“You may be right,” Goscinny acknowledged. He leaned forward, dismissing the argument. “The point is that such customs are very important to the first-rank worlds and interfering with them will only provoke anger.”
“I think we’re getting a little off-topic here,” Colin said, before the argument could grow any further. He could see, as he often could these days, both sides of the issue. It might have been the price of playing politics, but he suspected that he was losing his idealism, or even his determination to do what was right, regardless of the cost. “We will investigate Cottbus and proceed from there. Once we know what we’re dealing with, we can decide what to do next.”
He watched as, one by one, they filed out of the room. He hated to admit it, but there were times when he wished he’d just gone renegade or maybe even remained a mere Commander, permanently under Percival’s thumb. There, he hadn’t even known how lucky he was, while now the whole weight of the Empire rested on his shoulders. He couldn’t even put it down without risking the loss of everything they’d fought for. Billions of lives rested in his hands…
Politics, he thought, in disgust.
The Embassy, as she had decided to call it, was small, but functional. Carola had set up a pair of rooms for herself and her bodyguards, a second pair for her assistants, and little else. There was no point in cramming the building full of luxuries… and besides, she was trying to signify a major break with the past. The Cottbus Embassy didn’t need luxury, or wealth, but a businesslike attitude.
“I want you to hire a long-range courier boat,” she ordered one of her assistants, as she paced around her office. “I’ll provide the secure data packets for Markus to read, once they get to Cottbus. Make sure you pick one of the independent firms and not something owned by the Families.”
“Yes, Ambassador,” the aide said, and headed out the door.
Carola threw herself into her armchair — her sole concession to luxury — and rubbed her hands together with glee. It had all worked perfectly — well, almost perfectly. She had hoped that Parliament would vote to accept her as Ambassador without further delay, but it seemed that saner voices had prevailed. That was hardly a surprise; they didn’t have any means of verifying what she’d told them and they would be foolish to accept her without finding some way to verify her claims. It would take them at least two months to come close to identifying the truth… and by then, she would have her hooks deep into Earth’s population.
She smiled as she reached for her terminal and scrolled through the messages. As she had expected, the number of messages had skyrocketed after she had addressed Parliament, with everything from requests for dinner with MPs to offers of business relations from various firms and Family-owned corporations. She would turn down the latter, of course, and rely on the former; they would have to back her politically, or discover that their own government was hurting them. It was a neat little trap that the rebels couldn’t hope to escape, unless they tore down their own rules. She doubted that they would do anything of the sort.
In the end, she suspected, they would probably try to move in on Cottbus anyway, only to discover that Admiral Wilhelm wasn’t alone after all. The war would be long and bloody, but by then, she was confident of victory. The Empire was ripe for the taking… and it would be her, in the end, who sat beside her husband on the Imperial Throne.
Her other assistant knocked on the door. “Ambassador, we have a direct call for you,” she said. Carola looked up, annoyed. There had been hundreds of direct calls for her, most of which she had been forced to reject. Her time was too short to exchange inane pleasantries with everyone who thought that they were important. “I believe that you should take this one.”
“Oh, really?” Carola asked. She had made her position on direct calls quite clear. They weren’t allowed to talk to her unless it was something very important indeed. “And why is this one so important?”
“It’s someone you might remember,” the aide said. “It’s Gwendolyn Cicero.”
Chapter Eleven
“I don’t want any formalities,” Goscinny said, as the shuttle landed neatly in the Jefferson’s shuttlebay. “I just want to remain a mere passenger.”
“A passenger with thirty aides, assistants and gofers,” Admiral Katy Garland said dryly. “And, I might add, three whole squadrons of superdreadnaughts to escort him to his new workplace. How many members of the Thousand Families had such an escort?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Goscinny said, realising that he was being teased. “I don’t want to start a habit of enjoying such accommodations.”
Katy nodded. The old Imperial Navy had been fond, very fond, of grand formalities when hosting senior dignities, from entire greeting parties to celebrations and astonishing luxuries, at least for the guest. The ordinary crewmen wouldn’t see any change in their treatment even if they were convoying a Clan Head. The new Imperial Navy, as designed and shaped by Colin and his inner circle, was much less keen on such formalities, regarding them as a waste of effort. Katy privately suspected that some officers regretted their passing, but she wasn’t one of them. The idea of treating a guest onboard her starship so well was almost insulting.
“Nor should you,” she said, finally. “I prevailed upon Captain Chalker to leave out most of the formalities, just so you could be introduced to the starship gradually.” She smiled. “Besides, everyone is very busy at the moment and they don’t have time to down tools and welcome us onboard.”
“I know,” Goscinny said. The pressure to move, from the arrival of the Victorious and its Ambassador, had only been growing stronger. Katy had barely had time to carry out a few minor exercises and she wasn’t confident in the gunnery capability of half her ships. There should have been months, at least, to work the fleet up properly and turn it into a well-drilled weapon, but events, as always, had dictated their own pace. “How confident are you of success if we had to fight it out with Cottbus?”
Katy left the question unanswered as they boarded the massive superdreadnaught, exchanged greetings with the Captain and two of his officers — somehow, she wasn’t surprised that Captain Toby Chalker had found time to greet her personally, even through it was far from her first time onboard — and allowed the Captain to show Goscinny to his cabin. The Independence-class superdreadnaughts didn’t leave as much room for passengers as the more standard General-class ships, but they still managed to create enough room for Goscinny and his aides. The ship itself felt distinctly undermanned, but that was the result of the automation the Geeks had built into the ship. It was something that worried her. The Jefferson might have twice the effective firepower of a General-class superdreadnaught, but if she were ever to be seriously damaged, she would find herself in much more trouble. The Damage Control departments had suffered heavily.
“So,” Goscinny said, as they settled down into his cabin. She declined an offer of brandy and accepted, instead, a mug of coffee. The warm liquid felt wonderful after so long preparing the fleet. “You never answered my question.”
“I couldn’t answer your question,” Katy said, slowly. “I don’t know the exact situation and just what we will be facing. Assuming that we face everything that was listed as being part of the Cottbus Sector Fleet — and given that that listing comes from a year ago, it won’t be accurate — we should be able to defeat them in a stand-up battle. The advantages of this ship and the experienced crews scattered through our units should give us a decisive advantage.”