Chapter 6

Epilogue New Imperial date 7962 NI

My learning curve in becoming an Admiral, a Rear Admiral in fact, after leaving my last Imperial service as a Second Lieutenant, and Militia as a Lieutenant-Commander, as my father Duke Jolyon was never one to promote even his own family members until time and experience served, was an extremely steep one. Fortunately, as Velda had so astutely assessed, my Vice-Admiral Alana was supremely efficient, ever-ready with advice, and she actually made me look good on the bridge.

I made sure, on Alana’s advice, that I allowed the Flagship’s Captain, a young officer called Valerian, to run his ship without any interference from me, while Alana and I controlled the movements of my Fleet, which was only a fraction of the enormous force of battleships, cruisers and destroyer-carriers that Mylon, Pynom and Pippa and any number of off-grid clones that Pynom, with zulon hierarchical approval, had bred in secret to wipe the Rebel scum from their bitter and divisive rule and restore a political system that in its well practiced and civilised way was able to impose a rule which was layered, true, but owed benefice to all levels of society and allowed mobility of advancement within a lawful system that was fair to all, denying excess through privilege and encouraging progress of betterment through effort and honesty.

All twelve of the well-trained and organised Imperial Fleets swept through their assigned sectors with minimal fuss and very little actual fighting. Often warlords were overthrown by subordinates who wished to embrace the new and restored Imperial order.

Other warlords who were more sensitive and had been more responsible and caring in their dealings with their people were able to capitulate and benefit in the long run from the electoral system which had proved so effective and popular in Como Prime under the Merciant Noble family, and the fact that the Empress-Elect-in-Waiting Lilian bore the Merciant surname following her mother’s legal marriage to my late father, had much to do with reducing any challenge from surviving Nobles, to not a single one with any chance of popular success.

Lilian was challenged twice by families who wanted to promote me to Emperor, but their swift reduction to ordinary citizens by abolishing their noble qualifications for sedition by not approving the most eligible candidate, totally evaporated any other possible opposition to Lilian’s claim as Emperor in her own right. Was that fair? Well, they knew the law and, if they were worthy, the new political system was flexible enough to allow the cream to rise and the dross to sink, given time and a reasonable amount of effort.

Within a terran-year of the launch of the New Empire, every single system had surrendered with barely a couple of hundred planets or moons that held out under siege by a few madmen who couldn’t accept what was happening, while most of the resistance was by true republics who did not want to join the New Empire, but were open to negotiating a peace with relative autonomy to decide their own method of government. Lilian and I agreed that in the new order we wanted to bring in, there was a valid place for more than one kind of government, so all viable star systems, whether nobles-led or minor republics, all planets were given a similar degree of autonomy, provided they all joined the Imperial Federation and paid the taxes due to keep the administration, military, police and judiciary in place to maintain law and order.

Together, almost immediately the last of the major warlord systems fell, leaving just these few anomalies. Lilian and I stood up in the inaugural meeting of the Imperial Chamber with representative of these minor republics and argued for their integration into the New Order as a new category of ‘Minor Republics’ within the Imperial system, with Elected Presidents, rather than Earls, Archdukes, Dukes, Viscounts, Barons, and Interim Governors, appointed by the Empress and her Privy Council or promoted from lower houses by the Elected Senate of Systems, who represent the masses of humanity.

For the last three terran-months, since peace reigned across the majority of our Galaxy, Velda and my family joined me once more on Como Prime, where I was overseeing the rebuilding of our modest palace, while still flying off to the Empress’ Palace on the ancient capital of Teteran Tertio.

Teteran Tertio was a moon of the Terran system, which had previously served as the Empire’s capital a terran-century or more ago. It had been a relative backwater which was peaceful and largely undamaged, although it was now undergoing a process of modernisation which incorporated modern thoughts of maintaining a representative Senate of Systems as well as provide a small but safe environment for an Empress to raise a family of heirs to carry on the process of Empire.