The Barbarian Bride (The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “He wanted to remain an admiral,” Tiffany said.

  “And what do you think an admiral is?” General Thorne asked. “An absolute dictator, in command of hundreds of ships and thousands of spacers.”

  Tiffany sighed. “What is your point, General?”

  “The recorders are off,” General Thorne said. “I’ve gone to some trouble to make sure that we will be unheard.”

  “How kind of you,” Tiffany said, snidely. “I didn’t think I could get into worse trouble.”

  “Marry me,” General Thorne said.

  Tiffany blinked in shock. “What?”

  “The Emperor is mad,” General Thorne said, flatly. “I think you know it as well as I do, Lady Tiffany. And trying to ally myself with Admiral Garibaldi would be a dangerous gamble. There’s always a need for someone like me, someone who can do the dirty work without those inconvenient moral scruples, but Admiral Garibaldi probably has his own set of enforcers by now.”

  “Or he might just decide he has no use for you,” Tiffany pointed out.

  “There’s always a need for someone like me,” General Thorne repeated. “But you’re the Empress, to all intents and purposes. Marry me, and I will free you and overthrow your former husband. And together we will rule Earth.”

  Tiffany fought down an insane urge to giggle. She knew — she knew — that General Thorne was being sincere, even though it seemed laughable. He might just be able to overthrow Marius, then declare himself the new Emperor. And, with Tiffany by his side, he might just be able to make it stick. Unless, of course, Admiral Garibaldi unseated both of them when he attacked Sol...

  “You do realize that Admiral Garibaldi is unlikely to be impressed,” she said. “What do you plan to do about him?”

  “I don’t ask for much,” General Thorne said. “I — we — will remain in possession of Sol, perhaps AlphaCent and a handful of other Core Worlds. If Garibaldi was willing to make a similar deal with Admiral Vincent, he should be willing to make one with me. And your name will add a certain credit to my regime.”

  Tiffany shuddered. She wanted to be free, she wanted to escape Marius’s grasp, but she knew she couldn’t trust General Thorne. She’d exchange captivity in sickbay for a gilded cage, at best; she’d be lucky to have any freedom at all, if he didn’t just implant her to ensure that she was an obedient wife. And even if he treated her as an equal, she doubted Admiral Garibaldi would leave Sol in the hands of a ruthless bastard. Earth was the homeworld of humanity, after all.

  “No,” she said, flatly.

  General Thorne cocked his head. “You do realize there’s no other way out?”

  Tiffany shrugged.

  “I’m serious,” General Thorne warned. “You’ll be interrogated, over the next few days, until you spill everything you know. And then you’ll be put on trial, in front of a carefully-selected jury, and found guilty. And then you will be put to death. Or, if your husband is feeling sadistic, dumped on a penal world. What do you think would happen to a young woman like you, dumped amid thieves and murderers and rapists?”

  “It would be better than lying with you,” Tiffany said. “And what is to stop me telling everyone about your little ploy?”

  General Thorne smirked. “You know the interesting thing about direct brain induction? A subject can have all sorts of hallucinations, without ever being entirely certain what is real and what isn’t. You might become convinced that aliens are eating your brain, Lady Tiffany, or that your father was actually a wizard with magical powers. And you’d tell the world those lies with total conviction. No one will believe a word of the truth.”

  “Then go to the devil,” Tiffany said, tiredly. Marrying General Thorne, even if he could overthrow Marius, was too high a price to pay for freedom. And even if they did get her to tell them about Ginny... well, maybe they’d discount it as yet another hallucination. It wasn’t much, but she clung to the thought anyway. “Get on with it.”

  “As you wish,” General Thorne said. He patted her left breast, affectionately. “The next few days are going to be really interesting.”

  “Only for you,” Tiffany said.

  “Oh, for you too,” General Thorne said. “Quite a few people learn interesting things about themselves just by seeing what hallucinations their minds produce.”

  * * *

  It was growing colder.

  There was no thermostat in the tiny apartment, nothing to suggest what the temperature actually was, but Rupert McGillivray had no trouble realizing that it was getting colder and colder. It was so cold that he was having trouble sleeping. His bones ached and creaked as he struggled to keep himself busy. The landlord hadn’t bothered to install heating elements, despite a number of governmental regulations insisting on keeping the building warm at all times. It wasn’t as if anyone gave a damn, after all.

  He poured himself a cup of powdered soup as he sat down at the table and inspected — again — the terminal. It was hard to maintain any sort of link to the planetary database, even though he’d spent the last month trying to access some of the hidden accounts buried deep within the banking system. It was galling to know he could have moved himself to a far superior apartment within hours, if he hadn’t been sure it would attract attention. The Emperor’s goons would be watching for him. And even if they weren’t, it would be too easy to fall into bad habits.

  Cursing under his breath — even buying food was tricky, in the slums — he logged into one of the message accounts and blinked in surprise. A message was waiting for him, marked with a code that only a couple of Brothers knew. Rupert hesitated — he’d assumed that Professor Kratman had been killed by the Emperor — and then opened the message. If someone had tracked it through the datanet, the mere act of logging into the account would reveal his location.

  Assuming they can track me back through all the datanodes, he reminded himself. ONI was good — he had a healthy respect for their WebHeads — but Earth’s datanet was a shambolic mess. He’d voted to repair or rebuild the network, or perhaps just install a new one, yet he’d always been outvoted. For once, his political isolation had actually worked in his favor, making it harder for the Emperor to track him down. And even if they can...

  He opened the message and swore as he realized there were a whole series of attachments accompanying the text. Tara Prime had been destroyed — by the Emperor. For a long second, Rupert’s heart skipped a beat. The Brotherhood had backed Marius Drake, using its influence to ensure the Grand Senate couldn’t simply marginalize him, but for what? If Tara Prime had been destroyed, and it had, it was impossible to escape the conclusion that they’d allowed a monster to take control of the Federation.

  And when he opened the attachments, he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Emperor was mad.

  He shivered. If the Emperor was willing to butcher over four billion humans, what was he not willing to do? Destroy Earth? Or AlphaCent? Or resist to the last when — if — the rebels came to depose him? How many more people were going to die?

  Rupert felt his hands shaking in shock. How much of the whole affair was his fault? He’d been the one to propose, to insist, that the Brotherhood use Marius Drake. And now the Brotherhood was effectively gone and Tara Prime was dead.

  I can’t stay in hiding any longer, he told himself. There were a handful of contacts left, he hoped, men and women who’d remained undiscovered because he was the only one who’d known their names and faces. Contacting them was a risk — the Emperor would redouble his efforts to find him — but he owed it to his conscience to take the chance. I have to get the word out.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Like all Grand Senators, he’d feared the mob, even as he’d sought to placate it. But the Emperor would act to crush it, if the mob rioted on Earth after it learned what had happened to Tara Prime. Hundreds of thousands of people would die...

  ... And yet, they’d die too if the Outsiders retaliated in kind.

  Gritting his teeth, he downloaded the last of the at
tachments to his terminal and went to work, putting together a news broadcast. There were censors in the news offices, he knew, but his contacts could circumvent them, if they tried. The government would act at once, of course, to stop the broadcasts, yet it would be too late. Word would be out and spreading.

  God help us, he thought. He shivered, again. It was hard to escape the feeling that he wasn’t long for the world, whatever happened. The cold was seeping into his bones. Millions of others, though, would be putting their lives at risk if they rioted against the Emperor. But at least they’ll have a fighting chance.

  Praying he was right, he tapped the terminal and sent the message.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Riots on Earth were not, in and of themselves, a major problem. Riots spreading to the industrial nodes, on the other hand, were a serious headache.

  —The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

  Earth, 4102

  “Emperor,” Lawrence Tully said. “I think we have a problem.”

  Marius snarled at him. He had too many problems. His wife was a traitor, his former protégé was advancing on AlphaCent, and his other admirals were clearly showing signs of treachery themselves. Starships and personnel that he’d ordered back to Earth, to stand in defense of the homeworld, had yet to appear. It was clear some of the admirals he’d appointed were considering becoming warlords.

  And now Tully had a problem? “What problem?”

  Tully looked nervous, but stood his ground. “A broadcast just started to go out from all of the major entertainment companies,” he said. “The same broadcast. They’re showing images of the destruction of Tara Prime, sir, and blaming it on us.”

  Marius stared at him. “How?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Tully said. “The censors should have stopped the program getting out, but it’s on all the major channels and it’s spreading through the datanet. It’ll be halfway to Mars by now!”

  “I see,” Marius said. He fought to control his temper. Someone — someone else — had betrayed him and they would pay, in time. But, for the moment, he had to cope with the disaster they’d unleashed. “Is the broadcast still going out?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tully said. “The media companies say they can’t stop it.”

  Marius snarled in frustration. “Order the troops to take the broadcasting headquarters, then shut the transmission down by any means necessary,” he said. “And then tighten up planetary security. I want the people responsible caught.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tully said.

  It was the surviving Brothers, Marius thought, as Tully scurried off to do his bidding. They had always known how to steer the media, and it was quite likely they’d embedded commands and hidden programming into the broadcasting networks. ONI was still picking apart the network of shell companies and corporations that masked the Brotherhood’s activities, but it was clear that many of them did business with the media companies. No doubt they’d supplied software to the companies that had backdoors worked into the programming. And if the software itself had gone rogue, nothing short of physically destroying the transmitters would be enough to stop the broadcasts going out.

  He closed his eyes as his head began to pound. Someone had betrayed him; someone had downloaded footage from the fleet and passed it to the Brotherhood. But who? Or... the timing was just about right for a message forwarded from Admiral Garibaldi, who was accompanied by the traitor Kratman. Marius had practically sealed the Gateway, but even he couldn’t keep Earth isolated from the rest of the Federation indefinitely. The bonds holding the Federation together were already far too weak.

  A new alert popped up in front of him. He swore, bitterly, when he read through the handful of words. Crowds were already gathering on Earth, outside the media companies, government installations, and dozens of other public places. He’d banned public gatherings, but the bastards didn’t seem to care. Hell, he was sure the universities were already fueling the fire by dispatching agitators to make the crowds angrier...

  He tapped his terminal, feeling another flicker of bitter rage. Earth had betrayed him, just like everyone else. And it would pay.

  “General Thorne,” he said, once the channel had opened. “You are ordered to use all necessary measures to keep the planet under control.”

  “Aye, sir,” General Thorne said. “I’ll see to it at once.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Kevin Sanderson gritted his teeth as the aircar dropped towards the giant complex on the outskirts of London, followed by a dozen more. Planetary Security had been hailing the media bastards ever since the first broadcast had gone out, but the directors of the complex hadn’t bothered to answer, no doubt considering the greatest ratings of their career to be worth more than the lives of millions of people. The lies they were spreading — and Kevin’s CO had made it clear they were lies — would get thousands of people killed in London alone.

  “There are crowds gathering outside the complex,” Lieutenant Gartrell reported. “Just look at the scum.”

  Kevin nodded. London was just like every other city on Earth; a handful of hard-working people, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of worthless leeches who did nothing beyond turning out the next generation of worthless leeches. It made his blood boil to think about just how many idiots were wasting their lives, while the taxpayers — men like himself — worked frantically to keep their heads above water. They preferred to drown themselves in drink or drug themselves into a stupor, rather than actually work to escape the horrors of their lives. It wasn’t as if it was hard to sign up with a colonization firm or even join the military...

  “We’ll have to put ourselves down at the outskirts of the crowd,” he said. It was possible the crowd would disperse when they realized the security forces had arrived, but he had a nasty suspicion that they’d stand their ground. Crowds were only ever as smart as the stupidest person in them, and most of the workshy were very stupid indeed. “Make sure you keep your weapons in your hands at all times.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Gartrell said.

  Kevin checked his own weapon as the small flight of aircars dropped to the ground. Some of the crowd took the opportunity to run, but thousands more were pouring onto the streets to join them. Dozens of alerts flashed in front of him, warning the security forces that criminals were taking advantage of the chaos to loot. He shook his head in sardonic amusement, knowing that the only people who would suffer were the Londoners themselves. Who would build a business in the city when it could be torn down and destroyed at any moment?

  Children, he thought, dismissively.

  He opened the hatch and led the way out, weapon at the ready. The crowd turned to face him, hundreds of faces blurring into a mass of seething hatred. He almost flinched, despite himself. Planetary Security wasn’t popular — they’d had to clean up messes during the earlier set of strikes — but he’d never seen such hatred written on so many faces. He clutched his rifle tighter as the other aircars unloaded their troops. Ideally, he’d set up barricades and force the crowds away from the complex, but there was no time. One didn’t advance in Planetary Security by creatively reinterpreting one’s orders.

  “ATTENTION,” he said, through his mouthpiece. “THIS IS AN ILLEGAL GATHERING. YOU ARE ORDERED TO RETURN TO YOUR HOMES AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNINGS!”

  The crowd murmured angrily, but didn’t move. Kevin felt his chest contract in fear as the anger grew stronger, fighting down the urge to run or open fire. He didn’t want to open fire, he didn’t want to kill so many people... and yet it was starting to look as though he had no choice. Gritting his teeth, he took a step forward, but the crowd stood its ground. The remainder of the troopers followed him, moving too slowly for the crowd to believe they were trying to be intimidating. It was all too clear that they were nervous...

  Someone threw a rock. Kevin barely had a second to register it before it struck Trooper Powell, sending him to his knees. Lieutenant Gartrell opened fir
e, aiming his rifle right into the heart of the crowd. Kevin opened fire himself, spraying bullets into the crowd. It flinched, then roared with anger and lunged forward. All of a sudden, Kevin was knocked onto his back, and there was nowhere to run. Hands tore at his uniform, feet stamped on his chest...

  ... And then there was nothing but darkness.

  * * *

  Tadd had never had any real ambitions in life, beyond surviving as long as possible. He’d left school at sixteen with a useless set of grades, then spent the next four years of his life drifting in and out of the gangs while drinking, whoring and taking drugs. Indeed, he couldn’t be said to have any political ideas at all. He’d only joined the crowd because it looked like a good chance to do some pick-pocketing while shouting his disdain at the government’s officers. The meddling scum deserved everything they got...

  ... And then the shooting had started.

  Left to his own devices, Tadd would have run. He knew himself to be a coward; brave men died on the streets of London, trying to prove their manhood even as the last breath drained from their bodies. But the crowd pushed him forward, fueling his anger towards the security forces and everyone else who’d meddled with his life. He slammed into one of the troopers, knocked him to the ground and stamped on his throat. Behind him, the crowd roared as it tore the troopers apart and then headed for the aircars. They were on fire before it occurred to anyone, even Tadd, that they might have been gainfully sold for beer money.

  “To the streets,” someone shouted. “Death to the pigs!”

  The crowd lunged onwards. Tadd, somehow, managed to get to the edge of the street and drop down, curling up into a ball as the crowd raged around him. The shouting was terrifyingly powerful, a lure that threatened to pull him into the maelstrom; he covered his ears, trying hard to keep from surrendering to the call. He’d never been a gangster, not really; he’d never been committed to anything. And yet, the call reached for him, pulling him towards the crowd. It was all he could do to keep himself low until the crowd raged off towards the nearest police station.