The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

They came down the center aisle together, walking slowly.

Something unusual, Croser thought with a prickle of interest, looking down at the Speaker’s dais. He had developed a certain affection for the mock-classical atmosphere in this room, and even for the cut and thrust of Parliamentary debate. Decadent and doomed, of course, but he would miss it; even the smells of tobacco and the leather cushions.

The Kings took their places in the twin thrones on either side of the Speaker’s chair. David I, solemn and grim faced, as if he dreaded what was about to happen. And Alexander, smiling, looking very healthy indeed, compared to a few months ago. Damn him. The waxing insanity of the Collins king had been a large part of his plans. Behind the dais the display wall was set to show the crowned mountain of the Dual Monarchy.

For now, Croser thought. For now.

The Privy Council, led by Crown Prince Lysander, filed in, taking their seats in the horseshoe-shaped area surrounding the thrones. That was unusual, except for the Budget Debates and the yearly Speech from the Thrones. Then the five Ephors, the direct representatives of the Citizens. Croser raised his eyes to the spectator’s gallery that tinged the upper story of the chamber, just under the coffered ceiling. One of his supporters was arguing with the guard.

Trouble, he thought, looking down at his fingers arranging the papers on the table before him. Black folders against the creamy stone, the whole interior was lined with it . . . He tapped at the terminal built into it; the library functions were active, but not the communicator.

The senators who had escorted the Kings to their thrones filed back to the benches. The Sergeant at Arms carried in the mace of office on its crimson cushion, and the Senatorial Chaplain delivered his invocation, ending as always, “God save the State,” but it seemed more than perfunctory today.

“This one hundredth seventy-eight session of the Senate of the Dual Monarchy of Sparta will now come to order. This is to be an Executive Session; I remind all members of this august body that there exists a state of apprehended insurrection.”

Croser pressed a key. “Point of order, Mr. Speaker,” he said, and the computers relayed his voice until it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “Is this to be a closed session? Pursuant to the Senatorial Rules of Procedure and the Constitution, Article XXI, Rights of Assembly and Information Access, I protest that such action is highly irregular if not unconstitutional without prior notice.”

The Speaker’s eyes were almost hidden by their wrinkled pouches.

“Senator Croser, you are not recognized.”

“I protest!”

“Protest is noted; please be seated, sir.”

The Speaker raised the amplification. “Senators, I spy strangers. The Sergeant at Arms will clear the Senate Chamber of all who do not belong here.”

Something squeezed at Croser’s stomach, as the clerks and secretarial staff left their posts. Shouts came from the galleries; Guard troops were clearing them, and though their uniforms were the gray and blue and silver of ceremony, their rifles held magazines and fixed bayonets. He half-rose and chopped one hand down across his chest; above him his bodyguard Cheung relaxed from the beginning of a move that would have ripped out a soldier’s throat as he sprang to seize a weapon. The visitors were led away, out of the galleries, out of the chamber.

Croser keyed the circuit that connected him with the other NCLF representatives in the Senate. “All to be detained,” he murmured. “So that nothing can get out. Although silence is a message in itself.”

“Leader, what shall we do?” one of his supporters hissed in his ear.

“Shut up.”

“But, Leader—”

“Shut up and stay shut up. Not one word, any of you; not under any circumstances whatsoever.”

Croser forced his lips to stop curling back from his teeth, tasting sweat as he reached out calmly to take a sip of water. What was it that old tombstone said? “I expected this, but not so soon.”

The Speaker rapped his gavel. “I recognize the President of the Council of Ephors,” he said.

Citizen Selena Borah Dawson, wife of the Principal Secretary of State, and very popular in Citizen Assemblies. The Ephors functioned largely as ombudsmen, but they had certain formal duties as direct representatives of the Citizens. “Senators, I ask for a resolution which under the Constitution the Kings may not request, but which you may grant.”

There was a ripple of movement. Croser hit the record and playback/scan functions. “Ah, interesting,” he murmured. “See, there are the ones who knew it was coming.” Excellent security on this measure, if Murasaki hadn’t picked it up. A damaging blow, despite all the preparations.

“Senators, I make no speeches,” Selena Dawson said. “The Speaker will show the evidence on which the request of the Citizens will be based.”

The Speaker touched buttons, doing the work of his vanished clerk. The crowned mountain faded from the giant display screen above the dais, to be replaced with a close-up shot. Croser recognized it; the Velysen ranch, with the dead bodies displayed.

“Senators, bear witness,” the old man said.

The image faded, to be replaced by another. This time a bleeding child, screaming by the corpse of its mother outside a burning building.

Hmmm. Croser thought. Oh yes, the Hume Consolidated Financial Bank bombing.

More. Burnt out ranches. A playback of Steven Armstrong’s engine crew drowning before the camera as their ship sank, of his family burning in their car. Chaos and blood in a restaurant, and a young man with his ribs peeled open by the grenade he had smothered. The frozen body of Deborah Lefkowitz, as the Helots and the scavengers had left it. More still; after fifteen minutes Croser leaned back in his chair and let his eyes slide down to the panel before him, flicking through shots of the other Senator’s faces. Even a few of his own NCLF appointees were looking gray; there were tears elsewhere on the benches, and not only among women. A few were looking away also, swallowing. Colleagues moved to assist one elderly representative who fainted.

“And the final horror,” the Speaker said. The wall was filled with the image of the shattered bunker at the Stora Mine. The camera moved inside, to hospital beds thrown over, then came to a halt on a tangle of broken and bleeding children shielded by dying women. “A deliberate act, done with equipment imported for the purpose,” Scaevoli said. “Imported from off-planet, brought all this way to be used to kill our women and children. Madame President, do the Ephors have a request of this body?”

“We do, My Lord Speaker. The State is in danger. We ask for the Ultimate Decree.”

Lars Armstrong leapt to his feet. “At last!”

I might have known, Croser thought. Steven Armstrong’s brother, and his successor as representative of the Maritime Products Trade Association.

Scaevoli looked to the Ephors. “Is this the request of the Ephors? Do each of you agree?” Three nods of assent. A fourth, a young man thought to be a radical fireball, stood staring in horror at the screen. He looked from that to Croser, looked defiantly to the Speaker. “Aye,” he said.

The Speaker bowed, and turned to the chamber. “I recognize Senator Armstrong.”

“My Lord Speaker, I move that the Senate instruct the Kings to take all measures necessary to ensure the safety of the state, effective as of this date and to run for one Spartan year before expiry or renewal.”

“Mr. Speaker!” Croser said, shooting to his feet.

“I recognize Senator Croser.”

“If the honorable Senator moves the Ultimate Decree—” essentially a drastic form of martial law, with the suspension of civil rights “—then surely there must be debate beyond mere assertion! Is this a deliberative body, or a rubber-stamp whose assent is secured in advance by conspiracy?”

Or a lynch mob, he thought, looking at the faces glaring at him from every corner of the chamber.

“Mr. Speaker.”

“I recognize Senator Armstrong.”

“Mr. Speaker.” Armstrong was a tall blond man like his brother, perhaps a little heavier, with hair that was thinning on top. His smile was much like that of the carnivore piscoids his family’s ships hunted. “I can best reply using words other than my own.

“How long, O Croser, how long,” he began, in a calm conversational tone.

“How long will you continue your abuse of our forbearance? What bounds will you set to your display of reckless contempt? Are you not affected by the alarm of the people, by the rallying of all loyal citizens, by the convening of the senate in this safely-guarded spot, by the looks and expressions of all assembled here? Do you not perceive that your designs are exposed? The Senate is well aware of the facts, but the criminal still lives. Lives? Yes, lives; and even comes down to the Senate, takes part in the public deliberations, and marks down with ominous glances every single one of us for massacre.