“Huh. Good point,” Peters murmured. “But Glick, at least, seems to have settled down once Auer and his ilk were taken care of.”
“True. But there are other… plutocrats… out there. In the former DP. In the other former star nations. Never mind relations of the former ruling families of those same star nations.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m still trying to figure out how to do it. But I’m starting to see the need for a new group, reporting straight to me – maybe only to me. I need more on-the-ground information, an ‘unofficial-official’ channel. Something that feeds me the information I need for personnel and policy decisions like that, but isn’t obvious, and that doesn’t get visibly tied to me. Maybe even… no, I don’t know.”
“What were you going to say?”
“It’s too fraught with the potential for misuse, Amanda. Let it go.”
“No, this is a brainstorming session, Bobby. Say it, then we can look at checks and balances.”
Dunham sighed. Like so many husbands in the history of the human species, when his wife got like this, he’d found it was best to simply go along, Emperor or not. And after all, he considered, she was really good at pulling rabbits out of hats. Maybe she would here, too.
“…Maybe even some sort of secret police,” he finished the aborted statement.
“Oh. Yeah, now I get why you immediately threw out that term as unacceptable.”
“Yup.”
“But there are still valid options along those lines, I think,” she considered. “We’d need somebody who is essentially as incorruptible as you and Geoffrey to run it, though…”
“And where the hell would we find someone like that? Someone we’d know was like that?”
“Well, it’d be a trick, sure. But where would they fit in? Would they be part of the Imperial Guard, or part of the police, or some other group, a completely new thing, or what?”
“I… don’t know. I haven’t managed to figure all that out yet. I just keep going ‘round in circles.”
They fell silent, thinking.
“Is there any rush?” she asked then.
“No, I don’t guess so,” Dunham replied with a shrug. “I mean, I’d kinda like to have a few things in place, if one of those attempts does get through to me – or hell, to stop one of those attempts getting through to me, though the Guard are doing well with it, along with some great help from the Imperial Police – but there are no deadlines. I think it’s probably better we take some time with it and ensure we do it properly, rather than rush it.”
“Well, let me see what I can dredge up with a little research, then,” Peters decided.
“Which is something you’re damn good at,” Dunham agreed.
“Which is why you discuss this stuff with me,” she said with a grin.
“Which is why I discuss this stuff with you,” he confirmed.
Two evenings later, after dinner, they went up to the gardens on the roof and strolled the pathways, arm in arm, content to watch the transition of day to night from their high vantage. The Imperial Guard stood by the escalator; the twins were in their rooms, diligently studying, and the galaxy’s ultimate power couple had some rare time to be alone with each other.
“This is so beautiful,” Dunham murmured, as the western sky faded and the first faint stars twinkled out overhead. He pulled Peters into his side with one arm. “And all of that,” he waved the other hand heavenward, “is the Galactic Empire now. Amanda, we’ve got to ensure that this all lasts. So the Throne – whether it’s me, or a successor – has to have the intelligence information to make it last.”
“I know. Section Six,” she declared.
“Huh?”
“It’s a secret police intelligence force that you want, right?”
“Well, yeah…”
“So it’s under the Investigations auspices. The bubbles that the Zoo came up with, way back when you first rebuilt the government, remember? It’s the Investigations bubble. That’s Imperial Police. So it has to be Section Six.”
“No, honey.” Dunham enumerated on his fingers. “Planet, province, sector, empire, Imperial City. Five sections. There is no Section Six, Amanda.”
“There is now,” Peters said with a grin. “Section Six, the Emperor’s Own. A top-secret group of investigators and operatives who answer only to the Throne. Run by someone as incorruptible as the Emperor Trajan, taking his orders and reporting back to him… and only him. Whenever there’s a problem, wherever there’s a threat, Section Six scopes it out, analyzes it, and neutralizes it… at the command of the Emperor – or Empress, as the case may be.”
“HA!”
“What?”
“You sound like a recruitment commercial!”
“Hey, you wanted ideas. I think it’d work.”
“Well, it sounds like exactly the sort of thing I want, that’s true,” Dunham conceded, “but how the hell are we going to staff it? How do we hide it?”
“In plain sight,” Amanda declared. “We’ll bring in someone who’s been so staunchly loyal to the Throne that he’s been willing to put his own money on the line, time after time, and run it through him.”
“You don’t mean– ”
“I do. Otto Stauss.”
“Amanda, I have the greatest respect for Stauss and his son. God only knows, they’ve saved my hide and the Empire, time and again. But they aren’t spy
