Mr. Moody stuck his head in and counted noses, then nodded.
“When the Emperor and Empress enter, you will all rise,” Moody said, then left the room.
They had all, of course, kept up with news from and about the Imperial Palace. That was, after all, their job, and they knew the Emperor was an historian, an academic type, while the Empress was an Imperial Guard officer, a decorated combat veteran. They also knew the Empress at this point was twenty-nine years old, while the Emperor was thirty-two. They expected to roll these youngsters in negotiations as they had their immediate predecessors so many times before.
They weren’t at all prepared for what was about to happen.
Ardmore and Burke walked down the hallway to the conference room. With strangers on the floor, Imperial Guard were at all the corridor intersections. When they saw the Emperor and Empress coming, four Imperial Guardsmen went into the conference room and took watch positions in the corners of the room.
Moody opened the door for them, and Burke and Ardmore walked into the room. Ardmore let her precede him, then he entered, and then Moody. Moody stood behind her. He was carrying a thin briefcase.
All the industry representatives rose as Burke entered. She was in MDU, with the purple fourragère, and wearing a sidearm. Ardmore was dressed in a business suit, specially tailored to fit him. Burke and Ardmore sat.
“Be seated, gentlemen.”
The industry representatives all took their seats. As strangers on the floor, all their names were tagged in an Imperial Guard overlay both Burke and Ardmore had access to and running.
“We are here today to discuss pricing on general health maintenance nanites the Empire purchases from the firms you represent. The Empire will no longer be gouged by your firms.”
“Milady Empress–“
“Be silent, Mr. Silvestri. You haven’t been asked a question.”
He started to open his mouth, but she cut him off.
“I can have you gagged if you think that would make it easier for you.”
He subsided, and she continued.
“The Empire will also no longer buy inferior product from your companies. And before you complain that none of your companies are selling the Empire inferior product, let me ask any of you who have Imperial-grade health maintenance nanites, as opposed to premium nanites, to hold up your hands.”
They looked up and down the table, but no one raised a hand.
“Your children? Hands, please.”
None.
“Your spouse?”
None.
“Your parents?”
None.
“So you see, do not make any argument to me that the current Imperial-grade nanites are not an inferior product. You have already made that decision with respect to yourselves and your loved ones.
“Up until a hundred years ago, everyone in this Empire received what you now call premium-grade health maintenance nanites. For over two hundred years, that was the case. It will be the case again. And the Empire will not pay the prices we’re paying now. We will pay less. Considerably less.
“Now, Mr. Silvestri, you may respond.”
“Milady Empress, we cannot supply a premium product for a lower price than we currently supply the more basic product.”
“Of course, you can, Mr. Silvestri. You will just not make eighty-five percent profit margins while doing it.”
“Our profit margins are closer to twenty percent, Milady.”
“Your reported profit margins are closer to twenty percent, Mr. Silvestri. After all the cost shifting and accounting tricks. Would you care to have my Imperial accounting department audit your books on those numbers?”
“Milady, the profit margins aside, the premium product costs significantly more to manufacture–“
“Five credits, Mr. Silvestri. It costs you five credits more per dose to manufacture the ‘premium’ product. I have your internal numbers. Do not lie to me, or I will have you taken downstairs and shot.”
Ardmore spoke here and all eyes turned to him.
“One bit of advice the Emperor Augustus VI gave me before he died was never to get her really mad.” He gestured to Burke. “Then again, she had just shot and killed eight people.”
The industry reps’ eyes went wide and they looked up and down the table.
“My grandfather died last week at seventy-three of a stroke,” Burke said. “My grandfather died twenty-five years before his time, of a condition we cured three hundred years ago, because you wanted to save five credits. Do any of you want to die early? Because I’ve got a hell of a deal for you. You don’t have to give me five credits. I’ll do it for free.”
Burke drew her sidearm and set it down on the table in front of her, its barrel pointed directly at Silvestri across from her. His eyes grew huge, and he stared at the muzzle of the gun.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Silvestri. It hardly ever goes off on its own. But, in this case, to be honest, I wouldn’t care if it did.”
She turned to Moody.
“Mr. Moody.”
Moody opened the top of the briefcase and extracted a file folder. He handed the file folder to Burke.
“Now there are several ways I can solve this problem. All of them are about equal from my point of view, so I’ll let you pick.
“First, I could find your companies guilty under civil law of official corruption, price fixing, accounting irregularities, and commercial fraud, resulting in the wrongful premature death of over two quadrillion people over the last hundred years. I’m not sure what the damages would be on that, but I suspect they would be large. Oh, and triple damages, because your companies’ actions were willful and malicious.
“I suspect damages of that size would put all your companies into bankruptcy. I suspect the damages would exceed the values of your companies, which would make the Empire the creditor in possession, and then the Imperial government would operate them.
“Second, I could just nationalize the companies, or make them public utilities under direct Imperial control, which amounts to the same thing. Again, the Imperial government would operate the companies.
“Third I could find your companies guilty of official corruption, price fixing, accounting irregularities, and commercial fraud, resulting in the wrongful premature death of over two quadrillion people over the last hundred years, under the criminal code. Some of those are capital offenses, which would involve me taking a whole bunch of people like you, your CEOs, your boards of directors, and other top-level executives out and shooting them. That one is actually closer to being a favorite of mine, but set that aside for now.
“Fourth, you could agree to reasonable pricing, while upgrading the existing nanites in the population. This would not entail me shooting anybody, but would require you to agree to operate in good faith. I’m not sure that’s even possible, but I may give you a chance at it anyway. I can always shoot everybody later if it doesn’t work out.
“And fifth, if you gentlemen don’t agree to reasonable pricing and terms, I could just shoot the ten of you and try negotiating with the next ten people your companies send to me, and see if they’re more reasonable.”
Burke turned to the Imperial Guardsman in the corner of the room.
“Guardsman, has everyone been evacuated from the next room as I requested?”
“Yes, Milady.”
“Ah, good. I wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
Burke turned back to Silvestri.
“So which is your choice, Mr. Silvestri?”
“What sort of pricing and terms did you have in mind, Milady?”
“You will update the nanites of every single person in the Empire over the next ten years, starting with those over sixty-five years old and working your way down, for twenty credits per dose. And that’s the long-term price going forward. For the next ten years, you’ll have about eight times the volume, and still be making reasonable margins. The amount you collect from the Empire will actually go up. About half aga
in, in fact. It’s the price we pay for not having managed you properly earlier. That’s the deal, take it or leave it. Of course, if you leave it, I’ll be forced to choose one of my other options.”
Silvestri looked up and down the table.
“We agree, Milady.”
“Excellent, Mr. Silvestri. I really think that was your best option.”
Burke pulled two sheets of paper from the folder – the top two – signed both, and slid one across to Silvestri. It said ‘Imperial Decree’ across the top.
“A courtesy copy for you, Mr. Silvestri.”
“Thank you, Milady.”
The other she put in the folder, then gave the folder to Moody.
“Please route and file this properly, Mr. Moody.”
“Of course, Milady.”
Burke picked up the semi-automatic pistol from the table, reholstered it, and stood. Everyone else stood as well.
“Thank you, gentlemen. A productive meeting, all told.”
Ardmore and Burke walked out of the room, and the industry representatives breathed a sigh of relief to see her go.
The Transition
Once back in Ardmore’s office, they talked about the meeting. They were in his office, because he didn’t fit very well in the guest chairs in her office. New guest chairs were being prepared, but they wouldn’t be in for a couple of days.
“Would you really have shot them, Gail?”
“If they had said, ‘Oh, yes, we want option five. Shoot us all,’ well, then, sure, Jimmy. But they weren’t going to. They were more likely to take one of the options that put the Empire in control of their companies, but that means they don’t have cushy, high-paying jobs, either, because I would have fired them all. Option four was their only option.”
“Putting the gun on the table was a smart move.”
“No, aiming it at Silvestri was a stupid move. I broke rules of firearm safety that go back almost to the invention of the firearm. But I had to get their attention. Make them see I was deadly serious. That I would take draconian action if I had to. And I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t much care if it went off or not.”
“But it couldn’t have, could it?”
“No. I checked on Silvestri ahead of time. No military service. I set my pistol down with the safety on the bottom so he couldn’t see it, just in case, but the safety was on, the hammer was down, and there wasn’t a cartridge in the chamber. It wouldn’t have just ‘gone off’. Which reminds me.”
Burke pulled her sidearm, aimed it down and to one side, racked a cartridge into the chamber, and reholstered it.
“I think it’s just as well they remain in control of their own companies, Gail.”
“Of course, Jimmy. If the Imperial government took over their manufacturing, the marginal cost would go to sixty to eighty credits per dose. That’s just not something government’s good at. With a hard price cap of twenty credits per dose, though, the only way to increase margins is to increase manufacturing efficiency. They can’t do it anymore by just ripping off their customer. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get it down to ten credits per dose for the premium version.”
“Really.”
“Of course. They haven’t had to, until now, because they had tremendous margins and were using their costs to justify the high prices. Mark my words. Ten credits a dose. Within ten years.”
“Without a reduction in quality, Gail?”
“Better not be.”
The Imperial Press Office did the best they could. The Emperor and Empress Regnant refused to reveal their reign names before the coronation, so the wording was a bit awkward.
PRESS RELEASE
– For Immediate Release –
IMPERIAL PALACE – The Emperor and Empress Regnant have negotiated a deal with the pharmaceutical companies whereby everyone in the Empire will receive nanite upgrades to a premium version that extends natural life for most people into their late nineties.
Franz Becker had predicted the Empress would force the upgrade of nanites for everyone in the Empire. He had seriously increased his investments in the pharmaceuticals industry, moving all his free cash into the nanite companies. How could the stock not go up with the promise of two and a half quadrillion additional doses to be delivered over some finite time period, by an industry that normally delivered thirty-five trillion doses a year?
On the announcement of the deal by the Imperial Press Office, stocks in all the pharmaceuticals shot up. They settled back quite a bit when details of the Imperial pricing structure came out and the companies followed up with revenue and margin projections. Franz Becker, though, had already liquidated all his pharmaceutical company holdings. He bought back in to his long-term strategic level once prices had come back down.
Becker made a killing.
The de facto leadership of the sector governors met after the announcement. Greta Feick, the Odessa Sector Governor appointed by the Emperor Augustus VI after the execution of Piotr Shubin, was not in attendance. The other seven had decided there was no magic in the number eight. They would have selected someone other than Feick if they wanted to fill out their number.
“Well, this will make them popular going into the coronation, no doubt about it,” Conway said. “Everybody’s got a parent or grandparent who’ll be affected on the near term, and it affects everyone on the long term.”
“I agree with you, Norm,” Manfred von Hesse said. “They would normally begin somewhat higher than the previous Emperor anyway, and get a bump off the coronation, but this can only redound to their benefit.”
“Is that a bad thing, though?” Smith asked. “I mean, having a popular Emperor and Empress, if we can work with them, helps us, too, right?”
“But remember who they are, John,” Gaskin said. “This is the historian who wrote ‘Power & Restraint.’ We know where they’re headed. Restoration of Imperial prerogative to its high-water mark.”
“She’s a bit more of an unknown, though,” Adams said.
“Not as unknown as she might be, Steve” Karlsson said. “Some facts about the negotiations came out from the industry representatives who were there. She was in Imperial Guard uniform, and put her sidearm on the table. She threatened, if they didn’t come to a satisfactory accommodation with her, to shoot them all and see if the next set of negotiators would be more tractable. She basically dictated the deal.”
“And some details about Piotr’s failed assassination attempt leaked, or were allowed to leak,” Porter said. “Eight riflemen made it into the Imperial Residence and killed the only four Guardsmen present. With no preparation or warning, she grabbed a Marine rifle kept in the Imperial Residence and killed them all.”
“Eight to one, and she killed them all?” Adams asked.
“One of the industry reps in the nanite meeting said that Ardmore said Augustus VI told him never to make her really angry,” Karlsson said. “Ardmore said that was after she had shot and killed eight people. So that checks, anyway.”
“Yes, I think with Her Majesty a certain amount of subtlety may be in order,” von Hesse said. “We certainly don’t want to annoy her gratuitously.”
“What about the coronation?” Conway asked.
“Oh, I will definitely attend – in VR, of course – and I urge all of you to do the same,” von Hesse said. “Given Their Majesties’ depth of knowledge of the history of the Throne, however, I will log in not from the Sector Governor’s Residence, but from a penthouse room in the biggest hotel in the densest part of Heidelberg.”
“Why from there?” Adams asked.
“Recall Trajan II’s execution of five sector governors by bombing them in their Residences, Norm,” von Hesse said. “During his coronation.”
“Oh, yeah,” Adams said. “You know, that hotel thing sounds like a good idea, actually.”
Burke had put a priority on resolving the nanites issue. With that out of the way, other issues relating to the transition came to the fore. First was a meeting with Diener
and Moody.
The new guest chairs had come in, and they met in Burke’s office. Ardmore was already seated in one guest chair, and two additional were in place when Moody came in through the door from the outer office. Moody’s secretary was still in the outer office she had been in, which was now the outer office to Ardmore’s office. Moody had taken the outer office to Burke’s office – the traditional Emperor’s office – and when he needed to go into Ardmore’s office, he cut through the communicating bathroom to his secretary’s office and then into Ardmore’s office.
“Mr. Diener is here, Your Majesties,” Moody said.
“Come in, Mr. Diener, Mr. Moody,” Burke said. “Be seated.”
They came in and sat in the other two guest chairs, next to Ardmore.
“It’s your meeting, Mr. Diener. Proceed.”
“Yes, Milady. Mr. Moody and I were wondering if you and His Majesty would be making any staff changes now that you are on the Throne.”
Burke looked to Ardmore, and he gave her a small shake of the head.
“No, Mr. Diener. The current staffing choices were all made by the Emperor Augustus VI with our consultation and approval. We planned for this for almost seven years. The current staff choices are in fact our choices.”
“Very good, Milady. That was the sense I had of it, but it was incumbent on us to ask.”
“Of course, Mr. Diener. But we’re happy with the current staffing, including most particularly yourselves. We anticipate no changes at the current time.”
“Very good, Milady. That is all we had this morning.”
Burke and Ardmore had a similar meeting with their military commanders. Imperial Admiral Jason Presley, Chief of Naval Operations of the Imperial Navy, Imperial General Samuel Destin, Commandant of the Imperial Marines, and Imperial General Eric Hargreaves, Commandant of the Imperial Guard, met with Ardmore and Burke in a conference room on the upper Imperial office floor of the Imperial Palace.
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