Interlude: The People Next Door Will Close In Like a Wolf Pack

February 489 I.C., Phezzan

Years ago, if anyone had asked Commander Neidhardt Muller if he would miss any of the cast of characters who rotated in and out of the Alliance embassy on Phezzan, he would have laughed and said that his posting on Phezzan was interesting for the weather, and the entertainment, and the liberated Phezzani women— not for whatever the Alliance was doing. Even now, he still would have said that line, and did: it was a useful reply to have on hand when someone at a party asked him what he enjoyed about his posting on Phezzan, and if he ever intended to go back home, and what he thought about his counterparts from the other side of the galaxy. His time on Phezzan had taught him a lot of things, and telling charming lies at a party was one of the first lessons he learned.

The trouble was that he did miss Reinhard von Müsel, who had left his post at the Alliance embassy well over a year beforehand. Not that they had been particular friends— their relationship, such as it was, was contentious even at the best of times— but Müsel had been a source of information, and entertaining besides that. There was a part of Muller that wondered if Müsel missed him just as much, doing whatever it was he was doing over in the Alliance. He doubted it, but it was fun to wonder.

Muller had tried his best to keep track of what had become of Müsel. He had been dismissed from Phezzan to attend some kind of inquiry on Heinessen, which had to do with the Castrop affair, and, Muller suspected, Müsel’s willingness to allow Imperial prisoners to walk free on his request. That was all Muller had learned about it— the actual proceedings were the kind of secrets that didn’t make their way to Phezzan’s Imperial embassy, and it wasn’t like Müsel was going to write him to say how it all turned out. After that, from going over crew posting lists with a fine tooth comb, Muller determined that he had been sent to the front. From there, Müsel vanished from his radar almost completely. This wasn’t unusual, but it did make him a little wistful, not knowing what the man was up to. At least he knew that he was still alive out there— his pseudonymous blog still updated about once every month and a half. This was far less frequently than it had in the past, and it contained even less personal information than it used to, but the posts still read like Müsel was trying out concepts for a doctoral thesis, and Muller still read them all, cheap Phezzani beer in hand.

Like so many other things in Muller’s life, the blog posts from “Marian Evans” seemed to exist in a bubble where nothing had yet gone wrong, and Muller was standing inside that bubble, watching everything tumble down around him. Somehow, ever since the Kaiser’s death, Müsel had managed to avoid talking about the complete economic chaos that was sweeping the galaxy, despite half the comments on his posts asking for his (or her, since his writer persona was a woman) thoughts on the matter. (Muller doubted that Müsel looked at his Phezzani comment section at all, which was one of the only things that stopped him from leaving his own remarks.) It was deeply strange that Müsel refused to talk about it, since even among the economically disinterested— which comprised most of the Imperial Embassy staff on Phezzan— it was a topic of conversation.

When Kaiser Friedrich died without a clear successor, things in the Empire had ground to an almost complete standstill. At first, it hadn’t been too bad— there was an influx of immigration to Phezzan, most of it “temporary”, as many members of the upper class who didn’t want to be around for civil war found a place to escape to. They brought their assets with them, and froze what they couldn’t carry. Nobles who remained began to take on a personally isolationist policy— keeping whatever their lands produced, rather than trying to sell. That was one thing, Muller thought, that was positive about the feudal system— each planet could be self sustaining for quite some time, and the lives of the peasants wouldn’t change much. The Empire’s steady flow of trade began to fall apart, with the remaining Imperial government unable to control its movement (and certainly unable to tax it). What remained was essentially a black market between individual planets and families, those allied to each other sharing resources. But these tenuous supply lines were vulnerable, and also inaccessible to Phezzan.

Phezzan had a great deal of its own economy tied up in the Empire— a lot in trade, but a not-insignificant amount of it in the form of loans, which abruptly stopped returning interest as no one in the Empire could pay them. In normal years, Phezzan also functioned as a kind of clearing house for Imperial goods— importing from noble families, either raw materials or finished products, and then re-selling them within the Empire.

The merchant class of the Empire had almost completely been absorbed into Phezzan’s economy. This was something that Müsel had written about extensively on his blog, many years before, and Muller called the memory of it to mind when thinking about the current situation. With such a sharp divide between nobility and peasantry, the middle class of the Empire was small, and social mobility was limited. The educated middle class tended to be concentrated in urban areas, primarily on Odin, and almost exclusively functioned as a quasi-artisan class, with work often tied to specific noble families. The only form of class mobility was through the Fleet, and even that was highly restrictive. Those who managed to gather the wealth to form part of a mercantile class were welcomed with open arms by Phezzan, while they had no way to move forward into the upper echelons of Imperial society. Over time, it had become somewhat self defeating— with no existing social structure to support a merchant fleet, all business went through Phezzan, which further reduced the space available for tradesmen to become merchants. This system had calcified within two generations of the settlement of Phezzan, and no one in the Empire had cared enough to put policies in place to change it. That, too, was a combination of factors: the nobility had reason to protect their class position within the Empire, and Phezzan had reason to discourage the Empire from working to loosen their near-stranglehold on Imperial goods.

Although Müsel, in his writing, had described the system with nothing but contempt, Muller thought that it seemed to work well, at least up until this point. After all, even if it gave Phezzan power over the Empire, the reason they had that power was the same reason that they were compelled not to exercise it: their economic fortunes were completely tied together. And Muller could certainly understand what the appeal was for every individual involved, beyond the rational calculations of money moving through the galaxy— there was a reason he enjoyed his post on Phezzan so much. Not having a ‘von’ in his name meant less on Phezzan than it did in almost any other officer’s posting.

Muller’s father was a member of the tiny educated middle class— a doctor. He had encouraged him as a child to find some livelihood that would keep him equally well fed, and Muller had been talented enough to earn a seat at the IOA. He sometimes wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t scored well on the entrance exam— would he have ended up on Phezzan after all, only as someone working in the offices of one of their conglomerates? He didn’t know. It was very funny to picture himself as a salaryman— like he had been amused several years ago watching Müsel put on a suit and fake glasses to attend all his interviews with Phezzani mining companies.

As far as the Alliance’s economy went, they were just as invested in Phezzan as the Empire was, if in a different way. It was funny how closely the two sides of the galaxy was tied together, considering the Empire and the Alliance were permanent enemies, and had been at war for well over a hundred years.

The Phezzani currency, called charges, was a smoke and mirrors way for Phezzan to use the real value that they siphoned off of the Empire’s trade as a lever in the Alliance economy. When Imperial goods were passed through Phezzan, though the business between parties was usually conducted in Reichsmarks, Phezzan extracted a sales tax. Phezzan used this extracted value from the Empire’s economy as a backing for issuing its own currency. In the early days of Phezzan’s trade with the Alliance, they had used their currency to offer loans to the Alliance. They fully expected the loans to never be repaid, but gave compelling interest rates for interest paid in the Alliance dinar. Slowly, this allowed them to stockpile Alliance currency as well, and made the planet a way to exchange currencies between the two nations. And Phezzan never hesitated to profit off of that, either.

The Alliance’s internal economy was significantly more robust and complex than that of the Empire, but much less stable. Unlike the Empire, which by its feudal nature was slow growing at best, the Alliance prized growth in everything— physical expansion, population, standards of living, any metric they could think of to measure. But any gains they could eke out were in direct competition with the fact that their economy was shackled to the endless needs of war production. The government’s search for revenue to fund the army squeezed every other sector, and left private businesses reliant on regular injections of Phezzani cash, which floated around the Alliance as a ghostly alternative currency. Phezzan was also quite happy to provide things of real value: Imperial goods that churned through Phezzan’s system, all their serial numbers filed off. Much like anyone who set foot on Phezzan could become an anonymous “Phezzani citizen” if they wished, so too could wheat and cloth and circuit boards.

As Phezzan grew richer, they had not shied away from running real businesses, ones that produced something, within the Alliance or Empire. These were the giant conglomerates that did so much business on the planet. But the more complicated and “real” Phezzan’s economy grew, the more the Phezzani government had license to perform economic manipulations that no one outside their government could keep track of. Phezzan could issue as much currency as it wanted, and so long as the galaxy’s economy continued to chug along, no one would mind if what backed Phezzan’s currency was mostly faith.

In any event, the disaster of the civil war had knocked life out of balance. With the sudden cessation of most Imperial trade, the faith that underpinned Phezzan’s ability to function was shaken. Phezzani businesses were now desperate to sell all their physical goods, and could no longer do so in the Empire, so a huge number of additional goods were being flushed into the Alliance’s markets. Although this only represented a fairly small real percentage increase, it caused a shockwave in the prices of domestic goods, outcompeted by suddenly-cheap Phezzani products. Simultaneously, Phezzan hiked interest rates on their loans to try to cushion the loss of revenue from the Empire. With the sudden deflation in prices, Alliance businesses found their profits falling short, and they were unable to service their existing loans. Those that were critical to the economy leaned on the Alliance government for support, while those that were non-essential began to go under one at a time. The situation would have to level out eventually, but to Muller it looked like it was going to keep getting worse for a while.

On Phezzan, life went on, but what he read in the Alliance papers about the situation made Muller wince. He could understand why Phezzan was acting in such a self-interested way, but it seemed shortsighted at best. If the Alliance grew wary of Phezzan’s power over their economy— and from the howling of the pundits in the papers, it seemed like more and more were coming to that conclusion— Phezzan could find itself cut off from that side. If the Alliance recovered from this stumble, they wouldn’t immediately reinvest in Phezzan, and if the Imperial civil war dragged on—

Well, Muller didn’t want to think about that.

News that reached Phezzan about what was going on in the Empire was all shoddy. They had contact with “a government” on Odin— Littenheim had taken over the capital— but everyone could see that its position was tenuous at best. Lichtenlade, whom everyone at the embassy considered to still be the actual head of government, was in hiding. Most of their real instructions, such as they were, came from Fleet Admiral Muckenburger on Iserlohn, functioning as a kind of government-in-exile. But all Muckenburger cared about was their ongoing information gathering on the Alliance, to see if there was any preparation for an invasion through Iserlohn while the Empire was weak. Muller and his coworkers dutifully reported what they could.

Aside from that, they were helpless to do anything, even if they had wanted to. They couldn’t halt the trickle of refugees through the corridor, even those that were bringing along military secrets or other things of value in hope of securing a favorable spot within the Alliance. As a tiny diplomatic outpost that served a country that had functionally ceased to exist, they had little power. But Muller still showed up to work each day, gritting his teeth and smiling.

Phezzanis wanted everyone in the Embassy to pretend that life was going on as usual. Everyone on the planet was blissfully fiddling while the galaxy burned, it seemed like to Muller. Perhaps that was an illusion, and within the corporate boardrooms and bedrooms of CEOs there was just as much anxiety as he felt, but if there was, it was all taking place far from his line of sight. Instead, invitations were still regularly extended to the members of the Embassy, and it was Muller’s duty to attend. He sometimes wanted to shriek, thinking about what was going on at home, while sipping martinis at some party.

He should have been glad to not be in the thick of it— after all, if he had been assigned to some other section of the fleet, he would have been obliged to fight against his own countrymen, but instead he just felt a gnawing uselessness. That was one other thing he missed Reinhard von Müsel for— if Müsel had been around, surely he would have told Muller to stop being ridiculous, even if doing so would have caused Muller to amp up his efforts to spy on him, in particular. Somehow, that man had a way of injecting other people with a kind of purpose.

Muller was at one of these miserable parties now, on a yacht in the river. The boat was moving so slowly that other ship traffic had to swerve around it to pass, but as the sun set the other traffic mostly disappeared, leaving the only sounds the music of the band further up the deck, and the lapping of the water on the side of the boat, and the distant hum of city noise. Muller wasn’t in uniform— this wasn’t that kind of party— and he was the only member of the Embassy who had come. Muller had, unfortunately or fortunately, become the designated invitee to all of these events. He was young and handsome and an interesting conversationalist, and not quite as cold-bloodedly Imperial as his superiors. Muller could never really decide if that was a good thing about himself or not.

He didn’t know what this party was ostensibly celebrating, and the only people here were Phezzanis, aside from himself. The Alliance embassy, caving to the popular sentiment in their homeland, had begun to boycott all the usual Imperial events. Muller didn’t mind not seeing them around— none of their current crop of staff was particularly interesting, and none of them were stupid enough to say anything at a party that Muller could use.

He had spent the dinner before boarding the yacht socializing with the other guests, but now Muller found he had no one he wanted to talk to, and was leaning over the rail on the aft of the yacht, watching the churn of the water from the slow-moving propeller. He had a whiskey in his hand, and while the sun had just gone down, the sky was still a dusty red on the horizon. The yacht’s fairy lights twinkled above his head, and he stared into space, thinking idly, once again, of how his parents were doing on Odin.

He should be more dutiful, he chided himself, but he didn’t want to go up towards the main deck of the boat, where the dancing was. The back of the ship was secluded, and looking out at the city lights was peaceful, in its own way. Phezzan wanted to pretend like life was still going on; well, the lights there were proof that somewhere, at least, it did. A self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe, but then again, what else was Phezzan?

“Not enjoying yourself at my party, Commander Muller?”

He was so startled to hear the sonorous voice behind him that he almost dropped his drink over the railing. He straightened up and turned around. Landressher Rubinsky, whom Muller had only ever spoken to once before, had come down the stairs to the empty bottom section of the deck.

“You have an excellent memory, sir,” Muller said. Although Rubinsky had spoken in the Imperial language, Muller responded in the Phezzani patois— not for any real reason, other than that it had become second nature to him after so long at his post. “I’m not even in uniform— I’m not sure how you know me from any man on the street.”

“Haven’t you attended almost every one of my little events for years?” Rubinsky asked, remaining resolutely in the Imperial language. “I’m nothing if not good with faces. It comes with the territory.”

“It’s true that I’m the embassy’s designated guest, unless my superiors are specifically summoned,” Muller said. “I assume it’s because whichever secretary of yours sends invites thinks I’m handsome.”

Rubinsky laughed. Muller looked behind him inconspicuously, trying to see where his usual cadre of security had gone. They were nowhere in sight, but that didn’t mean much.

“We would be a poor Imperial territory if we didn’t extend invitations to someone from your party,” Rubinsky said.

“And that’s why you invite the Alliance, as well?” He smiled, making it clear that the remark was meant only as a joke.

“You don’t see the rebels here today,” Rubinsky said, gesturing broadly at the fore of the boat behind them.

“I know. It makes me feel a little unbalanced, to not have something to counteract. I’m useless without an enemy.”

“You’re not enemies while you’re both my guests.”

“I always did like that line,” Muller said. “The way everyone here pretends to live in a better world.”

“Are you drunk, Commander?” Rubinsky didn’t sound accusatory, merely curious.

Muller looked down at the glass in his hand— still mostly full. “No. You’ll have to pardon me for speaking out of turn.”

“No pardon required at all,” Rubinsky said. “I’m just surprised you have an opinion like that.”

“I like Phezzan,” Muller said. He could have elaborated, but didn’t. Rubinsky was, after all, not a trustworthy person. One didn’t become the leader of Phezzan through honesty and fair play.

“You’re one of very few who hold that opinion,” Rubinsky said.

“More’s the pity.” Muller leaned on the railing, looking out over the darkening water. The yacht had turned a bend in the river, and now directly behind the boat, the spire of the elevator rose up into the sky, still lit by traces of the sun, like a signal flare that kept burning. “I’ll miss it here when I’m reassigned.”

“And are you expecting that to happen anytime soon?”

“Herr Rubinsky, if you’re asking for information, I’m afraid I know as little about how things are gong on my side of the galaxy as you do.”

“Of course. I was merely curious about staff changes at the Embassy.”

Muller smiled, but this time it was uncomfortably tight. “Phezzan is a country of the status quo,” he said. “Unfortunately, the rest of the universe is not. That’s the only thing I know about the future.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” Rubinsky said.

“In what way?”

“There isn’t a single creature in the universe who can survive without being able to adapt. Those are the laws of nature— and governments, and businesses. They hold for Phezzan, just as much as they hold for the Empire, or for the rebels.”

Muller was silent for a moment. “Phezzan’s certainly been forcing the Alliance to adapt.”

“It’s not my doing, I assure you.”

“No?”

“All this government does is issue currency,” Rubinsky said, which was such a vast and laughable oversimplification that Muller had to make an effort to control his facial expressions.

“And couldn’t you, as a currency-issuing body, have offered to prop up Phezzani firms that were hurting from the loss of Imperial business, rather than letting them hunt down their debtors and crash the Alliance economy?”

Rubinsky smiled, but didn’t answer the question. “It’s interesting that a representative of the Imperial government is so concerned with that.”

“It’s my job to care about the Alliance. Besides, if the Alliance learns to live without you, Phezzan will be in a worse position,” Muller said. “And as I said, I happen to like Phezzan.” He looked down into his drink. “Maybe for my own reasons, but nevertheless…”

“The rebels will find it very difficult to live without us,” Rubinsky said, dismissing the comment. “A wholly insular economy is one that will tear itself apart sooner, rather than later. Like you said, Commander— one needs someone to compete against. A matching pair.”

“That might be true,” Muller said. “But I don’t know if Phezzan will survive long enough to benefit—” He realized that he was saying far too much. “Forgive me, sir. I don’t mean to overstep.”

“Words are words,” Rubinsky said. “I’ve never really found much need to take them to heart— I’d rather have money than promises of love.” He paused. “And maybe you’re right. I have no idea what the rebels are planning to do, if it doesn’t involve us. Maybe we’ve made them accidentally unpredictable.”

“Maybe, sir,” Muller said. He couldn’t interpret Rubinsky’s comment— was it meant to be a warning. “You think they’re a poked tiger?”

Rubinsky smiled. “What do you think, Commander?”

“It’s not like the Alliance has exactly been a tame housecat before now. But other than that, I couldn’t say, sir.”

Rubinsky stared at him for a moment, then said, “They send you here because you’re the least cowed of all the people in that embassy— you should use that to your advantage.”

“I’m not sure what advantage you expect me to gain, sir,” Muller said. “Nor which ones you think I should want.”

Rubinsky cocked an eyebrow. “Every man has something he wants.”

“And are you here to offer me something?” Muller asked. He sipped his drink, then laughed a little. “Sir, I’m eating better at this party than I have in weeks— the Embassy ran out of money for payroll, and I’ve been eating nothing but canned beans to stretch my last paycheck. There’s not much I can trade you, even if I wanted to. The Embassy is functionally the last outpost of a ruined country, until someone manages to pick up the pieces.”

“You’re too honest. And I wasn’t looking for anything.”

“Just in case— it’s better to head you off at the pass,” Muller said. “You sounded like you forgot that the reason I have this post in the first place, and why I’ve been here so long, is that I’m a loyal servant of the Imperial government. Whoever’s government it ends up being.”

“You don’t have a stake in the civil war?”

Muller smiled. “I don’t have a noble name. Even if I had an opinion, it wouldn’t matter much.” He was a good liar, when he needed to be.

“I see.”

“And besides— there’s no war here on Phezzan.”

Rubinsky smiled too, though his smile was tight.

“Was there something you wanted, sir?” Muller asked.

“No, no— I just wanted to get the thoughts of someone closer to the situation in the Empire than I am.”

“We’re the same distance away,” Muller said. “Here in the center of the galaxy.”

“You’re a flatterer to my country.”

“That’s my job.”

“She’s a fickle mistress to flatter, so I’m told,” Rubinsky said. “Of all the people who come here looking for her favor, she gives it to very few.”

“Well, for those who have it, that makes her the best kind of mistress, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed.”

A woman’s voice sounded from atop the deck behind them. “Adrian?” she called. “Are you busy?”

Rubinsky glanced up behind himself, looking over at the red-haired woman— Dominique Saint-Pierre— and waved his hand at her.

“I didn’t mean to distract you from your much more important guests,” Muller said.

“Hardly. Perhaps I’ll see you again, Herr Muller,” Rubinsky said. “Enjoy the party.”

“I will, thank you, sir.”

Rubinsky walked away. Muller realized, playing the conversation over in his head, that he had stayed in the Phezzani patois, and Rubinsky had stayed in Imperial the entire time. It felt strange to him, though he couldn’t explain why— didn’t understand the point Rubinsky had been trying to make. Muller wasn’t intending to be deferent to Phezzan, and he doubted Rubinsky had any reason to flatter him, a relatively lowly soldier. It buzzed around his head.

He hadn’t gotten much information about the Alliance, either. It all seemed very ominous— that was the only thing he knew for sure. He dumped the rest of his whiskey over the side of the boat, watched it disappear into the churning water, and went to go mingle with the guests some more. He wouldn’t learn anything from them, either, but he wanted to try.

When the boat finally docked, around three in the morning, and all the other guests stumbled drunkenly off into their limousines, Muller took a bus back to the embassy building. Aside from the guards, he was the only one in the offices. It was creaky and quiet in the old marble building, with just the humming of computers and the whirr of the HVACs kicking on and off. The lights were off in the main office floor, and Muller went directly to his own tiny office, and woke up his computer.

Although he addressed the message he was sending to Fleet Admiral Muckenburger in Iserlohn, he knew well enough that Commodore Hank von Leigh would read the message eventually, when he gained access to Iserlohn’s computer systems. Leigh’s plans were obvious to anyone who had been paying attention, and Muller had been sufficiently convinced by the Castrop affair that Leigh could— and would— take Iserlohn. And Leigh was someone Muller knew how to write to.

Muller finished writing his letter— a long one, detailing the current state of the Alliance and Phezzan, the disrupted status quo, the way the Alliance was being pushed to the breaking point, and Rubinsky’s strange curiosity— by six-thirty in the morning, finished reading it over and pressed send by six-forty-five. He was in the process of writing a note for his superior, describing the communique with Iserlohn (and telling him that he would be taking the morning off to have a nap) at seven. At three minutes after seven, an urgent message from the Iserlohn fleet arrived in the Embassy’s secure ansible system. It was marked with so many bright red urgent flags that Muller stopped everything that he was doing to read it, and he was therefore the first to know what had happened on the other side of the galaxy.

Iserlohn fortress had been captured, and the Embassy’s new orders were, regardless of cost, to kill any member of Duke Braunschweig’s family if they attempted to enter Phezzan.