Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

She must have fallen asleep, for the next thing she felt was Cordova carrying her gently into the small townhouse she’d turned into her centre of operations and residence, while she was on Earth. She’d found herself dividing her time between Earth, Mars, Jupiter and AlphaCent, where massive shipyards circled the star and struggled to keep up with the new demand for starships. The Empire’s new construction program, intended to out-produce the Geeks and Nerds, had barely begun when the war ended, leaving Kathy to pick up the pieces. She’d been utterly ruthless, sacking managers who failed to deliver the goods, or abused their workforce, but it was like trying to bail out a river with a bucket and spade. The workers wanted rights, the managers wanted job security, the construction facilities were falling to pieces because no one had bothered to repair them… it was a nightmare. Only Colin’s backing and that of the Cicero Family had managed to keep the Empire moving, but there was an insatiable demand for new starships… and she couldn’t meet them all.

“You looked cute like that,” Cordova said, later. He’d carried her into bed and put her between the sheets as gently as a mother with her child. Kathy was rather amused that he had joined her without bothering to get undressed. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Surprisingly refreshed,” Kathy said, as she pulled herself out of bed, tore away the remains of her outfit, and staggered into the shower. “Are you coming to join me, then?”

Afterwards, they breakfasted on the balcony, looking out over the High City. Kathy had refused, on a matter of principle, to hire any servants, although she was technically entitled to hundreds of assistants. It was hard enough finding competent and trustworthy people to man her offices in the High City, let alone finding someone to keep her apartment in order, and so she tended to either make her own breakfast or eat in one of the office dining rooms. Cordova didn’t complain about her cooking — she rather enjoyed cooking, although she would never have admitted it to her family — and it provided a nice opportunity to be together. She knew that she should check her terminal, knowing that there would be hundreds of messages for her to wade through, but she couldn’t be bothered. In her experience, nine messages out of ten could wait, or could be passed on to a subordinate.

“I’m surprised you didn’t take the 5 thSquadron when Colin offered it to you,” she said, finally, having exhausted all other topics of conversation. “It did need a commanding officer who actually knows what he’s doing.”

“It’s been years since I commanded an Imperial Navy squadron,” Cordova said. “The Volunteer Fleet was much easier, not least because we all knew how far we could go with each other, but they’re now spilt up and helping to move goods from one side of the Empire to the other…”

Kathy nodded grimly. It was another problem. The Thousand Families had been working for years to bring all of the independent shippers under their control, not least because they forced the Family-owned shipping lines to keep their prices down. The early stages of the rebellion had seen thousands of freighters desert the Families and join the Shadow Fleet, serving as its logistics chain, and now that Earth had fallen, the shipping lines were coming apart at the seams. There might have been a few thousand Captains still willing to serve in the shipping lines, in exchange for better treatment and funding, but the vast majority preferred to work for themselves. The net result was that the shipping lanes were either crowded or almost deserted, hammering away at the economic links that bound the Empire together. The upsurge in piracy didn’t help. The Imperial Navy was running around, trying to establish a convoy system, but merchant skippers didn’t like running in convoys and preferred to trust their luck. It wasn’t a winning move.

“And besides, not all of the spit and polish brigade trust me,” Cordova added. “They’ve seen enough pirate ships to think that the Random Numbers would have been the same, so…”

He shrugged. “And besides, I’m more use here,” he concluded. He gave her a wink that would have had him jailed on some of the more repressive planets. “You’re here, after all.”

Kathy smiled, almost sadly. She knew, deep inside, that as far as Cordova was concerned, she was just a mistress. Space was his one true love and he couldn’t bear to be parted from her for long. One day, he would take his cruiser and set off to travel the depths of space again, leaving her behind. She didn’t hold it against him. She’d been the same herself once.

Her terminal buzzed before she could speak. “It’s probably someone with a hangnail,” she said, opening the small black unit and scanning the message when it blinked up in the holographic field. She’d sacked assistants who had sent her urgent messages before about nothing important. “I wonder…”

She scowled. “It’s an urgent summons to the Council,” she said, finally. “That probably means bad news.” She picked up her cup of tea and drank it quickly. “Coming?”

The High City, Colin had realised when he’d first set eyes upon it, had been created by someone without any sense of taste or aesthetics. It was a curious mixture of styles, ranging from Ancient Greek and Roman styles to more modern styles, some of them looking like purely imaginary spacecraft, half-buried in the ground. It was huge and yet barely populated, covering over a hundred square miles of ground, inhabited only by the Thousand Families and their servants. The servants, of course, didn’t get to live in the mansions. They had to sleep in the barracks surrounding the city.

It was traditional for all weapons and defensive precautions to be kept out of the High City, but Colin had appointed a Marine Regiment to handle the security precautions, suspecting that the more standard Household Troops or Family security personnel would have divided loyalties if he kept them in the High City. It’s population had swelled over the last few months, from representatives from the outer sectors and reporters from the first-rank worlds coming to see the High City for the first time, to Colin’s people running the government and it had created a whole new security nightmare. No one knew, yet, who had murdered Lord Roosevelt — although Colin wasn’t going to waste time mourning him — and the members of the Provisional Government were very definitely targets. Colin himself had been the target of over a hundred assassination attempts, while Cordova and Kathy had each been targeted on multiple occasions. The handful of captured assassins had been executed, pour encorager les autres , but they hadn’t talked. Someone with access to really high tech and a complete lack of scruples had made tracing them back to their backers impossible. It was, Colin had decided, rather worrying.

It was also traditional for shuttle over-flights to be banned, on the grounds that it upset the high-ranking and influential citizens of the High City, but Colin had overturned that particular rule, on the grounds that he and his people needed to travel around the Solar System as quickly as possible. It hadn’t made them any more popular, he reflected, as the shuttle settled down towards the Parliament building. The odds were that not a few Family Dowagers were seriously considering installing antiaircraft weapons on their lawns.

No one had taken Parliament seriously for centuries. According to unbiased history accounts, or at least as close to unbiased accounts as possible in the Empire, the original Families had struck a deal with the first-rank worlds, under the rule of Emperor Angus, that Parliament would serve as a check on their ambitions. Angus might have genuinely intended it to serve as a democratic block on their abuse of power, but he’d been assassinated and Parliament had become little more than a talking shop. The MPs had learned to keep their heads down, accept the vast bribes that came with their positions, and never think of thinking for themselves at all. The handful that seemed to actually believe all the high-minded propaganda Public Information pumped out about how Parliament made all the real decisions were quickly disposed of by Imperial Intelligence, or turned into puppets, just to keep the rest voting as their patrons ordered them to vote. The Battle of Earth had led, inevitably, to the collapse of Parliament. Colin and Kathy had swept them all out of office, sent the most corrupt and unpleasant to penal worlds, and sent out a call for honest and fair elections that would create a new Parliament. This time, with Colin and his people in control of the planetary defences, Parliament would have real teeth.