by Kali Altsoba
The only, wee problem is that Virgiliu is terribly, awfully, dangerously wrong about what’s happening inside the Imperium. Wrapped in smugness, he hasn’t the least idea of the intention for war in the Jade Court and none at all about the vast preparations for war inside Jahandar’s impenetrable empire.
“There are no easy answers or military solutions to the crisis,” he begins. “Nor are the stakes what they seem to be on the surface. This Union does not face a choice for war.” There are murmurs of relief around the table, but surprisingly, also a few loud sounds of disagreement.
“Pyotr treads a lonely path, shredding the diplomatic rulebook to bully a small neighbor is not the way to true greatness. His aggression only proves his weakness. We must reinforce our positions but never abandon prudence or our principles. We are considering collaborative efforts to achieve this goal.” And so on, and on. Vacuity after vacuity, word nebula after gaseous wisp, for more than ten minutes. It’s analytical obfuscation and evasion raised to high artfulness.
‘Flatulent, empty phrases,’ thinks Georges Briand, as he listens to Virgiliu prattle on about shipments of non-military material aid to Krevo. He interjects: “Director, if as you say our policy is and should remain humanitarian assistance to the Krevans without any strong military support, then all you are proposing is that we continue to drop medical aid from orbit onto dead people.”
LeClerc and Maçon are thinking the same thing, only in more colorful language. As are several junior ministers, judging by the growing interruptions and more angry, called-out and out-of-proper-cabinet-order questions.
No one dared interrupt Virgiliu in 30 years. Not once, over a long succession of prime ministers and governments from several parties whom he served while thinking, not inaccurately, that in the longer-term sense they served him. Yet here on his home turf of Barda he’s badgered and queried as never before. He grows visibly nonplused, red-faced with anger as questions keep coming. Unbidden. Disruptive. Disrespectful! It’s a full barrage by the War Hawks, interrupting what Maçon in private calls “virgiluating.”
Although he doesn’t show it as openly as bumbling Sanjay did, he’s discomfited by the interrogation, surprised by persistent queries from skeptical ministers worried about the threat and by his exposed lack of real information or grasp of the situation. He responds with what has always worked for him before, a niagara of generic pronouncements about past trends and future probabilities, with subtle and not-so-subtle reminders of his vastly greater experience and résumé than anyone else possesses in the entire government. Let alone in this cabinet Briefing Room.
Maçon gives him a full broadside. “Pyotr’s aggression challenges all the old truths that six months ago you said were self-evident and unassailable: that in this blessed Shōwa Age, old treaties won’t be broken, borders can’t be redrawn by force majeure. That law still matters above power, and that the peoples of star nations large and small remain free to decide their own fates.”
“This is a time of testing, yes.” Virgiliu looks portentously over the dark walnut table.
“Tell that to Krevans,” LeClerc says it sotto voce, yet loud enough that everyone hears.
Maçon speaks louder and directly, his blue lagoon eyes pouring tropical coolness on Virgiliu. “The Shōwa Age, the Satya Yuga, is over. We enter the Age of Kali. The end of Time and Death.”
Sanjay perks up, surprised that Maçon knows the terminology of the Four Ages of Time, of the eternal cycle of destruction and regeneration in the Vedas: “You’re wrong! This isn’t the coming of Kala, of Death. We may stretch the Treta Yuga a while longer, hold the Interregnum until things fall apart and Kala totters like a one-legged cow. Before doomsday fire and floods.”
“Excuse me gentlemen,” Briand breaks in. “This ancient theology you bandy and toss at each other, like yellow and red powders during the festival of colors, is fascinating in its way. But does a point to your remarks approach? Must we query and puzzle out how many gods or astrophysicists may dance on a point or a wave? Do you have information to share with this cabinet, Director Nicolescu, or will you keep venting your too precious and inflated opinions?”
‘Gods, I do love this man for the enemies he makes!’ LeClerc’s rampart brows relax, his ancient crossbow of a frown is set down by his side. For the best and hardest knight in his castle is riding out the portcullis to do mortal combat with a lumbering beast. He settles in to watch.
Virgiliu is stunned. No one has ever spoken to him this way. Never. Not in 70 years of fame, respect and loyal service. He looks over to his friend the prime minister and is reassured to see Robert Hoare scowling in disapproval of his Minister of Defense, then nodding firm approval to his best advisor. With his large backside guarded by the PM, Virgiliu girds for mortal combat.
“Sir,” he begins in a sonorous, measured voice, “if it’s facts you need then here they are.” He launches into an extemporaneous, virtuoso display of total recall of a mountain of data. It’s his oldest, greatest, most famous trick.
No one in Orion is his equal at pouring out sheer facts to drown an opponent’s better arguments. Yet, for the first time in 70 years of charlatanry, the gambit doesn’t work.
Briand
Virgiliu’s problem is that too many junior ministers at the table owe their rising careers to Georges Briand. Worse, they and their aides and military attachés are actually people of real talent. Worst of all, they’re something else rare and unexpected in the intelligence world he occupies in peacetime. They’re all well-informed by Maçon and have sound judgement, which is why they were hand-picked by Briand and approached to secretly join the War Hawks.
They listen to Virgiliu’s cascading performance but already they know better. He’s a waterfall of irrelevance, a niagara of false secrets and untrue facts. They have something more important than his deluge of deception. Real world, unblinkered judgment about what matters and what’s mere white noise frothing down the high mountainside of his jökulhlaup virtuosity.
What matters this day, in this room, isn’t 70 years of prognostication and performance-art-as-analysis. It’s that incursions by Kaigun phantoms brassily crossing the border are only the latest, albeit by far the most serious, provocation along the eastern frontier. With Sanjay’s failure, even those beyond Briand’s circle are awake to the danger. Maçon’s jabbing questions rouse them, confirming worst fears over the stories of strange Imperium behaviors.
There’s growing disquiet over Rikugun forces repositioning near the border as Krevan resistance erodes, and worry over hostile rhetoric on Grün Imperium memexes. Above all, hanging over deliberations is the naked fact of real aggression against a small Neutral, an assault already eradicating centuries of Krevan independence. It’s an ongoing act of war that threatens to overturn the essential balance of the three Great Powers and end the Peace of Orion. threatens to overturn the essential balance of the three Great Powers and end the Peace of Orion.
No one in the Briefing Room believes the Bad Camberg broadcast that the Grün memex keeps re-showing, as if loudness and repetition will make it true. Its premise is preposterous. Why would Krevan commandos attack an outpost of the mighty Imperium? It was staged, say multiple CIS and SGR analysts and reports, for internal propaganda use and to raise war morale.
No one in the Joint Cabinet, not even the willfully blind prime minister, accepts Pyotr’s proclaimed right to annex Krevan border systems that ceded from his ancestral realm over 800 years ago, at the end of the First Orion War. Borders are long-settled diplomacy, not subject to reversal by force in any circumstance. Legal rights and interests of all powers are engaged by the old borders, not just a long-ago dispute over territory between Grünen and Krevans. The balance in Orion mustn’t be altered by the unilateral whim of Pyotr Shaka III, who dangerously declares his annexations “permanently reunite wrongly severed and Lost Children with their Fatherland.”
Then there’s the matter of Grün agents caught operating deep inside Calmari systems. Hundreds t
his year. Far more than usual. How many are here, working in secret? To what ends? Thousands? Tens of thousands? It’s an old game, played by both sides. A way to maintain the peace according to the wisdom of the ancient adage “doveryai, no proveryai.” Trust, but verify.
But the scale of illegal incursions and espionage is alarming, especially now that a very old enemy, “State Defense Forces High Command” is crossing the borders. The symbol of the SDF is a lidless jade eye, the cyclopean gaze of Oetkert ambition and threat as well as an overt boast that the Oetkerts watch all, see all, know all. SDF is unloved at home in the Imperium but deeply distrusted abroad. It’s very good at what it does: dissemble and disrupt.
SDF agents have circulated agitprop, bribed border guards, recruited fifth columnists and traitor spies, collected precise political and military intelligence. The fact that all SDF agents are trained and commissioned KGN or RIK officers who know what to look for in a star port or base camp makes its capacity for stealing military intel much more worrisome. Civilian analysts in CIS and SGR might discount the threat, but career officers like LeClerc and Maçon take it more seriously. The most recent violations involve fifty SDF spies caught inside border star ports over the past ten days alone. There’s worse, appearing on cabinet parchments even as Virgiliu speaks.
A Core Secret CIS report, suppressed by Sanjay at CIS and Virgiliu at SGR was given to Briand and Maçon by an agent on Kestino just two hours ago. Maçon has leached it into his questions to Virgiliu, putting the Joint Cabinet indirectly in the know of its contents. While Virgiliu is speaking Briand goes all-in, thinking send to release the report to the whole room.
“Tell us, Director, can you confirm that the Kempeitai have been active outside Grün space?” The Kempeitai are Pyotr’s personal security force, his Praetorian Guard. It’s but the first cut of the axe by Maçon and Briand into the trembling oak of a once-solid career. It won’t be the last. Briand and his key lieutenants intend to chop Virgiliu’s glory from him branch by branch.
Virgiliu’s appalled. ‘That information shouldn’t be in Maçon’s hands. There’s a leak in my directorate I must plug! Or more likely on Caspia, inside Pradip’s operation in CIS.’
Outwardly, he’s unflappable. “Admiral, you are very well-informed.” As always, even while paying the forced compliment, Virgiliu manages to draw attention to his own vast warehouse of knowledge. “I was about to inform the Joint Cabinet of precisely that activity.”
‘No you weren’t,’ Briand, Maçon and LeClerc think it independently and all at once.
“There’s no need, Director. The cabinets have received a copy of the secret report you and Mr. Pradip wickedly withheld from us, the people’s government. They’re reading it now.” Indeed, every head is tilted. Even those who seem to be still looking at the Director are actually focused inward, reading corneal projections of the report sent by dot-channel implants.
Virgiliu is stunned. Yet he continues as if he is still in unchallenged control. “It’s true, minister, that Kempeitai have been identified on fifteen Calmari worlds. Our conclusion at SGR is that this is stepped-up political monitoring of the Grün exile communities on those worlds.”
““Monitoring exiles? Kempeitai answer solely to the Imperial Family,” Maçon clarifies what everyone knows. “They’re controlled directly by Pyotr. If its agents are undertaking operations inside our systems they’re doing so on his direct orders. If that’s true, this crisis just went to Level One.”
“Your information is inaccurate and your conclusion is therefore premature and quite wrong, Admiral Maçon. If I might just say, to help you better understand...”
“Director, with all respect, my information is the same as yours and your conclusion should therefore be the same as mine. Kempeitai agents are assassinating exile leaders, setting up cadres and cells loyal to the Tennō in Grün ghettos across dozens of Calmari cities and worlds, infiltrating our defenses with spies and potential saboteurs. This is brazen, direct intervention in our sovereign affairs. You knew this, yet you withheld the information.”
“There is no evidence of any saboteurs...”
Again Maçon brutally interrupts. “Yes, there is. Your own Core Secret report confirms it. Kempeitai agents are seeding infiltrators to take out several of our frontier naval yards from the inside, in the event of war.”
“You mustn’t site that report in public, sir. Not even in this room. It doesn’t exist. And if it did, it’s classified at the very highest...”
LeClerc rams the point home. “Damn your classification! These actions go beyond any historic or imperial Kempeitai mandate of repressing dissent on Grün homeworlds, to protect the prerogatives and privileges of the royal family. Gods know there are damn too many Oetkerts in Orion! Now Pyotr’s agents are carrying out criminal murders inside our space? This is rank treaty-breaking!”
A junior minister finds her courage. “That can only mean that Pyotr Shaka is behind the policy of aggression. First against Krevans and now us. Gods, this really could mean war!”
Another minister demands: “Why is the Joint Cabinet only learning of this now? Why were we not kept fully and properly informed? We are the government! Who do you think you are?” An angry chorus swirls around the table, echoing the charge from minister to minister. Even some of those in the PM’s camp resent the blow to their security clearances and their political pride. This may be Virgiliu Nicolescu seated before them, but who ever elected him?
The conversation gets away from Virgiliu. Revealing a Core Secret report inside this closed room Briefing Room means Briand has not broken the Official Secrets Act. It’s a crafty move, carefully calibrated with Maçon and LeClerc. Calmly now, forensically, Briand makes the case to prepare for war. He deploys arguments the prime minister won’t make and can’t destroy. The tension in the room is lightning-electric as he turns his large head and famous robin’s-egg blue eyes to Virgiliu and proceeds to strip the famous man naked.
For years the reed-thin, immaculately dressed Robert Hoare thought of Briand: ‘The man has real talent. He could do so much more inside the cabinet, but he would also rival me for the leadership. And he’s just too unseasoned and unrefined to wield such power.”
So he withheld high office from a charismatic politician with a growing public and Party following. He saw him as reckless at best, dangerous to the Peace of Orion at worst. He neglected that his own complacency in the face of rising external danger was no great virtue, either. Nothing since the current crisis began has changed the PM’s mind on either score. He is right. Briand is wrong.
He resisted Briand’s agitation from the backbenches, from outside the government, for increased defense spending to match the Grün build-up, a huge rearmament that started when Pyotr ascended the Jade Throne over his mother’s corpse. Now the build-up across the frontiers has reached a pace and scale that can no longer be hidden even from those who don’t wish to see or face its consequences, including the prime minister.
He blinked politically six months ago, his hand forced inside the Union Party by the Grün invasion of Krevo. As the Rikugun and Kaigun disemboweled harmless Krevan worlds without pause or impediment by the Union, a worried public compelled Hoare to appoint his greatest personal rival to the inner cabinet. And not just to any position. Minister of Defense is the most important position in the government, second only to the prime ministership.
Then again, politics is a house built on ever-shifting sand. ‘Another day brings a chance to cut this young buck down to a size he better suits.’ Robert Hoare stews over all these grudges while Briand queries, pushes, flusters and badgers his dear old school friend, Virgiliu Nicolescu.
The disdain is mutual. Briand thinks Hoare too parochial to serve in such grave times. That he’s as small as his bird-like, pecking appetite. That he’s local at best, that he “views interstellar politics from the wrong end of a city sewage pipe,” as he once said to Maçon. That his worlds view is better suited to a mayor than leader of the most power
ful empire in Orion.
Briand is subject to bouts of depression in the best of times. Even now, being frozen out of policy by Hoare will find him alone, forlorn in his office atop the first MoD tower in Lowestoft. Too often, alone and terribly drunk, trying to soak his worries that he can’t move policy to where he knows it must go. That he can’t quite grasp the levers of power, and that if he fails he won’t be able to make the needed changes in time. And then all Orion may collapse.
Politics was always Georges Briand’s second choice as a career. As a boy, he wanted to be a swashbuckling adventurer, an explorer of brave new worlds or just and wise conqueror of old ones. He’s never really grown up. He knows, somehow, that the Fates have more in store for him. He dreamed it as a boy and he still believes it as a man and a politician. He thinks he has a destiny.
Today he’s in fine fettle. He’s on Kars, gambling to expose the clever schemes of dishonest men like Sanjay and Virgiliu. And yes, also higher caliber statesmen like the prime minister. He thinks if can expose ploys and stratagems and delay tactics to the cabinets they will expire like vapors into vacuum. His co-conspirators have dispatched Pradip, now he must break the seal holding around the PM by taking out his old school friend and key adviser, Virgiliu Nicolescu. The cabinet is shifting away from the PM, but still in his place.