Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

  Lived after invoking a near-forbidden article and forcing an embarrassing retreat. Men had been executed for less. Men had deserved execution for less.

  The guards led him through four separate checkpoints. Dennison’s trip home had been spent in near silence, with sparse communications, so Dennison knew little of Varion’s conquests during the last week. However, considering the events aboard the Stormwind, the extra security made sense.

  His escort led him into a section of the imperial complex filled with bustling aides and officers. It was a testament to their worried state that not a single one paused to notice him, despite the color of his uniform and the crests that declared him to be an Imperial Duke. Crests that he probably wouldn’t hold for much longer. After a few turns down hallways, the guards led Dennison to the Emperor’s command center. They walked apart from him, so they didn’t tread on the crimson carpet reserved for High Officers.

  The soldiers at the door saluted, and Dennison’s escort halted. “The emperor is inside, my lord,” the lead MP said.

  Dennison paused. This was looking less and less like an execution. Ignoring his pounding heart, Dennison walked into the command center. None of the guards went with him.

  The first thing that struck him was the room’s busyness. Ten huge viewscreens had been erected all around the chamber, and high-ranking officers stood before these, calling out orders. Aides and junior officers scurried about, and armed soldiers, their weapons drawn, stood in every corner of the room, watching the occupants with suspicion. Nearly every-one—guards and commanders alike—seemed haggard, their faces wan, their eyes red from stress and fatigue. The room was kept dim to make the glowing icons that represented ships more easily visible.

  The viewscreens depicted ten different battles in ten different systems. Dennison caught a young officer’s arm. “What is going on here?”

  “The Silvermane,” the woman said. “He’s attacking.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere!”

  Dennison let the woman go. Everywhere? he thought, stepping forward. He recognized a few of the men giving orders. High Admirals, like his father. Scanning the screens, Dennison was able to piece together their situation. New Seele. Highwall. Tightendow Prime. These were important core worlds, each home to an imperial fleet.

  The emperor had moved his other fleets out to protect his borders. Dennison knew the numbers; he knew how many ships the Fleet had. If Varion took these worlds, there would be nothing left to resist him. The empire would be his.

  “And he’s fighting them all at once,” Dennison said aloud, looking up at the screens. “He’s controlling all ten battles at the same time.”

  An aging admiral—one Dennison recognized from his Academy days—sat in an exhausted posture in one of the room’s many chairs. “Yes,” the man said. “It’s like we’re a game to him. Defeating us one at a time isn’t enough of a challenge. He planned it like this—he wants to destroy us all at once—to show us just how good he is. By the Seal, we never should have let him leave the Academy. We’ve doomed ourselves.”

  Dennison turned away from the screens. At the center of the room, on a platform elevated a few steps above the floor, the Emperor sat in a large command chair surrounded by ten smaller viewscreens showing the same ten battles. He was obviously making an effort to maintain an erect, confident posture—but somehow that only made him look wearier, like a warrior straining to bear armor that was too heavy for him.

  Dennison stepped up to the chair.

  “Dennison,” the emperor said, looking at him with tired eyes, but smiling slightly. “You arrived just in time to watch your empire fall.”

  “I suppose executing me now would be pointless.”

  “Executing?” the emperor asked, frowning.

  “For invoking Article One Hundred Seventeen and losing a flagship.”

  The emperor sat for a moment, blinking. “Dennison, I was actually thinking of giving you a medal.”

  “For what, Your Majesty? Most flamboyant waste of half a fleet?”

  “For saving half a fleet,” the emperor said. “Lad, you have always been too hard on yourself. Varion was an optimist all through the Academy; he believed that he could do anything. Why do you always assume that you are a failure?”

  “I—”

  “Varion struck six separate fleets the same day he attacked Kern’s,” the emperor said. “In each battle, he managed to assassinate the fleet admiral— and in four of the six cases, he killed the next man who took command as well. We still don’t know how he got so many assassins onto our bridges— you can see that we’ve had to take a number of precautions here on the Point.

  “Regardless, of those six fleets, only yours escaped. Three of the fleets managed to disengage, but Varion chased them down and destroyed them. If you hadn’t abandoned the flagship as you did, you never would have been fast enough to get away.”

  Dennison regarded the emperor, then looked down.

  “Even in victory, you doubt yourself,” the emperor said quietly.

  “It’s no victory with Kern dead, Your Majesty.”

  “Ah,” the emperor said, rubbing his forehead. He looked so exhausted. So worried. “Do you know what happens when a conqueror runs out of people to fight, Dennison?”

  Dennison hesitated, then shook his head.

  “It’s always the same,” the emperor mused. “Men like Varion cannot be content with peaceful rule. They make brilliant commanders, but terrible kings. His reign will be filled with unrest, rebellion, oppression, and slaughter.”

  “You speak as if his victory were inevitable,” Dennison said.

  “Do you honestly believe otherwise?” the emperor asked.

  Dennison glanced back at the big screens. He could easily see why the emperor had set up this room. The threat from Varion’s assassins had required a single secure command post—likely with backups, should this one be destroyed—away from the ships themselves. The men here would be blood loyalists of the emperor’s household. From this room, the Imperial High Admirals could command the ten separate battles and work for victory right under the emperor’s eyes. Unfortunately, they were losing. All of them.

  Such brilliance, Dennison thought. Like a master of games, sitting before his boards, playing ten opponents simultaneously. Varion seemed to be most brilliant when he was stretched, and these ten battles must have stretched him greatly, because he was in rare form. He pressed his advantage on all ten fronts, and while the battles were by no means over, Dennison could see where they were headed.

  “I can’t let you take command,” the emperor said.

  Dennison looked back.

  “If that’s why you came back to the Point,” the emperor said, “then I must disappoint you. I read our almost inevitable doom in these battles, and the men who fight them are good tacticians. Our best. I realize you must want to fight your brother, but we both know you don’t have the skill for it. I’m sorry.”

  Dennison turned back toward the viewscreens. “I didn’t come to fight him, Your Majesty. I fled that opportunity.”

  “Ah. Well, perhaps you will survive his attack, lad. In a way, you are his family. He might let you live.”

  “As he let his father live?” Dennison replied.

  The emperor did not respond. Dennison turned to watch the screens, staring at Varion in his power, his perfection.”If he comes, I don’t want to live,” Dennison whispered. “He’s taken everything from me.”

  “Your father and Kern.”

  Dennison shook his head. “Not just that. He’s stolen my purpose. I was created to defeat him, and yet I am just as powerless as the rest of you. Nobody can face Varion. For the others, there is no shame in this— but my inability is a profound failure. I could have been him.”

  “You don’t want to be that creature, Dennison,” the emperor said, shaking a weary head, leaning back. “What has his life been? Nothing but success after success. That has bred an arrogance that will kill him someda
y. Better to be the failure who nobly strived than the success who never really had to.”

  Dennison closed his eyes. The words seemed foolish. Better to be Dennison the failure than Varion the genius?

  What could I possibly have that Varion does not?

  Dennison hesitated. Around him there were sounds—breathing, grumbling, called commands. One of the admirals cursed loudly.

  Dennison didn’t open his eyes. That admiral’s curses—he knew what had caused them. “The battle for Tightendow Prime,” Dennison said. “Varion just took the eastern fighter flank, didn’t he?”

  “Actually, yes,” the emperor said.

  Dennison stood with eyes closed. “On the fifth screen. He is pressing toward the gunships in the western screen-sector. He is taking them now, though moments ago they seemed safe. On the first monitor, he is pushing toward the flagship. It will fall within ten minutes. On the ninth screen, Taurtan, he is leading your fighters into a trap. They are being cut off somehow—I don’t know how, but I know he is doing it. They are lost.”

  Silence.

  “On the eighth screen, the planet Falna, he is collapsing the front line. After that, he will find a way to push the gunships into retreat, breaking their firing lines and opening the way for his fighters.”

  “Yes,” the emperor whispered.

  Dennison opened his eyes. “I don’t know how he will do these things, Your Majesty. That is the difference between him and me. Somehow, he can make his dreams into realities.” Dennison turned toward the emperor. “Do we still have the bug in Varion’s klage transmitter?”

  “For all the good it does,” the emperor said. “We discover his orders only a few moments before they are carried out. Perhaps that has allowed us to survive this long.”

  “Just before he died,” Dennison said, “Kern told me that you might have found a way to fake the transmissions coming in and out of Varion’s ship.”

  “The long distance ones, yes,” the emperor said, frowning. “But it’s far better just to spy on him. If we started fabricating messages, it wouldn’t take long for Varion and his men to discover the trick. We’d trade a long-term tactical advantage for a few minutes of confusion.”

  “Your Majesty,” Dennison said, “there is no more long-term. If Varion wins this day, then we are all dead.”

  The emperor’s frown deepened. He sat in thought for a moment, rubbing his chin. “What do you propose?” he finally asked.

  What am I proposing? Dennison thought. I’ve failed enough. Why pull the entire empire down with me?

  He started to tell the emperor he’d meant nothing by the comments, but something made him stop. Optimism and pessimism. He’d learned many things from watching Varion—tactics, strategy, how to manipulate a squadron. But it seemed he’d never learned the one thing that was most important.

  Confidence.

  “I’ll need a crew of technicians and aides,” Dennison said, “and these ten monitors beside your throne. Oh, and a tech who is familiar with that bugging system we have on Varion’s klage.”

  The emperor continued to sit in his command chair for a moment, looking up at Dennison appraisingly. Then, surprisingly, he stood, calling to one of the admirals. A few moments later a young technician was ushered into the command center.

  “You can hack the traitor’s klage data lines?” Dennison asked the thin man. “Sending false information to Varion’s ship?”

  The technician nodded.

  “How long can you keep it up?” Dennison asked.

  “It depends,” the technician said. “He has no reason to suspect a bug in his transmitter—he doesn’t know about the technology. But changing his information will create some interference that his technicians should notice and pick apart. If I’d have to guess, I’d say maybe a half hour or so.”

  Dennison nodded thoughtfully.

  “My lord,” the tech continued. “It won’t be a very useful half hour. We can send false messages in, and we can block the real transmissions from his admirals. But we can’t stop orders going out from the Voidhawk, so the nine other battle groups will soon realize Varion no longer knows what is truly happening, and is relying on bad information.”

  “No matter,” Dennison said. “Prepare to hack the line. I want you to make it seem that the fleets in the other nine battles are doing exactly as I say. Instead of the real reports Varion’s commanders are sending, give him the fabrications I describe.”

  The technician nodded, gathering a small crew and moving to a set of consoles at the side of the room.

  “What good will this do us, Dennison?” the emperor asked quietly. “Buy us a little time, perhaps? Sow a little confusion?”

  “Yes,” Dennison said. “Make certain your admirals make good use of it.”

  “What of the tenth battle?” the emperor asked. “That’s the one where Varion himself commands in person. We can’t fool his own eyes—and that battle is happening the closest to the Point. If he wins there, he comes here, and none of our fleets will be able to stop him.”

  Dennison turned, glancing at the tenth map. The Voidhawk, Varion’s own flagship, flew there in its glory. Dennison looked away from the ship, scanning the screen, searching for a particular squadron of fighters. They were always at the forefront of the battles where Varion himself was present. It was led by a particular pilot: the woman who had walked beside Varion on Kress.

  Dennison walked over to the admiral who was contending with Var-ion in this tenth battle. “My lord, I need you to do something for me. Take five squadrons of fighters, and make certain to destroy every single fighter in that unit at mark five-six-six.”

  “Five squadrons?” the admiral asked with surprise.

  Dennison nodded. “Nothing else is as important as destroying those fighters.”

  The admiral looked questioningly over at the emperor, who nodded. The admiral turned to obey the order, and the aging monarch looked uncertainly at Dennison, who returned to his side. Then the emperor stepped aside, gesturing toward his command seat, which sat before the ten smaller screens. “You’ll need this.”

  Dennison paused, then quietly sat down.

  “I’m ready,” the technician said.

  “Interrupt the feed,” Dennison said, taking a deep breath, “and show Varion exactly what I tell you.”

  The man did so, and Dennison took control of nine battles. Or, at least, he took fake control of them. The blips on his screens became lies. Fabrications, sent to Varion as a poisoned gift of knowledge.

  The knowledge of what it was like to be Dennison.

  Varion swung his fighters toward the gunship position on the planet Falna, intending to push back the imperial line. In real life, that’s exactly what happened. However, in the simulation, Dennison made a few changes. One of the imperial ships got in a lucky shot, and Varion’s fighter line took a hit in just the wrong place. The fake imperial line rallied, destroying Varion’s ships in a way that was unlikely, but not unreasonable.

  Dennison made such changes to each of the nine battles. Here, a squadron attacked at the wrong angle. There, a command ship’s engines failed at precisely the wrong moment. Individually, they were the kinds of small problems that happened in every battle. Nothing ever went exactly to plan. Yet all of these small bits of luck added up. As the nine conflicts raged in real life, Dennison sent Varion an increasingly invalid picture of his battle spaces.

  Whatever Silvermane tried, it failed. Fighter squadrons collapsed. Gunships missed their targets and then were destroyed by a random stray missile. Command ships fell, and sectors were lost—all in a matter of minutes, and across all nine battles.

  In Varion’s own vicinity, the five squadrons of imperial fighters did their job. The ships Dennison had targeted were gone in under a minute, though the major redirection of firepower left a hole in the central imperial line, making it collapse. Dennison paid no attention to that losing battle, or to the reports that the others were really faring far worse than his simulated victo
ries. He even ignored the emperor, who called for a chair, then sat quietly beside him, watching his empire tumbling down around him.

  Dennison ignored all of this. For a moment, he was perfect. He was Varion, his every effort rewarded. His hopes were truth. His commands matched his dreams. He was a god.

  So this is what it is like to win, Dennison thought as his crew fabricated a victory for one of his squadrons, then sent it to Varion. This is what it is like to expect to win. Is this really what he feels all the time? Is he so sure of himself that he sees his entire life as merely a simulation, played out exactly as he desires?

  Well, for a few moments, he’ll have to live with being Dennison instead.

  Dennison made the tactical fabric of the conflicts collapse, caused Varion’s forces to be routed. The only battle Dennison couldn’t control was the one at which Varion himself was present. However, once the Sil-vermane was convinced he was losing in other parts of the galaxy, he began to make mistakes on his own front. He took more and more risks, struggling against the omnipotent force that was Dennison.

  “Revenge,” the emperor whispered. “Is this what you wanted, Dennison? Is all of this about playing a last cruel trick on your brother before he takes our empire from us?”

  Yes, Dennison thought. This was his victory—his victory over Varion, his victory over a failed life. This was his moment: a perfect crescendo of battle, the entire universe bending to his will.

  Then it ended.

  “Someone must have noticed the bug!” the technician shouted as the viewscreens suddenly snapped back to the real battles. “The klage vibrations were a little irregular. I warned you!”

  Dennison sat back in the emperor’s command chair, releasing the breath he’d been holding. The room was growing quieter—the ten admirals hadn’t gained much during their respite. I’ve failed, Dennison thought. The deception hadn’t lasted long enough—Varion would now know he’d been duped. His communications now secure, he would easily retake command of the other battles.

  “What have you done?” the emperor asked Dennison with a haunted voice.