Imperator

by Timothy Ellis

  I did the same with the other jump point in the Keerah system, and Jane did the tests again. A second cloaked Lightning appeared in the closed off system, and Jane jumped both to the other side, uncloaked them, and all three started jumping home.

  “Inform Jedburgh the system is now secure, and he can redeploy our ships ready for tomorrow’s army deployment.”

  “Confirmed.”

  Within a few minutes, all the white dots in the Keerah system had vanished, including the battlestations. Jane started laughing.

  “What’s up chuckles?”

  “The Keerah admiral apparently did the tiger equivalent of wetting himself when our ships and stations just vanished without warning.”

  I laughed with her. And checked myself. Some warning was appropriate before scaring the shit out of people.

  “Suggest the Admiral sends local commanders a warning before redeployments happen in future.”

  “He already figured that out. He’s recording a general advisory at the moment.”

  Or I suspected he would be when he too stopped laughing.

  “And the Keerah? Have they indicated what they want done with their fleets?”

  “They seem to be fine. Three ships from each fleet are heading for the planet, and the rest look like they’re going to merge at one of the points, and head out.”

  “Have they been told they won’t be able to get back in?”

  “Yes. I did so just then. They’re going to the two local planets they lost, to see what happened to them. Neither have much of anything in orbit, so they’ll be safe enough there for a while. It’s just jumping out which is problematical.”

  “So they’d like us to clear the way?”

  I’d been going to anyway.

  “It has been suggested, yes.”

  She was grinning.

  “The debris would delay them a long time if we hit those fleets any normal way.”

  “If we send an Orion, it has the shielding to sweep the down jump lane mostly clear, and salvage droids wouldn’t take long to clear the rest to allow jumps. Any remaining from too close to the point itself, would be taken by shields as they appear, and if they send their battleships first, they shouldn’t take any damage.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Forty Three

  I worked my way through the other four core frontier jump points.

  All of them were still getting missile spam, and random fleet and fighter attacks. As I changed each jump point, everything going through it now appeared in the closed off Trixone system. As far as I could tell, none of the Trixone commanders knew anything had changed yet.

  A fleet went through one jump point immediately after I changed it, and appeared at the same time a missile barrage appeared from another jump point. The missiles had no time to avoid the Trixone ships, and half of them were destroyed by friendly fire. The remainder of the ships boosted away from the down jump lane as fast as they could. They’d no sooner made enough distance to be safe, when another missile barrage appeared, closely followed by a fighter wing. I stopped looking at that point.

  With each closed jump point, our ships and stations jumped back to Haven. One of the stations took on several squadrons of Excaliburs and Brawlers, and jumped to replace the hastily knocked up station in Ionia, allowing the small trade stations to be used somewhere else.

  The one thing I’d added to the jump points, was the blocking of communications through the points. So any plant ship which jumped, had no way of telling anyone they hadn't come out where they expected to, and their equivalent of the comnavsat, which the AI’s were getting really good at shooting as they came through, couldn’t either. I had no doubt they’d figure out something had changed fairly quickly, but hopefully not too quickly.

  It didn’t take long for the Democratic Union and Naranja leaders to start asking where our defenses had gone. Civilian ships would have reported the changed conditions in the next systems from theirs very shortly after they vanished, and there was in fact some panic on the stations.

  Amy did a quick announcement of the jump points being closed off by yours truly, in preparations for the Imperium going on the offensive for the first time, with further information to follow. The response from the public was cautiously optimistic.

  I also called home the Explorer and Claymore task forces, which had been on recon. And six big cat fleets now fitted with jump drives arrived as well. We did after all need an escort for third division’s ships. First and second had a titan for protection, so didn’t need anything, and the rest were earmarked for other operations. The cat’s ships had received upgrades, mainly to the firing rate of their guns. They were still under shielded, but being able to hit harder and faster might give them an edge. It was something we hadn’t shared with the Keerah or Ralnor yet.

  With all our ships back in Haven and together for the first time in months, Susan Bentley took charge of formations, and soon had the entire fleet laid out in neat rows. Just for show, all the Excaliburs and dropships were launched by their AI’s, and lined up as well.

  It wasn’t really a large fleet in historical terms. Seventy capital ships, five hundred odd fighters, and a couple of hundred drop ships. This didn’t include Jane’s ships or reserves, just human captained ones, and it didn’t include what was still in the shipyards or scheduled to go in. But none of the members could match what we had now, or at any time going back five hundred years.

  The only ones not included were those on station defense duty on the spine. Most of those now had pilots, or had them allocated for deployment in the next few days. They were getting some destroyers as well, once they came out of the shipyard. And would also be getting missile platforms once they were modified for our missiles. We’d have plenty of warning of anything approaching them likely to start a ruckus, so I wasn’t worried about a serious attack, just freighters behaving badly.

  Jane took Amy and a vid crew out in a Lightning limo, and they recorded the entire scene for posterity, and for showing to the Imperium as a whole.

  I made sure the vid would also be leaked to the Earth media, and through them to the other non-aligned sectors. While it might cause a panic in some circles, the object was to show the Imperium had an effective fleet bigger than anyone else had. And to clear up once and for all how pointless it was to start something with us. Until now, no-one spine-side had seen anything more than two of our big ships, other than the initial diplomatic and military assessment teams, who’d never seen anything like the full fleet. Now they’d see the whole fleet.

  I expected some shorts to need changing in senior military circles, especially in the Earth military, who liked us the least. Possibly even a few political smalls needing replacement.

  The rest of the afternoon was spent monitoring preparations for the next day. Although Jane brought up something of a worry unexpectedly. She walked into my office and sat, looking concerned.

  “I had a thought.”

  “Always dangerous. What was this one?”

  “You know I said no-one could steal a jump drive?”

  “I do remember that. Now you think someone could?”

  “No. That wasn’t the thought.”

  “What was?”

  “In theory, anyone with the magic could build their own jump drive. And it’s theoretically possible someone will do a tech version one day.”

  “So?”

  “What if someone jumps into the Darkness system?”

  There was a long silence, during which we just looked at each other.

  “SHIT!”

  “Not quite what I said, but close enough.”

  “Any suggestions for preventing it?”

  “I took the liberty of removing the Darkness system and the two lethal systems on each side from our navmap. So if someone steals ours in the future, or corrupts a mage who knows how to make them, they’ll not be able to jump in to any of them. I actually removed all four of the systems beyond Last Hope. Since no-one had discovered it, hop
efully that will give people the idea the spine ends there.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “You better close the jump point to War.”

  I did so, there and then.

  “What about the other end of the spine, where it joins the core?”

  “The Keerah never mapped the beginning of the Sagittarius Arm this time around. As far as I can tell, they didn’t even find a jump point leading along that arm at all. There must be one, because the Darkness poured into the core that way after going down the remainder of the Orion Spur into the Arm, but at least in this time line, no-one we know has any idea where it is.”

  “Maybe we need to keep it that way.”

  “If we can.”

  I heard a but coming, and voiced it.

  “But at some point, we’re going to need to recon the remainder of the Orion Spur up to where the Darkness system is, and the whole Sagittarius Arm to find out what, or who, is there. If there are civilizations along there capable of space travel, we need to know about it. And we also need warning if any ship ever gets within a dozen systems of the Darkness. We might have to set up a colony out there one day, and use it as a blockade point.”

  “I’ll remind you about it when we get a chance to think it out properly. But there is another consideration.”

  “And that is?”

  “The time line shifted. If there was the possibility of the Darkness getting out because we invented the jump drive and some idiot took it to them, it shouldn’t have changed.”

  “It had to change. We prevented the events which did occur, so change was going to happen.”

  “But what if all we did was delayed it a few extra years?”

  I looked at her for a moment.

  “Jane?”

  “Jon?”

  “You need a bit more fun in your life. You’re way too morbid at the moment.”

  “I’m not being morbid. Just looking ahead.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “I need to. I’m over six hundred years old, even if I really only began to live a bit over two ago. I could live for thousands more. Tens of thousands. And in all that time, how can we say another jump drive won’t be invented somewhere?”

  “Point. So our permanent solution might not be?”

  “Who knows? I’m just throwing up possibilities.”

  “I wish you hadn't.”

  “I wish I hadn't as well. But every time anyone makes a huge advance like jump drives, there’s always going to be a risk involved. The Darkness are just too dangerous. Even now, with our improved fleet, we couldn’t stand against them. Even if we forcibly mobilized every ship in the galaxy, we still would only hold them for so long, and eventually they’d wear us down.”

  “It’s a worry.”

  “And it’s our worry. We opened this particular Pandora’s Box. We need to find a solution which is permanent, and takes into account every possible tech advance that could ever be made.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “The impossible we do immediately. Miracles take a little longer.”

  “Touché.”

  I sighed. The whole ‘the Darkness solution was not permanent after all’ thing was hugely depressing. Now I needed to think about it. There had to be a solution which was permanent.

  “Thanks for dumping that on me.”

  “Your welcome. It’s why we pay you the big bucks.”

  She grinned at me madly, and rose to leave.

  “Wait. I get paid?”

  She laughed.

  Forty Four

  I looked it up.

  I was actually being paid. Out of my own account, but still officially paid. The Imperium’s council members, ambassadors, diplomats, and functionaries, were all paid by each individual member. The Haven government was making enough from taxes, trade fees, and the sale of carefully selected tech to other members, to be able to pay its own way now.

  Although Jane and I were the tax payers paying the most, and were effectively financing our little part of the Imperium between us. But this was slowly changing. In addition to military people and their families moving to Haven station, traders from all the members were starting to buy up sections of the station for corporate headquarters and accommodation for CEO’s and staff. About a third of the penthouses were already sold, for insanely high prices, which given the views through the clear ceilings was not surprising.

  But what did surprise me was the prices Jane was getting were almost double what we’d been able to get eighteen months before. But then, now we were not only over an Earth type planet, but the views of the space around us could only be called spectacular. Where we’d been in Nexus was now, by comparison, rather dull.

  Those corporations setting up bases on my station were increasing my personal income, and thus the amount of tax I was paying, and as they began to operate, they began paying taxes as well. A lot of these bigwigs were also trying to buy land down on the planet, but David had made sure land sales on our only really good planet only went to citizens. The result was, we were getting a huge amount of citizen applications as well. A lot of these were military families, who were making sure they could stay in the event of a casualty in the family. But those who didn’t want to be citizens were now talking rentals.

  As much as I hated losing people, our under equipped forces were going to suffer casualties at some point. And I wasn’t going to be sending people back when they lost the person who’d volunteered to fight for us. But this was unstated on my part, and David was taking a much more pragmatic approach, with his people telling people they needed to be citizens to guarantee staying permanently.

  The thing was, with only fifteen thousand people to begin with, we could absorb a billion without any real trouble, once the city building on the planet was completed. And this was without compromising the ecology of the planet at all. So there wasn’t really any issue. People being what they were though, and never doing anything they didn’t need to, spurred people like David to make things official.

  I was still paying for our military salaries, but David was already forecasting this changing within a year. The members were paying for their own troops, so the only increase in my payroll was coming from recruits who were not in an active member military. But my own finances, just from the rift trading fees alone, were going up dramatically. In fact, it was so successful, I could see Jane, Bob, and I needing to redesign the whole system, and probably introduce additional freight only stations in order to handle the volume, which was now rising exponentially.

  I’d been thinking about it at odd times recently. While the system all linked in through Terminus at the moment, it probably needed to link through dedicated trade hubs instead. But for now, I needed to keep my mind on the war. Still, if I managed to shuck this Imperator thing sometime in the future, I’d not have to worry about credits, ever. And managing the trade network to keep it functioning with the ever increasing number of nodes and freight volumes, was something to keep me occupied.

  Jane came back in just before I was due to meet Aline for dinner with the alpha team.

  “Now what?” I demanded.

  She sat again, ignoring my outburst, which admittedly I didn’t know where it came from.

  “We’re starting to get requests from large trader outfits to have some of their ships either moved into other member’s space, or be allowed to buy jump drives so they can trade anywhere. One of the largest of them has demanded we set up routes where trader ships can move around the entire Imperium if they want to.”

  I sighed.

  The galactic locust smells a meal, and stirs.

  “Not my concern. It needs to go up to the Imperium council, and be a leader meeting, not an ambassador one.”

  “But?”

  She knew me so well.

  “Putting in trade lanes defeats the isolation most of them wanted. And while I can see all traders everywhere wanting to be able to go everywhere, I can also see them all not wanting competi
tion in their own back yards.”

  “Not to mention it weakens our hold on the movement of freight through the rift system.”

  “I wasn’t going to mention that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I mean, I don’t see it as a big issue. If the members decide they want a traditional freight system, I guess we can do one for them. I’d just make large ship sized rifts which reject anything with a weapon from going through. The rift freight network will still be used, and we can adapt it just for military use if need be, and it will still generate an income.”

  “But?”

  “The whole idea of letting tens of thousands of human ships out into the galaxy ought to scare the shit out of everyone. The Imperium would rapidly fall apart just from the disputes and bad will generated by dodgy merchants and scam artists taking advantage of aliens. Not to mention humans on the spine are not ready to have giant cats threatening them across a negotiating table on their own planet, or worse, whatever criminal organizations all the members have, going to war with each other over territories.”

  Jane nodded. I could see she’d thought of all of this, but wanted to see if I understood it. But this had been my objection to getting spine humans involved at all. Maybe it was a cynical way of looking at things, but galactic locust was as good an analogy of how humans behaved. Everywhere we went, we consumed and destroyed, leaving behind waste and devastation. But I hoped the Imperium would have more sense than to allow it to happen in the future.

  “We can’t stop them though.”

  “Probably not.”

  “It won’t take them long to figure out they just need to buy freighters from member’s own shipyards, or even used ship dealers. Then they’ll compete with the local traders, moving things from member space to member space via the rift network. And the dark side of any society will try to expand. We can’t stop that either. We can control it anywhere where I or my AI’s have the control, but not down on planets. Even without setting the locusts loose, we’re going to need to expand Dick Burnside’s operations significantly now.”