“I see,” Kathy said. She didn’t know much about the security surrounding Colin, but she knew that it was extensive, based around the well-founded belief that he had far too many enemies. The Government section of the High City was wired completely by Imperial Intelligence, with armed and armoured Marines on call… and she’d been assured that it would take a major assault by armed soldiers to break through the defences. The Household Troopers had been disbanded, hadn’t they? The Third Emperor, whose name escaped her, had used them to make himself Emperor, but Colin had ordered all of the Household Troops disbanded. Even if Tiberius had kept some of them back, without triggering off alarms, they would still have to break through the Marines. “Jason, I need to ask you a question.”
He looked up at her, already knowing what she was going to ask. “Jason, what does he have on you?” Kathy asked. The mere detail of Jason Cordova being a Cicero wouldn’t have that much effect — hell, she could see it working out in their favour. Her father had made considerable political capital because there was a Tyler at the heart of the Provisional Government, despite Kathy’s refusal to use her position to help expand the Family fortunes, and there was no reason why Cicero couldn’t do the same. “Why does he even think that you’ll do as he says?”
“It’s a long story,” Cordova said. He turned, facing away from her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You have to tell me,” Kathy said, softly. It had to be something bad, really bad, but what? The Families had been known to forgive mass slaughter and child molesting, or even worse crimes. The memory of one of her few friends, brain-wiped and altered by her own father, rose up unbidden from her mind. If her father hadn’t fled Earth after the Shadow Fleet had arrived, Kathy would have had him killed for that crime. He had effectively murdered his own daughter. She couldn’t imagine anything that would have had such an effect on Cordova… but Tiberius evidently could. “What does he have on you, Jason?”
He turned to face her, looking around for the bottle she’d placed out of sight. “It’s a long story,” he repeated. “I grew up here — well, not here; the Cicero Estate — as a third-tier son. I didn’t have any real hope of becoming the Cicero, so they decided that I could serve the Family — and therefore the Empire — by going into the Imperial Navy.”
Kathy smiled. She’d wondered if Jason Cicero had actually been one of Tiberius’s dead brothers, but apparently not. A third-tier Family Member was somewhere in-between, trusted to handle matters that couldn’t be left to outsiders, rewarded and feted to the best of the Family’s considerable ability, but not often offered real power. Their birth made them part of the Family, but not important parts of the Family. Several thousand such young aristocrats had joined the Provisional Government after the end of the war, seeing it as a chance to carve out wealth and power for themselves without having to kowtow to first-tier members who’d gained their positions through an accident of birth.
“I discovered I was good at it,” Cordova continued. His voice grew more confident as he remembered. “I might have gotten into the Academy because of who my Family were, but I tried to make them proud and I was good at it, really I was. I graduated third in my class and there was no influence used to give me that position. They knew I was that good.”
Kathy nodded. The Imperial Navy’s series of academies for senior officers were political to a terrifying degree, often graduating complete incompetents because of who they were, or whom they were related to. Colin hadn’t graduated well, she recalled, even though going by scores alone he should have been in the top ten. Others, such as Admiral Percival, had been told repeatedly that their Family Names meant more to the Academy than skill or competence. The smarter ones tended to find clients to help them carry out the duties they were so ill-prepared to carry out. The hatreds that ran through the Academy were legends…
“I earned my position,” Cordova said. “I didn’t know that they were not going to allow me anywhere near a superdreadnaught squadron, but even when I realised that I would never be allowed to rise above Captain, I didn’t care. I became a Midshipman, and then a Lieutenant and then a Commander… and finally they made me Captain of a light cruiser. I met Admiral Percival along the way and I think I embarrassed him a bit.”
Kathy snorted. Admiral Percival had been beyond embarrassment. His incompetence had been the subject of private whispers and jokes among the Imperial Navy before Colin had rebelled, taken a superdreadnaught squadron from one of his clients, and then killed him at Harmony. Now, he was used as a textbook case of what not to do at the new Imperial Academy. It was, she’d decided long ago, better than he deserved.
“And for a few years I was happy,” Cordova continued. He sounded happier too. “We patrolled the Rim, we chased down and killed pirates and we watched as the Empire continued to expand. I spent years hunting down Captain Morgan and his infamous Morgan’s Hold, but it was my victory in the end… and I loved it. There was no chance of promotion, but I didn’t care! I had a good ship and a good crew — and we punched out a heavy cruiser once in an exercise, which probably took about ten years off everyone’s life — and we were happy.”
Kathy saw, behind his torn face, a image of the Captain he had once been and smiled. The Empire wouldn’t want to risk putting someone so competent in a senior position — the last person they’d trusted in a sensitive position had been Janice Windsor, who had made herself Empress with the support and backing of Home Fleet — but Cordova hadn’t shared Colin’s burning ambition and resentment. He’d been happy with the cards he’d been dealt… so what had gone so wrong?
He looked up at her. “And then I got priority orders,” he said. “I was to take the John Rayland to this world, right on the edge of the Rim. The orders didn’t allow me any leeway. I was to investigate the world, prove or disprove a report that had been filed with Imperial Intelligence… and if the world was what the report claimed it was, I was to scorch it without further ado. They gave me the mission, I think, because of who I was. They trusted me to carry it out without question.
“We should have known, we should have prepared for it,” he said, breaking off. “They were spacefarers after all. Macore’s fleet went further, so why couldn’t they?
“And we found the world. It only took one look to know what we were dealing with, a harmless world, but one under a sentence of death. I refused. They were completely harmless. No space flight, barely anything beyond water-powered junk, no threat at all. I could have blown them to dust and ash and they wouldn’t have a hope of hitting back. I said that it was pointless. We never even figured out how to talk to them. We might have more success without the pressure of the war.”
“But…”
He ignored her. “I didn’t realise at the time,” he explained. “I didn’t understand the pressures involved. I told them no and that was a mistake. They ordered me to scorch the world and sent a squadron of battlecruisers along to enforce their decision. A completely harmless world, far less dangerous than Gaul, burned to ash.”
Kathy stared at him. “But why?” She asked. It made no sense to her. Why would the Empire destroy a possibly-valuable assert. A developed colony world was almost priceless, with or without the original inhabitants. “Why did they want to wipe out such a harmless world?”
“Don’t you understand?” Cordova asked, almost pleading. “They weren’t rebels, or traitors, or missing colonists. They weren’t even human. They were Dathi! They were Dathi and I wanted to spare their lives!”