When Donahue got back to the apartment that evening, they ordered dinner delivered again rather than go out. Now hooked back into real-time data, and with video feed coming in from their own cameras and those of the Imperial Police, Dickens was jealous of any time spent out of VR. It was Italian tonight. A couple of big antipasto salads to share, four orders of meat lasagna – two for Odom – and Italian bread and butter. Odom dumped both salads in one big bowl and put it on the table with a pair of tongs.
“The bread is wonderful if you toast it slightly,” Odom said. “Warm. You want me to toast yours?”
“Yes, please,” Dickens said.
Odom nodded and loaded up the four-slot toaster. He already knew Donahue would want his toasted. The Italian restaurant was one of their favorites.
Once they had dinner together and were seated, discussion turned to the mission.
“Did you get the cameras emplaced today?” Donahue asked.
“Yeah. Piece o’ cake,” Odom said. “Hey, did we forget to order cake?”
“No,” Donahue said. “It’s in that other bag over there.”
The restaurant’s chocolate mousse cake was a delight, and there were four slices – once again, two for Odom. Odom looked around his back to the remaining bag on the counter to be sure.
“Great,” Odom said.
“Mike did a great job placing the cameras,” Dickens said. “I’m getting great feeds. I’ve already identified three of the multiple-alias agents. Rather, I’ve identified their day-to-day working alias, as opposed to their communications alias.”
“Have you sent that in?” Donahue asked.
“Oh, yes. Immediately. They can start monitoring those additional IDs as well. Relayed messages may come in one ID and go out another, so it’s important to get those new IDs fed back into the list of surveillance targets as soon as possible.”
“Excellent.”
“What have we got now?” Marybeth Harris asked her supervisor in the Imperial Network Operations Center.
“More IDs to monitor,” Kana Miura said.
“How many more?”
“Just three.”
“Oh, OK,” Harris said. “We may have to put additional processing on this soon. We’ve never monitored this many people before.”
“Yeah. Some big investigation, I guess.”
“I wonder what it’s all about.”
“I was strongly advised not to inquire,” Miura said.
“Wow. Well, I hope they’re getting what they need.”
Just a few miles away, Lina Schneider was reviewing the investigation map. Stanley Nowak joined her.
“Those new links are interesting,” Schneider said. “Additional IDs of people already under surveillance. Our multiple-alias people. Have we sent those on to the NOC?”
“Yes. They’re monitoring the additional IDs as well.”
“Good. And we’ve sent off the latest file of message intercepts to the Co-Consul?”
“Yes. The new links came in from the Co-Consul as well,” Nowak said. “I wonder where he’s sending the data, or getting intelligence back from.”
“I was told not to ask. Not even to speculate. So don’t go poking around.”
Nowak held up both hands in a warding-off gesture.
“No, not me. Forget I said anything.”
Schneider nodded. Whatever kind of operation Paul Diener was running, it was dark, very dark. But if they could keep turning up things like the additional aliases of people already under surveillance, she was all for it. She didn’t need details.
“Are we ready to update Their Majesties this afternoon?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re all set, I think.”
“Good. You can handle the presentation.”
“Um. OK. I guess,” Nowak said.
“You’ll do fine, Stan. Their Majesties require our best information, and you’re more up to speed on this right now than I am. Just try to forget who they are and present the facts.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Schneider and Nowak were standing by when Ardmore and Burke appeared in the investigation map viewing room. It was in VR, of course. The map was a three dimensional rat’s nest of nodes and links by this point.
“Your Majesties,” Schneider said for them both as she and Nowak bowed to Ardmore and Burke.
“Proceed, Ms. Schneider,” Ardmore said.
“Mr. Nowak will present today, Sire.”
“Very well. Mr. Nowak.”
“Yes, Sire. Our efforts remain focused on tracking all the different communications to identify the DP families’ agents. We are also monitoring message traffic looking for an upsurge in communications prior to a major event. With respect to the latter, that has not yet occurred, but we remain vigilant.
“With regard to the former, we are making progress. We have in the past month identified a few more two-stage middlemen. Additionally, all of our data is being provided to the Co-Consul. Mr. Diener has, in turn, provided us with the working aliases of some multiple-alias agents who are communicating with the DP families through a different alias.
“We’ve known of the DP families’ use of multiple-alias agents since the Paul Bowdoin murder last year, but they remain terribly difficult to find. It could literally be anyone. Mr. Diener’s information on the day-to-day aliases of three agents in Imperial City is shown here.”
Nowak highlighted a section of the map showing three middlemen with a second alias attached.
“We are now monitoring the communications of those additional aliases under the existing Imperial Warrants.”
“We are aware of Mr. Diener’s activities, Mr. Nowak,” Burke said. “While every intelligence organization is skeptical of information not developed in-house, take my assurance this information is of the highest quality, and can be relied upon.”
“Of course, Milady.”
“And there has been no increase of traffic within this network, Mr. Nowak?”
“No, Milady. There is, in fact, very little communication at all.”
“I understand, Mr. Nowak.”
“What I am expecting at some point, Mr. Nowak, is a short message to run through this network,” Ardmore said. “Setting the countdown, if you will. Will we see that?”
“Yes, Sire. Definitely.”
“Even if it’s just a word or two, Mr. Nowak?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Very well,” Burke said. “Thank you, Mr. Nowak. Ms. Schneider.”
Their Majesties cut the connection and disappeared from the map viewing room.
“Nice job, Stan.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
Back in Burke’s office, she and Ardmore compared notes. First, though, Burke signaled the Guardsmen to leave and suspended audio monitoring.
“Sounds like Mr. Pitney’s people are getting results,” Ardmore said.
“Yes. Getting at some of those multiple-alias people is important. They’re dangerous.”
“Why more dangerous than anyone else, Gail?”
“First, they were likely in the Imperial Police, to get multiple-alias nanites, which means they have training in how to be dangerous. Second, they are the people someone who is paranoid would likely assign to the most hidden parts of their operation. Because they can communicate on one alias and operate under another.”
“OK. I get that. But they’re turning them up.”
“Slowly, though,” Burke said.
“Do you want to reassess our strategy?”
Burke stared down at her hands for several seconds.
“No. No, I think we’re right. If we don’t wait, we’ll never turn them up at all.”
She looked him in the eye.
“I want to deal with this bunch once and for all.”
The Cusp Nears
They were seated around the kitchen table in Donahue’s apartment. It had been Italian again tonight.
“How long we been at this now?” Odom asked.
“Well, I got here the en
d of December, more or less,” Dickens said.
“Yeah, and we were here two, three weeks earlier. Beginning of December,” Donahue said. “So almost four months since Odom and I got here.”
“Just wondering how long this is gonna be,” Odom said, shrugging.
“Gotta get back for somethin’?” Donahue asked.
“Nah. It’s just boring, is all.”
“It’ll be boring until, one day, with no warning, all hell breaks loose,” Dickens said.
“You think?” Donahue asked.
“Yes,” Dickens said. “All these people we’re monitoring and tracking aren’t here for nothing. We think we know most of them by now, but I’m willing to bet we don’t know the main actors yet. It’s been too easy.”
“Too easy? With all that stuff you got and the cameras and everything?” Odom asked.
“Yes. Too easy. I just hope we have enough warning when it breaks to do something about it.”
“You just tell me who and where,” Donahue said. “We’ll take care of it.”
They were all on the pool deck in the Imperial Gardens on the roof of the Imperial Palace. Ardmore, Burke, and Burke’s parents watched Stevie squeal and splash in the pool under the watchful eyes of his childcare staff. Children could be taught to swim at a very young age, while their body fat made them super-buoyant, and at six months the child could propel himself slowly through the water, all the while enjoying it tremendously.
The pool temperature had to have been adjusted higher, of course, and that made it harder for Burke to swim her laps, but watching the child enjoy himself so tremendously more than made up for it.
Even though Ardmore and Burke normally eschewed them when alone, they were wearing swim suits in deference to Burke’s parents. Burke was wearing a white bikini that contrasted with her mahogany skin tone. Ardmore was wearing black swim trunks.
“You seem distracted, Dear,” Burke’s mother said to her.
“Uh, what? Oh. Just worried about work,” Burke said.
Burke didn’t normally talk about ‘work’ with her parents. The background was so complex, it would take days just to bring them up to speed.
“Anything I can help with?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. It’s very complicated. And it’s not a specific thing. More of a feeling.”
“Oh, those can be the worst,” Mary Anne said.
She looked across the pool to where Stevie’s swimming instructor and the childcare nurse were now drying off and diapering the child.
“Well, I see my grandson is about to go downstairs for his nap, so I think we’ll head downstairs and leave you two the pool deck without having your stuffy old parents around. Come along, Gregory.”
Posten grunted and got up from the chaise as Mary Anne took Stevie from the nurse. It was an oft-repeated exercise, as Mary Anne loved to carry the child down to the Imperial Residence while she cooed to him and he fell asleep in her arms, then deposit him in his crib in the first family apartment.
“See you at dinner,” Burke said.
As her parents left, Burke signaled the Imperial Guardsmen who were always hovering nearby. They nodded and retreated to the escalator cupola, well out of sight and hearing.
“So what are you thinking about?” Ardmore asked.
“The latest intelligence on the plutocrat conspiracy.”
“We don’t really know much more.”
“I know,” Burke said. “That’s what bothers me.”
“Well, let’s review. We know they’re up to something. They don’t maintain all those agents to no end. We know they aren’t close to pulling the trigger yet on whatever it is, because we see no uptick in their communications. Right so far?”
“I think so, yes.”
“OK,” Ardmore said. “On our side, our friend Tom has had all his people in place for months now, and they’ve done a good job identifying a lot of people. We have positive IDs on a lot of the multiple-alias people, even video recordings of them, so we know who those people are. We’re monitoring their communications, too, so we’ll know when their traffic picks up and we can round them up. Also right?”
“Yes.”
“Now, we could round everybody up now, if you think that’s better.”
“No,” Burke said. “I think we’ve been right all along. The best time to disrupt their plan is when everything is in motion. We might miss the triggerman otherwise, and not stop whatever they’re up to.”
“Right. So?”
“It’s just the waiting. Knowing it’s coming, and it not being time yet to do anything.”
“Understood,” Ardmore said. “On that I very much agree with you.”
“But, Jimmy. What if they win?”
“They can win the battle, Gail, but they can’t win the war. We have all our contingencies in place, even an off-planet Heir if it gets really ugly. And he will have command of the Imperial Navy and Imperial Marines. Do you think he can’t suppress this revolution?”
“No,” Burke said. “No, it should be easy for him.”
“And he’ll also have the loyalty of Tom and his friends, and our friend Franz Becker.”
Burke nodded. She had been surprised when she and Ardmore had agreed on who their off-planet Heir should be. There was only one choice really, as outré as it sounded. Only one person had the political acumen, the experience of command, and the ruthlessness it would take.
Manfred von Hesse.
How bizarre would it be if the now-loyal sector governor was elevated to the Throne to fight his erstwhile allies? Still, no one else was better positioned.
The Imperial Navy, the Imperial Marines, Thomas Pitney, and Franz Becker all had encrypted communications from the Throne with their instructions, and the VR system on another planet would communicate the crypto key if communications with the capital were lost. Against those forces, united behind von Hesse, no conspiracy could prevail. The Throne – not the physical Throne, but the concept of the Throne – would survive.
If it came to that.
Burke knew they were drawing near to what Ardmore called the cusp, the pivot point, where all of human history could turn on a dime. The future of humanity could all come down to the actions of a small group of people at the critical moment.
History could hinge on the actions of a single individual.
Sean Boyle, though he didn’t know it, was thinking along the same lines as the Empress. Whatever it was, it was getting close. He could feel it. At the same time, he felt helpless. There had to be something he could do, something that would stop what now seemed to him like insanity.
If the families brought down the Empire, trillions of people would die in the chaos that followed. War, famine, and disease would rack up terrible losses. Just ten percent of the Empire’s vast population was two hundred and fifty trillion people. That was a low estimate of how many might die, with untold suffering by the survivors.
Why? Because some distant relative, who was a shitty ruler to begin with, had been executed when he plotted to assassinate the Emperor? Shouldn’t that have been an object lesson, not a cause célèbre?
It would, in the hindsight of history, turn his family and the other families into monsters. Pariahs forever. Whether they won or lost.
And if they won, what had they won? The right to be shitty rulers, like their ancestors? There was no indication they had even a dram of the governance skills their ancestors had had. All that institutional memory had been lost over the generations. And their ancestors had not been good rulers. That much was clear from any reasonable assessment of history.
And that, of course, would be rule over the shambles left after the collapse of the Empire. Shattered, as Travis Geary had told him, like a piece of glass. Ruling over the shards. This is the glorious future his grandmother schemed towards?
Not knowing what else to do, Boyle started writing a letter to his grandmother, setting out his thoughts and his argument. He didn’t know if he would ever send it, but he might.
In the meantime, it gave him the feeling he was doing something, feeble as it was.
Maire Kerrigan was busy trying to get everything set up for the takeover of the Empire by the families. She had no illusions they would be able to take over the whole thing, but she felt pretty good by this time they could wrest most of the DP out of the ensuing chaos, and then pick off the non-DP sectors one at a time as things went forward.
She was doing all this planning pretty much in isolation. Oh, the families’ heads were communicating. They had to expect the Empire knew who they were. But they were not communicating with their hidden assets anymore, and hadn’t been since the sweep in which the Empire had rounded up or displaced so many of them. They did not communicate with their remaining hidden assets lest they out them to the Empire.
That would all change soon. She knew Ian’s timetable. He had a hard deadline of getting the refurbishment of the Imperial War Museum done by the beginning of the summer vacation season, and she worked toward that schedule.
But they wouldn’t communicate with their remaining hidden assets until the last moment, when they had to synch up everybody’s schedule.
Imperial City had multiple rings of safeguards against nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. The planet was guarded in hyperspace by a huge number of interceptors, the successors to the picket ships that had proved so decisive in the Sintar-Alliance and Sintar-DP wars. Space within ten million miles of the planet was a very controlled space, with assigned traffic patterns and orbits, and hundreds of warships ready to respond.
A ready squadron of Imperial Marines attack ships were stationed at Imperial City spaceport. And a full division of Imperial Marines with dozens of assault shuttles were stationed at the Imperial Marines Combat Training Center four hundred miles south of the city and assigned continuously as a ready division for defense of the capital.
Freight inbound to the planet did not come into Imperial City Spaceport. The cargos of the big freighters were brought into the Center Freightport, which was a hundred miles southeast of Imperial City, far enough from Imperial City Spaceport for the traffic patterns to not be overlapping.
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