Someone had defied Admiral Wachter’s communications blackout in the Morrison System and sent back a full report on the purge. Hundreds of senior officers had been removed, then effectively imprisoned on Morrison itself, rather than being sent back to face their superiors – and patrons – on Earth. In his own way, Admiral Wachter was making a statement to his subordinates; those who were responsible for the disgraceful state of a once-proud naval base were finally facing justice. But it was also a poke in the eye to their patrons, many of whom sat on the very highest council in the Empire.
Tiberius sighed as the discussion raged around him. On one hand, he could see Wachter’s point; Morrison was a disgrace and the people responsible had to be punished, rather than entrusted with further responsibilities. But on the other hand, wiping out large chunks of the patronage network – several patronage networks – would alienate the Family Heads and rouse their suspicions that Wachter intended to turn against them. It certainly wouldn't encourage them to get on with choosing a supreme commander for Home Fleet. Seven weeks of debate and outright arguing had produced nothing, apart from vague generalities about each individual squadron preparing itself for battle
Not for the first time, he cursed Lord Roosevelt under his breath. His departure from the council – and the council’s failure to nominate a replacement – ensured that they would remain deadlocked. Tiberius couldn't help thinking that simply appointing someone to the post should have been easy, particularly with the rebels breathing down their necks. Instead, the arguments had dragged on ... and on ... and on.
“This is your fault, Tiberius,” Lord Rothschild snapped. “We might have empowered a monster.”
Tiberius sighed and gathered himself. What was the point of being a Family Head if he couldn’t speak bluntly from time to time?
“We operate the patronage network to ensure that none of us can control enough firepower to overwhelm the others,” he said, bluntly. “In doing so, we picked clients who would place our interests first, rather than the interests of the Imperial Navy or the Empire as a whole. Many of those clients developed smaller networks of their own, which we did not oppose because, in the end, those networks were ours. We chose to overlook the simple fact that those networks also caused decay within the system.”
He scowled, looking from face to face. They all considered him absurdly young – and they were right, in an Empire where the wealthy could expect to live for over two hundred years. And they thought of him as inexperienced, which was also true. He didn't have the decades of experience each of them had in fine-tuning their patronage networks. But he liked to think that he had the galactic perspective they lacked.
“That was not a problem as long as we didn't face a serious threat,” he said. They knew it, they had to know it, but it needed to be said. “But now we do face a threat, one that may well overwhelm us and destroy everything our ancestors have built. This is not the time to allow corruption and decay to damage the system. We have to get ready to fight for our lives – and half of us have forgotten how!
“We've never needed to really fight in living memory. It was easy to make the decision to annex Jackson’s Folly, even though it took years of arguing to make the decision we all knew was inevitable anyway. We have annexed dozens of other worlds, none of which could really hope to resist our overwhelming firepower. And if they took out a handful of smaller ships ... so what? We had plenty more where they came from. As long as we held the biggest stick in the known universe, we never had to actually fight.
“But now we are facing a united rebel force that has superdreadnaughts of its own,” he reminded them. “We are facing people who want to destroy us and piss on the remains, who have access to the prospective new technologies of the Geeks and Nerds, who are the people we rejected because they had too much integrity or ambition to become part of our patronage networks. The enemy may be thousands of light years away, but our backs are pressed against the wall. By the time they get to Morrison, let alone Earth, we must be ready to face them!”
He took a deep breath. “If we fail to get ready,” he added, “we may as well surrender now and save time.”
“Surrender is not an option,” Lord Bernadotte snapped.
“Then we have to get ready to fight,” Tiberius snapped back. “Admiral Wachter is cleaning out people who have, put bluntly, helped to ruin a naval base we desperately need. Why exactly are we objecting?”
“Because he could build a patronage network of his own, then turn on us,” Lord Rothschild pointed out, in a tone that might be used to explain something to a particularly stupid child. “We have never trusted anyone with so much power since the Empress ...”
“Except if we don’t let him have his head, we will lose when the rebels arrive in orbit,” Tiberius countered, feeling his face heat. “Tell me something. How many of the ordinary crewmen at Morrison would have switched sides if the rebels had reached them before Admiral Wachter?”
“None of them,” Lord Bernadotte said. “They’re loyal ...”
He broke off as several listeners snorted rudely. They all knew that the first rebels had mutinied against their commanders – and that they’d been joined by others, thousands of others. The superdreadnaughts the rebels had taken couldn't have been operated without a full crew, certainly not in combat. No, this was worse than mutiny. Captured crews had switched sides without hesitation.
“I read the report very carefully,” Tiberius said, pressing his advantage. “The ordinary crewmen lived hellish lives. Their pay was frequently delayed. They were at the mercy of bullying rings operated by stronger crewmen. Discipline, in short, was absolutely non-existent. And, lest we forget, several ships from Morrison did vanish when they heard the news of the rebellion. Why should the other crewmen not join the rebels?”
One of the older lords leaned forward. “Gratitude?”
“Try using gratitude on a dog that’s been kicked once too often,” Lady Madeline said. “We should try to forestall another series of mutinies through better treatment.”
“We could also deploy more Blackshirts,” Lord Bernadotte pointed out. “There’s never any shortage of recruits.”
Tiberius scowled. Blackshirts were good at teaching newly-occupied planets the futility of resistance, but they were unwelcome on older worlds and downright dangerous on starships. Between their ignorance, the drug-conditioning and general aggressive attitude, their mere presence provoked hatred and rage among the host population.
“But we are being forced to expand our training and conditioning programs,” Lord Rothschild countered. “We simply cannot supply Blackshirts in enough numbers to keep threatened planets under control.”
“We have no choice,” Lord Bernadotte insisted. He stood to lose badly if the rebels continued their advance, or if worlds under his control revolted against outside authority. “The Blackshirts are one of the few trustworthy forces we have under our control.”
“That’s because they're addled into obedience,” Lord Rothschild reminded him. “You give a Blackshirt something out of the ordinary to handle and he’ll fall apart.”
“The conditioning keeps them loyal,” Lord Bernadotte snapped. “We need loyalty now, more than ever.”
Tiberius sighed. There were billions of Blackshirts in the Empire, which seemed a huge number until one actually looked at the map. Deploying them across thousands of separate planets meant that there were relatively few Blackshirts for each world, even if they were only deployed to the rebellious ones. Besides, the new demands on the imperial shipping network ensured that transporting Blackshirts – or anyone else, for that matter – would proceed slower than they might wish.
We cut out all the slack, he thought. It had never occurred to him just how tightly the Empire was bound together until they started trying to call up commercial spacers to serve in the military. Thousands had simply deserted, taking their ships with them; others had obeyed, reducing the number of freighters hauling fright between the stars. In hindsight
, it might have been better to ask for volunteers rather than simply trying to conscript everyone they could. But it had been the first panicky reaction and by then the damage had been done.
He recalled the latest set of predictions from the family’s analysts. Unless something quite remarkable was done, interstellar shipping was going to slow down quite remarkably for years, shattering the economic bonds that held large parts of the Empire together. Even if the rebels were beaten tomorrow, they’d noted, it would be centuries before all the damage was repaired.
Irritated, he slapped the table. The others stopped arguing and glared at him.
“We need to gamble,” he said. “Admiral Wachter is the best naval officer currently at our disposal – and he’s right. Morrison was allowed to rot away, by the officers he has relieved of their duties and then imprisoned. There will be time enough afterwards to repair the patronage networks.”
Lord Rothschild gave Tiberius a long considering look. “And if you’re wrong about his loyalty?”
“There are precautions we can take,” Tiberius said, coldly. “But we also need to bear in mind, at all times, that our first priority is defeating the rebellion. Infighting only helps their cause.”
He paused, knowing that he had their complete and undivided attention. “And we need to break the logjam and appoint someone to serve as Home Fleet's commander,” he added. “We have put the question of for far too long.”
“Pity no one knows what happened to the Empress,” Lord Bernadotte muttered. His family had once been one of her supporters, at least until she’d actually declared herself Empress and claimed supreme power. “We could have used her.”
“And then disposed of her,” Lord Rothschild said. His family hadn't been among her supporters – and never let anyone forget it. “The problem is that we don't have a candidate.”
“Then we find someone with actual experience and put them in the command seat,” Tiberius said. “And then we can use the patronage networks to back them to the hilt.”
He logged out of the meeting, torn between frustration and relief as the images vanished, leaving him alone in the secure chamber. It was so bloody irritating to go over the same issues time and time again, even if new evidence of Admiral Wachter’s determination to clean house had arrived from Morrison. Why did they feel they could simply talk the rebellion out of existence? Tiberius asked himself, not for the first time, why so many of the Family Heads had even managed to reach their positions. It was rare for them to pull their heads out of their butts.
Gritting his teeth, he strode into his office and glared at one of the paintings hanging on the wall. Rumour had it that his great-grandfather had employed a whole troupe of people to help him blow off steam, although Tiberius rather hoped that the stories weren't actually true. He knew more than he wanted to know about the perversions practiced by the lesser aristocracy – even some in his own family – but he honestly didn't know how his great-grandfather had found the time. There was always something for the Family Head to do.
He rolled his eyes as Sharon stepped into his office, carrying the datapad. “I have the latest reports from the industrial nodes,” she said. “Do you want a summery?”
Tiberius glared down at his hands. If only he dared trust one of his relatives to serve as an assistant. But he knew that none of them could be trusted to put the family’s interests first, not when they would think they had a chance to unseat Tiberius. And they might be right, if they acted carefully. The appearance of weakness or folly might be enough to bring him down.
“Not really,” he said, tiredly. “You’d better just let me read the full report.”
***
Gaunt had told them, as she led the way through a network of disused passageways, stairwells and sealed apartments, that the underground on Earth was literally underground, largely hidden under the towering cities. The omnipresent surveillance grew thinner and thinner under the ground, until there were large sections of the cities where there was no surveillance at all. Gaunt had added that youth gangs often made a game out of smashing surveillance devices, despite the harsh penalties if they were caught. It wasn't as if they had anything to look forward to in their lives.
The warehouse itself had been abandoned hundreds of years ago, she’d explained, when she’d led them into their new living quarters. It served as a gathering place for sharing tips and training, as well as neutral ground between the different underground organisations. It was also linked to countless possible escape routes, allowing the underground operatives to bug out if they believed they were under attack. Even a full regiment of Marines, Frandsen had noted, would find it hard to block every possible escape route.
“And we'd see them coming if they did,” Gaunt told him, with a leer. “We have quite a few surprises set up for them if they try.”
Gaunt worried Adeeba more than she cared to admit. The woman wasn't quite stable; indeed, there was an icy determination to hurt the enemy that seemed to override her common sense, let alone her understanding that the underground had to conserve its strength and strike decisive blows. Frandsen had told her that Gaunt had probably endured a full interrogation at one point, then escaped before they exiled or simply executed her. Gaunt had refused to talk about it at all when they’d asked, merely pointing to her scars and noting that she had scores she wanted to settle before she died.
It was hard to keep track of time in the underground. Adeeba knew that it had been two months since they had arrived on Earth, but each day seemed to blur into an endlessly repetitive pattern. The lightning never changed, no matter what they did. And it was growing harder and harder to tell the masked underground fighters apart. Frandsen could teach them everything from making homemade bombs to simple tactics, but Adeeba could only wait. If she hadn't been used to naval quarters, she suspected she would probably have cracked by now.
“I thought you grew up on Earth,” Frandsen said, when she said that out loud. “This isn't as bad as some places.”
“I grew up on the other side of the planet,” Adeeba said, crossly. “And there was more to do than here.”
The discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Gaunt and several masked figures, all of whom seemed to carry themselves with more authority than the younger men Frandsen had been trying to teach. Leaders, Adeeba guessed, wearing masks to conceal their identities. Their clothes were so baggy and shapeless that it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. They even wore gloves to keep from leaving any fingerprints or DNA traces.
“You can call me Alpha,” the leader said. “We have been collecting intelligence for you. In the course of doing so, we also stumbled across an opportunity to do the enemy considerable damage. We intend to deploy it within the week.”
Adeeba hesitated. “Are you sure you can do it without provoking reprisals?”
“We believe that it will be impossible for them to prove it was us,” Alpha said. “It will also leave hints that suggest that it was industrial sabotage, rather than anything else. However, there is a certain element of risk. We can expect them to tighten their precautions after the incident.”
“And thus make intelligence-gathering harder in future,” Adeeba said. The underground had picked up a great deal of intelligence, mostly concentrated on the Empire’s mobilisation efforts. It would have been very useful for Colin, if they had been able to get it back to him in a reasonable timeframe. “What exactly will it do?”
“Hopefully, damage a number of computer cores,” Alpha said. “They should feel the effects very quickly. Even once they work out what happened, it will still be hard to trace it back to us.”
Adeeba exchanged a look with Frandsen, then nodded. The underground leaders wouldn’t have brought it to them unless they’d already made up their minds to take the shot. If she said no ... they didn't have to listen to her. All she could do was give them her blessing and hope it didn't rebound in their face.
“Good luck,” she said, finally.
Gaunt rubbed
her hands together. “We hit them tomorrow,” she said. “And who knows what advantage we will be able to get out of the chaos?”
“If we’re lucky, the imps will start blaming each other,” Alpha said. “That can only help the cause.”
Adeeba rolled her eyes. She'd never realised that the Thousand Families competed so savagely, but it made sense. The Empire no longer had the resources to invest in developing new colonies, certainly not ones that would start to pay off their loans quickly enough to be effective. They were scrabbling over a shrinking pie.
“Let’s hope so,” she agreed. “Let us know what happens.”
Chapter Twelve
Marian Fairchild stopped outside her apartment door and fumbled in her pocket for the keys. The fingerprint scanner was broken again, thanks to the youth gangs that roamed this part of Luna City, and she had to use the manual way. She cursed the little bastards under her breath as she opened the door. Somehow, her rank as a Mid-Level Programmer in the Cicero Industrial Plant didn't entitle her to an apartment on a higher level, even though her boss had told her that she was one of his most valuable employees and he wasn't going to let her seek promotion or a transfer. Instead, she had to put up with the gangs damaging her door and praying that they wouldn't decide to break in one day. Both of her daughters were just too vulnerable when she wasn't in the apartment.
Inside, she glanced at herself in the mirror, scowling when she saw the dark shadows encircling her eyes. Any hope of a date with a hot man had vanished when her boss had told them all that they would be working double shifts from now on, leaving her tired and exhausted when she staggered home every day. Her dark hair was already starting to thin, she realised, or at least it looked that way. And there was no way she could afford a cosmetics treatment when she also had to pay for the girls ...
Her blood ran cold as she realised what she was missing. The girls. They were normally noisy, playing that dreadful racket that passed for modern music every time she came home, but now the apartment was quiet. She peeked into the bedroom they shared and saw no one; indeed, the room didn't look to have been entered since she’d sent them both to school in the morning. The small picture of their father – the only memento they’d had of a man who had walked out on them shortly after they were born – was still where they’d left it, positioned neatly so he could overlook their bed. It gave them enough comfort that Marian had never had the heart to remove it.
Democracy's Right: Book 02 - Democracy's Might Page 11
