"Yes?"
"As you might well imagine, Captain, your escape across the Galaxy has attracted a lot of attention," Colby said. "We were expecting an all-out offensive on an important sector after TOG took Yanulf. They abandoned that offensive, though, and we think now we may even have a chance of getting Yanulf back." He held up a cautioning finger. "That, however, must not leave this room."
"Of course."
"We think TOG backed off because they had... other things to think about."
"Like a squadron of renegade ships loose in their rear," said Kendric, as the larger picture begin to take shape in his mind.
Colby nodded. "Exactly. It looks as though one of Caesar's
Overlords mustered something like a quarter of TOG's ready galactic naval forces trying to hunt you down. Son, for those few weeks, the single largest battlefleet in the history of Mankind was on your tail. It's remarkable he wasn't able to corner you."
"It's a big Galaxy," said Kendric, but he was remembering the waves of TOG fighters closing in.
"Your daring had something to do with getting away from them, I daresay," Jackla put in. "We'd like to offer you a proposition."
I have to tell them. "Uh... ma'am... sir, I think I should tell you that some of us have already made a decision."
"Yes?" Kendric thought he read interest in the posture of the Baufrin.
"Two of us, anyway, have decided to go back."
"Back?" Colby asked. "Back to TOG?"
"We'll need your help to do it, of course. To travel backward on your Freedom Road. And we'd like a little time. T.C. is still trying to contact her brother, who is with the Renegade Legion."
Colby nodded. "I heard about that after your debriefing. I believe that someone on Davidian's staff is checking on that now."
"We appreciate it. But...well, anyway, we think we'd do the most good back in TOG's Galaxy, helping the Renegade Underground."
Colby and the Baufrin exchanged unreadable expressions.
"That's certainly not something we would expect of you," Jackla said. "For one thing, it would mean almost certain death. We've been losing too many agents over there lately."
"God knows we need more intelligence sources in TOG space," Colby said, but then his tone darkened. "We lost an important operative in the Gael Cluster recently. It was from his reports that we knew about your Squadron and the growing mutiny there." He shrugged. "Now we don't know if our agent's alive or dead. With the Renegade Underground's help, we may be able to find out. Yes, Captain, you could be of great help to us, over there."
"It's Caius Elliot you're talking about."
Colby neither agreed nor disagreed. Instead, he pursed his lips, turning his gaze past Kendric toward the starport beyond the window. "But there's something else we'd like to suggest. Another way you could help us. What we need more than anything is a way to carry the fight to TOG. It has occurred to some of us here that we can't continue a strictly defensive war for long, not when TOG holds such an overwhelming advantage in ships men.. .resources... in everything needed to fight a war."
"Yes?" They obviously have some plan of their own, Kendric
thought. What?
"It happens that we have three new ships. Wei! not new.. .but they haven't been formally attached to our forces yet."
Kendric's eyebrows crept up. "Gaidheal, lolaire, and Teachdair?"
"Exactly. How would you like to command those three...on a special, extended mission."
Into the Deep Dark once more! "I'm not sure I understand.
"You'll be working for us, for me and COMINT, directly. You will operate independently, largely on your own initiative, with some special requests from this office from time to time."
"But doing what?" Three ships against TOG? What was Colby driving at?
"Official policy holds that we just don't have the men or materiel 2 to go charging off into TOG space," Colby continued, "even if taking the war to them means less pressure on our worlds and fleets here. And, to a certain extent, official policy is right for a change."
"As right as it ever is," Jakla added.
Colby ignored her. "If we send strike forces into TOG space... ; Well, it wouldn't take long before aggressive tactics and all-out fights would bleed us dry. But there are some of us who still feel an aggressive j stance is the one we must to take to win. You met Admiral Davidian, of course."
"A remarkable man."
"Yes. His great-to-the-X-power grandparents came across with Constantin and the original Renegade Legion, and have been fighting TOG from the Commonwealth ever since. Many of the KessRith clans believe the fight ought to be carried to the enemy. Their entire philosophy is built around multiple concepts of war, honor, and going forward to meet the enemy. You can imagine what they think about a defensive fight!"
Kendric nodded silently. He knew the KessRith will to fight.
"What's your opinion, Captain? What do you think of a defensive fight, eh?"
Kendric had no idea what the man was driving at. "If you sit on your tail and wait for them to come get you.. .sooner or later they will. Sir." I
"Yes, I rather thought that's what you'd way. So... what I suggest is that you not sit on your tail here. You take your three ships, and carry j the war to the enemy."
Kendric shook his head, confused. "Three ships?" j
"We're thinking about organizing small units to conduct raids and special operations for us within TOG territory."
"With the Underground. And the Freedom Road."
Colby nodded. "You would be our first underground military strike force. If it works with you, we'll begin inserting other units." He slammed a fist down on the table. "But we've got to start taking the offensive, dammit, or we are doomed!"
Understanding grew in Kendric's mind. A small, experienced, hard-hitting force. Not a force to tangle with battleship groups... but to strike lightly held stations. To raid commerce. To knock out T-doppler tracking stations and listening posts. To drop off or pick up intelligence agents. To help smuggle people out on the Freedom Road...
"Agreed," he said. Then, with a new intensity of feeling, "Agreed!"
"It'll be damned dangerous. We won't hold it against you if you turn us down."
His mind leapt to possibilities, to problems, to solutions. "We'd need supplies...a place to repair our ships, to service them..."
"Our hope is to establish a chain of supply bases throughout TOG territory. Nothing big or elaborate. Just small facilities, hidden on asteroids or airless moons or inside the rings of gas giants. Small bases with food and medical facilities, missiles and mass projector rounds, maybe a repair facility. We'd establish and maintain those bases across the Freedom Road. Freighters passing by could drop off supplies, leave messages..."
"You're setting us up as privateers."
"You could say that."
"Close to certain key TOG trade routes, we could strike unescorted convoys, raid their planets, their commerce. Maybe tie up large numbers out looking for us." Kendric's face broke into a wide grin. "Hell, we could get that whole damned TOG fleet trying to find us again... and keep them out of your hair!"
"It's dangerous, Ken," Colby said again.
"So is sitting back, watching them grow stronger and bigger and more dangerous every day."
"Then you'll help us?"
What would-T.C. say? It had been less than a week since they'd been married in a simple ceremony held aboard the Gaidheal. Lenard Morganen had pronounced the joining shortly after the ship had limped insystem. T.C. was at the port now, helping the families of the Gael Squadron's crew as they revived to a brand-new life. So many of those people would be awakening to sorrow instead, and T.C. wanted to try to help offer comfort. To do something...
Kendric would have to talk it over with her, of course, and with the rest of the squadron survivors. Such a mission could only accept volunteers. He thought he knew what most of his squadron members would say. From his talk with T.C. the night before, he could guess her re
action, too.
"Do you think I'm going to sit here?" she'd asked, with sky glory in her hair and her eyes. "The dutiful wife of the Patria Potestas, waiting for you to come home? If you even came home? No, damn it! We go or we stay, hut we do it together!
He laughed, and extended his hand to Colby. "We're with you."
Appendices
APPENDIX I
The TOG Imperium
The revival of the Roman Empire of old Earth is surely one of the most interesting and unexpected twists of human social, political, and cultural history. It is also a prime example of how history is written— or rewritten—according to the political necessities and social eccentricities of any given age or culture.
According to the histories of Earth prior to the 30th century, Rome fell in 476 a.d., the date when a barbarian general named Odoacer dispensed with puppet emperors in Rome and declared himself King of Italy. The Eastern Roman Empire survived under various names until Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The old Roman Empire, however, transmitted a legacy of government, law, learning, language, and identity to Western civilization that would endure for thousands of years. Countless aspects of later civilization, from the traditions of wedding cake and wedding rings to the principle that a man is innocent until proven guilty, all had their basis in Roman law and custom.
The revival of Rome as a living political entity was an outgrowth of Man's diaspora through the Galaxy during the millennium following the development of faster-than-light travel in the 22nd century. The problems facing planetary governors were similar to those that had faced Roman governors of conquered provinces 3.000 years earlier. The development of VLCAs, allowing near-instantaneous communications across the Galaxy, permitted the creation of a strong, central interstellar government, while the sheer size of a given province and the numbers and disparity of the governed dictated the need for an imperial structure. On Terra, unification of the multitude of nation-states was accomplished slowly, and only succeeded at last when
Humanity was threatened by interstellar war. Though this unification was not accepted by all Humans (e.g., the flight of large numbers of Scots to NGC 4755), a city on the island of Sicily became devoted exclusively to the government of the Terran Imperium's far-flung colonies and possessions. It is not surprising that the new Human empire should identify with its ancient Roman forerunner, and the city's name paid homage to that fact.
The Roman Empire, it was now recognized, had never fallen. Rather, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 had ushered in the beginning of the Interregnum, a 1500-year Dark Age that lasted until the Praedi-catio Imperium of 2980, when the Terran Senate convened in New Rome for the first time to proclaim the new Empire.
This new Roman Empire existed in various forms throughout the following millennia. During much of this time, it was a true Republic governed by a Senate. A Caesar was elected from within the Senate body, but he was a relatively powerless figurehead more than a ruler, and sometimes there was no Caesar at all. Whether known as Republic or Empire, the new regime experienced periods of expansion and growth as well as periods of recession and near-collapse. Natural disasters such as the Snow Plague, and conflicts with aggressive alien civilizations such as the KessRith and the Ssora, brought the Empire to the edge of collapse more than once.
The Empire's key strengths, however, were its diversity and its scope. With Humanity established on hundreds of thousands of worlds across the Galaxy, large sections might be enslaved by non-Humans or ravaged by disease, but the survival of the Human species was assured. Throughout this era, it was the strength, not of the Empire, but the idea of Empire that allowed Humanity to maintain its self-image as a single people, bound together under a single set of laws and traditions. Indeed, historians had already begun to regard the Empire as an unbroken line of Order and Law, stretching across more than 6,500 years from Caesar Augustus to the present, with only a minor 1500-year wobble along the way. That wobble was the Dark Age Interregnum from 1423 to 2950 a.i. (1453 to 2980 a.d.)
Despite variations in form and shifts in character and policy, and despite the growing importance of the office and powers of the Emperor, the Empire remained virtually unchanged until 6680 a.i., when the newly elected Caesar B untari consolidated his power through the creation of the Overlords. The last vestiges of the Terran Republic were swept away, as Caesar, with the help of the Overlords, abolished the Ius Popularum (Law [justice] by the People) and replaced it with the Lex Caesari (Lay [command] by the Caesars) and the Terran Overlord Government.
The edicts and pronouncements that followed the establishment of TOG had far-reaching and startling consequences for every citizen and non-citizen throughout the Empire. This was especially true of the Patria Potestas (6691), which abolished the rights of women and relegated them to the status of possessions.
Most of these laws were issued under what were widely believed to be emergency measures. The Praeceptum Princeps was a statement of manifest destiny, first issued in 6690, that Man was the ultimate and supreme product of the evolution of intelligence in the Universe, and that other sentient species were, by the natural order of things, subservient and inferior to Humanity. Under the Praeceptum, Mankind was viewed as struggling to achieve his destiny—even his survival—in a Galaxy of alien cultures and civilizations that greatly outnumbered him. The Patria Potestas was designed to ensure a high birthrate in the ongoing struggle against the numerically superior aliens.
By acceding to this and other repressive measures in the name of expediency, the vast majority of Humans living within the Empire surrendered their right to self-determination, becoming as enslaved under the new regime as were conquered members of non-Human species.
By 6830, TOG had further consolidated and entrenched its hold on the bulk of the Galaxy. Certain small states along the borders remained semi-autonomous, while two—the non-human KessRith Empire and the Human-Baufrin Commonwealth—continued a desperate and unequal war against TOG in a losing struggle for survival.
It should be remembered that the structure of the Terran Empire is not, of itself, evil, despite the propaganda efforts of the Commonwealth and other enemies of Terra. In point of fact, the vast majority of Humans cannot conceive of any form of government other than the Empire, so long has it controlled the government, ideals, and destiny of Man. TOG, however, is a newcomer, a political idea that has taken over the body of the Empire to achieve ends completely alien to the overall direction of the nearly 7,000-year history of the Empire of Man.
It is against TOG that the Renegade Legions, the Renegade Underground, and the legions of the Commonwealth are dedicated.
Language
Consistent with the diverse backgrounds of countless human colonies across the Galaxy, most Human-occupied worlds have their own language or languages. This is the result of a natural process in which languages evolve during common usage, and become less and less intelligible dialects of the original over the course of hundreds or thousands of years. Toward the end of the Second Millennium, Humans attempted to reinforce the sovereignty of their empire by reconstructing a partly artificial language known as Galactic Latin, or Galatin.
With the gradual rise of Galactic Empire came the realization that a common language was necessary to bind together the thousands of disparate fragments of Humanity scattered across the Galaxy. Galatin began as a language of trade and of interstellar diplomacy. Eventually, over the next thousand years, it became as widespread as Anglic, Russki, and Pu tong hua (a Chinese lingua franca), the three major languages of space. With official encouragement, Galatin gradually replaced them as the official language of government. Traders found dealings with an Imperial government facilitated by use of Galatin, and in time, it became the principal language of commerce as well.
Galatin is generally identical to classical Latin, with a simplified grammar and syntax, and a vocabulary that has been expanded to allow scientific, commercial, and other specialized applications. Like most artifici
al languages, it is not well-adapted to poetic or artistic applications, and so many consider it soulless. Some writers (notably Gaeaphillos the Philosopher, in recent years) have made self-expres-sion in Galatin a new form of art, and are notable for the sonorous beauty of their rolling phrases in this tongue.
Individual worlds continue to use their own languages and dialects. (It would be too much to expect hundreds of billions of Humans to learn a new language overnight!) Second to Galatin, the trade tongue known as Standard Anglic, Galactic Standard, or Galstandard is in general use throughout the Commonwealth. Where language barriers continue to exist, perscomps and translator voders can be programmed to accept memory-clip modules that allow them to serve as linguistic translators, so long as both parties have the appropriate language program modules.
APPENDIX II
The Gaels
The Gaels of the Gael Confederation were descendants of Europeans from old Terra, specifically inhabitants of northern England and Scotland. The rise of third-world nations in power and status in the United Nations through the 20th and 21st centuries, coupled with the collapse of the various former Terran superpowers, had resulted in the fall of many of the older, established nations and the rise of new ones. Though Gael records are hazy on the subject (and TOG records do not record the event at all) it appears that Scotland achieved status during the 23rd century as an independent world power, then lost it again perhaps four centuries later as the various United Nations lost their autonomy to a new world government. The Gael Exodus appears to stem from this dark and confused period in Terran history.
Although few records remain from Gael sources, Human occupation of the Gael Cluster probably dates back to the late 27th century, when a small band of expatriates from Terra left to escape political or philosophical persecutions on their homeworld. It is not certain whether they deliberately severed all ties with Terra from the beginning (as they claim) or lost contact with Terra when a major interstellar war began (as the Terran Imperium maintains). Certainly, an open cluster such as the Jewel Box (NGC 4755) was an unlikely place to search for Terralike worlds to settle. If the original settlers had wanted to find a new home where they would escape notice for thousands of years, they could not have chosen a better place.
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