere else. He could have barred the dean from entering during a crisis...but they’d been forced to set up their headquarters in the admin building. The dean, as soon as he’d heard about the budding riot, had come down the stairs and into Tony’s office. He hadn’t had a moment of peace since.

  “Like...like something,” the dean said. “Do something!”

  Tony rose to his feet. “Right now, I’ve lost seven officers,” he said, sharply. He’d seen mob violence before, back when he’d been on the streets. It was unlikely that any of the officers had survived. “Your damn students are rioting and tearing the place apart. And you have persistently denied me the tools I need to deal with them.”

  “Then...then get the tools,” the Dean said. “Just...do something.”

  It was unlikely, Tony knew, that his career would survive. Losing control of a university campus would look very bad on his record. He’d have to apply to serve as a colonial marshal or something along the same lines, if he wished to stay in law enforcement. There certainly wouldn’t be such a cushy posting in his future. But if his career was doomed, he might as well go out in style.

  “Very well,” he said. He reached into his desk and produced a stunner. “If you’ll just look this way.”

  The dean’s mouth dropped open. A moment later, Tony pressed the trigger and the dean crumpled to the floor.

  “Leave him there,” Tony ordered. He walked over to the display, mounted on the wall. “I want you to pull all of the officers out of the campus, then concentrate them at the security guardposts.”

  “Yes, sir,” the dispatcher said. “But what about us?”

  “Seal the building,” Tony said. He had no illusions. Main Building was no castle. It was incapable of standing off an attack from a horde of insane students. If the students attacked, he and his men would be rapidly overwhelmed. “We’ll see about getting out through the roof, if possible.”

  He cursed under his breath. The students might just stop rioting in a few hours and go back to classes – they’d certainly done that before – but the speed at which the riot had spread suggested otherwise. This was no spur of the moment reaction, he was sure. Someone had done a great deal of planning and preparation in advance. The bastards were already smashing security monitors, both the overt bulky cameras and the smaller, well-hidden sensors. It pointed to treachery. No, it pointed to outright subversion.

  “Contact the planetary security command,” he added. “Tell them we need reinforcements.”

  He’d been briefed on the dangers of Outsider propaganda, back when the Outsiders had first shown they were capable of reaching all the way to Earth to make their anger felt. Some of the students were intelligent enough to realize they were in a trap, after all, and seek some way to get out. Backing the Outsiders might seem a way to escape...and besides, the Outsiders did have a point. Earth hadn’t been free before Emperor Marius, let alone after him.

  Stupid bloody students, he thought. And they’re about to learn just how unpleasant the world can be.

  * * *

  Jonathon watched, grimly, as a pair of students entered the diner. They were swaggering, deliberately showing off their power, hoping to intimidate the staff. He felt cold ice flowing through his body as they waved the other students out, then marched up to the counter and smiled at him. They had no doubts at all about their cause.

  “We want food and drink, now,” the leader said. “One hundred burgers...�
�

  “We’re almost out,” Jonathon said. The last report had told him that the transport had reported heavy delays. He suspected that was something of an understatement. The riot had made it impossible to deliver to the campus. “You won’t get half that...”

  The leader snarled at him. “You will send us the food,” he snapped. “I...”

  Jonathon hit the emergency button. Solid metal bars dropped into place, sealing off the staff section from the rest of the diner. The students looked shocked, then stamped out of the diner, banging the door closed behind them. Moments later, the howling mob started to pour through the door and trash the eating zone.

  Patty caught his arm as rocks and glass bottles started slamming into the bars. “They can’t get in, can they?”

  “I hope not,” Jonathon said. The howling was growing louder. He’d always known the students believed in conspiracies, but he’d never realized how absurd they were. What sort of idiot thought that food was still delivered, even in the midst of a riot? “But all we can do is wait and see.”

  And pray, he added, silently. The bars were starting to rattle ominously. If they break in, we’re dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  This was unfortunate as rumors were never very accurate. The original police action on the moon netted several hundred strikers, most of whom were released without charge. By the time the rumors reached Earth, they claimed the military had shot several thousand strikers and raped thousands more.

  -The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

  Earth, 4100

  “I don’t think you should be taking those,” Tiffany said.

  Marius scowled at her, then softened. “I keep having headaches,” he said, tiredly. “What do you think I should take?”

  “I think you should rest,” Tiffany said. She’d been more solicitous recently, something that pleased and annoyed Marius in equal measure. It was nice to have someone caring for him, but Tiffany had her own work to do. “You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

  Marius snorted. For better or worse, the buck stopped with him. That had been true since his first command, years ago. Now, he was emperor and he had to oversee everything personally. He just didn’t have enough subordinates he could trust to handle their responsibilities without supervision.

  “I don’t have time,” he said. A holiday sounded nice – he hadn’t had a proper holiday since before the Justinian War; besides, they hadn’t had a proper honeymoon either – but where would he find the time? Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. “There’s too much to do.”

  Tiffany stepped up behind him and began to rub his back, her fingers stroking his skin. It felt good, so good that Marius wanted to relax into her ministrations, but he knew there was no time. He’d condemned enough senior officers for spending time with their mistresses instead of doing their duty that he didn’t feel right about enjoying himself. Besides, he had yet another set of meetings to attend. Everything had been so much simpler when he’d been in command of the Grand Fleet. His crew had known their jobs and got on with them.

  And Blake shot me, he thought, sourly. The betrayal still hurt, even now. I guess he knew his job too.

  The communicator bleeped. “Sir?”

  Marius heard Tiffany grunt in irritation as he stepped away from her and walked over to the communicator. “Yes?”

  “There’s trouble on Earth, sir,” the operator said. “I...”

  “Define trouble,” Marius said. It was irritating as hell to know that his subordinates were nervous about bringing him bad news – but then, the Grand Senate had been known to shoot the messenger. They hadn’t been the only ones either. “What is happening?”

  “There’s a riot, sir,” the operator said.

  “A riot,” Marius repeated. He allowed his voice to darken. Couldn’t anyone tend to anything these days without asking him for instructions? “And this is important enough to call me?”

  “General Thorne requests a meeting, sir,” the operator said. “He’s already on his way.”

  “Very well,” Marius said. “Show him into my office when he arrives.”

  “You have to come back here afterwards,” Tiffany said. “I have some other ways to relax you.”

  Marius shook his head. “I have too much work to do,” he said. “And none of it can be passed down to someone else.”

  He kissed her on the cheek, then stepped through the door and into his office, pulling on his dressing robe as he walked. It wasn’t what anyone expected an emperor to wear, he was sure, but the Federation didn’t really have a proper uniform for a supreme ruler. The Grand Senators had always worn suits and ties, each one made by designers who charged more than an admiral earned in a year for each suit. Marius had suspected, when he’d looked at the books, that it was just another attempt to prevent outsiders from trying to run for election and overturn the system. Chang Li had been the only successful outsider – in more ways than one – for decades.

  And she was a treacherous bitch, he thought, nastily. Forgiveness wasn’t one of his virtues, not when the whole Federation was at stake. How long was she planning our downfall?

  He sat down at his desk and pressed his hand against the terminal, allowing it to scan his ID implant. A long list of documents appeared in front of him, all demanding his personal attention and signature. Everything, he noted with some irritation, from personal files to industrial production plans for the next five years. Replacing the infrastructure the Outsiders had destroyed was a long hard chore.

  And the Grand Senate burned out too much of our infrastructure, he reminded himself. Were they that confident that they could win the war in time to save themselves?

  There was a person who might be able to answer. But Marius had no time to face him.

  “Sir, General Thorne is here,” his aide said.

  “Then show him in,” Marius ordered. “Please.”

  General Thorne looked tired, Marius noted, as he was shown into the room. But at least he was reliable, unlike so many others. He saluted Marius curtly, then sat down on the other side of the desk and rested his hands on his lap.

  “General,” Marius said. “What’s happening?”

  “A major series of riots, student riots,” General Thorne said. “These were clearly planned in advance.”

  Marius cursed under his breath. “The Outsiders?”

  “Almost certainly,” General Thorne said. “They knew about the strike, somehow, but the rumors were vastly inflated.”

  “I thought we had that under control,” Marius said.

  “We did,” General Thorne countered. “As far as we can tell, word didn’t move from Luna to Earth...but somehow it reached Earth anyway. And then the riots began.”

  Marius groaned. “I see,” he said. He reached for another pill and swallowed it, without bothering with water. “What’s the current situation?”

  “We have riots on twelve separate campuses, sir,” General Thorne said. “They started at more or less the same time, too. That cannot be a coincidence.”

  “Evidently not,” Marius said. The pill wasn’t working. His head felt as thick as ever. “And are they under control?”

  “We have the campuses sealed off, sir,” General Thorne reported. “But they have managed to get word out into the datanet. We may see other riots soon.”

  Marius gritted his teeth. Earth’s datanet was unusual in many ways; unlike any of the others, it included large sections that were almost completely outside government control. There were archives of data dating back thousands of years in the datanet, some harmless pornography, but others considered politically dangerous. The Grand Senate, for all of its power, had failed to bring the datanet to heel. And students, for all of their general ignorance, tended to make the best WebHeads. They probed the datanet for hidden sections, then infested the uncontrolled cores and made them theirs.

  “Bastards,” he said. “What do they actually want?”

  “The first set of demands were for the release
of the strikers,” General Thorne said. “After that, their demands became a little more extreme. Right now, they want free elections, free unions, a resumption of government-backed social programs...and quite a few other things, all of which would cost us dearly if we attempted to implement them.”

  “Idiots,” Marius said. What sort of moron thought the Federation would be inclined to just roll over and give them whatever they wanted, if they rioted? The Federation hadn’t submitted to the Outsider demands and the Outsiders were invading Federation space with a huge fleet. “I assume you have a plan to deal with them?”

  “Yes, sir,” General Thorne said. “I have four regiments of security troops on their way to each of the campuses. On your command, they will storm the campuses and deal with the students. They will go into detention camps and be held until we have established their role in these events, then you can deal with them as you see fit.”

  “Good,” Marius said. Students. Why hadn’t they done something useful with their lives, like joining the Navy? Or emigrating to a world that could actually handle them? Or even taking vocational training? “I think we’ll add them to the list of involuntary emigrants.”

  “Yes, sir,” General Thorne said.

  “After that, we should take a long hard look at just what role the universities play in our modern society,” Marius added. He’d left them alone because many of the students had parents who were actually working, which made sending their children to university all the more inexplicable. “And start expanding the vocational training courses.”

  He sighed, cursing – yet again – the Grand Senate. There just weren’t enough trained people to serve as teachers for the vocational courses, which meant that expanding the whole system was going to take time, longer than he cared to admit. If there hadn’t been a war on, perhaps it could be done at a calmer pace, but there was a war on. And they had to win the war. Defeat would mean the end of human unity...