The Collapsing Empire

  The count snorted at this. Ghreni pressed on.

  “If you agree to everything, in five years, I’ll pardon you. I’ll say that the late duke had threatened you and your family to such an extent you felt you had no choice. You were under extreme duress. And since I was there for all of it, I’m in a position to confirm that. So that’s it. Confess, five years at home, and then a pardon.”

  The count laughed, weakly.

  “Why are you laughing?” Ghreni demanded.

  “Lord Ghreni, you have no idea what’s coming in the next five years,” the count said.

  “On the contrary, Claremont, I do. Changes are coming. End is going to become the heart of the Interdependency. All paths will lead to here.”

  “No. No paths will lead to here. In five years we’ll be alone. It’s a physical certainty.”

  Ghreni began to feel uncomfortable and realized it was the count’s last sentence that did it. “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you think I sent my son away, Lord Ghreni. At this specific time?”

  “To escape the fighting here, and to complain to the emperox about me kidnapping him.” The latter was why Ghreni wanted Marce out of the way if he couldn’t be retrieved. Ghreni wasn’t sure how much pull the Count of Claremont had at the imperial court, but he knew Nadashe and Amit wouldn’t appreciate a report from End about his actions making their lives harder.

  The count shook his head. “I had him leave now because if he didn’t, it would be impossible for him to ever leave.”

  Ghreni was puzzled. “Are you talking about the Flow stream?” What would an imperial auditor know about Flow streams? The count’s specialty was taxes, not phys—

  “Oh my God,” Ghreni said, and openly stared at the count. “You’re him.”

  The Count of Claremont seemed puzzled but amused. “Who am I, Lord Ghreni?”

  “You’re him! The Flow physicist! The one whose work Hatide Roynold based hers off of.”

  Claremont continued to look puzzled for a moment, but then Ghreni saw a sort of slow realization come over his face. “I know that name. I remember that name. She sent me some of her work and a list of questions years ago.”

  “And you didn’t respond.”

  “No, I didn’t. I had been ordered by the emperox not to discuss my work with anyone.” Another expression popped onto Claremont’s face then. Concern. “You think her work is accurate, don’t you? You think the Flow streams are moving to End. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Ghreni’s mouth gaped.

  Claremont slapped the side of his bed. “That is it! That’s actually it!” Claremont started laughing, a loud, almost agitated noise. One of the marines opened the door and poked a head in to investigate. Ghreni angrily waved him away.

  Eventually Claremont got control of himself, wiped a tear away from his eye, and looked at Ghreni. “Oh, you sad, ambitious fool,” he said.

  “What do you know?” Ghreni asked.

  “I know that Hatide Roynold was sloppy with her math. I know if she didn’t check some of her base assumptions, she’s probably iterating wildly away in a direction that has no basis in reality. Has any of her work you’ve seen had peer review?”

  “No,” Ghreni said.

  Claremont nodded. “Of course not. She’s like me—snapped up by a patron and working alone. Peer review is important, Lord Ghreni. Until Marce was old enough to start checking my work, I was flying blind. Made some stupid mistakes I just didn’t see. Roynold was making them too. I know, I saw them. She probably never corrected them.” Claremont leaned forward and weakly poked Ghreni in the chest. “And you, you ignorant grasping poltroon. You didn’t know any better.”

  Ghreni actually flinched from the poke. “What are you saying?” he asked.

  Claremont smiled and then lay back into his bed. “What I’m saying is nothing, Lord Ghreni. Not until you decide to send a report back to your house, detailing your sudden ascendance to the dukedom. You are going to be doing that, yes?”

  “I am.” The report would go out on a mail drone, a small unmanned craft that floated in space right outside a Flow shoal, onto which electronic communication—personal letters and pictures, business communications, reports, intellectual property that could be digitized—was recorded. Once a day one of these drones headed into the Flow with its stash of information; once a day a drone appeared out of the Flow, with letters, communication, IP, and so on to transmit to End. The mail was always late, because End was far away from everything. But it always arrived.

  Claremont nodded again. “File your report. Send it. And then when it happens, you come back to me, and I’ll tell you my terms.”

  “When what happens?”

  “You’ll know it.”

  “And what terms do you think you’ll be able to dictate?”

  “I’d like not to have a murder on my record, for starters. After that, we’ll see. But I’ll tell you this, Lord Ghreni, you have this all wrong. I don’t need you. You, on the other hand, might need me. More than you know. So go write your report. I’ll stay quiet until you get back.”

  Claremont actually made shooing motions, dismissing Ghreni. More out of bemusement than anything, he left.

  * * *

  Ghreni went to his office at the House of Nohamapetan building—it would take a while to move his concerns into the ducal palace, a thought that sent a thrill down his spine—and composed his report to Nadashe. The report was both in code and encrypted. Then he sent it on a secure beam to the mail drone, and waited for a receipt that it had been. The receipt came minutes later, along with the timer for the departure of the drone, which would be on its way in under half an hour. Ghreni noted the receipt and then busied himself with other work, primarily fielding reports from the team writing up the truce with the rebels.

  This was involved enough that it wasn’t until three hours later that he noticed he’d received an additional note from the mail service, informing him that his mail would not be delivered on time. The reason was “drone failure,” which meant the drone was defective in some way. The information in the drone, including his report, would be transferred to a different drone (there were dozens parked out near the Flow shoal) and then sent through.

  Ghreni noted this and was about to click through when he noticed two other reports of delays due to material failure. As he read the third one a fourth entered into his queue.

  Ghreni pinged his assistant. “What’s going on with the mail drones?” he said.

  “I don’t know, sir,” was the reply. “Everyone’s complaining about it. All the mail is bouncing from one drone to another.”

  Before Ghreni could respond to this his tablet pinged to let him know Sir Ontain Mount was trying to reach him. He disconnected from his assistant without acknowledgement and hailed Mount.

  “We seem to have a problem,” Mount said.

  “With the treaty discussions?” Ghreni asked.

  “No, something else. A fiver named Because I Said So just reported in to Imperial Station. It was about to translate into the Flow.”

  “Is there a problem with the ship?”

  “This ship is fine. It’s the Flow shoal.”

  “What about it?”

  “It isn’t there, Lord Ghreni. It’s entirely gone.”

  Several hours and a number of semi-frantic meetings later Ghreni returned to the hospital and to the Count of Claremont’s room.

  “Oh good, you’re back,” Claremont said. He pointed at the Imperial Marines. “I’ve been told I’m fine and they’re going to release me now. They’re about to hand me over to the local authorities, which I suppose are your people now. I’m going to jail, apparently.”

  “I need the room,” Ghreni said, to everyone who was not the count. The room cleared out. Ghreni turned his attention back to Claremont. “You knew. About the Flow.”

  Claremont nodded. “It was possible that it hadn’t collapsed yet when you sent along your report, in which case this would be a different conversa
tion. For now, at least. But if it hadn’t collapsed today, it would have been tomorrow, or the next day. Within a week, in any event. And we’d be having this conversation then.”

  “If the Flow stream collapsed then you sent your son to his death.”

  “No. I predicted this stream is collapsing from the entrance shoal. The exit shoal will be open for months yet. Not that it will matter. Nothing else can get into it, so for all purposes once the stream empties of ships currently in it, it’s gone. Everyone who’s on End will be here for the duration.”

  “And how long is that? How long is ‘the duration’?”

  “Why, Lord Ghreni. That’s forever, of course.”

  Ghreni had nothing to say to this.

  “There is one thing,” Claremont said.

  “What is it?”

  “The Flow stream out from End is closed. But I predict the Flow stream to End will stay open for several years yet. It’s already showing some signs of decay. But it should hold for a while. It might even be the last Flow stream in the Interdependency to collapse entirely.”

  “What does that mean?” Ghreni asked.

  “It means we should be getting ready for visitors.”

  “Visitors.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “As many who can make it here alive, I expect,” Claremont said, and then clapped his hands together. “Now, Lord Ghreni. You’re a murderer and a usurper, and you tried to hurt my son. In a perfect world you’d be dead or rotting in jail for what you’ve been doing for the last few years. Either option would be fine by me. But right now, for better or worse, you’re the Duke of End. I suppose now that you’re duke you’ve magically found a way to end the rebellion, yes?”

  Ghreni nodded.

  “Which means you were actively involved in the rebellion in some horribly duplicitous way, yes?”

  Ghreni gave a full-body shrug to this.

  “That’s what I thought. Regardless, now we’re at peace, which we’re going to need for what comes next, and you, alas, are instrumental in keeping it. Which means that getting rid of you at this point would cause even more problems than it would solve. I could try arguing the point—I suppose I could contact Sir Ontain and make a fuss. But now that you know about the Flow stream collapse, you know we have bigger problems on our hands than rebellions and coups. So I’m going to offer you my support.”

  “Really.” Ghreni blinked at this. “With all due respect, sir, I think you’re misjudging who needs whose support.”

  “I’m not. You have some decisions to make that will decide whether humanity—the part of it here now, and the parts of it to come—survive the collapse. You’re ambitious and you’re greedy and you clearly were part of some larger plan by your house to take control of the Interdependency. Good.”

  “Good?”

  “That last part, yes. It means your ambition and greed are in service for something more than just yourself. It means that you might be something other than just a grasping sociopath. That you might actually care about the Interdependency, and the people in it, and what happens to them. If you do, or if at the very least you can learn to, then I’m here to help you. If you don’t, you might as well have those marines on the other side of the door shoot me now. At this point, it’s all the same to me. But if you are going to use me, and you should, I have some terms and requests. Some things I need from you, so I can trust that there is more to you than the shallow, self-centered hustler you’ve been up to this point. I need to believe you might actually be able to save the world.”

  For the life of him, Ghreni had nothing to say to any of this. It was literally like his tongue and brain—his two advantages—had simply shriveled up and blown away.

  Claremont peered at Ghreni closely. “You didn’t think this was how it was going to go, did you? Being duke? Getting everything you planned for?”

  Ghreni opened his mouth to respond and croaked. He swallowed, embarrassed, and tried again. “No,” he said.

  “Well, surprise, then, Lord Ghreni,” Claremont said. “And now, tell me: What’s it going to be? Are you going to use me, or not?”

  PART THREE

  Chapter

  13

  Less than ten minutes after Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby emerged out of the Flow in the Hub system and began its thirty-seven-hour real-space trip to Hub’s imperial station, a bomb went off in the entertainment district of the city of Chadwick, on Hub. The bomb had been placed in a restaurant and went off just after the lunch rush, killing ten people in the restaurant, two people on the street outside. The restaurant itself was gutted.

  The response was quick. Automated fire suppression units sprang from their hidey-holes to minimize that threat; the public air systems in that area switched over to particulate filtering mode to keep the air breathable for the immediate environment. The massive doors to that section of Chadwick, so rarely activated, ground closed in order to seal off the spread of any possible conflagration, the damage of which would be horrifying in that enclosed, underground environment. Transport tubes in and out of Chadwick were shut down and physically sealed off. Until local and imperial authorities reopened the tubes, the only way in or out of Chadwick would be overland, in hard vacuum. But even the access tunnels to the surface were closed off and policed.

  Not that it mattered. “They’ve looked at the security cameras for the week prior to the bombing, both from the restaurant and on the streets around it,” said Gjiven Lobland, the imperial investigator at the scene, in video piped into the executive committee’s meeting room at the imperial palace, three hours after the bombing. “There’s nothing. No drops, nothing left behind by a customer, no suspicious activity. We’ve identified all the patrons and staff who ate or worked there and we’re working through them, starting with the ones with criminal records. So far, all of them have come up clean.”

  “So how did the bomb get in there?” asked Upeksha Ranatunga, representing parliament.

  “We’re looking into it. What video we have shows the explosion originating in the back of the restaurant, in the storage areas. We have the forensics people in there now.”

  “If it went off in the storage areas then it might be something that was delivered,” Archbishop Korbijn said. “In which case it could have been something that had been sitting there for days, or weeks.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Lobland agreed. “We’ve got investigators looking through delivery records. We’ll find it.”

  “Has anyone claimed responsibility?” Cardenia asked.

  “No, Your Majesty. Not yet. We’re monitoring communications planetwide. When we know, you will know.”

  Cardenia nodded and motioned for the feed to be cut.

  “I think we know who this is,” a voice said, down the table.

  Cardenia looked up and saw Nadashe Nohamapetan, the most recently installed member of the executive committee. She had replaced Samman Temamenan, who unfortunately had to go and die on Cardenia, opening up the slot. Cardenia regretted Temamenan’s death, on several levels.

  “You’re going to say the End separatists,” Cardenia said.

  “It’s the fourth bombing in the last two months on Hub,” Nadashe said. “All with basically the same modus operandi. We have reports of similar activity in three other systems as well, all of which began after news of your coronation and the bombing of it reached those systems.”

  “They could be copycats,” Ranatunga said. “And we apprehended the coronation bombers.”

  “We killed the coronation bombers,” Korbijn amended.

  “Alleged coronation bombers,” Cardenia added. The two alleged bombers had indeed originated out of End but otherwise very little was known about them, except that they blew themselves up with a small bomb just before imperial forces slammed down their door, and that the apartment they were found in on Hub had physical evidence linking them to the coronation bombing.

  “We killed two individuals,” Nadashe said. “We don’t kno
w if we got rid of their whole cell or network.”

  “What do you suggest we do, Lady Nadashe?” Korbijn asked. “Other than what we’re already doing, which is substantial?”

  “Archbishop, I agree that our local and imperial investigators are doing everything they can. The problem isn’t here. It’s on End. It’s time for the Interdependency to step in and take control of the planet and snip out the rebellion there.”

  “As you’ve said before, and as you’ve had your members of parliament suggest,” Ranatunga said.

  “It’s not only the MPs from Terhathum who believe this, Minister Ranatunga.”

  “When I said ‘your members of parliament’ I wasn’t referring to just the ones from your home system, Lady Nadashe. I was also referring to the ones from other systems that you’ve purchased for this crusade of yours.”

  Nadashe appeared to bristle. “I resent the implication that the House of Nohamapetan is acting improperly, or indeed any differently than any other house or guild when it has an interest.”

  “And what is your interest, Lady Nadashe?” Cardenia asked.

  “Our interest is avoiding the possible disruption of trade, and in the lives of the citizens of the Interdependency. It’s also in our interest to make sure that those who attack the emperox are seen to be punished. An emperox who is seen as weak or vulnerable invites chaos.”

  “You would have us subjugate a constituent system of the Interdependency for the optics,” Cardenia said.

  “Not only for the optics,” Nadashe said. “And not primarily for the optics. But for the optics, too? Certainly.”

  Cardenia turned to Ranatunga. “What is the current temperature of the parliament on this?”

  Ranatunga looked over at Nadashe before answering. “The parliament was outraged at the initial attack on your coronation, ma’am. I think it found the deaths of the alleged attackers anticlimactic. With this new raft of attacks, there’s considerable support for a more robust response.”