“I tell you it is more than suspicion; it is fact! Sad and sorry truth, of the foulest and most bitter taste, but one which cannot be denied! This is the handiwork of the man who would claim to lead you, steer you, guide and protect you. The man who calls himself Steward and pretends at being your king, but is not more than a glorified and selfish lord, a corrupt bureaucrat, a gilded death merchant.
“And I must tell you his unlawful execution and sponsored assassination of your beloved leaders did not stop at fourteen, as another twenty-seven, and possibly more of your representatives have vanished without a trace. You have not heard it in your news, which is forced to keep it quiet. You have not heard it from their families, which are bullied or paid to help cover it up, or who also wind up mysteriously missing, but they are gone! If you find yourself with pangs of doubt…that is understandable. To doubt such foul treachery is the natural response, when the crime is an extreme and malicious attack against justice itself, and against the Empire, and even against us personally as her citizens. And yet doubting a thing cannot make it untrue. Ask yourselves, when have you last seen or heard from Representatives Abasi or Van Zyl? To name only two. Search for them. If they live, then they can be made to appear and discount my claims. But if they do not appear…you must expect the worst.
“My beloved citizens, I remind you once more there is hope. That still in this dark hour, in the presence of such foul treachery at even the highest levels, we can persevere and prevail. We have but to unite. In unity there is strength, under the crown there is leadership and common purpose, and together, standing as one, we are more than a match for our enemies, both at home and abroad. There is still hope because there is still time. The vultures, the Rotham fleets, are not yet at our door. But we must act swiftly to join together or there will soon come a day when there is not hope because time will have run out. Rally to me, my honorable countrymen, and I promise never to let such a fate befall us.
“As I end this broadcast, I am sending a list of all twenty-seven of the representatives who have gone missing, the ones you cannot find out about in your news. Search for them; find them if you can. But know that if they cannot be produced, if they are never available for new comment or interview and no one has seen them, then you may trust my word and your good instincts they have been taken by Caerwyn Martel. Taken and probably killed. If not killed, then imprisoned. Understand too, this list of twenty-seven is merely a list of those whom we know to have disappeared. The blackguard may have, and probably has, seized several more. I urge you to be vigilant and to demand the truth.
“As ever, I remain your queen and stalwart defender in all things.”
***
As the broadcast ended, Caerwyn’s staff members were scurrying to prepare to transmit a broadcast of their own at his command. Although the queen’s words about him had been scathing, and her claim he’d been abducting and killing representatives, ones who’d proven damned filthy traitors, had been right on the money, her accusations had lacked evidence. She’d made claims, but without proof, her words, no matter how biting, were without teeth. Caerwyn knew he need only point that out, then distract the people with something else, some new scandal to get them in a tizzy of confusion and fear to cast fresh new doubts upon the value of the words of their would-be queen, the woman who promised a Rotham invasion and yet none had appeared. As it happened, Caerwyn knew just the thing to use against the rebel queen, and in fact he’d been planning such a move for quite some time, waiting only for her to open her big fat mouth once again so he could slam it shut before all of the Empire.
“Ready to broadcast in two,” said the man directing the people with cameras.
Caerwyn nodded. Normally, he preferred more respect from those working for him, in fact he demanded it, and to forget his titles and honorifics when addressing him was tantamount to forgetting his station as Steward and Guardian of the Empire, and such an omission required reprimand, even punishment. But in the rush and bustle of lights, cameras, make-up, staging, and so on which went into sending out a rush broadcast before all of the Empire, Caerwyn elected to forgo the formality in favor of making sure everyone did their jobs right and made him look and sound better than the queen. She was merely a weak woman, hardly five and a half feet tall, yet somehow her own staff managed to present her as this empowered, commanding force that seemed like some kind of titanium goddess booming her orders and will across the vast stretches of the Empire with the ease of divine power.
If they can make a weak, pathetic woman seem like a queen, even a goddess, thought Caerwyn, then I must have them see me as neither a mere king, nor a mere god, but a king among gods. If she is titanium, then I shall be one of those high-entropy alloys of several metals, virtually combining all of their powers to shatter the likes of titanium and all the rest that stand against me.
Caerwyn took his place standing before the Imperial throne, a symbol he and his producers liked to use because it invoked the feelings of power and legitimacy he wanted to implant into the fickle-minded public, whose weaknesses of thought required him to steer them, forcefully if necessary, back onto course, time and again.
He stood tall and the cameras were framed to subtly remind the Empire he was taller than the rebel queen. His clothes, his hair, the setting, everything was designed to empower him and remind the Empire that the rebel queen was really nothing more than an exiled princess with both an overwhelming sense of entitlement and a messiah complex.
The man bossing the cameras gave his last instructions, then looked to Caerwyn and counted down with his fingers. When he got to one, he pointed and Caerwyn knew he was live.
“I reach out to you, my children, from the true seat of our Empire, Capital World, to briefly and candidly address the falsehoods you have just witnessed. The rebel queen, who continues her campaign of insurgence and military ambition to undermine the true government of the Empire, is flat-out lying to you when she claims her warmongering is done in the interests of peace and unification. I have said before, and shall say again, the fastest path to peace and unification is for rebels and traitors to lay down their arms, disband their insurgent forces, and submit before the lawful rule of The Assembly and the government of this Empire. To come before the capital and to beg for mercy. A mercy that, to those who were misled by the rebel queen’s lies and empty promises, I am willing to provide.
“Crimes can be forgiven, if they were done with the mind of an innocent. And no soldier, officer, nor crewman who follows the queen does so with the understanding he is participating in a rebellion. Nor does he know he is fueling an unnecessary and bloody civil war. Such can be forgiven, if they abandon their criminal ways and return to the fold. So too can the magistrates be forgiven who have declared for the rebel side, should they wake from the trance put upon them by the rebel queen’s lies, and realize by following her they have left the Empire, rather than joined it. Such is the power of the rebel’s propaganda machine that she has brainwashed her own allies into believing that war is peace, and sedition is unity.
“You can hear her raving about it in her own words how her war against this Empire will somehow lead to peaceful unification if more warships, weapons, and soldiers join her fight against this government. Now, how can such a thing be true? She has pointed to the color black and called it white. But you, my children, you are too smart for her and for this foolishness. Reach out also to your friends and family also; do not allow them or anyone to be deceived! We must be strong and not bow to her tactics of fearmongering.
“In her latest effort to spread the fear she so desperately needs to feed her rebellion, she has pointed the finger at me and slung slanderous accusations upon me which don’t deserve the dignity of repeating. All I shall say is this: they are false…patently and obviously false. And, as prudent listeners such as you will have noticed, the rebel queen gave no evidence, not a shred of it, to support her claims. She merely invoked words and more words to support her circular arguments. She spun tales of conspi
racies and spies and crimes and cover-ups; very exciting things, yes, but they belong in the theaters and story-books, and wherever else her troubled imagination discovers them.
“You will recall the last time she addressed us with such a message of great urgency that all the Empire must hear it, she warned us of imminent attack by a Rotham invasion fleet so malicious and overwhelming we must all submit to her reign, bow before her, and band together all our ships under her command, else we risk imminent annihilation by Rotham attack.
“This will hopefully come as little surprise to you, we are all still breathing. Free and clear of any Rotham attack; certainly and blissfully we seem to remain in a rather profoundly un-annihilated state. So then, where is this attack the rebel queen promised us; no, threatened us with?
“Perhaps you're thinking it hasn’t come yet, but is still on the way. Not an unreasonable supposition, to the logical mind that has nonetheless been hoodwinked by the rebel queen’s propaganda and clever words. But to you I say, rest easy. For there is no attack coming. I have before me the most up-to-date readings from the Imperial listening posts that keep vigilant watch over the DMZ, a grid of technology specifically set in place to alert us of any Rotham aggression.”
Caerwyn picked up the prop printout and pointed at it. “Here, it even has the time stamp. This was transmitted less than five minutes ago. Do you know what it says? All is silent inside the DMZ.” He tossed the prop aside. “That means there is no Rotham fleet on its way to invade our planets like the rebel queen has told us. And trust me when I say such a force does not exist. If it did, she could not know about it. Not unless these alleged ‘spies’ of hers, who supposedly uncovered a vast murder conspiracy plot by me without a shred of evidence also have eyes in Rotham space, and also enjoy making conclusions about Rotham activities that are also substantiated by exactly zero evidence.
“You see the pattern here, don’t you? Of course you do. You’re far more intelligent than the rebel queen gives you credit for. She has established a pattern of imagining up threats, then warning us of them, all of us, staring at us with that stone-cold face of despair she likes to show us, and then promising us if we only submit to her rule or send her more soldiers, more guns, more starships, somehow she will protect us from these threats. Threats that seem to exist only inside her imagination. She uses fear as a form of control, of manipulation. And she tries to exert that control upon us, upon you. She tried again not twenty minutes ago; you heard her yourself!
“I wish I could tell you this was something she was doing as a mere parlor trick, to try to convince the weak-minded to join her hopeless and unlawful cause. Certainly there is an element of that, and I urge you not to be fooled. But the sad truth goes even deeper than that. For the rebel queen, it turns out, cannot help what she is doing.” Caerwyn tried very hard not to smile as he thought of what he was about to say. It was so delicious, the words tasted like fine wine even before he spoke them. Only by pausing for breath, and dramatic effect, did he manage to keep his expression solemn.
“You see, it turns out the rebel queen actually suffers from mental delusions, and has since she was a small child. So the ghosts she sees in her own shadows are not just ploys meant to trick those around her, but rather the poor rebel queen actually sees those ghosts, or thinks she does, and that’s how she can tell us, quite sincerely, such ridiculous things as Rotham invasions and high-profile conspiracy serial murders are going on right under our noses. I’m even intrigued to see what her gifted, but very troubled imagination comes up with next.
“How do I know this about her? I’m sure that is the question you are asking. Because, unlike the rebel queen, I trust in your intelligence, and that is a very intelligent question to ask. The answer, it turns out, is simple.
“When we took the Imperial Palace after the king’s unfortunate death and the rest of the Akira family abandoned it, we discovered a great many sealed records among the inventory of the lock boxes in the bomb cellar. Among them were medical records for all of the Akiran children. But none had more medical records than the young rebel queen herself, who, as a child, was diagnosed with her condition and, probably up until recently, had been receiving treatment, including therapy and strong medication, to help her manage her paranoid episodes. Because of this discovery, which has only recently come to light, I must seriously call into question the sanity and state of mind of the rebel queen, who, perhaps, is not even herself aware of the far reaching effects of her unlawful, rebellious actions, which have evidently been coopted to help feed some larger rebel effort led by her advisors. Men and women of such low cunning they’d take advantage of a mentally ill girl and put her before cameras and force her to give speeches that promise the doom of everything we all know and love unless we give them what they want.
“This may all sound a little bit hard to believe, but I’m sure if you examine the facts and remember each of the rebel queen’s claims, you'll see it all adds up. However, although I trust your intelligence to arrive at the logical conclusion, I am not the rebel queen and therefore shall not rely on my words alone, and appearance of given circumstances, to support my assertions. Rather, I shall supply evidence to prove the truth of my claims.
“First I shall immediately make available for download and distribution complete copies of all the medical records we have so far found. They will be available for anyone to read and inspect, and I encourage you to do so.”
Many days ago, Caerwyn had the idea to discredit the rebel queen by using medical expertise to bring into question her sanity. Since he’d had that idea, he’d immediately ordered his document experts to come up with such medical records and had since been informed by them they’d created near-perfect forgeries and fabrications of such documents, of quality which should pass even the most rigorous of inspections. So he knew they were ready to be released.
“Additionally, as soon as I sign off, I'm sending out a broadcast from Dr. Albert Hameldon, who was the attending physician to the Akiran children during their early years. His testimony will elaborate on the exact specifics of the poor, troubled rebel queen’s precise condition, and will corroborate everything I have told you today.” Caerwyn again resisted a smile as he thought of what was next. He had indeed tracked down the real Dr. Albert Hameldon, who had in fact been, until his untimely termination, the primary physician for the Akiran children, just as Caerwyn had claimed. So those facts ought to be easy for any fact checkers to substantiate. Of course there had been no such condition affecting young Kalila Akira, all of that was an utter lie, but fortunately for Caerwyn, Dr. Hameldon had left his Akiran employers on bad terms and had no love for them. Additionally, he was a man steeped in gambling debts and could easily be leveraged into saying anything for the right price. So long as Caerwyn kept the man happy after his testimony, so he never recanted, or contradicted himself, or else made him dead, Caerwyn hadn’t decided which, then Dr. Hameldon was living proof of the lie Caerwyn so eagerly wanted the Empire to believe.
“With that, I bid you peace and good fortune, and urge every listener to remain listening to hear the testimony of Dr. Hameldon, who can explain this profound discovery far more elegantly than I am able to myself. I part you today with only a simple, but important, rhetorical question, and that is, can we afford to allow a mental patient to sit upon the Imperial throne?”
“Aaaaand, you’re clear,” said the producer, pointing at Caerwyn, meaning Dr. Hameldon’s broadcast, being shot from inside his spruced-up, old medical office, had begun. As his staff started taking down the cameras and shifting the equipment, he knew he was finally free to relax. No longer able to help himself, he let out a chuckle, which turned into a laugh. He shook his head, thinking he really had gotten the better of this latest exchange.
The rebel queen had tried her best, and her attack on his character was not without its dangers. The specific names the rebel queen had sent might cause him some actual trouble if people started digging, but Caerwyn already had a plan in place
to deal with that.
He would use the existence of the fifty-nine who successfully got through to defect to the rebel queen, traitorous bastards all, as evidence no one is stopping anyone from turning traitor and defecting. Meanwhile, his people had already been tasked with finding stock footage to broadcast of some of the missing representatives to rebut Kalila’s claims, and Caerwyn had put into place a do-not-kill order on the few Representatives who had been captured but not yet executed. He intended to pressure them, by threat and bribery, into making recorded statements, meant to appear live, and then he would broadcast them as further evidence against Kalila’s claims.
He also had some of his people investigating the possibility of framing Kalila’s spies, which she’d admitted to having, as being the ones responsible for the abduction and suspicious murders of the fourteen representatives the public had noticed were missing.
All of the damage she’d inflicted him could and would be handled. But as for the blow he’d just dealt her…he doubted she could do much to recover from that. Especially when footage from some of these allegedly dead representatives began to appear, further impeaching both her allegations and her state of mind.
Chapter 6
“It’s a bunch of cargo ships and freight transports,” said Vulture, peeking through the scope of his anti-material rifle. “But I don’t see any cargo.”
Ryker knelt just behind them; the two had gone ahead of the others to scout the situation. They hid in a thicket of trees and rocks on an elevated position about three kilometers away from the edge of the city, where several large, bulky starships had touched down, forming a makeshift city of their own just on the outskirts of the ruined capital. Ryker was able to make out some of it with the binoculars, but Vulture’s keener eyes combined with the superior magnification of the rifle’s scope meant he had a much better idea of what was going on than Ryker did.
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