Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “I take care of all of my patients,” Jane said, tightly. She nodded towards her desk. “But I’m afraid I have bad news for the Captain.”

  Sandy lifted an eyebrow. “And you want me to deliver it?”

  “I can deliver bad news myself,” Jane said. She smiled, then sobered rapidly. “Most of the supplies are formulated for aliens, not humans. They’re missing certain vital components that humans need to survive. At best, we’re looking at slimming food.”

  “Oh,” Sandy said. Slimming food did nothing, but satisfy the body’s urge to eat. It passed through the digestive system and came out the other end within the day. She honestly didn't understand why someone who worried about their weight didn't just have their body adjusted, but Earth was fond of strange fads. “Is there no way we can use this to make up the shortfall?”

  “I doubt it,” Jane said. She tapped the scene meaningfully, but the medical terminology was beyond Sandy’s comprehension. “The best we can do is use it to satisfy the craving for food; it won’t actually give them anything they need. It would just make their hardship over the next few months greater than it would be without the alien foodstuffs.”

  She scowled. “There are some alien foods that we can eat and vice versa, but none of the supplies we brought fit into that category. The short answer is that we cannot feed the humans with the alien supplies.”

  “Understood,” Sandy said, tightly. The Captain would not be pleased, nor would anyone in the Fairfax Cluster. To have six fully-loaded freighters crammed with food for aliens ... it wouldn't be long before someone suggested that the Government had deliberately set out to ensure that the food was useless for human consumption. “I’ll inform the Captain myself.”

  Leaving the Doctor behind to tend to her patients, Sandy walked back towards the Captain’s office, thinking hard. The remains of the local government were quite unable to handle the crisis of food distribution, particularly now that the local military – such as it was – had been shattered too. There would almost certainly be civil war. Unless, of course, something was done about it. But what?

  She stepped into the Captain’s office and winced inwardly at his expression. “I received a note from the Governor,” he said, as the hatch hissed closed behind her. “She has expressly forbidden the use of her supplies to feed humans.”

  “It’s immaterial,” Sandy said. She explained, quickly. “We can't use them to feed starving humans.”

  “Brilliant,” the Captain said sarcastically, when she had finished. “There’ll be riots on the streets. I can't even blame them.”

  He swung the terminal around so that Sandy could see the message. “Your father sends his regards, but also his regrets,” the Captain explained. “It may prove impossible to cut loose supplies from anywhere else for Tyson’s Rest.”

  Sandy scowled, then hesitated as a thought struck her. “What about Bottleneck? Regulations used to insist that all bases kept a massive supply of MREs ...”

  “Good thought,” the Captain said. “I’ll send an enquiry to the Admiral, but it would still take a week for supplies to arrive even if they were dispatched at once.”

  He put his head in his hands, then looked up. “We’re going to have to go to our next destination,” he said, grimly. “There is no point in remaining here, not now. We can't do anything further to help and our presence will just inflame local tensions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sandy agreed. “What about the bodies?”

  The Captain sighed. Sandy could understand his mixed feelings. If the bodies had been human, a war crimes unit would catalogue the dead before sealing up the bodies for burial or shipment back to their families. But there was no point in sending the alien bodies back to a homeworld they’d never seen, even if the transport was available.

  “We’ll drop a KEW on the camp before we leave,” the Captain said, finally. “Or should we vaporise the bodies with plasma grenades?”

  “Plasma grenades would probably be the best bet,” Sandy said. She doubted that the local authorities would be happy about fragments of alien DNA floating around, even though it wouldn't do any real harm. People were funny that way. “There would be less of an impact on the environment.”

  The Captain nodded. “See to it,” he ordered. He looked back at his terminal, where the damning message from the Governor was still visible. “And then prepare the ship for departure. I want to be gone from here by 1700.”

  Sandy’s implant told her that it was 1400. She would have to work fast. There were away teams to pull back to the ship, final scans to run and – above all else – convoy operations to be planned and shared with the freighters. And the bodies would have to be burned to ashes.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. She would take as much as she could off the Captain’s shoulders. “I’ll see to it at once.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was rare for commercial spacers to look upon the interstellar gulfs between stars. Most of them brought their ships in and out of hyperspace as close as they could to their destinations, trying to cut down on the amount of time they spent in normal space. But for a military starship – or pirates – it was more common to lurk at the edge of a star system than any civilian would realise.

  Jason leaned back in his command chair as the squadron closed the hyperspace portals behind them and settled into formation. This far from the only inhabited world in the system, it was unlikely in the extreme that their arrival would have been detected. Earth and the Core Worlds might have been able to build massive orbital sensor networks, but few colonies could afford the colossal expense. Even so, he'd brought them out of hyperspace on the other side of the primary star, minimising their chances of detection as much as possible. Being detected too early would be disastrous.

  “All transits completed,” Dana reported. “The squadron has engaged sensor masks, as per orders.”

  “Good,” Jason said. Sensor masks were nowhere near as efficient as cloaking devices, but he preferred not to use cloaks unless they were close to any potential targets. They drained vast amounts of power – and besides, no cloak was ever completely effective. “Any encroachments?”

  “Nothing within sensor range,” Dana said. “The only radio source I am picking up comes from a set of claimed asteroids.”

  Jason smiled. The Putrajaya System had been heavily developed prior to the war, largely because the founding colonists had believed that heavy industry would allow them to jump several levels of development at once. They might have been right if the Dragons hadn't attacked, smashing much of the system’s industry and then carting off thousands of humans to serve as slaves. Now, the system was struggling to survive and rebuild – and investment was lacking. It would be years before the system was back up to where it had been before the war, let alone started to grow again.

  “Keep a careful eye on them,” he ordered. He turned and looked towards the helm officer, who looked understandably nervous. His predecessor had been killed after expressing his doubts about the operation too loudly. “Take us towards the first waypoint.”

  Havoc quivered slightly as the drive came online, propelling her towards the inner star system. Jason settled back in his command chair and watched the display, noting just how much damage the Dragons had done to the system’s once-proud infrastructure. It posed a danger of detection – it was quite possible that salvage crews were trying to save what they could – but one that could be handled. If nothing else, it was unlikely that a salvage crew would report their presence to the system’s authorities. They would risk being arrested for trespassing if they revealed themselves too blatantly.

  “There are no signs of enemy starships,” Dana reported. “I think we beat the feds to this spot.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Jason grunted. They'd pushed the drives as hard as they dared, but he’d always known that it was going to be chancy. If the locals had a chance to distribute the supplies, it would be difficult to ensure that they got them all. “Keep watching for any sign of trouble.”r />
  He grinned as the planet appeared in the main display. It was surrounded by a handful of orbital stations – and a great deal of debris. Between the Dragons and the Colonial Militia, everything in orbit had been destroyed. He was mildly surprised that they hadn't tipped the wreckage into the planet’s atmosphere or knocked it towards the primary star, unless they intended to use it as raw material. Judging from one of the orbital stations, that was precisely what they had in mind. No doubt they couldn't even afford more than a handful of asteroid miners.

  “We’re approaching the first waypoint,” the helmsman reported.

  “Hold position,” Jason ordered. “And now we wait.”

  ***

  The latest message from Bottleneck had not been encouraging. Admiral Porter had sent his apologies, but cited a series of Federation Navy regulations that forbade the dispatch of military supplies to civilian planets without authorisation from the Admiralty. Glen had fired off a dispatch to Admiral Patterson in response, although he had the nasty feeling that a message from a mere Captain would vanish somewhere in the bureaucracy rather than be showed to its intended recipient. He’d also fired off a message to Theodore, pointing out that the crisis was an opportunity to improve the Federation’s standing within the Fairfax Cluster, but it would be at least two weeks before he heard back from either of them. And even if the Admiralty acted at once, he knew, it would be nearly a month before any supplies were sent.

  Glen gritted his teeth, cursing Admiral Porter under his breath. There had been a time when Admirals would not have hesitated to skirt the borders of regulations; hell, hadn't then-Captain Schmitt been commended for ignoring the non-interference regulation and saving a planet of primitive aliens from an asteroid strike? And it was highly unlikely that leaving a planet of human settlers to starve would be considered commendable behaviour. But he could see the Admiral’s point. As the bureaucrats clawed back their power, Admirals and Captains who bent or broke regulations would find themselves in real trouble.

  Not everyone has corporate backers, he thought, sourly. The income from his stocks in Knight Corporation alone made him a wealthy man. Admittedly, he hadn't had access to his trust fund until he'd turned eighteen, but he’d lacked for nothing. Theodore had presented him with everything he'd wanted, apart from a real challenge. And a chance to be himself.

  He checked the latest message from the Governor and scowled. She seemed pleased with herself, but reading between the lines Glen saw trouble coming. Her one-on-one meetings with representatives from the different worlds in the Cluster might have seemed like a worthwhile idea to her, yet they almost certainly looked like an attempt to sow dissent to the locals. And the reaction to the attack on Tyson’s Rest was sheer fury.

  “I shouldn't have told her about the starships we’d identified,” he muttered to himself. But he’d included that detail in his report and the Governor had used it against the Bottleneck Republic, accusing their military of carrying out the attack. If she hadn't been the Governor ... as it was, Glen had the feeling that she was swiftly wearing out her welcome. Calling the colonists a bunch of barbarians unwilling to forgive or forget had not gone down well.

  It was too early to hear anything from the Federation, but Glen was sure that it wouldn't be anything the colonies wanted to hear. Who would have thought that an attack on a refugee camp could drive a wedge between two human civilisations? The Federation might insist that the Bottleneck Republic provided security for the refugees, forcing the republic to denude its defences if it tried to meet those demands. Or the Federation might send reinforcements itself.

  His intercom buzzed. “Captain, we are ten minutes from our exit point,” Helena said.

  “Understood,” Glen said. “I’ll be on the bridge in a minute.”

  He stood, shut down the terminal, then strode through the hatch and onto the bridge. Sandy rose from the command chair, saluted him and then headed for the hatch. She'd be on the secondary bridge in case of trouble. Glen sat down and checked the displays, then forced himself to relax. They’d be ready if something actually happened.

  Space twisted in front of him as they roared back into normal space. The display lit up with hundreds of icons, enough to quicken his heartbeat before he realised that most of them were completely immobile. Putrajaya’s once-impressive industrial base was now nothing more than ruins drifting in orbit. A handful of in-system craft were moving around, trying to salvage what they could, but most of the damage seemed beyond repair. He grimaced, remembering what the files had said about the planet. They could feed themselves, at least, but they couldn't make more than minimal progress on rebuilding their industry.

  And they won’t get any investment until the political situation is sorted out, Glen thought, as the remaining red icons turned green or yellow. Theodore won’t invest in the sector, let alone a single planet, unless there are protections in place for investors. The Federation won’t underwrite them as long as there’s a possibility the Bottleneck Republic might actually leave the rest of humanity. And they don't have much to offer to prove their sincerity.

  “Orbital scan completed,” Cooke reported. “No starships detected; five in-system ships detected, all heading away from the planet. Orbital defence grid is on standby; I estimate at least five minutes before it can open fire.”

  Sloppy, Glen thought, coldly. There was an enemy fleet somewhere in the sector, a fleet that had left Tyson’s Rest in ruins, and yet Putrajaya wasn’t tending to its own defences. But a quick glance at the display told the rest of the story. Putrajaya simply didn't have the resources to invest in more than a minimal defence network, let alone the ground-based stations the planet had enjoyed before the war. They’d probably kept the network tuned down to prevent wear and tear on the equipment.

  “Send them our IFF and request permission to start unloading,” he ordered. “And ask what shuttles they can spare to assist us.”

  There was a long pause before Danielle turned to face him. “They’ve granted us an orbital slot,” she reported, “but their shuttles are apparently occupied elsewhere.”

  “Bollocks,” Sandy said, though the command network. “What else might their shuttles be doing?”

  Glen nodded. Even the agricultural colonies had a shuttle or two – and, in the colonies, it was customary to help unload freighters when they arrived. The task would be a great deal slower without an orbital station, causing yet more delays. But it seemed that Putrajaya was unwilling to allow them to use its shuttles. Glen could guess why.

  “We’ll have to do it ourselves,” he said. If they wanted to refuse to help unload supplies for the alien refugees, there wasn't anything he could do to force them to comply. If he made it an order, they’d probably find an excuse to report the shuttles inoperative. “Take us into orbit and then inform Jackson King that she is to commence unloading at once.”

  “It’ll take hours,” Sandy said. She sounded irked; Putrajaya had delivered a slap in the face to the Federation, but also to the principles of the Bottleneck Republic. “But we’d better get on with it.”

  “We can use the Marine shuttles too,” Glen said. It was skirting the edge of regulations, but he saw no alternative. “And I will inspect the camp myself in the process.”

  ***

  Two hours later, he found himself cursing the entire human race as he looked upon the alien refugee camp. They might have been Dragons, rather than Mice or another slave race, but surely even they didn't deserve to be penned up so tightly. The planetary government had dumped them on a large island in the middle of the ocean and largely left them to their own devices. Even the human supervisors from the Federation seemed to be dispirited by the experience.

  He’d seen Dragons before, but it had been a rare experience. Starship crewmen never met their enemies face to face. It simply didn't matter if a starship’s crew had hands, claws or tentacles; their power lay in their ship, not in their personal appearance. Marines did ... and most of their tales were horrific. Seeing the
enemy so humbled brought out an odd mix of emotions; delight and relief that this group had been broken, at least, merged with a kind of guilt. Perhaps, he told himself, it would have been kinder to kill them all.

  Dragons were tall, taller than the average human, with scaly draconic skin and sharp teeth that glinted unpleasantly in the sunlight. The handful he’d met in the past had been prideful, carrying themselves as though they were still the undisputed masters of an interstellar empire – but then, they had to appear confident or their subordinates would drag them down. These Dragons looked listless, their tails dragging in the dirt as they wandered over the island. The colourful feathers they used to mark rank and status were completely missing.

  These are the ones who chose to live, he thought, as he stared at them. Countless others had taken their own lives, either through suicide or mounting insane attacks on human starships towards the end of the war. Their ethos told them what happened to races that lost galactic wars, It was clear that they couldn’t face the thought of becoming broken slaves, just like their own victims. He couldn't help wondering if the ones in front of him ever regretted going into captivity.