Phil had retired to his office to get some work done, with Markus outside, probably reading. Unlike vid shows, things never happened quickly when politics occurred. Even major fleet engagements that only took up a few pages on paper usually ran hours of realtime when you looked closely at the event log, with long stretches of maneuvering and such between actual action.
So he looked up sharply when the hatch opened unannounced. Markus stood there with a tablet in one hand, immediately stepping to the other side of the desk and handing the device to Phil.
“You need to see this live,” he said as the hatch closed.
Then the big lug sat down in the chair and leaned back. Must be good. Markus was usually a little more spit and polish than that. Most of the time.
Okay, sometimes.
Phil looked down at the machine. Video poised for play. Looked like something broadcast from Aditi on public airwaves. Trust Markus to have picked up a gadget like that when he was here last. Probably had several, so he could take them apart and study the innards.
Markus was like that, too.
Phil hit play and watched the woman newsreader stare into the camera with haunted eyes.
“Breaking news from the Capital, in case you are just joining us,” she said in that breathless way that they all had mastered by the time they got promoted to the cushy job. “The Prakaash Party has broken with the government and announced a vote of No Confidence, to be held tomorrow. Spokespeople from Pahaad Aur Baada and Van Parties have also put out statements in the last hour that they will support Prakaash. Furthermore—wait, I have an update. We’re about to go live to our reporter in the field for a special scoop.”
The screen cut and Phil recognized Roshni Mishra now. He even recognized her office, deep in the bowels of the capital building itself.
“This is Ashwin Kulkarni,” a young man appeared in the screen. “I’m currently talking with Herald of the Assembly Roshni Mishra in her office, regarding her statements about no longer supporting the government of Jasvinder Mhasalkar. Madam Herald?”
The camera shifted around to Roshni again, looking almost triumphant in the way she seemed to glow.
Phil assumed that somebody had turned their back on the woman at the wrong moment and gotten a knife in the kidneys. She had never come off as a bad person, but a smooth operator and a deadly foe.
“Thank you, Ashwin,” she said, turning those dark, charismatic eyes to the camera like she was already in a campaign commercial.
Maybe she was. If she was voting against her own government, there would likely be snap elections pretty quickly. Phil wondered if Mhasalkar would stay on as a custodian, like usually happened in Aquitaine elections.
Then his mind flashed back to the Horvat Affair that had brought down the government back home. And gotten a number of people thrown in prison for a long time for what was adjudicated as treason at the time.
Phil had had more than a little involvement in such a thing. He supposed that he might bear some responsibility here.
Of course, if politicians stopped doing bad things under the table, they wouldn’t have to worry about police coming to arrest them when it all came out.
Roshni had paused just long enough to spike the camera. Looking like a Speaker should? Maybe.
“I have just come from an Emergency Meeting of the Assembly Caucus,” she said, like it was an announcement rather than an interview, but Phil wasn’t sure it wasn’t. “Certain details that heretofore had been unknown to me were brought to the attention of the Caucus. Tomorrow, I will be introducing them without security clearance to the Assembly itself, as part of the explanation for why Prakaash is no longer supporting the government and will be moving into the opposition immediately. There will be a vote of no confidence at that time under extraordinary circumstances.”
“Will the government fall?” the reporter asked, breathless with anticipation that he had the inside scoop.
Phil wondered if the Aditi Consensus was about to come apart on him. Or just finally grow up and stop acting like bullies to all their neighbors.
Nice enough folks, but he wouldn’t trust any of them with his last beer, as the ancient saying went.
“That is up to Jasvinder at this point,” Roshni said with the kind of smile that a shark would have been jealous of. “Based on the outcome of the meeting, I and my people will have nothing to do with it. I believe that many other parties will feel the same way. When the news comes out, I wonder if his own party will continue to support him. Or Administrator for War, Avinash Bachchan of the Vyaapaar Vaayu Party.”
Phil heard the gasp from the reporter and nodded to himself. Roshni was about to play hardball. She’d impressed the shit out of him on that topic when he’d first met her.
“Madam Herald, can you give my viewers some clue as to what information you will be introducing into the public record tomorrow?” Ashwin Kulkarni asked now.
“Certainly,” she said now, somehow finding yet another level to dial up her smile and intensity. “Put simply, the government of Jasvinder Mhasalkar, in the person of Administrator for War Bachchan, ordered the attack on the Gloran Carinae II, one that destroyed the colony. We have the evidence, and will make it public tomorrow. That’s all I really have for now. Thank you.”
Boom.
He looked up at Markus, noted the wide eyes on the man.
“Get Harinder in here,” he said.
Markus moved instantly, standing and opening the hatch. Harinder happened to be almost there from the other side.
“He already knows,” Markus said, sliding out and to one side as Harinder entered.
“Shit,” Harinder said from the doorway.
Phil handed her the tablet.
“Get that video transmitted to everyone in both squadrons immediately,” he ordered. “Just in case somebody wasn’t monitoring the right channel. Then contact Glanthua’s Stand and ask the Emperor to stand by for a day so we can see how it all shakes out.”
“Government falling?” she asked.
“Horvat Affair, all over again, maybe,” he nodded. “You remember how that went down, so prep everyone here. Iveta can be extra paranoid for a day or two, but I don’t think we’re at risk. Still, maybe we should back off some, like it was Ewinhome below us, just so we don’t get caught up in the collateral damage. Careers just ended over that admission on Mishra’s part.”
“Phil, people are likely to go to prison for that,” Harinder countered.
“All the more reason to let them sort it out themselves,” he said. “Getting that out in the open and making them deal with it means that they might take the opportunities to clean up some other things. Possibly even sweep out a lot of those old farts and bring in some new blood. Creator knows the Consensus needed something like that, even before this. I just need for Kerenski to not decide that he needs an extra kilo of flesh over this as well.”
“I’ll talk to the War-Captain and see what they think,” Harinder nodded. “And brief folks. You want to make a statement in an hour or so, once we all start listening to the planetary news along with everybody else?”
“Yes,” Phil agreed. “And let Kerenski know that he might want to address the joint force at that time as well. I doubt he’ll have anything to say to the ground or the Assembly at this point, but I’ll keep our options open.”
“The Emperor address the Assembly in open session?” Harinder asked sharply.
“Not until I know what he’ll say,” Phil smiled. “At the same time, it might ratchet things down a few levels. There have to be a lot of folks a little twitchy right now, with this much potentially hostile firepower in orbit.”
“Understood.”
She stepped back and closed the hatch. He located Heather and opened a line to her quarters once he knew she was awake and relaxing.
“What’s up?” she asked as she came on the line.
“Mishra just admitted on the local news that Aditi did it,” he said. “Harinder has the video going out to everyone. You and Iveta stay on rotating shifts for now, in case I need one of you with Tactical on no warning, but that’s paranoia, not concern.”
“We here for a few days and then withdraw to Carinae?” she said.
“Or Derragon,” Phil nodded. “Kerenski has to decide if bringing down the Consensus government will be enough, or if he wants to go after the Consensus itself.”
“We likely to help, if he does?” Heather asked.
“Not if he shoots first,” Phil clarified. “If Aditi does, they probably have it coming.”
“Good enough,” she said.
Phil cut the line and leaned back to think.
He’d come in expecting to have to have nasty, public arguments with folks. Folks who might have forgotten that Aditi was only a nice place on the surface of things. And like the others, the presence of Aquitaine seemed to be a catalyst to break loose a lot of old friction.
First Lord Naoumov had given him those secret orders to make sure that the entire cluster was brought forward, technologically as well as socially and politically, because at the end of the day she couldn’t definitively say that Denis Jež was wrong. That the Republic would never fall and transform into Imperial Aquitaine.
Phil wasn’t so sure. No, that was a lie. He was almost positive, but that it wouldn’t really happen in his lifetime.
Unless there was a way to watch frogs being boiled so slowly that nobody noticed. Was that what Denis had seen?
Phil remembered things back when he’d joined the fleet out of Academy, about the time that Jessica Keller had started making a name for herself as the greatest commander of her generation. Back when overall fleet command had been split between the Noble Lords and the Fighting Lords, a split partly reflecting the origins of the officers of said fleet, when about half had come from the so-called Fifty Families that really made up the social and cultural elite of the Republic.
The other half had been folks like him, Jež, and Keller. Middle- and lower-class kids with aptitude and dreams.
Kasum had broken the power of the Noble Lords. Removed a great many of them from power. Horvat had accidentally helped that, because so many of the folks that had gone down with him at the time had also been those sorts of folks.
That left a lot of aggressive ones behind. In command, with Keller and her squadron all retired for good now, getting on with their lives.
That also left people like Phil to try to read the tea leaves of history and make smart choices now, because they might not play out in his lifetime.
If he was lucky.
The future of the galaxy might come down to Adric Kerenski at this point.