by David Weber
"Any artificial radiation?"
"Negative, Captain," Dahak replied, and Colin bit his lip. Sheskar was—or had been—the Imperium's forward bastion on the traditional Achuultani approach vector. Perimeter Security should have detected and challenged them almost instantly.
"Captain," Dahak broke the silence which had fallen, "I have detected discrepancies in the system."
The visual display altered as he spoke. Oddly clumped necklaces of far smaller dots replaced the circles representing Sheskar's central trio of planets, spreading ominously about the central star, and Colin swallowed.
Dahak had gone sublight at the closest possible safe distance from Sheskar, but that was still eleven light-hours out. Even at his maximum sublight velocity, it would have taken almost twenty-four hours to reach the primary, yet it had become depressingly clear that there was no reason to travel that deep into the system, and Colin had stopped five light-hours out to save time when they left.
At the moment, he, Jiltanith, Hector MacMahan, and Ninhursag sat in Conference One, watching a scaled-down holo of the star system while they tried to decide where to leave to.
"I have completed preliminary scans, Captain," Dahak announced.
"Well? Was it the Achuultani?"
"It is, of course, impossible to be certain, but I would estimate that it was not. Had it been an incursion, it would, of necessity, have followed a path other than that traditionally employed by the Achuultani, else the scanner arrays which reported this incursion had already been destroyed. Since they were not, I conclude that it was not the Achuultani who accomplished this."
"Just what we needed," Hector said quietly. "Somebody else who goes around blowing away entire planets."
"Unfortunately, that would appear to be precisely what has happened, General MacMahan. It would not, however, appear to be of immediate concern. My scans indicate that this destruction occurred on the close order of forty-eight thousand years ago."
"How close?" Colin demanded.
"Plus or minus five percent, Captain."
"Shit." Colin looked up apologetically as the expletive escaped him, but no one seemed to have noticed. He drew a deep breath. "All right, Dahak, cut to the chase. What do you think happened?"
"Analysis rules out the employment of kinetic weaponry," Dahak said precisely, "distribution of the planetary rubble is not consistent with impact patterns. Rather, it would appear that the planetary bodies suffered implosive destruction consistent with the use of gravitonic warheads, a weapon, so far as is known to the Imperium's data base, the Achuultani have never employed."
"Gravitonic?" Colin tugged on his prominent nose, and his green eyes narrowed. "I don't like the sound of that."
"Nor I," Jiltanith said quietly. "If 'twas not the Achuultani, then must it have been another, and such weapons lie even now within our magazines."
"Exactly," Colin said. He shuddered at the thought. A heavy gravitonic warhead produced a nice, neat little black hole. Not very long-lived, and not big enough to damage most suns, but big enough, and a hyper-capable missile with the right targeting could put the damned thing almost inside a planet.
"That is true," Dahak observed, then hesitated briefly, as if he faced a conclusion he wanted to reject. "I regret to say, Captain, that the destruction matches that which would be associated with our own Mark Tens. In point of fact, and after making due allowance for the time which has passed, it corresponds almost exactly to the results produced by those weapons."
"Hector? Ninhursag?"
"Dahak's dancing around the point, Colin," MacMahan's face was grim. "There's a very simple and likely explanation."
"I agree," Ninhursag said in a small voice. "I never would have believed it could happen, but it's got all the earmarks of a civil war."
A brief silence followed the words someone had finally said. Then Colin cleared his throat.
"Response, Dahak?"
"I... am forced to concur." Dahak's mellow voice sounded sad. "Sheskar Four, in particular, was very heavily defended. Based upon available data and the fact that no advanced alien race other than the Achuultani had been encountered by the Imperium prior to the mutiny, I must conclude that only the Imperium itself possessed the power to do what has been done."
"What about someone they ran into after the mutiny?"
"Possible, but unlikely, Captain. Due in no small part to previous incursions, there are very few—indeed, effectively no—habitable worlds between Sol and Sheskar. Logic thus suggests that any hostile aliens would have been required to fight their way across a substantial portion of the Imperium even to reach Sheskar. Assuming technical capabilities on a par with those of this ship—a conclusion suggested, though not proven, by my analysis of the weaponry employed—that would require a hostile imperium whose military potential equaled or exceeded that of the Imperium itself. While it is not impossible that such an entity might have been encountered, I would rate the probability as no greater than that of an Achuultani attack."
Colin looked around the table again, then back at the silent holo display. "This isn't good."
"Hast a gift for understatement, my Colin." Jiltanith shook her head. "Good Dahak, what likelihood wouldst thou assign to decision by the Imperium 'gainst fortifying Sheskar anew?"
"Slight," Dahak said.
"Why?" Colin asked. "There's nothing left to fortify."
"Inaccurate, Captain. No Earth-like planets remain, but Sheskar was selected for a Fleet base because of its location, not its planets, and it now possesses abundant large asteroids for installation sites. Indeed, the absence of atmosphere would make those installations more defensible, not less."
"In other words," MacMahan murmured, "they would have come back if they were interested in re-establishing their pre-war frontiers."
"Precisely, General."
Another, longer silence fell, and Colin drew a deep breath.
"All right, let's look at it. We have a destroyed base in a vital location. It appears to have been taken out with Imperial weapons, implying a civil war as a probable cause. It wasn't rebuilt. What does that imply?"
"Naught we wish to discover." Jiltanith managed a small smile. "'Twould seem the Imperium hath fallen 'pon hard times."
"True," MacMahan said. "I see two probabilities, Colin." Colin raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue.
"First, they wiped each other out. That would explain the failure to rebuild, and it would also mean our entire mission is pointless." A shiver ran through his human audience, but he continued unflinchingly.
"On the other hand, I don't believe anything the size of the Imperium wiped itself out completely. The Imperium is—or was, or whatever—huge. Even assuming anyone could have been insane enough to embark on destruction on that scale, I don't see how they could do it. Their infrastructure would erode out from under them as they took out industrialized systems, and it seems unlikely anyone would follow leaders mad enough to try."
"Yet 'twas done to Sheskar," Jiltanith pointed out.
"True, but Sheskar was primarily a military base, 'Tanni, not a civilian system. The decision to attack it would be evaluated purely in terms of military expedience, like nuking a well-armed island base in the middle of an ocean. It's a lot easier to decide to hit a target like that."
"All right," Colin nodded. "But if they didn't wipe themselves out, why didn't they come back?"
"That's probability two," MacMahan said flatly. "They did so much damage they backslid. They could have done a fair job of smashing themselves without actually destroying all their planets. It's hard for me to visualize a high-tech planet which wasn't nuked—or something like it—decivilizing completely, but I can accept that more easily than the idea that all their planets look like this." He gestured at the holo display.
"Besides, they might have damaged themselves in other ways. Suppose they fought their war and found themselves faced with massive reconstruction closer to the heart of the Imperium? Sheskar is—was—a hell of a long w
ay from their next nearest inhabited system, and, as Dahak has pointed out, this area isn't exactly prime real estate. If they had heavily damaged areas closer to home, they could've decided to deal with those first. Afterward, the area on the far side of the Imperium, where damage from the Achuultani hadn't wrecked so many planets to begin with, would have been a natural magnet for future expansion."
"Mayhap, yet that leaveth still a question. Whyfor, if Sheskar was so vital, rebuild it not?"
"I'm afraid I can answer that," Ninhursag said unhappily. "Maybe Anu wasn't as crazy—or quite as unique in his craziness—as we thought." She shrugged as all eyes turned to her. "What I'm trying to say is that if things got so bad the Imperium actually fought a civil war, they weren't Imperials anymore. I'm the only person in this room who was an adult at the time of the mutiny, and I know how I would've reacted to the thought of wiping out a Fleet base. Even those of us who didn't really believe in the Achuultani—even the 'atheists,' I suppose you might call them, who violently rejected their existence—would have hesitated to do that. That's why Anu lied to us about his own intent to attack the Imperium."
She looked unhappily at the holo for a moment, and none of the others intruded upon her silence.
"None of you were ever Imperial citizens, so you may not understand what I'm trying to say, but preparing to fight the Achuultani was something we'd societized into ourselves on an almost instinctual level. Even those who most resented the regimentation, the discipline, wouldn't have destroyed our defenses. It would be like... like Holland blowing up its dikes because of one dry summer, for Maker's sake!"
"You're saying that disbelief in the Achuultani must have become general?" Colin said. "That if it hadn't, the Fleet would never have let itself be caught up in something like a civil war in the first place?"
"Exactly. And if that's true, why rebuild Sheskar as a base against an enemy that doesn't exist?" Ninhursag gave a short, ugly laugh. "Maybe we were the wave of the future instead of just a bunch of murderous traitors!"
"Easy, 'Hursag." MacMahan touched her shoulder, and she inhaled sharply.
"Sorry." Her voice was a bit husky. "It's just that I don't really want to believe what I'm saying—especially not now that I know how wrong we were!"
"Maybe not, but it makes sense," Colin said slowly.
"Agreed, Captain," Dahak said. "Indeed, there is another point. For Fleet vessels to have participated in this action would require massive changes in core programming by at least one faction. Without that, Fleet Central Alpha Priority imperatives would have precluded any warfare which dissipated resources and so weakened Battle Fleet's ability to resist an incursion. This would appear to support Fleet Commander Ninhursag's analysis."
"All right. But even if it's not the Imperium we came to find, there may still be an Imperium somewhere up ahead of us." Colin tried to project more optimism than he felt. "Dahak, what was the nearest piece of prime real estate? The closest star system which wasn't purely a military base?"
"Defram," Dahak replied without hesitation. "A G2-K5 binary system with two inhabited planets. As of the last Imperial census in my data base, the system population was six-point-seven-one-seven billion. Main industries—"
"That's enough," Colin interrupted. "How far away is it?"
"One hundred thirty-three-point-four light-years, Captain."
"Um... bit over two months at max. That means a round trip of just over eleven months before we could get back to Earth."
"Approximately eleven-point-three-two months, Captain."
"All right, people," Colin sighed. "I don't see we have too much choice. Let's go to Defram and see what we can see."
"Aye," Jiltanith agreed. " 'Twould seem therein our best hope doth lie."
"I agree," MacMahan said, and Ninhursag nodded silently.
"Okay. I want to sit here and think a little more. Take the watch, please, 'Tanni. Dismiss from battle stations, then have Sarah get us underway on sublight. I'll join you in Command One when I finish here." Jiltanith rose with a silent nod, and he turned to the others.
"Hector, you and 'Hursag sit down and build me models of as many scenarios as you can. I know you don't have any hard data, but put your heads together with our other adult Imperials and Dahak and extrapolate trends."
"Yes, sir," MacMahan said quietly, and Colin propped his chin in his hands, elbows on the table, and stared sadly at the holo as the others filed out the hatch. He expected no sudden inspiration, for there was nothing here to offer it. He only knew that he needed to be alone with his thoughts for a while, and, unlike his subordinates, he had the authority to be that way.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Well, Marshal Tsien?"
Tsien regarded Gerald Hatcher levelly as they strode down the hall. It was the first time either had spoken since leaving the Lieutenant Governor's office, and Tsien crooked an eyebrow, inviting amplification. The American only smiled, declining to make his question more specific, but Tsien understood and, in all honesty, appreciated his tact.
"I am... impressed, Comrade General," he said. "The Lieutenant Governor is a formidable man." His answer meant more than the words said, but he had already seen enough of this American to know he would understand.
"He's all of that," Hatcher agreed, opening a door and waving Tsien into his own office. "He's had to be," he added in a grimmer voice.
Tsien nodded as they crossed the deserted office. It was raining again, he noted, watching the water roll down the windows. Hatcher gestured to an armchair facing the desk as he circled to reach his own swiveled chair.
"So I have understood," Tsien replied, sitting carefully. "Yet he seems unaware of it. He does not strike one as so... so—"
"Grand? Self-important?" Hatcher suggested with a grin, and Tsien chuckled despite himself.
"Both of those things, I suppose. Forgive me, but you in the West have always seemed to me to be overly taken with personal pomp and ceremony. With us, the office or occasion, not the individual, deserves such accolades. Do not mistake me, Comrade General; we have our own methods of deification, but we have learned from past mistakes. Those we deify now are—for the most part—safely dead. My country would understand your Governor. Our Governor, I suppose I must say. If your purpose is to win my admission that I am impressed by him, you have succeeded, General Hatcher."
"Good." Hatcher frowned thoughtfully, his face somehow both tighter and more open. "Do you also accept that we're being honest with you, Marshal?"
Tsien regarded him for a moment, then dipped his head in a tiny nod.
"Yes. All of my nominees were confirmed, and the Governor's demonstration of his biotechnics—" Tsien hesitated briefly on the still unfamiliar word "—and those other items of Imperial technology were also convincing. I believe—indeed, I have no choice but to believe—your warnings of the Achuultani, and that you and your fellows are making every effort to achieve success. In light of all those things, I have no choice but to join your effort. I do not say it will be easy, General Hatcher, but we shall certainly make the attempt. And, I believe, succeed."
"Good," Hatcher said again, then leaned back with a smile. "In that case, Marshal, we're ready to run the first thousand personnel of your selection through enhancement as soon as your people in Beijing can put a list together."
"Ah?" Tsien sat a bit straighter. This was moving with speed, indeed! He had not expected these Westerners— He stopped and corrected himself. He had not expected these people to offer such things so soon. Surely there would be a period of testing and evaluation of sincerity first!
But when he looked across at the American, the slight, ironic twinkle in Hatcher's eyes told him his host knew precisely what he was thinking, and the realization made him feel just a bit ashamed.
"Comrade General," he said finally, "I appreciate your generosity, but—"
"Not generosity, Marshal. We've been enhancing our personnel ever since Dahak left, which means the Alliance has fallen far behind. We need to make
up the difference, and we'll be sending transports with enhancement capability to Beijing and any other three cities you select. Planetary facilities under your direct control will follow as quickly as we can build them."
Tsien blinked, and Hatcher smiled.
"Marshal Tsien, we are fellow officers serving the same commander-in- chief. If we don't act accordingly, some will doubt our claims of solidarity are genuine. They are genuine. We will proceed on that basis."
He leaned back and raised both hands shoulder-high, open palms uppermost, and Tsien nodded slowly.
"You are correct. Generous nonetheless, but correct. And perhaps I am discovering that more than our governor are formidable men, Comrade General."
"Gerald, please. Or just 'Ger,' if you're comfortable with it."
Tsien began a polite refusal, then paused. He had never been comfortable with easy familiarity between serving officers, even among his fellow Asians, yet there was something charming about this American. Not boyish (though he understood Westerners prized that quality for some peculiar reason), but charming. Hatcher's competence and hard-headed, forthright honesty compelled respect, but this was something else. Charisma? No, that was close, but not quite the proper word. The word was... openness. Or friendship, perhaps.
Friendship. Now was that not a strange thing to feel for a Western general after so many years? And yet... . Yes, "and yet," indeed.
"Very well... Gerald," he said.
"I know it's like pulling teeth, Marshal." Hatcher's almost gentle smile robbed his words of any offense. "We've been too busy thinking of ways to kill each other for too long for it to be any other way, more's the pity. Do you know, in a weird sort of way, I'm almost grateful to the Achuultani."
"Grateful?" Tsien cocked his head for a moment, then nodded. "I see. I had not previously thought of it in that light, Comr—Gerald, but it is a relief to face an alien menace rather than the possibility of blowing up our world ourselves."
"Exactly." Hatcher extracted a bottle of brandy and two snifters from a desk drawer. He set them on the blotter and poured, then offered one to his guest and raised his own. "May I say, Marshal Tsien, that it is a greater pleasure than I ever anticipated to have you as an ally?"
