Sokolov’s boss, Caroline Pritchard, forwarded that message up to the Projects manager for the coronation video project. She was shocked when she received a response within minutes.
After the coronation is complete, play her secession speech, to Catalonia Sector only, on official feed. Follow with my speech to Catalonia Sector. – Trajan Imp.
Sokolov couldn’t believe he got a message direct from the Emperor. He checked the system time. Eleven-twelve. The to-be-crowned Emperor was still waiting for the coronation to start. Only twelve minutes had passed since the palace feed initiated, but it felt like it had been hours.
Jonatan Sandoval watched his network monitor visualization with satisfaction. His feeds were maintaining. He could see them trying to break his substitution, but his bots were on top of their efforts.
Wait. What had that been? A minor event seemed to repeat. Either that or he’d been boxed.
“Switch monitor nodes. Go to backup.”
“Switching to backup, sir.”
When the display switched, it should look identical, but it didn’t. They had boxed him and had him watching a recording. The official feed was propagating throughout the Catalonia Sector.
“We’ve been had. Have the bots switch to the private feed on every planet.”
“Instructions going out, sir. Switching feeds at the planet level.”
“Ma’am, he’s substituting the feeds now on every planet.”
“I see it. Initiate crypto-verification on all feeds.”
“Initiating crypt-verification on all feeds, ma’am.”
Mori watched the battle unfold. Every time his bot tried to switch the feed, her bot checked it with the crypto-signature. When it failed check, it refused to switch.
“Nodes are refusing the switch, sir. Every time we try to switch the feed, the nodes reject the switch and maintain the official feed.”
“How is that possible?” Sandoval asked. “How do the nodes know which one is the official one?”
“Sir, I’ve picked up a buried crypto-signature in the official feed. It’s changing every sixty seconds.”
Now what? He couldn’t bust a modern crypto every sixty seconds. The nodes must have the key. He couldn’t knock the official feed off the air. Only one play left.
“Initiate multi-fork. Swamp the network.”
“Initiating multi-fork, sir.”
The false feed now forked and forked and forked, over and over again, flooding the sector with the substitution. It was a distributed denial of service attack that should supplant the official feed by sheer numbers. Any channel someone turned to looking for the coronation, the odds were they would not get the official Sintar version, but his substitute.
“Ma’am, he’s trying to flood the network.”
“I see it. Initiate counter-flood.”
“Initiating counter-flood, ma’am.”
The official feed also forked and forked and forked again. It was a last-ditch move, but hers had advantages. Among others, she also had control of the adjacent network nodes in the adjoining sectors. They were also getting the official feed, coming in through their sector capitals. All these adjacent nodes started forking copies of the official feed into Catalonia as well, which gave Mori more bandwidth and more horsepower than the hackers had. Most of the video feeds in Catalonia would be the official version.
But Mori wasn’t content with that. They were going to tear down the network later anyway.
“Ma’am. Between the two of us, we’re starting to overwhelm capacity.”
“Deploy VR reapers. Key them to preserve our feed.”
“Keying to preserve tagged feeds. Deploying reapers, ma’am.”
Mori watched as the reapers moved into the Catalonia sector. Kill-bots, they would kill any VR channel that wasn’t the official, crypto-signed coronation feed. Personal calls, business calls, VR games, other VR entertainments – any VR feed, anywhere, they killed if it wasn’t cryptosigned.
“Now deploy the bot reapers.”
“Deploying bot reapers, ma’am.”
Any bot that wasn’t hers was the target of the bot reapers. They killed the bot and deleted it. Because they didn’t have to do any identification except was it hers or not, they could be very fast.
The waves of reapers swept across the sector and wiped out everything. Every bot, every VR feed, everything except the coronation. They overwhelmed the hacker’s bots, and deleted them.
Jonatan Sandoval watched Sintar’s bots overwhelm and destroy his bots. Then his system monitor went blank as the VR reapers tore down his NOC.
He had nothing left. They had won.
It was 11:20.
He opened a channel to Jose Ferrer.
“That’s it, sir. Game over.”
“What do you mean, game over?”
“I can’t do it, sir. They were waiting for us. The coronation feed from Sintar is crypto-signed. I can’t break the crypto, so I can’t just sub it in. Their bots see it and refuse the switch. And when I tried a last ditch swamp of the network, they sent bots in to kill every VR and every bot in the sector.”
“That will kill every VR. Personal calls, business calls, everything.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. They’re playing for keeps over there. And I can’t stop her killer bots because they’re operating at a higher permission level than mine. I have to outsmart them. But they’re just killing everything. There’s no outsmarting that. They even tore down my NOC.”
“All right. I’ll tell the Sector Governor.”
Not in person, of course. Ferrer wasn’t suicidal. And not in VR, either. Sintar’s bots would kill that.
He sent her a text message.
Sector Governor Renata Palomo de la Gallego was not happy. Ferrer had been right about that.
“What happened?” her husband, Bernardo Palomo de la Gallego, asked.
“The whole video project fell through. The Sintar network ops people were all over it. Part of the plan was to take them by surprise, have a fait accompli. But they anticipated problems, and were waiting for Ferrer’s people. They literally cleared the network of anything but their damned coronation feed.”
“So your coronation feed isn’t going out. What about your secession speech?”
“No, it was all part of the same file. We can’t get anything out. Which is good, I suppose. Can you imagine what a public relations nightmare it would be for that to go out after his coronation instead of mine?”
“Thank heaven for small favors.”
“We’re just going to have to find another way to go about it. I’m not giving up. This isn’t over. Not by a long sight.”
“Well, I suppose we might as well watch.”
They sat and watched the coronation in VR, Renata grumbling and muttering the whole time.
“Thank God that’s over,” Renata said. “What a bunch of nonsense. They couldn’t even do the Call of the Council because he killed them all.”
“They sort of skimmed over that, didn’t they?”
“They sure did. Oh, look. Now we get the highlights replayed. How splendid.”
But after the highlights, the video feed didn’t end. Instead, Renata watched in horror as her speech announcing the secession of Catalonia from the Empire went out to every household in the sector.
Renata’s speech dropped right into the good feelings that always followed the coronation of an Emperor. People at home, in bars, or at coronation parties gaped at the screen in bewilderment.
“... Now that I have been properly crowned the Empress of Catalonia, as you just saw, it is time and past time to denounce that imposter on Sintar, the self-styled Emperor, the uncrowned Tyrant of Sintar ....”
“What is that crazy bitch talking about? We just saw his coronation.”
“Who the hell does she think she is?”
“The Emperor is going to have her head for a wall decoration before this is over.”
“Yeah, she’s gonna be the guest of honor at D
ia de los Muertos, that’s for sure.”
And then, as Renata and Bernardo watched, it got even worse.
When Renata’s speech ended, the video shifted again. It was the Emperor Trajan, on the golden throne of Sintar, the Star of Sintar on his forehead, sitting splendid in the shaft of sunlight that came down through the skylight of the nave of the Throne Room around noon.
“People of Catalonia.
“You have been the victims of a deception. You have been lied to by your sector governor and by her paid minions in the Catalonian press. I am not an illegal occupant of the throne of Sintar, I did not execute the Council without cause, and I am not a tyrant.
“When my sister, the Empress Ilithyia –“ here the shot cut to a recording of the Empress Ilithyia II at her coronation, beautiful and shining, a virtual goddess, standing before the throne “– named me her heir, it was perfectly legal, although not traditional.
“It was my sister the Empress Ilithyia who reformed your government, brought you new medicines, broke the monopolies on freight and passenger fares, and reformed the patent system, reducing prices on goods and services throughout the Sintaran Empire.”
The shot cut back to the Emperor Trajan.
“I was one of my sister’s senior advisers on these reforms. She trusted me to carry these reforms forward, to continue her work. There is more to come. A complete reformulation of the Empire’s laws, much shorter, written in plain English, to make them easy to read and understand. A reform of the courts, to better live up to the promise of equal standing for everyone before the law. An end to the brush wars that drain our resources and cost us the lives of so many of our finest young men. An end to corruption in the bureaucracy.
“Before she could implement these further reforms, My sister the Empress was struck down by the Imperial Council.”
The shot cut to the nave of the Throne Room during the murdered Empress’s lying in state, the three caskets arrayed before the empty throne. The shot was close enough to understand the sacrilege that had been committed, but far enough away to give some relief to the viewer.
“Our whole family – my sister, her husband, my wife – were all killed by the attack orchestrated by the Imperial Council. Of my sister’s closest confidants, only I survived.”
The shot cut back to the Emperor Trajan.
“My sister trusted me, as she trusted no one else, to carry out these further reforms, to continue to improve the lives of all citizens of the Empire.
“And yet. People of Catalonia, if this is the path you wish, and not just the ravings of a madwoman, then I must take your desires into account. But you must also know that, if Catalonia leaves the Sintaran Empire, it leaves behind the benefits of being a part of the Empire. The medicines, the technology, the rule of law, the peace of Sintar.
“To that extent, it is your decision. I will not fight against a secession that has the popular support of the people of Catalonia. I will not lay waste to a portion of the Empire I hope to rule. I will not kill the very people I hope to serve.
“The moment of your decision is upon you. As a taste of what you would be missing, though, the Empire will no longer support the VR system and QE radio network that is only a small part of the Empire’s benefits.”
“I await your decision.”
And with that, the VR went dead.
Completely dead.
Stenis Dernier watched the transmission of the Emperor’s speech in the upper corner of his vision. The rest of his vision was the huge display of the QE network, with Catalonia directly in front of his bridge.
“OK, we’re coming up. Status?”
“Bots report ready, sir.”
“Command queue is ready to transmit, sir.”
In the corner of his eye, he watched the Emperor.
“I await your decision.”
“Execute Killshot.”
“Executing Killshot, sir. Bots acknowledging.”
“Command queue transmitted, sir.”
Dernier watched the magnificent display and saw the network die. It was the most profound thing he had ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of nodes, and links, both hierarchical and redundant. In ones and twos and tens and hundreds, they all just collapsed and went black in his display.
Only one link remained, from Sintar to Catalonia. A single hard-addressed link, directly from the palace to the Imperial Police sector headquarters on Catalonia.
Dernier hoped they could get it all back up again when the time came.
If it came.
Catalonia Chaos
After the coronation ceremony, the participants and their familiars were gathered in the formal living room of the Imperial Apartment. Dunham, Peters, the Saarets, Daggert, Lieutenant Colonel Leitner and Major Mercer and their wives, the Perrins, and Brenda Connolly, who got swept up in the decampment from the Throne Room to the after-party upstairs.
“What’s happened on Catalonia?” Saaret asked Dunham.
“They tried to substitute the coronation feed and failed. Our people outfoxed them at every turn. But Renata also had her secession speech as part of that video. Our whiz kids found the file. They let me know just before you came in with the department heads. So I told them after the coronation was over, they should play her speech out through the sector, then play my speech, then shut it all down.”
“And that all happened?”
“So I understand.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see what happens next.”
Peters, standing nearby with Connolly, had listened intently to this exchange.
“Oh, my.”
“What’s happening, Amanda. I only caught part of that.”
“Brenda, remember how I told you I had two good ideas? That’s why I got bumped upstairs?”
“Sure.”
“Well, they had picked up that the Catalonia sector governor might try to take advantage of the chaos on Sintar and secede Catalonia from the Empire.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. They didn’t know what to do about it if she did it. How did you get people mad enough about it to shut her down rather than just go along with her?”
“And your idea was?”
“Shut off the VR.”
Connolly gasped.
“Yeah, that should do it. What was the other idea?”
“They didn’t know when she would do it, and I said she would do it on Coronation Day, that she would try to substitute the VR feed.”
“And did she?”
“She tried. But I guess we were ready for them. I just heard that our network people kept our feed up, then played her secession speech. She had prepared that speech, but it was supposed to be broadcast after her coronation video, not his. Then the network people transmitted Bobby’s ‘no Empire, no VR’ speech and shut down VR in the whole sector.”
“Wow. Those were two great ideas. It’s gonna be chaos in Catalonia.”
“Yeah, hopefully they blame her, and not him.”
Suzanne Saaret wandered up then.
“Suzanne, I want you to meet my friend Brenda Connolly,” Peters said.
“How nice to meet you, Brenda.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Suzanne.”
Suzanne turned to Peters.
“I wanted to tell you how lovely you looked today at the ceremony, Amanda.”
“Thank you, Suzanne. You don’t think this dress is a little, um, lightweight?”
“No, dear. When you’re young and beautiful you can get away with murder. When I was your age, I was shameless in using my assets to forward Geoffrey’s career. It’s amazing how many powerful men will engage in long and indiscreet conversations with a scantily dressed young woman at a cocktail party.”
Suzanne chuckled at the memory and Peters and Connolly laughed.
“Nevertheless, Amanda, I would warn you against standing in front of those windows in that dress on as bright a day as today. Stay toward the sides of the room as you have been.”
“Good advice, Suz
anne. Thank you.”
Suzanne wandered off.
“She seems nice,” Connolly said.
“She is nice. I like her a lot. And she has Bobby’s best interests at heart.”
“Who is she?”
“Oh. Suzanne is the consul’s wife. Suzanne Saaret.”
“Yipe.”
“What?”
“The consul’s wife?”
“Yes. House rules. Everybody is on a first-name basis in the Imperial Residence.”
“That will take some getting used to. Calling the consul’s wife by her first name is kind of surreal.”
“Just wait until I introduce you to her husband and his boss,” Peters said with a grin.
“What happened?” Sector Governor Renata Palomo de la Gallego asked.
“He shut down the VR,” her husband, Bernardo Palomo de la Gallego, said.
“On Catalonia?”
“Probably in the whole sector. Though I have no way of finding out with no VR.”
“I can still get in to our palace security and such.”
“That’s a private system, not an Imperial one,” he said.
“What about messaging? We don’t need VR for that.”
He was silent for a while.
“No,” he said. “There’s no off-planet messaging. He shut down the QE radio network, too.”
Everyone out for coronation parties suddenly found themselves with no way to pay the bill, and restaurants and bars had no way to charge them. Bartenders and restaurant managers recorded names and credit amounts for settlement later, but without VR there was no way to verify identity either.
Private VR systems continued to work as long as one was in the local system. With no back-end to check credentials, there was no VR anywhere for anyone except in their own home and business, where the local credentials cache had them recorded.
The coronation, at noon on Sintar, had been at one-thirty in the afternoon local time in Catalonia. The VR crashed about a quarter to three, and by three-thirty angry crowds were starting to fill the streets.
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