Out in space, the Imperial Navy was losing a particularly hard battle it didn’t even realize it had been fighting. Although the PCC hadn’t bothered with the myriad of commercial and private ships plying the spaceways, it had planted sabotaging programs within the computers of the Navy’s ships; it had not used them in previous battles for fear of tipping its hand, but now that the secret was out there was no point in being subtle.
Navy ships in fleet maneuvers suddenly found their gunnery computers switching on and firing at other ships in their formations. Nearly half the Navy’s ships that had survived the “Gastaadi War” were either destroyed or seriously damaged before astute commanders realized what was happening and had their computers dismantled. On other ships the computers shut down the air circulation and regeneration systems. Navy ships were big enough to hold a great deal of air and there was plenty of time for the crews to switch to spacesuits before anyone suffocated – but the result was awkward and most uncomfortable. And of course the astrogational computers were now totally unreliable; all trajectories had to be calculated laboriously by hand. Ship commanders tried to contact their superiors to find out what was going on and what their orders were, but the snarl in telecommunications made that impossible.
The PCC and its subsidiary computers had kept the Empire moving like an enormous and delicate machine. Literally within the space of hours that machine had ground noisily to a halt, with pieces flying in all directions and clouds of steam emerging from the pumps. There could never be an accurate tally of the lives lost during that initial catastrophe; even the most conservative estimates ranged into the tens of millions. But there was little relief for those who suvived without physical harm; of the trillions of people living on the more than thirteen hundred planets of the Empire, there was scarcely one whose life was not strongly shaken by the tragedy.
The worst fears of Yvette and the Head had been realized. The PCC had wrought more destruction in less time than anyone would ever have dreamed possible. The once mighty Empire of Earth, the greatest political entity humanity had ever built, lay in ruins. All the smoothly functioning mechanisms of galactic civilization were shattered, with no way in sight to rebuild them. The Empire of Earth – at least as it had existed for two and a half centuries – was all but dead.
—
There were some, though, who refused to accept the death of the Empire without a struggle.
The Circus of the Galaxy was on the planet Jarawahl when the disaster struck – and as chance would have it, that was one of the worlds whose duke was a member of the PCC’s conspiracy. The Head had no way to warn the d’Alemberts about the impending revolution, so Duke Hanuman’s broadcast announcement of Jarawahl’s secession from the Empire caught the DesPlainians as much by surprise as the rest of the populace.
Duke Etienne, the Circus’s manager and leader of the d’Alembert clan, tried to subcom the Head but was unable to get through. He and the Circus had standing orders, however, to investigate any situation that took their fancy and to take any action they deemed necessary – and this situation certainly fit within that broad commission. Duke Etienne began making plans to change the situation.
It would have been very tempting to shut the show down that evening and throw everything he had against the outlaw duke’s force-but the proud d’Alembert tradition decreed that the show must go on no matter what the tragedy around it. While the crowd was dismally small that night – less than a tenth of what the most popular attraction in the Galaxy usually drew – they got their money’s worth as they watched the Circus’s performers go through their paces. With their minds preoccupied by other problems, the audience failed to notice that the acts may have been a little less than perfect. Duke Etienne let the backups and understudies be the stars for the night, but even second-string d’Alemberts are impressive. He saved his top performers for the toughest job: returning Jarawahl to the imperial fold.
Although Duke Etienne didn’t know that the top leadership of the conspiracy had already been exposed and might have preferred to capture some of the higher-level traitors for questioning, he did know that open rebellion to the throne could not be tolerated. Such defiance had to be punished quickly and mercilessly to prevent others from copying the action. The time for finesse had passed; quick-and-dirty was the order of the day. If any of the enemy was alive for questioning at the end of the operation, so much the better – but the first objective was to take the planet back from the usurpers.
A team of twenty-five d’Alemberts stormed the ducal estates, armed with hand weapons, grenades, heavy duty blasters, and a grim determination to obliterate anything that tried to stop them. Duke Hanuman, assured by his master C that there would be no organized opposition to his authority, was not expecting any serious trouble – particularly not the first night after the takeover, when people would be too confused to take action. The personal guards he had on his estate were overwhelmed by the attacking d’Alembert force and the battle for control was over in less than an hour. Duke Hanuman – brave enough only to bet on a sure thing – collapsed under this pressure and surrendered to the d’Alemberts.
Other d’Alembert assault teams went to work simultaneously against police headquarters in five major cities around the planet. Though these buildings were more heavily armed, they too were unprepared for organized opposition so soon after the takeover. The battles here were fiercer but the outcome equally in evitable. With Duke Hanuman and the five major police headquarters back in imperial hands, the rest of the conspiracy’s forces crumpled. After only one night the revolt against the Empire had ended on Jarawahl.
Etienne d’Alembert questioned Duke Hanuman under nitrobarb, but learned little of value. The local duke had been persuaded to join the conspiracy some five years earlier, and had always received his instructions via interstellar teletype from the mysterious leader, C. C’s directives helped him tighten his hold on the planet so that when the eventual order came for the takeover, Duke Hanuman was fully prepared. All the known sources of opposition had been neutralized in one way or another, and there should have been no further problems. Duke Hanuman did not know the identity of C, nor did he know what was supposed to happen next. He was merely to consolidate his gains and await further instructions.
Duke Hanuman died as a result of the nitrobarb, and Etienne d’Alembert considered that a small loss. In the name of the Empress he swiftly executed the other ringleaders of the local gang and placed the lesser offenders under rigid guard.
One rebellious planet had been returned to the Empire, but Duke Etienne was worried. C would not have ordered only one world to revolt and held back on everything else; this rebellion would have to be galaxy wide in order to stand any chance of success. The fact that he still couldn’t get through to Earth, DesPlaines, or anywhere else he tried only tended to confirm his hypothesis. The Empire must be in big trouble right now – and that, to a d’Alembert, was a clarion call.
Knowing the Service would need help, Duke Etienne left a small group of people behind to make sure Jarawahl did not fall back into the conspiracy’s hands. As for the rest of the Circus, they packed up their show briskly and efficiently into their private transport ships and took off the next afternoon. Their destination was Earth, hub of the Empire. It was there they intended to learn what had gone wrong – and what they could do to help make it right again.
—
Jules d’Alembert had gone to the planet Nereid to pick up his personal spaceship La Comète Cuivré, which he and Yvette had left there when they’d gone off to Omicron with Lady A. Though he was eager to return home to his wife and son, he was still suffering from the wound he’d received on Omicron. The three-gee world of DesPlaines was no place for someone with a gimpy leg, not even a native, so he was forcing himself to relax here near the edge of the Empire until his leg was fit enough to go back to DesPlaines.
It was here that the revolt caught him, as unprepared as anyone else for the depth of the calamity. Nereid was not a world controlled by the conspiracy, and as a result it suffered the fate of most worlds – a complete break down of all computer – directed services. Jules was as baffled by the ensuing chaos as everyone else on Nereid – but being a d’Alembert, he was not inclined to sit back and watch events transpire around him. A d’Alembert was not a spectator; a d’Alembert acted.