Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  Glen frowned as his implant received a file. Quickly, he reviewed it; Dauntless was a fine ship, but she was too impressive a command for a fresh Captain, no matter how impressive his career. A number of young officers had succeeded to command after their seniors had been killed – and had been allowed to remain in command – but that had been during the war. Now, with promotions slowed down to a glacial pace, he knew that too many people would assume that favouritism had played a role in his promotion. And, given Admiral Patterson’s former position, it was almost certain that it had.

  He fought to keep his face expressionless, despite his mounting dismay. No one would question his assignment to a destroyer, a light cruiser or even an escort carrier. But a heavy cruiser was too much. Even if his war record had been staggeringly impressive – and he knew that it wasn't that impressive – it would stink like Limburger. Or the interior of a Dragon starship.

  His mind raced as he considered options. He could refuse the command ... and his refusal would be honoured, at the price of never being offered command again. The Navy would not question the judgement of an officer who felt himself unsuited to command. Indeed, it would ensure that such an officer spent the rest of his career somewhere he could do no harm. All he could do was accept the command and try to make the best of it.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, finally.

  The Admiral reached into his desk and produced a small black box, which he passed to Glen. Glen took it and opened it to see a tiny golden starship, representing a starship command. He couldn't help feeling a frisson of excitement as he pulled it loose, removed his silver XO badge from his collar and pinned the golden starship into place. No one, but starship commanders wore golden starships. It was the badge of command.

  “Congratulations, Captain,” Admiral Patterson said. He sounded like he meant every word, the bastard. “But I'm afraid that your shakedown cruise will be no picnic.”

  He must have sent a command into the room’s processor, for a giant holographic starchart appeared in front of them, centred on Earth. Hundreds of tactical icons, representing Planetary Defence Centres, Orbital Weapons Platforms and Home Fleet itself danced around Sol; even now, with defence budgets being cut, the Federation had no intention of reducing the vast amount of firepower assigned to protecting Earth. The Battle of Wolf 359 had only been eight light years from Sol. To civilians, that was an insurmountable distance; naval crewmen knew better.

  The starchart moved, focusing on the former Occupied Zone. “As you know,” the Admiral said, “the Dragons cut off access to the Fairfax Cluster for most of the war. The colonies on the other side of the Great Wall were forced to defend themselves. It has united them, but also bred an independence of mind that now threatens the stability of the Federation. This situation cannot be tolerated.”

  Glen scowled. Normal space might be placid, but hyperspace definitely wasn’t – and the Great Wall, a hyperspace storm that raged through the alternate dimension, was almost completely impassable. The only place where a starship could travel safely through the Great Wall was the Bottleneck, a gap in the storm that allowed safe passage. Normally, a storm could be circumvented. The Great Wall was so vast that circumventing it would take months of travel through hyperspace. Once the Dragons had blocked access to the Bottleneck, the colonies had been completely isolated. It had been sheer luck that they’d been left alone long enough to build up their own defences.

  “The situation is worse than you might think,” the Admiral said, breaking into Glen’s thoughts. “There are hundreds of millions of refugees, to say nothing of Dragons awaiting transport back to their homeworlds. The colonials are ... not too happy about keeping them anywhere near their own homeworlds, let alone the cost of feeding and accommodating them.”

  “Understandable,” Glen said. He’d fought the Dragons long enough to know that he didn't trust them – and that he would never trust them. Their whole society was based around the concept of might making right. They might not spend time whining about how unfair the universe was, but they would spend time trying to reverse the judgement of the war. “They would represent a potential danger.”

  “Not all of them are Dragons,” the Admiral said. “And, in any case, the Federation has decreed that local governments are responsible for the care and maintenance of the alien refugees until a more permanent settlement can be finalised.”

  He cleared his throat, loudly. “You’ll get a more detailed briefing later, but the essential point is that the Federation wishes to reassert its authority throughout the Fairfax Cluster. The alien refugees might have caught the imagination of many factions on Earth – the Liberal-Progressives in particular – but there are many other problematic areas. Tax, the unified Federation law code, the debts owed to founding corporations ... even question marks over the Exile Code. And the Colonial Militia is still building itself up into a formidable fighting force.”

  They have always been formidable, Glen thought. If nothing else, they had forced the Dragons to commit a whole fleet to attacking the Fairfax Cluster. And, despite that, the Dragons had never succeeded in crushing the colonials. By the time the blockade had been broken, the colonials had actually been going on the offensive.

  But he could see the Admiral’s point. If the Colonial Militia was still being built up, it raised a single obvious question. Why?

  “Your task is to lay the groundwork for the full resumption of the Federation’s authority,” the Admiral said. “You will transport the Governor to the Fairfax Cluster, where she will start tying the Colonials back into the Federation, then start patrolling the sector and dealing with issues as they arrive.”

  Glen nodded, wordlessly. The orders were vague, but that was to be expected. Even FTL communications would take up to a week to travel from Earth to the Bottleneck, then into the Fairfax Cluster. By the time he sent a briefing to his superiors and requested orders, the situation would have become much worse. It was why commanding officers had broad latitude to interpret their orders.

  The Admiral stood. “Good luck, Captain,” he said. “And may God go with you.”

  Glen saluted, then walked out of the compartment. A message blinked into his implants as soon as he was outside, inviting him to lunch. Somehow, he wasn't surprised that the message had entered the secure naval datanet – or by the identity of the sender.

  “Captain,” Captain Desjardins greeted him. His promotion hadn't gone unnoticed. “Do you require transport to your new command?”

  Glen shook his head. “I seem to have a date in Armstrong City,” he said. He was tempted to ignore the invitation, but he had a feeling it would be better to meet with his brother sooner rather than later. The other reason he might have been offered the command was someone pulling strings behind the scenes. “I’ll pick up a shuttle afterwards.”

  He gritted his teeth as he headed for the tube. He’d spent years trying to escape his family, yet somehow they always dragged him back. And now they’d given him one hell of a poisoned chalice.

  Bastards, he thought.

  Chapter Two

  Armstrong City had been evacuated during the early years of the war – the giant domes were hideously vulnerable to enemy missiles – but after the war front had been pushed hundreds of light years from Earth the population had been allowed to return to their homes, where they could resume their normal lives. Glen couldn't help finding something vaguely surreal in the scene as he walked through the streets towards the Grand Hotel; the legacy of the war was far from over and yet the civilians seemed to have forgotten all about it. But then, apart from taxes and conscription, what had the population of Earth really endured?

  He frowned as he caught sight of a demonstration outside Luna House and altered his course to evade it. A quick scan of the local news while he was on the tube had told him that the Humanists were holding a protest against the internment of alien refugees on the colony worlds, demanding that they be allowed to return to their homeworlds at once or be granted citizenship on hu
man worlds. The former was often impossible – the Dragons had badly damaged most of the worlds they had occupied – while the latter would not go down well with the colonials who lived there. They wanted to be rid of the aliens as soon as possible.

  Earth doesn't have a large alien population, he thought, as he reached the hotel. They have no idea what it might mean to grant those alien refugees the vote.

  The hotel’s security staff examined him thoroughly, then escorted him into the elevator and guided him to the tenth floor. Glen rolled his eyes; his brothers had always been a little paranoid, not without reason. They had enemies who might happily spy on their talks in hopes of snatching a brief advantage – or maybe even try to assassinate them. Given how many problems Knight Corporation had had when Glen’s father had died, it would surely seem a worthwhile gamble. And none of the next generation of the family were ready to take the helm.

  There was a second check when he stepped out of the elevator. Glen waited impatiently – one of the reasons the Grand Hotel was so expensive was that private security teams were allowed to take over entire floors for themselves – until they were done, then rolled his eyes as his brother’s secretary opened the door and announced him as grandly as if he were being presented to a king. His brothers were powerful, Glen knew, but they were far from all-powerful. If they disagreed on something major, it could easily rip the corporation apart.

  “Glen,” Theodore Knight said. He was tall and thin, with gimlet eyes and a willingness to do whatever it took to keep the corporation going. “Welcome.”

  Glen nodded. His elder brother had always talked as though he had a stick up his ass and it was too much to expect him to have changed, even though they hadn't seen each other for three years. The war had taken him away from Earth, after all. No doubt the family's influence could have pushed him into a nice safe posting at the rear, but Glen hadn't wanted to ask for anything. He'd spent too long trying to escape his family.

  “Glen,” David Knight said. He looked like a fatter clone of Theodore, his elder brother. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “And you,” Glen said, not entirely untruthfully. David had no imagination, but he did have a mind like a steel trap and an eye for spotting places where savings could be made. Glen had once called him a natural-born bureaucrat and David had thought it a compliment. “I trust that you had a pleasant flight?”

  His elder brothers nodded in unison. They had a whole fleet of personal starships; if necessary, they could have bankrolled a small military force out of pocket change. It wouldn't have been difficult for them to reach Luna; indeed, the fact that both of them had come suggested that this was quite important to the family. Glen felt a chill running down his spine. They might just have thought they were doing him a favour by leaning on the Admiral so that Glen would be promoted, but their presence here suggested a deeper motive.

  “I’m glad to see it,” Glen said. He sat down and crossed his legs. “I’m afraid I don’t have much time before I have to board my new command, so ...”

  “We’ll get right to the point,” Theodore said, gruffly. “It is time for you to do your duty by the family.”

  Glen scowled at his brother’s pompous tone. He'd been four years old when their father had died, which had largely excluded him from the desperate struggle to prevent Knight Corporation from fragmenting. But he’d found their quiet talks boring; going into the Navy had seemed the perfect way to evade a corporate desk job for himself. And besides, it was good for the family’s reputation to have a young man on the front lines.

  “You don't need me,” he said, feeling a hint of the old sullenness that had always pervaded his relationship with his elder brother. Theodore had tried to take their father’s place and hadn't entirely succeeded. “There isn't anything I can get you that you can't get for yourself.”

  Theodore took a long breath. “It was the family's wealth and influence that ensured that you were accepted into the Luna Academy,” he said. “It was the family’s wealth and influence that smoothed your path to higher rank. It was the family’s ...”

  “I know,” Glen snapped, feeling like an angry teenager again. “And so does everyone else.”

  His brothers had insisted that he go into the Luna Academy – there was no way they would let him be an ordinary crewman – but he’d hoped that he’d passed the exams on his own. The illusion had only been dispelled when he’d glanced at his own file, which had made it clear that he hadn't reached the score required to enter without outside patrons. And, now that he’d been given a heavy cruiser with almost no command experience at all, people would know that he had patrons.

  “And you must serve the family’s interests in response,” Theodore continued, relentlessly. “We did not pull the strings to assign you to the Fairfax Cluster out of the goodness of our own hearts.”

  “Of course not,” Glen said, rudely. “If you had any goodness in your heart, you had it cut out of you long ago.”

  Theodore ignored the jibe. “You are aware, no doubt, that the colonials are attempting to make their semi-independence stick,” he said, roughly. “We cannot allow them to declare independence and leave the Federation.”

  “What Ted is trying to say,” David injected helpfully, “is that we have strong interests in preventing the colonials from declaring independence.”

  Glen looked from one brother to the other, then met Theodore’s eyes. “Why do you care?”

  “That is remarkably naive of you,” Theodore sneered. “There is a vast amount of money bound up in the colonies – and not just those behind the Great Wall. Should they start declaring independence, that money will vanish into nothingness. The domino effect will then damage hundreds of corporations, including ours.”

  “I see,” Glen said, slowly.

  Knight Corporation wasn't the biggest corporation in the Federation, but it had interests everywhere, primarily concentrated in shipbuilding and shipping, heavy industries and colonial settlement. Theodore was a pain in the ass, yet Glen had to admit that his brother had managed to save the corporation and then expand its facilities to supply the Federation’s war machine with everything from starships to energy cells for hand pistols. But now that the war was over, those contracts were threatening to dry up.

  No, he thought. They will be drying up.

  “There will be a general election in a year,” Theodore continued, his tone returning to normal. “If the Colonials become independent, it will certainly give the Nationalist Faction a boost and do untold damage to the Federalists, perhaps even the Conservatives. We must do whatever we can to prevent that from taking place.”

  Glen tried to have as little to do with politics as he could, but he understood what his brother was saying. The Federation was not a homogenous entity. A large number of worlds, even small colonies, declaring independence would threaten the integrity of the entire union. The larger multi-star political groupings might be tempted to follow in their footsteps, placing their interests ahead of humanity as a whole. It had been those interests that had prevented a robust response to the Dragons when they had started their provocations along the border, back before the war had begun.

  And if that happened, he asked himself, what would happen to Knight Corporation?

  It was difficult to say. If the Federation collapsed completely, the corporation – and most of the other interstellar corporations – would certainly be badly damaged, if their properties weren't seized by the nationalist states and put to use elsewhere. Even if there were no further departures from the Federation, there would still be a staggering amount of money vanishing into thin air. He could understand, even though he didn't want to admit it, why Theodore was so concerned. But his brothers had to understand that there were limits.

  “I’m a Captain, commander of a single starship,” he said, keeping his voice level. “What – exactly – do you expect me to do about this situation?”

  There was a knock at the door. It opened to reveal a young woman pushing a tro
lley in front of her. Glen felt his stomach rumble as he smelt food, although he had never quite seen the appeal in the expensive foodstuffs his brothers devoured. It was a display of conspicuous consumption that had bothered him even before he’d visited worlds that were literally starving to death, thanks to the Dragons. The woman carefully unloaded the trolley onto the table – her short skirt revealed that she was wearing no underwear – and then departed as soundlessly as she’d come.

  Glen rolled his eyes as the door closed behind her. Theodore had no interest in his life, apart from the acquisition and wielding of corporate power; David simply didn't have the imagination to be interested in anyone other than his wife. Both brothers ignored the food, choosing instead to talk to the youngest brother. Glen stood, walked over to the table, and took a slice of bread and meat. It would probably have upset them to realise that something very similar could be bought for under a dollar or two, only a few metres from the hotel.

  “The Governor – who will be travelling on your starship – is one of our placemen,” Theodore informed him. His gaze followed Glen as he filled his plate. “Chandra Wu has a long career behind her, one where she has satisfied both the demands of her posts and those of her patrons. We expect that she will succeed in bringing the colonials back into the fold.”