Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “The analysts have different opinions. Some point to the constant menace of raiders along the edge of human-settled space and insist that the Colonial Militia intends to suppress the pirates. Others think that the strong anti-alien streak in colonial thought will manifest itself in genocide, attacks on the remaining Dragon worlds. And still others believe that the Fairfax Cluster intends to declare independence.”

  Glen listened as the facts and figures washed over his head. It did sound impressive, he had to admit – and it would be even more impressive to a civilian. But then, the TFN’s total hull numbers were also impressive, until one realised that they were rarely concentrated in one place. Even the climatic battles of the war hadn't absorbed more than thirty percent of the TFN. The Colonial Militia might be a formidable force if gathered together, but it was much less dangerous if it were spread out over dozens of light years.

  “I have a question,” Glen said, as Rogers paused for breath. “How many raider attacks have there been along the borderlines?”

  “There have been hundreds of reported attacks, ranging from lost starships to actual raids on planetary colonies,” Rogers said. “However, relatively few of those attacks have actually been verified by TFN personnel.”

  Governor Wu leaned forward. “And are these attacks a genuine threat?”

  “The Fairfax Cluster could take steps to minimise them,” Rogers said, simply. “We learned very quickly that convoys were almost always effective against pirates – or even light Dragon raiding squadrons. But the Colonial Militia rarely bothers to insist that shipping be convoyed, leaving escorts a matter of chance rather than careful planning. They also don't station starships in every threatened star system, even though they could.”

  Glen suspected that Rogers was deliberately minimising part of the truth. His brothers had forced a basic understanding of galactic economics into his head, including the economies of scale that were possible when large corporations handled interstellar shipping. Knight Corporation could afford to wait for a convoy, or even pay for the licences to arm their freighters. It wasn't an option for the smaller shipping companies, let alone an independent trader. They couldn't afford the penalties they would have to pay for delayed arrival, nor did they have the clout to avoid having such clauses inserted into their contracts.

  Nor could the TFN verify the attacks. As far as Glen knew, Dauntless would be the first TFN ship to visit the region for several years. Even during the final offensive, most of the fighting in the sector had been carried out by the Colonial Militia. The TFN hadn't wanted to divert starships when invading and occupying Sphere-Prime might have ended the war. From their point of view, the campaign had been an unnecessary diversion.

  But it might be months before anyone even knew that there had been an attack, he thought, grimly. Communications along the edge of explored space were always poor. The entire colony might be dead and no one would notice until a ship visited on a routine mission.

  He scowled at the thought. The Fairfax Cluster hadn't had an FTL network until the Federation had loaned them the relay stations, after the war. But it had provided yet another source of friction between the Federation and the Colonials. The Federation produced much of the entertainment, news broadcasts and everything else on the network – and charged a stiff fee for anyone who wanted to use it. In turn, the colonials preferred to rely on starships ... and besides, the network didn't reach everywhere. Most of the border had no relay stations at all.

  “So they prefer to leave the border undefended rather than take steps to deal with the situation.” Governor Wu said, with heavy satisfaction. “That is one matter I will deal with at once.”

  “You would need to call for escorts from the TFN,” Glen pointed out, before he could stop himself. He had a feeling that the Colonial Militia wouldn't be capable of meeting the Governor’s demands, no matter what it wanted to do. “It would certainly endear the Federation to them if we stopped the raider attacks.”

  “They have more than enough starships to handle a basic convoy system,” Rogers said. He clearly knew which side of the case to present. “All they need is a push.”

  Glen sighed, inwardly. At the very least, shipping times within the cluster would become much longer, doing untold economic damage. At worst, the colonials would see it as another sign of meddling by people who knew nothing of what was actually going on. And they would be right.

  “There are other issues,” Rogers continued. “For example, alien refugee camps have been largely starved of resources since the end of the war. The colonies have the responsibility for feeding the aliens, but they have been slacking off ...”

  “I have brought supplies for the camps,” Governor Wu interrupted. “It will make for a PR opportunity, if nothing else.”

  Glen stared at her. That was what was in the freighters? Supplies for the aliens?

  But the Governor was right. It would go down well on Earth. Humans supporting aliens who couldn't look after themselves; aliens who had already been liberated from the Dragons ... aliens who had been at the mercy of cruel humans unwilling to look past the hatreds of the war. And the colonies would be furious. Six freighters worth of food and supplies, brought all the way from Earth ... the costs would have been staggering, all for a PR stunt. It wouldn't just be the Fairfax Cluster that would be up in arms.

  Sighing inwardly, he settled back in his chair, mentally compiling his report to Admiral Patterson – and his brothers. The situation in the Cluster was quite bad enough without pouring fuel on the fire. Surely, there had to be something they could do ...

  Chapter Ten

  Susan MacDonald looked out over the refugee camp and knew despair.

  It had only been intended as a temporary settlement. The Dragons – and the aliens they had used as slaves – were not welcome on many worlds in the Fairfax Cluster. Moving them to Tyson’s Rest had seemed a solution to the problem of just what to do with the non-human refugees, at least until shipping could be arranged to their homeworlds. But the shipping had been delayed and the camp had grown and grown until it held upwards of four hundred thousand aliens, all crammed far too closely together.

  The local authorities had given the camp the bare minimum. A handful of prefabricated buildings, a couple of water and food processors ... and very little else. There were refugees suffering from medical conditions that could be treated easily, if the supplies had been made available ... but they were not. Every time Susan spoke to the local authorities, she was reminded that the planet’s human population didn't want the aliens anywhere near their territory. There were too many starving or suffering humans for anything to be spared for the aliens.

  She scowled as she caught sight of a handful of aliens making their slow way to the food tables. The Mice – as humans had come to call them – were largely harmless, barely able to lift a finger in their own defence. Unsurprisingly, the Dragons had simply overwhelmed them and then put the small aliens to work as slaves. They’d been victims, just as much as the humans who had also been enslaved, but most of the human race didn't care to recognise it. And their homeworld was a polluted cinder. They literally had nowhere to go.

  Shaking her head, she started to walk back to her tent. There, she could write yet another missive to the Refugee Commission, although she had a sneaking suspicion that it would be useless. The Fairfax Cluster didn't give a shit about the alien refugees and the Federation had too much else to worry about in the aftermath of the war. Even the Liberal-Progressives understood that it would be electoral suicide to care too much about aliens, even though the Mice had been slaves until the Federation had liberated them. There would be little additional help forthcoming, no matter what she said ...

  She ran through the calculations as she walked. No matter what she did, they would have to cut rations again by the end of the week. There just weren’t enough supplies for everyone in the refugee camp. And they were running short of everything else too, from firewood to bedding. The local authorities had even h
ad the nerve to file an environmental impact statement and demand compensation from the Refugee Commission. If it wasn't the only environmental impact statement filed in the entire cluster, Susan would eat her hat.

  Her tent was the only place in the camp she could be assured of some privacy – and only then when the rest of her staff were absent. She sagged the moment she closed the flap behind her, fighting down a tidal wave of despair that threatened to overwhelm her. Her staff, such as they were, were just as badly affected. She’d seen half of them leave, unable to bear it any longer. And the remainder were cracking too.

  Damn them, she thought, as she sat down at the desk. Damn them all.

  ***

  Lieutenant Tobias Jackson sat in his command chair, such as it was, and studied the near-orbit display. There was little in orbit, apart from a handful of satellites and automated weapons platforms intended to deter pirates. Tyson’s Rest wasn’t an industrial powerhouse and was unlikely to become one, not after the Dragons had savaged the original settlers and forced them to take in refugees just to ensure that their planet remained viable. It would be decades before the planet recovered from the war.

  The single manned orbital weapons platform was tiny, compared to the giant battlestations that guarded Earth or the other Core Worlds. Tobias had no illusions about the relative importance of Tyson’s Rest or the reason he’d been assigned to the insignificant world. The Colonial Militia was not a great believer in spit and polish, but it did have its standards and Tobias had offended against them. If he hadn't had an excellent combat record, he suspected that he would have been dismissed rather than exiled. But Tyson’s Rest wasn't that bad a place to defend, he had to admit. And the handful of local-born crewmen were shaping up nicely ...

  He leaned forward as an alarm shrilled. Tyson’s Rest saw almost no traffic, apart from a handful of freighters and a warship or two every month. The planet had little to offer the Fairfax Cluster, let alone the rest of the galaxy. Hell, its farms hadn’t recovered from the occupation or the damage the Dragons had inflicted before they abandoned the world. But now ... nine portals opened in quick succession, disgorging a handful of warships. Their IFFs read out as Colonial Militia, but Tobias felt a thrill of alarm as he studied their deployment. It wasn't like the Militia to fly in such a tight formation ...

  “Sound the alert,” he ordered. Maybe he was overreacting, but his senses were telling him that something was badly wrong. “Tell the planet to raise the alarm ...”

  Red lights lit up on his console as the enemy targeting sensors came online, sweeping through space and locking onto the orbital weapons platforms. Tobias swore out loud, then hit the emergency alert, flash-waking his defences. He’d kept everything stepped down to ensure that the equipment’s lifespan was prolonged as much as possible, but right now that was starting to look like a mistake. His targeting sensors came to life, too late. The newcomers were already opening fire, unleashing a spread of missiles towards the automated platform.

  “Send an emergency distress signal, then trigger a core dump,” he ordered, tightly. The platform would not stand up to the incoming fire. There was no time to abandon the platform and hope that the enemy didn't pick off the lifepods before they could descend into the planet’s atmosphere. “And then ...”

  The missiles struck home and the world vanished in a blinding flash of light.

  ***

  “All targets destroyed, sir,” Dana reported.

  Jason allowed himself a tight smile as Havoc entered planetary orbit. He'd worried about just what sort of defences were in place above Tyson’s Rest – and about how reliable some of the newer crewmen might be – but it seemed that their intelligence had been right on the money. The orbital weapons platform hadn't managed to get a single shot off before it had been destroyed; it hadn't even activated its point defence. Such carelessness deserved it’s just reward.

  “Good,” he said. “Lock weapons on the designated list of targets.”

  There was a long pause as Dana compared the list of targets to reality. They’d drawn up a list of potential targets, but their intelligence on Tyson’s Rest might have been unreliable. But it seemed that everything was as precise as he’d dared to hope. The targeting list – the spaceport, the government installations, the food stores, the power plants, the radio stations – were ready and waiting to be hit. There were no PDCs that might force his ships away from the planet.

  “Weapons locked,” Dana said. “Ready to fire.”

  Jason reached down and placed his hand on his pistol. Most of his crew would do anything for money, but he wasn't sure how far he could trust the newcomers. They might balk at mass slaughter of humans, even if they would gladly scorch an alien homeworld and then piss on the ashes. And if someone did decide to refuse his authority, they would have to be shot before they could infect others. The last thing he needed was a mutiny on his command deck.

  “Fire,” he ordered.

  Havoc had originally been built to serve in the Federation Navy prior to the actual outbreak of war. Oddly, she’d had few ship-to-ship weapons at the time; she’d been configured to drop KEWs on planet-side targets. Reading between the lines, Jason suspected that the design had actually been intended to stamp the Federation’s authority onto rebellious worlds; the Colonial Militia might have modified the ship to carry modern weapons, but they’d left the KEW racks in place. What had been intended for deployment in support of the liberation of the occupied worlds would now be turned against them.

  He watched, keeping one eye on his bridge crew, as the KEWs fell through the planet’s atmosphere and struck their targets. There were no forcefields protecting the installations, no point defence to break up or deflect the projectiles before it was too late. One by one, the targets were smashed flat, shattering any hope of ground-side resistance. They would never be able to coordinate a response.

  But we’re not here to occupy the world, he thought, coldly. There had been cases of pirates taking entire worlds and declaring themselves independent warlords, but the Federation Navy or the Colonial Militia usually made short work of them. Once, of course, they knew that there was a problem they had to tackle. We’re just here to make a mess.

  “Deploy the troops,” he ordered, calmly. No one seemed to have any objections to bombarding the planet – or, if they had, they'd kept them to themselves. “I want those aliens dead.”

  “Aye, sir,” Dana said. “The shuttles are on their way.”

  ***

  Susan felt the ground shake and stood up, puzzled. Her communicator, linking her to the planetary communications network, let out a squeal and then fell silent. Puzzled, she walked out of the tent and looked to the north. A giant plume of smoke was rising up into the air. If she recalled correctly, she realised, there was a military base in that direction. The local government had made it clear that their soldiers would be keeping an eye on the aliens and wouldn't hesitate to intervene if the shit hit the fan. Susan remembered thinking that the aliens were unlikely to cause trouble – and that maintaining the garrison was a cost the planetary government could ill afford. Now ...

  She looked up as she heard the screech of assault shuttles passing through the air. Four heavy-lift shuttles passed directly overhead, releasing a swarm of armoured men who dropped down to the ground and landed directly outside the refugee camp. Susan stared in disbelief, then horror, as the intruders lifted their weapons and opened fire. Bolts of brilliant white light tore through the aliens, ripping their bodies to sheds. It was a massacre. Even if the Mice had been as violent and aggressive as humans – or Dragons – they wouldn't have been able to crack the armoured combat suits with their bare hands. The local government might believe that everyone had the right to bear arms, but it had been made clear to her that right only extended to humans. There were no weapons in the camp at all.

  Susan threw herself to the ground as weapons fire flashed over her head, setting fire to the tent behind her. Desperately, she started to crawl away, hoping t
o reach the edge of the camp and escape into the countryside. The sound of alien throats screaming died away as the intruders completed their task; Susan glanced back and saw the armoured figures carefully making their way through the remains of the camp, blasting alien bodies just to make sure they were dead. She felt sick and helpless as she realised just how much the intruders hated aliens, just how determined they were to make sure that they wiped out the entire camp. The prefabricated buildings she’d had to argue for hours to obtain were forced open and searched, her handful of staff forced out into the open. She tried to crawl faster, but it was too late. An armoured figure came after her, picked her up effortlessly and carried her back towards the centre of the camp.

  It was a scene from hell. Alien bodies lay everywhere, leaking eerie green blood on the ground. Some were still twitching, but she suspected that they were all dead. The alien biology was not fully understood, yet it seemed impossible that anything could survive a direct hit from a plasma weapon. Humans had been known to expire from a glancing blow, simply through shock.

  She looked up at her captor as she was thrust to the ground and wondered, vaguely, just what would happen to them. Rape? Death? Or would they be left alone, in the midst of the graveyard their camp had become. Clarissa, the youngest of her staff, cried out as her clothes were pulled from her body, ripped away with armoured strength. Susan braced herself as best as she could for the ordeal she knew was coming, but nothing happened. Clarissa was allowed to sink to the ground and cover herself as best she could.