Debt of War (The Embers of War)

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He rubbed his forehead, feeling a dull ache behind his temples. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of armed soldiers on each and every starship, save perhaps for the lowliest gunboats. A mutiny might be quashed before it could take the starship out of commission, let alone turn the vessel against the king. And even if they could mutiny . . . He felt his headache grow worse as he considered the dangers. The House of Lords might move to take advantage of the chaos and smash the Colonial Alliance, and the king’s faction, before they could get back on their feet. No, there was no might about it. So many spies lurked on Caledonia that it was hard to believe there was room for civilians. The House of Lords would know if the king fell out with his supporters, and they would take advantage of it. And that would be the end.

  “We don’t have a choice,” he muttered tiredly. “We have to work with the king.”

  All had seemed so simple, once upon a time. The House of Lords, the Tyrians, were exploiting the colonies. Even calling them colonies was a mark of disdain. It wasn’t as if any of the worlds Bertram represented had been founded from Tyre. And the king had seemed their protector, the one willing to make investments that would eventually turn them all into first-rank worlds. Bertram didn’t regret allying with the king, not after the recession had thrown millions out of work and kicked off a series of economic collapses. There was no way he would have worked with the House of Lords, even if they’d wanted to work with him. He’d always be aware that they were measuring his back for the knife. And yet . . .

  He knew the war hung in the balance. The Battle of Tyre had been lost. Elsewhere, the king had made gains, only to lose them again when the House of Lords struck back. Bertram wasn’t blind to the simple truth that they had to hang together or be hung separately, yet . . . he knew, all too well, that they couldn’t allow themselves to become too dependent on the king. What would Hadrian do with absolute power? He’d already shown signs of losing control of himself. The decision to send the justiciar to Tarleton might not have been a misstep—Bertram knew there were factions in the colonies who would have loudly cheered if the entire planetary government had been sentenced to death—but trying to arrest the government without the Alliance’s consent had been a disaster. The king owed Kat Falcone more than he could ever repay. His allies were now worried about the future. If the king was prepared to throw his weight around when he wasn’t all-powerful, what would he do when he was?

  We don’t know, Bertram thought. And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

  The intercom bleeped. “Sir, the petition has been presented to the House of Worlds,” his secretary said. “They’re going to pass it to the king tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure they are,” Bertram said with heavy sarcasm. He wasn’t sure the king would take any notice. His advisers probably wouldn’t give a damn. Most of them simply wanted to go home, back to Tyre. Bertram was morbidly sure they’d betray the king in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it. “Inform them I’ll take it to him myself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bertram frowned as he turned back to the window. The crowd was steadily dispersing now, streams of people flowing away in all directions. He allowed himself a moment of relief, though it was combined with the grim awareness that next time the protest might well be different. He’d sought to steer the groundswell of public opinion, but he hadn’t originated the outrage. He was all too aware the king had started it by doing something that alarmed and horrified the public. And if he failed to meet their demands for change, for a concession, they’d seek newer leaders. And . . .

  “And we could lose the war,” he muttered. Out on the streets, he could be arrested for defeatism if he dared say those words out loud. Here . . . he had to face up to the possibility of defeat. The Theocracy had lost, at least in part, because its leaders refused to admit they could lose. “It could be the end.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  TYRE

  Peter’s private office was very quiet.

  Duke Peter Falcone sat at his desk, watching as Admiral Sir William McElney worked his way through the investigator’s report. The admiral was in his seventies, same as Peter himself, but he looked and felt older, a kind of maturity that Peter privately felt he lacked. His father, Duke Lucas Falcone, had ruled the family corporation for decades, long enough to know where all the bodies were buried and form a cluster of allies who’d back him against the remainder of the family. Peter . . . felt young and untried, even though he had adult children who were inching towards kids of their own. The sheer scale of his responsibilities weighed heavily on his mind.

  He studied McElney thoughtfully, wondering what was going through his mind. The admiral would never be considered classically handsome, although his rugged face did have a certain kind of charm, with his dark hair shading to gray despite a handful of rejuvenation treatments. But he looked like the kind of person who could be relied upon. Kat had relied upon him, once upon a time. His sister had many flaws, Peter admitted in the privacy of his own thoughts, but she was a good judge of people. Sometimes. Kat had no way to know the contents of the report. Only a handful of people knew even a glimmering of the truth, but she’d missed the hints that she should be wary. She’d allowed her determination to do her job to override her common sense, leading her into treason.

  And why does treason never prosper? Peter would have smiled if circumstances hadn’t been so tragic. Because if it prospers, none dare call it treason.

  His mood darkened. He knew, through his spies, that the other families were playing a double game. They were sending agents to the king, openly swearing to fight to the last while covertly opening up lines of communication just in case the war didn’t go their way. Peter understood their logic—having friends on both sides of the political divide was good for a corporation’s long-term health—but he couldn’t help taking such tactics personally. He’d had to practically disown his youngest sister, even though she’d declared her side openly. The others had been much sneakier. And the worst of it was that he couldn’t blame them, not really. They had to consider what might happen if they lost the war.

  And it’s only a matter of time before the king pushes them into outright treason, he mused as McElney—Sir William—finished reading the file. And then they’ll have to decide which side they’re really on.

  “Your Grace.” Sir William sounded stunned. “Is this true? I mean . . . Is it?”

  “The evidence suggests so.” Peter kept his voice calm, somehow. “The king murdered my father.”

  “Kat’s father,” William said.

  “A man can have more than one child,” Peter said waspishly. “My father had ten children.”

  He stared at the wooden desk, once again feeling the weight of the world pressing down on him. He understood, now, why so many middle managers had their desks covered with distractions, with things that might keep them from thinking about what they were really doing. He would almost have welcomed a time-wasting device to keep him from dwelling on the truth. His father, the man who’d raised him to be his successor, had been murdered. And his sister—damn her!—had sided with the murderer. The king might not have pulled the trigger himself, but he’d still given the order. And if Duke Lucas hadn’t been killed . . .

  Murdered, he thought angrily. He felt his hand threatening to shake as the sheer immensity of the crime started to dawn on him. Any death was tragic, but Duke Lucas . . . killing him had thrown the government into chaos, allowing the king to make a bid for power and depriving the House of Lords of a strong leader, someone who could smooth over the cracks and unite the aristocracy against the king. The king murdered my father so he could have his war.

  He tried to comprehend just what the king had done, but it was beyond him. Hadrian had been mad. Was mad. Deliberately starting a war with the Theocracy . . . No, giving them an opportunity to launch an unprovoked attack with considerable prospect of success. The gesture had united the entire Commonwealth behind him at the cost of millions of lives. And mur
dering everyone who might have stood in his way. The investigators had noted at least five other deaths that might be tied to the king. Peter believed the allegations, for what it was worth. He was no fool. The king wasn’t the only person who benefited from their deaths, but he was certainly the one who came out on top. And . . . and . . . and . . . he just couldn’t understand. The king was mad. He had to be mad. What if the Theocrats had won the war?

  He thought he couldn’t lose, Peter thought. In hindsight, he’d seen that kind of arrogance before. The king wasn’t just any aristocrat, but he was an aristocrat. And he was incredibly lucky.

  William was saying something. Peter dragged his attention back to him with an effort.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Can you please repeat that?”

  “If this is true, it would shake the king’s government to the core,” William said. “But can you prove it?”

  Peter felt a hot flash of anger. “We have the files,” he said sharply. “We can hand them over to anyone who wants to check them.”

  “Files can be faked,” William pointed out. “The king would certainly argue so.”

  “It’s difficult to fake such files.” Peter felt his heart sink. “We hacked them out of the king’s private bunker for crying out loud!”

  “But not impossible.” William met his eyes, evenly. “The king would claim the files are nothing more than fakes. He’d argue that all the independent analysts on Tyre were actually in the pay of one faction or another. Even the most truthful news outlet would be suspect, particularly under martial law. And, if the files are not accepted as evidence, all you have is a chain of inferences that might be just coincidences. The vast majority of the Commonwealth knows that Duke Lucas was murdered by the Theocracy. They’d be slow to believe any alternate facts.”

  Peter scowled at him. “Let me ask you a question,” he said bluntly. “Do you believe the files?”

  “I know the king,” William said. He didn’t show any offense at the question. “And yes, I believe he could have come up with such a plan. And yes, he has the nerve to make it work.”

  He paused deliberately. “But I also know that the truth will not be believed. People will not want to believe it. And the king will play that angle up as much as possible.”

  “He’ll have some problems disproving it,” Peter said stiffly.

  “He doesn’t really have to disprove it,” William said. “We’re the ones who have to prove his guilt, Your Grace, and that will not be easy. The king will argue that we made the evidence up out of whole cloth, and we will not be able to prove him wrong. It will come across as yet another smear campaign, one that will be as absurd as any of the others. Frankly, a great many people who do believe the accusations will wonder if the king was actually right.”

  “To kill my father?” Peter shook his head. “Impossible.”

  “To lure the Theocracy into war,” William said. “The colonials know the Theocracy was a deadly threat. Their worlds were occupied, their people brutalized until they were liberated . . . they may see the king as having done the right thing, as someone who was forced to be covert because the establishment here was too shortsighted to see the growing threat. And they may not care that much about your father. Your Grace, the big corporations are not popular. Kat’s the only aristocrat who has any genuine popularity, the only one they might listen to, and she’s on the wrong side.”

  “She doesn’t know the king murdered her father,” Peter said. He wasn’t sure of much, but he was sure of that. “She would never have sided with him if she’d known.”

  “Not when she thought Duke Lucas would have found a way through the postwar chaos,” William agreed. “But, right now, she isn’t going to be easy to convince either.”

  Peter sucked in his breath. “I have a meeting in an hour,” he said. “We have to decide how to push ahead with what we’ve discovered, maybe even start formal impeachment proceedings against the king.”

  William barked a harsh laugh. “I think we’re far beyond that now, Your Grace.”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “But we do need to formally impeach him”—he waved a hand at the datapad—“for that, if nothing else. And if he refuses to appear and present a defense, we can move to summary judgment against him.”

  “Which won’t impress his supporters,” William pointed out. “They’ll say you were trying to entrap him. They’ll claim you had no intention of letting him go, whatever defense he presented. They’ll say you created a situation where you couldn’t possibly lose. And they’d be right.”

  “It would force them to decide between declaring their support for an impeached monarch, which would let us formally strip them of their titles and positions, and abandoning the king,” Peter said. “And it would give us legal cover.”

  “Which won’t matter in the slightest if the king wins the war,” William said. “Why would he honor a court judgment that will certainly go against him?”

  Peter shrugged. “We don’t want anyone to say, later, that we didn’t give him a fair chance to defend himself,” he said. “And if we remove the legal ground beneath his feet, and his supporters, we can charge them with treason if they refuse to surrender.”

  “None of which will matter if the king wins the war,” William said again. “We need a plan for victory, not legal cover.”

  “And devising that plan is your job,” Peter said. “How do you suggest we proceed?”

  William considered his response for a long moment. “You could start by making it public that the king gave the Theocracy a clear shot at us,” he said. “You can explain how the king patronized Admiral Morrison, with orders to keep readiness levels low . . . You could even imply the king gave Kat private orders to do whatever she had to do to preserve the fleet—”

  Peter cut him off. “Do you believe there’s any truth in that?”

  “No,” William said. He sounded as if he wanted to say something ruder. “I was her XO. I don’t believe she expected anyone, except perhaps Duke Lucas, to come to her aid if she was put in front of a court-martial. She expected her career to end if the Theocracy didn’t attack. If she had any reason to think otherwise, she never showed it to me. And . . . I don’t believe she was ever that good a dissembler. I was beside her for years. She always wore her emotions on her sleeve.”

  He paused, waiting for comment. Peter said nothing.

  “I think you can focus on the charge the king started the war, or at least did everything in his power to ensure the Theocracy started the war,” William continued, after a moment. “You can put together a fairly simple narrative, one that can be easily fact-checked. Plenty of details are in the public domain now, even off-world. And there are plenty of former resistance fighters in the king’s forces, people who saw their friends killed, their wives raped, their children . . .”

  Peter held up his hand. He’d heard the liturgy of horror. His father had made it clear to him, before his death, that the Commonwealth could not afford to forget how evil the Theocracy had truly been. Evil on an unimaginable scale, where millions of people had suffered and died . . . millions upon millions, nothing more than a statistic with no more emotional impact than a corporate annual report written by bureaucrats so far from the front lines that they might as well be working for another corporation. The death toll was bloodless. His father had insisted they had to put a human face, as many human faces as possible, on the Theocracy’s crimes. It was the only way to make it clear that the Theocracy could not be allowed to rise again.

  “I take your point,” he said. “You think it might turn them against him.”

  “I think it might cause some discontent,” William said. “And it is more believable than claiming the king has a personal body count. These are not the days when kings could kill their enemies in single combat.”

  “It would make things a great deal easier,” Peter said. “But we could charge him with murder . . .”

  “The allegations would come across as far too good,” William sai
d. He let out a shaky breath. “When I was younger, I had to work with the redcaps . . . ah, with various levels of the military police. They always said they were suspicious of perfect alibis because they’d clearly been prepared well in advance. There were always gaps, chinks of suspicion, in stories that hadn’t been planned in advance. Spacers would have to explain things that looked suspicious even if they were completely innocent.

  “You’re telling the truth. I believe it. But it looks like a smear job to anyone who doesn’t know you and the king. And they’re not going to believe the charges. Politicians accuse each other of stupid shit all the time.”

  “Yes,” Peter agreed. He found Sir William’s informality refreshing. “But they generally accuse each other of really stupid shit, not outright murder.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” William said. “But there was always a layer of . . . believability about it. Back home, politicians would be accused of being poor children of the kirk, of minor immoralities that were inherently impossible to disprove. They were always wary about leveling more serious charges, charges that might be impossible to prove even if they were true. People might believe that a senior politician fiddled his expenses or took unsubtle bribes. They’re not going to believe outright criminal or treasonous charges without a lot of evidence.

  “And in this case, you’d need some pretty solid proof. The king could just deny the allegations. And it would be impossible to prove them beyond reasonable doubt.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Peter said. He clenched his fist. “What do you suggest we do with the remainder of the report?”

  “Nothing, as yet.” William frowned. “Can I think about all of this, Your Grace? If we deploy the report too soon, it could be turned against us.”