Tarkin

Tu’Nasai. The Palace. Thursday.

The bulletin was read twice in the room. Eleven dead on a platform, more than forty wounded, and among the dead General Secretary Radek. The leader of the Revolution that had overthrown the old monarchy — a monarchy which survives in Tu’Nasai, under the Emperor’s safekeeping — was gone. The wire did not say by whom.

As the silence went, the aides began to sort the questions. Recognition. The relationship. War. Whether it had come from outside, or from inside. The Emperor let them. He had the same page they had, and no other.

“Has Aleksander called?” The Emperor spoke of the old, deposed, Britarvian Monarch.

“Not that I am aware of.”

“He may. If he does, I will take it, out of courtesy.”

“Does he expect a restoration?” an aide asked.

“Expect it? He may. Receive it? No. The monarchy died more than a decade ago. The people have moved on. We cannot restore what has been forgotten. He lives because we took him off that coast. That is the whole of the debt I told him we would uphold, and we did and still do.”

He looked back at the bulletin.

“I do not believe we are not altered by this. That is not the same as having expected it. Monarchy, no monarchy. Radek, no Radek. The coast is the same coast. The people are the same. The acquaintance is older than the house we put on a ship, and older than the republic that took the house’s name. These last years I have dealt with Radek, and with the state he spoke for, because that was the Britarvia in front of us. I told him, after the Revolution, that it was not his Emperor I was allied with. It was the state.”

He was quiet long enough that an aide thought the meeting had ended. It had not.

“What Myrovar has already published is this: Burtova has the station, the wire, and the hour. A commander who reaches a wreck with two companies, and who has the Bureau tell the country to listen at six, is not waiting on our recognition to be in the room. We have no finding on who laid the charge, though we may suspect privately. We will hear Burtova. If the Presidium is still a Presidium when she is done, we answer the state we have been answering. If the state has become the district, we answer the district, and we do it as we would have answered Radek: for the country, not for the office.” He folded the page once. “Either way, the embassy will file their names. We will say we are sorry for them. We will place our nearby facilities on high alert. But we cannot mourn Radek, and I cannot tell if the state even expects it yet.”

The wire went down at half past four. It carried the names, and the regret, and nothing else. Aleksander was not on it.

Myrovar. Garrison Headquarters, Myrovask Military District. Thursday, 18:00.

General Natalya Burtova spoke from a plain desk in the garrison headquarters, the flag of the United Revolutionary State hanging behind her and a single microphone before her. Across Britarvia, factories stopped their lines and collective farms gathered around radios. "Comrades. This morning, General Secretary Ivan Radek was killed in Myrovar by insurgents sent from Woplonga. The Revolutionary Armed Forces will find every person involved in planning and carrying out this attack. If they are in Woplonga, we will go after them there. Any government that protects them will be treated as an accomplice."

"This attack succeeded because the Presidium failed. It debated while our enemies prepared, and it left the state unprotected. As of tonight, the Revolutionary Presidium is dissolved. All authority over the Party and the state passes to the State Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, which I will chair. The Armed Forces and the Revolutionary Security Bureau now answer directly to the Committee. Former Presidium members will remain in RSB custody while their conduct is reviewed. Officials and officers who carry out the Committee's orders will keep their posts. Those who obstruct them will be removed and treated as counter-revolutionaries."

"Tomorrow, the Committee begins the Great Revolutionary Advance. Industrial output will double within five years. Collective farms will meet their quotas. Workers will be reassigned to the steelworks in Volensk, the mines in the Varska Mountains, and the dam projects on the Radek River, and Party cadres, students, and soldiers will work alongside them. By the end of this plan, Britarvia will be stronger, more secure, and more capable than at any point in its history." She folded her notes. "The first stage of the revolution removed the monarchy. The second stage begins now. Forward, comrades." In Radekgorod, Director-General Menshov switched off the radio in his office and reached for the telephone.

Diplomats from Britarvia have been expelled out of an abundance of caution.

The Plumage notes with concern the sudden destabilization of their Britarvian allies after the assassination of Ivan Radek but has no further comment at this time.

The nation as well as president Jayden hunter have watched but not been affected or worried and have enacted no mourning or remembrance of the passing of general secretary Ivan Redek or by increased tensions in Britarvia due to their suspected involvement in the old democratian civil war.