Victory at all costs (Spinward Book 3)

by Rupert Segar

  As devised by the Intendant, Robert’s cover was that he was on a fact finding tour to see if Arcadia was fit to become a protectorate. There was no question about the planet’s economy or ability to meet its quotas. Manufacturing and ship building had exceeded expectation. Robert’s supposed main line of enquiry was the welfare of Arcadian culture: was the mental and physical health of the nation being looked after? The seal of an official inquiry allowed Robert access anywhere and everywhere. His subject meant he could dispense with the attention of corrupt chief elders and their political cronies. Instead, he could talk to the elders who mattered. William had a list of the “good and the bad” as assessed by the Imperial Intelligence Unit; an overblown title for a small group of military intelligence officers who were assisted by an AI information correlator, planet-wide surveillance, and a huge reservoir of informers. Robert worried he might be being used to locate potential troublemakers but then, he thought, all the names were on the lists already.

  Devonport’s food centre was located in the disused fish auction hall. The sale of seafood was now done directly with buyers all over the planet via the military comms net. The majority of the fresh fish went to the military or the biggest township, Plymouth. It was an irony not lost to Robert that for many of the inhabitants, fresh fish was now too expensive to buy.

  “This is what we give our families,” said Senior Elder ‘Grannie’ Wright, holding out a packed of tinned sardines. “Some of the families come from a long line of fisher folk. Now they’re reduced to begging for an evening meal.”

  “Is it just supply and demand?” asked Robert. “Fresh seafood has become a fashionable luxury. So the price goes up and only the rich can afford to buy what was a staple for the people of Devonport.”

  “It used to be that the township fed itself first and then sold off the surplus,” said the elder known as ‘Grannie.’ “Under the occupation, the economy has been put into overdrive. In Plymouth, you have the spaceport. In Southampton they have factories that could be modernised to supply components. Here in Devonport, we only have fishing …”

  Senior Elder Wright broke off her conversation as a young woman carrying a baby in a papoose pushed her way into the crowded room.

  “Michelle, I’m surprised to see you back,” said ‘Grannie’ Wright. “I thought John had a job on the Atlas trawler.”

  “Granny, the Ocks took his pay because we owed the tax.”

  ‘Grannie’ Wright loaded the young woman up with a big basket containing five day’s food. As she left, the young girl cried and was comforted by the Senior Elder.

  “The poll tax imposed on the planet by the Ocks, the occupying force is incredibly unjust. It is so recessive that it is positively medieval.”

  As ‘Grannie’ Wright warmed up to her lecture, Robert reminded himself that this elder, with a charitable heart, was also a professor of economics.

  “To make every adult pay a flat rate tax regardless of whether they are high earners, poorly paid or not even in work at all is unfair and inefficient. It causes a dislocation in the labour market and demoralises a substantial subset of the population.

  “If you were the Chancellor, what would you do?” asked Robert.

  “Replace the Oct tax with something more progressive. A combination of a sales tax and a levy on incomes as a percentage of earnings would leave the poor with enough cash to buy some food. It would possibly raise even more money that the despised poll tax does.”

  Robert smiled; he had found his new treasurer.

  +

  The rest of the tour saw Robert and William visiting twenty townships in as many days. For the most part, the diplomat doctor and the Intendant’s aide slept on board the royal flitter. However, in the southern port of Nassau Keys where the weather was tropical, they were persuaded to sleep out in hammocks slung between palm trees, on the shore in front of the town hall. Robert and William both regretted this reckless move when they woke up in the middle of the night being bitten by Iberian mosquitoes. Despite beating a hasty retreat to the flitter and using the sonic showers and antiseptic salves, by morning, the two men were covered in itchy welts. When one of the egg cup size swellings on William’s arm burst, disgorging a cloud of newly hatched mosquitoes, Robert called for help.

  A town hall official, Robert thought she was the tourism officer, drove them in a hover car to a cliff top clinic. His discomfiture at being a doctor forced to seek medical help worsened when he saw it was a leprosy centre. On ancient Earth, leprosy has been cured and almost eradicated before the Great Exodus took place that saw Humankind heading off for the stars. However, somewhere in the region of galactic space near Arcadia, a colony ship had picked up a new disease. Unlike Earthbound leprosy, the new disease was not a bacterium but a virus. The symptoms were similar, as were the reaction of uninfected people towards the sufferers. Robert remembered once reading about space leprosy. It was carried by mosquitoes.

  Although used to seeing patients naked, Robert was embarrassed at having to strip in front of a female doctor. Dr Alicia Gomez was an attractive woman, a decade or so younger than Robert and that made the ordeal harder to bear. Dr Gomez was thoroughly enjoying herself.

  “So you’re the big wig diplomat inspecting Nassau Keys,” said Dr Gomez as she rubbed the Argon-gas decapitator over a weld on Robert’s posterior. “Will we pass the test now you’ve been bitten by the rare but entirely avoidable Iberian mosquito?” She snapped a piece of artificial skin out of a dispenser and slapped it on Robert’s arse.

  An hour later, Robert and William were sitting in disposable towelling robes in what looked like deck chairs in Dr Gomez’s consulting room.

  “Your clothes will be returned to you tomorrow after complete irradiation and gas immersion. The larva of the Iberian mosquito is incredibly hardy. We believe it can survive centuries in interstellar space, fall into the gravity well of a planet without burning up and then hatch.”

  “Is that how the mosquito got here?” asked William.

  “No, young man, it came as a hitch hiker on board a Portuguese freighter in the era before the Great Plague,” said Dr Gomez. “And the little space leprosy virus was a stowaway inside the stomach sack of the female mosquito.”

  “So, I have space leprosy, Dr Gomez?” asked Robert sitting uncomfortably on the piece of artificial skin attached to his behind.

  “Please, call me Alicia,” said the sallow skinned doctor, although she pronounced it Ali-th-ia. “Yes, Dr Fillips, you do, but it is nothing to worry about. A six-month course of anti-virals for both of you should clear the condition.”

  “But we can’t stay here for six months. We have to …” said William

  “You can go as soon as you like. Just remember to take your pills.”

  Outside the clinic, they met the tourism officer who had driven them there. She too was wearing a disposable towelling dressing gown. Her hover car had been sealed inside a large plastic bag inflated with argon gas. Two technicians were manoeuvring a gamma pulse emitter in front of the vehicle. Dr Alicia Gomez was supervising the sanitisation but came over to watching trio.

  “We take the Iberian mosquito very seriously. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to keep under control. It breeds parasitically, as you have found out, but humans are not really its favourite prey.”

  “What is?” asked Robert.

  “It’s an arachnophile, it loves spiders.”

  +

  It was cool among the trees, Robert did up his jacket, pondering on the course of the previous three months. Upon his return to Plymouth, the Intendant had declared Arcadia a protectorate. The cabinet of elders that Robert had recruited were summoned by military escorts to Plymouth, now named as the capital city. Robert was pleased to discover that William had added Dr Alicia Gomez to the list. She had lectured the young aide about the need for a national health service and he had signed her up as health secretary.

  Robert was asked to preside over the new cabinet but declined. He said the cabinet members may
have been selected rather than elected but they deserved a modicum of democracy in being allowed to choose their own leader. Robert further declined the title of Protector of the Protectorate saying that he thought that should be the Intendant’s job.

  Within weeks, the new regime had written a bill of rights which was signed into effect by the Intendant. Arcadians became semi-citizens of the Empire. A new tax regime was put in place replacing the old poll tax with a fairer system of proportionate levies. Military officials became subject to civilian law. A national health care system was being established to provide basic care at no cost.

  Robert felt pleased with the progress that had been made. The new cabinet was working for the benefit of all Arcadians not just the rich few. However, even though they now called it an administration, it was still a form of occupation. Arcadia was still making a heavy contribution to the Empire’s war effort. The world’s economy had been completely changed to create more wealth but that meant harder work for all citizens.

  Robert emerged from the wood and turned onto the lane that led to his house. Just metres away, a young couple sat on the fence. They jumped off the wooden timbers and walked over towards Robert.

  “Dr Fillips, I am glad to see you have not changed much since the last time explorers were here,” said the fair haired girl, who looked in her early twenties.

  The young man, whose facial features were broadly similar to the girl’s, held his hand out. “This is my sister Thistle, I am Nigeal. We are here to liberate Arcadia.”

  Chapter 19: Intergalactic Threads

  The space bay doors slid apart to leave a house sized opening between loading bay 7 and the vacuum outside. The Kargol Emperor was decidedly uneasy as the reassuring plastiform doors separated to reveal black space dotted with stars. Even though a near invisible force screen held in the atmosphere and kept out the harsh radiation, the King of Ten Thousand Worlds felt vulnerable. The Brood King, however, seemed indifferent as he arranged and rearranged cables and wires stretched between the control desk and the Sentinel, which in turn was linked to an aerial on a stand on the edge of the space bay floor. The aerial pointed directly at the portal hanging above Marylebone.

  “Soon, I will be able to speak to my father,” said the head hanging below the Brood King’s abdomen. “I have established intergalactic communication with a planet more than 23 million light years away. Your puny Human technology could never hope to span such a distance.”

  “No, my lord,” said the Emperor, “but you are using the alien technology of the gateways.”

  “I am only using the portal as a power source. The science that allows the transmission is pure Brood.” The spider seemed angry at the Emperor’s apparent slur.

  One the Brood Kings long limbs lashed out and knocked the head off a rotting corpse that had almost been stripped bare by the grub spiders. The gruesome figure had its arms outstretched, tied by ropes.

  “See the remains of Sergeant Evans, there? How do you think my father managed to reach out across the intergalactic void and snatch him from his base camp?”

  “You have already told me, my lord. Your father used the power of a gateway to propel him …”

  “No, no!” shouted the head hanging below the spider’s belly. “You are a royal fool. The power of the gateways is what attracted my father to this galaxy. But he had to funnel a web of transit through the dimensions of hyper-space to reach out and grab the sergeant. The first spiders he sent to this galaxy used the gateways to create beacons of space energy but it was my father who moved the spiders and that human to and fro across the intergalactic nothingness. Only we Brood have the power to traverse from one galaxy to another, which is why, in time, the entire cosmos will belong to us.”

  The Brood King shifted its ungainly body, sliding down off the control console and shuffled over toward the Sentinel. Half way between the two, the spider drew level with the Kargol Emperor. The Brood King turned his wrath on his royal attendant,

  “You are more insignificant than the Humans you pretend to rule. You think an Empire of ten thousand worlds is impressive. The Brood control every world, every moon, and every creature throughout one hundred and seventeen galaxies. That is more than ten thousand billion worlds; all teaming with life. Beings and creatures who have only one purpose; to serve the Brood. Your half empty, sparsely populated, galaxy is hardly worth the effort of conquest. If it was not for our compulsion to control everything, I would order the destruction of your kingdom and all the worlds in it. Now get out of my way. Wait over there.”

  The Brood King indicated a chair near the aerial perched on the edge of the loading bay. The Emperor would never choose to sit so close to the vacuum of space but he had no choice; the Brood King’s orders could not be refused. As he skirted the Sentinel, the ape-like creature, Peter, a former Guardian officer, performed a forward roll. Then, with his head hanging forward, he moved to the end of the AI machine and grunted like an ape.

  “Peter, leave the King alone. He is not worth bothering,” said the gurgling voice from the dismembered head hanging underneath the spider. “Hook up the virteron cables.”

  The Emperor stood near the edge of the space bay. He could feel the static from the force field in front of him, but he was not reassured. The humiliation inflicted on him by the Brood King reminded him of the harsh treatment he had received from his own father, the previous Emperor. As a boy, he was ignored by his mother and continually undermined by his father. He was never good enough in his father’s eyes. When he was eleven, he received a poor report from the foppish diplomats who were supposed to be his tutors. His father had marched him to a small airlock on the royal barge. His father quietly explained that the Empire had no room for a ruler who could not learn his lessons. There was no place for a substandard prince. Privilege and power could only be extended to those who deserved it. The rest deserved death. At that, the Emperor cast his son into the airlock and closed the door.

  “What will you do?” said the Emperor over the airlock intercom. “I am opening the outer door. Speak while you still have air in your lungs.”

  The small boy now grown into a man still remembered the shrill shriek of air whistling out of the slowly opening outer lock.

  “I will work harder, father. I will work harder,” he screamed.

  The outer door closed and the airlock re-pressurised. Through the glass panel in the inner door, the boy saw his regal father turn and walk away. The boy was relieved to be saved from further humiliation. He had wet himself in terror.

  The old Emperor’s lesson worked. The boy developed a new determination to study and became an exemplary scholar. The boy was also determined to take his revenge.

  Ten years later, the royal barge suffered complete decompression when an explosion blew off its loading bay door and all the bulkheads failed to close. The boy’s mother, along with two other royal wives, was blown out into space. The old Emperor managed to cling on to his command chair but died painfully. The fluids in his body boiled away and his skin developed frostbite before he passed out from lack of oxygen.

  At the age of 21, the new Emperor took the thrown. There was no investigation into the cause of the explosion and the royal barge was dispatched into the corona of the Crandos’ sun. The King of Ten Thousand Worlds sighed as he recalled the contentment he had felt at the death of his parents.

  “Peter, has all the data been sent?” said the gulping voice of the Brood King.

  “The Sentinel has just encoded the last batch,” said the young man with dirt engrained on every part of his body. “Incoming signal, over 32 terabytes and counting.”

  “Where is the message coming from?” asked the Kargol Emperor.

  “The signal comes from what you call the Whirlpool Galaxy, more than 23 million of your light years away – a considerable achievement.”

  On the back of the aerial pointed toward the anomalous gateway there was a basic holo emitter. A stuttering black and white image flashed on and off before it stab
ilised. There were two Brood Kings facing one other, although one was grainy with low definition.

  “Father, the Brood stands on the verge of victory. This galaxy is a puny offering but it is one more step towards control of the cosmos by the Brood collective.”

  “My Child, you disappoint me.”

  “Father, in what way do I disappoint you?”

  The speckled black and white figure paused and then held up the connector at the end of a metallic cable. It shrugged its shoulder so that its ample abdomen wobbled as it cast away the cable.

  “The data shows you are losing the battle. How could an armada controlled by the Brood and its agents be annihilated by a few primitive islanders on a water covered world?”

  “They have been given the means to manipulate subspace and hyperspace by an elusive species of technologists. It is only a matter of time before I find their secrets out.”

  “My child, you have overlooked the fact that this technologically advanced species has already beaten an armada of more than a thousand ships with one vessel.”

  “But, father, there is only one such ship and it is still in the Chimera Sector.”

  “No, the last batch of data shows the vessel destroyed two warships and has now left using the portal at Chimera 6.”

  The younger Brood King seemed to shiver.

  “I am not afraid. I have upgraded the armada’s shields and weapons. That ship will find us more than prepared.”

  The Brood King’s black and white image sat quietly, unmoving for a full forty seconds. Then the older of the two arachnids delivered his judgement.

  “The Brood cannot tolerate failure. The enemy must be destroyed. My child, I declare you outcast and you will remain so until you prove yourself the victor. Until then, there is no welcome for you in my or any other galaxy controlled by the Brood.”

  The vid image flicked off as the junior Brood King lashed out at the aerial, cutting it in half and crumpling its stand.

  “I will show my father the meaning of victory,” said the gasping voice used by the spider. “When your man, Colonel Garth returns, I will have the means of destroying both this galaxy and my father’s. We will see who is outcast then.”