“I’m glad to see everyone is all right after this last round of nonsense,” said Lacomia Sector Governor Ethan Davis.
“So who was it? Do we know?” asked Catalonia Sector Governor Maria Celia Morales.
“We can guess, I would think,” said Garland Sector Governor Robert deVries. “Who was the only anti-Throne group not impacted?”
There were nods around the table.
“The plutocrats of the old DP, of course,” Davis said.
“I’m surprised Their Majesties haven’t done anything yet,” said Estvia Sector Governor Carson Adams.
“Yet is the key word there, I think,” said Center Sector Governor Chen Guanyin. “I am confident that, in the longer term, this will not go unanswered.”
“Their response must be well-targeted,” said Essen Sector Governor Grayson Moore. “One can’t simply execute someone because they have money and are in the old DP. That would include me, for example.”
“No doubt they are doing the investigatory work required to determine the exact parties responsible,” said Colinas Sector Governor Santiago Diaz. “That takes time.”
“I hope we have the time,” Adams said. “The murder of Paul Bowdoin and the assassination attempt on the Empress were major moves. It seems to me some cusp is approaching.”
“Agreed,” Davis said. “Along that line, I had a question for everyone. Did anyone manage to capture the agent?”
People shook their heads around the table.
“All of them were killed?” Davis asked.
“Mine had a shootout with the residence guard detail sent to scan VR IDs. He lost,” Chen said.
“We got the warning in the evening,” deVries said. “When the guard went to his apartment in the residence, he shot himself.”
Davis looked at Feick.
“We emptied out the building with the fire alarm, then scanned everyone’s VR IDs coming back in. He tried to escape the grounds and was shot.”
“He’s dead, then?” Davis asked.
“Oh, yes.”
Well, the Emperor had assured her he was dead now, so that was the truth.
“Did we all get VR IDs from them at least?” Davis asked.
There were nods all around the table.
“Good,” Davis said. “Well, at least Their Majesties have those to work with.”
“Where do we think all this is going?” deVries asked. “What’s their end game?”
“Assuming the plutocrats of the DP?” Chen asked.
“Yes,” deVries said. “Assuming it’s them, what’s they’re play?”
“They had the ability – undetected for a long time – to simply kill everyone with any authority or legitimacy, all at once,” Feick said.
“And then what?” deVries asked. “Assuming that’s the play, what do they do then?”
“Without the Emperor and the sector governors, the provincial governors would be the highest standing authority,” Adams answered.
“I assume they would want political control, so they would have to stand up some form of government, and then try to force the provinces into it,” Diaz said.
“If it was nominally a democracy, that wouldn’t be hard in the former Democracy of Planets,” Moore said. “There’s still a lot of cultural lean in that direction here.”
“So they do what?” deVries asked. “Have all the planetary governors vote in a president, with the goal of full democracy down the line?”
“That would probably go over really well out here,” Moore said.
“Somewhere during this process, though, the military gets involved,” Morales said.
“Does it?” deVries asked. “I’m not so sure. Not if it’s a fait accompli, and there is no Throne to give orders.”
“Well, if they’ve thought it through – and I think they have – then they have to have considered the military aspect. Could they have infiltrated the military?”
“Maybe for some top-level military people they have the same agents in place for assassination as they did for us,” Adams said.
“That’s a disturbing thought,” Chen said.
“I will bring that possibility to the attention of the Imperial Investigations Office,” Davis said, making a VR note. “Anything else for today?”
“I wonder how our fellows who are less, um, fond of the Throne are viewing all this,” Diaz said.
“I think it has to have given them pause,” deVries said. “They were nominally on the same side. I would think now they realize there will always be, in the plutocrats’ minds, just two sides – the plutocrats and everybody else.”
“Yes, the DP plutocrats having in place a way to remove them all, permanently and at once, has to have them doubting their alliances,” Feick said.
“We should watch for a way to welcome them to our side of the table,” Adams said.
“Everybody give that some thought and keep an eye open for opportunities,” Davis said. “Anything else?”
Davis looked around the table.
“All right. I’ll see you all in two weeks.”
There was another somber meeting going on, this one among the leaders of the plutocratic families that had run the Democracy of Planets for a millennium. The inner council of those families met around a round table in VR. Karl Weibel on Sondheim was the nominal day-to-day leader, but within this group he was more of an equal.
Joining Weibel were Arthur Kunstler, Weibel’s second, in Fremd Sector, Nikos Mantzaris in Athens Sector, Maire Kerrigan in Connacht Sector, Antonio Sciacca in Mantua Sector, Oksana Durov in Lauda Sector, Jost Auer in Gandon Sector, and Bertram Corbyn in Stanton Sector.
“How bad is it, Karl?” Corbyn asked.
“As far as we can tell, we’ve lost every single one of the highest-placed agents we had in the sector governors’ and royals’ staffs,” Weibel said.
“Were any of them captured alive?” Durov asked.
“We don’t believe so,” Weibel said. “We’ve got no reports of any captured alive, and the news reports that are coming out are of fatal confrontations with house guards. What prompted those confrontations, we’re not sure, but it could have been VR ID scanning that showed multiple VR IDs. They might also have found a way to detect the kill command transmitters even when they’re not turned on.”
“If they’re on to multiple VR IDs, we’re in trouble,” Auer said.
“Well, it wouldn’t be good, that’s for sure,” Weibel said.
“Are those all our losses right now?” Corbyn asked.
“No,” Weibel said. “We’ve also lost contact with several resources within the Imperial Palace, which is why I don’t have a lot of insight into what’s going on. I simply don’t have the information sources I once did.”
“This Emperor and Empress – one or the other or the combination – are clearly much more capable than any in the past century,” Kerrigan said.
“Yeah, we really put our foot in it when we tried to kill the Empress,” Mantzaris said accusingly, looking at Weibel.
“And Bowdoin made it worse,” Auer said.
“Which are decisions made by this council,” Weibel shot back. “I will not be the scapegoat for this council’s consensus decisions. If you want someone else to run day-to-day operations that is your right. But we all underestimated the Throne here. We’ve gotten too smug in our ability to operate with impunity.”
“I think that’s fair,” Kerrigan said. “We need to look forward. The open question is, What do we do now?”
“One interesting consideration is they’ve given no indication they know the backdoor into the premium health nanites was engineered,” Corbyn said. “Every reference they’ve made to it is they were hacked. And they’ve made no criminal moves against the nanite manufacturers or their executives.”
“Going forward, though, they’re going to be updating everyone to a premium package that does not have the kill command,” Auer said. “And every target of interest has already flushed the premium nanites by now.”
“Being in possession of one of the transmitters now amounts to a death sentence,” Durov said.
“Yes,” Weibel said. “We should probably tell everyone with one of the transmitters to dispose of it lest they get caught with it. They are useless at this point.”
“I think we need to go further,” Kerrigan said. “If I were them, I’d be watching financial transactions. Funds transfers. I think we should halt all funds transfers into the alias network.”
“That’s rather extreme isn’t it?” Corbyn asked.
“We’ve underestimated the Throne twice now, and what has it gotten us?” Kerrigan asked. “Who would ever have believed they would have been on top of the Bowdoin kill so fast? The Impies arrived at the same time the local cops did. Our agent didn’t even have time to get off the grounds.”
“Do we have enough resources in the alias network right now to operate without new transfers for a while?” Auer asked.
“I think so,” Weibel said.
“Then I agree it would be a smart move,” Auer said.
Weibel collected votes around the table.
“OK, we’ll do that as well. Anything else for right now? All right. See you in a couple of weeks.”
Summary And Strategy
One other big meeting was held in this critical period. The fifth faction vying for control of the Empire also met.
“Your Majesties,” Franz Becker said, and bowed.
“This meeting is being run on Imperial Residence rules, Mr. Becker,” Burke said. “My name is Gail.”
“And people call me Jimmy,” Ardmore said.
“My first name is Franz,” Becker said.
“Have a seat, Franz,” Burke said.
“Thank you, Mil– Gail.”
“Oh, now this is comfy,” Paul Diener said when he logged into the meeting.
There were four big overstuffed armchairs in front of a stone fireplace. A cheery fire was burning in the fireplace. Burke, Ardmore, and Becker were already there.
“Have a seat, Paul,” Burke said.
“Thanks, Gail.”
“I found this simulation in Trajan II’s files,” Ardmore said.
Diener looked around the comfy room.
“It’s very nicely done,” he said.
“I thought it might be conducive to clear thinking,” Burke said. “So much is going on, we need to round it all up and get the big picture, then plot a way forward for the Throne.”
Becker was a little shocked by Burke’s statement. He was definitely on the inside, in a position of maximum trust by the Throne. He felt honored.
“I’ll start off. We are now aware of at least three factions working against the Throne, and two working for it. The three factions working against the Throne are approximately half of the sector governors, loosely affiliated with a core group nominally headed up by Baden Sector Governor Manfred von Hesse; the heirs of the royal houses of the former Alliance nations, whose nominal head we don’t know, and the descendants of the one hundred eleven plutocrat families that ruled the Democracy of Planets behind the scenes, probably for centuries. We don’t know the head of that group, either.”
“I thought it was a hundred and twelve,” Diener said.
“No,” Burke said. “The hundred and twelfth person was the spymaster for the DP in their consulate in the Carolina Sector.”
“Ah,” Diener said.
“Working for the Throne are the four of us and the Imperial Palace staff, including the Department, which only the four of us know about, and the other half of the sector governors, loosely organized around a core group headed by Lacomia Sector Governor Ethan Davis. So there are not two factions in this battle, but five.”
“More a war than a battle, Jimmy,” Burke said.
Ardmore waved a hand, conceding the point.
“So a review of the history will help a bit, I think,” Ardmore said. “The Emperor Trajan defeated the Alliance nations in 7 and 8 GE. With their navies destroyed and unable to defend themselves from either the Democracy of Planets or the Empire, most of the Alliance nations annexed to the Empire as protection against the DP. The Empire defeated the DP in 10 GE, and ended up ruling all of human space.
“There was an assassination attempt in 10 GE, the first warning of which came from Franz’s ancestor, Otto Stauss. He had seen large bets being made in the stock markets the Empire would suffer some sort of setback. The assassination attempt was thwarted, and was tracked back to a group of wealthy families in the DP. Trajan executed the conspirators, and Otto Stauss became the richest human being alive by covering the DP plutocrat’s bets against the Empire in what is now called the Great Chaos in the markets.
“Those families had been ruling the DP from behind the scenes for hundreds of years. Maybe a thousand years. We’re not sure, but the signs are there. They had their own hierarchies and succession strategies. They rebuilt much of their fortunes during the Golden Age of the Four Good Emperors and bided their time.
“That time came when Augustus the Great named his son to the Throne rather than a young, energetic Emperor selected on the basis of merit. Looking back through the Emperor’s files, it is not clear to me whether the DP plutocrats had any input into that decision. It may simply have been a gross mistake of the sort that comes along once in a while. There’s an ancient prototype for this mistake. Marcus Aurelius named his son Commodus to the throne of Imperial Rome, which marked the end of Rome’s Five Good Emperors, who had all been selected on merit and were, in fact, the model for the Sintaran Empire.
“There were two major events in Augustus II’s reign that set the stage for where we are now, though they weren’t seen as major at the time. One was a change in Imperial accounting rules, called accounting deregulation, that did not require a record of the source account of fund transfers received into an account. It also did not require the identity of accountholders be verified, effectively making alias accounts legal. This gave the DP plutocrats a way of moving money around and paying subordinates that was untraceable.
“The second major change was to have two grades of health maintenance nanites, and to make the lesser of the two the one the Empire gave every citizen at no charge. Health maintenance nanite packages were developed in the second decade GE, as the Empire flourished under Trajan the Great. Prior to that, there were individual nanite groups for various things, like heart disease. As the various nanite products got cheaper, they were assembled into packages of health maintenance nanites and simply provided to everyone.
“Augustus II, though, changed that system. The lesser package of nanites was provided to everyone, and a premium package was provided on the open market, or what was purported to be an open market. The goal may have been to reduce costs for the Empire while giving the pharma companies a higher-margin product to keep the cost of the basic package down. The premium package that was ultimately provided included a kill command that was designed into the package by pharma companies under the control of the DP plutocrats.
“I have been through the Emperor’s correspondence, meeting records, and notes on these changes, trying to see if they were engineered by the DP plutocrats. They did support the changes, but so did many others, all special interests. Augustus II, having grown up coddled in the Palace, did not have the identification with or understanding of the common people the Four Good Emperors had had, and, absent that, there was no one in those meetings to represent the interests of the population as a whole.
“The Empire continued down this path for a hundred years, undoing much of the work of the Four Good Emperors. Reinstalling a self-serving bureaucracy, permitting increases in taxes, permitting trade tariffs and embargos between sectors, permitting the dissolution of the Imperial Guard into a pouf squad, the whole miserable litany. We don’t pick up our story again until the Emperor Augustus VI, Jonathan Drake.
“Drake knew the Empire was going downhill. He had been watching it happen his whole life. Under the urging of his wife, the Empress Consort Jul
ia, he pursued some reforms, but the sector governors and the bureaucracy maneuvered against him, and Drake’s efforts came to naught. He was preparing another attempt when his wife died suddenly, and those reforms were put on hold. Five years later, Edward Moody tripped across a reference to my history of the Four Good Emperors and pointed it out to Drake. Drake called me in to talk, then hired me, and we set at the process of reform in earnest. The first step of that reform was to reform the Imperial Guard, which is when Gail was brought in.
“We now know the Empress Consort Julia was murdered by the DP plutocrats using the kill command in the premium health maintenance nanites. It was not suspected at the time that there had been any foul play, but it did interrupt Drake’s attempts at reforms.
“There was, however, a junior doctor on the staff of the clinic in the Imperial Residence who looked into the Empress’s death in more detail. What he saw were micro-hemorrhages distributed throughout her body. He suspected the nanites, rather than something systemic, but no one listened to him. When he became the head doctor of the clinic, he stocked search-and-destroy nanites in the clinic against that possibility.
“That brings us up to the coronation.”
“That’s an amazing story, Jimmy,” Becker said.
Ardmore nodded.
“And the DP plutocrats have made common cause – or appeared to – with the heirs of the thrones of the former Alliance nations and our own dissident sector governors.”
“Appeared to?” Diener asked.
“Yes. The plutocrats ruled the Democracy of Planets alone, and I don’t think they plan on sharing power with anyone.”
“So what’s the inside story of what’s gone on since the coronation?” Becker asked. “Which is what? Only two months now?”
“Not even, yet,” Burke said.
“Incredible,” Diener said.
“Yes. It’s been busy. The DP plutocrats made two major missteps during this period. The first was the attempt to assassinate Gail, thinking it would slow down reform, especially, I think, trade reform. When she collapsed at the after-party of the coronation, all I could think of was to get her to the clinic. I caught her and ran to the clinic, where the doctor on duty for the big event was the head doctor, who was the same fellow who suspected nanites in Empress Consort Julia’s death. He injected Gail with search-and-destroy nanites, and saved her life.
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