Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

The corridor terminated in the interior of the mansion, deep within the private quarters that belonged to the inner circle of the Family. He remembered, with a growing sense of shame and guilt, that he’d brought Alicia here once, despite the disapproval of some of the Family, just to show her his rooms. He’d slept with her then, before the end of the war and the Fall of Earth, and he had led her to her death as effectively as any Judas goat. She’d been bright and full of life and he’d taken it all away from her, just because he had wanted to save his own miserable life. He staggered along the corridor, wishing desperately that he’d thought to provide himself with a weapon, but he’d always had men and women ready to risk their lives in his defence. A Family Head shouldn’t carry a weapon, his father had said, and he had followed it to the death. Daria had even encouraged him in that belief.

He reached the control room and peered inside. Daria was sitting in a chair, holding a single weapon on her lap, watching as the display showed images from inside the mansion. She looked up at him, saw him, and beckoned him inside imperiously. He came, helplessly, and knew that he would have come even without the weapon in her hand. He was seeing the true Daria now, the hidden truth behind the mask she’d worn for Colin and the other rebels, and it chilled him to the bone. His father had backed a sociopath to reform the Empire. He hadn’t had time to regret his mistake.

“You lied to me,” he said, between gasps. The screens were showing scenes of horror spreading through the mansion. Pleasure slaves killed robotically as they advanced through rooms that should have been safe. He saw a naked girl, her face chillingly blank, picking up children and snapping their necks, one by one. How many of the Empire’s elite had attended the wedding ceremony? How many of them were now dead or trapped without hope of escape. “Why?”

Daria smiled. The building shuddered again as the display switched to an outside view. Marine landing craft were racing towards the estate, ducking and weaving to avoid fire from ground-based weapons while firing back with HVMs of their own. It would take them time to clear their way into the estate, Tiberius realised, and by the time they fought their way to the reception area, almost everyone would be dead.

“Why not?” Daria asked, her mask slipping back into place. The bloody scenes of carnage seemed nothing, but a mere distraction. “Why should I not purge the Empire of all who would oppose me?”

Tiberius found himself gasping for breath. “Why?” He pleaded. “You’re killing us all.”

“I was born to one of the Thousand Families on the wrong side of the sheets,” Daria said, calmly. There was a mocking undertone in her voice, a hint of cold amusement at how events had played out. “I was never wanted anywhere and so my father sent me into the Imperial Navy, just to get rid of me. I was his little embarrassment, you see, someone he couldn’t disown, but also someone he couldn’t accept. I hope that you used birth control when you started to sow your wild oats, my dear.”

Her voice had become openly mocking. “I cut my way to the top through sheer brilliance and a complete lack of concern for anyone else,” she continued. “I hit the glass ceiling, of course, just as Colin himself hit it, but I had allies. Your father, among others, wanted to reform the Empire, and so they picked harmless little Janice as their Empress. They might as well have given the fox the keys to the henhouse.”

Tiberius stared at her. “But you wanted to reform the Empire,” he protested. “They wanted you to begin a reform program…”

“Of course they did,” Daria agreed, “and so do I. They taught me to imagine how things could be changed. I imagined a universe without the Thousand Families.”

She laughed. “How many of your kin will die together?”

The building shook again. On the display, armoured Marines were pouring out of their landing craft and flowing — too late — into the building. Tiberius knew a moment of hope, even though he knew whatever remained of the Provisional Government would blame him for the massacre. There was nowhere left for him now. The Marines might as well shoot him and get it over with.

Daria read his thoughts. “Yes,” she agreed. “They’re not coming to save you, Tiberius.”

She levelled the gun directly at his head. He flinched, trying to leap out the way, but it was too late. The gun barked once, there was a brief stabbing pain in his head… and then nothing. Nothing, but darkness.

“Forward, at the double,” General Neil Frandsen snapped, as he led the Marine Company into the Cicero Mansion. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near the action, or so his subordinates had argued, but there was no way he was going to leave his superior and friend in the midst of danger. The battle armour made short work of the main entrance and he crashed through into the first reception hall, into a scene of horror. Dead bodies, men and women, young and old, lay everywhere, their bodies wracked with deadly wounds. None of them had had a chance.

“Disruptor wounds,” one of the Marines noted, as they moved quickly through the building. Frandsen could only nod in agreement. Disrupters had been banned for centuries — although Imperial Intelligence and the SDs had been known to use them as terror weapons — because they not only killed, they killed people in terrible agony. Whoever had planned the massacre wanted the dead to suffer. No one would use a disruptor in cold blood. “Sir, movement…”

Frandsen’s visor lit up as the first hostile came into view. For a moment, his gaze focused on the perfect naked body, and then warning tones sounded as the suit’s sensors took in the disruptor in her hand. She fired a single green burst of light at him that the suit countered, before one of the Marines neatly put a bullet through her forehead. Her dead expression, utterly unmoved by what she’d been doing and what the Marines had done to her, haunted him as others, their faces as expressionless as hers, appeared from the side corridors. The Marines tried to get them to surrender, but it was useless. They didn’t even hear their words before they were shot down.

The teams split up as they advanced further into the building, powered armour smashing through walls and floors as they moved towards their fellows. Colin was still alive, Frandsen hoped desperately, but if they were under siege… Whoever had planned the massacre had been clever, he acknowledged without particular heat, but they didn’t have effective tools. A group of Marines would have conducted a mobile defence. The defenders, whatever they were, merely hurled themselves on the Marines, trying to bring them down by sheer weight of numbers. Against powered combat armour, that was a losing game, one that could only result in a slaughter. Blood spilled everywhere as they pushed their way further into the building…

“We’re coming,” he said, keying his transmitter. If Colin didn’t have at least a pair of Marines with him, he was probably dead. The pleasure slaves, or whatever the hell they were, had formed a ring around the main hall, one that was defended by heavy weapons. He led his team around the defenders and punched them out as quickly as he could. “Colin, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Neil,” Colin said, finally. “I don’t know how long the doors will hold out, but we’ll hold as long as possible…”

The signal cut off sharply.

Pushed and prodded by the Marines, and Cordova, who had been released on the grounds that it no longer mattered what anyone thought, the trapped men and women had built a formidable barrier using every piece of furniture in the room. Colin didn’t have any illusions about how long it would last if the pleasure slaves brought up heavy weapons, however, and ordered as many people as possible to crouch away from the doors. A moment after they made contact with the advancing Marines, the doors blew open into dust and the pleasure slaves started their advance.