EMPIRE: Conqueror (EMPIRE SERIES Book 6)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “One gets compromised in so many ways. No matter what one’s goals when one sets out on the political journey, there are so many accommodations to be made, so many interests to please.”

  Riley shook his head, and stared out over the valley. Glick let him stew for several seconds before he answered.

  “That’s the really interesting thing, to my mind. The thing about being sector governor in the Empire is there’s only one person to please, and that’s the Emperor. There are no elections, no campaign funds to raise, no compromises. Just the Emperor. And he’s so painfully straightforward it’s scary. If you just flat out ask him what he thinks about something, he’ll just flat out tell you.”

  “That would be refreshing.”

  “He doesn’t have to dissemble, because he’s not hiding anything. He has no hidden agenda. His intent is to do the best he can for everybody, and you’re either with him or not.”

  “And the executions? The destruction of Olympia?”

  “The DP and the plutocrats threatened the people he was sworn to protect. Against that, he will have no mercy. Absolutely none at all. The least-harm way forward they left him was to hit them hard. Very hard. They didn’t think he would.”

  Glick shrugged before continuing.

  “They were wrong.”

  “Boy, I’ll say,” Riley said.

  He looked back out over the valley again, thinking it all over. Glick was content to wait. Then Riley turned back to him.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I have already accepted the position of Sector Governor.”

  Riley nodded.

  “It sounds more and more like the right decision, Seth.”

  “I think it is, but I’ll tell you this, Roddy. Do not swear oath to this Emperor if you don’t intend to keep it. Don’t even think about it. We can still be friends if you retire.

  “But we can’t be friends if you’re dead.”

  Dunham touched an icon on the panel set into the corner of his desk, and Darrel Hawker appeared at the connecting door between their offices.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Be seated, Mr. Hawker.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Hawker sat down in one of the chairs in front of Dunham’s desk.

  “Mr. Hawker, we are going to hold a coronation – a re-coronation, actually – on the tenth anniversary of my original coronation. That will be in three months, more or less.”

  “Very well, Your Majesty.”

  “Is that something you can handle, Mr. Hawker?”

  “Oh, yes, Sire. And I am sure Mr. Perrin will be willing to give me a hand with it. He’s still around, and helps out when things get busy.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Hawker. And those Imperial Charters. Are those prepared?”

  “Yes, Sire. They only need your signature.”

  “Push them to me, Mr. Hawker.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  The five documents appeared in Dunham’s inbound queue. He opened one and scanned it.

  “And has Mr. Forsythe signed off on this wording, Mr. Hawker?”

  “Yes, Sire. He made a few minor changes, but he’s happy with them now.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Hawker. That will be all.”

  Andrew Forsythe was Darrel Hawker’s significant other, but he was also the Emperor’s Personal Counsel and had been for several years. If the documents were OK with him, they were OK with Dunham.

  Dunham sent a message to Projects, asking that the group in charge of foreign relations with the remaining farside independents set up a meeting.

  Denny met with his whole team in the conference room simulation.

  “All right, everybody. We have a new client, which is a good thing, because I don’t think the Imperial Navy is going be doing a lot of new design work for a while.”

  “Who’s the new client?” Liu Jiang asked.

  “Otto Stauss. He’s apparently one of the richest men in the Empire.”

  “No, he’s not,” Vipin Narang said. “I just read about him. He’s the richest man in the Empire.”

  “Oh. Good. He won’t have any problems paying his bills, then.”

  “What’s the deal?” Liu asked.

  “Open bill, no-bid contract,” Denny said.

  “Wow. He’s serious,” Narang said.

  “Well, the Emperor recommended us to him, so I think that’s what’s driving that,” Denny said.

  “OK, so what’s the assignment?” Liu asked.

  “There are six million abandoned Democracy of Planets warships out there. Recent build. The Emperor will let Stauss salvage them if we come up with a plan to de-weaponize them and repurpose them to freighters and colony ships.”

  “Colony ships?” Narang asked.

  “The Empire is going to be encouraging colonization out west, past Phalia,” Denny said.

  “He’s giving the troublemakers a place to go,” Bertha Townsend said.

  “Troublemakers?” Narang asked.

  “Yes,” Townsend said. “Some people aren’t happy with peace and prosperity and nine-to-five jobs. They cause trouble, just so they can relieve the boredom.”

  “The adult version of the bored school child,” Liu said.

  “Exactly,” Townsend said.

  “Mr. Stauss said something of the kind to the Emperor. The Emperor didn’t contradict him,” Denny said.

  “So what have we got for plans?” Narang asked.

  “I just got the complete engineering drawings for all four ship types from Mr. Dunlop,” Denny said.

  Denny pushed the plans to everyone else, which the simulation modeled as him distributing copies. People started flipping through them.

  “Oh my God,” Liu said. “Who designed this? Everything is bolted or welded to everything else.”

  “Somebody who was on a cost-plus contract, approved through a political process, and was the politically preferred vendor,” Narang said. “Which is to say, the guy who gave the most money to their election campaigns.”

  “Oh, I knew all that, but seeing it in print makes it worse, somehow,” Liu said. “Jared, I don’t know what we can do with this.”

  “Hey, that’s why they gave it to us,” Denny said. “If it was easy, they could have given it to anybody.”

  It was Saturday afternoon, and the kids were vibrating with excitement over their birthday party.

  “I’m glad we invited the parents,” Peters said. “You and I and the staff aren’t going to be enough to ride herd on all this.”

  “Oh, it’ll be fine,” Dunham said.

  He shrugged.

  “If I have to, I’ll call out the Imperial Guard.”

  Peters laughed.

  Their first guests came around the corner. Two sets of parents, each with a child the twins age, already in their swimming suits. The parents looked a little shell-shocked after being guided through the Imperial Residence to the escalator by the Imperial Guard.

  Peters and Bobby went to meet them at the corner of the pool deck.

  “Hi, I’m Amanda, Sean and Dee’s mom, and this is their father, Bobby.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mil– Amanda.”

  They shook hands with Peters.

  “And I’m Bobby.”

  If they looked shell-shocked before, it was epic now, as they shook hands with the Emperor.

  “C’mon, you guys,” Dee yelled.

  She ran and jumped in the pool, and was followed by three other screaming youngsters, her twin and the two new arrivals.

  And so it went as people arrived. They gradually loosened up as Dunham and Peters worked the crowd, until all the parents were sitting and chatting on the picnic tables lined up along the pool deck. Fifteen rambunctious six-year-olds squealed and splashed in the pool under the watchful eyes of two lifeguards. And Housekeeping staff were preparing the cake and ice cream around the corner.

  After ninety minutes in the pool – after the children had worn off some of their energy and slowed down a
bit – it was time for cake and ice cream. It was, of course, incredibly messy.

  When they were done, Dunham stood, and clapped his hands.

  “All right, kids. Time to clean your face and hands. Back in the pool!”

  There was a shriek and fifteen six-year-olds jumped up from the picnic tables and ran for the pool and another hour of splashing and squealing.

  Then it was time, and parents and children took their leave of the birthday twins and their parents and headed off down the path to the escalator.

  Dee watched the last of them go.

  “I’m sorry it’s over,” she said.

  “But it was fun,” Sean said.

  Dee turned to Sean.

  “We really must do this more often.”

  “Yes, General Daggert. Be seated.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  Daggert sat before the desk of the Emperor, the third ruler he had served in this building, in this room.

  “You asked for this meeting, General Daggert. Go ahead.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Daggert took a deep breath and let it out.

  “Your Majesty, you are the third ruler I have served in this position, over the last twenty years, and you have many years to run, I hope. I think it is time I retired. Things are calming down now, the threat level has eased a great deal, and it is a good time for someone else to pick up the reins. They won’t be in the middle of a crisis, or a war, or with a burgeoning threat level. They’ll have time to get their feet under them before it all hits the fan again.

  “And it’s time for me, as well. I think of the things we have gone through, you and I, with the Medved murder, and the Council crisis, two wars, and then this latest threat of the nerve toxin. I am too old now to stay up two days running for emergencies like that, and that’s really part of the job.”

  “I understand, General Daggert. You are your own best counsel in this matter. Have you given any thought to your successor?”

  “Yes, Sire. General Henry Grant has been on detached duty to the Imperial Marines the last two years. He’s due back at the Palace, and has the time in grade for the promotion. He also has current relationships with the general staff over there. So Hank would be my recommendation.”

  “Very well, General Daggert. I will let you set the timing for the transition, but I would ask of you a personal favor.”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  “General Daggert, would you please stay on long enough to officiate the coronation coming up? As a personal favor to me?”

  “Yes, Sire. I would be happy to.”

  “Thank you, General Daggert. It’s important to me.”

  “So are we getting any handle on this?” Denny asked.

  “We’re starting to,” Liu said. “The impeller assembly and the loader assembly were both meant to be replaced as a unit.”

  “OK, so we can just pull them out and not replace them, right?”

  “Yes, except you need to put cover plates over the holes. That’s how they made them assembly-replaceable. You take a chunk out of the hull. So we have to have a replacement plate.”

  “Then you have a big empty volume internally. Can we use that? Like build a cabins module on the planet, and then insert it into that big hole? A cabin assembly to replace the loader assembly or the impeller assembly?”

  “Perhaps,” Narang said. “We’re looking at it. What might make more sense, for the freighter version, is to cut back the length of the hull to open up framing for container racks, and then plug the loader and impeller holes in the back portion of the hull with shorter cabin assemblies.”

  “How many containers can we get on, say, a battleship?”

  “Maybe a thousand. Perhaps more,” Narang said. “We’re also looking at extending the frame. We might be able to get up to fifteen hundred or so. Hard to get much over that.”

  “OK, so we can do something. We’re just not sure yet what that something is.”

  “We’re still seeking the optimum. Yes,” Liu said. “But we will have a plan. And we’re already a lot cheaper per unit than building new, even when we net out the salvage value of the existing warships if we didn’t rebuild and repurpose them.”

  “Excellent. Well done. Keep working it, though. let’s see how much cost we can wring out of it.”

  Governors and Governments

  The breakfast dishes were cleared, the coffee poured, and the staff and Guardsmen shooed away. Dunham, Peters, Saaret and his wife Suzanne sat on the balcony on this beautiful Sunday morning. It was late morning, after eleven.

  “So what all is going on?” Suzanne asked. “Things are happening so fast now, I need the weekly briefing to keep up.”

  Of course, Suzanne Saaret had no official position in the government, but she was one of Bobby’s most trusted advisers. She had common sense, spoke her mind, and had no other axes to grind than Dunham’s success.

  “Everything’s pretty much settling down now,” Dunham said. “There’s a couple more loose ends to tie up, but lots of things have been working themselves out.”

  “Li-i-i-ke...?” Suzanne drew it out, and Dunham laughed.

  “Mr. Stauss and Mr. Denny are coming up with a plan to rebuild and repurpose those big DPN warships to civilian uses. We’ll need lots more freighters to get interstellar trade up to where it should be. And we’ll also need colony ships. No sense wasting six million solid platforms.”

  “Oh my God. You introduced Denny and Stauss to each other?”

  “Yes. They seem to get along very well, surprisingly enough.”

  “I don’t find that surprising at all,” Suzanne said. “They are both the best in their fields. It’s a match made in heaven.”

  “Apparently so. Let’s see, what else is going on?” Dunham asked. “I have had sixteen of the twenty DP district governors accept sector governor positions over their same territories. I’ve talked to them in some depth, and I think they all get it.”

  “What about the other four, Bobby?”

  “They’re retiring. They were planning on that anyway. On not running for re-election again. The Empire will honor the DP’s pension commitments, so they’re going to go ahead and retire. Each of them had a precinct governor they recommended though. A bit of research indicates they’re probably the right choices.”

  “Who did that research?” Suzanne asked.

  “I did, Suzanne,” Peters said.

  “Oh. OK. What else, Bobby?”

  “I’m meeting with the heads of state of the five remaining independent nations. The Empire is going to give them all Imperial charters to remain independent.”

  “Binding your successors?”

  “Yes. The Empire needs some places that aren’t the Empire, so the disaffected have some place to go. The potential of it, anyway.”

  “That’s smart. Anything else?”

  “One other thing. The sector governors are setting up a little club, or association, so they can get together and talk out problems, come up with solutions, give each other advice. I’ll address their inaugural meeting.”

  “Bobby. After the Imperial Council debacle, that seems like trouble to me.”

  “Oh, I know. I see it. I had Valery Markov’s people look at it, and there will be some rules for them that will alleviate most of the potential for problems. If it gets out of hand – at all – I will disband it.”

  “OK. And how are the plans for the coronation coming? It’s only a couple of weeks now.”

  “Good. Mr. Hawker is on top of it, and Mr. Perrin has been advising him.”

  “Oh, good. I would so like to see us pull it off well.”

  Suzanne paused, then continued.

  “By us, of course, I mean you three.”

  Dunham chuckled.

  “I knew what you meant.”

  Dunham looked out over the Palace Mall. It was just coming up on noon, and the cast-in-color statue of Dee, lit by the noon light from the reflectors, looked at the Imperial Palace beneficen
tly.

  President Pierre Jourdain of Abelard was meeting with two of his neighbors, President Jacob van Meer of Bordain and President Graham Bentley of Westhaven. Jourdain and van Meer were new to office, being elected in the political firestorm that swept the Alliance countries after their catastrophic losses in the Sintar-Alliance War. Graham Bentley had managed to stay in office, if only just, as he had been very popular before the war.

  They met in VR, in a simulation of the living room of a hunting lodge. Rough-hewn but comfortable armchairs in a conversation group held the three easily.

  “So what do you think he wants?” Jourdain asked.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it’s anything good for us.” van Meer said.

  “What do you think?” Jourdain asked. “Forcible annexation?”

  “What else could it be? He has everything else,” van Meer said.

  Bentley stirred.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said. “The Emperor’s never forcibly annexed anyone our size, and he could have, if he wanted to, after the war. I don’t know that he’s going to start now.”

  “Well, if he does, there’s nothing we can do about it,” van Meer said. “That Navy of his is unstoppable. Even if we had parity in hull numbers, which we don’t by a couple orders of magnitude.”

  “That’s surely true,” Jourdain said.

  “Oh, I agree,” Bentley said. “Yet I think he might pleasantly surprise us. I think we should maintain an open mind and hope for the best.”

  They met in the blank room in VR. There were six club chairs present, in a circle. Dunham, dressed in a simple business suit, was there first, and greeted each head of state as they arrived. Last was the Satrap of Sirdon, Genghis Khan XV, who showed up exactly fifteen seconds late to make some kind of point, Dunham supposed.

  “Let’s all be seated, shall we?” Dunham said, waving to the chairs.