EMPIRE: Reformer, page 1
EMPIRE
Reformer
by
RICHARD F. WEYAND
Copyright 2018 by Richard F. Weyand
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-1-7321280-4-0
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Credits
Cover Art: Aaron Griffin
Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk
Books by Richard F. Weyand:
Books in the EMPIRE series:
EMPIRE: Reformer
Books in the Childers Universe
Childers
Childers: Absurd Proposals
Galactic Mail: Revolution
A Charter For The Commonwealth
Campbell: The Problem With Bliss
Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
December, 2018
CONTENTS
Accession
Transition
The Files
Travers World
Education
Medicine
School
Cure
Recovery
Imperial Update
Dee’s Education
The Dance
Side Effect
Scholarships, Commissions, And Commitments
Money
Wedding
Thank You
Departure
To Space
First Class
Sintar
Shopping And More
College
The Meeting
Hired
First Day
Two Big Questions
Serious Reforms
Four Graduations, A Promotion, And A Move
Building Resistance
A Nasty Little War
Homecoming
Patents
Back To The Shithole
Second Homecoming
Imperial Oversight
Imperial Guardsmen
Discovery
Settlement And Referral
Council Panic
Imperial Moves
Fate Intervenes
Accession
Lila Mishra, Her Majesty Adannaya III, twenty-fifth Empress of the Sintaran Empire, was dying. Jiahui Song, assistant to Her Majesty and Heir Apparent to the throne, sat by her bedside.
“Leave us.”
The voice, frail now with age and disease, nevertheless held the note of command, and the Privy Secretary and the Chairman of the Imperial Council and their aides bowed toward the dying woman and left the room. They were alone, with the exception of the two Imperial Guardsmen who stood at ease in the far corners. They were ubiquitous here in the Imperial Residence, and they expected to be, and were, treated like furniture.
“Jackals,” Mishra muttered once they had left the room. She straightened her covers, sighed.
“I tried, my dear.”
“I know you did, Your Majesty.”
“Jiahui, now that it is the last hours of my life, for a short time, I want someone to call me Lila again. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes. Lila.”
“Thank you. As I said, I tried. You must do better than I did. By the time I knew how the system worked, what my actual powers were, and how far I could push, I was past my prime. That is one reason I have chosen you as my heir. This is better a young person’s job. You will have the strength to wrestle with the Council and the bureaucracy where I did not.”
“I hope so, Your Ma– Lila.”
Jiahui was fifty-six years old, hardly young, but Lila Mishra had been almost seventy years old when she acceded to the throne over twenty years ago.
“I have left notes for you in the Empress’s private computer files. You and only you will have access to these once I am gone. The things I have left undone. Possible methods for getting them done. Many things. One secret to getting things done is the bureaucracy and the Council must adhere to the letter of the law. The actual legal powers of the Empress are impressive, but they have been hemmed about and fenced in over time with custom and process, with the end result most Imperial power has been delegated to the bureaucracy. But you can invoke those powers in specific cases. You can’t exert Imperial power in every case, in every circumstance. The Empire is just too big. But you can, here and there, override the bureaucracy.”
After this long speech, she closed her eyes and sighed. Song looked around the room, the Imperial bedroom, in the Imperial Residence portion of the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace dated back to the founding of the Sintaran Empire and before, to the Kingdom of Sintar, when Sintar was the only planet ruled from this palace.
Now, a hundred and fifty thousand worlds owed allegiance to this monarch, in this place. Three hundred trillion people were ruled from this building.
Of course, it was more than just this building. The Imperial Palace was part of the Palace Complex, a collection of buildings in Imperial Park, thirty square miles in the capital. These were all low-rise buildings, twenty stories or so, in a park-like setting. Around the Palace Complex, government skyscrapers towered a hundred stories or more, dozens of them, hundreds, the workspaces of the millions upon millions of bureaucrats it took to administer the Empire.
Mishra reached for her hand. Song took the Empress’s hand and held it. It was bony and thin with age, the skin white and soft and thin as silk, the veins and arteries standing out in sharp relief.
“The secret is the Imperial Decree. The bureaucracy claims to rule by Imperial Decree, but a true Imperial Decree must be signed by the Empress herself. These are absolutely binding on the bureaucracy and the Council. But a word of warning. Write them yourself. If you let them write them, they will fill them full of conditions and circumstances and details, and take all the power out of them. Write them, execute them, and only then inform the Council.”
“I understand, Lila.”
“And know this. While they are bound by Imperial Decree, the Empress is not. You can overrule or repeal any Imperial Decree, whether your own or that of an Empress who has gone before. I have left you some suggestions in my files. But the final decisions, of course, are yours.”
“Thank you, Lila.”
“That’s it, then.” Mishra sighed and gripped Song’s hand a little harder, for a second.
“Do you want me to call them back in, Lila?”
“No, Jiahui. I want to die in peace. Please, sit with me.”
“I’m happy to.”
Song looked about the room, large and with a high ceiling. The small grouping of chairs by the windows, looking out over Imperial Park. The large bed, now surrounded with medical monitors and oxygen tanks and equipment cabinets. The doors to the closets and bathroom on one side, and to the sitting room and the hallway on the other. The walls were a rich off-white, almost a cream, with gold worked into the crown molding and the coffering of the ceiling. Heavy burgundy drapes flanked the windows, with sheers covering the windows and softening the daylight. A heavy woven rug in blues and greens and burgundy covered the wooden floor.
How many Empresses had died in this room? Was she destined for the same? She suddenly felt like a transitory being in an enduring location, a mere butterfly on the limb of a great tree.
It was later in the afternoon when Mishra’s breathing once again became erratic. She gripped Song’s hand a little harder for a moment, and whispered, “Good luck, my dear.”
And then she was gone.
Song sat there for a time. She felt as if the palace itself had fallen on her. While she had enjoyed the Empress’s unqualified support for years, she was unsure she could even do this. Empress? To hundreds of trillions of human beings? How did one even grasp that, much less do it?
She stood with difficulty. She felt heavy. Burdened. As if the weight of her duties were a physical thing she carried. She arranged the dead Empress’s hands just so, straightened her hair, arranged her bed coverings. She would not have her be unkempt at such a time. Silly, perhaps. Sentimental. But it was also protecting the dignity of the office she herself now held.
She walked over to the door to the hallway, opened it, and stepped out into the hall. The Privy Secretary and the Chairman of the Imperial Council and their aides all stood waiting.
“The Empress is dead.”
“Long live the Empress!” they all responded, and bowed to her.
Household matters were the affair of the Privy Secretary, Lord Biser.
“Prepare the Imperial Funeral.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
State matters were the affair of the Chairman of the Council, Lord Saaret.
“Prepare the Imperial Coronation.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Have you selected a reign name? We thought Adannaya IV would be a nice touch.”
“I have selected a reign name. Ilithyia.”
“There has been no Empress named Ilithyia, Ma’am.”
“Then I shall be Ilithyia the First. Is that not so?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Ilithyia, the Greek goddess of midwifery and childbirth. Juahui Song, Empress Ilithyia I, would try to bring a new Empire forth from the old.
Transition
Changes of Empress within the Sintaran Empire usually came at long intervals. No one currently in a position of power or influence within the Empire had been in a similar position twenty-three years ago when there had last been an Imperial transition. The result was it was always done anew. Those who had roles to play in the process were aided by the memoirs and biographies of past Empresses and
high-level bureaucrats, so they weren’t totally without any guidance.
The body of Empress Adannaya III was moved to the basement of the Imperial Palace, where an embalming facility had been set up for one-time use. Her burial attire was selected from the Empress’s formal wardrobe. A bier was erected in the Throne Room, where the Empress’s body would lie in state for a week before burial in the Imperial Mausoleum on the grounds of Imperial Park. The calendar for these events and a description of them had been found in a biography of Anahera II, and, though that funeral had been a hundred years before, it was used as the model for the current ceremonies.
The Imperial Guard had moved the Heir Apparent, now Empress Ilithyia I, Jiahui Song, into one of the guest apartments in the Imperial Residence as Lila Mishra’s health had deteriorated. They now moved to full security on the new Empress, although she remained for the time being in the guest apartment.
The housekeeping staff took the opportunity of the Empress’s own apartments being temporarily empty to completely recondition, refresh, and otherwise renew the Empress’s apartment. All the furnishings, draperies, and rugs were removed and cleaned, repaired, and replaced. The walls were painted, although in the same colors, as the rooms were historically important. Almost nothing had been done for twenty-three years, and they may not have the opportunity again for a long time, so everything was gone through with a great deal of detail and care.
The information technology staff of the Imperial household had an easy transition to make. All Lila Mishra’s computer files, permissions, and authorities were transferred to Jiahui Song’s accounts, including her encrypted private files and correspondence. This was done automatically once Lila Mishra’s VR system interface reported its host deceased.
Even the kitchen staff transitioned. All Jiahui Song’s culinary tastes and preferences had been analyzed and studied, and an all new menu for the new Empress was prepared. Her normal meal times were noted and planned for, and the transition when the new Empress acceded to the throne was seamless.
The office staff transition was seamless as well. The Heir Apparent had worked with everyone in the office staff for years by the time of her accession to the throne. Lord Biser was the Privy Secretary, nominally the senior member of the household and office staff, but in practice this was a more ceremonial position relating specifically to the Empress’s dealings with the Imperial Council and the various departments of the government. Day-to-day office activities were overseen by his deputies, the business manager and the business secretary.
The business manager, Harold Iverson, oversaw the day-to-day management of the nearly ten thousand people on the Empress’s personal staff. He was the ringleader of the circus that was the Imperial Palace, and was the direct report of all the various managers it took to run the departments.
The business secretary, Claude Perrin, ran the Empress’s research groups, legal department, investigators, secretarial pool and other functions not associated with housekeeping and personnel. He was the Empress’s most frequent day-to-day contact, and the primary tool through which she exercised her authority over the Empire.
The Imperial Council, too, was preparing for a transition, but they did not know what form it would take. When Lila Mishra had named Jiahui Song her Heir Presumptive, the Imperial Council had been happy to approve her, making her the Heir Apparent. They expected little in the way of changes, but there were always some.
“What do you think we can expect from the new Empress?” Lord Humphreys, Councilor for Defense, asked Lord Saaret, the Chairman of the Imperial Council.
“Hard to say. Some tinkering around the edges, I suspect. Empress Ilithyia was a close confidant of Empress Adannaya III, and her agenda and priorities will likely be much the same,” Saaret said.
“You don’t expect anything major, then?”
“I think it’s unlikely. I was talking with Lord Biser, and he thinks there will be some changes in Education and Health that might make Ralston and Falmouth more than a little uncomfortable, but that’s about it.”
“So, nothing big,” Humphreys said.
“No. Nothing with Defense, Treasury, Foreign Affairs, Provinces, Trade, Pensions, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, that’s a relief. What about later on?”
“A new Empress usually makes a few changes, then the Throne and the Council settle into a slightly different relationship,” Saaret said. “Big changes later on are rare. At least, that’s how it’s been in the past, based on my reading.”
“And Empress Ilithyia is young. She could rule for thirty years. More.”
“Hopefully so. Long live the Empress.”
The Files
Jiahui Song went into the Empress’s office and sat at her desk. It was clear of items, as almost everything was done in virtual reality. One of the great technical achievements of the Sintaran Empire had been the perfection of the injectable nanobots that wired the human nervous system to interface to the VR systems, and of the production nanobots that created them. This made the process inexpensive, and very nearly the entire population of the Empire received the VR nanobots regardless of their economic circumstances at the age of four.
Song opened her account in the system. Her computer account had been merged with that of the prior Empress, Lila Mishra, Adannaya III. In addition to Song’s previous file folders, she found Mishra’s public folders and working folders. She also found a private folder, which had all access blocked except by owner. She opened that one.
It took Song several days to get through it all. She was profoundly shocked by what she read.
One file was a list of the people in the government whom Mishra had trusted. None were on the Imperial Council, nor in its first two layers of reports. There were individuals and organizations here and there, scattered across the bureaucracy. It was stunning how few of them there were, given the size of the government. A few thousand individuals. No more.
The one exception was the Imperial Guard, hand selected from the Imperial Marines, and devoted to the sitting Empress. Mishra had trusted them to keep her confidences and carry out her orders. When members of the Imperial Guard had discovered one of their own was reporting Mishra’s confidential conversations to the Imperial Council fifteen years ago, they had taken turns beating him to death with their bare hands. Mishra had had to pardon them all, lest the Imperial Police seek murder charges against them.
Mishra had also trusted her own personal staff, hand-picked from across the government, and her household staff, including the maids and cooks and servants in the Imperial Residence.
There was another list, of whom not to trust under any circumstances. It included all the Imperial Council and its first two layers of reports, as well as the higher levels of the Imperial Police. Wow.
Another file was a spreadsheet of all the kickbacks and bribes Mishra’s detectives had managed to track down, called out by who made the payments and who received them. It went on and on, thousands upon thousands of lines, organized by government department, beginning with the Imperial Council. They were making five and ten and twenty times more than the Empire was paying them, to bend Imperial policy this way and that. No wonder Imperial policy on so many issues resembled a pretzel.
Of particular interest was who was making ‘side money’ in the Navy Department. Purchase and acquisition was the big money-maker here. Why were the purchase and acquisition people being paid such big money? Wait. One department made even more. Quality assurance. There was only one reason to bribe a quality assurance department: to get them to accept sub-par ships, weapons, and components. Wonderful. Just wonderful.
There were also payments to the Navy Promotions and Placement Board. These were made by other Navy personnel. Well, of course. A job in quality assurance was highly lucrative. You clearly weren’t going to get placement into purchase and acquisition or quality assurance unless you crossed palms – and looking at the amounts, seriously crossed palms – on the promotions and placement board.
Song moved on to other folders within the private folder. There was one for each department or area of Mishra’s concern.
