Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

Kathy blinked at him, puzzled. It wasn’t uncommon for con artists to try to pass themselves off as members of the Thousand Families and quite often they succeeded until they were compared against the Imperial Register. There were over two million men and women, after all, who could be counted as part of the Families and no one knew them all. As long as they remained carefully out of the way, instead of posing as someone from the senior Families, they could get away with it for years…

But she knew that Cordova was real.

“They want me to kill him,” he said, thinly. His voice broke again. “They want me to kill Colin!”

“But…” Kathy started. She broke off and thought rapidly. She’d learned to think quickly during her first year at the asteroid mining platform, before she’d met Cordova for the first time, and it was a skill that had come in handy from time to time. She’d learned other skills as well, such as the basic practicality of always having a get-out plan, and she found herself checking out her plan to escape from Earth. There were first-rank worlds or isolated colonies that would be glad to see her. “Jason, who wants you to kill Colin, and why?”

“Tiberius,” Cordova said. Kathy recoiled. He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d pulled her over his knees and spanked her. She’d liked Tiberius, the Family Head who’d joined the rebel cause, understanding that the Families had to adapt and change to fit their new circumstances. He hadn’t even tried to get her into bed, unlike some of the other young men of the Families, but clearly he’d been playing a deeper game. “He wants me to kill Colin, somehow…”

Something clicked behind Kathy’s eyes. It was almost impossible to imagine anything that could be used to pressure someone like Cordova into agreeing to commit murder, or something that someone as smart as Tiberius could imagine being useable to force him to kill a friend and ally, but clearly Tiberius could think of something. Only one possibility made sense.

“You’re a Cicero, aren’t you?” She said, reaching out and holding him. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she was right. The only people who might have a claim on Cordova’s loyalties, apart from the rebels, the Provisional Government and Kathy herself, were his Family. His mysterious unnamed Family. A Cicero! It made perfect sense. The Cicero Family would have had the clout to ensure that Cordova’s past was carefully hidden… and, unlike so many of the other families, they had adapted well to the brave new galaxy.

Not as well as we thought , she thought angrily. Her surprise was rapidly being replaced by rage. The Provisional Government wouldn’t survive Colin’s death. It would dissolve rapidly into a mass of competing factions, allowing Tiberius and the remainder of the Families to quietly reassert control behind the scenes. It wouldn’t be long before the new order fell apart, to be replaced by a version of the old order, run by someone smart enough to prevent a second rebellion for years…

Or perhaps it would be worse. Colin had broken centuries of unthinking supremacy and submission to Earth. The first-rank worlds would fight to keep their independence; after Gaul, they would have no choice… and they were arming to the teeth. Colony worlds, established and then systematically raped by the Thousand Families to feed their bloated appetites, would fight against any restoration of the debt-peonage that had held them in bondage. Warlords like Admiral Wilhelm — and even the remains of the Shadow Fleet , she thought darkly — would launch their own bids for supremacy. The Empire would fall apart into a nightmare of civil war.

The vision held her transfixed, for she had feared something like it once she started to understand — truly understand — the underlying power and structure of the Empire. The Shadow Fleet had fought a fairly clean war, without scorching a single world, but that would change. The Empire might have threatened to scorch Gaul, and they’d certainly come too close to succeeding, but if it all fell apart hundreds of worlds would be scorched, or even just targeted with a handful of shipkillers or antimatter bombs. The devastation would blow humanity back to a handful of worlds, burning in the night, leaving the remains of humanity back in the Stone Age. It would be the end of civilisation.

“Yes,” Cordova said, finally. “I was born Jason Cicero, forty years ago on Earth, and banished from the Family fifteen years ago, wiped out of all the records.” His voice darkened slightly, dipping towards depression. “I looked myself up in the Imperial Register after we took Earth. They wiped me completely from the records. My mother probably told everyone, right up to the day she died, that she only had three sons.”

Kathy blinked. “And you’ve never tried to talk to your brothers?”

Cordova shrugged. “What would we have to say to one another?”

Kathy nodded, thinking hard. “When does he want you to kill Colin?”

“He didn’t say,” Cordova explained. His voice tightened, but focusing on the question seemed to be helping him concentrate. She’d never seen him so weak and vulnerable before and it bothered her… and it bothered her that it bothered her. Had she really been looking for a man who would be a font of strength, rather that someone who was intelligent and smart enough to be good company? “He just wants me to be ready to move when the order came.”

“I see,” Kathy said. She didn’t know much about the security surrounding Colin, but she knew that it was extensive, based around the well-founded belief that he had far too many enemies. The Government section of the High City was wired completely by Imperial Intelligence, with armed and armoured Marines on call… and she’d been assured that it would take a major assault by armed soldiers to break through the defences. The Household Troopers had been disbanded, hadn’t they? The Third Emperor, whose name escaped her, had used them to make himself Emperor, but Colin had ordered all of the Household Troops disbanded. Even if Tiberius had kept some of them back, without triggering off alarms, they would still have to break through the Marines. “Jason, I need to ask you a question.”

He looked up at her, already knowing what she was going to ask. “Jason, what does he have on you?” Kathy asked. The mere detail of Jason Cordova being a Cicero wouldn’t have that much effect — hell, she could see it working out in their favour. Her father had made considerable political capital because there was a Tyler at the heart of the Provisional Government, despite Kathy’s refusal to use her position to help expand the Family fortunes, and there was no reason why Cicero couldn’t do the same. “Why does he even think that you’ll do as he says?”

“It’s a long story,” Cordova said. He turned, facing away from her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You have to tell me,” Kathy said, softly. It had to be something bad, really bad, but what? The Families had been known to forgive mass slaughter and child molesting, or even worse crimes. The memory of one of her few friends, brain-wiped and altered by her own father, rose up unbidden from her mind. If her father hadn’t fled Earth after the Shadow Fleet had arrived, Kathy would have had him killed for that crime. He had effectively murdered his own daughter. She couldn’t imagine anything that would have had such an effect on Cordova… but Tiberius evidently could. “What does he have on you, Jason?”

He turned to face her, looking around for the bottle she’d placed out of sight. “It’s a long story,” he repeated. “I grew up here — well, not here ; the Cicero Estate — as a third-tier son. I didn’t have any real hope of becoming the Cicero, so they decided that I could serve the Family — and therefore the Empire — by going into the Imperial Navy.”