There was a long pause as the Admiral considered it, his face impassive. “There are conditions,” he said, finally.
“Name them,” Tiberius said. He wasn’t in the mood to bargain. “What do you want?”
The Admiral ticked off points on his fingers. “You can’t run the war from Earth,” he said. “I want overall authority to operate without referring every decision back to you. I want authority to remove officers who don’t live up to my standards or are hopelessly corrupt. I want authority to activate the naval reserves, access naval stores and other measures to get the fleet into fighting trim without having to seek permission from Luna Base.”
Tiberius felt his eyes narrow, again. “You think the fleet isn’t in fighting trim?”
“I would be very surprised if it is,” the Admiral said, bluntly. “When I was last on the command deck of a superdreadnaught, corrupt officers had a nasty habit of stealing supplies and selling them off. I expect the missiles that destroyed the Jupiter Shipyards came from the Imperial Navy, originally. Even if they didn’t…”
He shrugged. “And morale will be in the pits,” he added. “Which leads to another point. I don’t want Blackshirts on the ships. Putting them on ships in Sector 117 was idiotic, to say the least. I’m not surprised that the crews mutinied. The Blackshirts are animals.”
“I know,” Tiberius said, quietly.
“And one other thing,” the Admiral said. “I know there will be spies in the command staff and spies in the crews. The patronage networks will see to that, I expect. But I don’t want anyone undermining my authority. If you want to relieve me of command, that’s one thing — I’ll accept it, even if I won’t like it. I won’t tolerate officers trying to undermine me or asserting separate authority. One hint of that and I will put the officer in question out an airlock.”
Tiberius met his eyes, seeing nothing but grim resolve. The Thousand Families had been leery of placing so much power into a single person’s hands, even before the Empress had reminded them of the wisdom of that policy. If the Admiral was secretly disloyal — or even merely ambitious — he would have ample opportunity to prepare the ground for a coup. The patronage networks normally made that tricky, if not impossible. But if the networks were told to keep their heads down…
There would be no checks and balances, nothing to prevent the Admiral from laying his own plans. He’d been a legend in the Imperial Navy a long time before Tiberius had even been born, one of the few Admirals to earn respect from all ranks. And yet, if he’d wanted to be disloyal, he could just have kept his mouth shut. Instead, he was practically daring Tiberius to reject him. Or was it a cunning double-bluff?
Or was he completely unaware of the political subtext? Did he just want the tools he needed to do the job properly, no matter the political cost?
“I believe I can ensure that no one challenges you openly,” Tiberius said, slowly. “But I’m afraid there will be spies. I doubt I could convince the others to remove them.”
“Probably not, no,” the Admiral said. He looked down at the datapad, then back up at Tiberius. “Admiral Porter — or rather his command staff — is correct to suggest that we prepare our defensive lines at Morrison. The rebels will, assuming they drive on Earth, have to reduce and occupy the base to protect their rear. My fleet will assemble there, then lure the rebels into battle in a time and place of our choosing.”
“There will be objections,” Tiberius pointed out, mildly. “Hundreds of worlds are at risk.”
The Admiral snorted. “I cannot defend everywhere,” he said. “If I spread out the fleet, we will risk losing everything. The rebels will simply concentrate their forces against one target after another. Smaller worlds add nothing to their strength, so they can be recovered after the rebel fleet is destroyed.”
Tiberius nodded. “Why not attack directly towards Jackson’s Folly?”
“I doubt the fleet is in any condition to take the offensive,” the Admiral admitted. “The rebels will know that we have a huge production advantage. Their only hope for victory is to attack Earth and the other Core Worlds as soon as possible. The autonomous worlds may even consider joining the rebels if the rebels look likely to win.”
He shrugged. “Besides, we don’t know where the rebel shipyards are,” he added. “Given three or four years to build up our forces, we can start scouring the Beyond for their bases.”
Tiberius winced. “How long will it take to finish the war?”
The Admiral gave him a quirky grin. “The war could be shortened considerably by making the wrong decisions now,” he said. “But war is a democracy. The enemy gets a vote.”
“Finish it as quickly as possible,” Tiberius said. The Empire hadn’t mobilised the entire Imperial Navy in centuries. Even bringing the naval reserves up to full fighting trim would be costly — and, right now, the Empire’s economy was fragile. What would happen if it collapsed completely? “We don’t know how much time we have before the Empire falls.”
“No,” the Admiral said. “I suppose you don’t.”
Sharon entered the office when Tiberius called her, then escorted the Admiral to the shuttle that would take him to his new flagship. Tiberius watched him go, hoping that he’d done the right thing by pushing the Admiral forward. Even if he was loyal, it had been years since the Admiral had set foot on a command deck. What if he’d lost the knack?
He pushed his thoughts aside as two of his cousins, Lady Gwendolyn Cicero and Lord Pompey Cicero, were shown into the office. Gwendolyn was tall, heartbreakingly beautiful and had a mind like a steel trap, as countless would-be lovers had found out to their discomfort and dismay. There was a reason she was tipped to head up the family’s intelligence apparatus after her great-uncle resigned. She had a remarkable talent for extracting information from unwilling donors. Beside her, Pompey seemed to almost fade into the background, which suited him quite nicely. There were few better experts on security measures and countermeasures in the High City.
And they were both young enough to actually think.
Tiberius nodded to them both as they sat down, Gwendolyn artfully arranging herself so she displayed the tops of her breasts to watching eyes. He knew better than to trust her completely, not when she had enough ambition for the entire family hidden under her smile, but he knew that she could be trusted to put the family’s interests ahead of her own. After all, even Tiberius could not remain in the family if he alienated everyone else. Pompey, on the other hand, had no real ambition. It wasn’t always a character flaw.
“You know the situation, I assume,” he said. They would probably have heard the full story from one of Gwendolyn’s sources. Tiberius knew for a fact that she was bedding a senior member of the Rothschild Family, someone high enough to isolate facts from the rumours flying through the High City. “I have a specific task for you two.”
Gwendolyn smiled, winsomely. “For us, My Lord?”
“For you,” Tiberius confirmed, shortly. If there was one thing he knew about Gwendolyn, it was never to lower his guard around her. “This rebellion threatens the interests of the family as well as the Empire as a whole. We may lose the war.”
“Surely not, My Lord,” Gwendolyn said. She was mocking him, very slightly. “The Empire is invincible.”
“We may defeat the rebels, but lose the war,” Tiberius said, coldly. “The cost of defeating them might well add to the economic damage we have already suffered. If the ties binding our economy start to collapse, we will find ourselves scrabbling over the pieces of the Empire and fighting a civil war. We might not come out ahead.”