“What were the Puppies doing in Lamprey space?” Hamilton asked, using the common slang terms for the Hrauwah and the Lhan Arkh, respectively.
“It was a tramp freighter trying to make a fast buck, basically. The last surviving Lhan Arkh Syndics were paying a premium for weapon systems. The Puppy ship dropped off its cargo just before the attack, for all the good it did the Lhan Arkh. The merchantman also got some decent telemetry of the invasion and its aftermath.”
Heather strongly suspected the ‘tramp freighter’ was actually a Hrauwah covert intelligence vessel, but she hadn’t bothered to confirm those suspicions and the ship’s captain had been willing to share the information for a reasonable price, which meant the Puppies were still playing nice with their human friends, even if their relationship had turned chilly in the last few decades.
She projected some of the visual data into Hamilton’s implant. The bizarre-looking Medusa ‘cloud ships’ were unmistakable: so was the Lamprey battlecruiser that was torn apart by a massive plasma blast from one of the aliens’ solar-flare weapons. That cruiser was the last capital ship of the People’s Republic; its destruction marked the end of what once had been one of the top five Starfarer civilizations in the known galaxy.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch,” Guillermo said without a trace of sympathy.
Heather couldn’t disagree. The Lampreys had been one of humanity’s worst enemies. One of their clients, the Risshah (a.k.a. the Snakes) had initiated First Contact with humanity by murdering over half of Earth’s population in an unprovoked orbital attack. The Great Galactic War had indirectly led to the Lhan Arkh’s destruction when its ruling People’s Congress unwisely made an alliance with the Medusa species. The jellyfish-like telepathic species had quickly turned on the Lampreys and in the ensuing three decades ground them down to nothing. The Fourteenth Congressional district was the last major system under Lhan Arkh control. Now its fifteen billion citizens were dead or, worse, had been turned into mind-slaves. As the DCI had noted, they had that coming to them. Only problem was, the Medusas’ Enlightened Circle wasn’t any better, and they’d been growing steadily, going from a minor polity with a handful of systems under its control to an up-and-coming contender, mostly at the Lampreys’ expense. Their preference for ammonia-based ecosystems meant they didn’t covet the same worlds as humans and other Class Two species, but since terraforming technologies were readily available that didn’t mean much.
“Wish we had more intelligence on the Jellies,” Guillermo said.
“Unless we revisit the Psyche Program, it’s not going to happen. We barely have enough people able to read their mail.”
During the last war, humanity had discovered the ability to communicate directly between minds by using so-called tachyon-wave systems. The technology started out very promisingly – perhaps too much so – before its terrifying implications sunk in. Further research and development had been frozen outside a few covert programs; giving people the ability to read each other’s thoughts – and to contact and perhaps summon warp entities – was deemed too risky. Early adopters like Heather were put on a drug regimen designed to suppress their newfound abilities; only a small group of adepts – all employed by government agencies or the military – remained. By and large, the US had decided to set aside those technologies except for a narrow set of uses.
Only problem was, the US wasn’t the only species with telepathic potential. The Medusas had been scrupulously cordial towards humanity after a few skirmishes had shown them fighting humans wasn’t a good idea, so they weren’t considered an imminent danger. Now that they had disposed of the Lampreys, however, they were beginning to encroach on Hrauwah space. If they threatened the Puppies, the US would intervene in favor of its oldest ally, and Heather figured the need for telepaths would outweigh the risks. Too bad only a few very ‘black’ projects were still working on developing t-wave systems. Guillermo was thinking the same thoughts. Heather could pick up other people’s emotions and thoughts, often without meaning to. Now that she was back in Agency, she was off the suppressants, a full-fledged telepath once again.
“Moving on,” the DCI said. “The problem of the day is the Horde incursion. What’s the latest?”
Heather switched gears; the Medusas were her main purview, but she always kept a close eye on any possible threats to the US.
“The Horde fleet has dived deeper into Crab space. We ducked a bullet this time; they could have easily followed CRURON 88 into US territory. The invaders plundered Kunah System, although they spared most of its population. After that, they hit the next province along the warp chain, looted it on the fly – and vanished. They must have used an unknown warp conduit to disappear. The Crabs’ provincial fleet was destroyed during the initial attack but reinforcements are on the way and they’ll try to track down the invaders. That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“That’s only the largest Horde incursion to date, and it’s part of a pattern of increasing frequency and size. There have been sixty-seven incidents over the last two centuries; almost half of them, thirty-two in total, have happened over the last decade. Twenty in the last five years. Six this year alone, culminating in this invasion, the largest in the historical record. We’re seeing a lot more of their planetoids, too, and they are larger than any we’ve seen before. These aren’t mere pirate raids; I think we are looking at a Volkerwanderung – a migration-invasion event.”
“Yes!” Professor Morrison said. “Exactly what I’ve been saying. And this is not the first time such mass migrations have happened, either.”
Ah. So that’s why he’s here.
“As it turns out,” the academic continued. “The Tah-Leen who built this great station were not the oldest extant civilization in the galaxy. The Horde has that honor, even if one might hesitate to call scattered bands of thieves and scavengers a civilization. Their tribes or bands – we unfortunately have very little knowledge about their social or political structures – have been drifting in and out of what we refer to as the known galaxy for as far back as any records go. They are an ancient and recurring threat and have been so for eons. Even the Kraxan histories mention them, and they go back nearly a million years.”
Starfarer history rarely went back that far. Most starfaring civilizations lasted only a couple to a handful of millennia before either becoming extinct or Transcending to a higher state of being that remained a mystery to younger species. That process had been going on for untold millions of years, and most of that history was lost. Unavoidable when one considered that detailed records of thousands of species spanning those time scales would overtax even the most advanced data storage systems in existence. The US had accidentally acquired the oldest chronicles of the known galaxy almost thirty years ago, and in that time hadn’t been able to examine more than a fraction of it, despite having put thousands of scholars and analysts to the task.
“Do those records provide us with anything actionable?” Heather asked.
Morrison nodded. “The Horde mass migrations appear to be cyclic. Their cause is unknown – unfortunately, in all that time, nobody has established meaningful communications with the Horde – but if they follow previous patterns, the raids will grow in size and frequency as more clans or tribes follow the trailblazers. Interestingly, each incursion propagates from a different sector of the known galaxy.”
Warp ‘ley lines’ crisscrossed the Orion-Cygnus arm of the galaxy, a volume some ten thousand light years long and a third as wide. Theoretically, nothing prevented warp conduits from reaching further out, but none going beyond those limits had been found. But if the Horde kept arriving from different places, it might mean they knew of such routes. Interesting, as Morrison had said, and also worrisome. Nobody knew what might be lurking beyond known space.
The academic went on: “The migrations usually continue until the nomads encounter enough resistance to convince them to try their luck elsewhere. It seems that they
are bouncing back and forth from some point beyond our local sector of the galaxy. Of the last three great migrations, one was stopped by a major galactic alliance known as the Peacekeepers. That happened hundreds of millennia ago.”
“What stopped the second one?”
The academic looked down. “Nothing, I’m afraid. Some eighty thousand years ago, the Horde cut a swath of destruction through several civilizations before moving on. The galactic balance of power was fundamentally altered – the Starfarer states that followed the Tah-Leen era collapsed in the centuries following the invasion; their successors were minor client species who filled the vacuum left by their predecessors.”
“Which makes the third incursion the Horde War of 115 AFC.”
“That would appear to be the case. But that should have been the end of it for thousands of years. Instead, less than a century later, they are back. I fear the Horde War wasn’t the full migration event but rather its opening move.”
“We dealt with the last major incursion easily enough,” Hamilton said. “Maybe this is a new group that didn’t get the word they aren’t welcome here.”
“We should do well not to underestimate the Horde,” Morrison said. “Some of the nomads’ technologies are surprisingly advanced. Nobody still knows how they can move their asteroid-sized ships through warp space, for example. This group’s origin is unknown. There is no telling what they might have picked up along its travels.”
“And outside the US, Starfarer civilizations are weaker than they were a hundred years ago,” Heather noted. “The Imperium and the Lhan Arkh no longer exist. The Vipers and Wyrms are a shadow of their former selves. The Crabs, Lutarri and the O-Vehel are the largest polities around, but their space forces are tiny compared to what we fought during the Great Galactic War.”
Even after its own round of cutbacks and reductions in force, the US Navy could defeat all the other Starfarer fleets combined, at least if one didn’t add the Medusas to the equation, and nobody was crazy enough to form an alliance with them, not after what they did to the Lhan Arkh. Most alien civilizations had given up any hope of competing with humanity, or even among themselves. They’d adopted largely defensive postures, reducing their forces accordingly. Which was great and all until a big barbarian armada showed up to upset the balance of power.
“Well, we are definitely not underestimating the Horde,” Hamilton said. “That’s why you are here. You two are going to lead a team to analyze past and current data relating to their activities. We are running this analysis instead of the Office of Naval Intelligence because the Agency has more experience working with the Tah-Leen and Kraxan libraries on Malta. The bubbleheads will be backstopping us and providing us with current data. McClintock, I want you to be the point person here. Hand over all your other projects; this has top priority.”
Great, Heather thought.
She had a lot of other irons in the fire and didn’t appreciate abandoning them. And she and Morrison had butted heads before when dealing with the immense reams of data still being cataloged at Malta: tens of thousands of years of extremely detailed records from two very different cultures took a lot of parsing and her implants made her one of a few hundred people able to access them directly. Unfortunately, her style of data analysis clashed with Morrison’s methodical – one might say plodding – approach. Working with him wasn’t going to be fun.
On the other hand, intelligence analysis was a lot safer than the stuff she used to do for the Agency. No more dropping onto hostile planets or doing daring ninja raids on enemy facilities. She’d leave that sort of stuff to newer generations.
Then again, my most dangerous assignments started out as data analysis. Let’s just hope history doesn’t repeat itself.
Interlude: State of the Union
New Washington, Sol System, 197 AFC
“And God bless America.”
“Transmission over, Mr. President.”
Al Hewer, first and so far only President of the United Stars of America, stepped away from the podium and left the studio. Tyson Keller joined him in the short walk to the Oval Room, which unlike the one in the old White House was used mostly for small meetings between the Commander in Chief and his closest confidants. Tyson knew he was about to get an earful from Hewer. He didn’t mind; it was all part of the job he’d taken almost two centuries ago.
“Why am I still here?’ Al told his Chief of Staff – and unofficial enforcer and troubleshooter – as he plopped down on his customary armchair. It was a rhetorical question, but Tyson answered it anyway.
“Because you don’t think anyone else can do the job, Al. That’s why you always find an excuse to not pass on the baton.”
Anger made the president’s homely features twist into a scowl. “Now is not the time, Ty. Not for your whining and most certainly not for me to step down. Not with the current Congress. Not when the usual suspects want to beat all our swords into ploughshares and hope the rest of the universe leaves us alone.”
“Excuses, Mister President. A damn good excuse in this case, I’ll give you that.”
America, and the rest of humankind, were safe only as long as nobody in the known galaxy thought it could defeat the US Navy. The moment that stopped holding true, the country – the entire species – would be wiped out as thoroughly as possible, which for Starfarer technology meant wiped out down to the last specimen.
Tyson went on: “The New Republicans want a lot of things and may have gotten a small majority in the House, Al, but the best they can hope to get through the Senate is a two, three percent reduction of the military budget. We can survive that.”
“Problem is, if we survive that, they will push for ten percent four years from now,” the President said. “Plus more exemptions from Obligatory Service. They figure if they can spare enough kids from spending four years in uniform learning how the universe works, they can get enough votes to get a majority. Enough morons in the Eagle Party are following their lead.”
Tyson had to nod at that. The Eagle Party had risen from the ashes of the old American party system. It had been a war party in every sense of the word, and it had held comfortable majorities at the federal level since its founding during the first decade since First Contact, when the memories of the near-extermination of the human race had been fresh in everyone’s mind. The old US had died along with over a hundred and fifty million of its citizens; the new country had been more centralized, authoritarian and militaristic. Tyson Keller had officiated over many of those changes himself; in his opinion they had been necessary evils, but evil nonetheless. And the times, they were changing. The New Republican Party, the Federalists and the Libertarians had been steadily gaining ground since the end of the Great Galactic War. They espoused wildly different policies but agreed on one thing: the old ways needed to go. Even the Eagle Party had grown a ‘peace dividend’ wing.
“Victory disease,” Tyson said. “Can’t even blame them, not when our own military experts are convinced the Navy can defeat the combined forces of every polity in the known galaxy. We came out of the war with an overwhelming edge in technology.”
“Which won’t last forever,” Al countered. “They still outnumber us five hundred to one. The new tech we ‘liberated’ from Xanadu and those Kraxan ruins is tough to replicate or counter, but sooner or later some bright aliens will figure it out.”
“It’s going to take several more decades before they do. Even with near-eternal life, it’s hard to think that far ahead, Al. People are getting tired of sacrificing for the future.”
“Then why is it that the richest, most populated star systems are the one electing most of the ‘peace dividend’ candidates?”
This time Tyson didn’t bother answering the rhetorical question. The core worlds were the wealthiest and most peaceful parts of the country. They hadn’t seen a hostile alien in over a century. To them, war was something they saw in news reports that felt about as real as video games. They saw the four years every citizen had to sp
end doing their Obligatory Service term as a tyrannical imposition. The colonies were poorer, but they lived close to the edge and knew they were one bombing run away from oblivion. That prospect tended to concentrate one’s mind rather well.
“Anyway, your speech was about as good as it needed to be,” Tyson told the President. “Kept the base voters happy, pointed out how the economy’s getting better, and reminded people that the Medusas remain a potential threat and that the Horde incursion was no joke.”
“I wish we knew where the Horde went.”
“Last we heard they were heading away from American space. Let the Crabs worry about them.”
Al nodded and shifted subjects with his typical abruptness. “How’s the Veep shaping up?”
“I think she still looks at the job as some sort of forced vacation,” Tyson said.
The current Vice-President, Sondra Givens, had been the Fleet Admiral who won the Great Galactic War. To her, any other job was a demotion. But when Al had asked her to step in during the last election, she had accepted. Her sense of duty made the samurai of old seem like fickle high-schoolers; she had been on some warship bridge or another since the United Stars Navy had been founded and she would do whatever job was required of her.
“See if you can help her out, Ty. She’s been there and done that, just the sort of person who can remind the peaceniks that winning a war means nothing if we squander our gains during peacetime.”
“She hates politics about as much as a flag officer can and still rise to her level.”
“She’d better learn. After she is done in Washington, I want her running the Joint Chiefs. They are getting too ossified over there.”
“You don’t agree with their recommendation to scrap all current t-wave research, then,” Tyson said.
“Damned right I don’t. Our warp-based abilities are one edge the other Starfarers can’t match, other than the Medusas. Being scared is no excuse to throw them away.”
To The Strongest Page 6
