The five hundred heavy cargo shuttles took eight trips apiece to transfer all one hundred twenty five thousand containers, thirty-two containers at a time. It took sixteen hours. It would take the cargo-transfer shuttles of the DP warships considerably longer to transfer those stores to their ships.
The skeleton-like empty freighters edged away from the DP formation and headed out-system. Projector ships of the Sintaran fleet projected hypergates for them and they disappeared.
“All right, Admiral Benton. That’s it for this time. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
“Thank you again, Admiral Espinoza. And send my thanks up your chain of command if you would.”
“Of course, Admiral. And if your government allows your people to vote from out here, you might consider writing in ‘None of the above.’ Or ‘Emperor Trajan,’ for that matter.
“Espinoza out.”
They were sitting in the Chief’s Mess – the Goat Locker – of the battleship DPN Earthrise.
“Don’t that beat all,” Senior Chief Petty Officer Raymond Condit said.
“What’s that, Ray?” Chief Petty Officer Paolo Madeira asked.
“Sittin’ in the Goat Locker of a DP ship, in Sintaran space, after we invaded ‘em, eatin’ a protein bar they gave us after beatin’ us fair and square, because they didn’t want us to starve.”
Condit shook his head.
“Makes you wonder just how much o’ that shit we were told about Sintar and the Emperor and all that was just plain lies.”
“Probably all of it, Ray. Sure seems like, anyway.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it.”
Condit took another bite of the protein bar and shook his head.
“Shit’s gettin’ weird, Paolo. Shit’s gettin’ real weird.”
All across the front, Sintaran formations confronted their DP counterparts and held out the offer of food and reaction mass. All across the front, stunned DP commanders found themselves being restocked by Sintaran freighters.
And all across the front, DP spacers began to reconsider the lies they had been told – things they had long held to be true – about Sintar, about its aims and its actions, and about its ruler.
Dunham and Peters were sitting on the balcony of their private living room. It was the quiet hour of the day, with the twins in bed.
“My understanding is the relief operation is working out well,” Dunham said. “That’s what the reports are, anyway.”
“Oh, I’ve been monitoring it, and it’s working out very well. I have something you need to see.”
She pushed him a recording file.
“Watch this and see what I mean.”
Dunham opened the file and found himself watching the initial conversation between Fleet Admiral Maria della Espinoza and DPN Fleet Admiral Conrad Benton. When it was finished, he turned back to Peters.
“Benton is one of their twenty fleet commanders,” Peters said. “It’s clear he was wound pretty tight there. They were going to have to abandon ship. Jam all the crew into four containers for a dangerous, unsecured trip down to the planet.”
“Which would still leave a huge issue, with twenty thousand ships adrift in a populated system. And it’s clear he was moved by the whole thing. Admiral Espinoza handled it well, I thought.”
“All your admirals did. I picked that one out of two hundred conversations as being pretty representative. There are a lot of people on the other side out there rethinking a lot of things right now. And sooner or later, they’re all going home. That’s a big deal for long-term peace. A really big deal.”
Sean Dunworthy of course recognized the Imperial seal on the header of the mail message, though he had never received such a message before. It was an invitation to a meeting. He opened the VR channel and found himself sitting in a well-appointed office in front of an expensive but not ornate desk.
Tricia Milner received the same mail message. She didn’t recognize the Imperial header. She too opened the VR channel and found herself sitting in the same office with Dunworthy, whom she had spoken to many times in face-to-face calls.
“Good morning, Ms. Milner.”
“Good morning, Mr. Dunworthy. What is this meeting about?”
“I have no clue. But that was an Imperial header.”
“Oh my gosh.”
At that point, Dunham appeared behind the desk, and they both shot to their feet.
“Please be seated, Ms. Milner. Mr. Dunworthy.”
They took their seats and sat stunned, staring at the Emperor.
“In my position, I often have to ask people to do the near impossible. The two good parts of that requirement is that sometimes people manage to do it anyway and that I am in a position to recognize that performance.
“You were asked to feed thirteen billion people, in orbit in scattered systems, on short notice. It was an absolute need of the Empire that this happen. If it hadn’t, I think it would have been a stain on our reputation, if not on our very humanity.
“That you succeeded is remarkable in itself. That you succeeded within the timeframe you did is extraordinary. I would therefore like to recognize your effort on the Empire’s behalf with the Gratitude of the Throne.”
The Emperor waved a hand, and a simulation of the award in its presentation case appeared on his desk.
“It is not often awarded, and never but by the Throne itself, in the most extraordinary circumstances. Congratulations to you both.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Dunworthy and Milner said together.
“In addition, Mr. Dunworthy, you will receive a sizable, tax-free bonus in connection with the award.”
“Thank you, Sire.”
“Ms. Milner, I believe the commission structure of your company has already compensated you for your efforts in this regard.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Congratulations to you both. And, once again, thank you.”
The Emperor bowed his head to them and cut the channel.
Finding himself back in his office so abruptly was disorienting enough to Dunworthy, but a knock on his office door made things even more bizarre as an officer of the Imperial Guard entered his office and walked up to his desk.
“Mr. Jeff Dunworthy?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
The Guardsman held out a black velvet-covered case to him.
“With his Majesty’s compliments, Mr. Dunworthy.”
Tricia Milner had just popped out of VR and was back in her office when her intercom signaled.
“Ms. Milner, you have a visitor.”
“Show them in, please.”
Her office door opened and an officer of the Imperial Guard entered and walked up to her desk.
“Ms. Tricia Milner?”
“Yes.”
The Guardsman held out a black velvet-covered case to her.
“With his Majesty’s compliments, Ms. Milner.”
“Thank you.”
When the Guardsman had left, Milner opened the case to find the gold laurel wreath of the Gratitude of the Throne, in two sizes. One she considered normal-sized, for a lapel pin or broach. The other was much larger, on a ribbon. For embassy parties, she supposed.
From the time she got the mail message until she sat once more alone in her office had been barely twenty minutes.
“Well, that was surreal,” she said to the empty office.
A New Majority
Prime Minister Harold Pinter and his cabinet sat in a VR meeting room watching the election results coming in. They were all in club chairs watching the big display wall from election headquarters.
“They need eleven seats to take the majority,” Jules Morel noted.
“It looks like they’ll get more like twenty or twenty-five,” Pinter said.
“That bad, do you think, Harold?”
“I’m watching Sotheby’s seat. I think of him as my twenty-five-seat marker. And right now, he’s just holding even with Kramer. If he loses, I think it’s twenty-fiv
e seats. If Sotheby holds on, it’ll be more like twenty.”
“Ah.”
“It seems to me our traditional patrons were not as forthcoming this time as in the past,” Isaev said.
“That’s normal, Pavel,” Morel said. “They actually like to see the government turn over once in a while. It makes people more compliant to their requests for some accommodation or other if their support isn’t unconditional.”
Maybe half an hour later, after several more updates, the final numbers were coming in.
“Well, there goes Sotheby. So it’s going to be twenty-five seats,” Pinter said. “More than enough. I guess it’s about time to call that asshole Totten.”
“Just remember this is all part of the plan, Harold,” Morel said.
“I know, Jules. Still tough to lose an election, even when you plan on it.”
Jeremy Totten came back to the VR meeting room where his shadow cabinet was watching the election results.
“Pinter just called to concede the majority,” Totten said. “We have at least two hundred sixty-five seats, so soon the new Parliament will vote in the new government.”
“It’s been a long wait, but it’s worth it,” said Edmond Descartes, the shadow foreign minister and Totten’s political strategist.
“I just wish he would have sounded more disappointed. More shocked. He seemed like he knew it was coming.”
“He should have known it was coming,” Boris Andropov, the shadow defense minister, said. “The polls have been pretty clear all along.”
“Polls aren’t always right, either, though. Still, he’s called, he’s conceded, tomorrow we start by swearing in a new Parliament.”
Things take as long as they take, however, and it had been almost thirteen years since there had been a change of government in the Democracy of Planets. First the election results had to be verified. Then the Parliament had to assemble. With many of the new members on their home planets, that would take some time.
The DP had one interesting technology the Sintaran Empire did not. A person could go into a VR channel and project their avatar into a real location. That location had to be equipped for it, and the technology was expensive, but it did allow politicians in the DP to campaign on their home planets during a thirty-day election cycle without leaving Olympia. That is what all the existing members running for reelection had done. Since it could take up to thirty days to get to the far end of the DP in hyperspace, that was not a minor consideration.
One could not use such projections in Parliament, however, and new members were usually not already on Olympia. Working out travel times for his incoming members, Totten figured it would be two weeks before he had an absolute majority of two hundred and fifty-one members physically present.
It was a teeth-gnashing delay, but couldn’t be helped. Totten concentrated on getting the new government’s plans in place so they could hit the ground running.
One of the first items of business was dealing with Sintar.
Sunday brunch – through the coronation, the wedding, the pregnancy, the Sintar-Alliance War, the Sintar-DP War, and even the twins – had been sacrosanct. On Sunday mornings, Dunham and Peters went to the Saarets’ apartment in the other half of the top floor of the Imperial Palace and had a buffet brunch. The weather was beautiful today, and the sheers, the drapes, and the glass were open to the stunning view down Palace Mall.
Conversation about business was absolutely verboten during the meal, and was enforced ruthlessly by Suzanne Saaret. Only after the meal was complete, over coffee, could the conversation switch to the business of Empire. Suzanne had relented that far. And, on the top floor of the Imperial Palace, everyone was on a first-name basis. Suzanne had not relented on that at all. Being Emperor was hard enough, Suzanne maintained, without making it worse by having no place where Dunham could act like, and be treated like, something approaching a normal person.
As Dunham was Emperor, Saaret was Co-Consul, and Peters was Empress and senior adviser in the Co-Consul’s office, these conversations were often extremely sensitive. The serving staff and even the Imperial Guard were sent from the room once coffee was served. Suzanne had no official position in the government, but she was a force of nature.
“Very well,” Suzanne said once the staff had left the room.
No one needed any explanation of what she meant, nor was any further permission necessary.
“So the DP has a new government,” Saaret said.
“So it seems, Geoffrey,” Dunham said.
“Any idea what it means for the war?”
Dunham shrugged and Saaret turned to Peters.
“Amanda?”
“There are three possibilities, and any of them would be pretty normal behavior. One, of course, is that nothing changes. That on foreign policy the parties are aligned, and it is only their domestic policies that will change. Modestly at best, because their corporate patrons don’t want major changes.
“Second is they could wind down the war, negotiate peace and go home. That has historical precedents on a major change in government, such as the Russian withdrawal from the Triple Entente in the first half of the Great War.
“The third possibility, and the one I think is most likely, is they actually ramp up the war. Become more belligerent. This, too, has historical precedent.”
“Why do you think they will take that third road, Amanda?” Dunham asked.
“Because that’s what Totten and his crew ran on. That Pinter’s government wasn’t being aggressive enough in waging the war, wasn’t doing enough to teach Sintar a lesson. That was their platform. They didn’t argue domestic politics at all. Coming into office with a platform like that, I would expect them to do whatever they could to ramp up the war.”
“But what can they do?” Saaret asked. “They can’t even feed their own navy. Right now, we’re feeding them.”
“The portion of their navy in Sintaran space, yes. Don’t forget they still have more than two million warships back in the DP. We have kept them pretty immobile by wrecking their support infrastructure and picking off the units that move, but there are still some big formations there. Enough to cause trouble.”
Saaret and Bobby nodded.
“True enough, Amanda,” Bobby said. “But what will they try?”
“Probably something gloriously stupid,” Amanda said. “The corporate powers that control the DP government didn’t keep Totten’s group out of power for the last twelve years because they thought he was so brilliant.”
“And in the meantime we’re feeding their navy, at considerable expense,” Saaret said.
“It’s only money, Geoffrey, and not that much in the grand scheme of things,” Dunham said. “Consider it an investment in the eventual peace. Especially if they do something gloriously stupid, as Amanda says, and I have to do something particularly grotesque to put a stop to all this.”
He was talking about Operation Hammer Blow, both Peters and Saaret knew. Dunham clearly still hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but Amanda thought it was inevitable, especially given the change in government in the DP and the platform they ran on.
Thinking about Operation Hammer Blow, though, Peters had a sudden insight.
“Bobby. The gloriously stupid thing they’re most likely to do is attack Sintar itself. Maybe a total-fission attack on Imperial City, assuming they’ve duplicated the technology.”
“Yes,” Dunham said. “That would make sense to them, I guess.”
Saaret was slowly nodding.
“Yes, it might,” Saaret said. “Would they succeed, Bobby?”
“I don’t think so, Geoffrey. I’ll review the defensive plans with Admiral Leicester.”
Suzanne had watched this conversation without saying anything, but she spoke up now.
“Bobby, you should leave the capital.”
“No, Suzanne,” he said sternly.
“But we can’t lose the Emperor.”
“If need be, another will arise. But Sintar is
where the Emperor rules.”
He saw her concern and his expression softened.
“Do you know how the Russian soldiers knew they would defeat the fearsome and undefeated German army in the Great War, Suzanne? Didn’t just think they would win. Absolutely knew it.”
“No, Bobby.”
“Because Stalin never left Moscow. He watched the Battle of Moscow from the balcony of the Kremlin, but he never left the city.
“Live or die, I stand here.”
Jeremy Totten finally had his two hundred and fifty-one members, and he called the Parliament to vote in the new government. The shadow government won the election, and Harold Pinter’s government became the loyal opposition.
It was the morning of the next day before the staff had cleaned Pinter’s things out of the prime minister’s office in the Executive Building and moved Totten’s things in.
“Finally!” Jeremy Totten said as he sat in the conversation group to one side of his office.
After eight weeks of moving the no-confidence vote, the short campaign, the elections, and then the agonizing wait as the Parliament assembled, he was finally Prime Minister.
Totten looked out the picture window down Central Mall toward the Legislative Building.
“That’s a nice view of the Legislative Building, I must say. It looks great from here.”
“Yes, but now we need to govern,” Interior Minister Edmond Descartes said.
“That’s the easy part,” Totten said.
“And the war?” Descartes asked.
“Easier still. This whole war has been badly mismanaged from the start. Losing our support infrastructure while we occupied a bunch of lesser frontier planets? What the hell were they thinking?”
Totten turned to his defense minister.
“Boris. Get over there and get briefed on what the actual situation is. We don’t even know what’s going on since the previous government clammed up on us. Get the facts, learn what plans are in place, and plan to brief us in, what? Say a week?”
EMPIRE: Conqueror (EMPIRE SERIES Book 6) Page 14