Opening Moves

by James Traynor

  Corr'tane had noticed something in that file he connected with. The female officer would speak her mind despite protocol if she thought she was right. It was something High Strategos Kalla'shan had noticed in Corr'tane himself and encouraged. Obedience was importance, but the old man had known that it was only one part of what made a great military. Initiative and independent thought mattered just as much. As such, Corr'tane decided to follow his example and had arranged for Pryatan to be promoted and sent to his command where her supposed 'flaws' would actually be her greatest asset. Where another Strategos would have her flogged for questioning the order, Corr'tane enjoyed it, allowing her to explain it out loud and go over any flaws he may have missed.

  “It's a trap for the Tuathaan, Captain. And War Captain Tallthresher's units and the others still in system are the bait. I don't intend to meet them in open combat, at least not initially. The Tuathaan are headstrong and impulsive, but they aren't completely stupid. They'll send scouts. I intend for these scouts to see the blockade ships and report back.” He punched a set of keys and a representation of local foldspace appeared in the holotank. The image of the system looked like a multi-polar neural cell with the sun – depicted in black – as its impassable nucleus and its dendrites as the foldspace corridors reaching out to other stars. “We know where the main relief force must come from,” he zoomed in on the corridor from Báine to Dunnan Gal. “We'll seed the corridor's terminus with passive sensor buoys. Since we can expect the Tuathaan within twenty-four hours, the drift won't be strong and extended enough to all pull them into the gravity shears. And a few light minutes past them we will wait, in minimum emission mode with our drives shut down.”

  Pryatan sharply sucked in her breath and Corr'tane gave her a thin smile. Powering down one's warp field inside the fold wasn't even reckless. It was madness! Even though the corridor was fairly wide and stable there was simply no guarantee that the widely divergent gravity currents and jumping shears even in the 'eye of the storm'-like center of the corridor wouldn't go through even their heaviest vessels like a torch through a sheet of paper. A well-compensated warp generator would ride out such surprise occasions without even breaking a sweat. In fact, it would even be able to draw energy from the distortion fields. But this...!

  “They won't expect this, captain,” Corr'tane explained calmly, looking up to her. “With War Captain Tallthresher's units in system, 3rd Fleet has seven hundred and fifty ships left. The 12th Fleet in Báine was facing two fleets, Pryatan. Much of them will be coming our way, and I intend to let them never make it to Dunnan Gal. The danger we face is calculable. We may lose a few dozen ships in the fold while we lie in wait for the enemy. But he won't be expecting us there. And that will be his undoing.”

  Captain Pryatan saluted, her face blank. Corr'tane didn't know if she agreed with his decision or not, but she did carry out her orders – and that was enough. If he succeeded he would be a hero of the Dominion, maybe along the legends of old. If he failed he would probably pay with his life before a firing squad. Either way he would leave Dunnan Gal victorious, or he simply would not leave at all.

  The Pyramid, Chicago, North American Union, Earth.

  Intelligence analyst Susan Smith called a tiny office on the eastern corner of the second layer of the Union Tower's step pyramid layout her own. It wasn't much, but it was definitively preferable to the temporary cubicles that were being erected in the section all around her. The service was still busy trying to jump-start a team of analysts for the Ashani Dominion. Their reclusive nature made it hard to gather and correlate data. Few people had ever traveled to their space, and even fewer had returned. Also, the service had rather strong reservations about working with outsiders from academia. Painful experience had shown that the non-disclosure agreements certain elements signed weren't worth the good old-fashioned paper they had been printed on. The liberals had a tendency to run to the press the moment they left the Pyramid, the right wingers tended to be obnoxious pains in the agency's collective butt. That left them with few choices, and actually put Susan in a position of seniority. Hence, the chance to keep her own little private space.

  The Union Tower, or – what everybody actually called it – the Pyramid, was a tall, four-sided, steep-angled skyscraper, its whole front covered in black mirrored glass, giving it the appearance of an obsidian obelisk, with two 'wings' on either side to enhance the building's structural stability. It was settled on two step-pyramid-like platforms with smoother angles, located on an artificial island just off the coast of Chicago.

  Five kilometers to its south, separated by the waters of Lake Michigan and Chicago's old downtown area, rose the Halls of Congress, representing the delegates of the Union's original fifteen member nations.

  While the President and the Senate had an extravagant set of offices and chambers, most of the bureaucrats lived and worked in more traditional environments. For Smith that meant a hole sandwiched between emergency generators and building supplies in the Central Security Directorate's section of the Pyramid.

  Of course, she didn't really mind. She had only left university a year earlier with a solid history degree and a passion for her planet's past. During her final year her tutors had put her in touch with a member of the administration who turned out to be a recruiter for the secret service's analyst branch. He had suggested her mind would be of great use to the nation if she was interested. It had been a guaranteed job – always very welcome – but more importantly, she could be at the forefront of putting humanity and the Union on the interstellar map, making sure alien powers and the indies didn't take advantage of them. She took the job and soon found herself both an analyst and information interpreter for the Central Security Directorate, almost a dream job with tremendous potential for advancement. Working – and somewhat living, actually – in the coffin-sized office was a temporary inconvenience. She had already made an impression with Director William Campbell and expected a promotion to an office closer to actual daylight in the near future.

  A chime from her door caused Susan to look up from the report she had been preparing. It was a summary of all combat information ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, had been able to acquire on the Ashani fighter program gleaned from the Pact. ONI had dutifully handed the info to the CSD, and chiefs of staff seemed particularly puzzled about the Swiftpaw-class fighters and their extensive combat record. The whole thing looked like a massive waste of resources and manpower to them, and despite her lack of an engineering or military background, Susan was inclined to agree.

  “Yes, come in, please,” she called, her voice sounding dull in the concrete room.

  Instead of seeing the mailman – some information was just too sensitive to have it circulate on electronic networks – or an intelligence officer wanting another report, to her immense surprise she found Secretary of State Thomas Randolph on her threshold.

  “Agent Smith,” he smiled, his thick bible-belt accent smooth as treacle. “Hope I'm not keeping you from something important...?”

  “Of course not, sir,” Susan stammered, then blushed and hurriedly cleared a space on her desk and ran around to drag up a chair from beneath a heap of folders. “Please, sit down.”

  Randolph nodded his thanks and settled down opposite Susan.

  “I have to say, sir: I don't usually get high level officials down here. Actually I don't get anyone much in my little corner of the Pyramid, ah, the Union Tower,” she clumsily corrected herself.

  The SECSTATE ignored her fumble. “Certainly not the cleaners,” Randolph observed with a chuckle. “I noticed you in a meeting with the President a while ago. You were aiding Director Campbell, correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Susan nodded. “I've been studying available information about the Ashani for the past few months. Whenever Mr. Campbell needs someone to take notes or offer information on them, he calls me.”

  “That's pretty impressive, to have the ear of the director on this matter,” Randolph spoke softly, more musing to hi
mself than addressing Susan. “So he listens to you on the Dominion?”

  “I suppose so, sir,” Smith's reply was cautious. “It is sort of my specialty.”

  “Are you, per chance, fascinated by the alien, Miss Smith?” Randolph asked quite unexpectedly. “Do you perhaps admire them, respect them?”

  “I wouldn't put it like that, sir,” a small frown crept unto Susan's face. “I'm more or less professionally obliged to be curious. In general, I respect individuals for their merits, sir, but not simply because they appear more advanced or very different from us.”

  “So, the Ashani for example: are they better than us?” Randolph wondered. “In your opinion, of course.”

  Susan's frown deepened. Her job had been to find out how good the Dominion's fighter program was. That was hard enough, let alone to come up with a blanket statement on a whole species two thousand light years away. “I don't think so,” she replied cautiously. “They seem an older civilization, but that doesn't make them better. We have little historical data on them, due to their general distance and usually reclusive nature. It seems they had space travel before us, but about half the known species can claim that for themselves. Aliens did evolve differently, sir. That's just a basic fact owed to differences in social structure and environmental circumstances. The Érenni, for example, had next to no wars on their world. Violence was always a small-scale, almost personal experience for them. There was competition, ample intrigue and backstabbing, but one wouldn't be able to find an Érenni equivalent of, say, the Battle of Waterloo. Compared to us, they've evolved rather slowly as a civilization. Some other races have only advanced by accident, by finding alien ships on their world or getting invaded by other powers and learning from them, the hard way.” Susan shrugged. This wasn't exactly rocket science. “We got here ourselves, with no outside help. While the Érenni were busy finding compromises and taking baby steps we were fighting wars and learning better ways to outsmart and outfight our enemies. And we still do. It's apparent in the way we look at alien powers: curious, as fountains of wealth, but ultimately as secondary security threats. After all, for that role we've got the Indies, the Euros and the Alliance,” Susan allowed herself a thin smile. “Theoretically, if all human nations were united, the only other star nations that could match our populations and industrial output would be the Rasenni Empire and, to a lesser degree, the Ukhuri regime.”

  “You have some interesting opinions,” Randolph nodded. “And I think we have much in common. We share a belief about humanity's place in the galaxy, don't we? That we should be a strong part of it, but not controlled by it?”

  Susan tilted her head, not knowing what the SECSTATE was going for. What he said wasn't wrong, but to an analyst like her it was a decidedly boilerplate statement. Still, he was the SECSTATE, so... “That's a good way of putting it, sir. We certainly do have the potential to rise above many of the known alien civilizations.”

  “So you consider humanity a leader of galactic civilization?”

  “No, not unconditionally,” she replied. Certainly not as fractured as they were. But the innate potential was there. “But given time and the right decisions we could certainly rise to a position where our assent was crucial in pretty much everything. Much like the Rasenni at their peak, for example.”

  Randolph grinned widely. “You're absolutely right!” He leaned forward and banged the table, startling Smith. “We share the same ideas, Miss Smith, and it is a relief to find a bright young woman who understands the galaxy. Humanity is the leading civilization, and it is my dream to put us, and by doing so, the Union, at the head of galactic politics. We need to rise to a position where it'll be us influencing others while maintaining our own traditions, pure and untainted by misguided alien philosophy!”

  Smith maintained a placid smile, her eyes watching the secretary intently. There was rather quite a stretch between what she had said and what he had made of it. Randolph's words were more fitting for a campaign speech. But she sensed there was a career opportunity for her in there, and kept her mouth shut.

  “We need the Union to be strong,” Randolph continued. “It is paramount to prove ourselves to the aliens, to show them what we already know about our place in things, and that we – not the others – speak for humanity. We were making good progress with the Rasenni and the Pact nations until the present situation. Did you hear the Dominion's also hitting the Tuathaan?”

  Susan blinked. That was news to her and seemed an all together far too risky move. Even fractured, the Tuathaan Clanholds were a very formidable opponent. Given the projected military might of a star nation the size of the Dominion, fighting them while also sending a fleet against the Érenni was a big gamble. “Do you know who's leading the attack, sir?”

  “We had a ship ID from the Tuathaan saying Strategos Tear'al... He ain't doing too good.”

  Smith nodded slowly, digging through the information her mind had absorbed during the days and weeks she had gone over the scraps and pieces that constituted the CSD's full knowledge of the Dominion. There! She recognized the name as that of the former head of Ashani military intelligence. “If the Tuathaan manage to beat them back it could get messy.”

  “More than that,” Randolph harrumphed. “If the Tuathaan defeat the Ashani it'll strengthen their place in the Pact, make it harder for us to establish our influence. But, on the other hand, if the Dominion wins it'll be bad for the Pact and probably cause us some major problems in the future.”

  Each of the Big Three on Earth had tried to open diplomatic relations with most of the known powers, and given the sheer amount of settled planets, that had led to an explosion of all three nations' state departments or foreign ministries. As for the heavy hitters out there, for the Union it had gone well with the Pact and the Rasenni Empire, and even the Ukhuris had thawed considerably over time. But the Ashani Dominion had always been too far away, too small – relatively – and too reclusive to warrant much diplomatic effort. There just wasn't any political or economic need to put much effort into getting to the Dominion: the Union's – and Earth's – security concerns and favored trade partners and routes were situated a lot closer to home than the nearly two thousand light-years distant star nation. But, if the Ashani somehow managed to wrestle a strategic victory from the maelstrom they had jumped in they would become a strategic concern.

  “So you see, we have an issue: this war could undo decades of diplomatic work, with either the Tuathaan or the Dominion taking the place on the galactic political scene that rightfully ought to be ours,” Randolph explained. “Now, I think we should do something about that, but before we do it's important that we have as much information as possible, especially about the Ashani.”

  Susan shrugged. Matters were, quite frankly, a lot more complicated than the SECSTATE's words implied, but she shared at least his desire for a more prominent role of humanity. “Well, sir, I can, without boasting, say that my reports are very thorough. They have everything we've collected on the Dominion in them,” she stated.

  “I know. In fact, I've read them and your university reports. That's why I'm here talking to you and not to Director Campbell.”

  “He doesn't know you're here?” Susan almost rose from her chair, alarm creeping into her voice.

  “Point is, we don't know all that we need to,” Randolph went on ignoring Smith's comment. “We don't know how effective they are in battle, and as a result we can't predict how this war will end.”

  “Well, available data is pretty thin,” Susan found herself shrugging again. “We've bought some data recorders from civilian ships that were present when the Érenni colony of Senfina fell, but they were pretty useless. All that data showed how fast they could run away, not that I blame them. What we want, no, what we need is data from a ship caught in the thick of the fighting, but as far as we know only a couple of warships survived that encounter, and the Érenni are holding that info close to them.”

  “Do we have anything out there?” Randolph ask
ed evenly.

  Smith paused, wondering if she should talk about the deployment of the navy's ELINT platforms. She had to make up her mind on the spot, and quickly decided that, as the third most powerful man in the Union's political apparatus, Randolph did have the authority to know. Susan punched a few queries into her terminal, then slowly began to nod. “We do have a handful of mobile recon platforms within the Pact's vicinity, but the Director isn't willing to risk exposing them by sending them closer to battle.” She hoped she didn't have to emphasize to the SECSTATE what a monumental diplomatic cluster fuck it would be if one of those vessels was detected by the Ashani or even just one of the Pact members.

  “All right, then. Let's say I could give you anything you wanted.” Randolph waved his hands. “Any method you need, any means that are necessary: what's the best way to get information on the Ashani war machine?”

  “Ideally? To have one of our ships in a system when the Dominion hits it,” Smith said thoughtfully. “It could hide on the outskirts, monitor the battle, then send the data home for analysis. The ships are equipped with long-range tachyon transmitters, so if I was to get a ship into a war zone, ideally its data would be transmitted to the CSD or ONI in real time.”

  “So, an expedition?” Randolph nodded. “And one battle would be enough?”

  “Enough to gauge their power and basic capabilities,” Smith agreed. In relation to the power they were fighting, that was. “But if we wanted to know stuff like tactics, weaknesses of individual commanders, formations and…”

  “Not just yet,” Randolph interrupted. “For now I'm just interested in seeing how much of a threat they are and if they'll beat the Pact.”

  “Well, as I said, if I was the director, I'd send a ship,” Susan enthused. “But Director Campbell never would. It's a question of risk assessment, Mr. Secretary. Our ships are disguised as civilians, but from what we know the Dominion seems to have a habit of destroying everything in a system, even neutral vessels. He'd never risk getting one of our assets caught out there. The risks are substantial: the loss of ship and crew, the potential danger to national security if the Ashani salvage the wreck, the diplomatic repercussions if footage of the ship is leaked to other governments...”