Every Last Mother's Child
Page 40
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The four of them met in a secure room in the House of Lords. It was a room where secure briefings on the nation security were held. When the chief of the kingdom’s intelligence service, or in the rare case where the Mounties needed to brief the leadership on high level criminal investigation, the briefing was held in this room. It was as secure as the Mountain’s conference rooms. The room was also used for high level political discussions such as the one they were holding now. There was no electronics in the room. It was swept repeatedly several times a day. The room was lined with old fashioned paper books. The books were the reference library for the House of Lords, not only did they contain the House of Lords proceedings, but parliamentary procedure from around the galaxy. It was where the members of the House of Lords met to plan their parliamentary shenanigans. Today’s meeting was no exception.
They were the minority party’s experts in parliamentary procedures. They were also students of the parliament’s history. Rammer had brought them together to investigate a way to bring the Queen and the Marshal into the House of Lords for an inquiry.
“So far,” Lord Malcolm began the proceedings, “The Queen is well with in her rights to name the Marshal. She declared a planetary emergency. When she declares a planetary emergency she then has the responsibility to resolve the issue.”
“But shouldn’t the general have routed his report through the prime minister?” Rammer asked, “He is after all head of government.”
“The general’s obligation is to report to the monarch who is commander and chief of the militia.” One of the older men said. “This was done so that the majority party couldn’t use the military against the lords themselves. The monarch is restrained in two ways, we the parliament must approve all spending on the militia, and we must declare war if she wants to use the military to invade a neighboring star system. The Militia, and for that matter, the life safety forces of the planet are hers to command. She is responsible for ensuring the life safety of all citizens of the planet.”
“So she is within her power to declare an emergency and begin evacuation of the people of Trena.” Rammer said, “But hey, doesn’t she have to apply to us to fund the evacuation. Don’t we have to approve the budget?”
“Yes and no,” another spoke up she was a member of the House of Lords Finance committee. “By declaring an emergency she is permitted to expend the funds she needs to make the evacuation happen. The crown is during an emergency permitted to suspend banking rules, and commerce. But that’s all she can do.”
“Yes but that’s limited,” another said, “She may spend the funds; but she must also report to us on the expenditure of those funds and we must infuse the accounts with additional funds as they are expended. She has to apply for any funds that exceed what is in them. She’s got to be close.”
“Not really,” Rammer said, “I’ve been keeping an eye on her funds. She has expended a lot of funds. Much of it out of the emergency fund; but she has expended more out of her personal fortune. She has sold some of her interests around the system. She owned about a third of the Trena Near Space Mining consortium and then she owned some stock in a couple off world businesses. She is a billionaire several times over and what she has spent has come out of her personal fortune and the emergency fund.”
“Isn’t she prohibited from spending her own fortune on the interest of the Trena people?” Some one asked.
“No. She isn’t allowed to financially gain from the troubles of the Trena People.” Rammer said, “In other words she isn’t allowed to have stock in any industry that will make money because of the services they are providing during a time of emergency.”
“That’s it!” the woman from the finance committee suddenly said, “She is required to submit a yearly financial statement. I seem to remember that she has stock in the 3T ship yards, and might have some money in the Boeing Trena Space Works facility.”
“But we all own stock like that!” Rammer said.
“But we haven’t said that we need to evacuate, and then using companies we own stock in to effect the evacuation.” The woman said. “We have the lever to get her to the House of Lords to answer questions.”
“What about Wilson himself.” Some one asked, “Is there something we can do to him.”
“Not really,” Someone said, “We can call him before the select committee of the evacuation. He does have a duty to brief the parliament on his plan to evacuate our citizens.”
“My people have been investigating him” Rammer said, “I thought it was suspicious that he left Earth so I talked to a couple people I know. The man isn’t clean, but he has nothing that can be charged against him. He has not committed a crime on Trena. Although the media on Earth has him listed as participating in a jail break; it wasn’t. As a major stockholder in Ebio; he just recovered his property. From what I have seen of him he isn’t incompetent, he lets his troops do their job. He sets a direction and expects people to either ask him about it if they don’t understand it or get the task done. If there is a weakness is that he cares too much for his troops. A couple of his officers have mentioned that he is too close to the troops he leads and should be a little more distant. But at the same time his troops will do just about anything for him and he has had a tremendous history of success. That was why he had been named to be the Marine Corps top MP. They were thinking about making him the youngest Command NCO of the Marine Corps. In fact he had been named and was only waiting for their senate to confirm him. He resigned just as they were voting.”
“So how do we…” some one asked.
“Let’s bring him before the committee and grill him on the evacuation, and then let’s bring the Queen in and grill her about her investments where the evacuation is concerned.” Rammer said, “We have to regain control of the situation.”
“The only thing we might have on him is allowing a foreign military officer to look at the classified data concerning the evacuation.” Rammer said, “My legal authorities can’t make up their mind if he did something illegal. General Alphine has been posted to the evacuation command as liaison to Earth, and the Thonian military on planet. So she was getting briefed in.”