Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Not going to be a wallflower all the time, I hope?” A voice said from behind her. “I’m sure that there’s at least one person who would want to dance with you.”

Kathy turned to see Jason Cordova himself, standing there, holding a pair of drinks in one hand. He wore a pirate’s outfit from the sixteenth century, up to and including the black hat with the skull and crossbones logo, but the difference between him and his former peers down below was that he wore flamboyant outfits all the time. When Kathy had first met him, he’d been wearing a golden and purple eyesore that drew all of the attention to the outfit… and away from the man wearing it. They’d been lovers for nearly two years and it still astonished her how much he changed when he undressed. No one would ever have mistaken the faintly patrician man for Jason Cordova… and that was exactly how he liked it.

“I’m just a little bored,” she said, as she took one of the drinks. Cordova had been more than a little distracted recently, even if he had been throwing himself into helping Colin cut out as many incompetent or untrustworthy officers from the remainder of the Imperial Navy as possible. “Was I one of those airheads down there five years ago?”

Cordova shrugged. “I was one of them thirty years ago, so I’m not in a position to throw stones,” he said. “That was just before they packed me off to the Imperial Navy, of course, and sent me out to learn a trade.”

Kathy smiled. Jason Cordova was a legend. A young man from the Thousand Families — although no one knew which Family — who had been given command of a starship and ordered to scorch a rebellious world, wiping all life from its surface in a fiery blaze. Cordova had refused to carry out the scorching and had fled to the Rim, barely minutes ahead of a furious Imperial Navy squadron intent on punishing him for refusing to commit mass murder. His crew, all very loyal to him, had followed him into exile and had stayed with him until he’d joined up with the Shadow Fleet and fought in the Battle of Earth.

“And now we’ve both come home,” she said, shaking her head. She hadn’t seen as much of him as she had hoped over the last two months. They’d both been awesomely busy. “Why did we even decide to come?”

Cordova looked out over the hordes of bright young things enjoying themselves and trying to pretend that nothing had changed. “I think we both wanted to know if we could still cut back and enjoy ourselves,” he said, surprising her with his insight. “I also think that we both found out the answer — no.”

Kathy nodded. She had attended too many such balls in her youth. She would have worn something pretty, although she wouldn’t have dared to complete with the senior girls, who would have squashed her socially if they had perceived any challenge, and danced and enjoyed herself until her body was aching. Perhaps, afterwards, she would have found a partner for the night and woken up in his bed, wondering what had happened to her clothes. She hated to think, now, how much her dresses and outfits had cost her father…

“We’ve grown up,” she agreed, and finished her drink. It was one of Lord Wakefield’s private concoctions, a pink fizzer or something like that, and she didn’t want to think about what he’d put in it. It was probably highly alcoholic, but she’d taken the precaution of taking a simple counter-agent before she’d disembarked from the aircar and she couldn’t get drunk. The most that could happen was that she would become a little tipsy. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

He allowed her to lead him through the chattering throngs, including a handful who called out to her, hoping to get into her good graces or pretending to be in her good graces. The High City worked, or had worked, on a system of patronage, where who you knew was more important than how good you were, but times had changed. She might not have the satisfaction of forcing self-important men and women to court her, repeatedly, but at least she wasn’t having to put up with their flawed products. Minister of Industry, it seemed, was a job with a very high turnover. The person who’d remained in the job the longest had been there for two years.

The outer hall was still bustling with guests arriving from other mansions. Someone, she saw, had vandalised an old painting with the words LONG LIVE THE EMPRESS, although two pleasure slaves were trying valiantly to remove the writing without damaging the priceless artwork. A pair of young men, barely entering their teens, were groping the slaves in public, laughing and giggling to one another. The slaves weren’t human — the production line that had created them saw to that — but it still bothered her. The Rim had had few moral principles, but she’d never seen anything like the casual creation of near-human slaves…

On the other hand, she thought morbidly, there’s rape and murder and endless struggles, out there far from the light of the Empire. Perhaps we’re not that different after all .

Cordova looked over at her after he’d helped her into the aircar. “How was your father?”

Kathy considered. She hadn’t visited her father at first, not after she’d read her own obituary. Her Family had been nice about her, although her father had been crushed at losing not only his daughter and Heir, but some of his dreams. Others hadn’t been so nice, with ‘nice piece of ass’ right next to ‘cock-tease,’ all from younger men who resented her reluctance to go to bed with them just because they were senior to her, socially. Stacy Roosevelt had been surprisingly harsh, not least because she should have known that Kathy was actually still alive, instead of being kidnapped, raped and held for ransom by a pirate band. Colin had looked hard for Stacy after discovering that she was still on Earth, but she’d vanished, probably somewhere where she thought that nothing had changed.

“He wanted to see what I could do to rebuild the Family fortune,” she said, finally. “After Roosevelt crashed and burnt” — Stacy styled herself the Roosevelt now, something that the remainder of the Family hadn’t opposed, not least because it made her responsible for their debts — “my Family went down with them. He was hoping that I might ensure that they got some good contracts to rebuild themselves.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll be going back there,” she added. “It just makes me look as bad as the last set of procurement officers.”

“Good,” Cordova said, deadpan. “Cordova’s wife must be above suspicion.”

Kathy elbowed him. “Twit,” she said. It was tempting to think that they might have a happy life together, one day, but for the moment their duties kept them apart. “And you? Have you thought about going back to your Family?”

Cordova looked uncomfortable. “They cut me out of the Family Tree,” he said, grimly. Kathy was about the only person who would have heard the pain under his sense that it was a vast joke. “I doubt they want to see me again, particularly now, not after I’ve helped take them down a peg or two. It would be nice to go up to them and say, look, here I am. Your prodigal son, come home. Kiss my hairy ass !” He laughed. “Yeah, it would be nice, until I started having to deal with the Family again.”

He shook his head. “Better, I think, to remain Jason Cordova and let sleeping tigers lie,” he finished. “I wasn’t born Jason Cordova, you know.”

Kathy shrugged as the aircar passed over the mountains and altered course, ghosting down at supersonic speed towards the High City. Earth’s population, even now, was barely over three million, mostly members of the Thousand Families and their clients. The darkness surrounding the aircar was unbroken by lights, or any sign of human habitation, allowing the stars to shine down freely on the planet below. She could look up and see the halo of asteroids and industrial modules orbiting the planet and, beyond them, the lights of orbital fortresses and starships, protecting the new order from its enemies. She’d joked, years ago, that if Earth were to be scorched, the Empire would run a lot smoother and have more money, but the joke didn’t seem so funny now. The Provisional Government had enemies. The odds were that Kathy, Colin and the rest of them were the most hated people on the planet.