“No,” he said, finally. He sounded as if he had been crying, although there was no evidence on his face to suggest tears. She could barely process what she was seeing. Jason Cordova had taken on a battlecruiser squadron with a light cruiser and escaped unscathed, laughing and joking all the way, but now he looked almost scared. Something maternal, buried deep inside her, awoke and she reached out to enfold him in her arms. He felt like a man whose heart was racing madly, almost as if he were scared. She doubted that their bedroom gymnastics had had that much effect against him. Holding him was like holding a mouse or a hamster. “Kathy, I…”
He broke off with an effort. “Kathy, the world turned upside down.”
Kathy stared at him, unable to understand. If something had happened, she would have been informed at once, as part of the innermost section of the Provisional Government. It was still too early to hear anything from Cottbus, or from Admiral Garland; the last courier boat had informed them that she intended to proceed to Cottbus and carry out her orders. There had been no great disaster, no fleet engagement in Earth’s orbit, so why was Cordova so… wound up?
“Here,” she said, standing up and pulling him into the living room. She didn’t drink often herself — and she’d been amused to discover that Cordova had decidedly plebeian tastes — but she did have a bottle of fine brandy her father had given to her, back when he’d been trying to worm his way back into her good graces. She poured a healthy portion into a crystal cup and passed it to him, watching with some alarm as he swigged it down like cheap rotgut. She’d only tasted the asteroid-produced booze once, but she’d had the impression that it had taken the lining off her teeth. “Now, what’s happened…?”
“I’m not the person you thought I was,” Cordova said. He took the bottle from her and poured himself a second glass, tossing it down in bare seconds. Kathy frowned and removed the bottle from his sight, silently calculating how much he had drunk. It was possible that he’d drunk much more before she’d arrived home, either from her stash or from a local bar, and his implants weren’t kicking in. “Kathy, everything has changed, again.”
Kathy blinked at him, puzzled. It wasn’t uncommon for con artists to try to pass themselves off as members of the Thousand Families and quite often they succeeded until they were compared against the Imperial Register. There were over two million men and women, after all, who could be counted as part of the Families and no one knew them all. As long as they remained carefully out of the way, instead of posing as someone from the senior Families, they could get away with it for years…
But she knew that Cordova was real.
“They want me to kill him,” he said, thinly. His voice broke again. “They want me to kill Colin!”
“But…” Kathy started. She broke off and thought rapidly. She’d learned to think quickly during her first year at the asteroid mining platform, before she’d met Cordova for the first time, and it was a skill that had come in handy from time to time. She’d learned other skills as well, such as the basic practicality of always having a get-out plan, and she found herself checking out her plan to escape from Earth. There were first-rank worlds or isolated colonies that would be glad to see her. “Jason, who wants you to kill Colin, and why?”
“Tiberius,” Cordova said. Kathy recoiled. He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d pulled her over his knees and spanked her. She’d liked Tiberius, the Family Head who’d joined the rebel cause, understanding that the Families had to adapt and change to fit their new circumstances. He hadn’t even tried to get her into bed, unlike some of the other young men of the Families, but clearly he’d been playing a deeper game. “He wants me to kill Colin, somehow…”
Something clicked behind Kathy’s eyes. It was almost impossible to imagine anything that could be used to pressure someone like Cordova into agreeing to commit murder, or something that someone as smart as Tiberius could imagine being useable to force him to kill a friend and ally, but clearly Tiberius could think of something. Only one possibility made sense.
“You’re a Cicero, aren’t you?” She said, reaching out and holding him. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she was right. The only people who might have a claim on Cordova’s loyalties, apart from the rebels, the Provisional Government and Kathy herself, were his Family. His mysterious unnamed Family. A Cicero! It made perfect sense. The Cicero Family would have had the clout to ensure that Cordova’s past was carefully hidden… and, unlike so many of the other families, they had adapted well to the brave new galaxy.
Not as well as we thought, she thought angrily. Her surprise was rapidly being replaced by rage. The Provisional Government wouldn’t survive Colin’s death. It would dissolve rapidly into a mass of competing factions, allowing Tiberius and the remainder of the Families to quietly reassert control behind the scenes. It wouldn’t be long before the new order fell apart, to be replaced by a version of the old order, run by someone smart enough to prevent a second rebellion for years…
Or perhaps it would be worse. Colin had broken centuries of unthinking supremacy and submission to Earth. The first-rank worlds would fight to keep their independence; after Gaul, they would have no choice… and they were arming to the teeth. Colony worlds, established and then systematically raped by the Thousand Families to feed their bloated appetites, would fight against any restoration of the debt-peonage that had held them in bondage. Warlords like Admiral Wilhelm — and even the remains of the Shadow Fleet, she thought darkly — would launch their own bids for supremacy. The Empire would fall apart into a nightmare of civil war.
The vision held her transfixed, for she had feared something like it once she started to understand — truly understand — the underlying power and structure of the Empire. The Shadow Fleet had fought a fairly clean war, without scorching a single world, but that would change. The Empire might have threatened to scorch Gaul, and they’d certainly come too close to succeeding, but if it all fell apart hundreds of worlds would be scorched, or even just targeted with a handful of shipkillers or antimatter bombs. The devastation would blow humanity back to a handful of worlds, burning in the night, leaving the remains of humanity back in the Stone Age. It would be the end of civilisation.
“Yes,” Cordova said, finally. “I was born Jason Cicero, forty years ago on Earth, and banished from the Family fifteen years ago, wiped out of all the records.” His voice darkened slightly, dipping towards depression. “I looked myself up in the Imperial Register after we took Earth. They wiped me completely from the records. My mother probably told everyone, right up to the day she died, that she only had three sons.”
Kathy blinked. “And you’ve never tried to talk to your brothers?”
Cordova shrugged. “What would we have to say to one another?”
Kathy nodded, thinking hard. “When does he want you to kill Colin?”
“He didn’t say,” Cordova explained. His voice tightened, but focusing on the question seemed to be helping him concentrate. She’d never seen him so weak and vulnerable before and it bothered her… and it bothered her that it bothered her. Had she really been looking for a man who would be a font of strength, rather that someone who was intelligent and smart enough to be good company? “He just wants me to be ready to move when the order came.”