“How many people?” Claire asked.
“Several thousand.”
“Almost five thousand,” Ardmore put in. “In the military. In the sector and provincial governor’s offices. All over the place. Mostly in the former Democracy of Planets.”
“What happens now?” Claire asked.
“That’s a good question,” Ardmore said. “One with no easy answers.”
“Interrogating everyone is first,” Burke said. “To find out what we can. That’s under way.”
Daniel Ryan was being held in an isolated cell in the basement detention area of the Imperial Research Building. He had limited VR access to entertainment programming and reading, but no inbound or outbound messaging. The Imperial Guard brought meals on a regular schedule, and the food was good.
Ryan had been questioned briefly. He didn’t have much to tell them. He only knew his part of the plan. What he needed to do. Was expected to do. But he had cooperated completely.
There was no sense lying. Ryan guessed they were monitoring his autonomic responses. Further, they knew much more about the whole thing than they ever let on. If he lied, they would know it, and then the interrogation drugs would come out. The Throne took treason charges very seriously, and nothing would stop the Imperial Guard from getting to the bottom of something once you had their attention.
Neither his life nor his sanity would be high on their list of priorities.
On Sunday afternoon, Ryan was taken from his cell by a pair of Imperial Guardsmen. He was moved to the same interrogation room as before, with chairs at either end of a long table. The chair farthest from the door was bolted to the floor. They asked him to sit in that chair, then, as before, they handcuffed his ankles to the chair legs. They left his arms free, they just didn’t want him leaving the chair.
He waited for a few minutes before the door opened again and two Imperial Guardsmen came in, taking watch positions in either corner of the door wall. That was new.
The door opened again and the Empress walked in, dressed in Imperial Marine MCU with captain’s tabs and a purple fourragère. Ryan jumped to his feet.
Burke sat in the interrogator’s chair and clasped her hands in front of her on the table.
“Be seated, Colonel Ryan.”
“Yes, Milady Empress.”
She considered him for a while, making him uncomfortable.
“You have been unusually forthcoming, Colonel Ryan.”
Ryan shrugged.
“I stand accused on an Imperial Warrant of treason, Milady. Further, I cannot argue with it. There is usually only one way that ends.”
“But not always, Colonel Ryan. Not always. I find it is too easy to simply kill people. It is not my preference.”
Ryan said nothing. He had not been asked a question. And he would not allow himself to hope he would leave this facility in any other way than a body bag.
“Colonel Ryan, I need you to tell me your story. I need you to start at the beginning and tell it to the end. It is Sunday, I have the time, and I want to hear it.”
“Yes, Milady.”
Once Ryan started talking, it became easier and easier to talk to Burke. In hindsight, her being in MCUs with captain’s tabs might have been designed to put him at ease. Or it could simply be how she dressed on Sundays. Imperial Marines often wore MCUs off-duty or even once retired. Only the purple fourragère indicated she was the Empress.
Ryan told her about growing up on Galway, and admiring his elder sister Maire Walsh. About taking an assumed name at age four. About going to the Imperial Marine Academy Galway. About his career. About the plan the families had hatched. What little he knew of it anyway. It was Maire’s plan. It was always Maire’s plan. She was the head of the family and that was how it was.
Ryan told her about the museum refurbishment. How he had grown proud of the job he had done. Had even hoped a snag would forestall the plan. But when the warhead had shown up, he had done what he was expected to do. He told her about catching the seven intruders inspecting the warhead, trying to figure out what to do. That he had been going to kill them – the six other than his great-nephew – because they would be dead anyway in the nuclear explosion.
Ryan told her about his great-nephew Tommy Doolan knocking the gun out of his hand, and Odom punching him. How he had woken up cable-tied to a jump seat in the hallway. About Tommy dressing him down over his role. About being shook by the explosion in the exhibit hall, and hearing about Tommy’s death. He wound down at that point. He had been talking nearly two hours.
“Did you see Cadet Boyle – Tommy Doolan – when he dropped out of VR to get the fire extinguishers, Colonel Ryan?” Burke asked.
“Yes, Milady.”
“Did he say anything to you, Colonel Ryan?”
“Yes, Milady,” Ryan said. “He told me, ‘I will not be forsworn. Not like you.’ He said it with contempt.”
Burke sat back in the chair. It had been an amazing soliloquy.
“Tell me, Colonel Ryan,” Burke said. “Was it so bad being in the Imperial Marines? Being in Imperial City? Being part of the Empire?”
“It was never a question that occurred to me, Milady. I was just doing what I was told. It never even occurred to me to question it.”
Burke nodded.
“Thank you, Colonel Ryan. It has been most enlightening.”
Burke stood, and he shot to his feet.
She left him standing there when she left the room.
“Well, that was disturbing,” Burke said to Ardmore when she got to their private living room upstairs in the Imperial Palace.
“The interview with Colonel Ryan?”
“Yes. I just told him to tell me his story, and he did. The whole thing.”
“Well, it was two hours, give or take,” Ardmore said.
“Yeah. It was the damnedest thing. He never questioned anything. He just did whatever his sister said. Never even thought of questioning it.”
“Was he going to kill Commander Geary and the rest when he caught them in the museum?”
“Oh, yes,” Burke said. “He figured they would be dead in the nuclear explosion anyway.”
“Well, we can’t let that guy go. That’s for sure.”
“We can let his sister go – the one who gave the orders – but not the guy who followed orders?”
“Ouch,” Ardmore said. “Yeah, that seems wrong. So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What’s your next step?”
“Talk to the sister,” Burke said.
“Channel 22?”
“The office? No. Channel 20.”
“The fire-breathing Empress again?” Ardmore asked.
“Yes, if I have to. This is going to stop.”
Audience
Last week Galway city had been eight hours ahead of Imperial City. Due to Galway’s longer days, it had slipped eleven hours and was now three hours behind. Burke put in the meeting request to Maire Kerrigan at noon Imperial City time.
On Galway, it was nine in the morning Monday when the Empress’s message came in. Kerrigan considered not taking the meeting request, but there was going to be music to face one way or the other. This beat having the Imperial Guard kicking in her door, for example.
Kerrigan accepted the meeting and clicked the pointer. She found herself standing in a completely blank off-white room – not even doors or windows – with three leather club chairs. She was standing in front of one of them, facing another directly opposite, in which the Empress sat. The Emperor sat in the third chair, alongside the Empress’s, but it was clear the meeting was primarily with the Empress.
Both were dressed as they had been at the coronation, and both wore their crowns. The Emperor, dressed all in black, was a mountain of a man, and seemed to wear the chair as much as sit in it. The Empress wore a semi-sheer white caftan, the crown jewels across her chest and the Star of Humanity on her brow. She sat in her chair as if it were a throne, her arms along the a
rms of the chair. She radiated authority.
“Your Majesties,” Kerrigan said, bowing.
“Be seated, Ms. Kerrigan.”
“Yes, Milady.”
Kerrigan sat, and Burke’s face softened.
“I wanted to personally express my condolences for the loss of your grandson Thomas Doolan in Imperial service, Ms. Kerrigan.”
“Thank you, Milady.”
“He will be buried at sea, Ms. Kerrigan. It was his dying request. You and the family are invited to attend the funeral in VR.”
“Thank you, Milady.”
“I will send you further details when they are available, Ms. Kerrigan. There is some delay, as his body is so radioactive and poisonous at this point special precautions need to be taken.”
“I understand, Milady.”
“That said, you and I have unfinished business, Ms. Kerrigan. You have put me in the position of having to decide what to do with you, the other heads of the plutocratic families in the former DP, and the thousands of prisoners we have taken. Indeed, the entire billion or so people descended from those executed for treason in 10 GE. I could simply execute you all, I suppose, but that is not my preference.”
“Execute a billion people, Milady?”
“Of course. In an Empire of half a million planets, that is only two thousand people per planet on average. Your plot, would it have been successful, would have resulted in the deaths of tens or hundreds of trillions of people. Should I not safeguard the larger group against the cancer you represent? Imperial forces would not even have to carry it out. I could put a one-million-credit bounty on all your heads.”
“That would be a quadrillion credits, Milady.”
“In an Empire of two-and-a-half quadrillion people, that is a mere forty cents per person, Ms. Kerrigan. Don’t you think it would be worth forty cents a person across the Empire to be rid of you and the threat you represent to their lives, their well-being, their prosperity? And, as we would confiscate all your accounts and holdings first, the initial bounties would be paid from your own resources.
“It would not even be particularly difficult. We have DNA samples from all one hundred eleven of those executed. DNA sniffers could be deployed in spaceports, bus terminals, grocery stores, doctor’s offices, public places. And when one of them tagged a descendant of that group, the person who killed them could live in comfort for the rest of their lives as a reward from their fellow citizens.”
The Empress was right, and Kerrigan knew it. It would be absurdly easy for the Empress. An Imperial Decree, and everyone in the Empire would be hunting for them.
“But you can’t. You wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t, Ms. Kerrigan? Observe.”
The Empress seized her VR controls, and Kerrigan found herself in a recording. She was seated in a straight-back chair in a circle with perhaps two dozen other people. She was gagged and bound to the chair. She tried to get out, to drop out of VR, but her VR controls were gone.
Looking around, she saw the padded epoxycrete room had no windows, just a steel door. The people in the room were all gagged and bound to their chairs, and they all had a number scrawled on a piece of paper pinned to their shirt.
At that point, the door opened and the Empress entered. Or rather, Gail Burke, she who would become Empress. She was eight or nine years younger, in her early twenties, and dressed in Imperial Marine MCUs with the black fourragère.
“You have all been found guilty of espionage and sentenced to death by His Majesty, the Emperor Augustus VI. You have all refused what mercy may be granted for cooperating with the investigation into your crime. So be it.”
Burke looked up at the ceiling.
“Begin.”
“Seven,” a voice came back from the ceiling.
Kerrigan watched as Burke pulled her sidearm out of its holster, turned until she faced number seven, a middle-aged man. His eyes were wide and darting about. She shot him three times across the center of the chest. He jerked with each shot, flopped a bit, and was still.
“Next.”
“Nineteen.”
Burke turned to number nineteen, a pretty young woman sitting next to Kerrigan, her eyes squeezed shut. Kerrigan looked directly into Burke’s face – expressionless, emotionless – as she shot the pretty young woman three times across the center of the chest. The woman’s head fell forward on her chest. Her bladder released at that point, and blood and urine dripped from her chair onto the floor.
Kerrigan could smell the blood and urine. It was clear this was a recording of an actual event, not a simulation.
“Next.”
And so it went. Kerrigan watched as six times a number was called out, six times Burke turned and fired three times, six times a prisoner died. Some were messy. Some were quiet. Some struggled against their bonds and tried to scream past their gags. Some jerked their heads around crazily, looking for some escape. Some simply closed their eyes. The smells of urine and blood and gunpowder filled the room and mixed with the muffled sobbing of the survivors.
After the sixth one, Burke reloaded and reholstered her sidearm and walked out of the room.
The nightmare dissolved, and Kerrigan found herself once again sitting in the leather club chair in the blank off-white room facing the Empress.
“Tell me again what I would or would not do to preserve the Empire, Ms. Kerrigan.”
The Empress would do it, Kerrigan now knew. She was an Imperial Marine, had seen combat, and would kill up close and personal if necessary. How much simpler to sign an Imperial Decree and declare them all persona non grata, to be hunted down and killed. Not just her and her conspirators, her henchmen and her agents. Everyone in the families, until every single descendant was dead. All her relatives. Her brothers and sisters, her children, her grandchildren. By merely signing a piece of paper.
Kerrigan also knew now Tommy had been right. She did not have what it took to rule. Going along with Antonio Sciacca’s scheme had been easy. Something dealt with at arm’s length. Almost theoretical. But Kerrigan did not have the stomach for something like what this Empress had done as a young officer.
And now she wielded Imperial power.
Burke saw the realization dawn in Kerrigan’s eyes, let it mature, then stepped into her thoughts.
“Your scheming has, finally, come to represent an existential threat to this Empire and to the quadrillions of people I swore oath to protect. You and the others will end this now, or I will end it. Your grandson will be only the first of your losses.”
“I understand, Milady,” Kerrigan managed to say.
At that point Burke tilted her head, looked at Kerrigan quizzically.
“Is it so bad, Ms. Kerrigan? Living in the Empire? I do my research. Your family rebuilt its finances after the investment losses of Sean Robert Walsh. Built the family estate. Became, once again, wealthy and powerful. Your companies are doing well in the free-trade environment His Majesty and I restored. What in heaven’s name do you have to complain about?”
“I understand, Milady. In the past week, I have read His Majesty’s book. Tommy recommended it to me in his–“ Kerrigan choked up a bit here “– last communication.”
“And you read it, Ms. Kerrigan? Excellent. Then you know that, were a group of wealthy and powerful merchants – such as Mr. Sciacca’s group, say – to come to us with some advice or some idea to enhance the lives of the people of the Empire as a whole, we would surely consider such ideas. Not to confer preferences that elevate some above others, or give some an advantage over others, but some good idea that was beneficial for everyone. That is how most good ideas in the Empire reach the Throne.”
“Indeed, Milady?”
“Yes, Ms. Kerrigan. There is true political power. Not merely to vet some politicians, among whom citizens vote, and then watch them go off on their own agendas. But to have the ear of the Throne.”
“But you have the power, Milady. You and His Majesty.”
“We have no power at a
ll, Ms. Kerrigan. We are bound by our oaths to the Throne. To do what is beneficial. To do what is necessary. Even if it means to sentence a billion people to death to save the rest of humanity from their cruelty. It is not what we want to do. We have no choice.”
That was a point of view that was alien to Kerrigan. She had seen it before, in His Majesty’s book. In some of the things said by the Four Good Emperors, particularly Trajan the Great, who set the standard. In the act of self-sacrifice of Ilithyia II, where the book began.
“I think I see, Milady.”
The Empress sat back in her chair, her arms along its arms, her fingers crooked over the ends. She was an incredibly imperious figure, and radiated authority. Kerrigan felt like a supplicant before a mighty being, who sat in judgment of her.
“I will let you go and consider what I have said, Ms. Kerrigan. But there will be no compromise on this: your choice is reconciliation or annihilation, for each of the families. We can detect the DNA of the descendants of any of the one-hundred-eleven families. So it is up to you to police your own family. If any raise their hand against the Throne, then all in that family will be punished.
”If any family seeks reconciliation, and enforces it on their members, then they shall have it. If any does not, then I will do what I must do, and that family will be hunted down and exterminated, every man, every woman, every child.
“I have sworn oath to protect the people of this Empire, and I will not be forsworn.
“Take that message back to the other families. Ms. Kerrigan. Make sure they understand. They have a choice to make. They control their own destinies.
“But the Throne will no longer hold back its sword in the face of their truculence. Imperial Power will be wielded to protect the people of the Empire. May God have mercy on them then, for I will not.”
Kerrigan shivered at that, and bowed her head to the terrible apparition before her.
EMPIRE: Resurgence Page 21