The Far Bank of the Rubicon (The Pax Imperium Wars: Volume 1) (22 page)

“Yes, I think that would be a good idea. I can’t think straight.”

Jonas spoke to the room. “Administrator, send request: Ask Dmitri Telperian to join us.”

A courtesy chime announced that the computer had heard him.

Jonas and Stephen sat quietly for the time it took Dmitri to join them. In a matter of moments, he entered the room with his usual controlled and stoic walk. Only someone who knew him like Jonas could see the stress in his motion. He carried his stress in his shoulders and around the corners of his eyes. As he approached, he pulled a third chair out from the table and positioned himself between the two princes. Looking at Stephen, he said, “Your majesty, how may I be of assistance?” Jonas noted the change in title. Dmitri had referred to Stephen as the King.

Stephen also noticed, and for just a second or two, he scowled. Then, as quickly as it came, the anger dissipated, and Stephen shrugged. “Dmitri, what am I to do now? I have to speak to the nation.”

“Yes, Sire, you will have to speak to your people. You are the king, and they should hear news of this horrible day from you.”

Stephen began to warm. “Do we really know that, Dmitri? We haven’t found out what has happened. He might have survived.”

“Stephen, before I came in here, I spoke with Admiral Hansen, At this point, the blast is estimated to have been half a gigaton. Not huge, not a planet killer, but it went off only three miles from the conference center. Stephen, there will be no body to find. The building wasn’t shielded. Zurich was a neutral city and that brought with it a sense of safety which has proven to be misplaced. We are on the far bank of the Rubicon. There is no going back. You are the King.”

A tear began to form in Stephen’s eye. “I can’t… This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I don’t know what to do.”

Dmitri sat up a little straighter and looked at Stephen intently, willing him to understand. “Stephen, you are not alone. I am here. Your aunt is here. Jonas is here. We will help you.”

“So what do I do?”

Dmitri hesitated.

Jonas guessed that he was feeling unsure as to whether or not he was the proper person to advise the new king.

“Where is Dora?”

“I left her crying in her quarters.”

“I see,” said Dmitri. He looked down at his hands, thought for moment, and then answered. “In that case, this is the advice I have for you. It is clear to the personnel at the Crucible that this attack is the start of war. Just before I stepped in to see you, there was an unconfirmed report that the Allied gate in Schloss Hess had been attacked and may have already fallen to the enemy. Steps are being taken to prepare our forces. Stephen, you don’t assassinate over twenty heads of state unless you mean war. Right now, the top priority is to ensure your safety, which is why your ship is already being diverted to the ORB.”

Stephen shook his head and looked at the floor. “Don’t I get a say in that? Won’t that make me look weak? My place is with my people,” said Stephen.

“You are the King, Stephen. Of course you get a say, but…”

At that moment, the administrative computer interrupted Dmitri. “Her Highness the Princess Dorothea Athena is joining the conference.”

All three heads turned as the door at the other end of the room opened. Aunt Dora entered. Her walk was steady but not as crisp as usual. Dora’s face looked grim and determined.

“Dora, they are taking us to the off-world bunker and not home! That isn’t right! I need to go to the capital to be with my people and mourn my father,” Stephen argued.

An ashen-colored Dora began shaking her head, even while Stephen was still talking. With a clear effort of will, she kept her voice calm. She grew steadier as she spoke. “Stephen, there may be other attacks yet to come today. We are taking you to a place of safety until we can make sure that the capital is secure. This kingdom has lost enough today. It would fall apart if it lost you. Right now, you are the glue that holds the House of Athena together. We have to keep you safe. Besides, we have other things to think about than simply mourning your father. This is war, Stephen. If there is one of these bombs in Olympia or headed to one of our colonies, we have to stop it. Remember, this conference was supposed to be in our capital. Right now, there is great fear that at any moment a bomb could go off there, as well. I believe we should bring together the war council. It a slight breach in protocol, as Your Majesty should really be meeting with a Bishop right now to formalize your kingship, but in this instance, it will have to wait.”

Stephen nodded, sighed, and looked down at his hands. After a quiet couple of seconds, he spoke softly, still gazing down. “I am only going to say this once. If any of the three of you ever call me ‘Your Majesty’ again, I will have you thrown out of court and sent as our ambassador to New Artica. Do all of you understand?”

Wanting a way to break the tension, the impish little brother part of Jonas briefly thought about answering with “Yes, Your Majesty,” but just before he spoke, he realized how inappropriate it would have been. He felt ashamed. The impulse to laugh and poke fun of Stephen felt like a habit of mirth that no longer belonged in the reality of his new world.

“We understand, Stephen. You can have that much say in your destiny today,” answered Dora. “Now, with your permission, I believe that we should leave intraspace and hold this conference by secure holi. May we?”

Stephen looked up. He idly waved a hand at Dora. “Do what you think best, Dora. I can’t think straight right now, and I need your help.”

“I know, Stephen. That’s why I’m here,” said Dora in a softer tone as she brushed away tears from the corners of her eyes. “We need to look to our people. There will be time enough to cry when they are safe, and we will get you home soon.”

Stephen nodded. “I understand, even if I don’t like it, but I don’t feel ready to chair the council. Dora, is it possible that I defer authority to you in that meeting?”

Dora thought about it for a moment.

While she was thinking, Dmitri spoke up. “In this case, Dorothea, I believe that Stephen might be correct. By deferring to you, he tells the military who the new king trusts. By placing his trust in you, he gives himself both continuity with the old regime and a voice of strength and stability in a time of crisis. I think that he is right. It would be much better than having him appear weak through ignorance in his first meeting. Besides by letting you lead the meeting, he hasn’t technically made any claim to the throne until it is ratified by the clergy.” Recognizing Dora’s tears, Dimitri added, “That is, if you are up to handling the meeting.”

Dora brushed the tears off her face. “Not in intraspace, but I will be much more able to control myself on the holi. Dmitri, will you let Admiral Hansen know that King Stephen the Sixth would like his military counsel to meet in fifteen minutes?”

Dmitri stood. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Jonas stood with Dmitri and was just getting ready to follow him out the door when Dora stopped them. “One more thing before you go. I expect that the staff and the military will be watching us right now. With the King being removed from harm’s way, they will be even more aware that they are in danger if another attack were to come. Jonas, it is important that you be there with them. Encourage them. Thank them. They will recognize that you are sharing the risk with them. That will be important for the King and the House of Athena.” Jonas looked at Dora, nodded, and then stepped through the door out of intraspace, before his mind could dwell on the obvious implications for his own safety.

The war began even as Jonas spoke to his brother in intraspace. In meatspace, the Unity hit hard, attacking four different gates. Three fell within hours. Information was hard to come by from those systems, but it appeared that concerns about Unity cyber-warfare hadn’t been exaggerated. The fourth system, Wales, had somehow managed to destroy their own gate-control station. It was a desperate move which temporarily cut the system off from the rest of the galaxy but also trapped the Unity fleet. So far, despite fierce fighting, the Allied forces at Wales hadn’t been able to destroy the Unity mother ship parked near the gate. If the Unity ship could get its on-board gate-control system calibrated to the gate, the heroics at Wales would all be for naught. Estimates were the Allies had three to five days left to stop the Unity in Wales. All in all, it wasn’t a good start.

In hindsight, it became clear that, on the cyber front, the war had begun at least a few hours before the attack on New Zurich. Key intraspace nodes were flooded with traffic, forcing Allied communications into the slow back alleys and byways. All around Allied space, infrastructure struggled to hold its own against an onslaught of attacks. In homes across space, fusion generators shut down and would not start again. Planet-wide transportation control systems failed, leaving vehicles navigating on their own without assistance and, in some places, dams failed. In one case, a whole city sank into the ocean.

Overall, the spectacular attacks were quite rare. However, even the seemingly innocuous ones, such as the failure of a city’s automated transportation system, resulted in a few deaths here and a few deaths there. It was the depth and the sheer number of these attacks which caught the Allies by surprise. In all, the Allies counted at least two million of these zero-day attacks on their territories during the first twenty-four hours of the war. It was hard to calculate the number of casualties, but the lowest estimates put the number in the tens of millions and the highest over one hundred million.

Jonas thought it was the cyber attacks, more than anything else, which brought home the reality of the war to everyone in the Crucible. This wasn’t just a border war which would result in a negotiated solution and a loss of territory on either side. This would have to end in the unconditional surrender of one side or the other.

The depths of the Unity cyber capabilities didn’t become evident until twenty-four hours after the start of the war. Jonas sat in the Crucible at yet another meeting of the war council. Like everyone else, he had had no sleep since the attack. In the ever-present glow of the screens, he had no sense of time. The war council had met officially with King Stephen three times already since the day before. In reality, while they were all trapped together, the war council was in constant session.

During the current meeting, Stephen had just asked Admiral Dawson what had been done when one of Admiral Hanson’s aides stood up and started screaming. The young woman was about Jonas’ age and had been acting as the communications officer for the meeting. She looked like she was in a trance. Her left hand fumbled for the heads-up device on her head, even as her right hand took a knife out of her belt. Screaming, she charged at the person closest to her, who happened to be Admiral Hansen.

One of the security staff in the room screamed, “mind-jack!” and fired before she got close. The communications officer died on the carpet shortly thereafter.

After that, protocols changed for the use of heads-up devices in the Crucible. Only those officers who needed them were allowed to wear them. Mind-jacks happened three more times in the next few hours. However, in all the following incidents, security officers were able to stun the victims and remove the heads-up device before any damage was done.

Jonas spent the first two days waiting for a nuke to go off in Olympia. Despite persistent rumors and occasional anxious moments, no other devices were found in Allied territories after the assassinations of the heads of state.

For these first hours, Jonas was a conspicuous presence in the command center. He attended all briefings. He listened to reports. He greeted the staff and encouraged them in their work. He acted as the face of the House of Athena. Twice, he appeared on state-run television, taking the elevator up from the bunker and meeting with the reporters in the palace. Dora and others felt these interviews were extremely important for the government and those living in the capital, as they demonstrated that the family had not abandoned it. Jonas found himself on state television encouraging Athenians to show the Unity that they had not intimidated the Athenian people. He even allowed himself to shed a few tears when talking about his father during one of the interviews.

Deeply shocked by the assassination of their leader, the whole nation responded with a jingoistic and determined nationalism. Spontaneous parades and street parties erupted in major cities on several planets. The Athenian family crest hung from nearly every building in the capital. Even the reporters’ questions were soft and remarkably pro-monarchy. War had come to the Pax, and despite years of preparations, the first few days showed that the Allies were woefully unprepared.

Jonas awoke with a start on the third night after his father’s murder. He felt the adrenaline subside as he stared into the blackness of his room. It was the third time he had woken up from the same nightmare in the last two nights. He was walking through the palace, trying to find his father to warn him about the attack. Every time he came close, Milton Rain suddenly appeared behind him and covered his mouth, forcing Jonas to watch again as his father turned bright as the sun and the holi connection went dead. For the next two hours, Jonas couldn’t sleep.

Finally, toward the end of the night, Jonas simply got up, showered, put on his uniform, and walked down to the command center. He entered with a strong wafer of hardened cortan in his left hand, a grain could be fermented to create a mild stimulant effect. Jonas enjoyed the sensation of his brain waking up.

He returned the salute of the guard at the door, noticed Admiral Dawson talking with Stephen at the conference table, and went over to them. He pushed on the barrier three times rapidly, enjoying the wave pattern he sent down the window and the static hiss that went with it. Dawson looked up and immediately waved Jonas into the room. Without hesitating, Jonas marched through the now-penetrable window.

Stephen’s holi turned to him and said, “Why aren’t you asleep?”

The parental tone irritated Jonas, and he wasn’t about to talk about his nightmare. “I could ask you the same thing, Your Majesty,” Jonas said with a smile.