Barbarians at the Gates (64 page)

“Aye, sir,” Admiral Mason said.

“I want the Grand Fleet ready to depart in twelve hours,” Marius ordered. “Make sure the fleet train is loaded with supplies from Harmony”—one other advantage of a civil war was that both sides used the same weapons—”and is ready to support us as we advance. If we are lucky, we won’t have to fight our way into Boskone and the other worlds we set up as nodal defense points...”

“One point,” Papillae said. “We have been unable to confirm that there isn’t a message already winging its way back to Earth with a warning. The Senate may not know that we’re coming, or they might suspect the worst.”

“You can’t pick out an encrypted message?” Admiral Mason snorted.

“The message might be something innocuous,” Papillae said. “Something that would pass unremarked. The message that activated Raistlin didn’t say anything directly.”

“We’ll assume that we’re heading into hostile space,” Marius said with a nod. “We leave in twelve hours. Until then...dismissed!”

* * *

Roman had asked to see the admiral as soon as possible. He was surprised when he was called in only an hour after he sent the message, and even more surprised to see the two Marines guarding the admiral’s hatch. It was a break with tradition and, worse, it suggested that the Admiral no longer trusted his crew. The Marines searched him thoroughly but gently, and then allowed him to enter. The admiral himself was seated on the sofa, his left arm wrapped in a cast.

“Admiral,” he began. Words abruptly failed him. “I’m glad to see that you’re all right...”

“Save it,” Admiral Drake said. He looked up. Roman was surprised to see a new intensity burning in the admiral’s eyes. “I assume you want a new ship?”

“Yes, sir,” Roman said. He’d checked on
Midway
and had to admit that the report had been accurate. It would be cheaper to build a new assault cruiser than to repair a badly damaged one. She’d be sent to the breakers and her hull metal would be used to produce new ships. “Why did he open fire?”

“The Senate decided, in their infinite wisdom, to massacre all the prisoners we took on Bester,” Admiral Drake explained. His bitter voice shocked Roman to the core. “Admiral Justinian decided to go out in a blaze of glory.”

He frowned. “I don’t have a ship that needs a commander at the moment,” he added.

Roman couldn’t keep the disappointment off his face.

“I do need an aide, however. If you take the post now, I’ll give you a ship as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” Roman said. He was surprised that the admiral wanted him—he’d graduated with Raistlin years ago, not that they’d ever been friends—but he knew better than to refuse. “When do I take up my duties?”

“Now,” Admiral Drake said. “We’re leaving in twelve hours and I want every ship that can fly and energize a beam going with us.”

* * *

Twelve hours later, Marius stood on the command deck and watched as the Grand Fleet slid into motion, heading towards the Jefferson Asimov Point. He would have found it hard to describe his feelings at the moment, knowing that he was rebelling against the Senate, crossing his own personal Rubicon.

One way or another, the die had been cast.

The shortest route between two points isn’t always a straight line when considering Asimov Points. A spacer knows that doubling back on his course can sometimes get him to his destination quicker.

-Observations on the Navy, 3987

In Transit/Earth, 4098

The
Prince George
-class space yacht had originally been designed for ten passengers and a crew of five. After the Brotherhood had the ship quietly refurbished in a military shipyard, the yacht had the speed of a destroyer and could be operated, if necessary, by a single person. Rupert had kept three of his most trusted retainers on the ship, but he’d dismissed the rest of the crew, even the woman who ran the galley. He’d had to eat packaged meals for the entire trip. After four weeks, even the pleasures of watching entertainment dramas he’d always meant to watch had worn off, and he was cursing his own mistake at not bringing along someone to share his bed.

But there hadn’t been much choice, or much time to arrange the desperate flight to Harmony. He’d hoped that there would be more time, either to send a warning message ahead of the assassination order, or for the Brotherhood to make other preparations on Earth, but they’d underestimated the Senate’s determination to act quickly. The assassination order was now winging its way to Harmony—no, it would have got there by now. And if Admiral Drake had been assassinated, the Brotherhood’s long-term plan would have fallen apart.

Silently, he cursed the two Factions under his breath. Who would have dreamed that Conservatives and Socialists could ever find themselves in agreement, if for radically different reasons? Perhaps the threat of being overthrown had made them panic and react quickly, even though there was no immediate threat.

He brooded on it as the ship went through another Asimov Point—using his Senator’s codes to gain immediate access—and wondered, again, what he would find when he reached Harmony.

They were midway through the Java System when the alert sounded.

“Senator,” Captain Windsor reported, “we are picking up military starships transiting the Asimov Point ahead of us.”

For a long moment, Rupert felt a flash of panic. His worst nightmare was discovering that the Senate had realized that he wasn’t going off on vacation and sent another message ahead of him, ordering his arrest or execution. The Senate would not, normally, have issued a kill-order for a Senator, but these were far from normal times.

His second thought was that Admiral Drake was ahead of him, and was bringing his fleet to Earth. As far as he knew—and he had had access to all of the Federation Navy’s reports—there wasn’t any other large fleet ahead of him. Admiral Drake’s force should have been the only one in the area.

“Hail them,” he ordered. “Transmit my Senate codes, and request permission to dock.”

There was a long pause.

“They’re declining permission,” Windsor reported. “They’re ordering us to vacate this space, or they will open fire.”

Rupert’s lips twitched. After everything, after his escape from Earth, dying at the hands of Admiral Drake would be the final irony.

“Send back another message,” he said. “One word: Arunika.”

There was a second pause.

“They are sending a Marine shuttle to dock with us and pick you up,” Windsor said. “I’m afraid that we cannot evade them, or escape either.”

Rupert bowed his head. At his age, there was no longer any point in fearing death.

“I understand, captain,” he said, “Follow their orders. I suspect that our lives are no longer in our hands.”

* * *

The transit from Harmony to Jefferson had been smooth. Marius had had Admiral Justinian’s forts secured by his Marines prior to the assassination attempt, so no one had tried to bar the fleet’s passage through the system. Admiral Justinian hadn’t built any further fortifications until the Asimov Point leading to Boskone, but they had been secured as well. The real danger had come when they’d passed into the Boskone System, yet the Senate hadn’t thought to issue orders barring the Grand Fleet’s passage. Besides, Marius had selected the system’s defenders personally and they had been horrified to learn about the assassination attempt.

He’d continued onward until they reached the Java System. The commander of the system’s defenses had balked until Marius had offered him the flat choice between surrender and being blasted out of the way. With only two fortresses, the commander had swallowed his pride and allowed his fortresses to be secured and occupied. Marius’s fleet hadn’t waited for the operation to be complete before they’d started heading towards the next Asimov Point. And then his sensors had picked up the yacht.

“Order the Senator brought onboard,” he ordered as soon as the cryptic second message had arrived. “Once he is aboard, resume course for Earth.”

He’d plotted out the course while preparing to leave Harmony. The shortest way to Earth led to the Gateway, but the Gateway defenders would definitely balk at allowing the fleet into the system without a fight, and the Grand Fleet would be bled white if it tried to break in by force. Admiral Justinian had had the right idea in crossing interstellar space to reach Earth. The key to the Solar System wasn’t Earth itself, but Home Fleet. Admiral Justinian had believed that he could take Earth before Home Fleet could intervene. Marius knew better.

He looked up as the Marines escorted Grand Senator Rupert McGillivray into his quarters. Marius hoped they hadn’t been too rough, although he couldn’t blame them for feeling paranoid due to the assassination attempt. The silver ring on the Senator’s hand caught his attention at once, informing him that the Senator was a member of the Brotherhood. A dark suspicion flared through his mind, which he pushed aside and waved the Senator to a chair.

“Welcome onboard,” he said tartly. “What happened?”

McGillivray made no pretense at being puzzled by the question. “The Senate decided that you were surplus to requirements,” he said flatly. “I came to warn you.”

Marius snorted. “You’re a month too late,” he pointed out. “You should have sent a message.”

“The Senate had locked out all communications to the Grand Fleet,” McGillivray explained. “I had hoped that I would be able to send you a message from Terra Nova, but they’d locked it out by then. I could only hope that you survived the assignation attempt.”

“Right,” Marius said. The Senator’s story was reasonably plausible. “And now that you know that I am still alive—and driving towards Earth—why are you here?”

McGillivray took a breath.

“Can I ask, first, what your intentions are towards Earth?”

Marius studied him for a long moment, reminding himself not to underestimate the Senator. McGillivray was older than Marius, older than Professor Kratman; the last survivor of the Imperialist Faction in the Senate. No one lived so long without gaining a vast amount of experience...and no one would remain in the Senate without knowing precisely where the bodies were buried. Old he might be, but McGillivray had lost none of his intelligence or knowledge.

“I intend to remove the Senate and create a new representative government,” Marius said flatly. There was no harm in the Senator knowing that. “Why are
you
here?”

“You need to do more than that,” McGillivray said. “You need to declare yourself Emperor.”

“Are you insane?” Marius stared at him.

“No,” McGillivray said. “Are you?”

“I don’t want to be Emperor,” Marius said after a long pause. “Why do you, a Senator, want me to become Emperor?”

“I shall explain,” McGillivray said. “The bonds of loyalty that held the Federation together have been fraying for a long time. The Inheritance Wars inflicted a colossal level of trauma on us, because the Colonial Alliance wanted to be independent of the Federation and that could not be allowed. The Blue Star War damaged the Federation’s sense of unity. And now Admiral Justinian and the other warlords formed their own little kingdoms.”

He shook his head. “Very few people have any loyalty to the Senate. They certainly don’t want to go out and die for the Senate. And who can blame them when it is increasingly obvious that the Senate is a closed world, dominated by a political elite that not only doesn’t care about the people, but is willing to actively harm even those who have worked for them to get what it wants? There is no longer any connection between the ruled and the rulers. We need, somehow, to reawaken the bonds of loyalty.

“We need someone who can serve as the focus of that loyalty. Someone who is respected and—more importantly—trusted by the population. Someone who is canny enough to know what needs to be done, and is willing to cut through the knots that prevent it from being done. How many people do you think have that kind of base to work on? You—just you.”

“You—the Brotherhood—promoted me on Earth,” Marius pointed out dispassionately. “Did you have this outcome in mind from the start?”

“And throughout the Core Worlds,” McGillivray agreed. “We hoped that the rebellious warlords would force the Federation Senate to change or die. They refused to change and, partly because of your heroic efforts, survived the war. If they don’t leave power, soon, they will try to lock down the entire Federation. All the fault lines running through our society will shatter, and the Federation will come apart. The result will be chaos on a galactic scale.”

“And with the Outsiders moving in, the Federation will be vulnerable,” Marius said. He couldn’t deny the Senator’s logic, yet...he didn’t want to be emperor. Perhaps he could hold the position for ten years, and then put it down. “I think...”

“Consider Earth,” McGillivray said, interrupting him. “Why is the population so high? Answer: the Senate feeds the population, allowing Earth to survive with a much greater population than any other planet. What can we do about this? Answer: we can put contraceptives in the state-supplied foods, cutting the birth rate. Why aren’t we doing this? Because the program is blocked in the Senate every time it is suggested.”

Marius had been listening patiently. Now he leaned forward.