“And then disposed of her,” Lord Rothschild said. His family hadn’t been among her supporters — and never let anyone forget it. “The problem is that we don’t have a candidate.”
“Then we find someone with actual experience and put them in the command seat,” Tiberius said. “And then we can use the patronage networks to back them to the hilt.”
He logged out of the meeting, torn between frustration and relief as the images vanished, leaving him alone in the secure chamber. It was so bloody irritating to go over the same issues time and time again, even if new evidence of Admiral Wachter’s determination to clean house had arrived from Morrison. Why did they feel they could simply talk the rebellion out of existence? Tiberius asked himself, not for the first time, why so many of the Family Heads had even managed to reach their positions. It was rare for them to pull their heads out of their butts.
Gritting his teeth, he strode into his office and glared at one of the paintings hanging on the wall. Rumour had it that his great-grandfather had employed a whole troupe of people to help him blow off steam, although Tiberius rather hoped that the stories weren’t actually true. He knew more than he wanted to know about the perversions practiced by the lesser aristocracy — even some in his own family — but he honestly didn’t know how his great-grandfather had found the time. There was always something for the Family Head to do.
He rolled his eyes as Sharon stepped into his office, carrying the datapad. “I have the latest reports from the industrial nodes,” she said. “Do you want a summery?”
Tiberius glared down at his hands. If only he dared trust one of his relatives to serve as an assistant. But he knew that none of them could be trusted to put the family’s interests first, not when they would think they had a chance to unseat Tiberius. And they might be right, if they acted carefully. The appearance of weakness or folly might be enough to bring him down.
“Not really,” he said, tiredly. “You’d better just let me read the full report.”
Gaunt had told them, as she led the way through a network of disused passageways, stairwells and sealed apartments, that the underground on Earth was literally underground, largely hidden under the towering cities. The omnipresent surveillance grew thinner and thinner under the ground, until there were large sections of the cities where there was no surveillance at all. Gaunt had added that youth gangs often made a game out of smashing surveillance devices, despite the harsh penalties if they were caught. It wasn’t as if they had anything to look forward to in their lives.
The warehouse itself had been abandoned hundreds of years ago, she’d explained, when she’d led them into their new living quarters. It served as a gathering place for sharing tips and training, as well as neutral ground between the different underground organisations. It was also linked to countless possible escape routes, allowing the underground operatives to bug out if they believed they were under attack. Even a full regiment of Marines, Frandsen had noted, would find it hard to block every possible escape route.
“And we’d see them coming if they did,” Gaunt told him, with a leer. “We have quite a few surprises set up for them if they try.”
Gaunt worried Adeeba more than she cared to admit. The woman wasn’t quite stable; indeed, there was an icy determination to hurt the enemy that seemed to override her common sense, let alone her understanding that the underground had to conserve its strength and strike decisive blows. Frandsen had told her that Gaunt had probably endured a full interrogation at one point, then escaped before they exiled or simply executed her. Gaunt had refused to talk about it at all when they’d asked, merely pointing to her scars and noting that she had scores she wanted to settle before she died.
It was hard to keep track of time in the underground. Adeeba knew that it had been two months since they had arrived on Earth, but each day seemed to blur into an endlessly repetitive pattern. The lightning never changed, no matter what they did. And it was growing harder and harder to tell the masked underground fighters apart. Frandsen could teach them everything from making homemade bombs to simple tactics, but Adeeba could only wait. If she hadn’t been used to naval quarters, she suspected she would probably have cracked by now.
“I thought you grew up on Earth,” Frandsen said, when she said that out loud. “This isn’t as bad as some places.”
“I grew up on the other side of the planet,” Adeeba said, crossly. “And there was more to do than here.”
The discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Gaunt and several masked figures, all of whom seemed to carry themselves with more authority than the younger men Frandsen had been trying to teach. Leaders, Adeeba guessed, wearing masks to conceal their identities. Their clothes were so baggy and shapeless that it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. They even wore gloves to keep from leaving any fingerprints or DNA traces.
“You can call me Alpha,” the leader said. “We have been collecting intelligence for you. In the course of doing so, we also stumbled across an opportunity to do the enemy considerable damage. We intend to deploy it within the week.”
Adeeba hesitated. “Are you sure you can do it without provoking reprisals?”
“We believe that it will be impossible for them to prove it was us,” Alpha said. “It will also leave hints that suggest that it was industrial sabotage, rather than anything else. However, there is a certain element of risk. We can expect them to tighten their precautions after the incident.”
“And thus make intelligence-gathering harder in future,” Adeeba said. The underground had picked up a great deal of intelligence, mostly concentrated on the Empire’s mobilisation efforts. It would have been very useful for Colin, if they had been able to get it back to him in a reasonable timeframe. “What exactly will it do?”
“Hopefully, damage a number of computer cores,” Alpha said. “They should feel the effects very quickly. Even once they work out what happened, it will still be hard to trace it back to us.”
Adeeba exchanged a look with Frandsen, then nodded. The underground leaders wouldn’t have brought it to them unless they’d already made up their minds to take the shot. If she said no… they didn’t have to listen to her. All she could do was give them her blessing and hope it didn’t rebound in their face.
“Good luck,” she said, finally.
Gaunt rubbed her hands together. “We hit them tomorrow,” she said. “And who knows what advantage we will be able to get out of the chaos?”
“If we’re lucky, the imps will start blaming each other,” Alpha said. “That can only help the cause.”
Adeeba rolled her eyes. She’d never realised that the Thousand Families competed so savagely, but it made sense. The Empire no longer had the resources to invest in developing new colonies, certainly not ones that would start to pay off their loans quickly enough to be effective. They were scrabbling over a shrinking pie.
“Let’s hope so,” she agreed. “Let us know what happens.”
Chapter Twelve
Marian Fairchild stopped outside her apartment door and fumbled in her pocket for the keys. The fingerprint scanner was broken again, thanks to the youth gangs that roamed this part of Luna City, and she had to use the manual way. She cursed the little bastards under her breath as she opened the door. Somehow, her rank as a Mid-Level Programmer in the Cicero Industrial Plant didn’t entitle her to an apartment on a higher level, even though her boss had told her that she was one of his most valuable employees and he wasn’t going to let her seek promotion or a transfer. Instead, she had to put up with the gangs damaging her door and praying that they wouldn’t decide to break in one day. Both of her daughters were just too vulnerable when she wasn’t in the apartment.