The crowds had started to gather and slowly congregate as far south as Prince Regent Street, and the throngs of people thickened further up Nestor Street, and a huge assembly waving placards had gathered at Trinity Square. The groups were behaving quite politely, and wardens in high-vis vests were omnipresent this far out. Small groups of Royal Cordelia Police constables were visible here and there, although they were simply observing for the most part. But as soon as the groundcar entered Tillborough Street, the temperature of the crowds started to increase. The police presence had increased from patrols to entire squads, and they wore riot gear complete with stunrods and shields. The bodies of protestors had also grown larger and more vocal, shouting rehearsed slogans as they marched along the pavements and piedways, carrying homemade banners. Linton Sciacca, the Marquess of Howeland, had started to regret taking a groundcar to Goldbrook Palace instead of a skycar about twenty minutes ago; he would have been there in a tenth of the time. He just hadn’t considered the fact that November 13 was a Sunday, and as such the vast majority of Cordelia would be off work or school, he had been too preoccupied with the startling news and preparing for the inevitable debate in the Lords. As Goldbrook Commons (not to be confused with the House of Commons in Goldbrook Palace, but tourists routinely were anyway) and the pillars of Graces Square came into view, Linton knocked on the window to the driver’s compartment for his chauffeur to stop; it was impossible to see the steps and fences of Parliament for all the bodies.
A long line of navy and white of constables in heavy riot gear stood on the steps leading into the Goldbrook Palace grounds, perhaps as many as eight hundred police officers with shields presented and visors lowered. Some held the leashes of snarling harnessed police wargs, their grey fur bristling and tails whipping back and forth in agitation. Troops of mounted police officers were trying their best to keep the road through the Commons and Graces Square clear for traffic, but there was a palpable tension in the air. The huge downtown Inner City areas were packed with protesters, and the police had their hands full keeping the more belligerent parts separated from the more well-behaved ones, the total numbering in the tens of thousands. In addition to the usual omnipresent cloud of drones of all types, cries, denunciations, and slogans filled the air.
Blood must be paid in blood!
Close the ports!
No war in our lifetime!
God save the King!
Justice for our men and women!
Down with the Alliance!
Block Elysian trade now!
Up the Navy!
Death begets only death!
Linton still hadn’t left the safety of his vehicle, considering it somewhat of a personal peril until a squad of police officers reached him. More groundcars were haphazardly parked in the chaotic scene, some trying to back off while wardens and constables tried to clear enthusiastic protestors out of the way. The police were trying desperately to hold open a corridor for members of Parliament to get through the ocean of people, the Parliament Security officers of the MPs shielding them. It wasn’t as if the crowds were intentionally physically threatening the MPs, but the sheer press of bodies was immense and only a small spark of excitement would be enough to start a stampede. And as the squad leaders on the ground saw the ‘car bearing the flag of the Secretary of Defence, they immediately blew whistles and ordered more constables around Linton’s vehicle. The aristocrat took a deep breath, corrected his purple cravat and downed the large glass of cognac in his chair’s armrest (not the first he’d had on the way up from the Oriel), grimacing as the alcohol travelled down his oesophagus, hopefully providing a measure of Valhallan courage. Only then did he open the ‘car door and faced the cacophony outside.
It wasn’t only the police officers who recognised the Defence Secretary, for camera drones came swooping down almost immediately, and a cheer rose from the crowds in his immediate surroundings, and he instinctively affixed a polite smile. As best Linton could make out from behind the struggling lines of navy and white riot geared constables, most of the protestors who’d managed to make it this close to Goldbrook were pretty young, dressed in everything from the haute culture of the upper classes, to fashionable street wear, to non-descript cheap clothes. There were also more than a few wearing the mahogany and red uniforms of the Royal Army, the black, gold and white of the Royal Navy, and the black, red and white of the Royal Marines.
“We’re with you, My Lord!” a shout could be heard from Linton’s right, which was followed by shouts of support and agreement.
“Just let us at them, Lord Howeland, we’ll sort the Greens right!” another shouted voice proclaimed to further calls of endorsement.
“An eye for an eye, Milord! Justice for our sailors!”
Linton couldn’t do anything but be led along through the human corridor by two burly men in black suits from Parliament Security. He managed to muse briefly on the professionalism of the Royal Cordelia Police. The crowds had been gathering for hours, but had seemingly yet to turn nasty. The day was thankfully young, not even twelve in the afternoon, which meant that there hadn’t been much time for hooligans and troublemakers to get sufficiently drunk to start much mischief. It helped that the pubs around this part of town were both very expensive and also not open at this hour. But Linton was pretty sure that the police would have their hands full before long…
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Just as he was thinking that, something went flying through the air and smashed into a thousand pieces on the cobblestones.
“The people still remember Harrow, Milord, no more deaths to stuff the warmongers’ pockets!”
The person started to howl something else, but three constables immediately burst into the throng of people to apprehend them, and things became even more chaotic. Whistles blew and about twenty officers mounted on what corresponded almost to warhorses started to disperse the nearby crowds. Howeland didn’t see much more, as he was hustled –nay, manhandled– along and suddenly he was through the thick line of police that guarded the Parliament gates, a line four deep. Letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding Linton walked down the Goldbrook Palace entry grounds and through the open gilded gate, veritably jumping up its short flight of stairs.
Goldbrook Palace was a massive complex originally constructed as the official royal residence in Cordelia in 2320, but had relatively quickly been replaced as such by the smaller, but more central and ornate St. Andrew Palace in 2397. Instead, Goldbrook had been chosen to house the Parliament, and expanded to accommodate such a purpose. Unlike what some tourists expected, given Aurora’s cultural history, it looked nothing like the old Westminster Palace in London on Earth. It was built in a Neo-Baroque Revival style known as Lydellism that combined elements from what would later be dubbed Neo-Edwardian and late Reconstructivism. If any rough Earth equivalent could be produced, it would have been the old Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, but scaled up many times over, with four distinct wings, a massive entrance hall, and a domed clock tower hall. Some five-thousand staffers worked there full time, and it had in addition to the large chambers of the House of Commons and Lords, numerous anterooms, lounges, conference rooms, decorative hallways, a royalty suite, lobbies for each of the chambers, press rooms, several museums and display rooms, cafés, and a (very expensive) restaurant that faced the huge gardens on the northern (backwards) facing side of the domed central hall. The huge complex was slightly elevated over street level, which was why there was a broad flight of stairs at the southern end of the palace grounds. The grounds with all their gardens and small pavilions were encased by fences that were more decorative than protective, but their twenty-foot height made them inconvenient to scale.
The lavishly decorated Reception Hall was filled with Members of Parliament from both houses, many of them looking confused and more than a little dazed. Parliamentary Security officers and police constables were omnipresent, guarding doors and flights of stairs, in addition to the traditional porters and doorkeepers in their elaborate long black coats and cocked hats. Staffers and personal aides milled about, and there was a sense of absolute confusion, the usual quiet and professional behaviour usually conducted in these halls of power completely abandoned. Linton sat down on one of the wooden benches close by the main entrance doors, watching as more and more MP’s and their staff came through, most of them having plastered on a nonchalant expression that probably belied their actual emotional states. No one was unaffected of what was going on, and Linton wasn’t thinking about the crowds outside the palace fences. He fished out his handcom and started to look for a news stream, eventually settling (with some slight chagrin) on the New Guardian’s. The camera drones were hovering just over the heads of the crowds, and the split-feed was trying to give an impression of the different groupings and the police’s attempt to separate them. A very vocal throng of mostly males dressed in street clothes, some waving or draped in the violet national flag of Aurora were shouting slogans, which made Linton wince. The other half of the stream was a vox-pop, in which the journalist was asking seemingly random people of their opinion of the current political situation.
“My son’s in the Navy,” a woman dressed in a mauve coat said, looking straight into the camera drone’s pickup, “he’s in Western Fleet, and I’ve never questioned his choice of profession. But now it’s different, innit’, the Elysians are pushing for some sort of reaction, and we’re not havin’ it, no. So I’m proud my lad is in the Service, protecting us all.”
Swiping away the stream, Linton searched for a different one, landing (much more to his liking) on the Evening Post and their own version of a vox-pop. The camera focused on two young men brandishing placards with the text Thank you Mr Prime Minister, no war today if you don’t mind written in bold black font, a reference to a popular political satire show. The female journalist approached them and asked what they hoped the Parliament would decide after the day’s discussions.
“Frankly Miss,” one of them said, dressed in a black anorak, “I don’t really care for what they say, I much more care for what they do. If the Roys and the Solibs want to drag us down the horrible path of even more militarisation, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do.”
His friend, wearing what was still called a souvenir jacket despite the change in pictorial styles over the centuries, picked up the baton.
“It’s not that we don’t love our country and the Union, but this increased brinkmanship is not helping anyone. We send a warship to the frontier, the Elysians send two. We commission a new cruiser, the Alliance immediately orders three more. It can’t go on just from a financial and demographic point of view, no matter what the people or the Powers that Be feel.”
“What’s the judgement of the hoi polloi?”
Linton looked up into a pair of dark brown eyes that shined with part mirth, part dead serious.
“Sir Edward,” Linton said as he rose from his rather uncomfortable pew, “If I that comment had come from any other man, I’d be asking if they were being serious. It smacks of disregard for the populace which the Parliament is supposed to represent, and that comes from me, a non-elected member of the Lords.”
Sir Edward Ranganekary flashed a brief grin.
“Well, good thing you know me, and are aware that I’m pulling your leg.”
Lord Howeland responded with a smile of his own.
“I didn’t know the Commons were joining this early?”
“Ah, yes,” Sir Edward Ranganekary said somewhat sheepishly “the Commons is convening about an hour after the Lords. And your opening statement is streamed in both houses, considering you’re the Secretary of Defence and all that. Once the Lords have had their fill of meaningless nonsense, we proper shakers in the Commons will have at it.”
Sir Edward’s smile at that last comment congealed a little, and he sniffed the air.
“I say, have you been drinking? A sort of performance enhancer I reckon?”
Lord Howeland snorted and brushed off some imagined lint off his blazer shoulders.
“More like a life-buoy, Sir Edward. I don’t think I’d be able to physically survive the retorts Dawnshire and Trewellynshire are no doubt preparing at this very moment without having some alcohol in my bloodstream.”
Edward Ranganekary, despite himself, smiled at the retort.
“Well, no matter what may come, I have every confidence that’ll you will make us proud, Milord.”