Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “The Great Wall doesn't block access from the Draconic Empire,” Sandy continued. “So when the Dragons thrust into the Federation, they also attacked the edge of the Fairfax Cluster and blocked access to the Core Worlds. You probably know how the colonies organised themselves and continued to fight.”

  “And held the Dragons off long enough for the Federation to fight its way back to the Bottleneck,” Glen said. Not for the first time, he cursed the Great Wall. If the Federation had known that the colonies had survived, the TFN might have launched the relief mission sooner, ensuring that the colonies were more grateful to their rescuers. “I know that part of the story.”

  Sandy nodded. “Well, the Bottleneck Republic sent ships and crew to the Federation, such as myself” – she waved a hand towards her chest – “to ensure that they were in on the kill. And they launched raids into Draconic space as the final invasion began, helping to draw ships and defences away from the advancing Federation Navy. But they weren't inclined to just subordinate themselves to the Federation after being abandoned.”

  She took a breath. “You grew up in the Core Worlds, so you may not understand just how much damage the Dragons did to the colonies,” she explained. “They butchered hundreds of thousands when they invaded planets, enslaved thousands upon thousands of our people, moved in millions of conscript workers and forced us to fight like mad bastards to keep them away from Fairfax and the other makeshift industrial nodes. I was there when civilian freighter crews took bulk freighters with bolted-on weapons into the fires of battle, just to buy time. They all died just to win us a few more months of freedom.

  “Even now, the war is still underway. There are rogue starships hitting our convoys, enemy soldiers still fighting on liberated worlds and hundreds of millions of refugees. The Federation may have declared peace and started to demobilise; the colonies do not have that luxury. There isn't a single person in the Core who hates the Dragons with the intensity of the colonies. None of us are prepared to consider the Dragons as anything other than the enemy. Nor are we prepared to sacrifice to suit some Federation bureaucrat’s idea of how the universe should be run.”

  Glen took a guess. “Citizenship for alien refugees?”

  Sandy nodded, reluctantly. “I won’t deny that there were aliens who fought beside us,” she said. “And they were rewarded for their bravery. They have been offered citizenship. But I do not believe that anyone in the Republic would freely grant citizenship to any non-human who hadn't fought beside us – and certainly not the Dragons. We want them off our worlds, now.”

  “Back to homeworlds that may not even exist any longer,” Glen mused. The Dragons had occupied and settled at least a dozen alien homeworlds, scattering their former alien populations throughout their empire as slave labour. By the time the TFN had liberated the alien worlds, most of them had been completely wrecked. The Dragons had clearly never bought into the belief that their conquests should be protected, or their subjects treated with anything resembling human dignity. But then, the slaves had been treated well by their standards.

  Glen had read papers produced by sociologists who had studied the Dragons after the war, when it was fairly safe to travel to occupied worlds. Most of them had tried to excuse the atrocities, or at least blame them on the Emperor and his cronies, but a handful had been more honest and pointed to their evolutionary history. Compared to Earth, Sphere-Prime had been a desert. It hadn't been until the Dragons had reached interstellar space that they’d discovered planets that were far more habitable than Sphere-Prime. They hadn't bothered to waste time coming up with inventive justifications for conquest. They’d just snatched, like kids in a candy store.

  And it had worked well for them until they had run into humanity.

  “There are other issues,” Sandy said. “The Federation has become more ... controlling as it struggled to fight the war. We don’t like that very much. It’s a matter of some pride that we are more diverse than the Federation, even though the Federation has many more planets under its banner. You won't find any support for extending Federation tax codes to the Fairfax Cluster or even any form of interstellar jurisdiction. We have our laws and we live by them.”

  She shrugged. “I won't say that the Bottleneck Republic is perfect, because it isn't,” she added. “We do have problems with aliens. And some of our cultures are far from free. And many of us are paranoid about any form of central authority. I sometimes think that the only thing that keeps the Bottleneck Republic going is a shared consensus that it should exist.”

  Her voice hardened. “But the Governor is dreaming if she expects us to just bend over and spread them for her.”

  Glen frowned. “I have a lot to think about,” he said. If Sandy was right, the entire situation was massively unstable. Perhaps the best solution would be to invite the Bottleneck Republic to join the Federation as another semi-autonomous nationalistic bloc. It might not quite qualify by the standard rules, but they had been stretched before.

  He looked down at his terminal as a message blinked up. “And the Governor wants to hold a party.”

  Sandy snorted. “Who does she think will come?”

  Glen fought the urge to laugh. “The senior crew,” he said, seeing the invitation. Governor Wu’s staff had clearly not realised that they had to check with the Captain or XO before sending out invitations. “And it looks like we can’t get out of it.”

  He smiled at her expression. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We survived the Dragons. We can certainly survive Governor Wu.”

  Sandy snorted again. “Really? And are we allowed to open fire on the Governor?”

  “I think the rules of engagement forbid it,” Glen said. At least Luna HQ hadn't rewritten the ROE yet, although with the Federation slowly returning to a peacetime structure it was probably only a matter of time. “But perhaps we’ll learn more from her over the dinner table.”

  By the look on Sandy’s face, she wasn't convinced. Neither was Glen.

  Chapter Seven

  Sandy had been more than a little disconcerted to discover that Governor Wu’s staff had effectively taken over the conference room. She wouldn't have objected – the compartment was rarely used while the starship was in hyperspace – but her staff should have asked her first in her role as XO. Instead, they’d just moved in and started to decorate it for the Governor’s dinner party. The cooks in the galley had not been pleased when the staff had asked to borrow their equipment too.

  But she had to admit that staff had made the strictly-functional compartment look good. The table had been covered with a golden cloth, fine cutlery and glasses had been laid out, and the chairs had been decorated. Governor Wu herself stood at one end of the table, welcoming guests as they stepped into the conference room; she’d apparently taken the Captain’s chair for her own use. Sandy couldn't decide if that was a deliberate insult or simple ignorance on her part. The Captain, who was engaged in polite small talk with one of her staff, showed no visible reaction, but Sandy was sure that he was annoyed.

  “Please, be seated,” Governor Wu said. Her voice rang out through the small compartment, inviting the senior crew and her staffers to the table. Sandy had heard some grumbling, but none of the officers had declined the invitation. It wouldn't have been politic. “My staff have worked hard to prepare our dinner.”

  Sandy could well believe it. The TFN took good care of its officers and crewmen, but the general attitude to food production was to prepare as much of it as possible, rather than worrying about taste or fancy ingredients. Complaints about the food were just another naval tradition, older than most. The Governor’s staff, on the other hand, seemed determined to produce a meal that both looked and tasted good. Sandy suspected that the whole process was inefficient, but she had to admit that it had its uses. The trolley the staff wheeled in looked both decorative and functional.

  “The wine is the finest from New Avalon,” Governor Wu explained, as her staff poured glasses and served the food. “I’m n
ot much of a wine snob, but I have been told that this particular brand goes well with lamb cutlets.”

  Sandy wanted to roll her eyes. A bottle of fancy wine from New Avalon cost about as much as a Commander earned in a year. The Governor was either showing off her wealth or her political connections. Carefully, Sandy lifted her glass and took a sip. It tasted weaker than she’d expected, but then her experience with wine was limited. Her father had told her, more than once, that her grandfather had been a drunkard and that she was not going to go the same way. The teenage Sandy had resented it terribly; now, as a disciplined naval officer, she understood what he’d meant. But it left her ill-prepared to comment on the wine.

  She turned her attention to the plate of lamb that had been placed in front of her. Real meat had been staggeringly expensive during the war, although she wasn't sure why. Like quite a few other economic puzzles, it had probably been caused by the distortion introduced by the war as the economy had been switched over to war production. Artificial pod-grown meat had been far cheaper for most families, even in the colonies. But there was always something not quite right about it. Real meat tasted much better.

  “Tell me,” Feingold said, after taking a bite of his food. His voice was bland, but Sandy detected a hint of mischief in his tone. “Do you believe that feeding us up will win you supporters?”

  The Governor’s face didn't change, but her assistant looked as if he were about to have a heart attack. No doubt no one had ever cheeked his employer quite so comprehensively, even if Feingold did have a reputation for being an unsophisticated colonial. Sandy concealed her own amusement behind a facade of blandness and waited to see how the Governor would respond. She was actually mildly surprised that Feingold had been invited at all.

  “I believe that good food should be shared to be enjoyed properly,” the Governor said. Her lips curved into a smile that didn't reach her eyes. “But if you want to support me, please feel free.”

  Feingold smiled – an open genuine smile – back at her. “I’m afraid I cannot be bought so easily,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “Not when the price would include the virtual slavery of my people.”

  The Governor’s smile slowly faded away. “The Federation has no intention of enslaving your people,” she said. “We are not the Dragons. We merely intend to ensure that everyone follows the same laws, laws which your people often flout.”

  “But forcing your laws on us is a form of slavery,” Feingold said. “We had no say in the formulation of those laws – nor would we have much say in future, if we became good little Federation members. You are expecting us to trust to your good nature and many of us believe that you have no good nature.”

  “The Federation is a democracy,” the Governor said. “The will of the majority is paramount.”

  Feingold snorted. “Does history record a case where the majority was actually right?”

  The Governor considered it. “A majority of the Federation Senate agreed to treat aliens behind our lines as refugees, even to consider granting them local citizenship,” she said, finally. “The alternative is either treating them as a permanently disenfranchised community or genocide, slaughtering each and every one of them. Was that the wrong choice?”

  “I looked up the voting records,” Feingold said. “There was an interesting pattern in the votes, Governor. The Senators that voted in favour were almost all Senators from the Core Worlds, where there are very few alien refugees. They are not responsible for dealing with the problems caused by implementing the decision.”

  “Greenway voted in favour,” the Governor said, immediately.

  “Greenway is unique,” Feingold said. “None of the other colonies voted in favour.”

  Sandy scowled, inwardly. Greenway had been occupied by the Dragons, who had dumped a large population of non-human slaves on the planet. The slaves had been rebellious and many of them had joined up with the human resistance, fighting savagely to keep the Dragons from overrunning the entire planet. By the time the war had come to an end, genuine bonds of friendship had been formed between humans and aliens and thousands of others had come to Greenway to settle permanently.

  But there hadn't been many other worlds where humans and aliens had fought side by side.

  “That is the core of our problem with you,” Feingold pressed. “You have made a decision that will affect our lives badly and then demanded that we embrace it, even though we know that the decision is not in our best interests. And that is slavery.”

  “We all have to make sacrifices,” the Governor snapped. For the first time, there was a hint of anger in her tone. “My own homeworld paid over sixty percent of its GPP to help fund the Federation Navy. Right now, the aftermath of the war is causing no small amount of hardship. Companies are downsizing, workers are finding themselves out of work and there’s a labour glut on the market. Or do you think that just because they were never attacked the Core Worlds didn't suffer?”

  “There's a difference between paying taxes, no matter how high, and fighting desperately to preserve something of your way of life,” Feingold pointed out. “And all of your unemployed can be fed by your social security networks. That isn't an option in the colonies.”

  He took a breath. “But that isn't our only problem with you,” he added. “You want us to comply with all of your regulations. Some of them are sensible, sensible enough that they will be added to our own laws sooner or later. Others are designed to benefit the big interstellar shipping corporations, rather than our own people. And the reason they are designed that way is because the corporations have too much influence in the Federation government.”

  Sandy saw the Captain wince and felt a moment of sympathy. She’d looked up his family and confirmed that they did run Knight Corporation, but the Captain’s record indicated someone who had been trying to escape his family's influence. Sandy could understand that; God knew she wouldn't have transferred to the Federation Navy if she hadn't been trying to escape her father’s shadow.

  But she also knew that Feingold had a point. The shipping rules and regulations, enforced by the Federation, were only a minor inconvenience to the big corporations, but they could be fatal to a small operation. It didn't help that shipping rates had been laid down by the Federation during the war – and no one had yet moved to unlock them – or that the bigger corporations used semi-legal syndicates to keep the independent shippers out of the biggest markets. The colonies were where the independent shippers flourished and few of them were keen to embrace the Federation’s all-consuming way of doing things. Why should they when the regulations had driven so many of them out of work?

  “Those regulations were voted into existence by the vast majority of the Federation ...”

  “Only in numbers,” Feingold interrupted. “You see, your Core Worlds all have vast populations, which gives them vast clout. We would vanish into the Federation if we joined, becoming nothing more than tiny worlds for you to exploit.”

  “You are already part of the Federation,” Governor Wu said, coldly. “The Federation exists to give humanity a united government. You are human and thus you are part of the Federation.”

  “That’s funny,” Feingold observed, lightly. “We never signed the treaty.”

  “The Federation would defend you if you came under attack,” Governor Wu pointed out, coldly. “We would do that because you are human.”

  “But you haven’t been defending us,” Feingold snapped. He didn't bother to try to hide his anger any longer. “Right now, the situation along the border is chaos. Our worlds are being attacked and raided, the refugee camps are unstable and we fear that independent Dragon warlords might be planning a resumption of the war. We have even swallowed our pride and asked for assistance from the Federation Navy. And what have you sent us?”

  He waved a hand around, indicating the bulkheads. “One ship.”

  Sandy winced inwardly. She loved Dauntless, particularly now that they had worked out all the bugs and replaced the unsuit
able components, but she knew that Feingold was right. One ship could only be in one place at one time. Dauntless might be able to deter pirate activity in one star system, but she wouldn't be able to deter it in another star system. The only way to deal with pirates and raiders was to flood the threatened systems with light warships, start a convoy system and hunt down their bases as ruthlessly as possible. And, with the TFN rapidly demobilising, it was unlikely that the light units required for such an operation could be spared.

  And they’d be on the other side of the Bottleneck, she thought, grimly. That’s enough to give any strategic planner nightmares.

  The thought was a bitter one, but it had to be faced. There was no way to beam a signal through the Great Wall, which meant that any signals from Earth to Fairfax had to go through the chain of relay stations in the Bottleneck. A handful of destroyed relay stations would make it impossible to summon those starships back in a hurry, if there was a crisis in the Core Worlds ... and the Dragons had shown just how easy it was to cut the Bottleneck Republic off from the Federation. The Dragons might no longer be a threat – although Sandy tended to agree that some Dragon warlords might not accept the end of the war so tamely – but there were other dangers out in interstellar space.