Chapter 43 - Important People[]
The Triad
Tharkad System
Lyran Commonwealth
November, 3097
[Archon's Apartment, 10:00 AM....]
Daphne Rowe wasn't the head of LIC, she wasn't the head of any agency. She WAS, however, an employee of the Norns department, and the person sentenced to come answer the Archon's questions about the fact that nobody in the Domestic office knew the Coup was coming. The reason she was elected for this unpleasant duty, was that this morning at 7 AM, she had to shoot her boss in the head.
Because that's what you do with a traitor.
"...I uncovered it late," she confessed. "They have us thoroughly compromised, Your Highness. Lohengrin's action teams are probably the cleanest, but Internal Affairs is thoroughly penetrated with Victorists and Republic spies. We've got a few, but it's like when you see rats. Roaches or Crana: if you see one, there are a thousand or more you've missed chewing away at the agency."' She was angry, but it didn't show. "I'm not sure I can give you a list of senior officers that you can actually trust, sir."
The doors opened before Andrew could continue asking his questions, and a small woman in black strode through. Walking in her blue-wood walking stick striking a snappy cadence on the floor as she walked in.
"Duchess Ngo. How was the trip?" Andrew asked.
"Busy. Someone tried to park a Cameron battle group in my spot." Elizabeth said with a sour expression. "Quite inconveniently, someone else shot up the fueling docks. I spent taxpayer money on the Tharkad Anchorage and I'm rather angry about the condition it's in... Hello Daffy."
"Sorry about the mess." replies Daphne.
"Not your fault." Liz shrugged off her greatcoat, and dropped it on one of the sitting room chairs. "Seems the rats and termites have once again gotten into the Commonwealth. I told your father he needed to run a purge when he took office. Peter was too lenient, and now it's too late for a simple purge."
"That... seemed pretty extreme to my father, Duchess." Andrew said.
"Well, you see what I was trying to warn him about almost a decade ago, ayeh? How letting Mandarins develop in key posts could backfire?"
Andrew winced, "Father felt it was worth it to have a bit of continuity and stability..." he paused, then mourned, "Very stable..."
Elizabeth shifted her cold attention to Daphne Rowe, two old women posturing for position while Andrew mulled over things.
"Daffy, still working for the spook shop I see. How's your boy?" Her tone was light, and the diminutive showed a familiarity going back decades. Not so much fondness, but definitely familiarity.
"He refuses to speak with his mother." Daphne said. "Something about my being a 'relic of a sordid imperialist past' and how he'd rather sleep in the gutter of academia with the proletariat."
"You should've beaten him more often." Elizabeth commented. "Now you have a son who thinks a professorship is both demeaning and ennobling... which wouldn't be wrong, except that he's a bloody neo-marxist economist. This is what you get when you spoil your children with things instead of experiences..."
Andrew decided to try and get the conversation back on some kind of statesman-like track. "Duchess, what does it look like up there-there were reports of sabotage..."
Elizabeth's demeanor shifted back to professional, "We've secured the outer system, the orbitals, and around a thousand prisoners, Highness. When Patrick calls, should I tell him to space them, or hold them for internment?"
"Hold them." Andrew told her, remembering the hollow stares from Amanda and her colleague in the ruined throne room. "We made him talk."
Elizabeth nodded in approval, "Very well. You've got my daughter, is she well?"
"...No enlisted personnel were involved in the interrogation." she'd said. He blinked away the memory, "As well as can be expected, Your Grace," he said stiffly. "Considering what she had to do this morning."
"Yeaaahhhh..." Elizabeth dropped down into a different chair, and folded her hands. "May I presume the Republic Uniform Naval Treaty is permanently in the past-tense?"
"I believe that's a defined possibility." Andrew said quietly.
"Good. Leave your options open," Liz suggested. "But keep in mind, this was overt. Victor remains among the living. As is his supporters do as well, and killing or jailing them will get well past the point of viability in a straight purge. Right into the edge of genocidal stupidity. You're going to need to use the velvet glove, not the iron fist, unless you ache to repeat this morning's bloodshed and violence on a scale not seen since Victor and his sister tried to simultaneously bankrupt and destroy the nation in the sixties. If that's your aim, I'm taking my toys, and my kid, and going home."
He blinked, "What?"
"I will not participate in another pointless civil war driven by a desire for revenge or the illusion of national pride." Elizabeth told him, "I advise taking Daffy here and some people you can bribe or blackmail. Then cleaning house inside the national government. I advise some stinging, but not necessarily fatal punishment for prominent supporters of the Coup, with no reprisals. Make them sweat wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, make Stone sweat for a bit. Make it clear you're in charge, but not with purges. It's too late for that, or too early."
"It must be answered somehow!" Daphne blurted.
"Yeah," Elizabeth said. "Two options there that make sense to me. You can consult other advisors, but sense to me." She rolled her cane on her hand, "Option one; assassinate Victor Steiner-Davion. This is difficult, it provides no options if he wasn't in fact, supportive of this madness. It has historically proven rather difficult to kill the dwarf... that's option one. Option two is meet with him and talk with him. Find out how deep into this he is or if he's deep enough? If he starts making demands or if there's a tell that he's not on the up-and-up or is measuring your throne for his own butt? Well, at that point, you can kill him with clarity both of conscience and politics as you will then hold the moral high ground. Meet with those you SUSPECT of being involved, pump them for their grievances, and if those grievances prove valid, address the grievances, because if you just kill them, you're only making room for someone with the same problem that you don't know about."
"Iron or silk? That's what you're suggesting."
"Yeah, it's an iron-or-silk problem... and it's your problem now, because at some point they lost patience with your father. Stone may have tried to manipulate this from the background, but the soldiers on those dropships? Were Lyrans. That much cooperation has a domestic cause. Find the cause and eliminate it by resolving it. Or we'll have to keep doing this... and honestly, I'm getting old now. I want to live to see more grandchildren."