Duke Rudbek elbowed Peter. “He’s trying to blame us, some of us, for his crimes.”
“Crimes we can’t prove,” Peter muttered back. A week of careful investigation had turned up nothing more than circumstantial evidence. It would be quite easy for the king’s defenders to point out that the people responsible could quite easily have been working for one of the senior aristocrats instead of the king. “He’s trying to derail the bill.”
Hampshire spoke over a growing rumble of unrest. “This bill—yes, we know what it is—is nothing more than an attempt to escape justice! The people behind it want to distract the king, to distract everyone, from the canker in their midst. This is not opposition! This is outright treason! And it will not stand!”
The rumble grew louder. MPs were on their feet, shouting backwards and forwards. Peter gritted his teeth, forcing himself to think. The king had outmaneuvered them, it seemed. By accusing his opponents of treason, presumably with just enough faked evidence to make the charges reasonably compelling, the king had made it much harder for his opponents to impeach him. And yet, the accusation wouldn’t last. Any halfway competent investigation would prove their innocence.
There isn’t going to be an investigation, he thought, feeling ice trickling down his spine. The king is gambling everything on one final throw of the dice.
“Send the signal,” he said urgently. “Tell our people to move in, now!”
Duke Rudbek nodded. “Done,” he said, tapping his datapad. “If we can secure the planetary defenses . . .”
“By order of His Majesty, under the provisions of Martial Law, everyone in this chamber is under arrest until a full investigation can be carried out,” Hampshire thundered. It was lucky his voice was amplified. No one would have heard a word otherwise. MPs were practically throwing things at each other. “You will sit down and wait quietly . . .”
Peter’s datapad bleeped loudly, warning him that a jamming field had just snapped into existence. All datalinks had been cut, even the secure link to his mansion. He stood. Parliament was heavily defended, but . . . A roar broke out in the lower levels as a bunch of MPs rushed the prime minister. Some government MPs moved to shield him, but others looked uncertain or turned and fled. Alarms howled a moment later, alerting the MPs to move to shelters. Peter hadn’t heard those alarms outside emergency drills. Parliament had never been attacked, not even during the opening hours of the war.
A war just started, he thought. And all hell is about to break loose.
A dull explosion rocked the chamber. Peter swallowed, hard. “What was that?”
“Someone trying to break in,” Duke Rudbek said. “I daresay Parliamentary Security is under attack.”
Peter’s bodyguard hurried into the chamber. “Your Grace, armed troops arrived at the main entrance and opened fire!”
Duke Rudbek looked up, sharply. “Who fired first?”
“I don’t know,” the bodyguard said. “But there’s a battle going on outside!”
Peter stood. “Where do we go?”
“You have to get to the shelters,” the bodyguard told him. Peter wished, suddenly, that he knew the man’s name. “This way, please.”
“We have to evacuate the building,” Duke Rudbek said. “Or take one of the tunnels.”
Peter shot a questioning look at the bodyguard. “We can’t guarantee your safety,” the bodyguard said. “The building is surrounded, so going into the streets is a seriously bad idea; I don’t dare take the risk. And the local airspace isn’t safe. There are reports of gunmen with portable HVMs in the area.”
“Then we go down,” Peter said. Other bodyguards were flowing into the chamber, some grabbing their principals and half carrying them out without waiting for debate. “I . . .”
He stopped as he saw the scene in front of him. Hampshire was lying on the ground . . . bruised, battered, bloody, and apparently dead. Other wounded or dead MPs and lords lay next to him, looking as if they’d been trampled by a herd of wild animals. The speaker was sitting on his chair, staring blankly at the carnage. Blood stained the floor, mocking everything they’d hoped to achieve. They’d hoped for a peaceful resolution, but civil war had broken out.
Shooting echoed in the distance, followed by another explosion. Peter’s bodyguard grabbed his arm and yanked him through the door, hurrying towards the drop-shafts. The alarms were growing louder, a howling dirge for democracy and civilization. Peter felt sick as they dived into the drop-shaft, wondering, a second too late, if the power would fail. But it held up long enough for them to land at the bottom safely. Duke Rudbek and his bodyguards followed a moment later.
The king wanted to capture us, Peter thought. The army was riddled with the aristocracy’s spies, which meant the men attacking the Houses of Parliament had to be the king’s household guards, loyal to him personally. And that means . . .
He forced himself to think as he was pushed into a secure chamber. The king’s household guard was normally limited to a couple of thousand men but had expanded, of course, during the war. It had been one of the issues Parliament had meant to address, before the growing crisis drowned it out. The horse had definitely bolted on that one. And yet, it wasn’t entirely bad news. The king probably didn’t have the manpower to secure all his potential targets. He’d have problems if he wanted to seize the mansions, or the industrial nodes, or the ground-based Planetary Defense Centers.
But if he takes command of the high orbitals, he can force everyone else to surrender, Peter thought. The ground-based defenses would need time to react and, by the time they realized how serious things had become, they could be smashed flat. And then what? Does he think he can rule the Commonwealth?
The bodyguard slammed the armored door shut, then sat down at a terminal and started to tap commands into the system. A series of images popped up in front of him: a live feed from the security sensors, a handful of news broadcasts, even a couple of emergency services and military channels. Peter glanced at his datapad, but it was still dead. The datalinks that should have been permanently open were closed.
“This terminal is linked into the city’s physical infrastructure,” the bodyguard said by way of explanation. “The jamming field doesn’t affect it.”
Duke Rudbek coughed. “So . . . what’s going on outside?”
“A great deal of shouting and screaming,” the bodyguard said. “Everyone seems to have something to say.”
Peter leaned forward. “Are we in any immediate danger?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” the bodyguard said. “But unless we get reinforcements, this building will fall very quickly.”
And then we die, Peter thought. The king had definitely staked everything on one final throw of the dice. We die and get condemned as traitors, while Hadrian continues with his plan.
“Get me a link to the nearest garrison,” Duke Rudbek ordered. “I need to speak to the CO.”
The hour ticked by slowly. Peter linked his datapad to the terminal, alternately sending messages to his clients and trying to get a grip on what was happening. The news reports appeared to have been written in advance—they all claimed that traitorous elements in Parliament were resisting arrest—but the independent reporters were pointing out that matters were nowhere near so cut-and-dried. It was a nightmare. There were reports of an attempt to assassinate the king, gunfights on the planetary defense battlestations and even Home Fleet . . . reports that constantly contradicted themselves. He couldn’t tell who was winning, if anyone was winning.
“Troops are on the way to lift the siege,” Duke Rudbek said finally. “Parliament will be saved.”
Unless the king decides to blow it up, Peter thought. The shelter was heavily protected but couldn’t stand up to a kinetic strike. Or a penetrator warhead. Was the king desperate enough to deploy one? And what would happen if he did? Peter wondered, bitterly, what had happened to the other aristocrats. Their bodyguards would have gotten them to the other shelters, wouldn’t they? They might be dead al
ready.
“There are also reports of the king’s troops digging in at the palace,” Duke Rudbek stated grimly. “I’ve requested that my clients prepare to take the building, but they’re hesitating.”
“I’m not surprised,” Peter said. There was so much confusion on the datanet that everyone had to be a little unsure of themselves. Which actions were legal and which were outright treason? His lips trembled at the thought, even though it wasn’t really funny. Whoever lost would be the traitors, of course. “Do we have any updates from the orbital fortresses?”
“Five of them appear to be firmly under Admiral Fisher’s control,” Duke Rudbek said, after a moment. “I’m not so sure about the others. One of them appears to have dropped out of the datanet entirely.”
Peter nodded. Admiral Fisher had been one of his father’s clients, although ties had weakened somewhat in the year since his father’s death. He was a good, and more importantly reliable, man—a man who understood the importance of keeping Planetary Defense separate from the Royal Navy. And he knew what the opposition had been trying to achieve.
Another hour went past, slowly. The king’s household troops fought bravely, once the reinforcements arrived, but they were badly outnumbered. A handful surrendered, but the remainder fought to the death. Peter couldn’t help wondering what the king had done to deserve such loyalty, although it hardly mattered. Perhaps the troops were colonials, or perhaps they expected to be executed if they were captured. He found it hard to care.
“Parliament is secure,” Duke Rudbek said. Peter’s datapad bleeped, confirming that the jamming field was gone. “And troops are on their way to the palace.”
Peter scanned the reports that had started to flow into his datapad. Shootings, bombings, entire installations going off the air . . . Some of the most alarming reports had been updated before he saw them, suggesting that they’d been based on false data. But even the handful of confirmed reports were terrifying. The entire planet appeared to be at war with itself.
He scowled. Two of the orbital battlestations had dropped out of the datanet, while the datanet itself was starting to have problems. Someone had loaded chaos software into the datacores. Peter was no computer expert, but even he knew how dangerous chaos software could be. It mutated so rapidly that it could turn on its programmer before he had a chance to realize that something had gone wrong. The king had to be desperate.
“We have to find the king,” he said as a string of new reports scrolled across his screen. “If we can capture him, we can put an end to this madness.”
“Yes,” Duke Rudbek said. “But where is he?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
* * *
TYRE
“Admiral,” Kitty snapped, “we just picked up a FLASH alert from the planetary defenses.”
Kat looked up. “Sound red alert,” she ordered. Alarms howled through the ship. A FLASH alert meant that the system was about to come under attack. It had never been used in drills. “Bring the fleet to battlestations!”
She stood as the display rapidly updated, alerts popping up all over the high orbitals. She’d expected to see vortexes opening and enemy starships pouring out, but instead all hell seemed to have broken loose in orbit. A number of orbital battlestations had dropped out of the datanet, and the datanet itself was flickering, as if it was on the verge of failing completely. She couldn’t believe it. The datanet had so many redundancies built into it that nothing short of complete destruction of the entire network would silence it.
“Battlestation Thirteen reported armed men in the CIC, then went silent,” Kitty said as she and her crew struggled to make sense of the torrent of information pouring into the sensors. “Battlestation Nineteen made a similar report, but insisted that all the men were killed before they could do serious damage.”
She looked up, her face pale. “Home Fleet . . . Admiral, Home Fleet also reported men attempting to take control of the ships.”
Kat felt her blood run cold. “Order our squadron put into lockdown,” she ordered. “Full internal security protocols. And get me a direct link to the planet!”
“All links to the planet are down,” Kitty reported. “I can’t get a secure link to anyone.” An image popped up in front of her. “A state of emergency, another one, has been declared over the whole planet,” she added. “Global News is reporting that the king ordered the arrest of a number of aristocrats for high treason, but his men were met with armed resistance.”
Kat sucked in her breath. Had the king discovered Admiral Morrison’s backer? Or . . . had something gone spectacularly wrong? The tension had been so high that pundits had been openly predicting civil war. There were quite a few factions, now, that would have an excellent motive to try to capture both the orbital defenses and Home Fleet. Someone was clearly trying to seize unfettered control of the military.
And the hell of it is that I don’t know who’s doing what, she thought as more reports flowed into the network. A third of them contradicted another third, while the remainder were clearly untrue. Tyre City had not been nuked. Her sensors would have detected the blast even from their distance. What is going on?
“Two of the battlestations are bringing up their weapons, Admiral,” Kitty reported. “They’re sweeping space for targets.”
“Order the fleet to prepare to move out of range,” Kat said. They were outside conventional missile range, but she was sure the orbital battlestations would have extended-range missiles. “And try to figure out what’s happening to Home Fleet.”
She sucked in her breath as she studied the display. Home Fleet’s formation was starting to look ragged. Some ships were remaining in the datanet, sharing information with the rest of the fleet, but others had dropped out completely. She wondered, morbidly, just who was trying to mount a coup and who was trying to mount the counter-coup. Someone could easily have seen a cough as a signal to start something violent. God knew that had happened before. How much time would pass before Home Fleet’s ships started shooting at each other?
“Admiral, I’m picking up a wide-band message from the planet,” Kitty said. “Everyone can hear it.”
“Put it on,” Kat ordered.
The king’s image appeared on the display. He wore his military uniform, every inch the commander-in-chief. His face was grim, but resolute. Kat hadn’t seen anything like it since the day the king had addressed the Commonwealth after the war had begun. He’d told his people that there would be many hard days ahead, but they would eventually prevail. And he’d kept the political coalition together long enough to win.
“My people,” the king said. “It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that our world, our star system, our sector, has been plunged into the gravest crisis since the collapse of the United Nations and the threat of interstellar anarchy. I have discovered that elements within our planet’s aristocracy were plotting against our government, with the ultimate intention of seizing power for themselves. To this extent, they armed and supported the remnants of the Theocracy and used them to trigger a crisis that would allow them to seize power.”
Kitty gasped. Kat barely noticed.
“It was my duty to move against them. As the monarch charged with maintaining and upholding the system our ancestors devised, I had no choice but to move against them immediately. They were already conspiring with innocent parties within the Houses of Parliament, plotting to remove their rivals from power, including me, and take control for themselves. The state of emergency they fostered, by deliberately pushing for mass unemployment and civil unrest, would have given them the power to ram through their agenda and make their dominion unchallengeable. I had to move immediately.
“Unfortunately, I failed. I was unable to deploy enough loyal troops to seize their persons before they escaped and rallied support. My prime minister and many of my supporters were killed by the traitors and their backers. Others have been taken prisoner. Their forces are already battling to take control of the orbital defenses and the n
avy. To my eternal shame, I have failed in my duty. Tyre is now ruled by men and women who have no loyalty to anything but themselves. And I have been forced to flee.”
“Where’s he going?” Kitty asked. “Admiral . . .”
“Quiet,” Kat snarled.
“I swear to you that I will return,” the king said. “Their tyranny will not last. Those of you who join them willingly, knowing what you know now, will meet a final end on the gallows. But those of you who remain loyal, who do everything in your power to prepare for my return, or even to stand aside and refuse to help the traitors, will be rewarded. I will return.”
The image flickered, then the message started to play again from the beginning. Kat hit the console, pausing the message. It was . . . it was unbelievable. And yet, she had no doubt that there were elements in Parliament who would do whatever it took to tear down the king and gain power for themselves. Had the king discovered any real evidence? Or . . . or what?
Kitty looked up at her. “Admiral?”
“Order the fleet to hold position,” Kat said. She had a feeling she knew where the king was going. Clearly, he’d anticipated something when he’d sent Princess Drusilla to her ship. “And remind all commanding officers that the fleet is to stay in lockdown.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Kat’s thoughts were churning. Peter . . . lead a coup? She doubted it. Her eldest brother didn’t have anything resembling an imagination. He probably couldn’t conceive of making a bid for supreme power, let alone risking everything on one throw of the dice. Falcone was powerful indeed, but not powerful enough to stand up to the king. And yet . . . there were others among the aristocracy who were ruthless bastards. They could easily have duped Peter into opposing the king.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 40