Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

He leaned forward. “And what, exactly, did Tiberius make you do?”

“He sent two of his people to Harmony to meet with me,” Cordova said. He seemed to be regaining his confidence, perhaps realising that Colin wasn’t going to drop a hammer on him and ruin his life. Just telling someone — anyone — had to be a huge relief. “They made contact with me and gave me a piece of artwork to remind me of what I’d done — or rather, refused to do — and told me to wait for orders. I don’t think that they knew the truth. Anyone who has survived as the Cicero wouldn’t have shared that kind of information with just anyone, even his closest allies. They asked me, from time to time, for information, but nothing too significant.”

“Holding you in reserve,” Colin said, thoughtfully. It made a certain kind of sense. No one in their right mind would just throw an asset like Cordova away. “They must have been worried about you simply cutting your losses and vanishing.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Cordova said, flatly. “It was the crew of my ship. They were all involved in my decision and would have suffered for it. I couldn’t get them all to hide, even out on the Rim.”

“They’ll have a pardon,” Colin said, and meant it.

“Pardoned for what?” Kathy asked, sharply. She leaned forward, as if she could change reality by sheer force of will. “If they weren’t guilty of anything, how could they be pardoned?”

Colin shrugged. “It might be important to explain that they haven’t done anything wrong,” he said, putting the matter to one side for the moment. The blunt truth was that the vast majority of the population would consider that they had done something wrong in not exterminating the entire planet and committing genocide. “Jason, Kathy, what do they want you to do now?”

“They want me to kill you,” Cordova said, carefully. “They offered to allow me back into the Family if I killed you, perhaps with other rewards as well…”

“Charming,” Colin said. Surprisingly, he felt almost happy. He had a real enemy to fight, even though he was slightly disappointed in Tiberius. The Cicero had been a valuable ally, or so he had thought. Combat on the ground, in the shadows, wasn’t his forte, but now he knew about the threat. “And do you want to kill me?”

They exchanged glances. “No,” Cordova said, finally. He stroked his beard thoughtfully. It was nearly a minute before he spoke again. “I want my crew pardoned, or officially forgiven, and nothing else.”

“I want this conspiracy defeated,” Kathy said, flatly. “They can’t turn the clock back, no matter how they try.” Her voice hardened. “Colin, this is a clear breach of the truce that ended the war, the agreement that preserved something of their power in exchange for them not bringing the Empire down around our heads. We can go after them openly now.”

She reached over and took Cordova’s hand. “They can’t turn the clock back,” she repeated. “We were having problems keeping the Empire stable despite everything, because of all their workers who wanted to be treated better, and who wanted power and promotion for themselves. We couldn’t keep trying to square the circle forever, but now we don’t have to try. They’re a clear and present threat and can be removed, simply and quickly.”

“Perhaps not,” Colin said, grimly. She was right, in a sense; it would be easy to go after Tiberius and the remainder of the Cicero Family, but would it end there? Who else was involved in the conspiracy? Tiberius had kept an open house, as far as the remainder of the Thousand Families were concerned, even including some of the MPs. How many of them had been subverted and brought under his thumb? He might even have Household Troops under his control, despite the agreement to remove them all from Earth. How far did his influence really spread? “How many others do you know about as being directly involved?”

Cordova frowned. “Tiberius himself, Pompey and Gwendolyn,” he said, finally. Colin swore. Three people… and even assuming that it was the entire Cicero Family, there was no proof … and dealing with them as quickly as he would have liked would have destroyed the rule of law he was trying to build! The thought was maddening; the enemy skulked in the shadows, doing whatever they pleased, while Colin was bound by the laws he had signed into existence himself. “He implied that there were many others…”

“Of course,” Colin agreed, savagely. There were around two million people who could be reasonably counted as part of the Thousand Families. Some, such as Stacy Roosevelt, had vanished into space, their fates unknown. The remainder had stayed on Earth and either thrown themselves into the Provisional Government, or hid in their estates and tried to pretend that nothing had changed. The latter, in particular, would be happy to support Tiberius, even if he sought to make himself Emperor…

And yet there was the nagging sense that he was missing something important.

He pushed it to one side as he looked up at the starchart. “Do you think that they might be allied with Admiral Wilhelm? It might explain how his forces advanced so fast…”

Cordova considered it. “I doubt it, unless Admiral Wilhelm is merely someone’s puppet,” he said, after a moment. “He seems equally determined to bring down the Thousand Families, assuming we believe everything that Carola said to us… and we know she lied several times. She might well have lied about that as well, except I have a feeling that she was telling the truth. A man in his position would have to be a fool to miss the chance that fate — and we — offered him.”

“True,” Colin agreed. It might be time for another chat with Carola, although dealing with her was an irritating problem. Legally, her very status was vague, although there was a motion afoot in Parliament to declare her a rebel against the Provisional Government and treat her as such. Daria had proposed it, as he recalled, but the MPs were dragging their feet. If Admiral Wilhelm won the war, he would probably be out for revenge on anyone who hurt his wife. It didn’t say much about their confidence in the war effort, but a great deal about their sense of self-preservation. “Leave that for the moment.”

He looked down at his table for a long moment. “I’m going to have to bring Vincent and Neil in on this,” he said, thinking hard. His Head of Security and the Commander of the Marine Detachment couldn’t have gone bad, for the very simple reason that if either of them had, he had already lost without knowing that he was at war. “I need the pair of you to keep me informed if Tiberius contacts you and…”

He paused. A thought had just occurred to him. “I could send you out of the system,” he said, to Cordova. “You’d be out of his reach and…”

“I think he’d pressure me to stay where I was,” Cordova admitted. “Besides, you don’t have a good role for me away from here and that might tip him off to the truth. If he learns that I came to you, he’ll step up his own plans and try to take you out…”

“He can’t, unless he can counter the Shadow Fleet,” Colin said, and wondered if that were actually true. He’d planned in terms of a fleet engagement, but if Tiberius smuggled a standard nuke into the High City, it would rather neatly decapitate the Provisional Government. Was Tiberius that ruthless? He would also take out several hundred lower-ranking Family Members. “I wonder…”

He broke off as his intercom buzzed. “Yes?”

“Mr President, we just had a flash signal from System Command,” his secretary said, grimly. Colin knew it was bad news just from her voice. “There’s been a shuttle accident. Grand Admiral Joshua Wachter is dead!”