Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

She’d prided herself on being capable of thinking even in a crisis and forced herself to think, coldly and logically. Tiberius had been right. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that he had been absolutely correct. If the news about Cordova and the Dathi got out into the Empire, the Provisional Government would be badly shaken. If there was one thing that united the human race, it was suspicion of aliens, even harmless creatures like the Rock-Monsters. They wouldn’t accept Cordova if they knew that he had spared a planet of Dathi, regardless of any abstract morality; they’d been brought up to believe that the Dathi were monsters and a permanent threat to humanity. She’d known , a day ago, that the threat had been largely manufactured by the Thousand Families — after all, the Dathi were dead, so they couldn’t complain — but now, now the threat might have been real after all. The Dathi could have a far more advanced world somewhere out past the Rim.

But it was a sword that cut both ways. There was no escaping the fact that Jason Cordova was actually Jason Cicero. Even if the precise Family remained a mystery, everyone knew that he had once been one of the Thousand Families. If the Empire learned that someone from the Families had spared Dathi lives, the Thousand Families would be badly shaken as well, even though they had been weakened by the rebellion. They might even lose what little grounds they had left to rule. The balance between the remainder of the Family-owned businesses and their workers wasn’t a stable one… and this could push it over the edge. The entire Empire might come apart at the seams.

Cordova stood up and started to pace, talking all the while. Kathy listened with half an ear, trying to decide what to do. Tiberius had used it mercilessly, knowing that it would always remain a loaded gun pointed at whoever ruled the Empire… which probably meant that he intended to dispose of Cordova once he had outlived his usefulness. There were other reasons as well, she decided; only a fool would take someone who had survived and prospered along the Rim for granted. Cordova might decide to take him down, just to prevent the secret from getting out, for she was morbidly certain that it wasn’t something known to the vast majority of the Cicero Clan. The more people who knew something, she knew, the harder it was to keep it a secret. Tiberius wouldn’t have shared it with just anyone, not unless he decided to use it.

“He could be bluffing, I suppose,” she said, unwillingly. She had enough experience of Family-level politics to feel certain that she was missing something. Tiberius’s blackmail information would do massive damage to his Clan if he wasn’t careful — talk about shooting himself in the foot , she thought wryly — and his enemies would certainly jump on him. Perhaps the entire Clan was rotten, they would say; if Roosevelt could go under, why not Cicero?

“He’s not bluffing,” Cordova said. Kathy silently cursed herself. She had forgotten, in her burst of oddly maternal feeling, that Cordova had a first-class brain. “I believe that if he told everyone, the remainder of the Thousand Families couldn’t jump on him without tipping off a general collapse. The Provisional Government might be different, but how could they hold Tiberius responsible for something I did?”

Kathy nodded slowly. “And they couldn’t charge you with genocide,” she added, thoughtfully. “You didn’t commit genocide.”

“They’re going to have to charge me with dereliction of duty, at the very least,” Cordova said. His voice weakened again. “Every Imperial Navy officer, at the Academy, is taught about the Dathi War and how close the human race came to being exterminated, leaving only a handful of humans fleeing the Federation in old ships. I believe that that was one of the reasons why the Macore Colony Fleet fled so far from Earth. They cannot afford to let me have a clear escape from the past, not with the entire Empire at stake.”

Kathy winced. He was right. If the news leaked out, the public outcry would become unmanageable. They already had enough problems with Admiral Wilhelm and the other warlords out along the Rim. If the news leaked out — and became exaggerated, as such rumours and stories often were — the Provisional Government would find itself under siege. The human race had become used to keeping aliens down, just so that they could have someone to look down upon to distract them from the miseries of their daily lives, and the very thought of a Dathi-lover in the heart of the Provisional Government would shock them. Colin could get away with a great deal, she knew, but she doubted he could get away with keeping Cordova in his government.

And his position would be very weak. He’d commanded the Volunteer Fleet and was respected along the Rim, but that would vanish in an instant when they learned he’d spared Dathi, not the reputed human colony world. The Rim’s inhabitants would become his most determined enemies, hunting the Random Numbers from asteroid to asteroid, until he was finally brought to battle. Every man’s hand would be turned against him. It dawned on her that the wisest thing to do would be to abandon him, now, but somehow she couldn’t do that. In a universe she’d grown to loathe a long time before she’d been sent out to the Rim, he was one of the few truly decent men and women she’d met. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit that she loved him, but she cared about him and she would not let him go.

She reached out and pulled him into a hug. “Don’t worry,” she said, as she kissed his cheek. It always felt different when he wasn’t wearing his beard. “We’ll find some way out of this, I promise.”

Cordova snorted. “We could change our names and run for the Rim,” he said, dryly. “I could come up with some faked papers that would give us some real options.”

Kathy shook her head. The Empire had been established for over a thousand years. One of the reasons why there had been no general rebellion before Colin had been that it had security measures everywhere, measures that largely remained in place. Parliament — or whoever won the power struggle on Earth — would be able to send out warrants for their arrest, coded with their DNA codes. They could have changed their appearances, even their genders, but they couldn’t change their DNA patterns… and if they went anywhere near a civilised world, they would be caught and arrested. The first-rank worlds wouldn’t hide them, not if they’d been involved in sparing Dathi lives… it was sickening, and it was part of the universe the Empire had built.

“That’s not an option,” she said, firmly. She grinned up at him and was dismayed to see the depression written on his face. “We have to beat Tiberius at his own game.”

“He wants me to prepare to kill Colin,” Cordova said, sharply. “If Colin is removed from the game, now, the Provisional Government will fall apart. No one else has the prestige to hold the government together. Tiberius and you are from the Families. The others are all from the first-rank worlds, or Macore, or even from the Freebooters. I doubt that even Joshua could hold the Empire together… and he doesn’t want the job.”

Kathy felt her eyes narrow. “And how do you know that?”

“He’s the only person who fought on the other side to emerge a hero from the war,” Cordova said. “He could have led the Morrison Sector Fleet against Home Fleet and kicked its butt from here to the Rim, making himself Emperor in the process, before offering Colin a deal for the future. No, he doesn’t want to be Emperor…”

“But it was Tiberius who nominated him for the role of Sector Fleet Commander,” Kathy said, thoughtfully. She’d gone through the records carefully, although many of the real decision-making meetings had been kept off the records. Tiberius had nominated Joshua to take the command and, in doing so, had risked his own power base. “He wouldn’t have done that unless…”