"An empire—?" asked Kathryn. "But the Commonwealth is democratic—"
"Was democratic!" he snapped. "Now it's rotted away. Too bad, but you can't revive the dead. This is an age in history such as has often occurred before when the enforced peace of Caesarism is the only solution. Maybe not a good solution but better than the devastation we're suffering now. When there's been a long enough period of peace and unity it may be time to think of reinstating the old republicanism. But that time is many centuries in the future, if it ever comes. Just now the socio-economic conditions aren't right for it."
He took a restless turn about the bridge. A million stars of space in the viewport blazed like a chill crown over his head. "It'll be an empire in fact," he said, "and therefore it should be an empire in name. People will fight and sacrifice and die for a gaudy symbol when the demands of reality don't touch them. We need a hereditary aristocracy to put on a good show. It's always effective, and the archaism is especially valuable to Sol just now. It'll recall the good old glamorous days before space travel. It'll be even more of a symbol now than it was in its own age. Yes, an empire, Kathryn, the Empire of Sol. Peace, ye underlings!"
"Aristocracies decay," I argued. "Despotism is all right as long as you have an able despot but sooner or later a meathead will be born—"
"Not if the dynasty starts with strong men and women, and continues to choose good breeding stock, and raises the sons in the same hard school as the fathers. Then it can last for centuries. Especially in these days of gerontology and hundred-year active lifespans."
I laughed at him. "One ship, and you're planning an empire in the Galaxy!" I jeered. "And you yourself, I suppose, will be the first emperor?"
His eyes were expressionless. "Yes," he said. "Unless I find a better man, which I doubt."
Kathryn bit her lip. "I don't like it," she said. "It's—cruel."
"This is a cruel age, my dear," he said gently.
Gorzun rolled black and huge against a wilderness of stars. The redly illuminated hemisphere was like a sickle of blood as we swept out of secondary drive and rode our gravbeams down toward the night side.
Once only were we challenged. A harsh gabble of words came over the transonic communicator. Manuel answered smoothly in the native language, explaining that our vision set was out of order, and gave the recognition signals contained in the codebook. The warship let us pass.
Down and down and down, the darkened surface swelling beneath us, mountains reaching hungry peaks to rip the vessel's belly out, snow and glaciers and a churning sea lit by three hurtling moons. Blackness and cold and desolation.
Manuel's voice rolled over the intercom: "Look below, men of Sol. Look out the viewports. This is where they were taking us!"
A snarl of pure hatred answered him. That crew would have died to the last human if they could drag Gorzun to oblivion with them. God help me, I felt that way myself.
It had been a long, hard voyage even after our liberation, and the weariness in me was only lifted by the prospect of battle. I'd been working around the clock, training men, organizing the hundred units a modern warcraft needs. Manuel, with Kathryn for secretary and general assistant, had been driving himself even more fiercely, but I hadn't seen much of either of them. We'd all been too busy.
Now the three of us sat on the bridge watching Gorzun shrieking up to meet us. Kathryn was white and still, the hand that rested on mine was cold. I felt a tension within myself that thrummed near the breaking point. My orders to my gun crews were strained. Manuel alone seemed as chill and unruffled as always. There was steel in him. I sometimes wondered if he really was human.
Atmosphere screamed and thundered behind us. We roared over the sea, racing the dawn, and under its cold colorless streaks of light we saw Gorzun's capital city rise from the edge of the world.
I had a dizzying glimpse of squat stone towers, narrow canyons of streets, and the gigantic loom of spaceships on the rim of the city. Then Manuel nodded and I gave my firing orders.
Flame and ruin exploded beneath us. Spaceships burst open and toppled to crush buildings under their huge mass. Stone and metal fused, ran in lava between crumbling walls. The ground opened and swallowed half the town, A blue-white hell of atomic fire winked through the sudden roil of smoke. And the city died.
We slewed skyward, every girder protesting, and raced for the next great spaceport. There was a ship riding above it. Perhaps they had been alarmed already. We never knew. We opened up, and she fired back, and while we maneuvered in the heavens the Revenge dropped her bombs. We took a pounding, but our forcescreens held and theirs didn't. The burning ship smashed half the city when it fell.
On to the next site shown by our captured maps. This time we met a cloud of space interceptors. Ground missiles went arcing up against us. The Revenge shuddered under the blows. I could almost see our gravity generator smoking as it tried to compensate for our crazy spins and twists and lurchings. We fought them, like a bear fighting a dog pack, and scattered them and laid the base waste.
"All right," said Manuel. "Let's get out of here."
Space became a blazing night around us as we climbed above the atmosphere. Warships would be thundering on their way to smash us. But how could they locate a single ship in the enormousness between the worlds? We went into secondary drive, a tricky thing to do so near a sun, but we'd tightened the engines and trained the crew well. In minutes we were at the next planet, also habitable. Only three colonies were there. We smashed them all!
The men were cheering. It was more like the yelp of a wolf pack. The snarl died from my own face and I felt a little sick with the ruin. Our enemies, yes. But there were many dead. Kathryn wept, slow silent tears running down her face, shoulders shaking.
Manuel reached over and took her hand. "It's done, Kathryn," he said quietly. "We can go home now."
He added after a moment, as if to himself: "Hate is a useful means to an end but damned dangerous. We'll have to get the racist complex out of mankind. We can't conquer anyone, even the Gorzuni, and keep them as inferiors and hope to have a stable empire. All races must be equal." He rubbed his strong square chin. "I think I'll borrow a leaf from the old Romans. All worthy individuals, of any race, can become terrestrial citizens. It'll be a stabilizing factor."
"You," I said, with a harshness in my throat, "are a megalomaniac." But I wasn't sure any longer.
It was winter in Earth's northern hemisphere when the Revenge came home. I walked out into snow that crunched under my feet and watched my breath smoking white against the clear pale blue of the sky. A few others had come out with me. They fell on their knees in the snow and kissed it. They were a wild-looking gang, clad in whatever tatters of garment they could find, the men bearded and long-haired, but they were the finest, deadliest fighting crew in the Galaxy now. They stood there looking at the gentle sweep of hills, at blue sky and ice-flashing trees and a single crow hovering far overhead, and tears froze in their beards.
Home.
We had signalled other units of the Navy. Some would come along to pick us up soon and guide us to the secret base on Mercury, and there the fight would go on. But now, just now in this eternal instant we were home.
I felt weariness like an ache in my bones. I wanted to crawl bear-like into some cave by a murmuring river, under the dear tall trees of Earth, and sleep till spring woke up the world again. But as I stood there with the thin winter wind like a cleansing bath around me, the tiredness dropped off. My body responded to the world which two billion years of evolution had shaped it for and I laughed aloud with the joy of it.
We couldn't fail. We were the freemen of Terra fighting for our own hearthfires and the deep ancient strength of the planet was in us. Victory and the stars lay in our hands, even now, even now.
I turned and saw Kathryn coming down the airlock gangway. My heart stumbled and then began to race. It had been so long, so terribly long. We'd had so little time but now we were home, and she was singing.
Her face was grave as she approached me. There was something remote about her and a strange blending of pain with the joy that must be in her too. The frost crackled in her dark unbound hair, and when she took my hands her own were cold.
"Kathryn, we're home," I whispered. "We're home, and free, and alive. O Kathryn, I love you!"
She said nothing, but stood looking at me forever and forever until Manuel Argos came to join us. The little stocky man seemed embarrassed—the first and only time I ever saw him quail, even faintly.
"John," he said, "I've got to tell you something."
"It'll keep," I answered. "You're the captain of the ship. You have authority to perform marriages. I want you to marry Kathryn and me, here, now, on Earth."
She looked at me unwaveringly, but her eyes were blind with tears. "That's it, John," she said, so low I could barely hear her. "It won't be. I'm going to marry Manuel."
I stood there, not saying anything, not even feeling it yet.
"It happened on the voyage," she said, tonelessly. "I tried to fight myself, I couldn't. I love him, John. I love him even more than I love you, and I didn't think that was possible."
"She will be the mother of kings," said Manuel, but his arrogant words were almost defensive. "I couldn't have made a better choice."
"Do you love her too," I asked slowly, "or do you consider her good breeding stock?" Then: "Never mind. Your answer would only be the most expedient. We'll never know the truth."
It was instinct, I thought with a great resurgence of weariness. A strong and vital woman would pick the most suitable mate. She couldn't help herself. It was the race within her and there was nothing I could do about it.
"Bless you, my children," I said.
They walked away after awhile, hand in hand under the high trees that glittered with ice and sun. I stood watching them until they were out of sight. Even then, with a long and desperate struggle yet to come, I think I knew that those were the parents of the Empire and the glorious Argolid dynasty, that they carried the future within them.
And I didn't give a damn.
SARGASSO OF LOST STARSHIPS
INTRODUCTION
Many scholarly works of varying lengths have been written on both the history and the literature of the early years of the Terran Empire, and the majority completely ignore the piece which follows. The few which do mention it mostly do so only in passing, describing it as "obvious fiction," or even scorn it as a hoax. The eminent Donvar Ayeghen once hastily changed the subject when the present document was brought up in an interview.
One doubter of its authenticity, Winston P. Sanders IX, has listed his objections to the document's authenticity as: (1) How likely is it that only one species in the known galaxy could have developed such mental powers? Telepathic races are rare, but known, but no other such near-supernatural abilities have been reported in any known non-human races. The universe does not favor unique events. (2) The narrative, in third person, is obviously a retelling of an earlier description of the events, yet no other accounts even slightly resembling the events in the piece have ever been unearthed by archaeologists or other researchers. (3) The course of the story, with an enemy of the young Empire gradually becoming one of its supporters, and also helping to defeat a deadly menace to the Empire and its subjects, makes the piece look suspiciously like a work of propaganda, put together to drum up patriotic fervor for the Empire and its controversial annexation policies.
One of the few supporters of the document's being authentic, D. H. Thomas, has not been taken very seriously because of his not-quite-respectable studies of ancient pre-atomic authors of dubious literary merit, such as Lester Dent, Walter B. Gibson, and Norvell W. Page. Still, Thomas' scholarship, however eccentric, is unquestioned, and he has noted subtle points in the narrative that indicate a close knowledge of technology and customs of the time frame in which the piece is set, arguing that the alleged time of writing rings true.
In any case, once the excavated document had been translated, its story proved popular with the lay public, both in subetheric text form, and in several vidplay versions (all of which, it should be mentioned, take great liberties with the original tale).
Final proof might lie within the "Black Nebula" that is the setting for much of the tale, but the few clues as to the nebula's location use terms—such as the name of stars—which centuries ago fell into disuse, so that even their locations are doubtful, let alone the location of the nebula.
There are, as one of the characters says, many black nebulae. Someday, an exploring ship might find the bizarre planet described herein. Or, even if that planet exists, it might never be stumbled on, leaving us forever with an undeniably rousing tale whose truth will forever remain unproven.
—Michael Karageorge
I
Basil Donovan was drunk again.
He sat near the open door of the Golden Planet, boots on the table, chair tilted back, one arm resting on the broad shoulder of Wocha, who sprawled on the floor beside him, the other hand clutching a tankard of ale. The tunic was open above his stained gray shirt, the battered cap was askew on his close-cropped blond hair, and his insignia—the stars of a captain and the silver leaves of an earl on Ansa—were tarnished. There was a deepening flush over his pale gaunt cheeks, and his eyes smoldered with an old rage.
Looking out across the cobbled street, he could see one of the tall, half-timbered houses of Lanstead. It had somehow survived the space bombardment, though its neighbors were rubble, but the tile roof was clumsily patched and there was oiled paper across the broken plastic of the windows. An anachronism, looming over the great bulldozer which was clearing the wreckage next door. The workmen there were mostly Ansans, big men in ragged clothes, but a well-dressed Terran was bossing the job. Donovan cursed wearily and lifted his tankard again.
The long, smoky-raftered taproom was full—stolid burghers and peasants of Lanstead, discharged spacemen still in their worn uniforms, a couple of tailed greenies from the neighbor planet Shalmu. Talk was low and spiritless, and the smoke which drifted from pipes and cigarettes was bitter, cheap tobacco and dried bark. The smell of defeat was thick in the tavern.
"May I sit here, sir? The other places are full."
Donovan glanced up. It was a young fellow, peasant written over his sunburned face in spite of the gray uniform and the empty sleeve. Olman—yes, Sam Olman, whose family had been under Donovan fief these two hundred years, "Sure, make yourself at home."
"Thank you, sir. I came in to get some supplies, thought I'd have a beer too. But you can't get anything these days. Not to be had."
Sam's face looked vaguely hopeful as he eyed the noble. "We do need a gas engine bad, sir, for the tractor. Now that the central powercaster is gone, we got to have our own engines. I don't want to presume, sir, but—"
Donovan lifted one corner of his mouth la a tired smile. "I'm sorry," he said. "If I could get one machine for the whole community I'd be satisfied. Can't be done. We're trying to start a small factory of our own up at the manor, but it's slow work."
"I'm sure if anyone can do anything it's you, sir."
Donovan looked quizzically at the open countenance across the table, "Sam," he asked, "why do you people keep turning to the Family? We led you, and it was to defeat. Why do you want anything more to do with nobles? We're not even that, any longer. We've been stripped of our titles. We're just plain citizens of the Empire now like you, and the new rulers are Terran. Why do you still think of us as your leaders?"
"But you are, sir! You've always been. It wasn't the king's fault, or his men's, that Terra had so much more'n we did. We gave 'em a fight they won't forget in a hurry!"
"You were in my squadron, weren't you?"
"Yes, sir. CPO on the Ansa Lancer, I was with you at the Battle of Luga." The deep-set eyes glowed. "We hit 'em there, didn't we, sir?"
"So we did." Donovan couldn't suppress the sudden fierce memory. Outnumbered, outgunned, half its ships shot to pieces and ha
lf the crews down with Sirius fever, the Royal Lansteaders had still made naval history and sent the Imperial Fleet kiyoodling back to Sol. Naval historians would be scratching their heads over that battle for the next five centuries. Before God, they'd fought!
He began to sing the old war-song, softly at first, louder as Sam joined him—
* * *
Comrades, hear the battle tiding,
hear the ships that rise and yell
faring outward, standard riding—
Kick the Terrans back to hell!
The others were listening, men raised weary heads, an old light burned in their eyes and tankards clashed together. They stood up to roar out the chorus till the walls shook.
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