"Eric! What the hell—?!"
"Those shuttles just altered course, Mr. President! They're headed straight in our direction, and—"
The PSF man never finished his sentence, for seven assault shuttles of the People's Navy screamed over the People's Palace. Four five-thousand-kilo precision guided warheads scored direct hits on the Presidential Dining Room, and Sidney Harris, his wife, his three children, and his entire cabinet and all of his senior advisors, ceased to exist in a fireball of chemical explosives.
Five seconds later, the Palace itself was little more than flaming rubble strewn across the cratered horror of its once immaculate grounds.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the Quorum, I am appalled by the scale of this act of treason." Speaker Robert Stanton Pierre shook his head sadly as he gazed out over the stunned faces of the People's Quorum and spoke into the dead silence. For all intents and purposes, the entire government of the Peoples Republic of Haven had been annihilated along with the heads of every Legislaturalist family that really mattered, and the full impact of the disaster was still sinking into the Quorum's minds.
"The fact that Secretary Saint-Just's Internal Security personnel were able to intercept and annihilate the traitors cannot lessen the blow," Pierre went on sadly. "Not only have our leaders and their families been brutally murdered, but the traitors came out of our own military! Commodore Danton has confirmed that the shuttles which carried out the attack were covered by official orders—orders which would have been wiped from his data base by still other traitors if not for the prompt action of loyal members of his staff. I deeply regret the casualties those loyal men and women suffered in the gunfight which wrecked the Commodores HQ, but the presence of the traitors who provoked it, coupled with their readiness to resort to violence when challenged, must raise the gravest suspicions. Under the circumstances, we have no option but to assume the worst, at least until the most thorough investigation can sift these horrible events in detail."
"Mr. Speaker!" A well-fed, beefy back-bencher stood, and Pierre nodded to him.
"The Chair recognizes Mr. Guzman."
"What do you mean 'assume the worst,' Mr. Speaker?"
"I mean that we face the gravest crisis in our history," Pierre said softly. "This attack was launched by Navy personnel on the heels of the worst defeat our fleet has ever suffered. We must ask ourselves who had the authority to order those shuttles out on their 'exercise.' We must ask ourselves who had reason to fear the government's reaction to their failure against the Hancock System and the loss of Seaford Nine."
"Surely you're not suggesting that senior Navy officers were responsible?!"
"I am suggesting only that until we know who was responsible, we must consider every possibility, however terrible," Pierre replied in a level voice. "I hope with all my heart that I am doing our military personnel a grave injustice by even suggesting such a thing, but until we can be certain of that, we owe it to the Republic to guard against the chance that I'm not."
"We owe it to the Republic?" someone else asked, without seeking recognition, and Pierre nodded grimly.
"The government has been destroyed, ladies and gentlemen. Secretary Saint-Just and Secretary Bergren are the cabinet's sole survivors, and only Secretary Saint-Just is currently on Haven. He's already informed me that, as no more than Secretary Palmer-Levy's acting successor, he feels neither qualified to nor capable of assuming the burden of government. Which means that we, the people's representatives, have no option but to assume emergency powers until such time as formal government can be reestablished."
"Us?" someone yelped, and Pierre nodded once more.
"I realize our experience is limited, but who else is there?" He looked at his fellows appealingly. "We are at war with the Star Kingdom of Manticore and its lackeys. In a time of such peril, the Republic must not drift uncontrolled, and until we can know positively that the military is reliable, we dare not place ourselves at its mercy. In the face of those inescapable and overriding concerns, we have no choice but to face our responsibility to provide the stability we so desperately need by organizing ourselves as a committee of public safety to assume direction of the state."
The Peoples Quorum stared at its speaker in shock. After so many decades of rubber-stamp approval of someone else's policies, barely a fraction of them had the least idea how to wield effective power. The very thought of it terrified them, yet none of them could deny the force of Pierre's logic. Someone had to assume control, and if there was the chance of a full-scale military coup...
Pierre let the silence linger for long, endless moments, then cleared his throat.
"I have, on my own authority, discussed our critical situation with Secretary Saint-Just. He has already moved to secure control of the essential administrative centers here on Haven and assures me of the loyalty of his own InSec personnel, but he has no desire to impose any sort of one-man rule on the Republic. In fact, he's practically begged me to explain the realities of our plight to you so that we can move quickly to establish the broad-based committee required to reassure our own people and the galaxy at large that no coup will be permitted to overthrow the Republic." Pierre shrugged helplessly.
"I see no option but to honor his request, ladies and gentlemen, and organize ourselves as a caretaker government until public safety can be restored."
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Amos Parnell sat in his office off DuQuesne Base's central war room and stared in sick horror at his terminal. The stocky, powerful CNO seemed shrunken, aged beyond his years, and his face was haggard.
His task force had returned to the Barnett System less than ten hours ago after its agonizingly slow passage from Yeltsin and what he supposed historians would call the Battle of Yeltsin. "Massacre of Yeltsin" would be more appropriate, and it was his fault. He'd taken the Manties' bait hook, line, and sinker.
He closed his eyes, covering his face with his hands, and knew he was a beaten man. Not just by the Manties, but inside. He'd gone into Yeltsin believing he had a three-to-one advantage, only to find himself facing a force even stronger than his own, and somehow the Manties and their allies had been able to preposition their powered-down wall of battle perfectly. It was as if they'd been clairvoyant, as if they'd been able to see every move he made in real time.
Their opening broadsides had taken him totally by surprise. A quarter of his fleet had been crippled or destroyed almost before he knew the enemy was there, and he had no idea how he'd extricated anything from the deadly trap. He couldn't remember. No doubt he could replay the com records and flag bridge recorders and reconstruct his orders, but he had absolutely no coherent memory of giving them. It was all a hideous nightmare of lightning-fast decisions and desperate improvisation that had somehow fought clear of Yeltsin with barely half the ships he'd taken into it, and half of them had been so battered their return to Barnett had taken more than twice as long as the passage out.
And now this. The President was dead. The entire government was dead, as were his own father, his younger sister, his brother, three of his cousins, and virtually their entire families, and Navy personnel had done it.
He ground his teeth in agony at the thought. The Manties' Hancock trap had succeeded even more completely against Admiral Rollins than the Yeltsin ambush had against him. Sixteen percent—the best sixteen percent—of the Fleet's wall of battle had been wiped out, and even as the Navy bled and died on the frontiers, another faction of its personnel had committed mass murder against its own people. He ached with agonizing, personal shame and thought longingly of the loaded pulser in his desk drawer. All it would take was a single squeeze of the stud... but he owed the Republic more than that. He owed it whatever he could do to stem the tide of disaster.