She scanned the yard and the plantings as she walked up to the front door. The grounds were beautiful, and very well kept. She would have to ask Ms. Pomeroy who the gardening firm was. She was often asked for recommendations by her clients, and these people did a wonderful job.
Minton opened the front door and walked into the entry. Whoo! The place needed a good airing out before she put it on the market, that was sure. That and clean out the cupboards and such. Something had definitely spoiled.
The interior was spotless, and she looked around with an experienced eye as she walked through into the living room.
What was that?
Minton screamed and ran back out to the car to call the police.
Henry Wilkins had hung himself off the railing of the loft.
Amanda Peters took the slidewalks from the Imperial Research building to the Imperial Palace. She rode the freight elevator from the sub-basement all the way to the rooftop, emerging within the small greenhouse facility that supported the gardens.
Her father, Mason Peters, had been the head gardener for the rooftop gardens for almost thirty years. Peters had worked in the gardens throughout middle and high school, before she went off to university. With a degree in finance and economics, she had come back to work in the palace three years ago, in the palace finance department. The Imperial Research building had just been completed, and she had put in for and snagged one of the staff apartments in that building.
As a child of the palace staff – a ‘palace brat’ – Peters had actually grown up in the palace. She and her brother had lived in her parents’ three-bedroom apartment on one of the lower floors of the palace, on a residential floor for senior Housekeeping employees. As a palace brat, she had been given priority consideration for employment when she got out of the university. She was already steeped in the culture and values of the palace staff, and the Imperial Guard had signed off on her security clearance in record time.
Her older brother Dean had gone off to university for a degree in agronomy and horticulture, and had also been employed by the palace when he graduated. He was now the assistant gardener, and would take over from her father when her father retired.
Peters still helped her father out in the gardens, more on an ad hoc basis than anything else, and she still had access to the rooftop gardens. She loved the gardens, and used to play there with her brother and their friends when the Empress Ilithyia I was safely busy doing other things. There were certain times when the Empress was known to use the gardens, and, at a call from her father in VR, the children would all scurry to the freight elevator to disappear.
Now, as an adult, she had all those happy memories of the gardens, which added to their appeal. And on sunny weekend days like today, they called to her.
She knew the Emperor was unlikely to be on the rooftop. Her father had told her that, while the Empress, her husband, her brother – the current Emperor – and his wife had used the rooftop gardens every weekday evening, and often on weekend days and evenings as well, the Emperor had not been in the gardens since he had acceded to the Throne. Perhaps the memories of their time in the gardens together were just too painful for him.
Peters kicked off her sandals. She left the greenhouse facility and walked out into the gardens. She reveled in the sweet scents of the flowers, the earthy smells of the loams and mulches, the sunlight dappling through the leaves of the bushes and small trees as she walked down the shaded lanes.
Barefoot, in her sundress, she danced through the gardens, and sang a joyous song of love, and life, and home.
“What do we have this morning, Mr. Saaret?”
“Several things, Sire. The business ideas group has modified the new ideas group’s proposal on organization. They’ve added a Budgets group and a Projects group to the four prior groups above the department heads. I think that’s probably a smart move. The full proposal is underway in the review group, but they tell me it is progressing nicely.”
“Excellent, Mr. Saaret. I like this proposal quite a bit, actually. The other ideas have all been various ways to put in place another hierarchic structure as before. Those positions will all fill with graspers and turn into little fiefdoms yet again. To my mind, those layers just remove from the Throne the ability to see what’s actually going on. I much prefer this idea. To give it a try, at least. We can always fill all those layers later if we want.”
“That’s one of the advantages, of course, Sire. We already have all those layers cleared out, so if we were ever going to try something like this, now’s the time.”
“Exactly. Do they have a timetable for a proposal?”
“Another week or so, Sire.”
“Very well. What’s next?”
“We’ve noticed some things coming out of the Catalonia sector that are disturbing, Sire.”
“What sort of things, Mr. Saaret?”
“It’s hard to put a finger on, Sire. The news of the Council Revolt and your counter-attack is subtly shaded. The news reports call it the alleged involvement of the Council and the alleged involvement of the Imperial Police. They note that no evidence was presented by the Throne that they were actually involved. And they point out that the Throne has never before been held by a male ruler, and has never before been passed within a family.”
“All of which is true, Mr. Saaret.”
“Yes, Sire. The editorials coming out of Catalonia are more explicit. They argue that these facts add up to making you illegitimate, that you are, in fact, a dictator. Trajan the Tyrant.”
“Nice bit of alliteration there, Mr. Saaret. I kind of like it.”
“Sire?”
“The Emperor of Sintar is a dictator, Mr. Saaret, as were all the Empresses before. That’s sort of the point, isn’t it?”
“Of course, Sire. But we do not see anything of this kind in any other sector, and in Catalonia it is coming from multiple sources. It has all the appearance of being orchestrated.”
“By the sector governor, Mr. Saaret?”
“Yes, Sire. Renata Palomo de la Gallego is nothing if not ambitious. I suspect she’s planning something. Perhaps a secession of the sector.”
“By turning the populace against the Throne, Mr. Saaret?”
“Yes, Sire. Should we do something about it?”
“Not yet, Mr. Saaret. I’ve been thinking about this since you brought her up as a potential problem a few weeks ago. Most people just want to be left alone, and don’t care one way or the other unless their own interests are affected.”
“So we just let it go, Sire?”
“For the time being. The farther Ms. Palomo gets out on a limb, the easier it will be to lop it off. I will get the pruning shears ready, however.”
“Very good, Sire. One other thing this morning. Our intelligence coming out of Estvia is troubling. They appear to be up to something, but we can’t tell what.”
“What are the signs, Mr. Saaret?”
“Additional materiel deliveries. Activation of military units. Increased shipping activity at military facilities. Mostly along our border. The orbital freight transfer station at Galveston has been particularly busy. That’s a short hop to Wollaston.”
“They want to take advantage of what they see as our current state of confusion, Mr. Saaret.”
“I think so as well, Sire.”
“Well, let’s see if we can’t have some surprises for them. I would invite you to sit in on my meeting with our military commanders tomorrow, Mr. Saaret.”
“Yes, Sire. And I almost forgot. Mr. Wilkins showed up.”
“Henry Wilkins, Mr. Saaret?”
“Yes, Sire. A real estate agent found him. He was apparently hiding out at Mr. Pomeroy’s beach house. Active VR suppressor and all. Pomeroy’s widow decided to sell the house, and the real estate agent went out there to survey it. She found Mr. Wilkins hanging in the living room.”
“That’s a hell of a decoration, Mr. Saaret. Took the matter out of our hands, did he?”
“Y
es, Sire.”
“Well, good. One less thing to do.”
General Martin Klaus, Commandant of Imperial Marines, and Admiral Howard Leicester, the Chief of Naval Operations of the Imperial Navy, were in Klaus’s car on the way to the Imperial Palace.
“Did you read up on the Emperor Hadrian, Marty?”
“I sure did, Howard. Interesting guy.”
“Sounds like your people are going to have some work to do.”
“I think we’re both going to be pretty busy, Howard. One thing I really like, though.”
“What’s that, Marty?”
“Hadrian let his soldiers win.”
“Amen to that.”
“Be seated, gentlemen,” Dunham said.
Klaus, Leicester, and Daggert sat, as did Dunham and Saaret.
“I’ve asked Mr. Saaret to sit in with us this week. We have a number of things going on at the moment that may involve your forces. I want to go over those with you, and make sure we are prepared.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Before I start, I need to mention that it is my intention to tell you what I want to do, but not how you should do it. That’s up to you. So if I get too specific with the how, I am asking you to push back. Really push back, like a senior non-com with a fresh academy grad. Understood?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Very good, Sire.”
“All right. Our first problem is Catalonia. The sector governor there is getting feisty, and I think she’s going to do something stupid. I’m going to let her do it, and then we are going to make her position untenable. So what I need to know from you is, can we move a hypergate? Assume it’s shut off, but still rotating. Can we take it into hyper and disappear with it?”
“Yes, Sire. Materiel Command sites them all the time. They have large tugs that can make a hole big enough to pull a hypergate through. And the tow collar is geared on the ship and can be rotated to match the spin of the hypergate. You have to be careful with navigation because of its angular momentum, but the crews know how to deal with that.”
“Mr. Saaret, how many hypergates does the planet Catalonia have?”
“Three, Sire. That’s pretty standard for a sector capital.”
“Very well. Admiral Leicester, I want you to stage the capability of simultaneously towing three hypergates out of Catalonia space into hyperspace. Gather them nearby, but out of detection of the planet. A few light years, perhaps.”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Include enough combat elements to protect them from interference by your own local forces, Admiral Leicester.”
“Sire?”
“I believe we may find your local commander has been suborned by the sector governor, Admiral. I would just as soon we can carry off this plan even if that is so.”
“I see, Sire. I’ll plan for that.”
“Good. Now on to Wollaston and Galveston. The Kingdom of Estvia is also showing signs of preparing to do something stupid. I had already planned to pull us out of Wollaston and put an end to the insurgency there by other means. Now it looks as if Estvia is going to give me additional cause. Let me tell you what I want you to be planning.”
Dunham laid out his goals for the operation. When he was completed, Admiral Leicester had an objection.
“Sire, no one is going to want to be individually responsible for taking those more, um, decisive actions.”
“Are your ships’ bridges implemented in VR, Admiral?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Then I will be present on the bridge, and I will push the firing button, Admiral.”
“Ah. Very good, Sire.”
“And you already have forces on the way, Admiral, after our last meeting?”
“Yes, Sire. I erred on the side of too much, as you requested, and sent two combat task forces. Actually, one task force, under a single command, but double the normal size.”
“Excellent. And you, General Kraus. Your plans for a withdrawal from Wollaston are ready?”
“Yes, Sire. Just give the word.”
“Excellent, gentlemen. We have our forces in motion, and now we wait for events. Thank you.”
In the car on the way back from the Imperial Palace, Kraus and Leicester were quiet for a while. Finally Kraus spoke up.
“When the Emperor said he was going to end the insurgency in Wollaston, I wasn’t quite sure how he thought he could do that.”
“Me, either, Marty. But I think that will do it.”
Kraus snorted.
“Oh, yes. No question. And it will be nice to take a bite out of those bastards in Estvia, too. But, wow. Just wow.”
“Remember. Emperor Hadrian, he said. He wasn’t kidding.”
An Existential Problem
Six weeks after the Council Revolt and the destruction of the top floor of the Imperial Palace, the top floor was completed and ready for occupancy. It was quick turnaround, but there had been no structural work, no requirement for additional plumbing to be run. The whole job was to strip the space down to the structural walls, and then trim it all out.
With the need to get a residence for the Emperor, Housekeeping had run two shifts of workers seven days a week to get it done. Rather than six weeks being thirty shifts, it was eighty-four shifts, the equivalent of seventeen weeks – four months – at a normal construction pace.
Saaret took Suzanne to see the apartment Thursday afternoon. They went up in the elevator to the top floor, where they debouched into an elevator lobby. Saaret turned to the left – the east – and opened one of the double doors. He waved Suzanne through.
The first door off the hall was the living room, a large space suitable for entertaining, with a glass wall opposite the entry door. Saaret opened the wall in VR, and first the drapes, then the sheers, then the glass wall itself slid back, to reveal a large balcony with a view down the Palace Mall to the south.
“Geoffrey, it’s beautiful.”
Suzanne walked forward to one of the chairs, and ran her hand across the brocade as she took in the room.
“The dining room is through here,” Saaret said.
Suzanne followed him through the portal – there were doors, she could see, withdrawn into the walls on either side – into a large dining room. It had room to seat twenty, but there was a table for four in place at the moment, and a sideboard on the opposite wall. The windows on the south wall had the same view as the living room.
They went back out into the hall. There were a couple of guest apartments, then the master apartment. Another, smaller living room that adjoined to the bedroom, with huge closets and master bath on the far side of the bedroom.
“This is all wonderful, Geoffrey. Now comes the hardest part. Moving. I dread all the work.”
“That’s not how it works here, dear. We simply tell Housekeeping to move us, and they do it.”
“Oh, but there’s all that preparatory work. The sorting and packing and all. Don’t you remember?”
“I do, indeed. But not this time. If I tell Housekeeping to move us tomorrow, you simply go off with your girlfriends in the morning, and come home that evening. To here. They will do it all.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. They have tremendous taste for things like what to do with my books – I suspect they and the bookshelves will end up in the sitting room there, or perhaps one of the guest apartments – and they can be trusted to do everything.”
Suzanne looked around the bedroom, out at the view, and turned back to him.
“Tell them, Geoffrey.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
The Emperor, too, moved into the Imperial Residence on Friday. He had spent the first week after the Council Revolt in one of the on-call bedrooms on the Imperial Guard’s duty floor. The next five weeks he stayed in an empty apartment in the Imperial Residence, though he did not eat in the cafeteria. The kitchen staff had brought his meals to him there.
It was hard staying there, in that apartment, a duplicate of th
e apartment he and Cindy had occupied before Dee became the Empress. Sometimes he would wake up and, disoriented, feel for her in the bed before the memories came crashing back in on him.
The weekends were the worst. Everyone else was off, with the commuting staff gone from the palace and the resident staff pursuing their private lives. With nothing else to do, he plunged into work, reading histories of the Empire and biographies of the Empresses and the Council Chairmen.
Moving him into the Imperial Apartment was easy. The staff had re-outfitted him with multiple Marine Dress Uniforms and a selection of business suits. For casual wear, he had Marine-issue T-shirts, sweat shirts, and Marine Combat Uniform (MCU) fatigue pants, sandals, and even combat boots. Every other possession he and Cindy had had, had been lost in the explosion of the rockets in their apartment’s bedroom and living room.
That Friday evening, the day he moved in, he had dinner alone – except for the Imperial Guardsmen – in the rebuilt dining room in which he had shared so many meals with Cindy, and Dee, and Sean. If he closed his eyes while he ate, he could almost feel them there with him.
On his way back to the Imperial Apartment, he passed the escalator to the roof. So many memories up there, too. He shuddered as he passed. It was like a stairway in a haunted house.
That weekend was the worst so far. The memories of the Imperial Residence were much more recent.
On Monday morning, after breakfast with Geoffrey, Suzanne Saaret prepared for a day out. She could hardly wait to tell her friends about her first weekend in residence in the palace.
It was a bit before nine o’clock, and Geoffrey had already gone downstairs to work, when she opened the door into the elevator lobby. The door swung silently open, and she found herself face to face with the Emperor, dressed in a business suit for the workday. He was looking down toward the floor as he waited for the elevator, and did not see her immediately.
When the door clicked shut behind her, he looked up and turned toward her. She almost gasped at the expression on his face. She wanted to run up and give him a hug and tell him it would be all right. His expression quickly changed to a professional mask when he saw her.
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