Tyrant

by Richard F. Weyand

  The Imperial Police, still in touch with Sintar, monitored the situation. They had a private VR system that covered the city, and between that and the single surviving link to Sintar, the Imperial Police in Catalonia were still in contact with their commanding officers and with the Imperial capital.

  General Kurt Walder, the sector head of the Imperial Police for Catalonia Sector received a priority call from Sintar with an Imperial header. He accepted it and was shocked to find himself in direct contact with the Emperor.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I know the coronation, Sector Governor Palomo’s speech, and my speech all went out on VR, General Walder, and the VR and QE radio systems are shut down. Beyond that, what is your status?”

  “People are spilling out into the streets, Your Majesty. We have, of course, received no communication from the sector governor’s mansion. They’re on a separate local system. We are trying to link to them so we can communicate with each other. The crowds are angry, but have not turned violent to this point.”

  “Very well, General Walder. Keep me informed.”

  “Do you want us to take any other actions at this time, Your Majesty?”

  “No, General Walder. Just let things play out for a bit.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Why did he shut down the VR, anyway? That was a nasty move.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s he supposed to do, when our batty sector governor just up and says, ‘We’re leaving the Empire. Thanks for all the nice stuff.’”

  “Yeah, he could have sent the Imperial Navy. That would have been nasty.”

  “Why couldn’t the stupid bitch leave well enough alone?”

  “Because it’s all about her. It always was.”

  The crowd that formed in front of the sector governor’s mansion – what Palomo had increasingly called ‘the palace’ – kept growing into the evening, and as it got darker, the crowd got uglier. No violence yet, but the calls for Palomo’s head had gotten more strident, and her security force was getting nervous. It had all the potential to blow up, and the crowd’s temperature kept rising.

  A staff member came in to where Palomo and her husband were watching events unfold in the local VR of the mansion’s security cameras.

  “We’ve re-established some communications, Your Majesty. We have communications to the Imperial Police headquarters now.”

  “Thank God,” Palomo said. “What are they going to do to disperse these crowds?”

  “They said they’re waiting for instructions, Ma’am, and will take no action at this time.”

  “Those bastards. Walder’s a loyalist prick.”

  The staffer beat a hasty retreat, and Palomo wheeled on her husband.

  “Now what are we going to do? Why did I ever let you talk me into this, Bernardo?” Palomo asked her husband.

  There it was. The pivot. It had been her plan from the start, but she would try to make this all his fault. To survive somehow on her own. Well, it had always been a marriage of convenience. And it was growing less convenient by the minute.

  As she paced away from him, he withdrew the small pistol.

  “I don’t know what ‘we’ should do, my dear. As for me, I will try to negotiate a separate peace.”

  She turned to him and he shot her, three times in the chest. She fell to the floor with a strangled cry.

  He turned and shot three more times, down the wall opposite the balcony doors, then ran through the open French doors to the balcony and threw the pistol over the balcony railing into the yard.

  He rushed back into the room to find the on-call staffer staring down at his wife.

  “Did you see him?”

  “See who?”

  Palomo pointed to the open French doors.

  “The shooter. He was on the balcony.”

  “No, sir. I didn’t see anyone.”

  Palomo went up to his wife, and felt for a pulse. No, she was well and truly gone.

  “Contact the Imperial Police. Tell them the Sector Governor is dead. Request their assistance.”

  The staffer rushed from the room.

  Palomo reached down and shut the eyes of the body.

  “Goodbye, my dear. It’s been fun.”

  He then went over to the bathroom and washed his hands thoroughly.

  When the call came in that the Sector Governor was dead, Walder dispatched a murder investigation team in an Imperial Police shuttle. They set down on the shuttle pad on the grounds of the sector governor’s mansion, where they were met by a staff member with an electric cart. He drove them to a door around the back and led them to the sitting room in the residence portion of the mansion.

  The body of the sector governor lay in the middle of the floor, shot three times in the chest.

  “Hello. Anyone here,” the Imperial Police team leader called out.

  Palomo crawled out from behind a sofa against the wall.

  “Thank God, you’re here. It was terrible. We were talking, and then someone came in from the balcony and shot her. I ran for my life, and he missed me.”

  The police captain of course recognized the sector governor’s husband.

  “All right, Mr. Palomo. Just have a seat. We’ll need to get a statement from you.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Palomo sat on a sofa well away from the body and the investigators, who had begun recording the scene.

  “Poor Renata.”

  They had all adjourned to the dining room for dinner. The small table for four had been exchanged for a larger table that sat twelve. They were just beginning to eat when Dunham got the faraway look of someone consulting his VR. Moments later, Saaret did the same.

  Dunham and Saaret met in a blank room in the VR.

  “I’ve just heard from General Walder, Mr. Saaret. He reports that Ms. Palomo is dead, shot inside the sector governor’s mansion. Her husband claims someone came in from the balcony through the open French doors, shot her, and then left. They found the gun in the yard below the balcony, but no evidence of the shooter.”

  “What’s most likely is that he shot her himself, Sire. That was always a marriage of convenience.”

  “You think so, Mr. Saaret?”

  “Almost certainly, Sire.”

  “And was he involved in her plans to secede?”

  “Of course, Sire. On something like that, there’s no way she would be acting without his counsel and strategizing. He was the brains of the outfit. And he coordinated the payments to her defenders on the Council.”

  “Can we trust Walder, Mr. Saaret? Do we know this is for real? Or is he one of the Palomos’ people?”

  “No, Walder’s a straight arrow, Sire. The Imperial Police sector commanders are some of the best people they have, and he’s one of the better ones even so.”

  “Very well. Thank you, Mr. Saaret.”

  Saaret dropped out of the VR.

  Dunham left the channel with the blank room, and pulled up a blank Imperial Warrant on his VR desktop. He filled in ‘Bernardo Palomo de la Gallego’ as the arrestee, ‘Suspicion of Murder, Treason, and Official Corruption’ as the cause, and affixed his signature. He sent a copy to Perrin.

  He also sent a message to the Projects manager for the network project to restore the network in Catalonia Sector as quickly as possible.

  For the third time that day, General Walder found himself in direct contact with the Emperor.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “General Walder, you are to hold Mr. Palomo on an Imperial Warrant as the investigation proceeds. I’ve pushed you the warrant. In addition to the murder investigation, you will investigate the financial records of both Mr. and Ms. Palomo. I am particularly interested in payments to individuals in the press.”

  “Understood, Your Majesty.”

  “I am also appointing you the Acting Sector Governor, General Walder. Disperse the crowds by letting them know the sector governor is dead, the Empire has re-established governance of the secto
r, and the network will be restored as quickly as possible.”

  “Very well, Sire.”

  “Keep me informed, General Walder.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Dunham dropped out of VR to rejoin his dinner guests. He had only been in VR twelve minutes.

  “Sorry, everybody. Things in Catalonia Sector proceeded much faster than we anticipated. Sector Governor Palomo is dead, General Walder of the Imperial Police is acting sector governor, and we are working to restore the network. The Catalonian Secession is over.”

  There was a spattering of applause around the table. Suzanne checked the time in VR.

  “What was that, Bobby? Seven hours? Something like that.”

  “Yes, Suzanne. Seven hours, start to finish. Thanks to Amanda.”

  Dunham lifted Amanda’s hand from the table on his right, kissed it, and put it back.

  People applauded again, and Peters blushed an astonishing shade of red.

  “A couple of good ideas, that’s all,” she said.

  “And it made all the difference in the world,” Saaret, on Dunham’s left, said.

  “So anyway, let’s eat,” Dunham said. “It’s a double celebration dinner. The Empire survives intact.”

  Stenis Dernier had just finished supper and was stretching out on the sofa in the living room of his apartment in Imperial Park West. What a day! The battle between Sayuri Mori and the Catalonian hackers had been epic. His portion had been rather anticlimactic in comparison. But the whole thing had been a wild day at the office, no doubt about it.

  Then the emergency recall message came in.

  “Back in the saddle again, boys and girls,” Sayuri Mori said as she joined her crew on her bridge in the VR network operations center. “We got everybody?”

  She got acknowledgements from her bridge crew. Everyone made it in. Amazing. Then again, they were VRing in from home, and nobody wanted to miss out on the action.

  “OK, we’ll see how long it takes Stenis to bring the QE mesh back on-line.”

  Dernier never moved from his couch. He VRed into his QE network operations center. All the links and nodes in Catalonia Sector were black, as he had left them, except for the one link into Catalonia that was locked down from the Imperial Palace to the Catalonia Sector Imperial Police headquarters.

  The thing about bringing the QE system back up is he could only control links where he had administrative communications to one end of the link. Well, let’s do it hierarchically.

  He shot a thread across the open QE link into Catalonia, then brought the Catalonia node up in administrative mode. He got a green light on that. So far so good.

  There were fifty provincial links out the other side of Catalonia. Those were next. He spoke into another channel.

  “Sue, can you give me private channel VR on Catalonia?”

  “Sure, Stenis. Coming up.”

  Green links spread out from his existing QE endpoint, washed over the other QE endpoints on Catalonia.

  “Establish contact with provincial links.”

  “Establishing contact, sir. We do have contact now on all fifty.”

  “Initiate restart on provincial links.”

  “Initiating restart, sir.”

  Dernier watched as links went green out to the provincial capitals. Two didn’t change.

  “Sir, we have two hard restart fails on provincial links.”

  “Understood. Initiate restart on redundant provincial links.”

  “Initiating restart on provincial redundancies, sir.”

  Now blue links spread between the provincial capitals.”

  “Redundant provincial links all restarted successfully, sir.”

  “Attempt restart on those two hard fail links, but initiate from the provincial side.”

  “Initiating restart from the provincial side, sir.”

  Those two recalcitrant links now popped up green.

  “Restart successful, sir. All links completely operational at the provincial level now.”

  “All right. Let’s go for the big one. Initiate restart on the planetary links.”

  “Initiating restart on planetary links, sir.”

  Past the provincial capitals in his display, green links began appearing ten and a hundred at a time, until nearly five thousand links were up.

  “Five hard restart fails on planetary links, sir.”

  “We’ll let those go for now. Initiate in-sector redundant links.”

  “Initiating in-sector redundant links, sir.”

  Blue links started lighting up, criss-crossing the spaces between planets, multiply connecting planets into the mesh.

  “We have ten hard restart fails in that group, sir.”

  “Initiate out-sector redundant links.”

  “Initiating out-sector redundant links, sir.”

  Red links now lit up between planets in the Catalonia Sector and planets in the adjacent sectors, providing another layer of redundancy.

  “Three hard restart failures in that group, sir.”

  “Attempt restart on all hard-fail links from the other side.”

  “Attempting restart on eighteen hard-fail links, sir.”

  Here and there in the intricate mesh, a link popped on.

  “We have successful restart on all hard-fail links, sir.”

  “Begin bandwidth testing, all links.”

  “Bandwidth testing underway, sir.”

  Dernier watched in second spectrum as thousands of links swarmed up into the red zone of maximum capacity. They ran them that way for ten minutes, waiting for failures, but none came.

  “Sir, we’re passing all bandwidth tests.”

  Dernier spoke into another VR channel.

  “It’s all yours, Sue. We’re up.”

  “All right, everybody. QE’s up. Let’s seed our channels. Hierarchy first.”

  “Seeding hierarchy, ma’am.”

  Mori watched the hollow tubes of links on her display fill with strands all across the hierarchical links.

  “We’re seeded, ma’am.”

  “All right. Grow them into the planet meshes.”

  Mori zoomed up on Catalonia, until the node of the planet became a mesh of links that filled her vision. She watched the threads propagate through the supernodes and down to the nodes one and two levels below.

  She pulled back on the view.

  “Growth normal, ma’am. It’s starting to look like a network again.”

  “Seed the in-sector redundancies.”

  More threads, now along the horizontals within the sector.

  “In-sector redundancies seeded, ma’am.”

  “Seed the out-sector redundancies.”

  More threads, now along the horizontals that passed out of the sector.

  “All redundancies seeded, ma’am. Basic mesh in place.”

  “Bring up administrative reporting.”

  “Administrative reporting enabled, ma’am.”

  Mori zoomed up on Catalonia and touched a supernode. The administrative data came up – active bandwidth, open channels, percent capacity, all at stupid-low levels.

  “All right, it looks like we have a network. Let’s grow this sucker. Open feeds from Sintar.”

  All the thousands of broadcast feeds from Sintar now flooded into the mesh. News channels, shipping schedules, live entertainment channels, all poured out into Catalonia.

  “Mesh is holding, ma’am. We have some adaptive changes underway now. The heuristic is closing on a solution.”

  “Watch for anomalies.”

  “We’re monitoring, ma’am.”

  “Solution closed, ma’am. We’re good.”

  “Open credential back-check channels.”

  “Back-check channels open, ma’am.”

  “Still stable, ma’am.”

  “Enable financial channels.”

  “Financial channels open, ma’am. Heuristic is adapting.”

  “Solution closed, ma’am.”

  “Enable educatio
nal channels.”

  “Education channels open, ma’am. Heuristic is adapting.”

  “Solution closed, ma’am.”

  “All right everybody, let’s let it settle down a bit more. Keep monitoring for anomalies.”

  Mori watched the display as the traffic built. School channels, all the financial channels, and the downstream broadcast channels were all open and running, and traffic would build as people started getting on VR and using the system. What she hadn’t opened yet were the floodgates – person-to-person VR, all the trillions of temporary channels people opened and closed to talk with each other.

  “System nominal, ma’am. The heuristic adapted a couple more times in there as the traffic built. It’s stable now. Traffic is still building.”

  It was another hour, as the traffic built and the adaptive network squirmed to adjust itself to the load, before Mori felt confident about opening up person-to-person communications.

  “What do you think, everybody?”

  “Load has flattened out, ma’am.”

  “The heuristic has been stable for twenty minutes now, ma’am.”

  “All right. Let’s open up person-to-person channels.”

  “Person-to-person channels open, ma’am.”

  “Traffic building, ma’am.”

  “We had an adaptation there, ma’am, but it was a small one.”

  “Traffic still building, ma’am.”

  “Whoa, we had a major adaptation there, ma’am.”

  Mori waited. She would hate to have to shut them down and make another attempt.

  “It closed on a solution ma’am. It just took it a while. Stable now.”

  “Traffic flattening out.”

  “We’re there, ma’am. Normal bandwidth range. The heuristic is stable.”

  Relief flooded over Mori. She hadn’t known how tense she had been until it washed away.

  “It looks like we have a network. Congratulations, everybody.”

  And over the other channel, Dernier’s voice came.

  “Congrats, Sue. That was beautiful to watch.”

  The crowds began to disperse when they were told Sector Governor Palomo was dead and the VR would be restored. When they VR started coming back up, with broadcast programming first, the rest of the crowds dispersed.