It was a nice desk. No, more than just a nice desk. An extremely nice desk. The polished wood of the surface was smooth and glossy, the color of warm honey. The edges were scrolled, carved into an elegant profile. The drawers were real wood and slid silently on heavy casters. The desk was everything an important person would want.
It was also completely empty, void of anything of any significance, a hollow symbol. Much like Lowell's current position.
Head of the Patrol High Command, one of the most powerful people in the Empire. What a cosmic joke. He'd held much more power as the unrecognized head of the undercover division, the one that no one really talked about because no one was quite sure if it existed or was only rumor. The Emperor had appointed him as the official head of the entire Patrol in an effort to clean out the corruption that ran rampant through its ranks. It hadn't worked.
Theodys had been heavily involved in the conspiracy to bring down the current government, until he'd been killed. Lowell had no idea who else was involved. All the trails he'd found were cold, dead ends that led him in circles.
He spread his hands over the pristine surface of the desk. Everything, all the connections and threads he'd spent years building, had unraveled over the last months. They had manipulated and maneuvered him into a corner. He saw no way out.
He had started with strong backing. He had Paltronis, and he trusted her with his life and his reputation. But they had found a way to remove her, to shuffle her off into a position where she had no contacts, nothing useful to offer him. He wasn't even sure where she was.
Commander Wexford had also come, offering his support, but he was never part of society on Linas-Drias. Wexford had taken command of the Fleet, relieving Admiral Flanigan of duty and arresting him for plotting treason. Wexford was as unreachable as Paltronis, stationed light years away and busy with his own concerns.
Lowell had moved quickly, forcing others of the High Command into retirement, threatening to charge them with treason if they didn't go, but they were far from gone. They pulled strings within the Council of Worlds, influencing the nominations to the Patrol High Command, picking their own replacements. Lowell's hands were tied.
He was the leader. His word should have been law within the ranks of the Patrol. He was mostly ignored. They saluted him, and gave him patronizing smiles as they ignored his orders.
He tapped his fingers on the wooden surface, a dull sound, muted in the plush office.
With no one of his own on the High Command staff, reports were routinely misplaced and redirected. Information never reached him, until it was much too late to act on it. His orders were misfiled or lost or reworded. No one ever would admit to the tampering. As far as he could tell, every one of his staff were involved.
Lowell had been reduced to a figurehead with no more power than the stone statue of the first High Commander in the lobby of the building. He'd been outplayed and outmaneuvered at every turn. He had lost.
He wanted to retire. He wanted to become an anonymous citizen of the Empire. He couldn't do that while war threatened. The situation had stabilized in the last month, but it was much too shaky for his liking. The Empire was like a chair with three legs missing. Balancing on the remaining leg was hard enough without people trying to kick it out from under you.
He'd tried, he really had. He'd given his life to keeping the Empire intact and stable. And he'd watched it crumble. It hadn't collapsed completely, but that was only a matter of time now. He'd seen the way the dice fell. The Federation helped stabilize what was left of the Empire. The situation would have settled, peace would have been possible, except there was still someone out there working to drag everything down.
He smiled bitterly. They didn't know how close they were to succeeding.
He had never felt quite so isolated.
He tried to keep things together. He did whatever he could to keep the fabric of society from unraveling completely. The knots were getting tricky to hold onto, there were so many of them.
And his people kept disappearing.
He'd discovered a message from Scholar, months old, buried in a database. He had no idea where Scholar was, or even if he was still alive. Lowell hadn't been able to trace him.
His other agents were scattered through the Empire, pushed into dead end positions that gave them no access to anything useful. Anyone tainted by association with him had been moved and demoted on the flimsiest excuse. It was enough to make him believe in paranoia.
They'd pulled his teeth, figuratively speaking. Without information, without loyal people in his network, he was nothing more than an old man.
He sighed, his gaze moving from the blank desk to the equally blank window. He was high in the Patrol Command Tower, more than a mile from the surface of the planet. The window showed gray fog. Rain rattled the translucent surface of the window every few moments. The tower was locked in a wet cycle for three more days.
He could have chosen to project any number of scenes through his window. He chose reality. He always had. He had never shied away from hard truths. Maybe he should have.
He tapped his fingers across the desk, wanting to be doing something. He had no reports, no paperwork, nothing to occupy his time. His staff made certain of that.
He'd lost track of the Phoenix and her crew. Those requests sometimes came through. His staff saw no danger in keeping tabs on one battered merchant ship, but it was very low on their priority list. The last position he had was three weeks old. It didn't help that the Phoenix changed id beacons almost every stop.
He envied Dace her freedom. She'd escaped the web of intrigue; with a few scars, true, but no lasting damage. At least he wanted to believe what the psych techs told him. She would adjust. She would survive. He knew firsthand how well she survived.
And he wished she were here. It was selfish of him to wish that, after everything she'd done. But if she were here—
Life would definitely be interesting, he thought with a heavy sigh.
His com link beeped, a soft chiming. He almost preferred the shrill cacophony of alarms. He didn't want to answer. What else was he going to do? Sit here and slowly die?
"Yes?" he said to the desk. There weren't even any buttons for him to push. The whole system was coded to his voice commands.
"You have the reception appointment at three," one of his nameless secretaries informed him.
"Thank you," he answered.
The com light blinked off. He was alone in his silence again. The clock in his desk showed he had two hours to wait. Two hours to waste doing nothing because he had nothing to do.
He slid his hands over the desk, feeling the unblemished smoothness of it.
He had tried everything. He was finished. He was too old.
The faintest stirring of emotions mixed like bile in his belly, disgust at himself and defiance. He wasn't going to go meekly into retirement. He would find some way to fight back.
But he was so tired. He didn't have the heart to rebuild his network from scratch, even if he could. He would rebel, in small ways.
He tapped his desk, calling up his comp screen. He opened the files they let him access. They contained useful information. He just had to find it. And then he would work on breaking the codes on the rest of the files.
They'd given him the desk. He might as well find some use for it.