Strings and Puppets - The Hive Succession

By Alinestra Covelia



Berzhinev closed the line, sat back, and kneaded his round knuckles into his eyes for a tense moment. Then he turned back to Shimoda and regarded him with the brittle wary look of a man who had not slept for two days.

"Still no word?" Shimoda asked. 

Berzhinev stood up and shook his head. "Not from the Chairman's link. Not from Ballantyne. Not from the honor guard." He paced back to the table display in the cramped center of the room.

There was a moment of silence as they considered the time lapse. It had been two days since last contact. Quite aside from the leadership issue, simple Hive law held at forty-eight hours' absence from sensors, cameras, or supervisors, a citizen was AWOL. In the utilitarian edicts of the law, that was largely the same as being legally dead.

Berzhinev sighed. Of course, when you're talking about the Chairman, things got a bit more complicated...

He looked up at the timepiece. They had less than thirty metric minutes left.

"You should send for Zhu," he said. "We're going to need him on our side."

Shimoda bowed - only a slight inclination of the head, to a man so much his younger - and left. At the door, he turned and looked back.

"I hope you know what you are doing, Arkady."

Presently, Berzhinev found himself seated opposite Zhu Helai, the Chairman's Second. Superficially, it would be hard to find anything in common between them. One was a tall, rangy Chinese man in his middle age, whose expression spoke of perpetual calm. The other was a plump, short European with an obvious hearing implant, and whose fingernails were rarely far from his mouth. Zhu's main experience was in administration and task management at the Chairman's side - Berzhinev had spent his time in intelligence and analysis. 

Yet both shared a crucial similarity. With the absence and presumed deaths of Chairman Yang and Intelligence Minister Tobias Ballantyne, both were former viceroys suddenly elevated to direct leadership. With all the cares and duties of managing a nation resting on their shoulders.

"In twenty-five minutes, will the Chairman will be declared dead by Hive law?" Berzhinev asked.

Zhu nodded. "We have two scripts for the Psyche department," he said. "One is the usual holding-pattern broadcast...-"

Berzhinev waved this away irritably. The broadcasts were utterly devoid of any real information, and their constant empty reiterations of "confident progress" at the Meet talks was starting to grate - even for him.

"-...and the other is a declaration of the 10-10-10 incident, telling civilians that we are looking into it now," Zhu said.

Berzhinev pondered this, splaying his fingers and tapping the tips against each other in an agitated tattoo.

"We need to move forward," he said. "Normally, the Psyche broadcasts move faster than this. We change the message every shift or so. What will the workers think if they hear the same thing two days running? What will the drones assume?"

Zhu leaned forward. "I can't do anything without Felden's approval," he said in a low voice. "He holds the purse strings in The Hive."

Berzhinev brought up the map. "We can't sit here and wait-and-see any longer. HQ is secure, I presume?"

Zhu nodded. "I've had personal control of its functions since the Chairman left our territory."

Berzhinev nodded. He would need to secure Fecundity Tower, with its valuable genosoy and cultiprotein farms, and the eugenics labs at The Leader's Horde. A thought struck him.

"I know Villapaucar has an intel base in Manufacturing Warrens," Berzhinev said. "Can you contact him and secure the exploration assembly lines?"

Zhu looked up. This was the Hive euphemism for "weapons factories". He nodded slowly. "I think he can be talked into our side," he said cautiously.

Berzhinev smiled. "Good. Best get on that right away, then," he said. "Power may corrupt, but it's always good to have a few gun barrels ready to cultivate it, eh?"

Zhu stood up and turned.

"Oh, one more thing," Berzhinev said. "I'd rather you didn't mention this to Radkovich or Li." Those were the two heads of security. "Their loyalties are unknown at this time."

Zhu pursed his lips grimly and left, but he did not affirm. Berzhinev made a note of that.

He turned back to his aides and gave orders. After a while, he looked up at the timepiece. Ten minutes. Somewhere in the distance, the broadcast sounded along empty corridors, the warm maternal voice of the reader soothing as the Guanyin's balm.

"Get me in touch with the Psyche Ministry," he said suddenly. 

* ~ * ~ *

There came a knock at the door, and Liren looked up. It was Pauli, one of the writers - not much more than a boy, but one of her favorites. Pauli was always working puns and aphorisms into the reports. All harmless stuff, to be sure, usually involving convoluted interpretations of old Chinese sayings, but it drew a laugh from the working public and occasionally made Liren herself chuckle audibly on-air too.

Now, however, his face was white.

"Yang gugu," he said, "there's a cadre member here to see you."

Liren's smile at being called auntie was short-lived. A cadre member? She stood up and smoothed out her worksuit, then straightened out her greying hair.

The cadre member came in, his uniform the steely grey of the admin class. "Minister Berzhinev has news for you," he said, handing her a datapad.

Liren looked at it, and her eyes widened. "Wait, Minister Berzhinev?" she said. The name was not familiar.

The cadre member smiled despite himself. Berzhinev had been right, he thought. This woman's voice was really quite something. A deep gentleness like a mother's smile.

"The information is all there in the report," he said. "You will not need to make your routine announcement this cycle - I have given those to your subordinate, Vikram. In the next news cycle, and no later than thirty minutes' time, you will have composed your own news report based on our facts here, and you will make this report to the general populace."

Her eyes reached a crucial point in the report. She looked up at the cadre.

"The Chairman is dead, isn't he?" she asked. He marvelled at the level way in which she said it.

He looked at her pointedly. "We are primarily concerned with preserving a sense of calm, you understand."

She looked down at the report, and swallowed. "Very well, cadreman."

* ~ * ~ *

Things had not gone well with Manufacturing Warrens. Over the course of the next hour, Security Attache Li had mobilized his entire force and taken over the assembly lines there. Berzhinev noted this and quietly struck Zhu off his list of reliable allies.

He was halfway through his orders to The Hive's armories, when the new broadcast came online. He stopped and listened.

"Many children of the Hive," the voice began, "we are strong in our unity. We have survived the vacuum of space, and the hard landing on Planet's surface. We have built up our living society, undaunted by the hardships we have suffered. And now it is as a mother speaks to her beloved children today, that I must tell you, our Chairman shall not return from the Meet."

Berzhinev stood up, listening in a trance.

"Chairman Yang has not abandoned us, my children. He went to expand our family and to welcome others to our laws and order. But among strange peoples and in the wilderness of this world, his word has become lost to the winds. Now, the family must grow from the wisdom he has left us.

"Citizens, do not forget your duties in this society. Do not forget what society has given you. Follow your duties with dedication and vigor. Instruct your subordinates with wisdom and compassion. And be on the lookout for any who shirk their duties and seek to cheat your family, your coworkers, your fellow citizens. Report them to your cadre members and help us build a strong society in the Chairman's vision.

"Together, we will weather the times of trouble. But our leaders serve the people, and you are the people of society."

After a few minutes of silence, Berzhinev realized he had been standing. He shook his head to clear it, and sat back down and completed his orders to The Hive armories. That newsreader was good, he thought to himself musingly. With that done, the central arms caches were secured - even against Zhu, if need be. Now he waited for the first of the reports to come in.

They did, coming from intel operatives as far away as Communal Nexus and Yang Mine. Overall, they were heartening - unchanged hourly production quotas, nutrient consumption, and work deviations. Civil obedience remained high, thanks doubtless in part to Liren's speech.

It looked like the Psyche people had done it - for now at least. He tapped his chin with a finger and then began biting his nail again. Of course, there were the Security men to worry about right now.

Over the next hour, reports started to come in about Radkovich's movements. Li had hunkered down in Manufacturing Warrens, so for now he was a contained threat. Better still, several work units in that base had begun reporting directly to Berzhinev's cadres, suggesting that Li's control of the base was less than absolute. But Radkovich had been out on field exercises during this time and nobody in the internal command knew where his vehicle columns might show up.

The main breakthrough came two hours into the state of emergency, when Jiang, a protege of Radkovich, came in from the cold. Berzhinev's assigned handlers found out that he had been persuaded to defect largely as a result of the Intelligence Ministry's pervasive control over the Psyche broadcasts.

Berzhinev studied a map closely. Jiang was pointing out key military outposts. "Radkovich has a significant number of forces at his disposal, but his greatest enemy is time," Jiang said. "He'll be looking for a place to garrison his troops, and then secure nutrients and logistics, and then take the initiative in uniting the faction behind him."

Berzhinev sighed. Yang Mine was exposed, and it would likely be the first to fall to Radkovich. And the base was too far away to hurry reinforcements in time.

"Get me the reader, I want to talk to her personally," he said.

"Sir?" asked an aide, uncertain.

"The newsreader. The woman doing the broadcasts," he said.

"Yang Liren?"

"Yes, her," he said impatiently. "We're going to have to brief her."

* ~ * ~ *

All told, the broadcast to Yang's Mine was a cautious success. Playing on her namesake, Yang Liren formed a carefully-worded order to the workers there to go about their business as usual, and to expect a visit from Radkovich's security detail for their own safety. However, the people's society did not expect the innocent citizens of the base to have to provide for the security forces. Their only orders were to politely tell the security forces to wait for supplies from The Hive to reach them. If there were any "misunderstandings", they should report them to the cadre.

As expected, reports started coming in thick and fast. Evidently, Radkovich doubted Center's willingness to supply him. Military levies on the base resources and personnel were a poor way to win loyalty - especially when Center has extended its support to the base citizens.

Within one day, the nearby base of The Leader's Horde received its first shipment of arms from The Hive, accompanied by a cadre leader. The cadre leader then contacted Factory 144, a staunchly loyalist working group with close ties to a friend of Berzhinev's personal secretary, delivering weapons into their hands. With a populace reassured by Yang Liren's psyche broadcasts, the base's general citizenry accepted the Factory 144 guards among them, and prepared the perimeter defense against Radkovich's army.

The following day, after a forced march from Yang's Mine, Radkovich's army arrived at The Leader's Horde, and found an apparently heavily-armed fortified defense force instead of cowering fertility workers. Radkovich did not know that the base's apparent perimeter defense was in fact its full militia count. Expecting considerable resistance, Radkovich sent for his remainder guard from Yang's Mine, pulling them off pacification duties and committing them to the assault. This bought Jiang enough time to hurry a second supply of reinforcements to the loyalist supporters at The Leader's Horde.

On the third day, the largely-unsupervised workers under Yang Liren's bidding mounted a coordinated revolt in Yang Mine, with twelve work units joining and overthrowing the last Radkovich lieutenants in the base. And Radkovich's army found itself once more in the wilderness, with no base to call home behind them, and with a steadily growing defense force on the other side of the base perimeter ahead of them.

Radkovich pulled his army back in the middle of the night. With rebreather and food supplies dwindling, his captains mounted a coup and removed him from command quietly. Yang Liren announced their surrender - couched in terms of a return "to the family" - over psyche broadcast the following morning.

* ~ * ~ *

Berzhinev clasped his hands and bowed deeply to Yang, as a man of his youth traditionally should to a woman her age.

"You have united half the nation, without a shot being fired," he said. "The Hive as a whole is indebted to you, and to the magic of your voice."

Yang Liren nodded, a growing shrewdness in her gaze. "You said half," she said. "Nephew Kadia, what remains to be done?"

Berzhinev fought the impulse to bite his fingers. He rubbed the back of his neck instead. "It's the Second, Zhu. He has Felden's economic coffers behind him, and may be cutting a deal with Li even as we speak for military support. I don't think there's going to be a peaceful way out of this."

"Felden left The Hive?" Yang asked gently.

"Flew the coop with Zhu just before we took Radkovich's forces into custody," Berzhinev said gloomily. "Rumor has it that they're gathering forces in Communal Nexus."

Yang pursed her lips. "I have many friends in Communal Nexus," she said. "An old factory comrade runs the logistical union there. And one of my plantation students works the broadcast channels."

Berzhinev looked up at her. All the way out in Communal Nexus? His own men had been striving without success to get a foothold - since Zhu expelled the cadres. Could this matronly grey-haired woman succeed where they had failed?

"Can you give them a call?" he asked. "It would really help us here. I would be in your debt, daniang."

Liren smiled, with an abstracted benevolence in her eye. "You're just asking me to talk to them, my friend. And that's what I've always done."

Berzhinev opened another line, calling over his shoulder as he did so.

"This could be what we need to end this thing, for good. Spare no effort!"

Liren shook her head quietly, watching the man at the controls. How long since he had slept? She wondered. His fingers were bleeding, his hair in disarray. Like so many of the Hive citizens, the future was a featureless cipher to him.

But not to her.

"Everything will be all right," she said, her voice rich with comfort amid the confusion. "Just as the Chairman would have wanted." 