We Few

"It won't be when I stand half of them up against the wall," Roger growled.

"That... could be counterproductive," Eleanora said cautiously.

"Anyone associated with this... damnable plot," Roger said flatly, "whether by omission or commission, is going to face rather partial justice. So is anyone I find decided that the best way to make a credit was to cut corners on military gear. Anyone. I owe that debt to too many Bronze Barbarians to ever forget it, Eleanora."

"We'll... discuss it," she said, looking over at the Phaenur.

"It's your Empire, but I agree with the Prince," Tchock Ral said. "The penalty for such things in our Alliance is death. To settle for any lesser penalty would be to betray the souls of our dead."

"But a reign of terror has its own unpleasant consequences," Eleanora pointed out. "Right now, the penalty for failure, at the highest level, is already so great that desperate chances are being taken. Or, what's worse, the best and the brightest simply avoid reaching that level. They... opt out rather than subject themselves and their families to the current virulent version of Imperial politics. Only the most unscrupulous strive for high office as it is; enact a reign of terror, and that trend will only be enhanced."

She shook her head, looking for an argument Roger might accept.

"Look, think of it as something like guerrilla warfare," she said.

"I think you're reaching," Roger replied. "It's not to that level yet."

"Yet," she said. "Not yet. But there's a saying about counterguerrilla operations; it's like eating soup with a knife. If you try to simply break the political alliances, by cutting up the obvious bits, then you're going to lose, and lose hard. You've got to not simply break the old alliances; you have to establish new ones, and for that you need an intact political template and people to make it work. You've got to convince the people ru

"The IBI would be... resistant to that," Temu Jin said. "Most of it, anyway; I suppose you could always find a few people who always secretly hankered to play storm trooper," he added reluctantly.

"And if you did find them, and you could impose your reign of terror, the Empire you're fighting for—the Empire they died for—" she gestured at the Marines, "would be gone. There'd be something there with the same name, but it wouldn't be the Empire that Armand Pahner served."

"I see the point you're trying to make," Roger said with manifest reluctance. "And I'll bear it in mind. But I reiterate; anyone associated with this plot, by omission or commission, and anyone associated with accepting, creating, or supporting defective military gear—with knowledge, and for profit—is going up against the wall. Understand that, Eleanora. I will not enact a reign of terror, but the point will be made, and made hard. I will put paid to this... evil rot. We may have to do it by eating soup with a knife, but we will eat the entire bowl. To the dregs, Eleanora. To the dregs."

Those eyes of polished brown stone swept the beings seated around the conference table like targeting radar, and silence hovered for a handful of fragile seconds.

"We will if we win," Julian said after a moment, breaking the silence.

"When we win," Roger corrected flatly. "I haven't come this far to lose."

"So how, exactly, do you propose to go about not losing?" Sroonday asked.

The meeting had gone on well into the afternoon, with a brief break for food served at the table by members of the admiral's family. The "External Security Minister" was the Alphane equivalent of the head of their external intelligence operations, and it had brought a wealth of information with it. The most important, from Roger's perspective, was the nature of the newly reformed "Empress' Own."

"Household troops?" Roger asked, aghast.

"Well, that's what the Empress' Own always have been, after all," Eleanora said.

"But these are Adoula's paid bully-boys," Kosutic pointed out. "They're from his industrial security branches, or else outright hired mercenaries." She shook her head. "I expected a whole hell of a lot better than this out of someone in Adoula's position. Most of them have no real military training at all. For all intents and purposes, they're highly trained rent-a-cops—used to keeping workers in line, breaking up labor riots, and preventing break-ins. The Empress' Own was composed of the best fighters we could find from throughout the entire Marine Corps. Troops trained to fight pitched battles, and then trained to think in security force terms and given a bit of polish and a pretty uniform."

"Agreed," Admiral Ral said with the Althari equivalent of a nod.

"Either we've been overestimating his military judgment," Eleanora said, "or else his hold on the military is even weaker than we'd dared hope."

"Reasoning?" Roger asked. She looked at him, and he shrugged. "I don't say I disagree. I just want to see if we're thinking along the same lines."

"Probably." The chief of staff tipped her chair back slightly and swung it in a gentle side-to-side arc. "If Adoula actually thinks the force he's assembled is remotely as capable as the real Empress' Own, then he's a certifiable lunatic," she said succinctly. "Admittedly, I didn't really know the difference between a soldier and a rent-a-cop before we hit Marduk, but I certainly do now. And someone with his background ought to have that knowledge already. But if he does, and if he's chosen to build the force he has anyway, it strongly suggests to me that he doesn't believe he can turn up sufficient troops willing to be loyal to him—or to close their eyes to the irregularities of what's going on in the Palace—from the regular military. Which, in turn, means that his control of what you might call the grass roots of the military, at least, is decidedly weak."

"About what I was thinking," Roger agreed.

"And either way, the first good news we've had," Ral said.

"True. But the Palace is still a fortress," Eleanora pointed out. "The automated defenses alone could hold off a regiment."

"Then we don't let the automated defenses come on line," Roger said.

"And how do we stop them?" Eleanora challenged.

"I have no idea," Roger replied, then tapped the face of a hardcopy hologram from one of the data packets the minister had brought. "But I bet anything he does."

"Catrone?" Kosutic said, looking over his shoulder. "Yeah. If we can get him on our side. The thing to understand is that the Palace's defenses aren't one layer. There are sections of the security arrangements I never knew, because I was in Bronze Battalion. You're a senior member of Bronze, you learn the defenses Bronze needs to know. Steel knew more, Silver more than Steel. The core defenses were only authorized to Gold, and Catrone was the Gold sergeant major for over a decade. Not quite the longest run in history, but the longest in recent history. If anyone knows a way to penetrate the Palace, it's Catrone."

"Putting all your faith in one person, with whom you have no significant contact, is unwise," Sroonday pointed out. "One does not build a successful strategy around a plan in which everything must go right."

"If we can't get Catrone's help, we'll find another way," Roger said. "I don't care how paranoid the Palace's designers were, there'll be a way in. And we'll find it."