Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

Something clicked in her mind. “Joshua is part of his conspiracy,” she said, grimly. She’d underestimated the scale of the problem. Tiberius wouldn’t be acting alone, if only to ensure that the blame would be spread thinly. He had to have allies… and Joshua made the most sense as a possible ally. Even if he didn’t want to be Emperor — and she had to admit that it would be a bit of a poisoned chalice while the Empire was on the verge of breaking apart — he would be the best person to take the throne, advised, of course, by Tiberius. “We can’t trust him either.”

“So, who does that leave?” Cordova asked, grimly. “Who can we trust?”

“The only person who stands to lose everything if they succeed,” Kathy said, firmly. “We have to take this to Colin himself.”

Cordova winced. “You want to tell him everything?” He asked, slowly. “What happens if he decides that I did the wrong thing?”

Kathy smiled wanly. “How can he decide that when he’s trying to give the aliens their freedom?” She asked. “He can’t just turn on you without weakening his own position… and, with Tiberius and the others burrowing away underneath him, he cannot afford to weaken himself any further.”

“The Dathi aren’t common aliens,” Cordova protested. “They were a very definite threat to all of humanity.”

“I know,” Kathy said. She looked over at him, fascinated despite herself. “Did you actually manage to talk to them?”

Cordova shook his head. The Dathi were unique in at least one respect; no one, in over a hundred years of war, had managed to establish communications between them and humanity. Their language was seemingly beyond the efforts of the most advanced translation software, mind-probes couldn’t reach into their brains and even the handful of prisoners the human race had taken had showed no interest in talking to their captors. They were the very picture of the soulless alien threat, dedicated to destroying the human race… and they had been laughably easy to demonise. Why not? They had done most of the vile things they were claimed to have done. The Empire’s propaganda and recruitment advertisements still used the Dathi as a recruiting tool.

“I always thought that we might manage to talk to them one day,” he said. There was an odd note of regret in his voice, when the warrior and starship captain gave way to the scholar. “We were trying to talk to them under the pressures of a war. It simply wasn’t possible to establish communications then, but I wondered if it could be done without the war, without any threats…”

Kathy nodded, sadly. She believed him, but he had been dangerously naive then. No one, not even a Family Member, could get away with hearsay on such a scale. The Empire’s internal politics demanded that the Dathi world be scorched and then firmly suppressed, just to avoid casting doubt on the success of the original genocide that had ended the war. After all, if one Dathi world had survived, why not others? Where was the guarantee that there were no other Dathi out there, waiting to spring on the human race? There was none. Humanity had spread far under the Empire… but space was effectively limitless. The Dathi might have travelled as far as the Clouds, or even the next galaxy…

Her lips twitched. It was impossible to prove that the race had been wiped out, so they remained a horrendously effective propaganda tool… and one that would never become overplayed, not until the entire galaxy had been brought under human control. They made such a perfect threat, all the better for being founded in reality… and one that no one could seriously oppose. How could they when the consequences could be so devastating? The rebellion, for all of its pent-up fury and violence, hadn’t been able to hold a candle to the Dathi War.

“Leave that for the moment,” she ordered, firmly. Her brain was racing into overdrive as she tried to think of different possibilities. They had little choice, but to go to Colin, but would that expose them to Tiberius? If he thought that they were plotting against him, and they were, he would have little choice, but to react as quickly and as violently as possible. How far could he go without betraying himself to Colin? He might have controlled his Family’s estate completely — she made a mental note to avoid any parties or entertainments offered there — but he certainly didn’t control the High City… or did he? The city might have been under the control of Colin’s security forces, but how complete was their control, really? The Families and Clans had fought their proxy wars in the city. They knew it perfectly.

Cordova shrugged. “You’re right,” he said, with a flicker of his old personality shining though. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it until it showed itself again. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Let’s go to Colin now and tell him what we know. If we can’t trust anyone, but him…”

“Not yet,” Kathy said, thinking hard. “Are you sure that he didn’t give you any date for the assassination?”

“Yes,” Cordova said, dryly. “I may be mad, bad and dangerous to know, but my memory is not that bad.”

“This isn’t the time for jokes,” Kathy said, although she was privately relieved to hear him cracking jokes again. “I don’t know much about assassinations, but if they don’t have a date in mind, they can’t expect you to set any traps for him, not where the Marines might find them. That would be rather revealing.”

“I know,” Cordova said, serious again. “I thought about it and I couldn’t think of a way of doing it, short of walking up to him and punching out his throat. Any weapon would be detected and removed a long time before I could get into his presence. They even make me hand over my cutlass and pistol before I enter the room.”

“Wise of them,” Kathy said, dryly. She had a private worry that one day he would hurt himself on his specially-made cutlass, although he’d told her, with a perfectly straight face, that he’d used it in boarding actions. She didn’t believe a word of it. “How do they expect you to succeed, then, if you can’t get a weapon into his presence?”

“I don’t know,” Cordova said, shaking his head. “The only method I was able to think of involved luring Colin onto my own ground, the Random Numbers , and assassinating him then.”

Kathy saw it clearly. If Cordova, one of Colin’s closest allies, had killed him… and had done so on his own ship, the Provisional Government would come apart… and the Thousand Families would step back into the breech, perhaps with Joshua as Emperor. It would also solve the problem of Tiberius’s own position being weakened…

She broke off as her communicator chimed. “Excuse me,” she said, and picked it up. “Yes?”

“Lady Kathy, the Cabinet has been called into emergency succession,” the voice on the other end said, grimly. “There have been… developments at Cottbus.”

“I’m on my way,” Kathy said. She looked over at Cordova. “I think its bad news.”

Carola looked at the pair of armed Marines escorting her and smiled.

She’d expected them ever since the destroyer had flickered into the Solar System, transmitted a brief encrypted message towards the Victorious — and her, of course — and flickered out again before any starship at Earth could intercept her. The message hadn’t been unexpected, of course, merely a report that the Imperial Navy — or whatever the Provisional Government ended up renaming the former Imperial Navy — had engaged Cottbus’s forces… and had been defeated. The alternative, that Admiral Wilhelm had been defeated, had worried her, but the gamble had paid off. Cottbus could now take the initiative and advance on Earth.