Imperial rogue, p.4
Imperial Rogue, page 4
And they hit her hard the first night in interstellar space, as Marlene ran through hyperspace as fast as she could. Reeve woke up the next morning feeling drained. One look at her haggard face in the mirror told the story. She would climb into the stasis pod with Paget later that day and stay in it until Marlene dropped out of FTL at Wyvern’s heliopause. Yet the idea of entrusting her life and that of Hal to an AI, which was, in the end, nothing more than a highly sophisticated bit of programming, gave her pause.
Programs could malfunction. Hell, the ship itself could malfunction, and she might end up spending eternity in stasis. The idea of putting her life in Marlene’s hands rankled now that it was imminent, and she decided to hold off for another night.
The next morning, after she rose, Reeve checked on Paget, who remained unconscious, then laboriously transported him to the hold where the stasis chamber squatted like a malevolent entity and carefully placed him inside.
“This is it, Marlene. Once I’m in the chamber, activate it. Release us when we arrive at the Wyvern heliopause or something goes wrong and you need to drop out of hyperspace.”
“Understood. It is the best way. I have monitored your sleep for the last two nights, and you will not survive the trip.”
Reeve tried a last attempt at pushing back the inevitable. “Could we slow, so we’re not running in the highest bands?”
“The balance between speed, distance, and antimatter expenditure is such that we might run out of fuel before reaching Wyvern if we go any slower, as counterintuitive as that may seem.”
“No, I get the drives are most fuel efficient in the highest bands. It’s one of hyperspace’s idiosyncrasies.”
“Besides, Commander Paget needs medical attention soonest.”
“Okay.” Reeve took one last deep breath and joined Paget in the chamber. The door closed, and she felt a prickling on her skin, one that promptly penetrated her deeper tissues. Within moments, her vision blurred, and then, everything stopped.
— 6 —
New Draconis, Wyvern
Second Empire
“I’ve got to say one thing for the Imperials — their foreign intelligence briefings about Lyonesse are getting better and better with time.” Farrin Norum, former Lyonesse Chief of the Defense Staff, and now a citizen of the Second Empire, sat back in his chair and exhaled loudly. He was in his early sixties, with blond hair mostly turned silver, deep-set eyes, and an angular face. “The news they contain isn’t, however.”
Currag DeCarde, former Lyonesse ambassador to the Wyvern Hegemony and also now a citizen of the Second Empire, glanced up from his workstation. Tall, muscular, with a square face, sandy hair going gray at the temples, and his family's intensely blue eyes, he was of an age with his long-time friend.
“What does this one contain to have you sighing like a lovesick calf?”
Both were in the office they’d shared for several years at the Colonial Service’s HQ in the Blue Annex to the Presidential Palace. Recently, they had become senior consultants, and they worked on issues directly for Admiral Johannes Godfrey, the commander-in-chief of the Service.
“A fair number of items. Makes me wonder where they have agents planted, because not everything can be open source. First, the Republic’s capital is now New Lena on Yotai. President Juska proclaimed it a few weeks ago after most of the government functions moved there. Lyonesse still maintains the Republic’s naval shipyards, but it is now mostly a backwater.
“Then they can hardly call it the Republic of Lyonesse, can they?”
“No, and that’s the second item. Juska proclaimed it the United Stars Republic when he shifted his flag from Lyonesse to Yotai.”
DeCarde’s eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s a turn for the books. Juska simply renamed it just like that?”
“With the full-throated approval of his tame Senate, no doubt.”
“Took him long enough, come to think of it. The Hegemony renamed itself the Second Empire five years ago, and we know Juska has ambitions to make the Republic humanity’s leading, if not sole, interstellar polity.”
Norum gave his friend a half-shrug. “And President Benes holds the same aspirations for the Second Empire.”
“Sure, but he's moving toward greater democratization, at least at the star system level, and reducing centralized control over planetary matters, while Juska is heading straight in the opposite direction — aiming for a dictatorship in all but name.”
“True. Next item on the intel brief — and I can’t tell how definite this is — but it appears the Republic is setting up clandestine re-education facilities for dissidents. The intelligence folks give it a fairly high probability of being accurate, and I’d tend to agree because that’s who Juska is.”
“Re-education facilities? Or concentration camps? The easiest way of dealing with those the government considers heretics is to incarcerate the poor buggers and delete the access codes. Then starve or work them to death, if they don’t execute them with a plasma round in the back of the head.”
“I suppose it depends on your level of sadism, and the Juska regime is collecting psychopaths like shit collects flies. Another item related to all the above is renaming the Lyonesse Office of Inquiry as the Office for the Security of the Republic. It now has a uniformed branch along with the former LOI’s plainclothes investigators.”
“What the heck will a uniformed branch do?”
“Guard the re-education facilities, perhaps?”
DeCarde nodded. “Probably one of the things. But Juska is playing the classical game of consolidating his power with a view to making it absolute.”
“Another Ruggero, then.”
“The game goes back much further than that, to the era immediately before spaceflight, although it was non-operative during the time of the Commonwealth and pre-Ruggero First Empire. Its practitioners were called fascists, communists, socialists, corporatists, and many other names, but they operated under the same basic premise — achieving absolute power over the common people was the sole goal. A small elite ruling with an iron fist, depriving citizens of their basic rights and enriching themselves in the process. The most successful ones hid behind a veil of fake democracy that vast swathes of their population couldn’t pierce. And those that could were often co-opted into serving the regime.”
Norum chuckled. “I forgot you’ve made the study of ancient political systems one of your hobbies.”
DeCarde held up a finger and said in a sententious tone, “While history might not repeat, it most certainly rhymes, and therefore, studying it should be the duty of every thinking sentient being. For example, one common feature of those political movements throughout history was re-education facilities, concentration camps, call them what you like — they’re all prisons in the end — to remove dissenters from view.”
“Yet the Hegemony didn’t use that sort of coercion.”
“No, it didn’t, making it unique among societies that sacrificed freedom for the sake of the collective good. However, the Hegemony arose from a catastrophe unlike any other in recorded history, and its system prioritized the sheer survival of a civilization rather than a deliberate attempt to subjugate a population for the sake of an ideology. Although one can see echoes of the older forms of authoritarianism in the Commission for State Security. And the Hegemony espoused the same basic philosophy as any of the others — all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Even so, it was nowhere near as coercive and corrupt as the Republic is becoming under Derik Juska.”
“True.” Norum nodded. “Though I still have a hard time understanding why the people of the Republic aren’t revolting against Juska’s measures.”
DeCarde made a face. “Because they don’t affect the vast majority of the population, they’re content to go along. Besides, the Lyonesse First madness has been going on for such a protracted period of time now — over ten years — that many folks have internalized those twisted ideals to the point of no longer questioning them.”
“Well, I am thankful to the Almighty for Vigdis Mandus and Sandor Benes. That Wyvern has two visionary presidents in a row is nothing short of miraculous. Imagine if they’d been cut from the same cloth as Derik Juska.”
“Then both halves of humanity would have been on the same course to disaster. And they would eventually have fought a bitter war of extermination between them. You see, authoritarian regimes need external enemies to keep the focus of the people away from what they’re doing.”
“Hence the Lyonesse First movement. Or whatever they’ll end up calling the damned thing now that the Republic changed names.”
“Just so.”
At that moment, a tall, slim woman with dark eyes and dark hair, wearing flowing black robes, poked her head through the open office door. Her smooth facial features belied many years in the Order of the Void.
“Hello,” she said in a bright but gentle tone.
“Hey, Maryam!” DeCarde smiled at her. “And what can we do for the Colonial Service’s Leading Sister today?”
“I’m checking to see if you read the latest intelligence digest about Lyonesse, or rather the United Stars Republic.”
“We were just discussing it.”
“Oh, excellent. Admiral Godfrey and General Torma were wondering if you had a few minutes to talk about it with them.”
“Their wish is our command. Now?”
“Indeed. We’re in the admiral’s office.”
Both men climbed to their feet and followed Maryam down the corridor. When they appeared in Godfrey’s open doorway, the admiral waved them in.
“Grab a seat.” Godfrey, in his early seventies, with thick silver hair and lean, intelligent features, gestured at the chairs surrounding a small conference table in front of his desk before taking one himself. He was imitated by Lieutenant General Crevan Torma, his second in command, a man whose black hair framed a craggy, olive-skinned face dominated by keen brown eyes that missed nothing. “If you’re here, it means you read the intel brief.”
“We did, Johannes,” Norum said, using Godfrey’s first name, as he, Maryam, and DeCarde sat. The admiral had requested that he do so when he first began working for the Colonial Office, seeing as how Norum had outranked him when he still wore a naval uniform.
“Since you two are our resident experts on things related to the Republic, we’re interested in your thoughts on the latest developments.”
Norum grimaced. “They’re not good.”
Godfrey gave him a wry smile. “We’d gathered that.”
“It appears that Derik Juska is finalizing the consolidation of his absolute power over the Republic,” DeCarde said. “He basically overrode the Constitution — cheered on by a Senate that he bought — by silencing and disappearing his critics. It wouldn’t surprise me if he presented a new Constitution making him dictator for life to the Senate, although he doesn’t really need it.”
“So in effect, he’s now a despot akin to the Ruggeros.”
DeCarde nodded. “Complete with a security apparatus designed to eliminate dissent.”
“The Office for the Security of the Republic.”
“Yep. Juska’s Stormtroopers, so to speak.”
“And the military is simply letting Juska trample the Constitution to which they swore their oath?” A frowning Crevan Torma asked in an incredulous tone.
“I expect that by now the officers above the rank of major or lieutenant commander who consider their oath paramount have been replaced by those whose loyalty is to Juska, not the Constitution. He’s had ten years to remove the ones who’d balk at his actions, more than enough time. Heck, Juska fired Farrin as CDS the moment he took office and replaced him with a Lyonesse First zealot, although Gerhard Glass didn’t trumpet his allegiance to the movement before he took over.” DeCarde made a moue. “The only good news for the Empire is that the quality of the Republic’s officer corps must have dropped significantly. Historically, it always did when professionals in the senior ranks were replaced by those who owed their promotions to politics rather than ability. But that same blind loyalty to political leaders meant the generals and admirals were more willing to take action at the whim of their masters rather than push back when they felt the security of the state was at risk.”
Godfrey nodded. “Meaning it makes them more unpredictable.”
“Indeed.”
“I find it incredible that a single individual, backed by a small but zealous minority, can so effectively take over a nation and twist its politics beyond recognition.” Torma shook his head.
“No political system ever devised by humans is proof against cunning sociopaths who crave absolute power, Crevan. Not even the Second Empire with the safeguards built into its revised Constitution, although it probably has much less of a chance to slide into autocracy like the Republic is doing. Lyonesse’s founder, Jonas Morane, was a bit of an idealist at heart and didn’t understand the lengths someone like Derik Juska would go to. Hence, the Republic’s Constitution has many flaws that a would-be tyrant can exploit.”
“And what do you know? Someone has exploited them,” Norum said in a flat tone that nonetheless conveyed his disgust.
— 7 —
“How was your day?” Farrin Norum asked after giving Rey Weston a quick peck on the cheek.
She’d come out of the living room when she heard the apartment’s front door open. Weston, a fifty-something almost as tall as Norum but with long blond hair framing a full face, smiled.
“Same old, same old. Nothing ever changes in the New Draconis Police Service. You?”
They had adopted this ritual years ago, and it never changed from workday to workday.
“The latest intel brief on the Republic came in today. It was depressingly interesting.”
“Do tell.”
“Not until I have a gin and tonic in my hand and am sitting comfortably.”
“Well then, go change, and I’ll prepare the drinks.”
She and Norum had met on Mykonos while the latter was preparing his escape to Wyvern. Declining to assassinate him as ordered by the Lyonesse Office of Inquiry, her then employer, she’d joined him in exile along with DeCarde and her colleague Beth Svent. Both women now worked for the New Draconis Police as civilian trainers, putting their considerable policing experience — both military and civilian — to good use.
When Norum emerged from their bedroom, he wore khaki shorts, a white, collarless short-sleeved shirt, and was barefoot. Weston, already curled up on the sofa, had her drink in hand, while a tall glass beaded with condensation waited for him on the coffee table. The end-of-day gin and tonic, taken together, was also part of the ritual.
Their relationship started with two lost souls clinging to each other in a strange land, not love. Yet what had begun as a physical attraction during their escape from pursuit by the LOI quickly grew into a deep connection, and by now, they couldn’t even consider living apart.
Norum sank into a chair opposite the sofa, picked up his glass, and said, “Your health, my dear.”
“And yours.”
Both took a long sip, then Weston lowered her glass and gave Norum a questioning look. “So, what did the intel brief say?”
Norum laid it bare word for word, and Weston’s face fell.
“That’s horrible,” she said when he stopped to take a nip of his gin. “What the hell has Juska done to the Republic?”
“What he planned on doing long ago, I suspect.”
“And no one back home objects?”
Norum let out a humorless bark of laughter. They rounded up and stuffed those who would have done so into camps long ago, or outright shot them. The remainder are either enthusiastically embracing the madness of the Lyonesse First crowd or wisely keeping their heads down and staying silent.”
Weston shook her head. “I suppose. Still, it is depressing to see the golden dream, our peace-loving Republic based on knowledge and founded by a visionary like Jonas Morane, twisted into this ugly thing.”
“Yep.” Norum lifted his glass to his lips again when his communicator, sitting on the kitchen counter, chimed softly. “Hmm. Who is calling at this time of the day?”
“It sounded like your personal address too, not the work one.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “Did you make a new friend, perchance?”
“No. I’m at the age where I don’t care for strange folk.” Norum put his glass on the table and climbed to his feet before heading for the kitchen to retrieve his communicator.
“Hmm,” he said after consulting its virtual display. “A missive from a darknet node — unidentified, of course.”
“Someone trying to sell you real estate in swampy Okeegee?”
“No.” Norum walked back into the living room, eyes on his communicator. “There’s a large, encrypted message behind a single word — sprog.”
“Sprog? What the hell is that?”
It took Norum a few moments to dredge up the definition from the murky depths of his memory. “It’s an ancient, pre-diaspora term for a recruit, if I recall correctly.”
“Okay. Why would someone encrypt a message using an old, disused word?” Weston took another sip, eyes fixed on Norum.
Something was tickling the edge of the latter’s consciousness, as if sprog had a specific meaning for him, a meaning he’d filed away long ago and forgotten about. He raised his hand to forestall any further words from his partner as he opened his mind fully to let the significance of sprog emerge from his subconscious. After a few moments, his eyes lit up as he snapped his fingers.
“By the Almighty, but that takes me back. When I was a lieutenant commander and first officer of the frigate Tristan, I took a newly commissioned ensign assigned to the ship under my wing to teach him the rudiments of his profession. He was so young and wide-eyed, I called him sprog. Don’t ask me where I came by the nickname. It just seemed to fit.”
