The Shadow of Cincinnatus (7 page)

He keyed his console, linking into the Marine Command Net. “Elf, I’d like you to look at the data,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”

There was a pause. Roman used it to watch the display, wondering just how many rules and regulations had been flouted. But...Athena had been effectively out of contact with the Grand Senate for six years. What had Governor Barany managed to do without the Grand Senate peeking over his shoulder? And was it really right to punish him for actually taking his system and turning it into a success?

But if he’s made deals with pirates
, Roman thought,
it isn’t something we could allow to go unpunished
.

“Picking up a signal from the planet,” Palter said. “Governor Barany sends his regards and invites you to call on him as soon as the fleet enters orbit.”

Roman considered it, briefly. He could hardly avoid paying a call on the governor, even if what he suspected was true. And besides, it would give him a chance to take the measure of the governor in person. Emperor Marius
had
given him considerable latitude, after all. But he had a feeling, if the old reports were entirely accurate, that the governor was up to his receding hairline in pirate activity. He’d taken advantage of six years of near-independence to build up a protection racket that was blighting the entire sector.

Roman’s earpiece buzzed. “I don’t like this,” Elf said. “It looks, very much, like the governor has made a deal with someone.”

“I know,” Roman said. “You have the plans for Operation Swap. Start tailoring them to the current situation.”

“Aye, sir,” Elf said.

Slowly, Athena herself came into view on the display. She looked like Earth had once been, according to the history books; a blue-green orb hanging against the blackness of interstellar space. But she was surrounded by five heavy – and outdated – battlestations, as well as countless orbital facilities and transhipment nodes. There were far more than the system should be able to support, Roman calculated mentally. The Gross Planetary Product had to be significantly higher than the Grand Senate had been led to believe.

“Link us into System Command,” he ordered. “I want us to have complete access to their systems – everything from short-range active sensors to long-range probes and listening platforms. Get the data filtered through to the intelligence analysts and tell them I want a complete breakdown of the system. Specifically, I want to know just what the fuck is going on.”

“Aye, sir,” Palter said.

Elf’s face appeared in the display. “Operation Swap has been updated,” she said. “The Marines are on standby, ready for immediate deployment.”

“We need evidence, first,” Roman said. The emperor might not object if they simply arrested the governor, but if there was to be a trial there had to be evidence. It was just possible that Governor Barany had pulled off a miracle. “Something to prove that the governor is a dirty bastard.”

“We already have proof,” Elf said. “The system has far more industrial production nodes than it should. Where is the excess production
going
?”

Roman frowned as the analysis popped up in front of him. Athena might have jumped a pair of development stages, but her industries weren’t large enough to absorb such a high level of production. Roman could understand wanting to build up a stockpile of spare parts – such a stockpile might have saved the Federation Navy from considerable embarrassment during the early years of the war – but there didn’t seem to be
any
such stockpile. And then, sooner or later, the industries would be unable to support themselves, if they were unable to sell their products. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t escape the impression that he was seeing evidence of heavy corruption right in front of him.

He gritted his teeth. It was absurd! By any reasonable standard, the governor had done an excellent job of ensuring the system remained loyal to the Federation – and survived the economic shockwaves. There were no shortage of horror stories about colonies that had collapsed, while the Grand Senate’s attention was elsewhere. Worlds cut off from supply lines, or raided by pirates, or simply forgotten in the chaos caused by the war. But if the governor had been making deals with
someone
, he had to be stopped. There was no alternative.

“We’ll call upon the governor tonight,” he said, after a moment’s thought. By then, they should have the proof they needed. “And...”

“Admiral,” Palter interrupted. “I think you should see this.”

Roman swung around as a new icon popped up in the display. “What the hell is that?”

“A starship of unknown design,” Palter said. A stream of data ran past the icon as the sensors started to probe the mystery ship. “I think she’s alien, sir.”

Roman blinked in surprise. Aliens were not allowed starships, full stop. The traumas of the First Interstellar War were still too raw for humanity to ever consider letting its guard down or ever accepting aliens as equals. The policy wasn’t something he approved of, not completely, but it couldn’t be helped. Allowing an alien starship anywhere near a human world was a clear breach of the law.

And she has to come from the Beyond
, Roman thought, sharply.
The governor didn’t report her presence to his superiors
.

“Query System Command,” he ordered, sharply. “I want a full explanation for her presence.”

The answer came quickly. “Apparently, she was salvaged a month ago,” Palter said. “They don’t know where she came from, sir.”

“Really,” Roman said. Any contact with a new spacefaring race had to be reported to the Grand Senate at once, whatever the situation. It was laid down in Federation Law. “Have a team prepared to board her, once we’ve dealt with the governor.”

“Aye, sir,” Palter said.

Roman forced himself to stand as the fleet entered high orbit. It felt
wrong
to leave the CIC when they were so close to the planetary defenses, no matter how confident his mentor had been that no one would put their lives on the line for Governor Barany. The fleet couldn’t keep its shields up without alarming the governor, which meant that the planetary defenses, no matter how outdated, could do real damage before the fleet returned fire. It was a risk, but one he had to take. There was no other way to arrest the governor without risking everything.

“Keep a sharp eye on the defenses,” he ordered. “And be ready to snap the shields up without waiting for orders, if necessary.”

He strode out of the CIC and down into his cabin, where he donned his dress uniform. So much had been revised since the Justinian War, but dress uniforms had been unaccountably overlooked. The blue and grey uniform that marked him as a commodore – with a very slight service record, marked in gold pips – was hellishly uncomfortable. He’d been told, back at the Academy, that it helped keep the cadets alert, but they’d privately suspected that someone with powerful connections had blackmailed the Federation Navy into accepting their creations. It was the only explanation that made sense.

Shame we don’t have time to change it
, he thought, as he checked his appearance in the mirror. His brown hair seemed thinner these days, even though he was only twenty-nine and alarmingly young for his rank. The dress uniform made him look older, thankfully. If it wasn’t so uncomfortable, he might almost have been pleased. But changing the design was a very low priority at the moment.

His communicator bleeped. “Platoon A is assembled and ready to provide escort,” Elf said. “They’ve all been briefed.”

“Good,” Roman said. It was almost a shame he couldn’t walk into the meeting with Elf by his side, but she had to command the platoon. Besides, it would draw their relationship into the open air, even though he was morbidly convinced everyone already knew anyway. It wasn’t in breach of regulations. “I’m on my way.”

The Marines, wearing dress uniforms he knew for a fact to be actually
comfortable
, met him at the shuttlebay. They didn’t look armed and armored, but Elf had once shown him just how many weapons could be concealed within a dress uniform – or any kind of uniform, for that matter. Watching her remove a whole series of knives, guns and other surprises had been both exciting and terrifying. He’d wondered, once, why prisoners were always stripped naked when they were taken into custody. He knew now.

“Sir,” Elf said. On duty, her face showed no trace of any emotions. Like him, she had been promoted rapidly, perhaps too rapidly. But the Marines wouldn’t have tolerated her if she’d been dangerously incompetent. “Platoon A is ready to depart. Company Two and Three, as well as WARCAT One, are also ready and waiting in shuttlebay two.”

“Thank you,” Roman said. It would probably require an entire team of investigators to uncover
all
of Governor Barany’s misdeeds, but a WARCAT team could make a start on it and, hopefully, uncover enough evidence to send the governor through the airlock and into hard vacuum. “They can follow us once we’ve secured the governor.”

He smiled, inwardly, as they tramped into the shuttle. He’d never hear the end of it afterwards, once they were alone together. What sort of captain, let alone a commodore, would leave his command deck and put his life on the line, just to snare a corrupt governor? But it was the only way to do it without the governor fleeing for his life...and besides, compared to some of the other stunts he’d done, it wasn’t genuinely reckless. The Marines would protect him if the shit hit the fan.

The shuttle rocked, then lifted off the deck and flew out into open space.

The Federation is divided up into sectors for ease of administration (and also for rigging elections in the Grand Senate’s favor). Each of these sectors generally consists of twenty to thirty star systems, with a Governor based at the Sector Capital, which tends to be the star system of greatest tactical/strategic importance. This generally implies the presence of a considerable number of Asimov Points
.

-The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

Athena, 4098

The original planners had shown a remarkable – and largely unprecedented – level of imagination when they’d named the planet’s capital city, Roman decided, as the shuttle dropped down towards the governor’s palace. Athena City might have sounded unimaginative in the extreme, but when nine out of ten capital cities were named something along the lines of ‘Landing City’ or ‘First Landing,’ it was definitely an improvement. It was intended, eventually, that the settlers would rename the city they’d founded, but it rarely happened in practice. The bureaucrats objected to having to redo all the paperwork.

Roman had never really liked planetary surfaces. He’d grown up in an asteroid habitat, after all, where the environment could be precisely controlled, without any of the irritating little problems that planet-dwellers faced like tornadoes or unanticipated rainfall. Indeed, he’d been astonished to discover just how vulnerable some planetary settlements were, even without pirates, raiders and terrorists. A single bad harvest could ruin the entire settlement and, if they were unlucky, plunge them all into debt. It made so much more sense, he thought, to move the entire human race into space. Anyone masochistic enough to want to live on a planetary surface deserved everything they got.

But he had to admit, as he stared down at the city, that the planet’s settlers had done well for themselves. The endless rows of prefabricated buildings that made up the early settlement had been dismantled, apart from one that sat in the middle of a park and was clearly intended to show the planet’s children how far the settlement had come. Instead, there were towering buildings of glass and concrete, far more than he would have expected from such a young colony world. And the people thronged the streets without any sense of care or fear for the future. There was an optimism pervading the city, he thought, that reminded him of the early days at the Academy. It almost felt attractive.

He turned his attention to the governor’s palace and groaned, inwardly. The building was massive, far larger than necessary...and a shining testament to the governor’s vanity. It was mean to serve as an administrative center as well as his personal residence, but it was too large even for that. Roman shook his head in disbelief as the shuttle landed atop the rear landing pad, wondering just how many credits the governor had wasted on the palace. It wasn’t as if the governor was going to stay there indefinitely.

Unless he thinks he is
, Roman thought.
Did he think the war would go on forever
?

The shuttle touched down with a bump, the hatch springing open a moment later. Elf motioned for him to stay in his seat as the Marines moved out, then signalled for him to follow them out onto the tarmac. The world smelled faintly of flowers, something that surprised him until he saw the gardens surrounding the palace. Governor Barany liked flowers, Roman saw. It wasn’t something he’d expected from Emperor Marius’s description of the man.

“Commodore Garibaldi,” a young woman said. “Welcome to Government House.”

Roman studied her for a long moment. She was tall, wearing a long dress that hinted at her curves rather than revealing them. Long blonde hair hung down to her rear, framing a thin face and highlighting blue eyes and perfect lips. Her skin was so perfect, Roman decided, that it was obvious someone had paid for her cosmetic surgery. It was just too perfect to be real.

“Thank you,” Roman said, reminding himself firmly that Elf stood right next to him. “Please escort us to the governor.”

The girl looked doubtful. “All of you? We have refreshments and company for your friends...”

“All of us,” Roman said, firmly. “Please.”

The girl bowed, then led them through the door. Roman had to fight to keep his face impassive as he took in the Governor’s House. He’d heard tales of the luxury enjoyed by the rich, powerful and well-connected, but he’d never really seen it before. Giant statues lay everywhere, each one carefully named and dated. Roman had to check his implants to identify a couple of them, all ancestors of the current governor immortalized in gold and silver. It was clear that Governor Barany intended to place his stamp quite firmly on the palace, ensuring his successors knew just who to thank. But Roman found it more than a little gaudy – and completely tasteless.