The Last Emperox

by John Scalzi

  “I don’t know that there are worse problems than trying to figure out how to save billions of people from dying,” Grayland suggested to Rachela.

  “That’s not your biggest problem,” Rachela said.

  “Billions of people are somehow not my biggest problem?”

  Rachela shook her head. “You’ve been reliably told that you’ll be out of power or dead within the next few months. That’s your biggest problem. Or at the very least, the one in front of you right now. If you want to save those billions of people, you’re going to have to save yourself first.”

  Chapter 7

  Nadashe Nohamapetan couldn’t help but notice that no one was having any of the refreshments.

  This was, on one hand, entirely fair. By now Nadashe’s reputation preceded her. She’d killed her own brother, attempted to assassinate the sitting emperox twice, and certainly anyone at her little soiree was by now well aware of the fate that had befallen Deran Wu. Nadashe felt the tiniest bit of pride that an entire buffet of comestibles lay unmolested. It meant people—these people, who comprised among them that part of the Interdependent elite of Hub not currently in jail for treason—had a healthy respect of what she could do to them with whatever resources she had available to her, right down to a single muffin or cup of coffee.

  On the other hand, it was also ridiculous of them. She hadn’t laid on the table of food and drinks in the first place. Proster Wu, as the actual host of the meeting, had done so. He hadn’t consulted with her on the menu. They should trust Proster, at least.

  Moreover and more importantly, Nadashe needed these people. They represented the means by which her plans and causes might come to fruition. Because of that, she wasn’t going to poison them (here, now).

  Complementarily, although they might not be willing to admit it to themselves, they needed her just as much as she needed them. Deep down they knew it, which is why they were here, (not) breaking bread with a murdering insurrectionist. All she needed to do now was to convince them of a thing they already knew.

  She could do that.

  And if she couldn’t do that through appealing to their self-interest, she had some threats to deploy.

  If that didn’t work, well. There was always tea. Later.

  Proster Wu, who had been mingling with his various guests, came over to Nadashe. “We’re ready. Everyone who is going to be here is here.”

  “There are families you invited who aren’t here?” Nadashe asked.

  “A few.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “It’s manageable.”

  “You’re telling me there are people who know what we’re doing here, who aren’t now implicated in it. Explain to me how that’s manageable.”

  “It’s manageable because I say it is.” Proster smiled. “The families who aren’t here are … sympathetic to your aims. They just want to see which way the wind blows before they commit.”

  Nadashe snorted at this. “In other words, they’re cowards.”

  “They might say they’re hedging sensibly,” Proster suggested. “And in the event that anyone, here or not here, thinks of talking about this meeting, there is the fact that unlike you, they actually fear the wrath of the Wus. They know crossing us means no new ships, no new weapons, and that their security forces may or may not have their best interests at heart from here on out. They’ll stay quiet.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Proster nodded and clapped his hands together and told his guests to take their seats. In a moment, roughly three dozen people, each representing a noble family and guild house, were seated in folding chairs.

  Nadashe noted each as they sat, filing away the presence of each for later. Most of the people in the room she knew, either from social engagements in happier times or because she’d sat across from them in a negotiating session. At least one of them she’d had sex with. It hadn’t been great sex.

  The rest she knew from reputation. As with any civilization, the closer you got to the top, the number of people who mattered shrank significantly. At the level Nadashe existed on, the Interdependency had the population of a small town.

  Nadashe waited until they were all quiet and looking at her. Then she nodded, went to the buffet, and fixed herself a cup of tea. There was a small murmur at this. Then she returned to the front of the assembly.

  “First of all, thank all of you for coming to this.” She motioned upward, to encompass the room, which was in fact the cargo area of a space ship under construction. The pretense of the meeting was that Proster, as the new and allegedly temporary executive director of the board of the House of Wu, was giving the attendees a tour of the house’s latest tenner design in the hope of securing sales. “I understand this is not the most luxurious of all possible meeting spaces.” She sipped her tea. “I also understand that some of you might be … apprehensive about cargo holds where I am concerned.”

  This got a couple of nervous laughs, a few surprised coughs, and a whole lot of muttering. Nadashe noted which of her guests suddenly turned to someone else with widened eyes, as if to say, Did she just joke about murdering her own brother?

  “And yes, I did just make that joke,” Nadashe said, answering that unasked question. “Let’s not pretend that you don’t know my past sins, or that I’m not aware that you know about them. Time is short and we don’t have the luxury of polite whispers. I am a murderer, a would-be assassin, and a traitor to the emperox. And with your help, I will be all these things again.”

  Louder murmurings this time, and someone stood up, as if to leave.

  “Sit down, Gaiden Aiello,” Nadashe said, more loudly than she had been speaking before. Gaiden Aiello froze like a small ungulate that realized it had been marked by a lioness. “You’re already here. It’s too late to say you didn’t know why you came. Sit. Down.”

  Gaiden Aiello looked around, saw no one else getting up out of their seats, and sat back down, nervous.

  “Let me repeat what I just said,” Nadashe continued. “Murderer. Would-be assassin. Traitor to the emperox. To the emperox. Not to the empire. Not to the Interdependency. And not to the noble houses and guilds that have built it and shaped it into what it is today.”

  “Get to your point, Nadashe,” said Leinus Hristo, of the House of Hristo. “I don’t care about your rationalizations. None of us do. Just tell us what we’re already colluding for.”

  “I was just about to get there,” Nadashe said. She took another sip of her tea and then set it down. “The houses and the guilds built the Interdependency. Now Grayland says she wants to save the Interdependency. What she means by that is that she wants to save its people. Its people.”

  “And?” said Hristo.

  “How does she save its people? They won’t survive on man-made habitats for long after the collapse of the Flow. There’s only one place they can go.”

  “To End,” someone said.

  “To End,” Nadashe agreed. “And how will they get there? She needs to transport them. And to that end she will use every ship she can. Your ships, which you rely on to support the goals of your houses. She’ll commandeer them if she has to.”

  “And it won’t work anyway,” Proster Wu said, from his seat at the front. “The House of Wu obviously has an inventory of every Flow space–capable ship currently under operation. There aren’t nearly enough of them for a rescue operation of any size. And the ones that exist are currently spread throughout the Interdependency. They are impossible to coordinate in the required time frame.”

  “Not to mention every ship sent to End stays there,” Nadashe said. “The Flow stream from End to Hub has already collapsed.”

  “Not to mention that your brother Ghreni has already taken control of End’s Flow shoals,” said Drusin Wolfe, who sat at the back of the grouping. “Speaking of coups. We all know what the Nohamapetans are trying to do on End. I see you trying to pa
lm that card, Nadashe.”

  “I’m not trying to palm that card, Drusin,” Nadashe countered. “I just hadn’t put it down on the table yet. But you’re correct. By this time my brother and the Prophecies of Rachela will have taken control of both the planet and the Flow shoals entering into End space. So, even if Grayland takes all of your ships and stuffs them full of refugees and sends them to End, without specific clearance from me, they will be destroyed within minutes of arrival.”

  This got more grumbling. “You said you were a murderer,” Drusin said. “You didn’t say anything about genocide.”

  “Please, Drusin. Think it through. The planet can’t support as many people as Grayland will want to throw at it anyway. Letting them all through threatens both the people who already live on End … and the people who will survive the collapse of the Interdependency.” Nadashe nodded to Proster. “Your turn.”

  Proster nodded and stood, turning to face the group. “Before his demise, Deran Wu proposed to the Wu board of directors a plan that allows for the commercial, industrial and cultural heart of the Interdependency”—he motioned to the assembled group to make it clear he was talking about them—“to survive the collapse of the Flow with its wealth, capital and values largely intact. It’s a multitiered plan that includes security control and enhancement to keep populations in line even as the Flow collapses, and new, advanced, Flow space–capable ships for the evacuation and preservation of what is actually important here: the noble houses of the Interdependency.”

  “So, just to be clear on this, the plan is riot control for the rabble and passage to End for all of us,” Drusin Wolfe said, motioning to encompass the room.

  “That’s an inelegant way of putting it,” Proster said.

  “I thought we weren’t being polite anymore, Proster.”

  “Yes,” Nadashe said, interrupting. She looked around. “Not everyone can be saved. They just can’t. It’s not logistically or physically possible. Even Grayland knows this, probably, no matter how she feels she has to go through the motions to try to save everyone, destroying the noble houses and the guilds in the process. She has to pretend. We don’t. We can save ourselves. And in saving ourselves, we save what matters of the Interdependency.”

  “At a healthy profit margin for the Houses of Wu and Nohamapetan.”

  “You will be coming to us for ships and security sooner or later anyway,” Proster said to Drusin Wolfe. “This way, at least, you and everyone else in this room will be at the head of the line.”

  “And what about the House of Nohamapetan?” Drusin said, turning his attention back to Nadashe. “Just how much are you planning to extort from each of us so we don’t get vaporized by your brother the instant we show up in End space?”

  “I regret to say that at the moment I have very little to do with the House of Nohamapetan,” Nadashe said.

  “I’m aware of that, actually. My senior trade negotiator just came up against the house’s current administrator.”

  “Kiva Lagos.”

  “You know her?”

  Nadashe pressed her lips thin. “I do.”

  “She’s not my favorite person,” Drusin said. “And I don’t think you intend to let her stay where she is for any longer than you have to. So I ask again: How much is the House of Nohamapetan planning to extort from each of us?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  It was Drusin’s turn to smile thinly. “I am skeptical. No offense.”

  “None taken.” Nadashe moved her attention away from Drusin Wolfe and toward the entire group. “Here is the cost for each house here to enter End space: nothing. I will give you passage for your ships—all of them, as many as you see fit to send. You will be given an encrypted, verifiable code that establishes I have permitted you into End space. You get that because you’re in the room, right now. Others who join into our pact may get otherwise reduced rates, depending on circumstances. But only you here, now, get this free passage from me.”

  “If I have learned anything about the Nohamapetans, it’s that nothing you do comes for free,” Drusin said.

  “The passage to End is free, Drusin. But I do have expectations.”

  “Which are?”

  “Before I get to that, let me be absolutely clear what the plan here is,” Nadashe said. “In just over four months, the deadline for parliament to come up with a plan to save the Interdependency from the collapse of the Flow will pass without parliament being able to ratify anything. When that happens—and it will happen—Grayland will almost certainly commandeer all of your ships, and whatever else she requires, in a futile attempt to save as many of her subjects as she can. When she does that, she dooms all of us. It’s as simple as that.

  “My plan is to stop her. I will depose her, and because she is too dangerous at this point to keep alive, I will have her killed. Then we install a regime that is friendly to the noble houses and the guilds, and which understands what we in this room already know: We can’t save everyone, so we save what’s important. Us.”

  Nadashe looked around to see if anyone had objections. No one did. “So, then, here are my expectations.

  “First, I expect your money. Lots of it. I will be handling the logistics of this coup, and unfortunately at the moment I can’t pay for it out of petty cash. I’ll be taking some from each of you before you leave. Everyone here pays in.

  “Second, I expect your cooperation. This will not be the baroque, grandstanding coup my mother and Jasin Wu attempted. This one will get messy, and I will need each of you to do your part. You will be graded on participation.

  “Third, I expect each of you to recruit. Those of you in this room are not enough. I know some of you will want to keep this small, and others of you don’t want to be seen persuading someone else to join a coup. But each of you knows what’s at stake here. If Grayland has her way, we all die.

  “Fourth, when the coup happens, I expect you to recognize and legitimize the new regime. Without your public allegiance and consent, the coup will dissolve into chaos almost instantly. This needs to happen fast enough that we compel the allegiance of those houses that are not part of the coup, and crush any house that stands out against it.” Nadashe pointed to Proster. “Obviously the House of Wu will stand with us. That will be a huge incentive for every other house to get in line.”

  Drusin Wolfe looked annoyed. “Of course the House of Wu will stand with the coup. Someone in it, probably Proster here, will be the next emperox.”

  Nadashe looked over at Proster. He nodded at her, a final confirmation.

  Nadashe looked back to the group. “No,” she said. “And this will be my final expectation from each of you. Your allegiance not just to the new regime, but to me. I will be the new emperox. The last emperox of the Interdependency.”

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter 8

  While the elite of the Interdependency were making their plans to abandon the common people to their fate, the common people of the Interdependency were beginning to come to grips with what, exactly, that fate actually was.

  It should be noted that the common people of the Interdependency were not fools. They were arguably the most educated and materially comfortable common people ever to live, in any human civilization, going back to when the first human decided hoofing themselves across the African landscape was a pain in the ass and decided to stay in one place instead.

  The population of the Interdependency were not fools largely for two reasons. The first was that the vast majority of the Interdependency’s billions of souls lived their lives either in cities hollowed out from the ground of otherwise uninhabitable planets, or inside habitats floating in space. In either of these environments, a large population of the uneducated and feral would be a clear and present safety issue for everyone else.

  The second reason was that the ruling class of the Interdependency, favoring financial and social stability over having the lumpenproletariat trying to rip
their heads from their necks at every opportunity, opted to have the Interdependency’s baseline standard of living one where no one starved, or was without shelter, or died of easily preventable diseases or went bankrupt if they had a heart attack or lost a job, or both.

  For these reasons, the Interdependency held no “poor” or “rabble” in ways that elites of previous civilizations would understand the term. This was great, if your goal was keeping a large population of humans, spread across trillions of kilometers of physical space, reasonably content on a day-to-day basis. It was less great if your goal was to, say, leave these billions completely in the dark about the encroaching end of civilization that was likely to result in slow famine and death for each of them if nothing was done.

  They knew. They knew because the scientists analyzing the data that Jamies and Marce Claremont, and Hatide Roynold, had collected had come largely from the middle and working classes of the Interdependency, and they shared information and data. They knew because the crews of the ships that plied the Flow, who had pledged themselves to the guilds that the noble families controlled, were also from the middle and working classes. They knew because the journalists of the Interdependency were from these classes as well. And they knew because the Emperox Grayland II, who had lived her early life as the child of an academic, had in her wisdom or naivete (or both) decided to let the truth about the imminent collapse of the Flow go out to the public.

  They knew, and knew reasonably early in the grand scheme of things.

  But what they did do with that information?

  A large number of people looked at when their particular system would be entirely cut off from the rest of the Interdependency, decided that it was enough time in the future that someone would probably figure out what to do, and then went back to their daily lives, only mildly more apprehensive than before. The more ambitious planned protests and conferences and composed strongly worded missives to their local, system and Interdependency ministers of parliament, saying in no uncertain terms that something should be done, that that’s what they were elected for. Then they, too, mostly went back to their lives, under the impression that they, at least, had done something.