The most obvious choice was to get such a robot into the position of consort to the as yet unmarried Crown Princess Edna, the only direct heir to the throne. Her Highness went on periodic “progresses” throughout the Galaxy with the unstated intent of finding a suitable spouse, since the Stanley Doctrine decreed she must marry a commoner. The PCC constantly monitored the princess’s tastes, and was able to program the personality most ideal to match her own.
Dr. Immanuel Rustin had always built the robots to the PCC’s specifications, and the computer itself programmed them for their possible duties. But a small mechanical problem with the first robot had necessitated bringing in an outsider to fix it – and through that tiny leak, the Service of the Empire got its first glimpse of the true conspiracy. Those mysterious agents, Wombat and Periwinkle, discovered and destroyed the robot – but even had they not found it, the PCC realized that particular plan would not have succeeded.
It had arrogantly made its plans based on love, a complex emotion it really knew little about despite all the literature it had read on the subject. As Lady A explained afterward, love is more than just two people liking all the same things. It requires an air of mystery, and even some intriguing differences between the two people. Considering the man Edna did choose as her consort, a mystic from the planet Anares, the PCC realized it was out of its league in trying to control such bizarre behavior. In the future it would stick to more predictable emotions.
The robots were not the conspiracy’s only line of attack, however. In order to promote chaos and under mine the Empire’s control at the local level, it stirred up separatist feelings on individual planets and encouraged terrorist groups to make attacks on imperial targets. Some of their arms and ammunition came from official munitions works, whose invoices were altered to hide the fact that they were overproducing. Most of the arms, though, came from the plant on Slag, which was set on overtime supplying armament for the revolution that was to come.
Piracy and space operations were also stepped up under the command of Admiral Shen Tzu, an able, if eccentric, officer. The practice raids against unarmed vessels kept the crews in fighting shape, and Admiral Shen would occasionally conduct military war games in the depths of interstellar space where there was no one to observe them but himself. Slowly but surely the conspiracy’s military forces were built up until they were almost a match for imperial forces.
Good talent was hard to find, and the conspiracy had an ongoing project to recruit useful people to its cause. Dr. Loxner had been helpful in altering the appearance of wanted criminals recruited for the conspiracy so they could be put to use elsewhere in the Empire; the PCC could give them new identities that were every bit as documented as their real ones to go with their new appearance. Almost at the beginning of the conspiracy, the PCC had been sure to have the Emperor appoint a governor of Gastonia who was sympathetic to the computer’s cause. Convicted traitors who were sent to Gastonia for exile soon found themselves worked back into the mainstream of imperial society if they were valuable enough. On hearing that her granddaughter had been sentenced to that forlorn world, Lady A had personally arranged for her to have an easy life there, keeping her safe and hidden from SOTE’s eyes.
When Dr. Loxner’s Operation was closed down by SOTE, the PCC had looked around for some other way of accomplishing the same end. Some years later, an imperial scoutship filed a report on a new planet it had discovered, very Earth-like and temperate. The PCC arranged to have the report wrongly classified within its files as “hostile and uninhabitable,” thereby guaranteeing that no one in the Empire would pay it much official attention. It then spent a lot of money and many more years building a city there and stocking it with all the comforts people could want, creating, eventually, the world called Sanctuary where criminal bigshots could “retire” in style. The foodstuffs and supplies for Sanctuary all came from legitimate sources, with the records, as usual, doctored to cover up the transactions.
The operations on Sanctuary proceeded smoothly. Many of the criminals quickly grew bored with their easy life there, at which point the conspiracy offered the most talented ones new positions within its hierarchy. As the conspiracy expanded, there were always jobs available for people of proven ability with no love for the current government.
Then, quite unexpectedly and without official authorization, Helena von Wilmenhorst turned up on Sanctuary conducting an impromptu investigation on her own. She was followed closely by the notorious Wombat and Periwinkle, and suddenly this operation was closed down, too. The PCC was becoming irritated. Although the two superagents had still come nowhere near the main structure of the conspiracy and in no way threatened it, their habit of popping up without warning was disconcerting to a machine that relished nice, orderly patterns. Still, because so little information about them was entered into SOTE’s computers, their movements could not be predicted. The PCC seldom knew where they were until after they’d appeared on the scene, and by then it was usually too late to act without fear of compromising its identity.
With these agents acting as a random factor, the PCC decided to push ahead quickly with its plans. The ideal opportunity presented itself with the wedding of Crown Princess Edna to her chosen consort. If the Emperor and his heir could be killed in public with the whole Galaxy watching, the Empire would be thrown into confusion. The conspiracy’s navy would move into position and take over before the forces of the Empire could rally, and the takeover would be accomplished with a minimum of bloodshed.
To maximize the confusion within Bloodstar Hall during the wedding, the PCC informed Captain Ling, commander of one arm of its navy, that a group of nobles was on a chartered ship bound for Earth. That ship was captured and substitutes for the nobles were sent on, all with impeccable identification supplied by the PCC. The computer also arranged for these people to pass the detectors at Bloodstar Hall without their weapons registering on the screens.
But just before Operation Annihilate was to go into effect came the shocking news that Ling’s base, which neither the Navy nor SOTE had even suspected until now, had been attacked and captured. Close to twenty percent of the conspiracy’s fleet was suddenly out of action. In near panic, the PCC put the rest of the military portion of its action on hold, waiting to see if any more raids would follow. It continued with the assassination attempt; if that succeeded, the PCC could trigger a delayed assault on the Empire’s military might.
But even the simple assassination attempt was foiled at the last possible moment by Agent Wombat. The armed fighters in the audience did their best, but without the confusion of an actual assassination inside the hall and the cannisters of TCN-14 that should have been exploding outside, they were quickly rounded up without a chance to do much damage. At that point the military operation was completely canceled; there was no point in tipping their hand too soon when nothing substantial could be accomplished. Better to wait and rebuild.
But now that it knew something of the enemy, the Service of the Empire dug in its teeth as tenaciously as a terrier with a rat. The PCC’s attempt to forge an elite fighting army of religious fanatics from Purity was shattered. Almost simultaneously, Agent Wombat turned up investigating the munitions plant on Slag. In order to impress the officials on Slag of his “criminal” credentials, he had SOTE insert in the files a list of fictitious groups to whom he’d supposedly sold arms. The PCC was able to warn its people that the list was fictitious and that the SOTE agents should be killed. Despite that warning, the SOTE agents survived and the plant on Slag was destroyed. Also lost to the conspiracy was the Duke of Tregania, the nearest inhabited planet; the duke had been a firm supporter of the conspiracy, but his connection with the plant on Slag was too solid and there was no way for the PCC to protect him without endangering itself. The job of manufacturing weapons was shifted over to the hidden spacebases, and work continued apace.
The PCC did not exactly become angry, for this was impossible, but it was certainly frustrated by these repeated successes of the SOTE agents. They could not be allowed more time to make further penetrations into the conspiracy’s activities. Looking ahead at the calendar, the PCC decided that a good time for its full attack would be coming up shortly when Stanley Ten abdicated at age seventy, as he’d promised to do. Operation Annihilate had been postponed at Edna’s wedding, but it would work just as nicely at her coronation.