Tyrant

by Richard F. Weyand

  EMPIRE

  Tyrant

  by

  RICHARD F. WEYAND

  Copyright 2019 by Richard F. Weyand

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-1-7321280-6-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Credits

  Cover Art: Aaron Griffin

  Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk

  Books by Richard F. Weyand:

  Books in the EMPIRE series:

  EMPIRE: Reformer

  EMPIRE: Usurper

  EMPIRE: Tyrant

  Books in the Childers Universe:

  Childers

  Childers: Absurd Proposals

  Galactic Mail: Revolution

  A Charter For The Commonwealth

  Campbell: The Problem With Bliss

  Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.

  Bloomington, Indiana, USA

  March 2019

  CONTENTS

  Accession

  The Imperial Council

  Saaret

  First Steps

  Releases

  Coming Up To Speed

  Funeral and Reconstruction

  Commander In Chief

  New Ideas

  Various Reactions, To Various Things

  An Existential Problem

  An Existential Solution

  A Chance Encounter

  An Improbable Assist

  Moving In

  Obvious

  Reassignment and Remembrance

  A New Navy?

  Preparations

  Withdrawal From Wollaston

  Rehearsals

  Coronation

  Cyber War

  Catalonia Chaos

  Confrontation and Conflagration

  Two Monuments

  Proposal

  Annexation

  Incursion

  Commitment

  Closure

  Accession

  Two rockets fired by the Imperial Police shuttle had impacted on the top floor of the Imperial Residence. General Daggert’s alert system had advised him in his VR that the Empress, her husband, and Cindy Dunham were dead, their last known location being the family apartment. Robert Dunham was unconscious, and his location was in one of the elevators on the top floor of the Imperial Residence. The building’s mechanical system told Daggert that elevator was inoperable. Fires were burning on the top floor of the Imperial Residence.

  The eighth floor of the palace where the Imperial Police shuttle had impacted was also on fire, fed by the fuel load of the shuttle. Mechanical damage on that floor from the impact of the armored shuttle spread deep into the building, but the floor above had not collapsed.

  Finally, there was a fire burning on the front lawn, the site of the crash of an Imperial Marine attack ship that had intercepted two of the missiles headed for the palace. The wrong two, as it turned out, but nonetheless.

  Daggert set his horror aside and sought comfort in activity. He directed a search and rescue team to the top floor of the Imperial Residence, and fire control teams to that floor, the eighth floor, and the front lawn. The automatic sprinkler system was already running on the top floor of the Imperial Residence and on the eighth floor, and the fires were being suppressed by the sprinklers.

  He gave the search and rescue team the location of Robert Dunham. Since the elevator was not operational, they couldn’t fetch it down. They would have to get onto the top floor of the Imperial Residence, work through the fires to the elevator, and then extract Dunham the same way, back through the fires. The team carried an extra fire suit and breathing gear with them.

  Daggert also put the Imperial Marines on alert, both at the Imperial Marine Training Center four hundred miles south of Imperial City, and aboard the Imperial Navy ships in orbit around Sintar.

  With all this under way, the horror caught up to Daggert, and he wept while he monitored and supervised the activity.

  The palace computer systems dispassionately noted the death of the Empress, and consulted their instructions conditional on such an occurrence. Messages were sent, files were transferred, notices were posted.

  When Dunham came to, he was disoriented. He was wet and hot. He looked around, and saw he was in an elevator car in the palace. The doors were damaged, shoved partially into the car, and there were fires burning beyond. The sprinkler system was on, which included one sprinkler in the roof of the car. The smoke build-up wasn’t too bad, because the palace had been penetrated and various windows blown out in the rocket explosions, which ventilated the top floor of the Imperial Residence.

  Memory flooded back. Of the alarm that came in as the four of them had been talking. Of him moving them out of the Empress’s apartment into the family apartment next door. Of the impact and explosion just as he had gotten into the elevator.

  He consulted his VR and saw the alerts. Dee, dead. Cindy, dead. Sean, dead. His sister, his wife, and his best friend, all gone in the attack on the palace, and himself alive by the barest fluke of timing and chance.

  Dunham curled up in the corner of the elevator car and wished himself dead as well.

  The search and rescue team paused at the fire door leading from the stairs onto the top floor of the Imperial Residence. They were all in fire suits with backpack breathing equipment. They took the temperature of the steel door to see if there was an active blaze against it on the other side. A hundred and ten degrees.

  “We’re good! Elevator is fifty feet to the right. Fire suppression first.”

  The point man opened the door and stepped out into the hall, holding the door open for the fire suppression team behind him. He looked down the hallway toward the Empress’s apartment. All the furnishings in the hallway were burning with various levels of intensity, increasing down the hallway toward the far end. The doors at that end of the hallway were all blown in except for those of the family apartment, which had been blown off their hinges and out into the hallway. The family apartment had an active large fire that occasionally licked out of the doorway. Some windows in the rooms on the other side of the hallway must have blown out as well, because the smoke was carrying across the hallway and out through the doors of those rooms.

  The fire suppression team made their way to the elevator, foaming the occasional chairs and tables that were burning. The rescue team followed, carrying a fire suit and breathing setup with them. The fire suppression team made their way a couple of dozen feet past the elevator and halted there, prepared to keep the escape path open.

  The rescue team got to the elevator, pulled crowbars from their belts and went to work on the staved-in elevator doors. Once they cleared the doors, they found one victim in the car, curled up on the floor.

  “Sir. We have a suit and breathing gear for you. Sir! Sir! You need to get this on.”

  Dunham lay unresponsive. Couldn’t they just let him die here?

  The insistent rescue team leader shook him.

  “Sir, come on. Let’s go. We have to get out of here, before something else lets go. We have to pull the team back.”

  Duty to the team. That got through to him. Dunham uncurled and allowed himself to be half-lifted off the floor. He fumbled his way into the fire suit with the help of two members of the rescue team. They sealed up the suit, then put his breathing mask on. They turned on the apparatus, then put the fire suit helmet over his head.

  “Can you breathe, Sir?”

  Dunham tested the mask. He nodded because he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “Good. All right. This way, Sir. We’re holding the path open.”

  They made their way out of the elevator into the hall, and he turned to look down the hall toward the family apartment. His apartment. The apartment where they had all died. Where flames continued to lick out of the do
orway into the hall.

  “Not that way. This way, Sir. We need to go out this way.”

  Dunham allowed himself to be led through the smoldering furnishings to the fire escape door. They went through the door and down the steps, on which dozens more firefighters waited.

  “All right. Survivors are clear. Let’s go.”

  Dunham and his rescue team paused on the first stairwell as the firefighting team went up the stairs and onto the top floor of the Imperial Residence to begin fighting the fire in earnest.

  And to recover whatever was left of the dead.

  Dunham walked down the stairs in a dream, landing after landing, until the team led him out onto one of the floors. Once safely out of the stairwell, they stripped him out of the fire suit and handed him off to medical personnel who were standing by. They then went back into the stairwell and headed back up to the fire.

  The medical people took him to their clinic, and he realized he was on one of the Imperial Guard floors several floors below the Imperial Residence floors. They checked him over, took his vital signs, and told him he was under observation but was fine for the time being. They gave him a strong analgesic for what they promised would otherwise be a headache for the ages. They then took him down the hall to General Daggert’s office.

  Daggert looked haggard and worn, his eyes were red, and he had been crying. He motioned Dunham to a chair.

  “Our immediate status is that the building is structurally sound, the fires are under control, and we have evacuated the upper four floors – the Imperial Residence and the Residence Wing – to the Imperial Research building. The office floors between us and the Residence Wing were unoccupied. Everyone we could save has been saved.”

  Dunham just nodded.

  “My instructions are to tell you that you have a priority message in VR, and to wait until you have finished viewing it.”

  Dunham checked his VR messages, and found a message with an Imperial priority. A message from Dee. He opened it in immersive VR, and found himself sitting in her office, facing her as she sat behind her desk, young and beautiful and alive, untouched by the explosion and fire.

  Oh, God, it hurt. He could reach out and touch her, but she wasn’t really there. He sat and faced her without hitting play, and just cried. He hadn’t known you could cry in VR.

  It was several minutes before he could hit play. It was even worse when she came alive in front of him.

  “Dear Bobby:

  “I am setting this recording to be delivered to you in the event of my death. I hope as I record this that you will never see it. That you are seeing it now, though, means I am gone. I am terribly sorry. I did what I did, acted the way I acted, for the good of the Empire. The Throne must prevail.

  “I cannot, yet, act against the Council. To do so would put the Throne itself in jeopardy, open it to charges that I acted capriciously, without evidence. The Throne is older than the Council, but the Imperial Council has existed for three hundred years. To move against it must not be done lightly, or without the clearest cause. For the Throne to act against the Council, the most clear evidence is required, the most dire circumstances must prevail.

  “That you are seeing this recording, though, means the most dire circumstances have in fact come about. The Imperial Council has struck against the Throne, and succeeded in killing the Empress. The survival of the Empire itself now hangs in the balance. In anticipation of these events, I have prepared several contingencies. General Daggert has all the details and the paperwork – the Imperial Decrees – I have signed today.

  “The one thing I wanted to tell you myself, through this recording anyway, is that I have named you the heir to the Throne. That is not traditional, but it is legal. You will be the first Emperor of Sintar. You are the one I most trust to take the actions required, to reset the Empire, to ensure the Throne prevails. For the Throne must prevail. Without it, the Empire and all its works will crumble and fade away.

  “As for me, know that I am happy as I go into this battle, come what may. I have already lived a far longer and far better life than I would have had without the Empire. Without the cure for Melsbach Syndrome the Empire invented and distributed. Without the education the Empire provided me through school, university, and law school. Without the opportunities the Empire provided me to make a difference with my life. If I die, I die happy and fulfilled. You must understand this. Do not mourn me, dear Bobby. Instead, celebrate the life I lived and the things I’ve done.

  “I also need to tell you that I have stayed in touch with Mom and Dad about how things are going here, and the dangers. My death will also have triggered my last message to them.

  “I want you to call them, right now, before you do anything else. I want you to ask Dad to tell you the story of Aunt Martha, and his role in that story. It’s important, and you need to hear it, now, before you take up the duties of the Throne.

  “I love you, Bobby. I grieve for how you must hurt right now. But know that I am happy with the life I’ve lived, and I am grateful for the part you played in it. You will always be my Bah-Bah. My hero.

  “Good luck now, and farewell.”

  Dunham dropped out of VR to find himself back in Daggert’s office. He checked the time in Craigs Notch, back on Travers World. It was about seven in the evening there.

  “I have a VR call I need to make right now. Can you wait for me, General Daggert?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  Dunham looked at him sharply, and Daggert simply nodded. Dunham sighed, and then dropped back into VR. He put the call in to both his mom and dad. While he waited for the connection, he wondered about Dee’s request. What was the story about Aunt Martha? Not really their aunt, his father’s spinster cousin had been quiet and withdrawn, a minor figure in Bobby’s and Dee’s childhood.

  The connection went through, and he found himself sitting on the couch in the front room of the tiny cabin in the woods outside Craigs Notch. There had been some upgrades over the years – the chairs and couch were recent, not from his childhood – but it was still home. His mom was in one armchair, looking pretty sad, and his dad was in the other, looking, as always, rather stoic.

  “Hi, Bobby,” his mom said.

  “Hi, Mom, Dad. Did you get a message from Dee?”

  “Yes. She’s dead, then?” his dad asked.

  “Yes. In a rocket attack on the palace. Sean, too, and Cindy. They’re all gone.”

  “Oh, Bobby!” his Mom said. “I’m so sorry. Her message didn’t say that. Of course, she couldn’t have known in advance what would happen.”

  “No. As it was, I was a chance survivor. There was an alarm, and I went to go see what it was. It missed me, but not by much.”

  His mom shook her head.

  “How terrible. Those bastards.”

  “Dee sent me a last message, too. She named me the heir to the throne. Emperor of Sintar.”

  “Isn’t it always an Empress?” his dad asked.

  “So far. So I’ll be the first Emperor of Sintar.”

  “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “Dee told me something else, Dad. She said I should ask you to tell me the story of Aunt Martha, and your role in it. She said it was important.”

  His father looked across at his mother with an accusing eye.

  “Somebody’s been talking out of school.”

  “Yes, dear. I told Dee. I thought it was something she should know about, the way things were going there.”

  “What’s it about? Aunt Martha is such a shy, withdrawn type.”

  His father took a deep breath, released it.

  “Yes, well, she wasn’t always that way. She was quite the party girl in her teens.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh, yes. And she liked the boys. A lot. Why, she probably bestowed her favors on a quarter of the boys her age. Maybe more.”

  Dunham’s head swam. Aunt Martha?

  “Well, one day a couple of the MacGruder boys, from over on the ne
xt ridge, tried to get friendly with her as well, and she said no. So they took what she wouldn’t give ‘em.”

  “They raped her?”

  “Yup. Took turns holding her down and raping her. Multiple times. When she tried to fight back, they hit her. It really messed her up. She thought her party behavior musta been sorta like an invitation to ‘em, and she got pretty withdrawn. She never really recovered. It’s pretty sad. She could have had a nice life, family and all, but she never did look at men the same way after.”

  “Where do you come into this?”

  “Well, the sheriff, he didn’t do anything about it. She was such a party girl, you know. What’s two more guys? He didn’t think he could get a conviction, so he just let it go. I always figured just because you said yes a lot, didn’t mean you couldn’t say no when you wanted to, but the sheriff wouldn’t do anything. And Martha’s siblings were all girls. No boys in her family. But she was my first cousin, so there was some things needed doing, and I did them.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I killed them.”

  “You killed them?”

  “Yeah. I went on over the ridge with the rifle, and I was waitin’ in the brush outside their place. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but when I seen them boys come out all laughin’ and havin’ a good time, and I remembered what they did to Martha and how it left her, well, I didn’t have any trouble at all. I took the shot, twice, and I killed them both.”

  Dunham couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, the sheriff wouldn’t do nothin’ about me either. What jury in Craigs Notch would convict me for killin’ the two bastards raped and beat my first cousin?”

  “Did it end there?”

  “No, those boys had an older brother, and he and their Pa come lookin’ for me. I figured they might get up to somethin’, and I was waitin’ for ‘em. They come after me with rifles, but I was in the house and they was out in the yard, and I killed both o’ them, too.”