Throne of Stars

by David Weber

  “If we’re lucky,” Despreaux observed.

  “You want to hear this, or not?”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “So, that was a reason for the female to not be too upset when the male was always having a good time with her. And it was another reason for men to stick around. Tits were a visual sign that said: ‘Screw me and stick around and defend this territory.’ Can’t be proven, of course, but it fits with all the reactions males have to them.”

  “Yeah,” Despreaux said sourly. “All the reactions. They’re still a pain in the . . . back.”

  “Sure, and they’re effectively as useful as a vermiform appendix these days,” the sergeant major said. “On the other hand, they’re still great for making guys stupid. And that is what we’re going to talk about.”

  “Oh?” Despreaux’s tone became decidedly wary. They’d reached the sergeant major’s stateroom, and she was surprised to see Eleanora waiting for them. The chief of staff had been modded as well and was now a rather skinny redhead.

  “Oh,” Kosutic confirmed. She closed the hatch and waved Despreaux onto the folded-down bed next to Eleanora, who looked at her with an expression which mingled thoughtfulness and determination with something Despreaux wasn’t at all sure she wanted to see.

  “Nimashet, I’m going to be blunt,” the chief of staff said after a moment. “You have to marry Roger.”

  “No.” The sergeant stood back up quickly, eyes flashing. “If this is what you wanted to talk about, you can—”

  “Sit down, Sergeant,” Kosutic said sharply.

  “You’d better not use my rank when talking about something like this, Sergeant Major!” Despreaux snapped back angrily.

  “I will when it affects the security of the Empire,” Kosutic replied icily. “Sit. Down. Now.”

  Despreaux sat, glaring at the senior NCO.

  “I’m going to lay this out very carefully,” Eleanora told her. “And you’re going to listen. Then we’ll discuss it. But hear me out, first.”

  Despreaux shifted her glower to the chief of staff. But she also crossed her arms—carefully, given certain recent changes—and sat back stiffly on the bed.

  “Some of this only holds—or matters—if we succeed,” Eleanora said. “And some of it is immediately pertinent to our hope of possibly pulling off the mission in the first place. The first point is for everything—current mission and long-term consideration, alike. And that point is that Roger literally has the weight of the Empire on his shoulders right now. And he loves you. And I think you love him. And he’s eaten up by the thought of losing you, which raises all sorts of scary possibilities.”

  Desperaux’s surprise must have shown, because the chief of staff grimaced and waved one hand in the air.

  “If he fails,” she said, “if we go with the government-in-exile program and he becomes just some guy who was almost Emperor, you’d marry him, wouldn’t you?”

  Despreaux looked at her stony-eyed for two or three heartbeats, then sighed.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Shit. I’d do it in a second if he was ‘just some guy.’ And I’m setting him up to fail so I can do just that, aren’t I?”

  “You’re setting him up to fail,” Eleanora agreed with a nod. “Not to mention contributing to the mental anguish he’s in right now. Not that I think for a moment that you’ve been doing either of those things intentionally, of course. You’re not manipulative enough for your own good, sometimes, and you certainly don’t think that way. But the effect is the same, whether it’s intentional or not. Right now, he has to be wondering, in the deeps of the night, if being Emperor—which he knows he’s going to loathe—is really worth losing you. I presented the alternate exile plan because I thought it was a good plan, one that should be looked at as an alternative. It was Julian and the sergeant major who pointed out, afterwards, the consequences of the plan. Do you want Prince Jackson on the throne? Or a six-way war, more likely?”

  “No,” Despreaux said in a low voice. “God, what that would do to Midgard!”

  “Exactly,” Kosutic said. “And to half a hundred other worlds. If Adoula takes the Throne, all the out-worlds are going to be nothing but sources of material and manpower—cannon fodder—he and his cronies will bleed dry. If they don’t get nuked in passing during the wars.”

  “So he has the weight of the Empire on his shoulders,” Eleanora repeated, “and he’s losing you. And there’s a bolt-hole that he can go to that gets both of those problems off his back. It happens that that bolt-hole would mean very bad things for the Empire, but men aren’t rational about women.”

  “That’s another thing I can lay out in black and white,” Kosutic said. “Lots of studies about it. Long-term rational planning drops off the chart when men are thinking about women. It’s how they’re wired. Of course, we’re not all that rational about them sometimes, either,”

  “Now, let’s talk about what happens if we succeed,” Eleanora went on gently and calmly. “Roger is going to end up Emperor—probably sooner than he expects. I don’t know how bad the residual effects of whatever drugs they’re using on his mother are going to be, but I do know they’re not going to be good. And after what’s going on right now gets out, the public’s confidence in her fitness to rule is bound to drop. If the drugs’ effects are noticeable, it will drop even more. Nimashet, Roger could well find himself on the Throne within a year or less, if we pull this thing off.”

  “Oh, God,” Despreaux said quietly. Her arms were no longer crossed, and her fingers twisted about one another in her lap. “God, he’ll really hate that.”

  “Yes, he will. But there’s much worse,” Eleanora said. “People are neither fully products of their genetics, nor of their experiences, but . . . traumatic experiences can . . . adjust their personalities in various ways. And especially when they’re still fairly young and unformed. Fairly young. Roger is fairly young, and, quite frankly, he was also fairly unformed when we landed on Marduk. I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to call him ‘unformed’ now, but the mold in which he’s been shaped was our march halfway around Marduk. Effectively, Roger MacClintock’s done virtually all of his ‘growing up’ in the course of eight months of constant, brutal combat ops without relief. Think about that.

  “More than once, he’s ended serious political negotiations by simply shooting the people he was negotiating with. Of course they were negotiating in bad faith when he did it. He never had a choice. But it’s become . . . something of a habit. So has destroying any obstacle that got in his path. Again, because he didn’t have a choice. Because they were obstacles he couldn’t deal with any other way, and because so much depended on their being dealt with effectively . . . and permanently. But what that means is that he has . . . very few experiential reasons to not use every available scrap of firepower to remove any problems that arise. And if we succeed, this young man is going to be Emperor.

  “There will probably be a civil war, no matter what we do. In fact, I’ll virtually guarantee that there’ll be one. The pressures were right for one—building nicely to one, anyway—when we left Old Earth, and things obviously haven’t gotten any better. What with the problems at home, I’d be surprised if a rather large war doesn’t break out—soon—and if it does, a man who has vast experience in killing people to accomplish what he considers are necessary goals is going to be sitting on the Throne of Man. I want you to think about that for a moment, too.”

  “Not good,” Despreaux said, licking her lips.

  “Not good at all,” Eleanora agreed. “His advisers,” she added, touching her own chest, “can mitigate his tendency to violence, to a degree. But only if he’s amenable. The bottom line is that the Emperor can usually get what he wants, one way or another. If he doesn’t like our advice, for example, he could simply fire us.”

  “Roger . . . wouldn’t do that,” Despreaux said positively. “No one who was on the March is ever going to be anyone he would fire. Or not listen to. He might not take th
e advice, though.”

  “And the armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution and the Emperor. He’s their commander-in-chief. He can do quite a bit of fighting even without any declaration of war, and if we manage to succeed in this . . . this—”

  “This forlorn hope,” Kosutic supplied.

  “Yes.” The chief of staff smiled thinly, recognizing the ancient military term for a small body of troops sent out with even smaller hope of success. “If we succeed in this forlorn hope, there’s automatically going to be a state of emergency. If a civil war breaks out, the Constitution equally automatically restricts citizens’ rights and increases the power of the sitting head of state. We could end up with . . . Roger, in his present mental incarnation, holding as much power as any other person in the history of the human race.”

  “You sound like he’s some bloody-handed murderer!” Despreaux shook her head. “He’s not. He’s a good man. You make him sound like one of the Dagger Lords!”

  “He’s not that,” Kosutic said. “But what he is is damned near a reincarnation of Miranda MacClintock. She happened to be a political philosopher with a strongly developed sense of responsibility and duty, which, I agree, Roger also has. But if you remember your history, she also took down the Dagger Lords by being a bloody-minded bitch at least as ruthless as they were.”

  “What he is, effectively,” Eleanora continued in that same gentle voice, “is a neobarbarian tyrant. A ‘good’ tyrant, perhaps, and as charismatic as hell—maybe even on the order of an Alexander the Great—but still a tyrant. And if he can’t break out of the mold, putting him on the Throne will be as bad for the Empire as disintegration.”

  “What’s your point?” Despreaux demanded harshly.

  “You,” Kosutic said. “When you joined the Regiment, when I was interviewing you on in-process, I damned near blackballed you.”

  “You never told me that.” Despreaux frowned at the sergeant major. “Why?”

  “You’d passed all the psychological tests,” Kosutic replied with a shrug. “You’d passed RIP, although not with flying colors. We knew you were loyal. We knew you were a good guard. But there was something missing, something I couldn’t quite put a finger on. I called it ‘hardness,’ at the time, but that’s not it. You’re damned hard.”

  “No,” Despreaux said. “I’m not. You were right.”

  “Maybe. But hardness was still the wrong word.” Kosutic frowned. “You’ve always done your job. Even when you lost the edge and couldn’t fight anymore, you contributed and sweated right along with the rest of us. You’re just not . . .”

  “Vicious,” Despreaux said. “I’m not a killer.”

  “No.” Kosutic nodded in acknowledgment. “And I sensed that. That was what made me want to blackball you. But in the end, I didn’t.”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  “Bullshit. You did your job—more than your job. You made it, and you’re the key to what we need. So quit whining, soldier.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.” Despreaux managed a fleeting smile, though it was plain her heart wasn’t in it. “On the other hand, if you had blackballed me, I would have avoided our little pleasure stroll.”

  “And you could never be Empress,” Eleanora said.

  Despreaux’s new indigo eyes snapped back to the chief of staff, dark with dread, and Eleanora put a hand on her knee.

  “Listen to me, Nimashet. What you are is something the opposite of vicious. I’d call it ‘nurturing,’ but that’s not really right, either. You’re as tough-minded and obstinate—most ways—as anyone, even Roger. Or can you think of anyone else in our happy little band who could argue him to a standstill once he gets the bit truly between his teeth?”

  Eleanora looked into her eyes until Despreaux’s innate honesty forced her to shake her head, then continued.

  “But whatever it is we ought to be calling you, the point is that with you by Roger’s side, he’s calmer. Less prone to simply lash out and much more prone to think things through. And that’s important—important to the Empire.”

  “I don’t want to be Empress,” Despreaux said desperately.

  “Satan, girl,” Kosutic laughed. “I understand, but listen to what you just said!”

  “I’m a country girl,” Despreaux protested. “A sod-buster from Midgard! I’m no good, never have been, at the sort of petty, backbiting infighting that goes on at Court.” She shook her head. “I don’t have the right mindset for it.”

  “So? How many people do, to start with?” Kosutic demanded.

  “A hell of a lot more of them at Court than there are of me!” Despreaux shot back, then shook her head again, almost convulsively. “I don’t know how to be a noblewoman, much less a fucking Empress, and if I try, I’ll fuck it up. Don’t you understand?” She looked back and forth between them, her eyes darker than ever. “If I try to do the job, I’ll blow it. I’ll be out of my league. I’ll do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing at the wrong time, give Roger the wrong piece of advice—something! And when I do, the entire Empire will get screwed because of me!”

  “You think Roger isn’t thinking exactly the same thing?” Kosutic challenged more gently. “Satan, Nimashet! He has to wake up every single morning with the piss scared out of him just thinking about the job in front of him.”

  “But at least he grew up knowing it was coming. He’s got the background, the training for it. I don’t!”

  “Training?” Eleanora flicked one hand in a dismissive gesture. “To be Emperor?” She snorted. “Until Jin told us what’s been happening on Old Earth, it never even crossed his mind once that he might ever be Emperor, Nimashet! And, frankly, his mother’s distrust of him meant that everyone, myself included, was always very careful to never, ever suggest the possibility to him. To be honest, it’s only recently occurred to me how much that may have contributed to his refusal—or failure—to recognize the fact that he truly did stand close to the succession.”

  She shook her head again, her eyes sad as she thought of how dreadfully her one-time charge’s life had changed, then looked back at Despreaux.

  “Admittedly, he grew up in Court circles, and he may have more training for that than you do, but trust me, he didn’t begin to have enough of it before our little jaunt. I know; I was the one who was supposed to be giving him that training, and I wasn’t having a lot of success.

  “But he’s been much more strongly . . . motivated in that regard recently, and you can be, too. You’ve seen how much he’s grown in the last half-year, probably better than anyone else besides me and Armand Pahner. But nobody’s born with that ‘mindset’; they learn it, just like Roger has, and you’ve already pretty conclusively demonstrated your ability to master combat techniques. This is just one more set of combat skills. And, remember, if we succeed, you’re going to be Empress. It’s going to take either a very stupid individual, or a very dangerous one, to cross you.”

  “Our kids would be raised in a cage!”

  “All children are,” Eleanora countered. “It’s why no sane adult would ever really want to be a child again. But your kids’ cage would be the best protected one in the galaxy.”

  “Tell that to John’s kids!” Despreaux exploded. “When I think about—”

  “When you think about the kids who just up and disappear every year,” Kosutic said. “Or end up a body in a ditch. Or raped by their uncle, or their dad’s best friend. Think about that, instead. That’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about, not with three thousand hard bastards watching anyone that comes near them like rottweilers. Every parent worries about her child; that comes with the job. But your kids are going to have three thousand of the most dangerous baby-sitters—and you know that’s what we are—in the known galaxy.

  “Sure, they got to John and his kids. But they did it by killing the entire Empress’ Own, Nimashet. Every mother-loving one of them. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are exactly twelve of us left in the entire frigging Galaxy, because the only way
they could get to the kids, or John, or the Empress was over us—over our dead bodies, stacked in front of the goddamned door! And there’s been one—count ’em, one—successful attack on the Imperial Family in five hundred fucking years! Don’t tell me your kids wouldn’t be ‘safe’!”

  The sergeant major glared at her, and, after a moment, Despreaux’s gaze fell.

  “I don’t want to be Empress,” she repeated, quietly but stubbornly. “I swore to him that I wouldn’t marry him if he was going to be Emperor. What would I be if I took that back?”

  “A woman.” Kosutic grinned. “Didn’t you know we’re allowed to change our minds at random? It comes with the tits.”

  “Thanks very much,” Despreaux said bitingly, and folded her arms again. Her shoulders hunched. “I don’t want to be Empress.”

  “Maybe not,” Eleanora said. “But you do want to marry Roger. You want to have his children. You want to keep a bloody-minded tyrant off the Throne, and he’ll be far less bloody-minded if he wants to keep your approval in mind. The only thing you don’t want is to be Empress.”

  “That’s a pretty big ‘only,’” Despreaux pointed out.

  “What you want is really beside the point,” Kosutic said. “The only thing that matters is what’s good for the Empire. I don’t care if you consider every day of the rest of your life a living sacrifice to the Empire. You swore the oath; you took the pay.”