Cordova glared at her. “I look like a doorman at one of the hotels that are trying to move upmarket,” he said, angrily, as he struggled with one of the fastenings. The uniform wasn’t designed to be easy to get into without help, but he’d insisted on dressing himself. “If I ever meet the idiot who designed the Imperial Navy’s uniforms, I’m going to challenge the bastard to a duel and gun him down without mercy.”
“I think he died a few hundred years ago,” Kathy said, tactlessly. Colin’s reformations had included a new style of uniform for daily wear, but no one had had time to update the dress uniforms yet. With Admiral Wilhelm on the rampage, it wasn’t something that anyone wanted to waste time upon. That hadn’t stopped several officers from trying to find other ways to waste time. Colin had purged them from the Imperial Navy and not, in her view, a moment too soon. “I still think you look splendid.”
“Perhaps I should go naked and claim I’m wearing traditional clothes from that nudist colony,” Cordova said, as he studied his image in the reflecting mirror-field. “Perhaps I should not show up and claim that I’m dressed as the invisible man.”
“Men,” Kathy said, shaking her head again. Cordova did look spectacular, but the uniform was unwieldy, even without the ceremonial sword he wore at his hip. Kathy knew little about sword-fighting, but Cordova had assured her that no one in their right mind would wear a sword like that if they expected to be using it. She was one of only three people who knew that the sword was real… and that Tiberius expected Cordova to use it on his benefactor. “Are you sure that you’re ready?”
Cordova scowled. Tiberius had tipped their hand, accidentally or otherwise, although she was still fairly sure that he hadn’t realised that they’d taken what they knew to Colin. The wheels within wheels were still spinning and she wasn’t sure how much anyone knew, even Colin himself. The plan was simple enough, but if it failed, they would end up carrying the blame for Colin’s death.
Have Colin killed, but not by anyone, she thought, in a burst of surprising anger. She hadn’t realised how much she’d cared until she’d been forced to start making hard choices. She must have grown up a lot over the last few years. Have him killed by one of his allies, so no one knows who to trust, and watch the Provisional Government come apart…
“No,” he said, with a touch of amusement. “I’m not ready, but we don’t have any choice.”
He looked down at his timepiece. “Twenty minutes until we have to depart for the Cicero Estate,” he added, thoughtfully. One finger stroked part of his outfit and he winced. “Perhaps I should put on something more comfortable.”
“Perhaps you should just stay as you are,” Kathy said, firmly. She stepped up to him and gave him a hug. It had been far easier dressing herself, even though she tended to take longer to dress than he did, but she only needed to wear a dress. She’d wondered about buying a really expensive dress, but instead she’d chosen a basic dress. Style never went out of style, as her mother had once said. “If that… outrage against the human eye gets damaged, we won’t have time to fix it.”
Cordova shrugged. “And that’s a problem?”
“Yes,” Kathy said. She could sense his concern and, indeed, she shared it. He understood space combat. Fighting in a crowded room was asking for disaster. “If things start to go wrong together, we could end up dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“My God,” Blondel Dupre breathed, as the aircar started to descend over the Cicero Estate. “Is this how they live all the time?”
Colin privately shared her awe, although he was much more practiced at keeping it from showing on his face. The Cicero Estate, quite literally, stretched away as far as the eye could see, hundreds of kilometres of land that belonged to the Clan, almost completely uninhabited apart from the Family Members, inhabiting their mansions that were small only in contrast to the massive building rising up ahead of them. The architect who had designed the building had combined several different styles into one whole that somehow managed to prevent a different appearance from each angle, keeping any outside observers confused. The building itself was massive, serving as both the home of the core of the Cicero Family and their headquarters. Colin had seen superdreadnaughts and command fortresses that were smaller.
Earth itself was largely uninhabited, a combination of a determined emigration policy and a draconian population control effort. The Federation had believed, or claimed to believe, that there had been too many people on Earth and had been quite ruthless in encouraging as many people to leave as possible, even to the point of enforcing a one-child policy on every human living on Earth. The Empire had taken advantage of the policy and, over the thousand years of its existence, had completely depopulated Earth, apart from their own people. It was the home of the Thousand Families, although Tiberius had once told him that there were still rumours of feral humans living in the wildness away from all settlement. The remains of the older cities had been razed to the ground centuries ago. No one knew if there were really rogue humans out there.
He cast his gaze over the endless swarm of incoming aircars and muttered a curse under his breath. He hadn’t realised, not really, just how many people would be coming to Tiberius’s wedding; after all, he had invited all of the Thousand Families, and as many of the real movers and shakers as he could. The MPs had been invited as a body, although Colin had heard that only a third of them were going to attend, while several of the Families that disliked Cicero had refused to send more than token representation. Colin would have been happier if Blondel hadn’t been accompanying him, but there was no way to avoid inviting the Empire’s Prime Minister. He hadn’t even had time to warn her about the possibility — the near-certainty — that someone would make an attempt on his life.
Her face was darker than he’d expected when he looked at her. He could guess at her thoughts. The men and women who owned such vast estates — the Cicero Estate wasn’t even the largest on the planet — had torn Macore, her homeworld, apart, just to add a few extra megacredits to their holdings. It wouldn’t even have saved the Empire, or delayed economic collapse for any time at all; if Kathy was right, only the most draconian of measures would save the Empire, and looting a tiny economy was actually counter-productive. It hadn’t been a necessary evil. It had been a cold, petty and banal evil.
Macore would have had a simpler way of dealing with Tiberius as well. A suspect in a crime, any crime, would be interrogated under a lie detector. If found innocent, he would be freed at once, while if found guilty he could be tried and sentenced. The Empire had had similar policies, but someone of Tiberius’s rank would have been immune merely because of his name, even if he committed the most vile crimes imaginable. The Thousand Families were long used to burying their mistakes, sweeping their outcasts and criminals under the carpet, those who had shocked the hardened governors of high society. It would have to be serious for anyone even to care, let alone cutting the culprit dead in the streets. In order to get the proof, inarguable proof, that he needed, he had to expose his back to a sword wielded by one of his closest allies. He would have laughed under other circumstances.
“They made this world into their palace,” he agreed, as the aircar dropped neatly to the ground in front of the main entrance. Flower girls, wearing outfits that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, greeted them at once, inviting them to enter the building and treat it as their own home. Judging from the number of MPs that were already surrounding the buffet, the invitation was being accepted by almost everyone. “Shall we enter?”