Pirate Empress Snippet 3

And in to Chapter 2...

Chapter 2

Catherine looked at the list for her cabinet. It was woefully short, many ministers had fled before the coup, others had during it. She, like her father had yet to fill some of the posts. The deputies in charge were doing the best they could, so she left them to it for the time being. She had the shuttle ride and a bit more to think about it and other things. Not to mention read briefs.

Too many briefs. And to settle with offers of positions to her supporters. Some had already accepted. Some like Marina Stuart and her sister just wanted to leave. She didn't blame them she actually secretly agreed with them. “I'll put you at the top of the evacuation list,” had been her standard response.

She looked out the window as she saw the curve of the planet begin to form. It was so pretty, white, blues, greens. Pity her people had mucked it up.

She thought back to seeing her father's body. She had wanted to kill the bastard for too long. Most of her family too. She had to admit, she'd felt no love lost in killing her siblings. They'd been rivals; she'd held no affection for them not even her youngest sister Khali. Khali had seemed sweet and innocent in their rare interactions on holidays but there had been something there recently, a hidden something that came out in the girl's eyes and occasionally in her smiles.

No, the girl had been trouble and had needed to go.

Did that make her a monster? She wasn't sure. She wasn't sure she cared. She probably knew the answer she just didn't want to be bothered answering it.

Tired, she thought.

The purge was still ongoing. Every pirate lord had to be found and assessed. Some were still missing. Some had already gotten out of the star system but II and ONI were still trying to track the rest down. Trying and failing because of the mess with the Feds.

Some of her supporters were on board to show they were loyal to the new regime. They fell all over themselves falling in line. Those bothered her on many levels. Others wanted to prove themselves. The most zealots were the ones who were angry with the state of the system and how the war had been prosecuted. Or they had an axe to grind. Or, in too many cases, they just loved to wallow in the violence.

She was determined to get it right though. They all were. They were being pressured from outside by the Federation. That meant they had to find a way to cement control fast. Fortunately, the Federation was a foreign attacker everyone could unite against. And her father had become unpopular as of late. She could and would use both to stay in power.

She needed to resist the urge to strike at people who didn't agree with her. A reign of terror was fine for some but she needed to find a middle ground. She needed to be seen as even handed. But she couldn't go too soft either. The gloved fist, she thought with a slight nod to herself. Gram, your lessons are finally proving useful, she thought with an ironic twist of her lips as she sent the fleeting thought to her late and unlamented grandmother.

She'd had to clean her own family from top to bottom. It had been a fire sale; everyone had been forced to go. Her father's closest supporters had gone right along with them. The assassinations had been carefully calculated. She had tried to limit the splash over with the other families. She knew there was going to be some; the families deliberately wed each other to keep infighting to a minimum. Not that that strategy worked.

Dealing with the ruling families had been tricky. She had stepped on any resistance hard, but tempered her bloodlust carefully to show that she could do so when needed. She had tried to carefully calculate a moderate response as required for each given situation, since they were all different. She didn't want to come off as being too ruthless or not enough.

Countess Newberry had let the story of her response to the threat of her own family get out in dribs and drabs as gossip. Word spread about how she ruthlessly picked off her own family. There were not enough people with enough power base to challenge her, and too many were looking to their own survival over banding together and coming after her.

Between that and having the Admiralty, II, ONI, and the other branches of the military solidly behind her it had allowed her to consolidate her grip on power over the past several weeks.

So far the Federation was holding off on further cyber-attacks. Broadcasts of the damage and civilian casualties caused by them might be helping, she wasn't sure. She was pretty sure that had been a good move, allowing the vid crews to show it had hurt her a bit, but it had showed that her people were trying to help.

But it also would hurt the Federation resolve in doing further harm, especially to civilians. She knew the Federation was sensitive to such things. Then again, Admiral Irons did threaten to nova bomb the entire star system, killing everyone in the system. She wasn't certain there was a way to stop a cloaked ship from delivering a nova bomb to the sun. Probably not.

That just meant she needed to find another way to take that threat off the table.

She needed time. Time to cement her control, time to rebuild, and time to execute the next stage of her plan. What was that saying about time in war though?

She frowned thoughtfully, puzzling over the reference before setting it aside. At the moment the origins didn't matter. A fresh thought occurred though, the Feds might be, no, they were most likely watching as they waited for some reaction. And no doubt assessing their strike and planning the next one.

There had to be ways to blunt the next one. She made a note to have her people look into that.

The biggest thing that was going to cement her control was decisive and clear leadership. Moderation, showing that she wasn't panicked but was taking the threats seriously. But showing strength and resolve while facing such adversity. She couldn't cave or give the appearance of caving.

But time! She needed time. Her fingers curled and then straightened over and over, digging into the cloth of her pant legs. Time. It all came down to time, and a way to use it to stop the next cyber-attack while they figured out how to fix what was damaged.

Well, I know someone who could handle the engineering side, she thought, touching a key to call her assistant to see how much longer she had to get to the station and her wayward lover. Their confrontation was long overdue. Hopefully her lover would forgive her.

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