by David Weber
"Until this moment," Roger said quietly, calmly, "we've been in very different places, Sergeant Major."
"Explain," Catrone said, shaking himself like a dog, shaking off the cold, drenching hatred of memory to refocus on the prince.
"I knew rescuing Mother was a necessity." Roger looked up at last, and the retired NCO saw tears running down his cheeks. "But frankly, if the mission would have worked better, if it would have been safer, ignoring Mother, I would have been more than willing to ignore her."
"What?" Catrone said angrily.
"Don't get on your high horse, Sergeant Major," Roger snapped. "First of all, let's keep in mind the safety of the Empire. If keeping the Empire together meant playing my mother as a pawn,that would be the right course. Mother would insist it was the right course. Agreed?"
Catrone's lips were pinched and white with anger, but he nodded.
"Agreed," he said tightly.
"Now we get into the personal side," Roger continued. "My mother spent as little time with me as she possibly could. Yes, she was Empress, and she was very busy. It was a hard job, I know that. But I also know I was raised by nannies and tutors and my goddammed valet. Mother, quite frankly, generally only appeared in my life to explain to me what a little shit I was. Which, I submit, didn't do a great deal to motivate me to be anything else, Sergeant Major. And then, when it was all coming apart, she didn'ttrust me enough to keep me at her side. Instead, she sent me off to Leviathan. Instead of landing on Leviathan, which is a shithole of a planet, I ended up on Marduk—which isworse. Not exactly her fault, but let's just say that she and her distrust figure prominently in why almost two hundred men and women who were very close and important to me died."
"Don't care for Alexandra, do you?" Catrone said menacingly.
"I just found out that blood is much,much thicker than water," Roger replied, cheek muscles bunching. "If you'd asked me, and if I'd been willing to answer honestly, five minutes ago if I cared if Mother lived or died, the honest answer would have been: no." He paused and stared at the sergeant major, then shook his head. "In which case, I would have been lying tomyself at the same time I was trying to be honest with you." He twisted his hands together and his arms shook. "I really, really feel the need to kill something."
"There's always those atul," Catrone pointed out, watching him work through it.
Frankly, the prince was handling it better than he had. Maybe he didn't care as much, but Catrone suspected that it was simply a very clear manifestation of how controlled Roger could be. Catrone understood control. You didn't get to be sergeant major of Gold Battalion by being a nonaggressive nonentity, and he could recognize when a person was exercising enormous control. Well, enough to prevent an outright explosion, at least. He wondered—for the first time, really, despite having seen the "presentation" from Marduk—just how volcanic Roger could be when pushed. Based on the degree of control he was seeing at this moment, he suspected the answer was very volcanic. Like, Krakatoa volcanic.
"Putting myself in the way of an atul right now would be stupid," Roger said. "If I die, the whole plan dies. Mom dies, and she... shit!" He shook his head again. "Besides, I've killed so many of them that it just wouldn't be satisfying enough, you know?" he added, looking at the sergeant major.
"Oh, yeah. I know."
"God, that hit me." Roger closed his eyes again. "At so many levels. Christ, I don't want her to die. I want to strangle her myself!"
"Don't joke about that," Catrone said sharply.
"Sorry." Roger sat motionless for another moment, then reopened his eyes. "We've got to get her out of there, Sergeant Major."
"We will," Catrone said. "Sir."
"I learned, a long time ago," Roger said, smiling faintly, his cheeks still wet with tears, "all of eleven months or so ago, the difference between being called 'Your Highness' and 'Sir.' I'm glad you're fully on board."
"Nobody is that good an actor," Catrone told him. "You didn't know. Your... sources didn't know?"
"I... think they did," Roger replied. "In which case, certain cryptic glances between members of my staff are now explained."
"Wouldn't be the first time staff held back something they didn't want their boss to know. Be glad it wasn't something more important."
"Actually, this is rather important. But I take your meaning," Roger said. "On the other hand, I think I'll just explain to them the difference between personal and important." He looked at the sergeant major, his face hard. "Don't get down on me, by the way, for considering Mother as a pawn. I saw too many friends die..."
"I watched," Catrone said, nodding to where the hologram had played.
"Yes, but even for someone who's been on the sharp end, you can't know," Roger replied. "You can't know what it's like to have to keep going every day, watching your soldiers being picked off, one by one, losing men and women that you... love, and the journey seems to never end. Seeing them dying to protect you, and nothing—nothing—you can do to help them that won't make it worse. So, I did. I did make it worse. I kept throwingmyself out there. And getting them killed while they were trying to keep me alive. Until I got good enough that I was keeping them alive. Good enough that they were watching my back instead of getting between me and whatever was trying to kill us, because they knew I was, by God, the nastiest, most cold-blooded, vicious bastard on that entire fucking planet.
"I wasn't fighting this battle for Mother, Sergeant Major; I was fighting it for them. To get that damned Imperial Warrant off their heads. To make sure they could go to bed at night in reasonable certainty that they'd wake up in the morning. So that the dead could be honored in memory, their bodies brought home to lie beside the fallen heroes of the Empire, instead of being remembered only as losers in a failed coup. As incompetent traitors. That was no way to remember Armand Pahner. I'd use anyone—you, the Association, Mother, anyone—to keep them from—"
He shrugged angrily, and his nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath.
"But, yeah, I just found out that blood is thicker than water. Before, I only wanted Adoula... moved aside. He was another obstacle to be removed, period. Now... ?"
"New Madrid is the real bastard," Catrone ground out. "He's the one—"
"Yes, he is." Roger flexed his jaw. "I agree with that. But I'll tell you something else, Sergeant Major. You're not getting your wire waistcoat."
"Like hell," Catrone said uncomfortably. "You're not going to let him walk?"
"Of course not. And if the timing is right, you can shoot the bastard, father of mine though he is—genetically speaking, at least. Or I'll hand you my sword, and you can cut his pretty head off. But in all likelihood, if he doesn't get accidentally terminated during the operation, or if he's not in a position where early termination is the best course, we're going to turn him over to the courts and slip a nice little poison into his veins after a full and fair trial."
"Like hell!" Catrone repeated, angrily, this time.
"That's what's going to happen," Roger said sternly. "Because one of the things I learned in that little walk is the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys don't torture people just because they want vengeance, Sergeant Major. No matterwhat the reasoning. I didn't torture that damned Saint bastard who killed Armand Pahner after he'd 'surrendered.' I shot him before I left Marduk, and given the Saints' violation of Imperial territory and the operations those Greenpeace commandos carried out under his orders—not to mention killing so many Imperial Marines right there in Marduk orbit—it was completely, legally justified. I won't pretend for a moment that I didn't take a certain savage satisfaction out of it; as Armand himself once pointed out to me, I am a bit of a savage—a barbarian—myself. But I didn't torture even the sons of bitches who killed him and tried to kill me, and I never tortured a damncroc for killing Kostas. Killed quite a few, but they all went out quick. If there's areason to terminate New Madrid as part of this operation, he'll be terminated. Cleanly and quickly. If not, he faces Imperia
l justice. Ditto for Adoula. Becausewe're the good guys, whatever the bad guys may have done."
"Christ, you have grown up," Catrone muttered. "Bastard."
"That I am," Roger agreed. "I was born out of wedlock, but I'm my mother's son, not my father's. And not evenhe can turn me into him. Is that clear?"
"Clear," Catrone muttered.
"I can't hear you, Sergeant Major," Roger said without a hint of playfulness.
"Clear," Catrone said flatly. "Damn it."
"Good," Roger said. "And now that that little UNPLEASANTNESS—" he shouted "—is out of the way, I'll give you one more thing, Sergeant Major."
"Oh?" Catrone regarded him warily.
"I've taken a shine to you, Sergeant Major. I didn't understand why, at first, but you remind me of someone. Not as smooth, not quite as wise, I think, but pretty similar in a lot of ways."
"Who?" Catrone asked.
"Armand Pahner." Roger swallowed. "Like I said, none of that trip would have worked without Armand. He wasn't perfect. He had a tendency to believe his own estimates that damned near killed us a couple of times. But... he was very much like a father to me. I learned to trust him more than I trust ChromSten. You with me, Sergeant Major?"
"Pahner was a hell of a man," Catrone said. "A bit of a punk, when I first met him. No, not a punk—never a punk. He was good, even then. But, yeah, cocky as hell. And I watched him grow for a bit. I agree, he was more trustworthy than armor. Your point?"
"My point, Tom, is that I've come to trust you. Maybe more than I should, but... I've gotten to be a fair judge of character. And I know you don't want to play kingmaker... which is why that's exactly what you're going to do."
"Explain," Catrone said, wary again.
"When we take the Palace," Roger said, then shrugged. "Okay, if we take the Palace. And we rescue Mother. You are going to decide—right then, right there."
"Decide who gets the reins?"
"Yes, who gets the reins. If Mother is evensemifunctional, I'll step back. Give her time to get her bearings, time to find out how damaged she is. But you, Thomas Catrone, are going to make the evaluation."
"Shit."
"Do you think Adoula has this?"
Buseh Subianto had been in the IBI for going on forty years. She'd started out as a street agent, working organized crime, and she'd done it well. There'd been something about her fresh face and dark-green eyes that had gotten men, often men who were normally close-mouthed, to talk to her. Such conversations had frequently resulted in their incarceration—frequently enough, as a matter of fact, that she'd been quickly promoted, and then transferred to counterintelligence.
She'd been in the counter-intel business for more than twenty-five years, now, during which she'd slowly worked her way up the ladder of the bureaucracy. The face wasn't so fresh any more. Fine lines had appeared in her skin, and there was a crease on her brow from years of concentrated thought. But the green eyes were still dark and piercing. Almost hypnotic.
Fritz Tebic had worked for his boss long enough to know when to avoid the hypnotism. So he swallowed, then shrugged, looking away.
"He may have it," he replied. "He's seen the report on the Mardukans who met with Helmut's courier. And New Madrid was definitely having Catrone followed. Catrone went to the Mardukan restaurant here in Imperial city, and a week later, he's meeting with the hard-core members of the Associations. But... there are a lot of threads. Adoula's people might not have connected them. Might not."
"If they had, we'd already have an Imperial arrest warrant for treason for Catrone and..." she looked at the data, frowning, the thin crease getting deeper, "this Augustus Chung. What gets me is that the players don't make any sense. And where are the materials Chung's been receiving coming from?"
"I don't know," Tebic said. "OrgCrime Division's already looking at this Marduk House pretty closely—they think Chung is laundering money. But they don't have the information on the shipments. I haven't put any of this into the datanet. The original report on the meeting with Helmut's officers is in there, but none of the connections. And... there are a few Mardukans running around. They don't have any skills, so they tend to end up as heavies of one sort or another. Some do work for orgcrime, so basically, the Sixth Fleet link looks like a false-positive unless you also have the information on the equipment Chung's been receiving. Ma'am, what are we going to do?"
It was difficult to hide much from the Imperial Bureau of Investigation. Most money was transferred electronically, as were most messages, and everything electronic went past the IBI eventually. And the IBI had enormous computing power at its disposal, power that sifted through that enormous mass of data, looking for apparently unconnected bits. Over the years, the programs had become more and more sophisticated, with fewer and fewer false hits. Despite draconian privacy limitations which were—almost always—rigorously observed, the IBI had eyes everywhere.
Including inside the Imperial Palace. Which meant the two of them knew very well the actual condition of the Empress.
Tebic remembered a class from early in his Academy days. The class had been on the history of cryptography and information security, and one of the examples of successful code-breaking operations had been called Verona, a program from the earliest days of computers—even before transistors. The code-breakers had successfully penetrated an enemy spy network, only to find out that the other side had agents so high in their own government that reporting the information was tantamount to committing suicide. At the time of the class, Tebic's sympathy for them had been purely intellectual; these days, he connected with them on a far more profound level.
A few key people in the IBI knew that Adoula and the Earl of New Madrid had the Empress under their complete control. They even knew how. The problem was, they had no one to tell. The IBI's director had been replaced, charged as an accessory to the "coup." Kyoko Pedza, Director of Counterintelligence, had disappeared within a day afterwards, just before his own arrest on the same charges. It was five-to-one odds in their internal pool that he'd been assassinated by Adoula; Pedza had been a serious threat to Adoula's power base.
But the problem was that the IBI wasn't the Empress' Own. It wasn't even the Navy, sworn to defend the Constitution and the Empress. The IBI's first and only mission was the security of the Empire. Yes, Adoula had effectively usurped the Throne. Yes, he'd committed a list of offenses a kilometer long in doing so. Perjury, murder, kidnapping, and physical and psychological torture. Technically, they should lay out the data, slap a set of restraints on him, and lead him away to durance vile.
But realistically, he was too powerful. He had a major base in the Lords and the Commons, de facto control of the Empress, and control of most of the Navy, and Prime Minister Yang had obviously decided it wasn't time to challenge him too openly. Whether that was because of the chaos Yang feared would overwhelm the Empire if he did so, or because he was more concerned about his own power than he was about the Empress and the Constitution was impossible to say, although Subianto had her own suspicions in that regard.
But whatever the Prime Minister's thinking, as Navy Minister, Prince Jackson was effectively in control of all of the Empire's external and internal security organs, especially after he'd replaced Tebic and Subianto's superiors with his own handpicked nominees. If they wanted to arrest Adoula, they'd need to present a list of charges to a magistrate. And even if they found one stupid enough to sign a warrant, they'd never live to process it. Besides, Adoula had already done too much damage. He'd managed to destroy the Imperial Family, and Subianto and Tebic, unlike all too many citizens of the Empire, knew precisely how vital to its stability House MacClintock had been. Without it, there was only Adoula, however corrupt, however "evil," to hold things together. Without him, what did the Empire have? An Empress who was severely damaged. Probably civil war. And no clear heir to the Throne.
And now they had this. Smuggling of illegal and highly dangerous materials. Collusion with a foreign power—they were pretty
sure about that one, although which foreign power was less clear. Conspiracy to commit treason—sort of; that one depended on the definition and whether or not it was technically possible to commit treason against someone who had treasonously seized power in the first place. Illegal monetary transfers—definitely. Falsification of identity without a doubt. Assault. Theft.
But...
"No chance of getting eyes and ears into the building?" Subianto asked.
"No," Tebic replied unhesitatingly. "Security is pretty unobtrusive, but very tight. Good electronics—very good, very professional. And those Mardukans literally sleep at the warehouse and the restaurant. The restaurant has countersurveillance devices—two agents have been asked to leave for trying to get floaters and directional mikes inside—but plenty of restaurants in Imperial City would've done exactly the same thing. Too many conversations nobody wants overheard."
"Who are they?" Subianto whispered to herself. "They're not the Associations. They're not with Adoula. They're not those idiots in the Supremacy Party."
"They're acting like they're going to counter Adoula," Tebic said. "But the Associations have to know the Empress isn't in the best condition, and there's no clear alternate Regent, much less a clear Heir, other than this fetus Adoula and New Madrid are growing." He paused and shrugged. "We've got three choices."
"I know." Subianto's face was hard and cold. "We can turn the data over to Adoula, and they disappear—or, maybe, get tried. We can do nothing, and see what happens. Or we can contact them."
"Yes, Ma'am," Tebic said, and waited.
His superior's face could have belonged to a statue—one of the old Persian emperors, the omnipotent semideities, often more than just a little insane, who had gifted humanity with such enduring phrases as "killing the messenger" and "maybe the horse will sing" and "the Sword of Damocles." This was a Sword of Damocles over both their heads, hanging by a thread. And the way those omnipotent emperors had wandered into the borderlands of sanity, Tebic knew, was from making decisions which would determine the fate of far more than just their own empire... and when they'd known their own lives, and their families', were on the line.