“Four,” Isaac muttered. “Any idea on smaller ships?”
“Our scans took place at sufficient range to make that kind of identification difficult,” Twenty-Five admitted. “We have confirmed the presence of major fixed defenses, sufficient to provide multiple layers of heavy security around the RCM.”
Isaac exhaled.
“Show me,” he ordered. “Relay the data on this channel; I’ll bring up a hologram.”
His office lit up a moment later. One image was the location of the RCM’s system. It was, he noted, almost equally distant from Refuge as from Skree-Skree. It was actually closer to where his reinforcements were currently en route than to anywhere else.
The second image was of the system itself. It was a mix of visuals and Matrix iconography that his computer took half a second to translate into Republic labels.
Isaac silently whistled. The RCM and its dreadnought companions were nestled in the middle of a massive asteroid belt. The gravity data suggested that the asteroid belt wasn’t original—the Matrices had shattered a small rocky world with missile fire and were feeding the wreckage into their foundries.
And those foundries had been busy. Building offensive fleets was secondary to defending the RCM, which was secondary again to actually Constructing worlds. Easily hundreds of fortresses orbited the system, creating multiple networks of defensive structures.
The big ships were most obvious, but there were icons in the map for probable contacts of other ships. There were dozens, potentially hundreds, of those. Few would be combat platforms and many of the noncombat platforms would be completely unarmed, but it was still a lot of ships.
“I’m not sure we can crack that,” he admitted aloud.
“That brings me to my second update, Admiral Lestroud,” Twenty-Five told him. “I have confirmed that my reinforcements are on their way. I will shortly receive twenty recon and security platforms and thirteen new combat platforms.
“With twenty-five combat platforms and the fourteen battlecruisers scheduled to be under your command, I put our chances of successfully engaging the RCM’s fortification at fifty percent. The addition of the fleet of the Sivar Governance as assessed by Minister Lestroud would increase that to eighty percent, plus/minus ten percent based on the level of upgrade applied to the Sivar battleships.”
“That’s a hell of a difference,” he noted. “But…those combat platforms will make a major addition. When are we expecting them?”
“Well before your own reinforcements. Within a few days.”
Isaac considered the astrographic map.
“We need more data,” he confessed. “Can you redirect your reinforcements to meet us near there?”
He was already doing mental math. Ten light-years was two weeks from his current location. If they’d done the VLA trick at the right angle in Skree-Skree, they would have been able to see the bastards.
His reinforcements could meet him there. They were actually closer, on the way from Refuge. The Sivar…he had no idea if he’d ever have them to back him up, let alone how quickly they could get there.
“We need to prepare on the assumption that we won’t have the Sivar,” he said aloud. “We’ll set a rendezvous two light-months from the system and converge there.”
Fifty percent, Twenty-Five had said. He had faith in his people, but that was still terrible odds.
29
“With the Sivar, properly upgraded and positioned to support us, the odds would be in our favor,” Isaac’s image told Amelie. “Without them, it’s a toss of the dice, my love. But…I don’t see a choice.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted grimly. “It’s been two days since I met the Intendant, Isaac, and I only just got confirmation of a meeting with the Keepers for today. These people are not in a hurry and seem to have their own problems going on.”
“Do I even want to know?” her husband asked.
“Problems like all the way back home,” Amelie said carefully. She was reasonably sure the privacy generator sitting next to her on the table was secure, and reasonably sure her tightbeam to Watchtower was secure, and certain the tachyon-com connection between the two battlecruisers was secure…but the last thing the Sivar Intendant needed to know was that the humans were exiles from a home that was a long, long way away.
“Is their fleet even worth this hassle?” Isaac asked.
“I’m not qualified to judge,” she admitted. “I can tell you that I’m seeing evidence of at least two, probably more, subjugated species. They might be subjects with decent rights…they might be slaves. I don’t know yet.
“If it’s the latter, we might be in trouble.” She glanced down at the other tablet she’d been working on.
“Holmwood thinks she could take their battleships three or four at a time right now,” she noted. “But she also says their lasers are actually pretty decent. Pump enough power through an efficient-enough laser and you can rival some of the lower-energy grasers, after all.”
Isaac snorted.
“It’s not quite that simple, but I see your point. Look, even if you got them on board at this meeting tonight, they’d need weeks of refits and weeks to get out here. If I leave tomorrow, we’re two weeks from contact. Do you think we can even sort out an alliance with these people in two weeks?”
“It took a month with the Tohnbohn,” she reminded him. “They at least wanted to talk to us and understood the threat, even if everything with them is slow. I’m not sure the Intendant really gets how much danger his Governance is in if we fall.”
“The Republic is far enough away that if we fall here, we can evacuate our allies and write off this sector,” her husband said, his voice very quiet and very grim. “We know what kind of effort that looks like, but we could do it.
“Without an alliance, I won’t get my people killed for the Sivar.” Isaac’s eyes told the truth. He didn’t have it in him to stand by while worlds were destroyed, though he’d make the threat.
“And what about their slaves?” Amelie asked. She knew the answer there, too.
“I know,” he conceded. “We need more data. I leave that to you, Amelie. Politics and backstabbing were always your field.”
“Hopefully, I won’t need to stab anyone,” she demurred with a forced laugh. “I’ll get answers, Isaac. Hopefully, I’ll even get an alliance. The sooner I manage that, the sooner I can see you.
“Don’t die on me,” she ordered. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he replied. “I don’t plan on dying. The same goes for you. Everything I’m seeing about these Sivar…I worry.”
“At least I’m not the only one this time,” Amelie told him.
Amelie’s meeting that afternoon was with two of the three Keepers. She still wasn’t entirely sure exactly what the title translated to. Her initial impression that they acted as cabinet ministers had been undermined by the degree to which the Intendant seemed to have multiple entire chains of command that converged on him.
Rode and Istila met her in a grand conference room that looked out over the terraced gardens of the First and Final Citadel. They each had a single guard, wearing the same toga garment as the Keepers themselves but with a black sash around the torso to hold a visible holster.
Those guards joined Amelie’s trio of Marines in low-profile power armor at the door of the room, while Istila led the Minister to the far end of the room.
This was apparently on an outcropping that hung out over the gardens, allowing her to look down in three directions and see the Sivar’s homeworld spread out.
“The Intendant has given us his initial instructions,” Rode told Amelie. “Today’s meetings are for us to learn more about each other. We cannot be allies if everything about each other is concealed in secrecy and shadows.”
“I agree,” Amelie said. She stepped off to one side, intentionally turning her body away from the two Keepers as she studied the gardens. There were a lot of people out there working on those terraces, dozens or even hundreds
that she could see from this conference room.
It was hard to be sure, but she didn’t think very many of them were Sivar.
“I have told you about my people,” she noted. “Our system is quite far from here, months of travel by our star drive and functionally unreachable by yours, as the star-lanes between here and there have never been mapped.
“Closer, though still beyond the reach of your star-lane maps, are our allies: the Vistans, the Tohnbohn and the Skree-Skree. The Vistans and the Skree-Skree have both seen the Builders come to their systems and have driven them back with our assistance.”
She smiled.
“Between the four of us, we control five star systems and have a combined fleet in this region of over eighty starships. Our alliance with the sane siblings of the Rogue Matrices provides an equal number of starships using a different star drive than our own, though they are computers and can have some…odd ideas about things.”
She was still watching her companions out of the corner of her eye, and both of them seemed surprised by the ship strengths in play.
“And between today and our previous meetings, I have now told you more of my Republic and her allies than you have of the Sivar Governance,” she noted. “I would…suggest that imbalance be rectified if we are going to continue these discussions.”
The two Sivar were doing more than communicating with their body language and eyes, Amelie realized. There was a delicate dance of their fingers down by their sides where they hoped she hadn’t noticed it.
Fascinating. Sign language offered so many possibilities for talking around aliens using computers to record and translate audio. To have a truly secure conversation, Amelie supposed she could have used her translator software to talk to Isaac in another human language. They could even have used her half-forgotten French or his equally rusty Swahili.
It would never have occurred to her to use Refined Terran Sign Language, even though both of them were fluent in RTSL. One of Exilium’s senators was deaf, after all.
The Sivar’s flickering finger language was far better designed for secrecy, though the conversation took at least a minute longer than Amelie figured it would have aloud or in RTSL.
She spent the time half-watching her companions and studying the gardens. The First and Final Citadel’s gardens were a wonder, she had to admit. The esthetics were alien—and often used to conceal weapons emplacements—but it was an immensely gorgeous project.
Beneath it, she could see what she presumed to be the Governance’s capital city. It was an interesting metropolis, with large chunks of it appearing barred to ground vehicles from this distance.
She wondered if she’d ever get to see it from close up. If the Sivar were smart, they wouldn’t let an ex-revolutionary anywhere near their general populace…but then, it wasn’t like she’d handed them her resume.
“You are, of course, correct,” Rode finally said, her voice a calm counterpoint to the activity on the slopes below. “May I show you a display, Minister?”
“Of course.”
The two Sivar led Amelie slightly back into the outcropping conference room and activated a bulky holoprojector. Even as Amelie was adding miniaturized holoprojection technology to her mental list of things they could sell the Governance, a map materialized above the table.
The structure of the map was fascinating. It took the shape of a series of balls and spokes, an interconnected model resembling a child’s model of a molecule. After a few seconds, Amelie realized that all of the “spokes” were the same length and the map had no direct correlation to real space.
“This is a star-lane map of the Sivar Governance,” Rode explained unnecessarily. “We are here, in the Sivar System on the world of Aris.”
The central ball flashed white.
“The Governance contains nine inhabited planets, each of which has a Sector Commandant or a Commandant-Key of War charged with its spaceborne security and a Prince-Key of Peace charged with the governance of the world. Around those nine inhabited planets, we have occupied twenty-four more systems and claim to the end of our currently mapped star-lanes, another forty stars.”
Amelie was clearly expected to react with awe to the sheer size and power of the Governance…but she was a child of the Terran Confederacy. Exilium was a backwater colony seventy thousand light-years from the edge of Confederate territory and home to a mere four million souls.
The Terran Confederacy was the unquestioned ruler of a region of space as large as the zone the Matrices had terraformed. From the wormhole generators in Sol orbit, the First Admiral could deliver a battlecruiser group to any star within three hundred light-years. Fifteen inhabited worlds, each with their own wormhole stations, were home to a human population nearing a quarter-trillion.
The Governance’s belief in their overwhelming power was cute.
“Where did I meet Commandant Ackahl?” she asked, ignoring their expectations of her and trying to match this map to real space. She was familiar with the stars in the region now, but the map was more concerned with the star-lane connections than the real-world positioning of the systems.
“You met Command Ackahl in the Sonbar System,” Istila told her. “This one.”
Another system flashed white and Amelie concealed a smile.
“So, Sonbar is your most vulnerable star when the Matrices come this way,” she told them. “If we do not agree on an alliance, you will still likely want to reinforce there.”
“That is for the Keeper of the Keys of War, the Intendant and the Commandants to decide,” Rode said. “My concern is the Citadel and Aris. Keeper Istila’s concern is the Prince-Keys of Peace and the worlds of the Governance. It is the Keys of War that look beyond our territory and plan our defense.”
“And who are the Eyes of Sivar?” Amelie asked.
That wasn’t a question they’d wanted to hear, and their fingers went back to flickering.
“They are a secondary branch of our nation,” Istila said slowly. “One that serves the Intendant and the Fates directly.”
A priesthood, Amelie guessed. Also trouble…but she’d known that.
“Nine worlds,” she repeated. “How many ships? If we agree to an alliance, how many of your battleships can the Commandants and the Keys of War send to face the Rogue Matrices?”
“If the Intendant wills it, we can send as many ships as you already have facing these Rogues,” Rode intoned, though if she’d been human, Amelie wouldn’t have believed her. “The fleets available to the Intendant are as vast as the Fates require.”
Which was not a number—but also told Amelie that Rode didn’t necessarily know the number. The female Siva was responsible for the Sivar homeworld and didn’t know how many ships her race commanded.
Their government was weirdly siloed.
“If we are to get to know each other,” Amelie said after a few moments of silence, “would it be possible for me to tour the palace? The gardens are beautiful and I would like a closer look.”
That would also allow them to take everything she’d said back to the Intendant. She was quite certain that their goal had been as much to learn the strength of the alliance as anything else.
“I would be delighted to show you our gardens,” Rode said after a quick flicker of fingers at Istila. “We can speak more of my people as we do. I hope I can ease your curiosity and fears, Minister Lestroud.”
“My curiosity, at least,” Amelie allowed.
She expected the tour to be educational…but she didn’t expect it to ease her fears.
30
Rode insisted on showing Amelie the area of the Citadel interior they were already in, calling it “one of the great wonders of our people.”
Amelie waited patiently through the tour, allowing the Keeper of the Citadel to tell her details of stone types and artisans and statues that she would never care about. It wasn’t that the area of the Citadel she was touring wasn’t gorgeous—quite the opposite. She just knew that they both understood that R
ode was playing for time for an escort to be assembled.
She wasn’t sure if the Siva realized that she also knew they were probably clearing the slaves from the area Rode was planning to show her. The Sivar seemed to suspect that the non-Sivar slaves would be an issue for her—which suggested at least some internal conflict over them, if nothing else.
But it was polite to let her hosts decide what she saw this time, so Amelie made polite commentary on the sweeping, reshaped caverns that had been turned into the reception area long before. When the Citadel had been built, the Intendant had clearly had to deal with somebody for grand audiences.
Eventually, they passed under yet another set of statues supporting a stone arch and reached a set of massive double doors.
“These are the Halls of Gathering,” Rode told her. “They are the most impressive of the Halls in the Citadel, but it is one of fourteen. There are, as you have seen, temples and pathways and residences throughout. Our engineers estimate that as much as ten percent of the mountain’s original mass has been excavated to create the First and Final Citadel.”
“So I see,” Amelie replied, her attention focused on the doors as they swung open. Another of the omnipresent double files of Sivar guards waited for them.
“Our escort,” Rode said unnecessarily with a gesture to the guards. “As with any leader, the Intendant has his enemies, and many would target you for being his guest.”
And, of course, they could only trust her so far.
“I understand,” Amelie agreed aloud. “Sergeant Choi?”
“We’ll play nice,” the Marine said with a grin. “I want to see these gardens myself.”
The Keeper of the Citadel—ruler of the entire planet of Aris, so far as Amelie could tell—gave the Marine an aside glance but didn’t object as they all fell in with the escorts.
Crusade (Exile Book 3) Page 19
