ROMA

by R. A. Ender

  Around that same time, the F’lwoka faced two major catastrophes. One of their planets was ravaged by a disease that decimated the population. The population was decreased to the point where the planet was no longer self-sufficient and had to be abandoned. It is now known that that world was Lochalsh.

  The second catastrophe was the invasion by the Imperial Alliance of Empires. Their aggressive colonial efforts brought them to the planet F’lwoka, which they conquered and renamed Tineo. Though unrest has continued even to the present day, it never gains the strength to overthrow the domination of the I.A.E.

  The story was different for F’lwok. After the success at F’lwoka, the I.A.E. moved to capture the Capital planet of the F’lwoka Empire. Their efforts were resisted for over twenty years. A number of generals with aspirations to the imperial crown repeatedly tried to conquer the cradle of the F’lwok people but failed. That is, until General Espar, the greatest General to ever lead an army of the people, in support of the Imperial Supreme Council, to expand the Empire. General Espar added over a dozen worlds to the I.A.E., including his successful conquer of F’lwok. Despite his status and celebrity, General Espar never sought political power, he was always an obedient servant of the Empire. Without question that was the trait which endeared him to history in the I.A.E.

  Their Capital world conquered, the only remaining free world of the F’lwok people, Kuk’tak, appealed for membership in the Confederacy. That request was granted, and the F’lwok became the third species to join the Confederacy and began a trend which saw the Colukto and the Ituas join within the decade.

  And although F’lwok was thoroughly beaten, subdued and quiet for over a century, they eventually rose up against their imperial oppressors. In a lightning fast revolt, the Imperial forces were destroyed or captured on the planet, and the entire Imperial Fleet patrolling F’lwok was captured without the loss of a single ship. Their success was enabled because of a large number of F’lwok used as slaves and drudges throughout the Imperial system simply overwhelmed their slave masters by sheer numbers. F’lwok was again independent.

  It was not questioned that the I.A.E. would move to recapture the world. The need to recapture its lost prestige demanded it. Knowing that it could not resist an Empire alone, the F’lwok appealed to become a member of the Confederacy. The Senate was torn. The Species Bloc were unanimously in favor, while the Old Colony Region and the Border Zone Alliance factions were opposed. The deciding faction, the Royalist League, eventually came down in favor. It was not known at the time but was later revealed that their support was bought with a promise to support the recapture of Veselyy, a Royalist world lost in a war with the Canua centuries before. The Canua War was the leading reason the Kingdoms had joining the Confederacy.

  The acceptance of F’lwok into the Confederacy led to at least two wars with the I.A.E., as well as the more recent standoff, the F’lwok Line of 1782, where a strong show of force stopped a weak emperor from invading the F’lwok system, leading to his demise and the rise again of the I.A.E. Supreme Council to power.

  With that relatively recent history, tourism was pretty rare on F’lwok. The level of Defense Force presence was high, which always created a large need to commercially supply the soldiers, which traders and companies were only too happy to do.

  Behind the Caesar Augustus was a long train of commercial and military vessels. The military vessels always led every train of ships as a simple safety precaution. One would be much better off if the first ship into normal space was armed and shielded before helpless merchant ships came pouring out.

  As Fleet Admiral Richard Hilbornus watched on his station, the ship reached its mark, and with the touch of her station, Jen broke orbit and slingshotted toward the Olympus Jump Gate.

  The gate instantly filled the forward display, despite still being quite a distance away. It is simply massive, Richard thought to himself.

  The jump gate was two large rings tethered together. The first ring was the largest. The ring was constructed of a thousand graviton fusion reactors strung together, with a command deck on top, and a series of maneuvering engines to allow the gate to be repositioned. At the tip of each reactor was a projector which was targeted at amplifying lenses on the smaller ring.

  The second smaller ring was big enough to allow even the largest ore mining ship to pass, but no more. The ring was a collection of amplifiers which received the energy from the first rings projectors, focused the energy at a single point in the center of the ring. When all the amplifiers fired at that point, the energy met and tore a hole in space and hyperspace simultaneously, opening a door into Olympus space. The door could be held open only while the energy was provided. The ships passed through the door single file and were instantly off on a journey to another world. Once the last ship passed, the energy stream was terminated and the hole in space closed without any trace or damage.

  On the command deck of the Caesar Augustus, the first ring raced toward the ship. The ship's velocity was being carefully managed by the jump gate operators, though Richard never took his eyes off his station for more than a moment glance at the screen to watch their progress. Before they had even passed through the ring, it was visually off the screen, as its massive size simply exceeded the view available.

  Next, was the smaller ring, which lay ahead, and was still dark. The energy streams would not appear until the last moment.

  The ship drew closer and closer. The ring loomed large on the screen. Just as its size exceeded the view available and it disappeared from view, a brilliant white light filled the ship.

  It not only poured out of the forward display, which instantly adjusted to not harm the eyesight of anyone watching, but it filled the ship with white light through every window. Every room was bathed in white light.

  But only for a brief moment, as the ship passed into Olympus Space, the blackness of space returned, and the artificial light of the ship's interiors again took over. Unlike the fantastical images used for plays about space, both hyperspace and Olympus space were profoundly black. Unlike normal space that contained stars and other light generating phenomena, the higher levels of space contained nothingness.

  It was a blackness that entered every element of your being when you looked at it. Frequent travelers learned not to look out into hyperspace too long, for the depression that filled one's soul began to feel increasingly harsh and permanent. Olympus space felt even worse. Most pleasure ships closed their windows during transit, displayed manufactured images of space or planets. Merchant and military ships simply trained themselves to look away.

  As the blackness came, Richard was suddenly gripped with a fear that it had him. He had a sudden surge of panic and a need to run. His heart raced and his mind cried out chaotically. As he tried to stand up, his mind snapped...

  ... And he found himself suddenly awake, in his bed.

  “Lights!” he called out, and the computer chimed acknowledgment with a soft cithara sound, and the cabin lights came up.

  Richard sat up and looked around. He saw his bed to one side, next to his desk. The cabin door was sealed and the other side of the room still held his private bath and kitchen.

  He swung out of bed, sitting on the edge. He took a deep breath. I hate Olympus space dreams! He thought to himself, taking deep breaths to calm his body and mind. Turning his wrist over, he looked at his watch. The time read 3:35 am. The date was July 18th, 1798. It was two weeks after the Caesar Augustus had left New Rome on its journey to F’lwok.

  Another week to go of these horrible dreams! Richard cursed the dreams again. Not everyone was affected by dreams when in higher spaces, less than ten percent reported any unusual dreams. Richard had the misfortune of being one of those ten percent. While he traveled in Olympus Space, he usually had at least one panicky dream every night. Another reason why he loved his training cruise, he could spend most of it in hyperspace or normal space where dreams didn’t haunt him.

  Oh, well. The price of the service, I
guess. With practiced effort, he lay back down and closed his eyes again. After over twenty years traveling in Olympus Space, he had trained himself to be able to go back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  The sun shone through the gold colored glass and sparkled all over her uniform and the surrounding space. The golden spots of light seemed to dance and sway as the wind blew the small globe around.

  Robin lifted a hand up to steady it has it hung from the market stand in the concourse of the F’lwok Spaceport. She looked at it closely for flaws before picking it off its hook and turning to the merchant who was watching her closely.

  “How much for this?” She asked evenly, trying not to betray her strong desire to have it hang from the window in her cabin and send those same dazzling flecks of golden light around her as a sun shone on the ship.

  The merchant smiled, or at least the F’lwok equivalent to human smiling. Like humans, the F’lwok were a mammalian type species who walked erect and faced each other with eyes, ears and a mouth. However, the similarity was simply skin deep, as the actual biology was vastly different.

  “For you, that is only 10 pieces. Shall I box it for you, Commander?” The merchant informed and pressed for the sale all at once. His use of the term Commander reminded her how identifiable she was while in uniform and how familiar most F’lwok were with Defense Force personnel.

  With a nod of acceptance, Robin handed over 10 pieces of F’lwok currency and accepted the carefully wrapped golden glass globe from the merchant. He smiled, but gave no verbal thanks, he was already off to mind another potential Defense Force customer browsing at the other end of the stand.

  At the Spaceport, Defense Force personnel couldn’t help bumping into each other they were so numerous. Robin had heard but had never strayed from the Spaceport to see for herself, that you could rarely see a Defense Force uniform anywhere else on F’lwok. Though absolutely required to defend the F’lwok near and outer systems, their presence was certainly becoming an increasing irritant for many F’lwok citizens. Defense Force was simply a continuous reminder of their weakness and dependence on one foreign power for protection against another. Over the century since F’lwok joined the Confederacy, the movement for the return to a F’lwok Empire and independence had steadily grown. So much so that during the last Senate representative election, the successful candidate was forced to adopt some of the independence movement platforms to keep an insurgent candidate from winning one of the two Senate seats. Even so, the victory was within a percentage point.

  For decades the Defense Force had been withdrawing their presence from view. All planet side installations had long since been turned over to domestic planetary security. Defense Force personnel usually remained at the Spaceport, and certainly never traveled in officially marked convoys when visiting the planet. Though nearspace presence was quite visible, the majority of citizens rarely ventured up into orbit. All these efforts did not stop the politicians, grandstanders, and populist agitators from using Defense Force as a convenient punching bag.

  And it was too bad because Robin had really wanted to visit some other parts of F’lwok. Not a common tourist destination, she would likely never end up taking a vacation. Unlike a lot of other worlds she had visited, F’lwok had a wonderfully flowery fragrance to the air. Every world smelled differently, and although the human nose adjusted quickly, some worlds just had a wicked odor that took a while to grow numb to. F’lwok, thankfully, did not fall into that category. But, her shipboard duties had not permitted any trips to the planet aside from official business.

  For most of the past month, she had been in charge of training the crew. Using the nearspace, they were able to drill and train a wide variety of necessary items. So far, the command deck crew had only managed to have the ship survive one of her inventive training scenarios, but that was the point. She had been extremely proud and surprised when they had managed to extricate themselves from a horrible trap laid by a Lanwouk pirate. But she hadn’t let anyone know.

  When she told Mato about it later, it drove him into a ten-minute rant about how his engineering scenarios were designed to be survivable and how this group of trainees had somehow managed to blow the ship up a dozen times anyways.

  Sara and Jen were also charged with training the crew while the ship waited at F’lwok for Richard to hear from his contact. As a visiting high dignitary, he had been shuttled around from appointment to ceremony, ceremony to meeting, meeting to dinner, and on and on. Every day they got into contact so she could update him on whether his contact had responded. So far, nothing.

  It was a contact within the I.A.E. that went back many decades. They first met the contact during the F’lwok Line. He had been no more than an acting captain, commanding a crew that had suffered the loss of their captain during a skirmish with F’lwok Forces. Since he had risen quite a bit higher in the Imperial Alliance.

  Governor De Bazan, as he was known today, had been a friend since their first meeting all those decades ago. A member of one of the powerful oligarch families in the I.A.E., he was neither a warmonger nor a blind patriot. He was an intellectual, an idealist and a family man who had lost too much in needless war. His great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father had all died in wars or battles with the Confederacy. He himself had lost a son in the war. All of this did not lead him to be a bitter angry man. Instead, it created a man who was loyal to his nation, but always willing to talk and pursue peace.

  At the F’lwok Line, it was his discussions with Richard that set the ground rules of each fleet's presence in the F’lwok system during the crisis and avoided any further incidents or bloodshed. Ever since his star had risen in a Supreme Council dominated I.A.E., and he now governed the South West Province of the Empire.

  Despite his high political position, he had always made himself available for discussions with Richard. Their information exchanges had been crucial to avoiding some accidental conflicts. It was always a two-way street, and the Governor gained for himself as much as he gave.

  While the Supreme Council led the Empire, the two could meet with relative ease. Since the rise of Emperor Espartero, things had become much more secretive. The governor was concerned about any perception of treason, so he had devised a system of contact. Either he or Richard could place an advertisement in a trade journal, specifically one dealing with interstellar transport. The little advertisement would alert the other that a meeting was requested, and would place another advertisement acknowledging acceptance. Two weeks after that second advertisement, they would meet at a prearranged deep space location.

  For Richard, this was no trouble what so ever. At first, De Bazan had a problem trusting his men. After ten years as a patron to his men, they were loyal to the core, even beyond any loyalty to the state. They had managed to meet at least once a year since the Imperial Throne returned, but this would be the first meeting which had a purpose beyond friendship.

  Ever since the ship made orbit, Robin had, every week, visited the F’lwok Spaceport to purchase the latest addition of “Interstellar Trade Weekly” from the scroll stand at the far end of the concourse. Along the way, she would shop and browse, and generally look touristy. After her purchase, she would get a haircut while reading the magazine, leave the magazine with the haircut shop for other people to read, and proceed to return to orbit.

  It was not the most secret method, and Robin never felt like a spy, but it had the routine appearance of nothing out of the ordinary. And it kept Richard out of the direct line of fire in case someone caught wind and was watching him.

  As Robin approached the scroll stand, she always walked around and looked at a few of the covers before selecting her magazine, paying the merchant the price which she always had ready, before walking directly into the hair styling studio.

  The studio was always full of Defense force personnel. The studio was for humans only, not for any racist reasons, just the reality that F’lwok hair did not grow long, and therefore did not require cutting.
Her rank never got her to the front of the line, so she always sat and slowly read the journal.

  The advertisements were in the back, but Robin always read the journal as though she was completely enthralled, and tried to follow with interest every article so she could speak about it in case anyone asked. And it was a good thing she did, since reading the journal had sparked a conversation with a freight captain who went on and on about the latest transport ship that had been reviewed last week. Robin had managed to maintain the conversation with ease and even enjoyed debating him on a few technical details he had remembered in error. It turned out to be a pleasant conversation.

  Even so, she ran his name and ship through the Defense Force database as soon as she arrived back on board the Caesar Augustus, in case he was a spy testing her, but he had checked out.

  Today, the studio was quieter, and Robin got a chair right away, so she knew she would have to read quickly. The hair cutters already knew what she wanted and that she would be reading, so he just got right to work, and didn’t dabble in small talk, as had happened on her first couple of visits.

  The journal was a little smaller than usual, and Robin was able to read it before the man was done her styling. Browsing through the advertisement, she finally saw what she had been waiting for now for over a month. The small response advertisement was on the second last page.

  With practiced calm, she ensured that her pace and behavior did not stray from business as usual. After paying and leaving the studio, she proceeded to the Defense Force transport gate and was immediately seated on the next surface to orbit transport waiting to leave. They left every fifteen minutes, she wouldn’t have long to wait.