Democracy's Light

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Did he really die in that shuttle?”

It was the first time that Colin had been able to discuss the matter with Anderson privately since Kathy and Cordova had dropped their little bombshell. If Tiberius — and God knew who else — was keeping an eye on him, a meeting with his Head of Security — to say nothing of the man commanding his Marine close-protection detail — would send up red flags. The war situation was worsening, he didn’t know for sure who he could trust, and one of his closest advisors had died in a freak shuttle accident.

“It is impossible to tell,” Major Vincent Anderson admitted, from his seat. A tall man with faintly anonymous features, Anderson looked anything, but confident. The loss of Joshua Wachter would have been worrying under any circumstances, but combined with the news about Tiberius it was alarming. “There was actually very little left of the shuttle after the accident.”

He verged into technical detail that would have confused someone without Imperial Navy experience. The shuttle’s drive field had destabilised rapidly within seconds, shearing through the hull and ripping the craft to shreds, killing everyone onboard long before any alarm could be raised. It had still been in Earth’s gravity field and the fluctuations, encouraged by the presence of Earth, had reduced the shuttle to fragments. If it had happened in orbit, the debris could have been recovered and analysed, but instead the pieces had fallen down towards the planet, burning up in the atmosphere. The little that investigators had found proved nothing.

General Neil Frandsen snorted. “We know that he boarded the shuttle,” he said, flatly, lighting one of his trademark cigars. The brand had once been reserved for the exclusive use of the Thousand Families, but after the Fall of Earth it had become available to the general public, including Frandsen himself. He had confided in Colin that he actually found the cigars rather bland and tasteless, but he kept smoking them anyway, just to remind the Thousand Families who had won the war. “We also know that he didn’t land anywhere else between leaving the spaceport and his final moments in the atmosphere. Does it not follow, then, that he is certainly dead?”

“I could give you a dozen possible ways to get him off that shuttle without being noticed, or to convince observers that he had boarded the shuttle, or even to use a cloned body to fake his death,” Anderson said, equally flatly. The two men didn’t get along very well. The Marine tended to think in terms of straight battles, while the Security Officer thought in terms of plots and counter-plots. “I cannot prove, to my own satisfaction, that Grand Admiral Wachter died in that shuttle. I consider it quite possible that he may not have been on the shuttle at all.”

Colin frowned. Conspiracy theories made his head hurt. “I see,” he said, finally. “If he wasn’t killed, then why was his death faked?”

“There are several possibilities,” Anderson said, ticking them off on his fingers. “One, he wanted to leave your service and decided to do it in a manner that would leave few questions behind. He worked with his own people, including his loyalists from Morrison, and set up the faked death scene so that he could vanish.”

“It would have killed the pilot himself, and Penny Quick,” Colin said, dryly. “Or were their deaths faked too?”

“Second, the Admiral is required for something else that Tiberius has in mind and therefore has to drop out of the public view… and, just incidentally, out of the Grand Admiralship you created for him,” Anderson said. “The death scene is set up and the Admiral leaves the system to do whatever Tiberius wants him to do.”

Colin nodded. “And the third possibility?”

Anderson shrugged. “Third, Joshua Wachter was actually killed, by one of his enemies,” he said, finally. “The man wasn’t — isn’t — actually short of enemies, from reactionaries down here to men and women who lost friends and relatives in the Battle of Morrison. It’s even possible that Tiberius ordered him killed, for whatever reason made sense to him.”

Frandsen smiled. “Why would Tiberius kill someone whose death would certainly draw unwanted attention?”

Anderson smiled. “He might have been loyal to Colin,” he said, nodding in Colin’s direction, “or alternatively refused to do whatever Tiberius wanted. I don’t think that that’s particularly likely, not after Tiberius was the person who recommended Joshua for Morrison, but it is a possibility. Frankly, sir, we don’t have enough evidence to point the finger at anyone, not in this position. We are left with an unsolved mystery.”

Colin stared down at the table thoughtfully. “Are you certain that it was murder?”

“We studied the shuttle’s records carefully,” Anderson said. “The drive should not have destabilised so badly without alarms going off everywhere; the craft certainly should not have been allowed to fly. There was no trace of any damage when it was inspected prior to use, nor is there any reason to suspect that the maintenance crews are lying. The only possibility is a deliberate piece of sabotage within the shuttle’s computer core, done competently enough to pass an inspection, yet utterly lethal when triggered. The shuttle might have been prepared for years before it was finally turned into a murder weapon.”

“What a cheerful thought,” Colin observed. He considered the thought for a long moment. A person who could sabotage one shuttle could do the same to others. “How many shuttles do we have on the planet?”

“Thousands,” Anderson said. He frowned. “I’ve ordered a check of all of their computer cores, just in case, but my gut feeling is that Wachter’s shuttle was specially prepared for its mission. The crews do run regular checks on their craft and discovering a killer program would have resulted in all of the shuttles being grounded until we had had a chance to inspect them all.”

Frandsen thumped the table. “Enough of this,” he said, angrily. “We know who was behind the murder, or the faked death, so what are we going to do about it?”

“We have no proof linking Tiberius to the Admiral’s death,” Anderson said, flatly. “We do not have grounds, under the new laws, to haul Tiberius in for questioning, even gentle questioning. We could ask him to make an attestation under a lie detector, but he would be quite within his rights to refuse, as indignantly as he liked.”

“And that,” Frandsen snapped, “would prove that he had something to hide.”

Anderson sighed. “Everyone has something to hide,” he said. “Anyone, even someone who is completely innocent of anything that could be called an offence, even under the Empire’s harshest laws, would fear a lie detector test, or the use of truth drugs. Everything they knew would come pouring out of them; the secret shames, the truths they would die rather than confess, the dark truth about what they’re really like, their sexual fantasies… everything and anything. No one will blame him for refusing to go through such a session. They will, instead, blame us for forcing him to submit.”

He leaned forward. “And even if we do find proof, what then?”

“Stamp on it sharp,” Frandsen said. “If he’s guilty, can’t we strip him of his power and position and dump him on some godforsaken penal world?”

“It’s not that simple,” Colin said, tiredly. He ran his hand through his brown hair. “We are attempting to build the rule of law here… and the law applies to everyone, even traitors — suspected traitors.”

“You know he’s a traitor,” Frandsen pointed out. “You have all the proof you need to convince yourself. What more do you need?”

“Yes, I do,” Colin agreed. “I know, but we have to convince the Empire that he is a traitor, rather than me merely stamping on someone who happened to disagree with me and creating a martyr. I could name seven MPs who will be quite happy to lambaste me for hammering Tiberius without a full confession, in triplicate, and others who will add their weight to secession campaigns. The Empire could fall apart over this.”

He shook his head. “Vincent, can’t you get covert access to his estate?”

“Not easily,” Anderson admitted. “The Thousand Families have always controlled their estates ruthlessly; it’s not like the High City, where we have domination and overall control. I couldn’t slip someone into his staff without them going through personality conditioning, which would render them useless, and I would have great problems breaking through their counter-surveillance techniques.”

He paused. “But this may not be the first murder that Tiberius has ordered, if indeed it was a murder,” he continued. “Lord Roosevelt was murdered by his own pleasure slave, one sold to him by” — he paused for dramatic effect — “Tiberius.”

Colin scowled. He disliked the entire concept of pleasure slaves — and forced personality reconditioning, for that matter — and had signed a number of laws into existence banning the former and placing the latter under strict supervision, but it hadn’t prevented the practice from continuing. There was little that could be done for the existing pleasure slaves — they couldn’t be re-educated or even freed from their condition — while anyone with any degree of paranoia, which suited the Thousand Families perfectly, would only want conditioned servants. It was possible to prevent conditioning from having an impact on a subject, but any halfway competent medical doctor would be able to tell that the conditioning had failed, giving rise to all kinds of questions.

“I see,” he said. “How many more of them are there on Earth?”

“Several thousand,” Anderson said. “They’re not even regarded as human, so there isn’t a precise count, but the High City alone has over nine hundred working within the city, mainly pleasuring visitors.”

Colin shuddered. The concept was revolting. One might as well bed down with an animal, or commit incest with a blood relative. The pleasure slaves might look human — they tended to maintain an innocent demeanour that could be both haunting and stunningly attractive — but they were little more than children, mentally. They would remain at the apparent age of twenty for thirty years, then age and die rapidly, unless they were put to sleep first. It wasn’t murder, according to the Empire. They weren’t human.

“Disgusting,” he said, shaking his head. If Tiberius had a means of controlling them at a distance, he might even have an entire army right under Colin’s nose, one that would never be suspected until it was far too late. No one took pleasure slaves seriously. “Keep them out of Parliament and anywhere else that might be dangerous.”

“Already done,” Anderson said, with a wink. “The remainder of the Thousand Families were not happy to learn about Lord Roosevelt’s death.”

“I’m sure,” Colin said. He laughed briefly. Tiberius had probably done the Roosevelt Clan a big favour, although the handful of survivors probably cursed his name with every breath they took. “We still have no direct proof, which leaves us with a problem.”

He picked up the gold-covered envelope on the desk and opened it. “You are cordially invited to the wedding of Tiberius Cicero, Head of Clan Cicero, and Alicia Russell, of the Russell Family,” he said, dryly. He’d only met Alicia once, but she reminded him, in some ways, of Kathy. Tiberius might have chosen well. “It’s not something I want to attend, but I may have no choice.”

“I don’t think that you count as a vital family member,” Anderson said, dryly. Colin had to smile. Apart from a bastard some few generations back, his family tree was decidedly common. Some of the Family matrons could barely bring themselves to acknowledge his existence. “You could just turn down the invitation.”

“You have got to be joking,” Frandsen said, a second later. “Here, we can pretty much guarantee your safety, unless they manage to get shipkillers launched at the city. In Tiberius’s estate… they could do anything to you. Colin, I hope you’re not considering going, not seriously.”

“I may have no choice,” Colin repeated. He scowled down at the invitation. It was handmade, a beautiful piece of craftsmanship under almost any situation, but Frandsen was right. The odds were that it was an invitation to a trap. He admired the workmanship of the artist, thinking hard. They had to understand the problem before they could advise him. “Tiberius is a member of the Cabinet in good standing.”

He held up a hand before they could object. “Officially, there is no break between the pair of us, so being invited — and accepting the invite — is pretty much compulsory,” he continued. “If I snub him, it will look as if I am snubbing him, in public. The outside observers, the reporters, the chattering classes, will take my snub and run with it. They will decide that Tiberius is on the way out and that news, in the wrong place, will inflict harm on the Empire.”

The thought was maddening. If he moved against Tiberius, in the stark certainty that he intended to kill him, he would look like a tyrant. The first-rank worlds would consider breaking ranks. His supporters would fear him and start preparing contingency plans for his removal. His enemies would see the writing on the wall and strike first… and all his hopes and dreams for the Empire would wither and die. He couldn’t allow it to happen, which meant that he had to expose himself to enemy fire, as crazy as it seemed.

“That is as nothing compared to the harm that would befall the Empire if anything happened to you,” Frandsen said, firmly. “The entire Provisional Government would come apart at the seams. You’re the only person holding it together. Parliament can’t go in the same direction without bickering… and the Imperial Navy will fragment without you. Admiral Wilhelm may win by default.”

Colin scowled. The news of Wakanda had come in last night; a first-rank world, the least of the first-rank worlds, had fallen to Admiral Wilhelm, almost without a fight. They hadn’t even placed a destroyer in a position to observe the battle and report to the Imperial Navy, so the only visuals they had of the battle came from a freighter captain who had risked her ship to record as much as she could… and it wasn’t enough to help calculate losses. The only point that everyone could agree on was that Wakanda had been crushed and occupied.

His eyes fell on the starchart. Assuming that Admiral Wilhelm left at once, he was going to be within two weeks of Earth, or days of the next possible target world. Colin privately suspected that Admiral Wilhelm wouldn’t bother punching out other first-rank worlds — it wouldn’t actually gain him anything beyond more enemies — but instead he would come straight for Earth. It might even win him some allies among the first-rank worlds if he made the right promises and offered the right deals. They didn’t even have an accurate read on his fleet’s strength, which meant that Colin couldn’t spare anything from Earth to reinforce the first-rank worlds. The war seemed to have faded into a state where the best he could do was wait to be hit.

“That may be true,” Colin said, dragging his attention back to the two men. It was true and, without false modesty, he knew it. Joshua Wachter, irony of ironies, might have been the only other person who could have held the Imperial Navy together, but he was officially dead. God alone knew what had happened to him, or what Tiberius had in mind, but Colin had some very nasty suspicions. “It’s also not up for debate. I have to attend the wedding.”

Frandsen scowled. “Permission to speak freely, sir?” Colin nodded. Frandsen was rarely so formal. “Sir, with all due respect, it’s a mistake, a stupid mistake. You will be venturing into the lion’s den, a place controlled by a person whom you know wants to kill you and destroy all that you stand for. You may as well paint a big target on your back and tattoo the words ‘please shoot here’ on your forehead.”

Colin smiled without humour. “Neil…”

“It’s not an issue of showing bravery under fire, or even under threat of fire,” Frandsen continued. “You’re not a young and expendable Midshipman any longer. God knows I have sent young Marines to their deaths, expecting — knowing — that some of the young men and women will die, but I had no choice. When I served as their commander, I could not take foolish risks…”

“You did lead the boarding party back at Macore personally,” Anderson observed.

Frandsen scowled at him before turning his attention back to Colin. “You should not attend this wedding,” he said, firmly. “Sir, please…”

“I must agree with Neil,” Anderson said, flatly. The kindest thing he normally said about Marines was that they were knuckle-dragging cavemen. Colin had rarely heard him actually agreeing outright with Frandsen, who competed with him for Colin’s attention. “I do not believe that we can guarantee your safety.”

“My safety isn’t the issue,” Colin said.

“Your safety is the Empire’s safety,” Frandsen said, tiredly. He rolled his eyes just enough to venture into insubordination. “See previous rant.”

“And see mine,” Colin said, softly. “I cannot not attend the wedding, Neil.”

“I know,” Frandsen said. “God help us.”

“But we will take precautions,” Colin said. He leaned forward. “I don’t know if Tiberius actually does intend to try something stupid at the wedding, but if he does, I want to be ready for him.”

“He’ll do more than try,” Frandsen said. He glowered down at the floor, as if he were expecting it to sprout weapons and try to kill them. The Empire had been known to use booby-traps to kill the unwary in the past. “If he can’t kill you with all the odds in his favour…”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“I know,” Colin said. They shared a tight grin. “This is what we are going to do.”