Castel Stirling, Novy Moskva
Eden, Edenstar System
Pentagram Cluster, Solar Hegemony in Exile
The petite-council room of the Castel Stirling was not part of her public or even semi-public above ground structure. This was no place of ceremonials nor of pomp or circumstance. This was a place of deadly serious business. As such it was deep in the heart of the real Castel, buried under millions of tons of soil, bedrock, starship grade armor, and reinforced mass concrete. The Castel that few outside the inner household and Black-Watch regiment ever laid eyes on.
It was not exactly advertised or well known (but commonly suspected and assumed nonetheless), but the Castel Stirling was actually an ancient Fortress-Bradley. A doom-cache long ago established on this rock as a bolt-hole for the House of Stirling. A long running effort started by the star-touched and mad-genius Bradley III Stirling long centuries prior and the tradition long maintained precisely for just these sorts of circumstances. The above ground and public portions were a fairy tale worthy of Schloss Neuschwanstein (if in exterior only, the interior was still largely barren) in Old Bavaria. The below ground portions would put Cheyenne Mountain, Raven Rock, Yamantau, and Kovinsky to shame.
Just outside the doors to the petite council room was the central defense facility, a planetary scale combat direction center from which the planetary defense for all Eden and her orbits and even the star system as a whole could be coordinated. The room itself held two great tables in a 'T' arrangement rather in the fashion of a medieval great hall, with a 'high' table forming the crossbar of the 'T' and the 'low' table the vertical.
Elise slumped in her seat in the center of the high table, fancy dress rumpled, makeup ruined, and head in her hands as the strident voices of the petite council clashed around her. One might infer that she was having a bad day. Her twins and their personal attendants were in hospital beds down the hall in the Castel's own infirmary, alive but unconscious. Likewise, the commander of her own Lifeguards regiment, the Black-Watch, was in a bed next to them, in a medically induced coma after some sort of hemorrhage. Which might or might not be related to the stunt her children had pulled, and given his barely coherent ranting before he was put under, might or might not have something to do with the giant alien super-battleship currently occupying the Zenith Point of the system.
At the moment it all seemed rather too much. Much too much. For a moment she could see Alexandyr II sitting next to her, cruelly smirking as if to say, 'you think you have it bad woman? I'm dead!' They had all tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen. Why wouldn't he listen? She could still remember his petulant ranting at them all when they tried to show him that Tubal Khan's sword was at their throats, hand banging on the table, spittle flying from his mouth, his face distorted and flushed beet-red.
"No! No! No-no-no! No! Absolutely not! I refuse to hear any more slander or base character assassination of my good and dear friend Tubal! Those wild Outtrim dogs rise against their betters and the most loyal Tubal Analis Khan has merely secured Our Hegemony while the SHDF goes out to subdue that ungrateful rabble of rioters and revolutionaries! You old women! You yellow cowards! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Worried that the presence of Khaganate troops here presents a security threat, indeed! Ha! You sound like jealous children, not marcherwarriors! This is jealousy, isn't it? You lot are jealous of the friendship of Tubal Khan and I! Well, I won't hear any more of this. I refuse. I am the sovereign here and I will not be told what is best or what I shall do. This 'conversation' is over! Good day, ‘gentlemen’."
Reverend Mother-Superior Mohiam's voice rang in her ears, as loud as ever, as if she was right there, as they conspired after to get herself and the babies off Earth on an Apostolic Nuncial dropship, "We will do what we can for you and the children, but for the father, nothing."
"For the father, nothing."
"For the father, nothing."
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