Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

“Get to the point,” Colin growled. “What are you offering us?”

“We would be prepared to listen to your concerns,” Gwendolyn said. “And we would handle them…”

Colin laughed, humourlessly. “And you’d like us to surrender our ships on your word alone?”

“There are reforms we could make,” Gwendolyn pointed out. “Reforms that would eliminate the need for a revolution…”

“But you would be asking us to trust that you would make those reforms,” Colin countered, sardonically. “Do you expect us to just trust you?”

“Not particularly,” Gwendolyn said. She shrugged, her face suddenly serious. “Right now, the Thousand Families are the glue that holds the Empire together. We control almost all of the Empire’s industry, much of the Imperial Navy and employ a very large percentage of the population. There are so many people under our control that even we couldn’t tell you just how many work for us, directly or indirectly. That is the truth of the edifice we have built up over a thousand years.”

Colin nodded, impatiently. “I know,” he said. “The point is certainly repeated often enough, isn’t it?”

Gwendolyn met his eyes. “Let us assume that you succeed,” she said. “The Thousand Families are shattered. What happens to the billions upon billions of people who work for us, directly or indirectly, if you bring that mighty edifice tumbling down?”

Daria coughed. “What happens to the billions upon billions of your victims if the edifice is left in place?”

Gwendolyn ignored her, focusing her attention on Colin. “We can reform the system, slowly and gently,” she said. “That will not bring it falling down, thus avoiding billions of people being thrown out of work and left to starve. But if you destroy the system…”

“People will suffer,” Colin snapped. “We get the point.”

He stared at Gwendolyn, daring her to look away. “What do you have to offer us?”

“We don’t yet know who will win,” Gwendolyn said. She didn’t look away; instead, she met his eyes evenly. “But we know that you might attain a decisive advantage. In that case, we would like to propose a compromise. We will surrender political power in exchange for being allowed to retain our economic power. It will give us time to adapt to the reshaped universe without tossing billions of people onto the streets.”

“Interesting,” Colin observed, finally. “And this is an offer from all of the Thousand Families or just yours?”

“Ours, for the moment,” Gwendolyn said. “We believe that the others would consider the compromise if the alternative was certain destruction.”

Daria smirked. “And what is to stop us sharing the recording of this meeting with the rest of the aristocracy?”

“Why, nothing,” Gwendolyn said. “Except, of course, there will be no further talks. Either you lose, because you were too stubbornly prideful to talk and compromise, or you win and the Empire shatters, forcing you to put it back together. And you know the consequences of that will be, at the very least, an interstellar dark age. Will you be able to hold even the Core Worlds together if the Thousand Families are gone?”

“I see,” Colin said. “You are here, then, not to open talks, but to discuss the possibility of talks. Talks based on us winning or losing or gaining a decisive advantage.”

“Essentially,” Gwendolyn said. “The Thousand Families will not talk to you, let alone compromise, until they are convinced that further fighting would be pointless.”

Colin rubbed his forehead, again. “And what,” he asked, “is to stop us from turning on them later?”

“We have no idea how you plan to reform the economic sphere,” Gwendolyn said. “The propaganda we picked up from the underground before we left Earth was very much a mixed bag. But we know it will take years for the economy to adjust to the chance, let alone allow competitors to rise up and threaten us. You can surrender your starships, but we cannot surrender our control over the economic levers of power.”

“We could simply take your industrial nodes,” Daria pointed out. “What’s to stop us from doing that, My Lady ?”

Gwendolyn didn’t show any reaction to Daria’s tone. “The Empire’s economy depends on thousands of pieces functioning smoothly together,” she said, simply. “Yes, you could seize control of a handful of industrial nodes. You still wouldn’t be able to run them without rebuilding the entire network from scratch. Even convincing people that they couldn’t trust you to respect private property would do considerable damage. It will take you years to replace the system, by which time we will have adapted — or died out.”

Colin gave her a long considering look. “You believe your people will die out?”

“I believe that the Thousand Families will have to adapt,” Gwendolyn said. “If specific families fail, they will be replaced by their competitors and vanish into nothingness.”

“Thank you for coming,” Colin said, dryly. He wasn’t sure if he was sincere or not. “You two will be granted private quarters, but you will be under restriction. Should you cause any trouble, you will both go out the airlock.”

He called for the Marines, who took the two ambassadors away.

“Well,” Daria said, once the hatch had closed. “ That was interesting.”

“Very interesting,” Colin agreed. “I wish Hester was here. She could do a better job of sorting out what they told us.”

He looked down at the desk, thinking hard. If Gwendolyn and Pompey were to be trusted — although Pompey hadn’t said a word — there were already cracks appearing in the Empire’s united front. Who knew how best it could be exploited? But, at the same time, they would have to be careful. Gwendolyn was clearly far more experienced in deceit than Colin himself.

“True,” Daria agreed. She smiled, but there was no real humour in the expression. “We’ll have to be careful they don’t talk us into signing the future over to them.”

“We are facing a planned sabotage campaign,” Colonel Gordon said. He was a Rothschild client, but he had enough sense to realise that now wasn’t the time to promote his patron’s interests. “All signs point to a large group — and probably one linked to the underground.”

Tiberius carefully kept his expression under control. He’d concluded that weeks ago, after his security officers had finally tracked down the person responsible for the chaos virus and interrogated her thoroughly. It was unlikely in the extreme that rebels from the edge of the Empire could have set up operations on Luna so quickly unless they’d had help from the Luna Underground. They’d managed to kidnap children just to force someone into helping them, for crying out loud! They could only have done that with help.

But the chaos attack hadn’t been the only burst of sabotage. Several other computer cores had been infected with chaos viruses, a number of processors had been reprogrammed to pass imperfect starship components while rejecting perfectly good ones and two Blackshirt training camps had been sent poison instead of conditioning drugs. Thousands of young men were now dead, setting the entire program back weeks if not months. No, the underground was getting bolder — and pushing the limits as far as they would go. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover that they already had operatives on dozens of starships and orbital platforms.

“So we act,” Lord Bernadotte snapped. “Send down the Blackshirts and flush the damn bastards out. God knows we cannot allow this to continue.”

Tiberius had to admit he was right. Home Fleet was in a poor condition, even without active sabotage. If there were more life support failures, crewmen would start deserting in droves –or contemplating mutiny. The life expectancy of a starship that mutinied in Earth orbit would be very low, but it would be able to do considerable damage to the planet before it was destroyed. Who knew what would happen if someone sabotaged other parts of the defences?