Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Of course,” Charlie said dryly. “Once Sandra gets to work on a mark, they’ll give up everything and come back pleading for more.”

“Bastard,” Sandra said. She picked a shoe off the deck and threw it neatly at him, but Charlie caught it out of the air without looking at it. “Don’t worry, Admiral. We’ll find out what you need to know, before it’s too late.”

“Thank you,” Katy said, dryly. She had faith in Anderson, if not in his three agents and their plans. “Is there anything you need from the fleet?”

The three agents shared a long look. “I doubt it,” Sasha said finally. “We just need to slip up to the ship and disembark from your ship, without being noticed. We’ll cloak in the hanger bay and drift out to a safe distance once the Jefferson is outside the gravity shadow before we vanish. The pickets won’t even catch a sniff of us.”

“They better hadn’t,” Charlie said grimly, “or this entire scheme will be worse than useless. A sensor record that places us close to your ships will be far too revealing.”

Katy checked her timepiece. “We’re going to launch for the exercise this afternoon,” she said. “I assume that you can be ready to depart by that time?”

“Probably,” Sasha said. Her voice became contemplative as she considered the challenge. “Can you make sure that the hanger deck is clear? We don’t want someone taking a good look at the ship and realising that something isn’t quite right.”

“Of course,” Katy said. Anderson had briefed her on that personally. The Imperial Intelligence ship could pass for a standard ship normally, but if it were carefully examined, there would be no way to conceal its true nature. She had also been warned that any attempt to examine the ship that closely would trigger a self-destruct. “If it’s not a state secret, what exactly are you carrying?”

“Medical packages,” Sasha said. She grinned nastily. “Officially, they were smuggled out of the Halo Productions Facility by some greedy bureaucrats and sold to a smuggler who sold them to us. The further away from the Core Worlds, the more money you can get for them and the fewer questions asked. Admiral Wilhelm’s staff will be delighted to get their hands on them. They’re far superior to the Imperial Navy’s standard medical kits.”

Katy scowled. “I see,” she said. She wasn’t surprised to discover that the Thousand Families had kept life-saving equipment for themselves, but it saddened her. How many millions of lives might have been saved if that equipment was generally available to all? How many of her crew from the Havoc might have been saved? “What else have you taken over the years?”

“We had to smuggle in some serious drugs and pose as drug dealers once,” Sasha said, flatly. Katy stared at her. Very few drugs were actually illegal within the Empire — anything that kept the masses from thinking was fine by the Thousand Families — but those that were banned were truly unpleasant. Some of them made slaves out of those unlucky enough to become addicted, while others burned out the pleasure nerves and left the users haunted and bitter shells. “If we could survive that, we could survive anything. Nasty people, those drug dealers.”

“Good luck,” Katy said, unwilling to consider the matter further. “If there’s an urgent development, contact the fleet directly when we arrive at Cottbus. If not, get in touch with me through covert channels.” She stood up. “And, like I said, good luck.”

“You know,” Daria remarked as she entered the room, “we really should have invested in a smoke generator.”

“I beg your pardon?” Tiberius asked. There were nine people coming to the meeting, each one of them important enough to merit their own security — which meant that keeping the meeting secret would be sheer hell — and organising it was incredibly difficult. It was a challenge, one that in the old days he would have relished, but perhaps not when the Empire itself was at stake. “Why would we want to fill the room full of smoke?”

“An old tradition,” Daria said, deadpan. “The best conspiracies are always practiced in smoke-filled backrooms.”

“I see,” Tiberius said. He didn’t. Daria was the strangest person he had met. At one point, she could be a strategic genius, with over ninety years of experience to draw on, and at others she could be almost kittenishly playful. He’d studied the classified records for Janice Windsor, as she’d been seventy years ago when she’d taken the throne for the first time, and he found it hard to believe that Imperial Intelligence had missed such a considerable threat. His father and the others of his little conspiracy had certainly ensured that Janice remained unmolested to carry out their plan… even if, in the end, it had failed. “Do you think that this is a conspiracy?”

Daria shrugged. “If treason prospers, it is never called treason,” she said dryly. She ran one hand through her long red hair. “I dare say that if we succeed in our plan, no one will dare call us traitors as well.”

Tiberius looked up as the Butler escorted the first of his guests into the room. Lord Pompey Cicero, who somehow gave an impression of indolence despite his slim form, took the comfortable chair that Tiberius waved him to and accepted a drink from one of the pleasure slaves. He was the security expert of the Family — as a Family member, the only one who could be trusted not to have an agenda that would harm the Family — and one of the people Tiberius had sent to Harmony, two years ago. Lady Gwendolyn Cicero entered next, having paused long enough to ensure that she entered alone, and took her chair as if it were a throne. She shared a look with Daria — the discovery that she had been working for the Empress for years had chilled Tiberius when he’d finally learned the truth — and leaned back to wait.

“An interesting gathering,” a droll voice said, as Admiral Wachter and Captain Penny Quick were shown into the room. Joshua was wearing the same civilian outfit he’d worn when Tiberius had pulled him away from his Norwegian cabin and sent him to Morrison, to the war. Penny, a blonde-haired woman with an apparent age of twenty-one, was wearing a simple tight-fitting outfit with a beret, which she passed to one of the pleasure slaves as she sat down next to Joshua. If she was intimidated by the surroundings, by being so close to so much wealth and power, she didn’t show it.

Or maybe that’s Joshua’s influence , Tiberius thought. There were many unanswered questions surrounding Joshua’s role in the final days of the war, including the rebel ambush of the fleet sent to scorch Gaul, and some investigative reporters had even suggested that Joshua had betrayed the fleet. Ironically, it had made him more of a hero than ever and firmly cemented his position as the Chief of Naval Operations, effectively the Imperial Navy’s uniformed head. It might not have been as powerful a position as it once was — Colin controlled the Shadow Fleet and one of his allies from the beginning controlled the new Home Fleet — but it was still influential. I wonder if they really are lovers ?

“I like to think so, yes,” he said, as Joshua frowned at him. He looked more composed than he had been back in Norway, when he had lectured Tiberius on the flaws within the Empire that had made the rebellion inevitable, before accepting command of the Main Strike Fleet. It dawned on Tiberius that Joshua had to be happier now than when he’d been commanding the fleet at Morrison, which suggested that he might not be willing to support them all the way. It might pose a problem. Joshua, as the only real hero from the Imperial side of the war, wasn’t someone who could be easily disposed of without too many questions being asked in the wrong places. “Thank you for coming.”