The Shadow of Cincinnatus

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Roman sighed. It had been a week since Governor Barany had been dispatched to Earth, along with a report that would ensure the only reception he got was a date with the hangman, but too much had happened since then. The security investigation had turned up too many potential problems for him to relax, ranging from hundreds of officers who had taken bribes to officers who might have connections with rebels or insurgents from across the sector. It was starting to look as though the Federation would have to relieve every last officer in the system and replace them with newcomers. And that would cause a riot.

  “I thought I was used to complex systems” he muttered. Catching enough time to nap in his quarters with Elf had been hard enough. “This is a nightmare.”

  Elf snorted. “You grew up on an asteroid and moved to the navy, where everyone moves to the beat of the same drum,” she said. “How much do you know about life on a planetary surface?”

  “Little,” Roman conceded. Even the largest asteroid habitat rarely held more than twenty thousand inhabitants. Even the giant asteroid settlements of Sol were spread out over several hundred asteroids. There was no room for separate factions on an asteroid – or a navy starship. “I may have underestimated the task.”

  “You probably did,” Elf said. She sat upright, then reached for her jacket. “There will always be people with interests that might conflict with yours, even though you’re meant to be in command. Their interests will lead them to oppose you. You just have to cope with them, or keep a sharp eye on their activities and prune off the most dangerous. Not everyone is a nail who needs to be struck with a hammer.”

  Roman turned to look at her, admiring the muscles in her arms. “So what do you advise I do?”

  “Hang on, watch what happens and make it clear you intend to be a fair-minded person,” Elf said. She shrugged. “Change is always disturbing, Roman, all the more so when the average person has good reason to fear that it won’t be for the better. The Federation does not have a good reputation for treating the folks here very well.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t work with the pirates,” Roman pointed out, tartly.

  “They didn’t choose their governor,” Elf reminded him. “In many ways, Barany was a good Governor. He didn’t feel the urge to throw his weight around, like so many others, nor did he squash free enterprise mercilessly. The people who live on Athena don’t give a damn about his protection rackets and his sales to people with dubious motives, Roman. They only care about what they can see...and what they can see is that the governor is better than many others they’ve had, over the years. Why wouldn’t they be worried when you removed him?”

  Roman suspected she had a point. When he’d been a junior officer, he hadn’t really given a damn about anything that had happened away from his own ship. It had been, at best, a matter of academic interest. And it would have been even less so, he thought, if there hadn’t been a war on. Life in the peacetime navy had been dreadfully dull, unless one had been assigned to the Rim. Every cadet had hoped for such a posting. And then Admiral Justinian had made his move.

  But if he’d been unconcerned about other starships, why would the population of Athena give a damn about the smaller colonies, the ones raided by the pirates?

  Human nature, he told himself. Always concentrate on what’s right in front of your face.

  “They’ll just have to see how little we intend to change,” he said, finally. “We’re not going to slap new taxes on free enterprise, are we?”

  “They don’t know that,” Elf explained. “And you won’t be governor indefinitely. Once Earth learns of what’s happened, someone else will be sent out to pick up the task. That person might be a complete bastard, no matter his intentions, as far as the locals are concerned. He might demand a total crack-down on everything that will shatter the local economy.”

  Roman grunted. Economics were hardly his thing, but he’d grown up on an asteroid, where everything had to be carefully regulated. If Athena was producing more than the system – or the legitimate buyers in the sector – could absorb, what would happen to the economy? Even a demand for proper end user certificates might be disastrous. It was possible, he told himself, that Athena might end up shipping supplies deeper into the Federation, but they’d face increasingly heavy competition. God knew more than a few asteroid colonies had been ruined by laws specifically enacted against them by the Grand Senate.

  Emperor Marius won’t be enacting such laws, he thought. But Elf was right. None of the people on the planet below had any reason to believe that, did they? As far as they were concerned, Marius Drake was just another warlord, one who had played for time and, in the end, won everything. It wasn’t true, Roman was sure, but it might not matter. Perception could mean everything when people had to gamble with their lives.

  Elf stood upright and paced over to the porthole, staring down at the blue-green world below the ship. After a moment, Roman stood up and walked over to join her, wrapping his arm around her waist. Part of him marvelled at how perfect her body was, not a single piece of fat or anything that detracted from her work; the remainder looked down at the planet and tried to imagine the surface teeming with life. From high orbit, it was impossible to see any traces of human civilization.

  “Planets are huge,” Elf said, as if she’d read his thoughts. “Do you know, sometimes, that the Grand Senate used to send a regiment or two of Marines to hold an entire planet?”

  Roman choked off a laugh. A regiment was a thousand Marines, assuming full strength. And the war had left many units dangerously undermanned. Armed and armored, the Marines could practically go wherever they wanted to go, but they would never be able to hold ground, at least once they had to move on to the next target. They could secure a PDC or a city, but not an entire planet. The thought was laughable.

  “They saw the star charts,” Elf said. “Each of the planets look small on the charts, when the charts show entire star clusters and transit lanes. But when you come up to a planet and actually try to land...well, that planet becomes very large indeed, on our scale. Down below, there are millions of settlers, more than enough to develop hundreds of different factions. It is hard to grasp just how many there are until you actually immerse yourself in the planet’s society.”

  “I know,” Roman said. “There are just too many of them.”

  He sighed. The basic intelligence sweep had turned up hundreds of factions, from Federation loyalists to people who would support the Federation if the status quo remained unchanged to people who hated the Federation and wouldn’t shed a tear if it collapsed into civil war. It was hard to tell just how much of the hostile chatter on the planetary datanet – Governor Barany hadn’t installed any limiters at all – was real and how much was just blowing off steam. And a harsh response to someone who was essentially harmless might spark off an uprising from people who were far from harmless. It was difficult to know what to do.

  “You will never get rid of them,” Elf predicted dryly, “short of total planetary destruction and mass slaughter. And I submit, Roman, that that would not be a good idea.”

  Roman shuddered. Even if he had been inclined to consider it, Emperor Marius would have had his head. He’d been furious when the Grand Senate’s men had slaughtered prisoners after he’d guaranteed their safety personally. Roman didn’t want to think about the emperor’s reaction to a destroyed planet. Too many civilian lives had already been lost in the Justinian War.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed. He glanced at the holographic display, then noted the time and smiled to himself. There were several hours before they had to return to duty. “Come back to bed?”

  Elf smiled back at him, but shook her head. “I need to get back to the barracks,” she said. “There’s too much paperwork to do.”

  “Something to mention to the emperor,” Roman said, with a sigh. “A ban on paperwork. Or a return to the days when commanders had personal assistants and stewards.”

  “You would have no privacy,
” Elf pointed out, as she pulled on her uniform. “And he would probably sell his memoirs to the tabloids.”

  “I grew up on an asteroid,” Roman reminded her. “And then I was at the Academy. What is this privacy concept again?”

  Elf snorted. “Try sharing a barracks with a hundred sweaty smelly Marines in various states of undress,” she said. “It doesn’t get worse than that, really.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Roman said. He ducked the pillow she threw at him with practiced ease. “I thought it would be worse in foxholes.”

  “Nah,” Elf said. “When you’re in a foxhole, and the enemy is firing at you, and mortar shells are dropping down all around you, and pieces of dirt and mud are flying everywhere...you’re just glad to be there.”

  * * *

  There was nothing remarkable about Athena’s star from a distance. It was just another white light, burning endlessly against the inky darkness of outer space. General Charlie Stuart examined the star as his fleet slowly entered formation on the outer edge of the target system, then forced himself to sit back and relax. It would be hours before they went into action for the first time, when they would discover if the years of effort had been worthwhile or not. Until then, all he could do was wait.

  “The fleet has completed its arrival, sir,” Lieutenant Juneau reported. “Laser links have been established. Fleet relay communications are online and operating at acceptable levels. No reports of major malfunctions.”

  “Good,” Charlie said. “Inform all commanding officers that stealth protocols are to remain in effect – and we will cloak in” – he glanced at his chronometer – “four hours from now, unless we receive an update from the watching spies.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Juneau said.

  Charlie looked up at the scene as the fleet slowly settled into formation. The continuous displacement stardrive was a remarkable invention, allowing humanity to bypass the tyranny of the Asimov Point network and settle worlds that had previously only been accessible through STL travel through normal space, but it had its limitations. For reasons best known to the boffins, it couldn’t be used within a certain distance of anything that cast a gravity field. Worse, a ship that happened to be traveling at FTL speeds when it encountered a gravity field would simply vanish. No one knew what happened to those ships; unsurprisingly, no one wanted to try and find out the hard way. The Outsider fleet had had no choice, but to come out of FTL quite some distance from their target.

  But at least we’re not approaching along a predictable course, he thought. War along the Asimov Point network consisted of a series of incredibly costly assaults through the points, where one side knew where the other had to appear and had ample opportunity to pick the assault fleet off, one by one. The sheer carnage of an assault into the teeth of enemy defenses had to be seen to be grasped, which was at least partly why the Inheritance Wars had dragged on for so long. Only the invention of the stardrive had shifted the balance of power decisively in favour of the Federation.

  It had also changed the face of basic military strategy. Now, an attacker could come from anywhere. Admiral Justinian would never have managed to attack Earth if he hadn’t succeeded in crossing the icy vastness of interstellar space. He couldn’t have bribed his way past the defenses of the Gateway – and his rebellion would have been detected long before he was in a position to threaten the Grand Senate itself. If it hadn’t taken years to cross the immensity of the Federation with stardrive, rather than Asimov Points, the war might have been won or lost years ago.

  But now it presented his opponent with a tactical headache. Defend the planets or defend the Asimov Point leading back to the Federation?

  “We picked up an update from the stealth ships,” Lieutenant Juneau said, breaking into his thoughts. “The Fifth Fleet is assembled at Athena.”

  Charlie swung round to look at the tactical display. It was several hours – at least – out of date, but it was the best he was going to get until the fleet approached its target. The Federation Navy ships were clustered around the planet, apart from a handful that seemed to be escorting freighters in and out of the system. It was a tempting target, and part of him yearned to take the fleet directly to Athena, but he knew better. A direct attack on the planet might cost them the war.

  “Pass the word,” he ordered. “We will proceed with Plan Theta.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Juneau said. If she was disappointed – or relieved – she didn’t show it. Instead, she worked her console, sending the signal to the rest of the fleet. “Message sent.”

  “We leave in one hour,” Charlie added. “The fleet is to cloak prior to bringing up our drives.”

  He sighed, inwardly. The fleet’s cloaking devices were – they thought – an improvement on the Federation’s pre-war designs. But no one was sure just how far the Federation had advanced during the Justinian War. Far too many of the Grand Senate’s security measures, intended to keep out the rogue admiral’s spies, had managed to keep out the Outsiders as well. And besides, Fifth Fleet had a hardcore of experienced officers, tacticians and sensor operators. They’d have the instincts they needed to interpret vague flickers of energy and deduce the presence of a cloaked ship.

  Good thing we’re not planning to sneak up on Fifth Fleet, he thought. That could have proven exciting – and fatal.

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Juneau said, again. “I should note, sir, that we have picked up no trace of sensor platforms.”

  Charlie nodded. Only the richest of systems could afford a network of sensor platforms at the edge of the gravity limit – and Athena, despite the Governor’s best efforts, couldn’t have hoped to put a comprehensive network together. Not, he knew, that it would have guaranteed anything. Earth had had a comprehensive sensor network and Admiral Justinian had waltzed right through it, without even giving a hint of his presence. If he hadn’t tried to be clever and decapitate Earth’s defenses before he arrived, he might have won the battle and the war.

  “My orders stand,” he said. They’d dropped out of stardrive well below the system plane, where most starships would choose to arrive for a least-time course to Athena itself, just in case the reports had been wrong and the governor wasn’t so inclined to take chances with the planet’s security. But then, the worst he’d ever had to fear was pirates. No pirate in his right mind would tangle with even outdated battlestations. “We don’t want to take chances.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Juneau said.

  Charlie nodded and forced himself, again, to relax. One way or the other, they were committed now. Right across the Rim, small squadrons of starships, insurgent cells and even single-person operatives were getting the command to go into action. The Federation had faced uprisings before, but never anything on this scale. Even the Inheritance Wars, as bloody as they’d been, had never been on such a scale. Maybe even the Grand Senate would have grown sick of the slaughter if they had.

  “The fleet has responded,” Lieutenant Juneau said. She sounded relieved, although she should have known better. Charlie had no intention of biting heads off for asking questions, particularly ones that might expose problems before they were used against him. “They’re ready to move on your command.”

  “Send the signal,” Charlie ordered. At the speed of light, the radio signal would still take seven hours to reach its destination. But it would beat the fleet there by nine hours. “Tell them to move at the designated time.”

  He shook his head slowly as the timer started to tick down to zero. The Federation had been foolish to leave so many people convinced that it was evil and utterly untrustworthy, even now an emperor had replaced the Grand Senate. There was so much hatred along the Rim that countless worlds could be trusted to simply fall into Outsider hands the moment the fleet appeared in their system. Hell, there were rebel cells within the inner worlds, cells that wanted their own independence, no matter the cost. It was just a shame they hadn’t been able to subvert many officers from the Federation Navy. In the wake of th
e Justinian War, even contacting an officer had been deemed too risky. The Grand Senate’s security measures had seen to that.

  “The fleet is ready to cloak,” Lieutenant Juneau said. “Sir?”

  “Cloak us,” Charlie ordered. He sat upright, slowly. On the display, seven squadrons of superdreadnaughts and hundreds of smaller ships slowly dimmed as they activated their cloaking devices. Beyond them, the fleet train waited. It would either join them in the system after a victory or run back to the Beyond, if the fleet lost. “And then take us into the system, as planned.”

  Chapter Twelve

  One of the gravest threats to any system is internal subversion. An outside attack can force the system to surrender, after punching through the defenses, but internal treachery can deliver the system and its facilities into enemy hands.

  -The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

  Athena, 4098

  Corporal Mark Canty rather enjoyed the posting to Big Brick, as her crew affectionately called the outdated battlestation. Sure, it wasn’t duty on a planet’s surface, where the Marines might find themselves patrolling one day and helping to find a missing child the next, but it was surprisingly enjoyable. The station’s CO might have been relieved of command for what had been termed gross incompetence – Mark had heard that it was rather worse than mere incompetence – yet the remainder of the crew seemed surprisingly welcoming. Maybe they hadn’t liked their former commander very much.

  It wasn’t a challenging duty, either. The platoon of Marines were merely expected to rotate between the CIC and their quarters, keeping an eye on the station’s crew. Mark suspected that they were merely there to remind the crew that there was a Federation out there, when most of them might have forgotten it since the system had been cut off by the war. There weren’t enough Marines to take over and operate the station on their own, if it were deemed necessary. It bothered the lieutenant enough that he’d sent at least three messages back to the fleet, requesting reinforcements. But there were none to be had.