Earlier, Vimes had privately confirmed to Christine that instantaneous contact with his counterparts throughout those affected Sectors had been lost, cutting her off from one of the key advantages their secret communication system gave them. From the information Vimes had been able to ascertain before losing contact, it was obvious this revolt had been well planned and professionally conducted. Vimes contact with his avatars had all been lost within a short time of each other, immediately after each Sector Central Bank and Government buildings had been stormed and taken over. Millennia earlier, Vimes had taken steps to ensure all traces of the secret IQC devices would be removed from his numerous avatars in the event of a revolt, and now confirmed to Christine he was confident the instantaneous communication technology remained secret. A new and disturbing development just coming in was news that many Jump Points had been destabilised, effectively sealing those planetary systems off from any outside help or communication.
Fortunately, the Sectors remaining loyal and under Empire control remained peaceful, their populations as yet unaware of the unfolding crisis throughout the Empire. In addition, all the Jump Stations and elements of the Imperial Navy which remained loyal were on high alert. Such a mobilisation of forces hadn’t been seen in the Empire since the war with the Felidae, whose borders with the Empire were, at least for now, thankfully still peaceful.
Of her husband, nothing had been heard, although a transmission intercepted by Vimes from Duke Fredericks home planet, Kiyami, indicated that Alexander's fleet had been attacked and destroyed, along with her son. She had initially dismissed the report as a fabrication, knowing as she did that Adam was safe and in training, but as the hours passed and nothing had been heard from Alexander, her anxiety had grown.
Indecision gnawed at her bowels like a vicious cancer, and she was finding it difficult to concentrate, for no sooner had she begun to digest and analyse one bit of news when another, seemingly more important item would demand her attention. Even the gentle scents coming from the rooms climate control wasn’t able to counteract the pheromones of anxiety and uncertainty that surged through the room every time another distressing piece of news came in.
General Parmenion, always mindful of what was going on around him, saw her inner conflict, walked over and quietly spoke so only she could hear what he said.
“Ma’am, you need to stop trying to control everything. Trust Vimes, the AI’s and your General Staff here to do their jobs. It’s what they were designed to do and what we have trained for all our lives. The sheer volume of information coming in is far beyond anything you can control yourself, and you know this. Our role is to provide the strategy and grand plan and yours is as much to show stability to the population as anything else.”
He broke etiquette and placed a reassuring hand on her left shoulder,giving a reassuring squeeze for a moment before removing it.
Christine turned towards him, warmed by this rare demonstration of affection, “I know, Parmenion, but I feel so helpless at the moment and want to do something, anything, rather than just staying here waiting.”
“I know, Ma’am. Every good Commander feels the same way when the battle starts to unfurl and they have to wait for the enemy to make their big move. It isn’t a good feeling, all the while knowing that people under your command are dying and there isn’t a damn thing you can do to stop it. It doesn’t get any easier with experience or the passing of time either.”
He laughed, bitterly. “Hark at me giving you advice. As I recall, you and Alexander were in some of the thickest battles during the last Succession War.”
Christine nodded. “Yes, we were, and this whole thing has a similar smell to it. The careful building up of forces under our very nose, the suddenness of the attacks and the attempts to cut off the heads of the Royal Family are all far too familiar for my liking. It’s almost as if…”
Christine stopped talking, her mind suddenly making a powerful connection that left her cold inside, sending a shiver across her back and making the hairs on her neck rise.
“Frederick’s been behind this all along, going back to the original Succession War. He has to be.”
Christine now had the attention of everyone in the room, so continued.
“The Palace jammer was in Sector 12’s offices and his Sector Capital played host to Alexander before he went to System DU-499. The intelligence on the raiders base came from his Sector and he would have known Alexander exact arrival time and destination well in advance of his leaving. He couldn’t be seen to be the architect of Alexander's disappearance for it would badly hurt any bid he might make for the throne, so manipulated him into going exactly where he wanted, when he wanted. I would wager he was behind the ambush on Heaven too.”
Parmenion looked thoughtful, digesting all the information and correlating against other known variables before speaking, “Alexander and I always suspected that at the end of the Succession War we hadn't destroyed all of the rebel ships and many of them had gone to ground, turned to piracy or offered their services to rival empires. As the years passed and we saw no sign of them, apart from an occasional ship that turned up on a border campaign or skirmish, we thought we’d seen the last of them as a serious, unified threat.”
Parmenion shifted his attention from speaking and projected onto the main screen his assumptions for everyone to see.
“If we assume Duke Frederick was a key player in the original revolt and working from a base number of surviving ships…say this number…and assuming over time he persuaded or bribed the other Sectors to support him, it would take anywhere between sixty and one hundred and twenty years to rebuild a fleet sufficiently large to threaten the Empires stability.”
Parmenion looked across to Christine, who had been looking at the screen with growing alarm. “I fear he and his co-conspirators have been playing a long game and have laid their plans well, as evidenced by our inability to get through to the lost Sectors.”
“Parmenion,” Christine interrupted as he paused for breath, “Vimes has been searching through Josef’s original files and has found evidence of how the Jump Points are being disrupted. I’ve sent this to you and the Cyber warfare teams for analysis. It appears we have a five or six-day wait before the Jump Points stabilise sufficiently for incoming or outgoing traffic.”
While they debated, representatives from the Sectors attacked during the failed attempt on Christine's life began arriving, many still showing partially healed wounds or sporting medical aids. Androids, directly under the control of Vimes, escorted the more obviously injured to their places whilst other servitors began bringing in plates of food to be eaten later. Fourteen of the thirty-six seats were empty, representing the eleven Sectors which had rebelled and three whose status was currently unknown following the death of their representatives at the hands of the rebels.
The rooms mood was sombre, although conversations were going on as people quickly checked on which of their opposite numbers had been killed or wounded in the attack and subsequent retaking of those Palace areas worst affected. As they talked, Christine looked around, taking in the pinched faces and tense body language from many of those present. Regrettably, she had a suspicion that some of them still hadn’t grasped the full enormity of what had happened the previous day and the turmoil that lay ahead of them all. Watching the representatives chat, some of them obviously comparing wounds with each other for bragging rights, she felt an overwhelming urge to leave the room and go seek out her son. Despite not hearing from her husband, she had an almost spiritual faith in his ability to survive against even the worst odds that a capricious universe could throw at him, and discounted the reports from Sector 12 confirming his and Adam’s death. Yet, certain as she was, the lack of any message from her husband gnawed at her and she feared something bad had happened to one or both of them.
Letting the conversations wash over her, trusting Vimes to warn of anything important that needed her immediate attention, she began to think what her next action should be.
In Parmenion and her General Staff she had the utmost faith. The remaining Sector Heads were all highly accomplished and would run affairs perfectly well even without input from her. Coming to a decision, she instructed Vimes to prepare her personal yacht for immediate launch and to confirm when it was ready.
“Are you going to tell me or do I have to guess, Christine?” Vimes asked softly in her mind, his usual good humour subdued to match her mood.”You’re going after Adam aren’t you,” he stated rather than asked. “The plan was to have him trained so he would have a better understanding of what it meant to be a normal person, away from the privileges of his birth. You know better than anyone how important this training is. Are you sure yo…”
“Of course, I’m sure, Vimes,” Christine interrupted, trying hard and not quite succeeding in keeping the annoyance from her face. “I’m his mother and nothing in this universe is going to stop me bringing my son home and then find out what the hell has happened to my husband. After that, together we’ll kick Duke Fredericks arse from one end of this Empire to the other.” She took a deep breath.
“Anything I can help with Ma’am?” asked Parmenion, leaning across towards her, his sharp eyes and attention to detail picking up traces of the interplay that had passed across her features.
Letting out her held breath with a gentle sigh, Christine looked at him and nodded, then smiled as she recognised the concern etched into the face of her loyal General.
“With people like these still loyal to our family, there is no way we cannot win through in the end,” she thought to herself and Vimes.
With that, Christine sent a private message to Parmenion, informing him of her decision. He was to be left in overall charge for a few days whilst she remained cloistered in her Private Apartments, not to be disturbed. Vimes would act as her intermediary between him and the Council should anything urgent need her attention.
The General was sufficiently familiar with Christine and the Emperor to recognise when not to argue a point, so he simply nodded in acknowledgement, despite his obvious misgivings. Not for the first time, Parmenion suspected he wasn’t being told the full story, but his many decades of Imperial service had taught him not to underestimate the Doones, and especially his Empress, for she rarely, if ever, did anything without a reason.
An hour, and much debate in the chamber later, Vimes confirmed to Christine her yacht was fully prepared and an up-to-date copy of himself loaded into its systems. Christine waited for a natural break in the presentation currently being made by her Sector Admiral, Lord Thomas Rose. A quick search with Vimes confirmed her suspicion he was a many-times-removed descendant of Lord Martyn Rose, whose statue in the Palace grounds she had been directed to. She felt sure the old Admiral would have been proud to know both he and his descendants continued to serve her family well. Choosing this moment, she stood up, motioning everyone to remain seated as they started to stand.
Looking at the expectant faces around the chamber she indicated to Parmenion, before speaking.
“I will be absenting myself for a few days. In my absence, General Parmenion will act in my place. Vimes will handle any enquiries you may have. Please be assured you all have my utmost confidence and I will return to this chamber once my work elsewhere has been completed.”
With that, one of the androids standing behind her pulled back her chair and escorted her to the door, before returning to its position, this time behind General Parmenion.
Once the door had closed behind her, Christine leant against the wall to relax for a few moments. The two armoured androids that guarded either side of the door paid her no notice, controlled as they were by Vimes who understood her inner turmoil. Releasing some of the inner tension that had propelled her for the past twenty-four hours, she was assailed again by doubts as to whether she was doing the right thing in bringing Adam back from training early. She knew how important this time had been for Alexander and for a few moments almost wavered, before standing upright and straightening her shoulders. Christine walked towards the nearby transit tube, her soft soled shoes squeaking softly on the mirror smooth floor. Just before reaching it, the pod doors opened silently and the internal lights came on. She sank gratefully into the padded seat just as it accelerated away to the heavily shielded hanger where her personal yacht was waiting.
Before too long the doors opened and she got out, not before struggling with the low seating position of the seat and taking two attempts to get up. She sent a quick note to Maintainance with instructions to have them raised a few inches, then presented herself at the door for Vimes and the secondary security systems to identify her. Smart-metal walls moved away inwards at a fast walking pace, allowing Christine to pass through the yards thick armour protecting the hanger bay. Moving through into the noticeably artificial light of the cavernous hanger, Christine paused for a few moments to do a visual inspection. Several dozen ships of various sizes and configurations lay settled around the floor in their cradles. She recognised them all, several bringing back memories not thought of for some time. Opposite the entrance where she was standing rested her needle-pointed yacht, shaped like a stretched teardrop, its hull mirror-bright and reflecting the harsh lighting. Living quarters and engines were at the rear, with sensors and some weapon systems housed in the long prow. At two hundred foot in length, it was much larger than Alexanders, and Christine struggled for a few seconds to recall when she last had cause to use it. Vimes gently prompted her recall before again fading back into the background of her thoughts.
“Five years? Has it really been so long since I’d seen my home planet, separated by the passage of time and distance?” mused Christine quietly under her breath.
Approaching the yacht, a door opened in the hull and a ramp extended down to greet her. A small number of servitor androids were still busy burnishing several areas of the hull to a mirror-like sheen, to be absorbed back into the floor when finished. Taking a last quick look around the hanger, Christine entered the ship, the ramp retracting and the hull opening sealing itself soundlessly behind her as she headed for the pilot seat.
Keyed to her DNA and thought patterns, she allowed herself to relax in the command chair and join with the ship, the little-used but familiar sensations merging themselves to her senses with a not unpleasant tingle. It took a good thirty seconds before Christine felt completely settled with the merger, the sensations fading away completely, leaving behind a feeling of well-being that mirrored the ship’s status. Instructing the ships AI to prepare for a Jump, Christine fed in the IQA coordinates and waited as the power began to flow into and build in the Jump engines. Within moments, the ship lifted several yards into the air and the IQA field expanded to encompass the ship, at which point it simply vanished. Instantly, the hanger was filled by a monstrously loud thunder-clap, as air rushed in to fill the vacuum, witnessed only by the slowly disappearing androids.
Scene 34, The morning after the night before
Karen sat atop the large, rocky hill that sat at the back of her uncle and aunt’s bungalow, glad of the padded overcoat and hood that was doing a grand job of keeping the morning chill and damp from seeping into her bones. She’d remembered to take with her a black plastic bin liner to sit on and was making full use of it. In all the years she had been coming to Skye, Karen had never sat here and watched the sunrise.
She’d woken early, too excited to lie in bed any longer and a little bored of watching Adam breathe slowly by her side, so had decided to go for a walk and try to compose her thoughts. A smile came unbidden to her lips as Karen wryly remembered the previous evening's exertions.
“No wonder he’s still sleeping,” she murmured to herself with a self-satisfied smile that threatened to take over her face. “I gave as good as I got, too,” and with that, allowed herself a moment of smugness.
It didn’t last long, however, for she knew there were a number of hard choices ahead; not least what to do about her work and finding somewhere to stay with Adam when her aunt and uncle came
home. After Adam had proved beyond doubt his story was true, Karen was so relieved she couldn’t help herself. They’d first made love in the lifeboat then, after Adam had guided it under cover of dark to her uncle’s large green boatshed and covered it with a large tarpaulin, they’d run the short distance back to the bungalow and into her bedroom, shedding their clothes the moment they had shut the front door behind them.
Adam had exceeded her most optimistic expectations and, if she was honest with herself, she’d been surprised at her own reaction. Again, the smile threatened to widen all the way to her ears.
“But am I doing the right thing?” the thought kept interrupting her pleasant reveries, again bringing her back to the hard choices ahead. Deep down, Karen knew she wouldn’t be leaving Adam’s side, with all that meant for her work and future. She found it ironic she’d let her old fiance, Ian, move to New York and leave her because she wasn’t prepared to give up her career, yet here she was, on the brink of following a man she’d only known for a few short weeks and, amazingly, was technically an alien.
“I must be mad,” she thought to herself, not for the first time.
From the hilltop, Karen had a distant view of the Cuillin hills, fortunately not shrouded today in clouds or mist. To her left she watched a sea-eagle lift off from its eyrie, set high up the cliff that marked the start of the valley cut deep into the rock by two small streams, slowly emptying themselves into the loch beneath the causeway bridge. The tide was out and the mussel and cockle beds that made up the loch’s exposed sandy bottom glistened as the breeze rippled the pools of standing water dotted around. A few sheep were up and about, cropping grass half-heartedly along the fence lines. An occasional car or lorry drove past, disturbing the otherwise quiet morning. The beauty and grandeur of the scenery never failed to make her feel a little awed or even insignificant, and she could understand why many people here turned to religion.
Imperium: Betrayal: Book One in the Imperium Trilogy Page 32
