The Shadow of Cincinnatus (42 page)

And all necessary means are to be embraced to win as quickly as possible
, Marius thought, coldly.
The sooner the war is ended, the better
.

“Overall,” Sitka concluded, “the battle was a success. Probes through Asimov Points Delta, Echo and Gamma revealed an enemy in disarray. That was, of course, weeks ago.”

Marius nodded. By now, Roman Garibaldi might have launched a counterattack that had pushed the enemy back to the Rim, or he might have lost Boston System if the Outsiders had managed to throw a second attack in through the undefended Asimov Point. Still, the victory would give new heart to the Federation and discourage unrest and outright rebellion. Given time, they could win the war. And then there would be time to breathe.

He cleared his throat. “We need to take advantage of this as quickly as possible,” he said. “I believe we should immediately move to...liberate the worlds occupied by the Outsiders.”

“Those worlds, in many cases, willingly joined the Outsiders,” General Thorne pointed out, dryly. “We will need to put together a much larger pacification force to ensure that unrest is kept under control.”

Marius nodded. It was almost a shame that the old pacification units had been disbanded, their troopers dumped on penal worlds.
They’d
known how to deal with unrest. He’d been appalled at their sheer brutality, years ago, but that was then. Now, he understood precisely why the Grand Senate had needed their servants. Brutal repression was the only way to buy time to rebuild the Federation into something workable.

“Start recruiting at once,” he ordered. Recruitment centers had already been opened, but they would have to be expanded as quickly as possible. What did it say about the pre-war Federation when one couldn’t even recruit enough thugs in time to make a difference? “And have them prepped for their journey to the Rim.”

“Yes, sir,” Thorne said.

“Admiral Garibaldi will require reinforcements,” Marius continued. A thought occurred to him and he smiled. “I intend to detach four battle squadrons from Home Fleet and take personal command, once the reinforcements are ready. My wife will remain on Earth, with full powers in my absence.”

Lawrence Tully coughed. “Emperor...are you seriously planning to leave Earth?”

“Yes. Yes, I am,” Marius said. “Do you require my constant supervision?”

Tully looked irked. “With all due respect, Emperor, our new government is
dependent
upon you,” he warned. “You are the center of government. Your absence will weaken the framework we have been building over the past two years...”

“Would you like a towel,” Marius interrupted, “to wipe my shit off your lips?”

He stormed on before Tully could say a word. “This government is intended as a temporary measure,” he said. “I do not intend to remain emperor forever, Comptroller. The government should be capable of operating without me, at least for a few months.”

“The civil service has been badly damaged by the war – the wars,” Tully said. His face had gone completely blank. “It may not survive your absence.”

“Then make sure it does,” Marius said.

He sighed, inwardly. Part of him knew it was stupid to leave Earth, but he wanted – he needed – a break from it all. The Grand Senators, fuck the lot of them, had had holiday worlds they could visit if they needed a vacation where their every whim was catered to by pleasure slaves. But the Grand Senators had had families who could take up the slack, if necessary. Marius only had Tiffany and, as much as he loved her, he had to admit that she lacked his experience in military affairs.

And besides, it might be good to remind the Federation’s population of his military skills.

“My wife will have full authority in my absence,” he said. “And I will be leaving some of you behind to advise her.”

There was a long pause. It was finally broken by Professor Kratman.

“This victory will certainly knock the Outsiders back,” he said. “It gives us an opportunity to gather ourselves and take some of the pressure off our industries. We could lower production demands and start fixing problems...”

“Out of the question,” Marius said. He hadn’t forgotten the lessons of the Inheritance Wars and he was surprised that Kratman
had
. The Colonial Alliance had slowed production before the Battle of Athens, believing the Federation Navy was effectively stalemated. They’d been disastrously wrong. “We cannot afford to slow production until the war comes to an end.”

The Professor met his eyes, reprovingly. “Then we will risk more disasters like the loss of AMP Thirty,” he said. “And each successive disaster will cause more disasters, more delays in production, more long-term headaches for the Federation.”

Marius’s hand twitched. He wanted a pill. He wanted one desperately. But he couldn’t take one in front of his cabinet...

“We will have time to breathe when we have won the war,” he said. “There can be no other threat on such a scale out there, can there?”

There was no answer. But then, there didn’t need to be. No one had really understood the sheer scale of the Outsider threat until they’d attacked the Federation. If there was yet another hostile alien race out there, the Federation might have no warning until the shit hit the fan. And a third war would take the Federation apart at the seams.

This one is already trying to do just that
, he thought, bitterly.
Yet another reason why we need to end this as soon as possible.

The thought led to another one. “I want to have the prisoners from the battle shipped to Earth,” he said. “They will be interrogated, then executed.”

“Of course, sir,” Thorne said. “Would you prefer a public execution or private?”

“That would cause them to retaliate against
our
prisoners,” Kratman snapped. “They have hundreds of thousands of our people held prisoner, ready to be slaughtered if we massacre
their
prisoners.”

“We don’t know they’ve been taking care of our prisoners,” Thorne snapped back. “I...”

“They sent us as much evidence as they reasonably could,” Kratman said.

“Faked,” Thorne insisted. “Keeping so many prisoners alive would strain them to the utmost!”

“They know better than to engage in mass slaughter,” Kratman thundered.

Thorne took a breath. “Are you
defending
them now?”

Marius slapped the table. “
Enough
,” he snapped. His head was starting to pound. “I will not hear my cabinet arguing so savagely. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Thorne said.

“The prisoners must not be slaughtered,” Kratman insisted. He didn’t seem cowed by Marius – but then, he’d known Marius as a snotty young midshipman. “They can be held on a penal world until the war is over,
then
you can consider their final disposition.”

“But they need to be interrogated,” Thorne injected. “Sir...”

“They will be held on Mars, after interrogation,” Marius ruled. He looked from face to face, desperate for the meeting to come to an end. “Are there any other issues we should raise?”

“Just one,” Tully said. “I believe we should cancel the plan to exile the student rebels.”

Marius swung around to glare at him. “Why?”

Tully looked down at the table. “Because their parents are quite important to the economy,” Tully said. “
And
the Civil Service. Resentment on their part might have quite unfortunate effects.”

Maybe I can find a use for Ness
, Marius thought.
Keeping the paper-pushers in line
.

He shook his head, a moment later. Ness might not be a potential traitor, or warlord, but he was simply unreliable.

“Very well,” he said, instead. “Hold them here, but do not exile them.”

He rose to his feet, unable to wait any longer. “Dismissed,” he said. “I will discuss your specific dispositions during my trip to Boston later.”

The cabinet dispersed. Marius watched them go, then walked through a side door into one of the smaller officers. He’d never been able to work out what the president had
done
in the office, but there was a large cabinet to one side, crammed with expensive bottles of alcohol. Some of them cost more than he’d made in a decade of serving as an admiral in the Federation Navy.

He sighed, then reached for a bottle at random and poured himself a glass. The reddish liquid smelt faintly of roses. Shaking his head – he’d never been a wine snob – he lifted the glass to his lips, silently toasted Roman Garibaldi and Fifth Fleet, then took a long sip. The wine tasted oddly smoky against his tongue, but it wasn’t unpleasant. He finished the glass and poured himself another one.

“You shouldn’t be drinking so much,” Tiffany said, as she stepped through the other door and smiled at him. “You have far too much work to do.”

“I know it,” Marius grunted. He tossed back the second glass, then placed it in the wash basin and strode through the door into the living room. “But I also have a victory to toast.”

“I heard,” Tiffany said. “Roman did well.”

“The boy was always lucky,” Marius agreed, although he knew that luck had played only a minor role in the battle. He turned as she followed him into the room. “Did you hear the bit about you taking command on Earth?”

Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want me to stay in command here?”

“I need someone I can trust absolutely,” Marius said. “There aren’t many people here who are devoted, first and foremost, to the Federation itself.”

He sat down on the sofa, rubbing his forehead. Tully was the consummate bureaucrat; he’d keep the system running, but he wouldn’t consider the greater good of anything above the system itself. Professor Kratman was more interested in theory than reality; he might be right about the dangers of pushing the economy as hard as he was, but the real danger lay in losing the war. And Thorne was more fixated on keeping a lid on potential troublemakers than anything else. Together, under his leadership, they could accomplish much. But separately, none of them could handle ultimate power.

Tiffany walked around behind him, then started to massage his neck. “I’ll miss you,” she said, as her fingers undid his jacket. “You’ll be gone for...how long?”

“At least seven months,” Marius said. “It will be quite a long time for you to hold supreme command, but you can do it. Besides, anyone who gives you real trouble will see me returning with an entire fleet behind me.”

He smiled. Home Fleet was
his
. He’d replaced some of the officers with his personal loyalists, while giving the crewmen shore leaves and other special treatment, ensuring that no attempt to foment a mutiny could succeed. Anyone who had ambitions to replace Tiffany as Regent of Earth would have to subvert Home Fleet, then somehow devise a counter to Fifth Fleet. And, of course, the superdreadnaughts under Marius’s personal command.

“Stand up,” Tiffany ordered. She removed his shirt as soon as he obeyed, then started to work on his trousers. “You need to relax.”

“I have work to do,” Marius protested, half-heartedly. “I...”

Tiffany walked around the sofa, then shrugged off her dress and stood naked before him. Marius felt a sudden lump in his throat, reminding himself just how lucky he’d been to have Tiffany given to him. The Grand Senate had thought Tiffany would help control him, or betray him if he plotted rebellion. Instead, they’d become true lovers and allies.

“I think you can wait,” Tiffany said, firmly. She stepped forward and pushed him down to the floor, then straddled him. “And besides, if I’m not going to see you for nearly a year, I want something to remember.”

* * *

The emperor looked surprisingly cheerful, Professor Kratman noted, as he was shown into the emperor’s office. He was sitting behind a desk, smiling to himself, as he read a set of readiness reports from Home Fleet. But then, he had good reason to be cheerful, Kratman knew. Home Fleet, as the Federation Navy’s reserve formation, was ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

“Professor,” Marius said. “Thank you for coming.”

“You’re welcome,” Kratman said. “What can I do for you?”

“You’ll be accompanying me to Boston,” the Emperor said. “I imagine there will be talks with the Outsiders, once they realize their defeat is inevitable. You will assist me with the talks.”

Kratman kept his expression under tight control. He’d expected to have to argue the emperor into allowing him to travel to Boston. Instead, he was being given what he wanted on a silver platter. It was enough to worry him more than he cared to admit.

“Yes, sir,” he said, softly. “Dare I hope you plan to give them more than their lives if they surrender?”

“We’ll see,” the emperor said. “But it depends on just how quickly they are prepared to bend the knee.”

“Yes, sir,” Kratman said. There would be time to convince the emperor to moderate his demands later, on the flight to Boston. “It will be my pleasure to serve.”

Kratman noticed a sheet of white paper on the desk and frowned. “What is that?”

“An execution warrant,” the emperor said. He gave his former CO an odd little smile, then held the paper out for inspection. “Blake Raistlin will die today.”

“Oh,” Kratman said.

From:
The Chaos Years
(5023)

There is an old analogy about political systems that are too closely interrelated for peaceful separation to be achieved. Two scorpions are confined within a small bottle, too small for both of them. But the scorpion that strikes first is unlikely to kill its opponent before it is stung itself. The outcome is mutual destruction.

For the Federation and the Outsiders, the analogy could not be more precise.

The Federation could not surrender its grip on the out-worlds. Nor could the out-worlds passively accept Federation domination indefinitely. Indeed, the Outsiders had fled the outcome of the last major interstellar war over who ran the Federation. The war bred ruthlessness on both sides because, intentionally or otherwise, the war aims were thoroughly incompatible. Emperor Marius saw the Federation as a holy cause; it could not be sundered, whatever the cost. But the Outsider leadership saw the Federation as the source of all evil. There could be no compromise.