by John Carr
“Before we begin, Captain Hawksley, I want you to know that I have inquired as to the details of your duel and resultant expulsion from the Imperial Court.”
Hawksley said nothing for a long time, then: “I hope that the information you received was correct, sir.”
“So do I.”
Diettinger began tapping panels on the briefing table, calling up a two-dimensional map of Sauron System. “For if they are, you did not simply kill a member of the Imperial Family in a duel.” Diettinger looked up. “You were manipulated into said duel by the eldest son of the Duke of New Gotham, who invoked his familial privilege of allowing his second to fight in his place.”
“That is correct, sir.”
Diettinger nodded, still apparently absorbed in the briefing table display. “Upon which, you invoked your own rights as a Burgess peer to have the duel made public; broadcast on holo. The young Duke’s father insisted that his own son fight or drop the challenge, lest the family be embarrassed politically by its public use of a professional duelist as second.” Diettinger looked up, smiling briefly. “Whereupon you killed the Duke of Gotham’s heir. Quite bold. You might have lost, and think of the embarrassment to your family, then.”
Hawksley almost smiled.”I never considered the possibility, sir.”
“I’m sure you did not. Which brings me to the subject of this meeting, Captain Hawksley.’’ Diettinger entered a command which replaced the flat map he had been studying with a three dimensional image of Ostia, Sauron System’s gas giant.”I have developed a mission profile for an operation which demands a commander and crew of great skill and flexibility. And, of course, confidence.”
Hawksley smiled.”That would be us, Dictator.”
Diettinger did not smile. “I do not have the luxury of indulging in theater, Captain Hawksley. You have not been summoned here to be given the opportunity to volunteer for this mission, but to receive your briefing. Falkenberg’s design and performance specifications and her crew’s unparalleled expertise in raiding tactics make your command the only reasonable choice for this operation.
“I am, however, most impressed with your own personal character. You show every indication of being a man who is incapable of relenting when he has committed himself to a course of action, and that quality is more important to me than any statistical representations of your ship or crew.”
“It depends on whether or not I believe the course of action to be right, sir.”
Diettinger shrugged. “Of course. Let me then convince you of the rightness of this phase of Sauron System’s defense.” The Dictator finished with a wry smile.
Diettinger entered several keystrokes that set the holo-image of Ostia turning slowly, and as it did, dozens of blue-white dots became illuminated just beneath the surface of the gas giant’s image.
Three hours later, Hawksley left the briefing room. To his surprise, Vessel First Rank Mara Emory was waiting for him in the outer hall.
“Hello, Mara,” Hawksley’s smile for her had none of its usual irony; in the past few weeks they had been ever more in each other’s company and each other’s beds, and Hawksley had the envious glances of dozens of other men and his own cracked ribs and bruises to prove it. Mara was beautiful, attentive, passionate . . and a Sauron, after all.
She frowned slightly as she took his arm and walked with him toward the shuttle wing of the complex. There was something in the privateer’s look, something that had perhaps been there since the day she had met him, yet had remained indefinable to her. She felt that she had missed some important decision that had long since been made in Ian Hawksley’s heart, and soon it would be put into effect.
But not tonight.
“I have missed you, Ian,” Mara said quietly. It would not do at all to discuss Hawksley’s meeting with Diettinger. The Dictator had neither time nor interest in paranoia, and made no use of the apparatus of surveillance, but that apparatus remained intact nevertheless, and imprudence was as unwise as ever.
“I’ve missed you, too, my dear,” Hawksley answered.
“I sent my Second Rank back to the Damans aboard my shuttle. I assured him you could take me back in yours.”
“And he did not seem at all surprised to hear it, I will wager.” Hawksley glanced about them as they passed through the security gate to the shuttle area.”You’re a wicked girl, Mara.”
Mara laughed, shaking her head.”You Burgessers have the strangest reticence about sex, Ian. As bad as the Imperial Court, or so I’ve heard.” They stepped onto a small tram and were whisked away toward the bay holding Lady Fairfax, Hawksley’s personal shuttle. “You’re a wonderful lover and we care for each other very deeply. Letting people know about it is simply a social courtesy.”
Hawksley gave her a look.
Mara shrugged. “It’s true. It allows them to modify their own demands on our time to accommodate us. You wouldn’t expect an investment banker to be socially available during standard business hours, nor an avid tennis player when a busy court opens . . .what’s funny?”
Hawksley was rubbing his eyes as they stepped out onto Lady Fairfax’s loading dock. “Ah. Nothing, darlin’. Nothing at all...”
They stepped into the cabin of the shuttle, and Mara glanced around approvingly. “Burgess’ shipwrights design everything with so much more elegance than Saurons do.” She stretched out on a long couch and smiled up at him. “Comfort, too. Come here.”
Hawksley stood next to Emory as the cabin door sealed behind him; Mara took his hand in hers.
“Don’t you need to get back to the Damaris?” he asked.
“Not immediately. Besides, your shuttle won’t have clearance to leave for hours, yet.”
“I could request priority clearance . . . ouch.”
He was on the couch and pinned in half a second.
“One of these days, you’re going to forget your own strength and kill me,” he warned her with a smile.
“I guess you’ll have to teach me to behave, then.”
“Hmm. Not likely. First rule of mountain climbing: You must be stronger than the mountain.”
She laughed, hugged him tighter.
“Ow, ow, ow...”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s not too bad.”
“How’s this?”
“Better...”
“And this?”
“Ahh... much better...”
Lady Fairfax missed two more launch clearance windows, and didn’t leave for four hours. She remained berthed at Damans for six more after that.
Twenty
I
Alone, sitting in the dark at his desk, Diettinger allowed himself a few moments of First Stage Sleep and pondered his meeting with Hawksley.
“Dictator,” Hawksley had said when it was over, “Do you know very much about ancient history?”
“Some. My Second Rank is really quite an expert on the subject, actually. Why do you ask?”
“There was a general on Earth - Tabletop-lineage, but we won’t hold that against him - named Grant during the Civil War - ”
“Which Civil War?”
Hawksley had looked up. “The Civil War, Dictator. For anyone with Burgess’ blood, there has only ever been one. Another reason for our ongoing feud with anyone from Tabletop, by the way. In any case, one of his officers, upon hearing the battle commands for the day, voiced the opinion that, if he ‘understood his order aright’, it could mean the sacrifice of every man under his command.”
“I know this story,” Diettinger told him.
“Then you know the general’s reply.”
Diettinger had nodded. “Yes, Captain Hawksley. I do.”
Hawksley had smiled, that look of fatalistic amusement had crossed his face again, and he had taken his leave.
Now Diettinger was thinking of the hundreds of thousands of men and women under his command, each of whom bore orders not so dissimilar from Hawksley, nor from those issued by General Ulysses S. Grant, dead and buried almost eight h
undred years before.
And here, today, almost eight hundred years later, Diettinger’s own reply was no different than Grant’s: I am glad, sir, that you understand my order aright. . .
Hawksley sighed, looking around the bridge. His crew were as silent as he, all of them bent to the tasks at hand.
It was not a bad plan, Hawksley knew. It had even succeeded in generating a spark of enthusiasm in him, and that had only happened one other time in the last five years, since - well, since the battle at Holcroft System. Diettinger’s plan was intuitive, flexible, and best of all, if it worked it would claim the lives of tens of thousands of Imperials.
Coming back to himself, Hawksley loosened his grip on the armrest of his acceleration couch, and thought about the only other thing that had sparked any joy in him during this last long half-decade.
“Navigator.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Station fix, please, relative to the Damaris”
“Station fix, aye. Seventeen billion kilometers to starboard of Damaris, our heading zero-niner-seven degrees, plus twenty-seven thousand kilometers.”
Further away than I thought, Hawksley thought. He looked out again, his gaze drawn to a line of flickering blue light: the maneuvering drive exhausts of fuel tankers strung out between Sauron and Ostia in a continuous line.
Closer, soon, perhaps.
By dictatorial edict, no ships were allowed within five hundred thousand kilometers of any Alderson Point. A small Coalition corvette had tested this injunction a few days previously, and had blown up, lost with all hands.
Speculation soon spread throughout the Fleet that some new form of mine had been deployed, one which would destroy or at least cripple any Imperials as they entered Sauron space. No attempt was made to allay these rumors among the Coalition ships, but it had been Vessel Second Rank Althene Adame herself, conning the Fomoria during one of Diettinger’s rare rest periods, who had given the order to destroy the corvette.
During communications system upgrades by Sauron Technical Rankers, every Coalition vessel had been secretly fitted with a special device. The larger part of this device would transmit a signal to the Sauron flagship if the vessel carrying it was preparing to engage its Jump drives. If such signal was not approved by the Fomoria - and none would be - the much smaller part activated a scuttle command to the ship’s computer. Althene knew that the corvette had been attempting to desert, and that simply would not do at all.
II
Cyborg Rank Koln had taken his last meeting with the other Cyborgs of the High Council. He was now immersed in work of such magnitude and complexity that even his capacity for concentration was taxed. Diettinger’s EVA commando tactic had been an important innovation in the war; even so, it had benefited from various improvements in certain aspects of its application, improvements which Koln had devised. The Dictator had been impressed, and Koln’s alterations had been implemented throughout the Fleet. Despite himself, Koln had found it impossible to suppress a sense of pleasure at Diettinger’s approval, and addressed this very dangerous symptom in a communiqué.
Diettinger is an excellent commander, (Koln had sent the hard-copy message to Ulm, Saentz and Manche with a courier) as well as possessing the gift of inspiring fervent loyalty from even the most rational of Soldiers. Whatever his genetic deficiencies, this fact should not be ignored, as it represents a definite asset for this phase of the defense of the Homeworld, and a dangerous liability for our eventual overt dominance of Sauron society. Upon successful resolution of the coming engagement, popular support for Diettinger will be at its peak, and his voluntary relinquishment of the emergency office of Dictator will then allow him to be legally appointed First Citizen. It would not be in our interests to subvert such legal procedures at that time, so our first priority following cessation of hostilities with the Empire must be Diettinger’s elimination via some plausible accident. Despite the paucity of vessels remaining in the fleet, I strongly recommend that such accident be the loss of Fomoria with all hands, as this will also eliminate Diettinger’s command staff, who comprise the bulk of his closest acquaintances and supporters.
Koln did not bother to consider the possibility that Sauron might not survive such an invasion, as the Empire was expected to mount, without being wholly dominated by that Empire thereafter. In his opinion, such a society would not be worth living in, even if it were prepared to let him do so.
Which, he knew, it was not.
III
The predominant emotion of any intelligent being before going into battle is fear, and Saurons were no exception. Superb training and a justifiable sense of superiority tempered their apprehension, but it had long ago been deemed counter-productive to breed it out of them completely.
Nevertheless, Communications Fifth Rank Boyle was in too high spirits to allow for much in the way of dread. His formal posting to the Fomoria had been authorized that morning, and he had immediately informed his biological parents, as well as the other members of his state-administered crèche. Family life had altered greatly down the years since Diettinger’s parents had sent him off to academy, and Boyle’s line had not a hundredth of Diettinger’s own provenance as a Firstholder heir. Even so, Boyle had received over two dozen messages of congratulations and pride in his achievement. The Fomoria was a prestigious berth, and what his familial relations might, by comparison with Diettinger’s, lack in intimacy was more than compensated with by their enthusiasm.
Boyle had long since resigned himself to the status of Fifth Ranker. It was no dishonor, simply the reality of his genes. An act of heroism or some procedural innovation on his part would surely raise his rank, but he would always be stigmatized by his Genetic Preference Rating and Fertility codes. His services as a parent were by no means discouraged, but the Sauron gene pool would have to dwindle substantially before they would ever be in any great demand.
Boyle stiffened in his chair. That last thought had reminded him of something he’d forgotten to do.
One of Boyle’s genetic drawbacks was a memory which the Breedmasters had declared “less than acceptable” for higher command responsibilities. To overcome his problems with retention and organization, Boyle lived and died by the notes in his datapad daily planner, which device he consulted now.
When he had come aboard Fomoria with other survivors from the destroyed Leviathan during the battle at Tanith, it had been in the company of several Occupation Breedmasters and their stock of fertilized Sauron ova. This material had originally been destined for the wombs of Tanith’s human-norm females, once that planet had been captured. With Leviathan’s destruction, her part in that aspect of the battle plan had been canceled.
But all those ova are still in the Fomoria’s holds, Boyle realized. He had meant to have the materials down-shipped to Sauron, but could not remember if he’d done so.
He keyed up the date and “to-do” list. There it was:
Materials Log: 70 units/OBs/Bay Seven, Section A-19.
OBs were the Occupation Breedmasters, units were the number of suitcase-sized containers which held their caste’s peculiar weapons for the subjugation of conquered worlds, and the location note showed them secured deep within the best shielded area of the ship’s stores.
Boyle flagged the entry with a note to inform Diettinger or Second Rank Adame of the situation in the morning report.
The First Rank will find some place to put them...
In his cabin, Fleet First Rank Galen Diettinger, legally appointed Dictator of Sauron, lay on his cot beneath a dim light and turned a small packet end over end in his hands. It was a holo of his parents on their last anniversary, and it had arrived by special courier that morning. A claw from his trophy Grizzly was in a small packet with the image, and a note which read, in his mother’s handwriting: My son, we have always been proud of you. And in his father’s: Good Luck.
His father, he knew, did not believe in luck. Few Saurons did. And his parents’ use of the past tense told him that whe
n the first bombs fell on Sauron, the last Diettingers that had remained on the Homeworld would not hear them.
His home, built by Brennus Diettinger so long ago, would be quiet now, the rooms of the estate dark. His stolid Sauron Grizzly would still be standing watch over the polished brass telescope. When the first thermonuclear flash of heat and light coursed up the valley, it would pass through his mother’s Family Garden, up the wide back steps, through the stout halls of Sauron marble. The grizzly would disappear in an irradiated flurry of fur and scales, armature, bone and smoke, and the telescope would first quiver and then fluoresce in a shimmer of vaporizing metal. The doors would go next, the light and heat being absorbed by their black sheen in one radiant instant, to consume them in the next.
The blast wave would follow and, for all his visionary nature, no storm which old Brennus Diettinger had ever experienced, or even imagined, would have prepared him for building against this. The hill would be scoured clean of home, headstones, trees, grass, soil, stripped down to bedrock; everything disappearing in seconds . . .and that would be all.
As Dictator, of course, Diettinger could have had his parents brought aboard the Fomoria.
But to what purpose? There is no assurance that we will not be the first ship destroyed in the coming battle. No assurance that my battle plan will succeed or, if it does not, that my fail-safe plan will work, nor if it does, they would even wish to be here to see it.
He knew what his parents had wanted. They had chosen it even before summoning the courier for the holo. Floating in the microgravity of the chamber was the notification from the registrar of his parents’ district that he had been named legal inheritor of all title to the family estate and holdings. So had passed the last of the Diettingers on Sauron...
Diettinger rose and went to his desk, removing the datachip he had hidden there weeks ago. He put it on the table next to his computer panel, and signaled the bridge.
