EMPIRE: Succession

by Richard F. Weyand

  “He was, Governor Goulet. His ship is now listed by the Imperial Navy as ‘Delayed, Cause Unknown.’”

  “Oh, heavens. Well, I do hope he and everyone else aboard are OK, Mr. Hayes. Thank you for the information.”

  “No problem, Governor Goulet. I’ll keep you updated.”

  “I would appreciate that, Mr. Hayes.”

  Bernd Stauss put in a meeting request to the address he got from his grandfather Otto’s recording.

  On Verano, Turley told Gulliver in VR, “We have a meeting request on the Stauss address.”

  “Take the meeting,” Gulliver said. “Let me camp on in management mode.”

  Turley accepted the meeting, and selected an avatar. She picked the Gerry Conner avatar as one that Dieter Stauss would likely be familiar with.

  When the caller arrived in the simulation, though, it wasn’t Dieter Stauss. A quick image search on Stauss turned up the match. Bernd Stauss, Dieter’s son.

  “Hello, Mr. Stauss. I’m Gerry Conner,” Turley said in the masculine voice of the avatar.

  “Hello, Mr. Conner. My father passed on to me this address.”

  “Has your father passed away, Mr. Stauss?”

  “No, Mr. Conner, but he’s stepped down from most business activities. He is no longer in a position to support your activities. But I am, and I am proud and happy to do that.”

  “Very well, Mr. Stauss. Well, it’s good to meet you.”

  “And I you, even though it is just through this avatar.”

  “As must be.”

  “Of course. No question.”

  “And the purpose of today’s call is...?”

  “My father and I have been watching the confusion in the capital, and we wondered if there was any role for us in helping with this mess.”

  “Actually, Mr. Stauss, there is. I was going to need to call you soon in any case. First, though, I must caution you that you will sometimes receive very confidential information, which it would be damaging to the Empire and the Throne to have revealed. Are you clear on this point?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Conner. My grandfather and father were both proud to serve the Throne. It would be a stain on the family’s honor were I to betray any confidence.”

  “Very well, then, Mr. Stauss. We will have need shortly of supporting an Imperial Navy attack ship carrier at a remote site. It must be supplied with the food and reaction mass supplies required by such a vessel. The cover story is that Stauss Interstellar is running a very secret prospecting survey in an uninhabited solar system, using a surplus Imperial Navy carrier because it can support so many parasites.”

  “I understand, Mr. Conner. Cover a secret with a secret.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Stauss. Now, what you can do is get those supplies ready, for deployment in two months. I will give you the coordinates and the plan then. QE radio on the freighter must be shut off, the crew sworn to secrecy, your most reliable captain, all that sort of thing.”

  “Understood, Mr. Conner. Where will those supplies be needed?”

  “You will stage them out of Alexa, Mr. Stauss.”

  “Alexa. Two months. Got it. We’ll be ready, Mr. Conner.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stauss.”

  Turley cut the channel, and dropped into the living room of the guest house. Gulliver dropped out, too.

  “Well, that was handy. We didn’t even have to call them. They called us.”

  “Yes. Dieter Stauss has never been stupid. He didn’t pick this time to bring Bernd into the loop by accident.”

  Seven days after Illustrious failed to arrive on schedule, Hayes called Goulet.

  “Hello, Mr. Hayes.”

  “Hello, Governor Goulet. I told you I would keep you updated on the status of General Parnell’s ship.”

  “Yes?”

  “The Imperial Navy has just updated its status to ‘Missing, Presumed Lost.’”

  “Oh my God. Now what do we do, Mr. Hayes?”

  “That, Governor Goulet, is a damn good question.”

  Goulet’s plans for Parnell’s return had all come crashing down. He had been doing this planning on his own, and not coordinating or even communicating with Hawking, Sounder, or any other sector governor at all. He had ignored or rejected a couple of hundred meeting requests by this point. The matter needed to be resolved here, in Imperial City. That much was clear.

  With no idea of what to do now, he put in a meeting request to Amanda Peters. She accepted his request, but for a VR meeting, and she included a channel. When he logged into the channel, he found himself seated in an armchair, in a cozy room, with a cheery fire burning in a stone fireplace to his left. Peters sat across from him.

  “Hello, Governor Goulet.”

  “Hello, Ms. Peters. Let me say first that I am terribly sorry for this latest tragedy. I imagine that you and General Parnell had become friends over the years. You spoke so highly of him, I know it is a terrible loss.”

  “That’s very kind, Governor Goulet.”

  Goulet waved it aside.

  “Now, however, we are left with a different situation. A worse one, in some respects.”

  “How so, Governor Goulet? The path is clear for you now. There is no alternate, no named successor.”

  “Yes. And also no path for reconciliation. I had hoped to have General Parnell be my successor. Perhaps first taking the Co-Consul’s spot when Mr. Hayes wishes to retire, then taking the Throne on my retirement or death. There would be some sort of reconciliation there, you see. I, as the older, would go first, and, given General Parnell’s much younger age, he would have his time on the Throne as well. In the meantime, we would have the benefit of both his experience and mine. By the time he took the Throne, he would know all I could teach him, as well as what he learned from your husband.”

  Peters just looked at Goulet, raising one eyebrow just a bit.

  “You see,” he said, “I had even practiced my arguments.”

  Goulet shrugged and continued.

  “I really am trying to find a way out of this mess we’re all in, a mess that some of the sector governors have created.”

  “And now it seems we have little choice,” Peters said.

  “Am I really that bad a candidate?”

  “Yes,” Peters said flatly. “I would rather see Mr. Hayes as Emperor and you as Co-Consul, than the other way around. But that won’t fly, either.”

  “Because of the sector governors.”

  “Yes. And the press. With General Parnell gone, everyone will say, ‘Oh, well it’s settled then.’ The Imperial Palace can’t now put forward a replacement candidate. So I guess you’re going to be Emperor, whether you can do the job or not.”

  “And you don’t think I can.”

  “No, but I could be wrong. I suppose we’ll just have to see.”

  “My intention is to prove you wrong.”

  “I wish you luck. You’re going to need it.”

  PRESS RELEASE

  – For Immediate Release –

  IMPERIAL PALACE – With the apparent loss of the Imperial Heir, Imperial Guard Brigadier General Daniel Parnell, Provence Sector Governor Jerome Goulet has become Emperor. He will rule as the Emperor Nerva.

  The loss of the HMS Illustrious was big news everywhere in the Empire, but especially on Garland, from where it departed.

  Christine Whittier Parnell, was shaking with fear as she opened ‘Romeo & Juliet’ in VR, and flipped again to Act V, Scene II. There could only be one reason for him to have pointed her at this scene before he left. The loss of the Illustrious was part of some ruse, to get him out of a bad situation. That’s the only thing that made sense.

  She clung to that hope through the weeks that followed.

  Doing It Wrong

  The Roman Emperor Nerva was the first of the Five Good Emperors, a senator elected to the purple by the Roman Senate when the last of the Flavian line, Domitian, was assassinated. A child of privilege from a prominent noble family, Nerva was sixty-three at the time of hi
s accession to the throne. He had no military experience, but was an experienced administrator and politician, and well liked by all the various factions in the Senate. Despite his age and declining health, he accepted the invitation to become Emperor to avoid a likely civil war.

  Provence Sector Governor Jerome Goulet saw parallels in his situation to that of Nerva. From a prominent family within Provence Sector, and without military experience, Goulet was an experienced administrator and politician. He was well liked by all the various factions among the sector governors, and was selected for the Throne by a clear majority of them. Though he had had no pretensions of being Emperor, he had to accept the Throne to avoid the possibility of civil war.

  While in Roman history Nerva preceded Trajan, the history of the Galactic Empire would have them the other way around.

  The symbolism of the choice was not lost on Co-Consul Sanford Hayes. About a week into Goulet’s reign, he and his wife Dominica discussed recent events, in their private living room in the Co-Consul’s apartment on the top floor of the Imperial Palace.

  “How will all this affect us?” Dominica asked.

  “That’s unclear. I offered my resignation, of course. He rejected it, saying now was not the time to give up my experience and counsel. So that’s hopeful, at least.”

  “But you don’t sound optimistic.”

  “I’m not,” Hayes said. “He’s a strange mixture of aloof and informal compared to Bobby. Or maybe Bobby was the strange combination, and Goulet’s more of a reversion to type. I don’t know.”

  “In what way?”

  “For instance, our Sunday brunches with the Emperor are gone. So is being on a first-name basis – with anyone – on the top floor of the Palace. Or anywhere else, for that matter. He is always His Majesty, everywhere. So that sounds aloof and formal compared to Bobby, right?”

  “Right,” Dominica said. “No question.”

  “Fine. But he is scheduling a series of meetings with senior Imperial staff. Wanting to sit down with them, perhaps a few dozen at a time, and ‘collect input’ from the staff.”

  “That doesn’t sound very Imperial.”

  “It’s not,” Hayes said. “Staff is a bit bewildered by it. ‘Does he want us to tell him how to be Emperor? Isn’t he supposed to tell us what he wants?’ That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, my. I can’t see Bobby ever doing that.”

  “No, I can’t either. Bobby had a vision. He had a protective and nurturing personality, probably from his childhood, when his sister needed him. And Amanda had a gardener’s perspective. Promote growth, do this little thing here, and this little thing there, to keep the garden healthy and growing. Both of the preceding Empresses were anti-corruption campaigners. That drove Bobby’s reign as well. He didn’t need ‘input.’ He already knew the answers. He was driving his own agenda from day one.”

  Dominica just shook her head.

  “That’s not all,” Hayes said. “He wants to sit down with the sector governors as well. To get their input, he says.”

  “Oh my God. That’s the last thing he should do. It will embolden them.”

  “Yes, and they’re bold enough now. This attempt to control the succession, using the threat to the Empire itself as a cudgel, is beyond the pale, and Goulet should know that. Instead of coming down on Hawking and Sounder hard, he’s playing into their hands.

  “Not only that, he wants to start holding press conferences. I don’t think he understands that the press in the capital is much less likely to be all chummy than the press in his sector, on his home planet. I’ve talked him out of that for now, until he has an agenda to talk about.”

  Dominica sat silent, contemplating a dark future. She looked up.

  “What about Amanda?”

  “He’s leaving her alone. ‘I’m not worried about a little old lady,’ he said.”

  Dominica laughed.

  “There’s his first big mistake right there,” she said. “Does he not know, official position or not, title or not, if she told the staff to tar and feather him and run him out the door on a rail, they would do just that?”

  “Apparently not. Of course, she wouldn’t do that. She’s worried about civil war, which is very common in empires at times of transition. For the time being, anyway, he’s just going to let her be.”

  “He’s sharing his bed with a cobra, and he doesn’t even know it.”

  “There’s a lot he doesn’t know,” Hayes said. “What’s worse is he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know it.”

  Goulet, for his part, thought he was doing rather well. He had retained the Co-Consul, the Personal Secretary, and the Personal Counsel – the three top staff members – for continuity purposes. That right there was a good start.

  The next steps when taking a new position were obvious to him. Identify the inputs and the outputs of the position, and gather input from stakeholders. He had told Hayes to set up meetings with senior staff in which he could do that, while he would handle setting up such meetings with the sector governors himself.

  There was an issue with the military. He was surprised to find that they weren’t under the Co-Consul at all. The Imperial Navy, Imperial Marines, Imperial Guard, and the Imperial Police reported directly to the Emperor. There should be at least one layer in between, Goulet realized. Consolidate the armed forces under a single command.

  That paled compared to what he saw in administration. At the top, there were six groups: Budgets, Projects, Investigations, Troubleshooting, Consulting, and Oversight. All these reported directly to the Emperor, but were usually administered by the Co-Consul.

  Below them, there were no less than four thousand individual departments, with no management structure above them at all. Nominally they all reported directly to the Emperor, but in fact ran themselves, with input and consultation from the six top-level groups. How the hell was that supposed to work?

  Finally, there were the seventy-nine sector governors, all of whom reported directly to the Emperor. Perhaps there should be some structure there, some sort of regional setup, into perhaps five or six regions.

  Goulet kept adding to his org chart of the Empire-as-he-found-it, and found it was a very flat organization at the top. When he counted up all the Emperor’s direct reports – the sector governors, the department heads, the six top-level groups, the armed forces, the dozen or so senior staff positions – Goulet came up with nearly forty-five hundred direct reports for the Emperor.

  This violated every management precept he’d ever learned. Of course, Robert Dunham had been no management expert. Had no management training at all, as a matter of fact. No wonder it was such a mishmash. Goulet knew that no one could properly manage more than about fifteen direct reports. In fact, it only took nine at each of three intermediate levels to get up over forty-five hundred on the fourth level.

  Goulet started working on intermediate layers of management, aiming at no more than ten reports for himself, and eight in each of the next two layers.

  Goulet brought the matter up in his next meeting with the Co-Consul.

  “Mr. Hayes, I don’t understand how this setup can even work. It’s completely outside normal management practices.”

  “And yet it has worked for over sixty years, Sire.”

  “That’s what’s so surprising. I’ve been trying to come up with some way of organizing all this. getting some sort of normal management structure in place. This clearly wasn’t designed by anyone with any management experience.”

  “Actually, Sire, if you look into the history of it, I believe you’re mistaken.”

  “Explain, Mr. Hayes.”

  “Yes, Sire. The Sintaran Empire at the time of Trajan’s accession to the Throne was shot through with corruption in its upper management levels. In fighting the Imperial Council in the Council Revolt, however, Trajan killed all the high-level administrators. Thousands of them. They were where most of the corruption lay. Geoffrey Saaret, the Co-Consul, asked the new ideas group to come up with a n
ew management structure that would keep corruption under control.”

  “The new ideas group? They’re under the Consulting organization, is that right?”

  “Yes, Sire. The point, though, is that the current organization came out of the new ideas group, was modified by the business ideas group, and further worked over by the new ideas review group. It was thoroughly vetted.”

  “And Trajan made it work for over sixty years.”

  “Yes, Sire. In fact, it’s been pretty much self-managing. If someone sees something awry, they take it to Oversight, who may involve Investigations. If someone is having problems, they may take it to Troubleshooting, or bring in Consulting to work out new processes. The structure freed up the Emperor to worry about bigger issues.”

  “Bigger issues than administering the Empire, Mr. Hayes?”

  “Yes, Sire. Things like the balance between the sector governors and the Throne. Making sure the economic benefits of the Empire reach to all the planets, not just the capitals and business centers. Making sure justice is administered fairly throughout the Empire. These are big and ongoing projects, and were the Emperor’s own.”

  “And the administration just takes care of itself, Mr. Hayes? That seems farfetched.”

  “Nevertheless, Sire, that’s how it’s worked for over sixty years now.”

  “So you don’t think I should change anything, Mr. Hayes?”

  “Not on appearances alone, Sire. In that context, I might bring up a quote from a fellow back in the twentieth century, on Earth. Chesterton, I believe his name was. Ah, yes. Here it is, Sire.”

  Hayes pushed Goulet a file. It was a quote from a book, with the book itself appended. Goulet read the quote in VR:

  In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."