EMPIRE: Renewal

by Richard F. Weyand

  “What we are going to do is implement Dr. Ardmore’s book. What he found out about how Imperial administration used to work. You will staff up your groups to match the numbers his research has uncovered. We will pull them from the current bureaucracy when we can. Where we cannot, such as for the Consulting Office, and particularly the new ideas group, we will pull from outside the government.

  “That is what we are about. Now I’ll answer any questions you might have.”

  King looked left and right at her colleagues. No one moved. She saw the Emperor raise an eyebrow, and she raised her hand.

  “Yes, Ms. King.”

  That shocked her, that the Emperor knew her name.

  “Your Majesty, to completely implement the findings of Dr. Ardmore’s book, to put things back together as they were, is a long undertaking, and, as you have said, you are ninety years old. Will your changes persist? Or will the effort fall apart when you have passed?”

  There were a couple of indrawn breaths, but the Emperor raised a hand.

  “That’s a good question, and I have a good answer. This is currently not known outside of this room, save by the Commandant of the Imperial Guard, but I am going to tell you, my fellow cabalists. Please keep it to yourselves. Dr. Ardmore and Captain Burke here are the Heirs to the Throne. They will be co-rulers, Emperor and Empress Regnant. Given their ages, they will likely rule for sixty years. So yes, the changes we make will persist, because they have been directing those changes and they will continue to do so.

  “Does that answer your question, Ms. King?”

  “Yes, Sire. Thank you.”

  Drake nodded, raised an eyebrow again.

  A fellow to her left raised his hand.

  “Yes, Mr. Pestov.”

  “Once we have built up our staff, Your Majesty, what of the rest of the bureaucracy?”

  “The six thousand or so department heads will operate on their own, with the assistance of the six top-level Offices you now head. Officially, they report directly to the Throne. There were only four thousand and some under Trajan the Great, and I suspect many of those departments are unneeded and will be dismissed.”

  “And the current bureaucracy above them, Sire?”

  “They’re gone, Mr. Pestov. Given their seniority, most have vested pensions and will retire. The rest will be let go.”

  Pestov nodded.

  “Thank you, Sire.”

  The Emperor looked up and down the row again, and one more person held up their hand.

  “Yes, Mr. Aronson.”

  “In Dr. Ardmore’s book, the Throne exerted much more power over the sectors than is now the case. Is that our model going forward, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes, Mr. Aronson.”

  “The sector governors will be unlikely to welcome such a change, Sire. What do you expect to happen?”

  “Oh, I expect some will say, ‘Oh, this is the new setup? OK,’ while others will resist the reimposition of Imperial authority over the Empire’s sectors and provinces.”

  “And if they resist, Sire?”

  “The traditional punishments for treason remain, Mr. Aronson. We won’t be changing those.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  The Emperor looked up and down the row again, but no more hands went up.

  “Very well, I will leave you to Mr. Diener, everyone.”

  The Emperor stood, so everyone else did. He walked to the door, which Captain Burke opened for him, and he headed off down the hall to his office in the company of Imperial Guardsmen. Burke and everyone else sat back down.

  “All right, everybody, let’s get down to some nuts and bolts,” Diener said.

  The Students And The Sector Governors

  For as monumental as the changes were playing out in the Imperial Palace, they had had, as yet, little effect on the Empire as a whole. The Law of Ilithyia II ended up with prosecutors dropping a bunch of prosecutions all across the Empire, not because they couldn’t prosecute for some act committed while it was still a crime, but because it seemed unreasonable to do so. The scholarship program had been changed, but it was in the middle of the school year, so that hadn’t started to bite yet. Censorship was gone, which caused editorials and political cartoons to be published that raised some eyebrows, but didn’t have major effect.

  Two groups did notice the changes though. One was students across the Empire, and the other was the sector governors.

  “Hey, Jack. Did you notice anything change in school lately?” Billy Montrose asked.

  “Yeah. It seems like we have more choices in our submenus,” Jack Berwyn said.

  “Yeah. Exactly. So I followed one of those, in the history section. I picked a biography of Trajan II. Jack, that guy was maybe thirty-seven, thirty-eight years old when he became Emperor.”

  “No. The Emperors are always old men, Billy. Even I know that.”

  “But that’s the point, Jack. They weren’t always. He was a young guy. And the Empress was even younger. She was so pretty, you wouldn’t believe it. She looked like Mikey’s mom.”

  “Now I know you’re wrong, Billy. Nobody looks like Mikey’s mom.”

  “Look. Just watch this one, OK? I sent you the pointer.”

  “All right, all right. I still say you’re wrong.”

  “Did you watch that lesson on Trajan II, Jack?”

  “Yeah, and I watched the ones on Trajan and Antoninus and the first Augustus, too, Billy. You were right. They were all really young. Like our dads. All the ones after that were like great Grampa.”

  “I don’t get what’s with that. And why didn’t we ever have those choices before?”

  “Maybe the old Emperors were jealous, Billy. The Empresses were all really pretty.”

  “But why didn’t they want us to know, Jack? And why is it OK now?”

  “I don’t know, Billy.”

  If the young students were surprised, the older students, especially those specializing in history and government, were shocked. They increasingly read ‘Power & Restraint’ as part of their studies.

  Across the Empire, a growing body of students was waking up to their history. They were finding it a more interesting history, as well. Instead of a dreary succession of aged Emperors, ruling over the Empire in doddering somnolescence, they studied handsome young Emperors and beautiful Empresses, ruling over the Empire at the peak of their abilities.

  With censorship lifted at the Empire level, and the sector governors unable to implement censorship on the Imperial network, all the previously banned materials were available, and the interest in old videos and documentaries about the Four Good Emperors soared.

  And the appellation – the Four Good Emperors – went viral.

  The sector governors in the middle of the fourth century of the Galactic Era were a mixed bag. Rather than being selected by the Emperor for loyalty to the Throne and dedication to improving the lives of their people, they were selected by the previous sector governor and approved by the Sector Governors Association before being sent on to the Emperor for appointment. It had been a hundred years since the Emperor had rejected such a nomination.

  The majority of current sector governors had been nominated by their fathers, inheriting the post much as the Emperors themselves now did. Most of these were a dull lot, raised to privilege and entitlement and missing the drive and ambition that had led to the sire of their line being appointed in the first place. Some of them were more clever and more ambitious, named to the post when a sector governor had no acceptable offspring or died without naming an heir.

  Unlike the situation during the reign of the Four Good Emperors, all the sector governors in the middle of the fourth century were male. Where the sector governors had been for two and a half centuries a mixed group of very able people, it was now an exclusively male group with a mixed level of skills.

  In any such situation, some leaders will emerge. These were often those who had not inherited the post, but had achieved it through some combination of ambition, pol
itics, and connivery. They were randomly scattered across the Empire.

  Those leaders kept in touch.

  “If I hear one more person mention the Four Good Emperors, I think I’ll have him shot,” said Pritani Sector Governor Joseph Gaskin.

  Baden Sector Governor Manfred von Hesse chuckled.

  “I think we all feel that way at this point,” von Hesse said.

  “We can’t do anything to stop this, either, can we?” asked Gandon Sector Governor John Biederman Smith.

  “No. The Emperor has never given us any independent censorship capabilities over the Imperial network,” said Norden Sector Governor Anders Karlsson. “That was always run by people in the Imperial administration, all of whom have now been fired.”

  “Yes, but I suspect it was never technically feasible to do it on a sector level anyway,” von Hesse said. “The network is too integrated, with a lot of redundancy. Anything you do to head something off, it just finds another way around. The censorship had to be done before things hit the network, at the servers.”

  “Well, at least we don’t have a long time to wait with this Emperor,” said Nederling Sector Governor Norman Conway. “He’s ninety now. Another five, ten years and we’re rid of him.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure that’s a good thing, Norm,” Gaskin said. “His son Jeremy has retired from government and moved out to his country house permanently.”

  “Could he be planning on skipping a generation?” asked Earth Sector Governor Michael Porter. “Leaving the Throne to Frederick? He might be easier to deal with than his grandfather.”

  “I don’t think so, Mike,” said Odessa Sector Governor Piotr Shubin. “My spies in the Imperial Palace tell me the whole family has been moved out of the Imperial Residence. You know who does live in the Imperial Residence, though?”

  “No. Who?” Porter asked.

  “Dr. James Ardmore,” Shubin said. “The guy who wrote the book about the Four Good Emperors.”

  “Oh, shit,” Gaskin said.

  “His Majesty couldn’t be considering making him Emperor, could he?” Conway asked.

  “I don’t know why not,” Shubin said. “Either him or Imperial Guard Captain Gail Anne Burke, who is also living in the Imperial Residence.”

  “A captain? Living in the Imperial Residence?” asked Midlothia Sector Governor Steven Adams. “What’s with her? Do you know anything?”

  “A little,” Shubin said. “Charlie Price got in trouble over there in Phalia. These pirates out in the colonies started encroaching in his sector, raiding. So he sent the Imperial Navy and Imperial Marines in there after them. Promised the public he would ‘kill the pirates.’ The Marines took the pirate base, killed a bunch of the pirates and took some others captive. Burke, who was then a lieutenant, refused an order to kill the captives and blocked a lieutenant colonel from taking matters into his own hands. Threatened him with arrest if he tried.”

  “As a lieutenant? That took some stones,” von Hesse said.

  “Yeah. So Charlie had her busted. Court-martialed for refusing orders. Dishonorable discharge. She petitioned to Imperial Marines Headquarters on Center, and the Emperor vacated the court martial, pulled her into the Imperial Guard, promoted her to captain – at age twenty-two, mind – and gave her the Distinguished Service Medal. And now she lives in the first family apartment, right next to his, and Jeremy is out at his lake fishing.”

  “This gets worse and worse,” Gaskin said. “So we may get either the goody-two-shoes lieutenant or the glory-of-the-past historian as ruler? I’m not even sure which of those I would prefer. As if I had a choice.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Conway said. “We don’t know those are His Majesty’s plans. They could just be court favorites at the moment. Bad enough, but that’s not the succession. Has anybody made inquiries of the Imperial Press Office?”

  “I did, through some press people,” Gaskin said. “The Imperial Press Office slammed the door on that line of inquiry pretty hard.”

  “So what do we do about the censorship thing?” Adams asked. “Some newspaper editors are getting pretty obnoxious.”

  “We can just impose our own rules, right?” Gaskin said.

  “Officially, no,” von Hesse said. “His Majesty has reinstated the Law of Ilithyia II, which makes censorship illegal at all levels of government within the Empire. Try to bring someone up on charges, and they’ll skate, in any court in the Empire. The charges would probably get thrown out in a summary dismissal.”

  “And the schools are wide open now, too,” Gaskin said. “The kids are reading any damn thing they want. And we can’t stop those, either.”

  “No, we can’t,” Karlsson said. “All the people who used to do that got fired as well. There’s nobody riding herd on the education servers anymore but computer people.”

  “So did the scholarship people,” Smith said. “I tried to get in touch to get a scholarship for my nephew to the Imperial University Earth. He will go to college next year. There’s no one there anymore. Imperil scholarships are all being handed out by computers now, purely on merit.”

  “So they’re going to drag kids out of the gutter and send them to college while our kids don’t get in?” Gaskin asked. “Where does all this stop?”

  “The more serious question is when does it stop, and what comes after,” von Hesse said. “Piotr, you seem to have the best hooks into the Imperial Palace. See what else you can find out, would you, please?”

  “Of course, Manny. That was my plan anyway. I’ll let you know.”

  The General And The Spies

  Imperial General Eric Hargreaves was appalled to discover, when he became Commandant of the Imperial Guard, the Guard had no active counterintelligence organization up and running in the Imperial Palace. He was actually appalled to find a number of things – like entitled poufs being Guardsmen instead of Imperial Marine combat veterans, the Guard being unarmed and mostly ceremonial, and Guard salaries having blown up to five times Imperial Marines salaries for the same ranks – but the lack of a counterintelligence operation was right up there.

  Hargreaves had been gradually cleaning things up and remaking the Imperial Guard into what it once had been. On the counterintelligence issue, he had asked around his contacts in the Imperial Marines until he’d found Colonel Taylor Leahy. Leahy was a quiet, almost cerebral, man who had a tremendous reputation in the Imperial Marines.

  Hargreaves pulled Leahy into the Imperial Guard and gave him his head. With all the poufs being let go, there were plenty of slots open, and Leahy had assembled a staff of counter-spy experts. Together with the extensive monitoring facilities within the Imperial Palace, mostly unused except by the spies themselves, Leahy had turned up twenty-four spies already.

  The usual Imperial Palace practice when finding a spy, or when some Palace employee was approached to be a spy, was to run them as a double agent, feeding false, misleading, or partial information back up through their controls. That was all well and good, but none of these people would talk or cooperate.

  “General Hargreaves, Your Majesty,” Mr. Moody said, waving Hargeaves into the Emperor’s office.

  “Be seated, General Hargreaves.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “You asked for this meeting, General Hargreaves. Proceed.”

  “This meeting should be private, Sire.”

  Drake looked to Burke, standing watch over Hargreaves left shoulder and nodded. Burke gave a hand signal to the other Guardsman present, who left out the door through the outer office to the hallway.

  “Guard,” Burke addressed the ceiling.

  “Yes, Captain Burke,” a voice came back.

  “Suspend audio monitoring for one hour.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  A soft ‘bong’ tone sounded from the ceiling. Drake looked over to the light switches by the door and noted a small flashing red light on the panel.

  “Proceed, General Hargreaves.”

  “Thank you, Sire. Colonel
Leahy has assembled his counterintelligence team to track down spies here in the Imperial Palace. They have already found twenty-four agents. Caught them in the act. The Guard’s normal methods in the past were to turn agents to double agents, and use them to feed the information we wanted their bosses to have back up the chain. However, none of them will talk about their situation or assist us in any way. They seem to think they will simply be let go and suffer no other consequences.”

  “Why would they think that, General Hargreaves?”

  “I’m afraid that may have been the Guard’s policy for the last several Emperors, Sire.”

  “And before that, General Hargreaves?”

  “They would have been shot, Sire.”

  “I see, General Hargreaves.”

  Drake considered. Perhaps easiest to execute them all. But then they would get no information from any of them. The Investigations Office wasn’t properly set up yet, but they could surely do investigative work on them once it was. Try to track the money. In the meantime, what to do with them?

  “Any suggestions, Captain Burke?” Drake asked over Hargreaves shoulder.

  “Yes, Sire. Sit all of them in a room. Shoot six of them at random, while the others watch, not knowing who’s next. Then ask for information again.”

  Drake raised an eyebrow to Hargreaves, who was more than a little shocked by Burke’s cruelty. Then again, they were spies in the Imperial Palace. Spies against the Emperor. Against the Empire itself.

  “Do you think that would result in getting more information from them, General Hargreaves?”

  “I would be surprised if it didn’t, Sire.”

  “Very well.”

  “Excuse me, Sire.”

  “Yes, Captain Burke?” Drake asked.

  “I volunteer to be on the execution squad, Sire.”