EMPIRE: Succession Read online

  Books in the EMPIRE Series

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Reformer

  EMPIRE: Usurper

  EMPIRE: Tyrant

  EMPIRE: Commander

  EMPIRE: Warlord

  EMPIRE: Conqueror

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  EMPIRE: Imperial Police

  EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

  EMPIRE: Imperial Inspector

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Intervention

  EMPIRE: Investigation

  EMPIRE: Succession

  Books in the Childers Universe

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  Childers

  Childers: Absurd Proposals

  Galactic Mail: Revolution

  A Charter For The Commonwealth

  Campbell: The Problem With Bliss

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  Campbell: The Sigurdsen Incident

  EMPIRE

  Succession

  by

  RICHARD F. WEYAND

  Copyright 2020 by Richard F. Weyand

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-1-7340758-7-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Credits

  Cover Art: James Lewis-Vines

  Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk

  Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.

  Bloomington, Indiana, USA

  December 2020

  CONTENTS

  Il Refugio

  Heir To The Throne

  Sector Governors

  Center

  Maneuvers

  Amanda in Command

  Missing, Presumed Lost

  Doing It Wrong

  Verano

  Concealment And Revelation

  The Shootist

  Several Inquiries

  Collecting Input

  Resupply Of The Illustrious

  Contretemps And Confession

  Interlude on Verano

  Amanda’s Plan

  Goulet And Bouchard

  Goulet And Parnell

  Stimson and Prieto

  To the Illustrious

  To Center

  Return Of The Shootist

  The Conspirators Assemble

  Sunday Brunch

  Preparations

  The Coronation

  The After Party

  Emperor And Empress

  Family

  Return Of The Illustrious

  Retirement

  Passing Of An Era

  From The Encyclopedia Hominum

  Afterword To The Succession Trilogy

  Il Refugio

  What had been for millennia a rocky outcrop on the seacoast had finally, through action of tide and weather, been cut off from the coast that spawned it. The rocky promontory stood proud and alone, separated from the headlands of the coast by a chasm a thousand feet wide and five hundred feet deep.

  A bridge spanned this chasm, allowing access to the one-hundred-and-twenty acre estate that had been built on top of the island. Destroyed eleven years before in the Empire-sponsored revolt that had overthrown Verano’s President-For-Life Juan Baptiste Elizondo, the bridge had long since been rebuilt by the new president, once more allowing access to Il Refugio, the country estate of the planetary president.

  An armored limousine made its way across this bridge, both preceded and followed by escort vehicles filled with serious-looking men, with serious-looking weapons. Once over the bridge, the escort vehicles peeled off and the armored limousine drove on to the front portico of the main house.

  The doorman walked down the steps from the front entrance and opened the rear passenger door of the limousine. Morena Prieto, fifty-four now but not looking a day over forty, got out of the car. She was dark, and beautiful, with a ready smile.

  Marie Louise Bouchard got out of the car after her. Where her mother was beautiful, Bouchard was stunning, as if God had decided to make one perfect woman. Twenty-nine years old, at the peak of her youth and beauty, she was a vision.

  “Madame President. Senator Bouchard. Welcome home,” the doorman said and led them up the stairs.

  Ann Turley and Paul Gulliver were in the living room of the guest house on Il Refugio. They were sitting in the living room unwinding after a long day. The guest house was perched on the very lip of the island, the picture windows in the living room giving a view west along the rocky coast. Waves splashed against the rocks, losing every battle but prevailing over time.

  It could be something of a shock to drop out of the Virtual Reality system and find oneself back here in this cozy room. For ten years, Turley and Gulliver had been the joint head of Section Six, the Emperor’s super-secret intelligence operation. Using a variety of names and avatars, the two had supervised an organization of thousands of intelligence operatives scattered across the four-hundred-fifty-thousand inhabited planets in human space.

  Financed directly out of the Emperor’s funds, reporting only to the Emperor himself, the organization existed to supplement the information His Majesty received through more official channels. So secret that it had no headquarters – no physical location at all – it was run completely in VR, which allowed Turley and Gulliver to operate Section Six using the same avatars, the same names, as if there were only one head of the organization.

  Turley and Gulliver had met in the Julian operation to overthrow Julian’s president-for-life, James Mieland. It was the twin to the Verano operation that had overthrown Juan Baptiste Elizondo at the same time. Gulliver and Prieto had been agents for Section Six during those operations, and the Empress had nominated Turley to Section Six when the Julian operation was complete. The two had taken command of Section Six at the end of the Earth Sector Crisis, the result of their investigation into Dalnimir, a provincial capital in the Earth Sector. For a time, Turley had been the Acting Sector Governor for Earth Sector. She retained the honorary title of Governor, as well as her reserve commission as a lieutenant general in the Imperial Guard.

  Now, ten years after the Earth Sector Crisis, Turley was a fit sixty-five years old, and Gulliver was fifty-one.

  “Oh, what a day,” Turley said once she dropped out of VR.

  She got up and went over to the bar to pour herself a glass of wine.

  “Yes. I worry about Hawking,” Gulliver said. “I’m just not sure what he’s up to yet.”

  “Him and Sounder both.”

  “I wonder who else is in their little circle. You know these guys have something going on, but it won’t just be the two of them.”

  Bryan Hawking was the sector governor of the Stanton Sector, while Elizabeth Sounder was the sector governor of the Vandalia Sector, both in the former Democracy of Planets.

  “We’re bound to find out eventually,” Turley said.

  “That’s what worries me.”

  Turley came back over to their overstuffed chairs looking out the big picture windows, bringing him a glass of wine as well.

  “Thanks.”

  The guest-house butler came in.

  “Governor Turley, Mr. Gulliver. President Prieto and Senator Bouchard have just arrived. They’ve invited you to dine with them in the main house at seven o’clock.”

  “Thank you, George. Tell them we’ll be there,” Gulliver said, and the butler bowed out, closing the door behind him.

  Turley checked the time in VR. Just a bit after six.

  “That’ll be perfect,” she said. “I’m going to go fresh up a bit. I’ll be back in half an hour to help you with that wine.”

  Turley and Gulliver walked into the sitting room off the dining room of the main house to find Prieto and Bouchard sitting with drinks. They had changed out of the business suits they had worn out from the cap
ital of San Jacinto and were dressed casually, as were Turley and Gulliver. The politicians stood to greet the arrivals.

  “Ann. Paul. It’s so good to see you,” Prieto said.

  “And you, Morena,” Turley said. “You finally made it out of the capital.”

  “Yes, the legislature is in recess, so I don’t need to be pulling strings behind the scenes for the moment. And Marie has finally been able to get away.”

  Bouchard laughed, a delightful laugh one always wanted to hear again.

  “Yes. We’ve finally all shut up long enough to leave the building.”

  Everyone else laughed. There were hugs of greeting all around before Turley addressed Bouchard.

  “So does that mean you’re here for a while, Marie?”

  “Yes,” Bouchard said. “A month at least, maybe more. It depends on when my tyrant mother calls us back.”

  “And I’m inclined to leave the legislature out for a while,” Prieto said. “Let things calm down a bit.”

  The major domo opened the double doors into the dining room.

  “Dinner is served, Ma’am,” he said to Prieto.

  They all went in to the dining room. The table was collapsed to its smallest size, with settings just for the four of them.

  “Your parents decided to stay in the capital, Morena?” Turley asked.

  “Yes, for the moment, anyway. With all the hubbub of the annexation question for the last several months, they were looking forward to Marie and I being out of the house. They may come down to Il Refugio a bit later.”

  For dinner this evening, the first meal with the president back in residence in months, the staff had pulled out all the stops. Braised lamb brisket – deboned after cooking – with a lemon oregano yogurt sauce, served on a bed of onions with new potatoes on the side, a blanched medley of vegetables with Hollandaise, a garden salad, and poached pears in a ginger cinnamon sauce served with crème brûlée for dessert.

  “My gosh,” Turley said. “It’s a good thing every night isn’t your first night back on the island, Morena. Even the gym on Il Refugio would have a hard time keeping up with this.”

  After dinner, over coffee in the sitting room, Gulliver brought up the political discussion where it had left off.

  “One thing I don’t understand about the annexation question, Morena,” he said. “Isn’t that purely a plebiscite? What is the government’s role in that other than holding a clean election? And isn’t it still two years off, anyway?”

  “The question is whether the government should make a recommendation to the electorate with regards to annexation or not, and, if so, what that recommendation should be.”

  “There’s no consensus emerging?”

  Prieto laughed.

  “No,” she said, “there isn’t. The battle lines are hardening, if anything.”

  “What’s your position?”

  “I’ve been cagey,” Prieto said, “though privately I am in favor of annexation. I don’t know whether the government should take any position on that or not.”

  Gulliver turned to Bouchard.

  “And you, Marie?”

  “I’ve been publicly for annexation, but have held back on whether the government should take any position or not.”

  “What would decide you there?”

  “Whether or not the government’s recommendation was for annexation. I don’t want a recommendation if it will be against annexation.”

  Turley had been watching this exchange with interest.

  “But how could anyone be against annexation?” she asked. “This Emperor has funded this colony from the start. Moved everyone out here. Provided all the necessary equipment and supplies. Even funded an operation to overturn the government when it went south.”

  “Yes, and that’s the issue, Ann,” Prieto said. “This Emperor did all that. This Emperor is also ninety-six years old. Who is the next Emperor, and how would Verano fare under him? Or her, I suppose. Who will be the next ruler, and when? The timing is bad, in that our annexation question comes up when we know the Empire is in for a sea change and we have no idea how that will go.”

  “I have a question about that, actually,” Gulliver said. “I understand that we all think the Emperor will pass away soon – within the next five years – but I guess I don’t understand why. With the best medical care in the Empire, why wouldn’t he live until a hundred-twenty or more?”

  “I’ve looked into this a bit in my studies, because it kept coming up in my reading,” Bouchard said. “The problem is that there are a large number of ailments and failures that pile up between the ages of ninety-five and a hundred. Medical science has cured many diseases, solved many health problems, but, once one gets near a hundred years old, they are so numerous, and we just haven’t solved them all. Not even close.”

  “So we solved or cured twenty of them, and thirty remain?”

  “Something like that, yes. Now there have always been some people who lived past a hundred, even to a hundred-ten, and always a few who pass away, even now, between eighty-five and ninety-five. Those are the tails on the normal curve. The bulk of people pass between ninety-five and a hundred. Those deaths – as opposed to deaths from accident or disease – seem to be genetically determined. Medicine can make people more robust for the time they have, maintain cognitive ability for the time they have, but how much time they have seems to be programmed in.”

  “And we haven’t figured out the programming,” Turley said.

  “No. And when they try to mess with it, they get children born with terrible defects. Work is still being done, but very carefully, and progress has been slow to non-existent.”

  “Which brings us back to the question,” Prieto said. “When the Emperor dies – this year or next year or three years from now – who will we have then? What will their policies be like? And what does that mean for Verano?”

  “No way of knowing,” Gulliver said. “That makes the annexation issue a really open question, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Bouchard said with a sigh. “Which means we have two more years of wrangling over it.”

  “Ten years ago, this all seemed so far off,” Gulliver said, shaking his head. “And now it’s here.”

  “Speaking of which, we’ve been your house guests now for ten years,” Turley said. “I’m not sure that’s something you signed up for.”

  “No, but we enjoy having you here,” Prieto said. “There’s no reason for you to leave, not on our end, anyway. And discussions like this have been very helpful over the years.”

  “Not to mention all the help with my doctoral thesis and my election campaign,” Bouchard said.

  “We didn’t help that much, Marie,” Gulliver said.

  “No, other than suggesting the topic for my doctoral thesis, reading several iterations of it, and making a number of good suggestions on the text. Oh, and suggesting that I work to move my voice down an octave to make it a better tonal range for politics. And working with me on my campaign platform. Other than those few things, you didn’t help at all.”

  She rolled her eyes, and Gulliver laughed.

  “OK, OK, point taken,” he said.

  “And you’re in the middle of your second term now,” Turley said.

  Bouchard nodded.

  “And I’m in the middle of my third,” Prieto said.

  “Will you run again, Morena?” Gulliver asked.

  “I don’t know, Paul. I’m not term-limited, as Mark Chapman was on Julian. I’d like to see the annexation question put to bed before I step down. I’m just not sure how that will work out, because they’re coming up at the same time, more or less. The four-year terms should have made the fifty-year anniversary of the colony fall between elections, but the first election was held when the colony was getting organized back in the Empire, two years before the fifty-year clock started running.”

  “That’s bad timing,” Gulliver said.

  Prieto nodded.

  “I suppose I’m good for on
e more term if it comes to that.”

  Silence hung for a bit until Turley changed the subject.

  “By the way, Marie,” she said. “I’ve had them change the tactical course around quite a bit. You up for a little friendly competition?”

  “Sure, Ann, but you’re going to best me by a lot, I’m afraid. I’m not in very good practice at the moment.”

  “Well, with at least a month off, there’s no time like the present. And I haven’t seen the new course yet, so we’ll both be in the dark on that score.”

  “All right, then. You’re on.”

  Turley had trained Bouchard when they got to Verano ten years ago. With both of them resident on Il Refugio, Turley had taught Bouchard how to achieve three-hundred-sixty-degree vision through the use of six small cameras on her hatband, logging into them in VR. Together with twin forearm rigs that would eject a small-caliber pistol into either or both hands on demand and the use of Imperial Marine tactical training simulators, Bouchard had achieved impressive performance. They had a tactical course set up on the mainland in a suitable location less than a mile from Il Refugio.

  That was Turley’s, Gulliver’s, and Bouchard’s first four years on Verano, while Bouchard was working on her PhD in history and government. She then ran for the unicameral legislature, and won an at-large seat on her first electoral outing. The busy six years since had seen no time to stay in practice, however, and Bouchard had spent most of her time in San Jacinto, living in the president’s mansion with her mother and her grandparents.

  As it turned out, Bouchard need not have worried. She had not lost muscle tone due to the gym she and her mother had installed in the president’s mansion in downtown San Jacinto. She was rusty the first time through the tactical course, but her earlier training came back to her quickly and, at twenty-nine, she had the reflexes of a cat. Turley, at sixty five, by contrast, was definitely on the far side of her prime, though she had also stayed in training.

  So while Turley won the first round, Bouchard tied the second and won the third round through the course. They reset the programming of the targets between rounds, so there was no learning advantage there, it was all reflexes and training.