Empire of the Fallen, page 20
CHANGING THE GUARD
‘Does anyone actually pay attention to politics any more? Or now that we all have our Entitlement Deeds, have we just stopped caring? Do you know who represents you? Who is putting across your views? Who you are voting for? Where the Cabinet and the President came from, and how they got to be there? Does anyone even care?’
Charlotte Asha, United Information
Constance eyed UNSOC wearily as her Bluebird touched down on the island’s landing pad. Given how busy she had been lately, she had been issuing executive commands to the Chiefs of Staff remotely, mostly via IHD. Since their argument in the Assembly Building, she had found them quite disagreeable. Foster, who had once seemed so wily and charming, now seemed crotchety and intransigent. Ellisburg had transformed from strategic genius to borderline autistic. Given how poor the volume and quality of intelligence coming in was, Kessler and Tavistock seemed simply inept, and there was still no replacement strike commander because none of them could agree on a suitable candidate.
She sighed angrily at having allowed herself to be goaded into this meeting. She would much rather have stayed in Carrington with her retinue of Special Warfare and EFFECT operatives. Even the bloody provar were better company these days; their tacticians made the Joint Chiefs look like childish amateurs, hence why they had nearly lost the Ascendancy War. If she’d learned anything from that conflict, it was that she was better off doing things herself.
But she had come nonetheless. They had obviously invited her for a reason, though why it had to be in Solar Ops Command baffled her. Perhaps it was because Carrington and the Assembly Building were her domains, and out here, on this small, secretive island in the East Sea, SOC was theirs. Well, if they thought she would be intimidated by such pathetically transparent tactics, they had another thing coming.
Pitt had accompanied her to the island, though he declined to attend the meeting. ‘Trust me, Ma’am, having me there would only make things worse. They think I’m your man.’
You are my man, you idiot, Constance thought, but simply smiled as she stepped down the debarkation ramp and on to the cold concrete apron. ‘No, you’re right,’ she called back up to him. ‘Better let me deal with this lot by myself.’
Pitt grimaced. ‘Careful, Andrea,’ he said in that condescending way that infuriated her. ‘We need them onside.’
Do we hell, she thought, but smiled again nonetheless. ‘I know. I’m not here to crack skulls.’
Pitt nodded like his advice had been somehow sage. He was starting to really irritate her. He was like Foster: gentlemanly, sportsmanlike, fair. Well, fuck fair. Hopefully by now that asshole Henrikson was out there sterilising kaygryn worlds with tailored viruses. Damn the kags and damn the consequences. She could walk down any street in the UN and broadcast what she’d done to anyone that would listen, and the only thing she would get is a thump on the back and a handshake. Pitt would never condone what she’d tasked the Vulture with. The man was losing his backbone.
She looked around. There were a few other vehicles on the landing pad, including one of a make and pattern she didn’t recognise, though it had quorl markings on it. Frowning, she ducked into the back of the waiting cruiser and it pulled away from the landing platform and made for the HQ ahead. Most of the lights were still on despite it being the middle of the morning. Vargonroth in winter, like Vargonroth most of the year round, was cold and dark and miserable—the perfect place for the seat of government.
The cruiser pulled to a stop outside the building and she climbed out and surmounted the steps. The Joint Chiefs were waiting for her in one of the incident rooms on the top floor, and it took her five minutes to reach it through the old building. There was the usual scrape of chairs as she walked inside, and Foster, Ellisburg, Kessler and Tavistock rose stiffly to their feet. Constance caught a few exchanged glances as she moved one of the chairs to the head of the table from where it had been next to Kessler, and then she sat down.
‘Sit,’ she said curtly, and they sat, uniforms tinkling with honorifics.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds while they all studiously avoided the elephant in the room. After a short while, Foster began providing her with an update about the galactic situation in his gravelly, rumbling voice.
‘Well, Ma’am President. We’ve prepared an update on the present state of the galaxy as we see it.’ As he spoke, holos sprang into life down the length of the table. ‘It’s not a pretty picture, I’m afraid. From what we’ve pieced together, of the three hundred kaygryn territories that border the UN or share a biosphere with the UN, over half are completely unstable.’ The holos changed to show a mosaic of drone feeds. Each one illustrated Foster’s point with images of kaygryn violence—much of it directed at the local human colonies. ‘Rioting and popular uprisings on all one hundred and fifty territories have resulted in human casualties. One hundred territories currently require direct Fleet and UNAF intervention. Seventy-five require complete military occupation. Almost half of our UNAF and Fleet strength is now tied up in defending UN territories from kaygryn attack.’
Constance nearly shrugged. She was feeling flippant, especially with Foster, the old dolt, who was clearly trying to deliberately shock her, but there was no need to be so facetious. People were dying, after all. ‘UNAF should be more than a match for the kaygryn,’ she said. ‘They’re Tier Three by convention, not military prowess.’
The table’s occupants smarted from her remarks, as if she had just spat on the table. They hated her, she realised, as much as she had grown to hate them. They saw her as arrogant and cavalier. She saw them as simpering cowards. As if I have time to listen to this, she thought, sneering inwardly. A few bloody kaygryn teenagers throwing rocks at Goliaths.
‘Which leads me to the other, more serious aspect of the problem,’ Foster said, clearly annoyed and doing nothing to hide it. ‘The kaygryn have access to technology which is far more advanced than they are capable of creating. We’ve learned from Uvolon that when the kaygryn have advanced technology, it’s because someone has given it to them. Advanced electronic warfare pods, advanced force shielding, charged blades that seem even better than those the provar use… couple that with cutting-edge asymmetric warfare techniques their militias have honed over the decades following Hadan’s Reach and you’ve got a very skilled and determined enemy on your hands. And that skilled and determined enemy is taking out our people on the ground. Our soldiers and our Goliaths.’ He took a breath and clasped his hands. He looked at Tavistock and Kessler, who both nodded. ‘We think that in the absence of the crusade fleets, the Kaygryn Empire has been running cargoes in and out of our galaxy for weeks—perhaps months—and supplying the kaygryn here for precisely this kind of seditious warfare.’
Constance’s eyes widened. She made an incredulous noise. ‘General, we’ve known about this for months! Executor Hasani is known to JIC… a, a known Imperial kaygryn leading rebel factions across the Federacy. They’ve been attacking UN targets since the inception of the Ascendancy War! How is this new?’
Foster looked angry. He cleared his throat a few times. ‘Everything we’ve heard on the matter has been conjecture. Now the scale of the problem, particularly since you started letting provar settle on Outer Ring worlds, is so large and widespread that the evidence is concrete. It’s concrete for the first time. Now. We have not known about it before; it has all been circumstantial.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Constance muttered. ‘This isn’t intelligence. This is barely even news. Tell me this isn’t why you asked me here. I feel like you’re trying to make a point.’
‘The point is, Ma’am President, that a huge volume of UNAF strength is tied up in fighting the Kaygryn Federacy and in humanitarian operations in the Ascendancy,’ Kessler said before Foster could splutter and embarrass himself further. God how she hated Kessler. She hated all of them, but Kessler especially. ‘The Kaygryn Empire is here, now, moving with impunity through UN space and supplying weapons which make even the kaygryn here deadly foes—something which half a year ago would have been risible. We are dealing with riots and unrest in the Outer Ring because the resettled provar are straining our resources there. Rather than garrisoning our worlds with seasoned fighters and front-line ships, you have them off among the provar evacuating their civilians. You have started impressment across the UN on an executive order, but even with round-the-clock reindustrialisation, we simply don’t have anything like the money or the materiel to equip and train everyone. Our EXM supply lines with the provar are something like two per cent of what they were pre-war… Our Tier Three allies have been left out in the cold while you hole yourself up in Carrington with a cabal of SPECWAR commanders and ex-Ascendancy war criminals. The bloody Zhahassi Commonwealth or Empire or whatever the fuck it’s called now is in a state of near total collapse since Zvell was made emperor, and our fingerprints are all over that debacle. So I suppose the point that General Foster here is trying to make is, what exactly is your plan? What are you doing to save the UN, because at the moment, you’ve cut us out completely, you’ve cleared the bridge, you’ve taken the helm yourself, and rather than turning on the pumps, you’ve ramped up to full-steam ahead and you’re driving us to the bottom of the fucking ocean!’
‘You’ve rather tortured that analogy—’
‘Goddamn it, Andrea!’ Kessler snapped, smacking the table with his hand. ‘This isn’t a game! This isn’t a joke! If I want the latest intelligence, I have to ask for it from Carrington! I’m the head of the United Nations Intelligence Service! I haven’t had a briefing in two weeks! You’re siphoning off everything for yourself and acting like a dictator! We’ve lost contact with two worlds in the Omadan Sprint! FID is screaming that Folhourt is about to be attacked! Why isn’t Halo Arch crammed with ops commanders directing ships? Why isn’t UNSOC packed to the rafters with generals directing the fortification of a thousand UN territories? What are you doing?!’
Such was the force of both his argument and his voice that Constance was momentarily struck dumb. ‘I’ll tell you what I am doing,’ she said, stabbing a finger into the table. She paused for a moment, trying to think of an effective rebuttal. As she took in the faces of the Joint Chiefs, the words caught in her throat.
‘Yes?!’ Kessler pressed.
‘I am doing everything I bloody well can!’ Constance snapped finally. ‘The Ascendancy is doomed. The way I see it, every provar we get is another soldier to protect UN territory. Better that they protect our worlds than their own. We have deep space relays watching the old crusade lines round the clock. The second that Kaygryn Empire fleets start coming through, we will stop all evacuation efforts and pull our fleets back.’
‘Ships take tens of hours to move between worlds,’ Ellisburg said. ‘They are better as a garrison rather than a quick-reaction force. If you plan to move them when Imperial ships have already arrived in Tier Three space, then it will be too late.’
Damnable Ellisburg. He was the only one in the room who knew what he was talking about. It was so much more difficult to contradict the man when he was clearly the most knowledgeable there.
‘Well, for policy reasons, we’re just going to have to do it my way,’ Constance said. That rankled with them. ‘I’ve already explained the situation with the provar.’
‘The way I see it, they’re using you,’ Foster said, having recovered from his earlier embarrassment. ‘The provar duped you into agreeing a ceasefire and now they’re manipulating you to do what they want. Where are all the AHF ships? Clustered around key Ascendancy worlds, while our marines are killed on their planets by theocracy hold-outs. Leave them all to rot, I say.’
Constance wanted to smash her fist into his big stupid face, again and again, until there was nothing but pulp. ‘The provar did not “dupe” me into a ceasefire, as well you know,’ Constance said through gritted teeth. ‘They were winning the war, as you freely acknowledged many times in the past, and thanks to my foresight and manoeuvring, we were able to split the Ascendancy into unequal factions and turn them to infighting. They did not fake a civil war, Algernon, nor did they dupe me in the meantime. To suggest that they did so now is preposterous, given the toxic history that exists between the Kaygryn Empire and the provar. They are terrified of being wiped out now that the crusade fleets are gone, and yes, they are our allies now by necessity, but they are still our allies and I shall assist them in furtherance of the greater good as I see fit.’
She took a deep breath. In demolishing Foster, she wasn’t winning any friends, judging by the mood. And besides, he was right: the provar had taken ninety per cent of the AHF and liberally garrisoned their key industrial centres, while the UN Fleet had never been stretched so thin. Politically it was difficult to justify, but tactically she knew it was the right thing to do. Why couldn’t they see it?
‘It’s the “as I see fit” aspect of that that I have the problem with,’ Foster muttered.
‘I have contingencies in place to deal with the kaygryn problem,’ Constance said, ignoring him. ‘They will be reaching fruition over the next couple of days. As regards the Kaygryn Empire, an operation is underway on that front, too.’
The Joint Chiefs exchanged looks. Yes, Constance thought, not a fucking clue, any of you. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.
‘What are these contingencies?’ Tavistock asked.
‘They’re classified,’ Constance replied curtly. Even before she’d finished saying ‘classified’, the room erupted in frustrated sighs. Kessler threw a holostylus on the table, stood up, and walked over to the arched windows looking out across the island. He clasped his hands behind his back. Foster, Tavistock and Ellisburg looked at the table.
‘Ma’am President, as will have been quite clear for some time now, we are not pleased with how you are handling the current political, diplomatic and, above all, military situation,’ Kessler said, not taking his eyes from the view ahead of him.
‘Nor am I pleased, Adrian, with how you have handled yourselves,’ Constance retorted, but it sounded sad as it came out, lame even. With a cold horror, she realised she was turning into Richard Aurelius: insane with rage by the end, hated by his generals, so blinkered as to bring a new extreme to the word… But the key difference between her and Aurelius was that he had been an idiot who had allowed himself to be manipulated into taking patently absurd actions, whereas she knew exactly what she was doing.
If Kessler had been bothered by what she had said—even heard it—he did not let it on. ‘We are hearing reports from Langdon Keita that the Exigency Corps are being stonewalled at almost every turn by other Tier Three players, even those historically weaker and more easily manipulated, like the golgron and quorl. Your address to the Assembly was nothing short of embarrassing. The lack of respect you demonstrate at every turn for our allies and even your own people is astonishing.’
Constance couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How dare he talk about her Administration that way!
‘We do not agree with your policy of evacuation and resettlement for the provar. We do not agree to your using UN Fleet ships to garrison and protect Ascendancy worlds. We do not agree with your policy of impressment or how you are dealing with the EXM shortage. In short, Ma’am, we do not agree with your presidency.’
Constance opened her mouth to vent her fury, but caught herself. A sour feeling of adrenaline clenched her guts, and her brow furrowed. We do not agree with your presidency. Kessler wasn’t just complaining any more. Now she understood why none of them would meet her gaze, why they all stared uncomfortably at the table. Her hands balled into fists.
‘If there is something you want to say, Adrian, I think you’d better just come out and say it,’ she said. Her jaw clenched.
Kessler turned away from the window. ‘We plan to submit before the Assembly a formal vote of no confidence in your premiership, Ma’am.’
Constance made a disgusted noise, but her insides were in turmoil. ‘So, it’s come to this, has it?’ she said almost absently, playing for time. ‘You’ve not been invited to the party so you look to have me removed?’ Her mind briefly wandered to the images she’d seen of Strike Commander John Garrick after he’d tried to kill Rick Aurelius. They’d had to scrape him off the floor of the PRISM bunker under Halo Arch.
‘Andrea—’ Foster tried.
‘Well, two can play that game,’ she said curtly, resolved. ‘Algernon: you’re fired.’
They all looked at her incredulously. Eventually, Foster managed a measly, ‘What?’
‘I think I made myself perfectly clear,’ Constance said, feeling adrenaline crashing through her system. ‘You are no longer the Chief of the General Staff. You are a political appointee, Algernon, not an elected representative. I put you where you are and I can remove you just as easily. You have one day to clear out your desk here at Solar Operations Command. I’ll ensure you are removed from the day’s code bulletin and any other information classified to the General Staff. I’ll announce your replacement by the end of the week.’
Foster spluttered. ‘For God’s sake, Andrea, you can’t just have me removed!’
‘That is exactly what I can do,’ Constance said. If Foster and the rest of them were going to try and have her removed, then by God she wasn’t going to go out without a fight.
‘Andrea, this is ludicrous,’ Kessler said, though there was doubt in his voice.
‘Have you all forgotten what you are?’ Constance asked with mock bafflement. ‘Each and every one of you was appointed by me on recommendation. You are glorified presidential advisors. I can remove you on a whim—and unfortunately for you, Algernon, I just have. Get out.’
The last two words hit the room like a gunshot. Foster even recoiled slightly. He sneered angrily.
‘This doesn’t change anything,’ he said, pressing himself stiffly to his feet. ‘The motion will still be submitted.’
