Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

He looked over at Anne. “Until the Marines arrive, you will command the fleet,” he added. His face twisted for a long moment, as if he wanted to say something profound, but no longer cared. Penny realised, with a chill, just what he had in mind. The crews might be treated under the Accords, but Joshua himself couldn’t be. He’d betrayed the Provisional Government. As the senior survivor, he would be the scapegoat for Daria’s crimes. “It was a honour to serve with you all again.”

Joshua left the bridge, not looking back.

A few minutes later, they heard the single shot.

Two months had passed since the Second Battle of Earth.

Colin watched from the balcony as Parliament was called to order, the first real Parliament representing the entire Empire. It had taken nearly a month to get ships out to Cottbus in the wake of Admiral Wilhelm’s defeat and Joshua’s suicide, but when they arrived they’d been relieved and surprised to discover that the sector was under control and Admiral Garland had occupied most of the planets. The remaining three sectors had lost their warlords in the Battle of Earth, along with their sector fleets, and offered little resistance when the Empire reclaimed them. Like Cottbus, they’d been military dictatorships, governed by men who’d seen a chance for real power at last and taken it. Some warlords still existed out along the Rim, but with all of the Empire’s superdreadnaughts accounted for, they would eventually either come in from the cold or devolve into pirate groups. They wouldn’t remain a threat for long.

He smiled as René Goscinny, newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Empire, stood up and started a long speech. The Empire was changing every day. Now that the Thousand Families had been effectively destroyed, either by Daria or by being removed to a colony world where they could live for the remainder of their lives in peace, economic life in the Empire was changing rapidly. Kathy had told him that the first-rank worlds would have an advantage, now that the monopolies and proscribed technology had been rescinded, in research and development, although some of the new combines would start catching up quickly. It was a Darwinian struggle, the survival of the fittest, but one that would end up serving the Empire well. The first-rank status, conferred upon almost all worlds, would lead to some unrest, but eventually it would all settle down. He smiled again, watching Marius Roodt, the President of the Chamber, and Blondel Dupre, Prime Minister, bring Parliament to order. They might be contentious at times, but after Daria’s desperate attempt to seize the power for herself — again — they had learned a few lessons. The new Empire would be very different to the old. It was almost a shame that he wouldn’t be there to see it.

“You’re still determined to leave?”

Kathy Tyler’s voice stopped him as he left the Parliament Chamber and headed back to his office. She was two months pregnant, according to his reports, but she showed no sign of the baby yet. It was unusual, to say the least, for a high-born mother to carry the baby to term in her own womb, but Kathy had decided that it was the least she could do for her dead lover. Jason Cordova’s death in action had almost broken her, but she’d pulled through and helped push the entire economic restructuring package through Parliament. It hadn’t been a perfect success, but in the long run, the Empire would be stronger than ever before.

“They don’t want me looking over their shoulders now,” he said, as she fell into step beside him. It wasn’t entirely true — he could have carried on as President if he had wanted the post — but he had felt that it would be better to leave. Besides, he really didn’t want the position of President, or Emperor. He’d felt forced to consider the latter during the darkest days of the war, but it wasn’t a post he wanted. Look what it had done to Daria and her allies. “Besides, I wrote the term limits in myself, back at the beginning. If I stayed, I’d be exceeding my own rules.”

Kathy smiled bleakly. “I understand,” she said. “Do you already have a ship lined up for the flight?”

Colin hesitated. “The Jason Cordova ,” he said, finally. Kathy winced, but said nothing else. Too many people, heroes and villains, had died in the closing hours of the war. “The Geeks designed her as a battlecruiser, so I should be well-protected out there past the Rim. A handful of experienced hands, but mainly a new crew, now that the Academy is churning out qualified officers rather than well-connected arseholes.”

He scowled. It had been Joshua who’d redesigned the Imperial Navy Academy; Joshua, who had led the Empress’s fleet into battle… and, in the end committed suicide, unwilling to go on. Colin would have had no choice, but to execute him if he had lived, but he missed the older man. Unlike so many from the Shadow Fleet and the ranks of the rebellion, he had understood the underlying problems of the Imperial Navy. His program of careful gradual change had to be continued. There was no real choice.

“Good luck, then,” Kathy said. She held out a hand. Colin shook it firmly. “I’ll see you when you return to Earth.”

She walked off, leaving Colin alone with his thoughts. So many had died; David Houston, Arun Prabhu and so many others, heroes and villains, friends and enemies. The Empire’s civil war had reshaped everything, but it might have ended so badly, or it might have pulled the Empire down to barbarism. They had been incredibly lucky.

And now the first-rank worlds are building superdreadnaughts of their own , he thought, grimly. That was going to be a problem for the new government. They’d devolved the Empire’s government as much as possible, but it wasn’t going to be easy to sort out new lines of responsibility and power. No one wanted to be oppressed again, even if they had to bankrupt themselves to produce a new squadron of superdreadnaughts, or consider limiting the Imperial Navy. The growing threat from pirates out along the Rim as the wave of change reached the Rim would force new deployments, but who knew where that would end? Perhaps the Imperial Navy would assign a squadron of ships to each world and allow them to forge links with their bases, or perhaps…

He shook his head. It wasn’t his problem any more.

It was an hour later when he arrived at the detention centre. He might not have had any official status any more, apart from Commanding Officer of the Jason Cordova , but General Neil Frandsen wasn’t going to allow him to remain unprotected. He had assigned an entire platoon of Marines to Colin’s personal guard, despite his objections, and an oversized Company to Colin’s ship. The Marine Corps had come through the civil war and rebellion almost unchanged, although Colin had signed orders to expand their recruiting base before he had left office. They were still the unyielding guardians of honour and, perhaps, the dream that had inspired the Empire.

“Stay here,” he ordered, before stepping into the cell. The single figure looked up from her chair. Carola Wilhelm, he realised, had loved her man. He was dead now, at Joshua’s hands, and she was alone. Their power base had been shattered by the rebellion on Cottbus. Even if she escaped — and she had, briefly, with Gwendolyn’s help before being recaptured — she had nowhere to go. “Hello, Carola.”

Carola’s voice was battered, almost old. “Fuck you.”

“Your husband is dead,” Colin said. “Your lies have been exposed. Most of your allies on Earth have been arrested and either sentenced to exile or a penal world. That just leaves the issue of what to do with you.”

Carola snorted. “And what are you doing here?”