Knight's Move (55 page)

“Oh,” his brother said.  “Make me.”

“You had my proxy, but you were supposed to confirm important votes with me,” Glen said, dryly.  “Surprise, surprise; you didn't bother to ask my opinion for a number of important votes.  And – surprise, surprise – those votes benefited you, personally.  How long do you think you would last as CEO once the rest of the family finds out what you did?”

“Perhaps we could compromise,” Theodore said.  “You wouldn't have to resign ...”

Glen snorted.  “You killed millions of humans and aliens, yet the law cannot touch you,” he said.  “So I have to be here, to make sure you don't kill any more.  And you
will
resign, because you cannot be trusted with such power.”

“I will,” Theodore said.  “If you keep this buried, I will resign.  And then you can keep your career, if it is that important to you.”

“I
will
be watching,” Glen warned him.  He’d do more than just watch.  If he wouldn't be on Mars personally, he would have words with his other brothers.  They’d be watching Theodore like hawks.  Even after his resignation, he would still have his shares in the corporation.  He would still be able to meddle.  “And one other thing ...”

Theodore waited, patiently.

“I assume that no one will find a trace of Harrison Montgomery,” Glen said.  “Suffice it to say that there
are
copies of the files, stashed somewhere well away from you and your men.  Should anything happen to me ...”

He turned and strode out of the room, not looking back.

It wasn't what he wanted, he admitted to himself, as he walked down the stairs towards the main entrance.  Theodore and his remaining accomplices would never be held to account for their crimes.  How could they be, without triggering off the civil war Glen had fought to prevent?  But at least he wouldn't have to tie himself to Mars, abandoning his naval career ... and there would be some compensation for the colonies.

He’d done the right thing, hadn't he?  The hell of it was that he might never know.

His communicator buzzed.  “Captain,” Sandy said as he stepped outside, “we’ve received our refit schedule.  They want us on our way back to the cluster within two months.”

Glen had to smile.  “Understood,” he said.  “I’m on my way.”

The End

Humanity’s exploration of the universe was greatly accelerated when renowned scientists White and Hamilton successfully opened the first portal gateway into hyperspace, an alternate universe that allowed faster-than-light travel, in 2145.  Although hyperspace was exceedingly dangerous, at least at first, human scoutships started charting the links between hyperspace and normal space, locating a number of Earth-compatible worlds within easy distance of Earth.  It was the dawn of the great expansion as human nations, corporations, religious groups and suchlike stroke to lay claim to a world or worlds of their own.  By 2200, over a hundred worlds had been settled and humanity was continuing to expand.  Even first contact – in 2245 – failed to halt the expansion.

Politically, this led to a dangerously unstable situation.  Claim-jumping, quiet ‘accidents’ that wiped out small colonies and even piracy became common, followed by small wars.  Eventually, after First Contact, Earth’s most powerful governments founded the Terran Federation, believing that humanity would need one force to keep order and one voice to speak to other alien races. 

This did not go down well with everyone.  The Federation was the creation of the most powerful governments and, unsurprisingly, they rigged the system in their favour.  If the Federation hadn't encountered the Dragons (as humans came to call them) it is likely that there would eventually have been a major civil war within human space.  Not only was the system rigged, the Federation put the interests of the core worlds (and national power blocks) ahead of the interests of humanity as a whole.  This was asking for trouble.

***

The Dragons (as humans came to call them; their real name being completely unpronounceable) evolved on a hot dry world from reptilian ancestors.  It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that their basic creed can be summed up as ‘to the victor the spoils’ or, more bluntly, ‘might makes right.’  Early wars on Prime Sphere were fought over access to water, farming land and other valuable resources.  The senior clans granted access to lesser clans in exchange for submission and obedience.  However, as any appearance of weakness was seen as an invitation to attack, the clans were ruled by despots, who were replaced when they grew old.  Draconic Kingship in those early days was a thoroughly Darwinian process.  All it took to establish legitimacy was to defeat the previous King. 

When they finally reached space and started to explore, they were already primed to build an empire.  The network of clans, ruled over by the Emperor, had only two ways to cope with the existence of alien life.  Aliens who submitted to the Dragons were treated as slaves, but allowed to live.  Aliens who refused to submit were ruthlessly destroyed.  By their lights, accepting aliens as slaves was a gesture of mercy from ruler to ruled; indeed, the tradition had its origins in how the early clans assimilated the survivors of other clans.  However, for obvious biological reasons, the alien slaves were never actually able to become part of the power structure.  The best they could hope for was to be considered an advisor to a senior nobleman. 

The official first contact between the expanding Terran Federation and the Draconic Empire took place in 2534, when a human scoutship – the
Santa Marie
- stumbled across an alien starship of unknown design.  It’s attempts to transmit the first contact protocols were ignored; instead, the alien ship closed into engagement range and opened fire.  The scoutship was destroyed, but the CO had time to transmit a distress signal and ensure that his ship would not fall into hostile hands.

Post-war investigations revealed that the Dragons had, in fact, captured a number of human colonies that had been established by rogue settlers at the very edge of human space.  The encounter with the
Santa Marie
had been a deliberate attempt to test humanity’s mettle, as was the series of brief and violent encounters between the Terran Federation Navy’s Frontier Fleet and the Draconic Navy.  However, once they had learned enough, the Draconic Emperor opened communications with the Federation and explained that the whole affair had been a ghastly misunderstanding.  The
Santa Marie
had, by raising its shields, committed an act of aggression by their lights.  This was, of course, abject nonsense, but it was accepted by the Federation.  As the brief encounters between the TFN and the Dragons had largely shown the superiority of the TFN’s technology, the Federation decided that it had little to worry about from the Dragons.  They could not have been more wrong.

The negotiations eventually settled on a border, which the Dragons barely bothered to pay lip service to, let alone take seriously.  ‘Raiders’ hit human worlds on their side of the border, while contacts were made with smugglers, pirates and others who might be willing to assist the Dragons.  Ten years of largely undeclared war followed, which was generally ignored on Earth.  Indeed, there were plenty of politicians who believed that the colonies were actually
provoking
the attacks, or using them as an excuse to build up their own military power.  The net result was that nothing substantial was done about the growing threat.

Meanwhile, the Draconic Empire realised that their opponent was more formidable than it seemed.  Although the TFN was actually weaker in hulls than the Draconic Navy – and its technological advantages didn't last, once the Dragons started researching them – the Federation itself was huge, far larger than the Draconic Empire.  Worse, it possessed a formidable industrial base that could be converted to military production very quickly.  Accordingly, the Draconic Empire planned for a quick campaign.  The core of the TFN would be smashed, followed by a drive on Earth.  Humanity would not have time to switch to a war footing.

The formal war began in 2545 when Draconic raiders attacked a Federation colony at the edge of the border.  Unknown to the Dragons, the attack accidentally killed the daughter of one of the Federation’s most prominent Senators (along with nearly four million other humans.)  Outraged at the media coverage, the Federation Government declared war and sent nearly half of the TFN to Jackson’s World, the closest military base to the border.  Once organised, the task force was ordered to proceed into Draconic Space and push them back, hard.  As military campaigns go, it was poorly planned and rested on a series of unfounded assumptions about enemy culture, technology and planning.  The results were disastrous.

Unknown to the Federation, the estimates of the Draconic Navy’s fighting forces were way off the mark.  When the task force entered the Starlight System (home to a race that had been discovered and enslaved before they had even mastered fire) they were jumped by a vastly superior enemy fleet.  The ensuring battle saw almost all of the fleet destroyed, with only a handful of survivors.  Worse, far too many humans were taken prisoner and brutally interrogated by the Dragons. 

Once they had satisfied themselves that they had destroyed the fleet, the Dragons drove over the border and invaded over ninety inhabited human worlds, paying special attention to Jackson’s World, where the defenders were still reeling from the loss of the fleet.  Indeed, the Dragons themselves were surprised by their easy series of victories.  It seemed like humanity’s final hour was at hand.

However, a number of ships had survived the destruction of the fleet and launched desperate attacks on enemy supply columns.  These attacks eventually tapered off, but they caused the Dragons to delay long enough for TFN reinforcements to be rushed to the war front and start slowing the enemy down.  The direct drive on Earth was stopped in the Maximilian System which, although it had been a costly victory, provided a major boost to Federation morale. 

Of post-war importance was the capture of Bottleneck, a star system that happened to sit on the only safe hyper-route into the Fairfax Cluster.  The colonists there were cut off from the Federation, the Dragons expecting that they would fall into their hands like ripened fruit.  It was an understandable assumption, but an incorrect one.  By the time the lesser clans started probing the edge of the cluster, the colonists had set up a defence force and managed to stymie their advance.

The war settled down as both sides started to dig in for the long haul.  In occupied space, the Dragons rounded up anyone who had served in ‘useful’ professions and enslaved them, dragging them back into their territory to work in the factories.  Others, deemed useless, were simply exterminated, often through the use of poison gas or biological weapons.  Their worlds were settled by the lesser clans, who used the remaining humans as slaves.

Ten years after the war had begun, the Dragons launched their second major drive on Earth.  Intended to crush human resistance before the humans could push their advantage, it turned into a major disaster as the advancing fleet ran into a far stronger human force in the Wolf 359 system and was eventually destroyed.  (Few Dragons ever surrendered in the war, nor did humans once they found out what fate might await them if captured.)  The destruction of the fleet allowed the TFN to start raiding behind occupied lines – and, eventually, to start raiding into enemy territory itself. 

This – intentionally – kept the Dragons off-balance as the human race completed its switch to war production and started pumping out thousands of new starships, starfighters and other weapons.  Worse, for the Dragons at least, humanity’s Special Operations Executive had started making contact with the billions of slaves within the Empire.  A campaign of work sabotage and suchlike was rapidly underway, while human infiltrators armed and trained resistance movements in the massive camps the aliens used to house their slaves.  The whole problem was made worse by heavy-handed purges that not only aroused hatred and fear among the slaves, but also wiped out vast numbers of technically-skilled slaves the empire needed to keep producing war material. 

The climactic battle of the war came in 2576, thirty years after the war began.  Having located a sizable shipping yard, the TFN slipped a major task force behind enemy lines and attacked the star system, then lingered in the targeted system.  The Dragons had no choice, but to send a large fleet to intercept ... at which point the
second
TFN task force appeared in the system and attacked the enemy fleet from behind.  Once the work of destruction was completed, the fleet withdrew, taking advantage of its position to attack a number of enemy-held worlds as it retreated.  This staggering success was followed up by several more deep-strike raids, targeted on the enemy’s infrastructure.  Slowly, but surely, the Draconic Empire was losing the ability to fight.