Knight's Move

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “Madam Governor,” the President said. He looked surprised to see her, even though she did live in Government House. But she had only attended one previous meeting of the full council. She’d left when it had become clear that the colonials intended to persist in calling themselves the Bottleneck Republic. “Do you wish to address the council?”

  “Yes,” Chandra said, shortly. She allowed her gaze to sweep the room, noting those who seemed less pleased than others to see her. Were some of them allies? There were worlds that were keen to receive Federation investment, even if it alienated the rest of the cluster. “There are matters that must be addressed.”

  The President gravelled his table, calling for silence. It descended slowly, although as more and more representatives noticed who was waiting to speak they quieted down. Chandra had spoken in public before, countless times, yet there was something about the almost-silence that was unnerving. They expected nothing good from her, she realised; they expected trouble. And they were right.

  She took a step forward, raising her voice as she had been taught. “The Federation has been investigating every possible angle that might lead us to the raiders,” she said. It was true enough; Federation Intelligence had been attempting to track down the starships sold to the raiders in hopes of identifying the purchasers. “Some of our discoveries have been downright alarming. The starships we have identified as being used by the raiders were sold to the Colonial Militia.”

  There was a sudden burst of outrage from the watching representatives. None of them, it seemed, were prepared to believe that the Colonial Militia had carried out an attack on the colonies. But the evidence was conclusive; the starships that had carried out the attack had been purchased by legally-approved representatives from the Fairfax Cluster. They'd had all the paperwork and authorisations they needed to take the armed ships and vanish. No one knew where they’d gone from there, but Intelligence had quite a few guesses.

  “It grows worse,” she continued, once the chamber had quieted again. “The attack on Xenophon, the brutal and bloody massacre of both humans and aliens, was aided and abetted by treachery. Starships that should have been on guard duty were sent away, while the battlestation that should have provided enough security for the planet was destroyed – by a suicide ship armed with the right codes to pass through the station's defences. This was no random attack.

  “This was an attack orchestrated by elements within the Colonial Militia. They obtained the starships, recruited crews from the dregs of society and set out to purge the sector of alien camps. This cannot be tolerated.

  “In the name of the Federation, in the name of humanity, in the name of simple common decency, I must present you with the following ultimatum,” she said. “I ...”

  The representatives all suddenly started to shout at once. Chandra forced herself to stand upright as they proclaimed their anger, then waited until they calmed down. The President gave her a sidelong glance, then gravelled for quiet once again. Slowly, with undertones of imminent mutiny, the room grew quiet.

  “The Federation will be sending investigators to the Fairfax Cluster to track down the people responsible for these acts against humanity and aliens,” Chandra said. She kept her voice low and level, refusing to admit to even a hint of concern about the message – or its reception. “Those investigators will have full access to every military base, personnel and starship within the colonies. Any attempt to slow their progress will be interpreted as an admission of guilt.

  “Those found responsible for the crimes against humanity and aliens will be indicted in a federal court, in front of judges from the Federation. If found guilty, they can expect sentences from death to being dumped on a penal world.”

  She paused for effect, then pushed on. “Furthermore, as it is clear that the current system provides absolutely no protection to the aliens at all, the aliens will be moved to a central world. The Fairfax Cluster will provide the shipping and the world, perhaps one of the handful with relatively few humans currently living there. Once there, the aliens will be provided support from the Cluster until they can look after themselves. They include many with the skills to produce food for themselves.

  “These steps are taken with the full backing of the Federation Senate,” she concluded. The message had arrived only an hour ago. For once, the relay network had worked perfectly, flashing the message through the Bottleneck and to Fairfax in record time. “If you refuse to cooperate, the consequences will be ... unpleasant.”

  The outrage and hatred in the chamber was almost a tangible entity. If looks could kill, she would be blasted into atoms a thousand times over. She'd not only held them to account before the entire galaxy, but dismissed their vaunted independence or even autonomy. Even the strongest worlds received no autonomy if they broke the Federation Code. The so-called Bottleneck Republic could not hope to stand off the Federation Navy.

  Turning, she marched out of the chamber. They could decide if they wanted to bow to the ultimatum or not. And if they refused, the Federation would do whatever was necessary to ensure that the aliens were protected.

  And, in doing so, save itself from irrelevance.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Portal closing, Captain,” Helena reported. “Transit complete.”

  Glen nodded. Jorlem was their last destination, a medium-sized colony that had been overrun too quickly by the Dragons to put up a real fight. The human population had been enslaved, but there hadn't been a significant resistance movement until the Colonial Militia had liberated the planet. Oddly, the files had suggested that the population had actually collaborated with the Dragons to a far greater degree than normal.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Raise the planet and ...”

  “Encroachment,” Cooke snapped. Four red icons blinked to life on the display. “Three destroyers and a frigate, scanning us. Weapons hot; I say again, weapons hot.”

  “Hold position,” Glen said, calmly. The ships were too far away to inflict damage before his crew had time to react, unless they were armed with something completely new and unexpected. He rather doubted it. The Colonial Militia might have managed to keep ancient starships going long after they should have been scrapped, but they hadn't really managed any breakthroughs that led to new technology. “Raise them.”

  “They’re Colonial Militia,” Cooke said. “They shouldn't be here at all.”

  Glen nodded. The last update they’d had stated that Jorlem was almost completely undefended. It was why he’d put it at the bottom of their schedule, ever since he’d realised that the raiders seemed to be following Dauntless. Jorlem was just the sort of world they would like to target. But four starships assigned to planetary defence ... what the hell was going on?

  “Picking up a signal,” Danielle reported. “They want to know what we’re doing here.”

  Glen’s eyes narrowed. The Colonial Militia should damn well know what they were doing at Jorlem, unless they hadn't got the word. Hyperspace had been unusually dense over the last few days, making communications almost impossible. Glen was used to being cut off from higher authority – it was one of the perils of spaceflight – but it was still worrying. The political situation was too tense for Dauntless to remain ignorant.

  “Inform them that we are here to deliver supplies to the alien camp,” he ordered, tightly. “And then see if you can pull a status update from the local communications station.”

  There was a long pause. “Captain Trout wishes to speak with you personally,” Danielle said, after a moment. “Can I put him through?”

  “Yes,” Glen said. Captain Trout appeared in front of him. He was a thin grim-faced officer, wearing a rather tattered uniform. But Glen knew better than to assume that made him unprofessional. The Colonial Militia just didn't place the same value on uniforms as the Federation Navy, choosing to be professional rather than appear professional. “This is Captain Knight of Dauntless.”

  “Captain Trout of Starlight,” Captain Trout said, gruffly
. “I’m afraid that there has been a ... change in circumstances.”

  Glen hesitated. Had the raiders attacked? Dauntless had heard nothing, but hyperspace might well have swallowed the transmission. And yet ... the planet's orbital installations, such as they were, seemed to be intact. The raiders had smashed every other orbital installation they’d encountered, then bombarded the planets for good measure. Why would they leave the satellites here alone?

  They wouldn't, he thought, grimly.

  “I’ll send you a full briefing package,” Captain Trout continued. “For the moment, what you need to know is that the aliens are no longer welcome on this planet. Your Governor” – he made the word a curse – “has insisted that they be transported to a world where their security can be guaranteed. Your freighters, I assume, are here to provide transport.”

  “I’ll review the briefing package,” Glen said, stiffly. Without knowing what was going on, there was no way he could make any decision. “But our freighters are not configured for passenger transport.”

  “I suggest that you reconfigure them,” Captain Trout said. “The local government wants to remove the aliens at once. It really doesn't care if the aliens are taken away or dumped in a mass grave.”

  His image vanished from the display. A moment later, the briefing packet popped up in front of Glen. He copied it to Cynthia, then opened it and began to read. The information should have been forwarded to Dauntless at once, but it looked as though that too had been lost in hyperspace. But it was very illuminating.

  He shuddered as he realised just how badly they’d underestimated the raiders. The attack on Xenophon was an order of magnitude more deadly and daring than anything either the Federation Navy or the Colonial Militia had seen since the end of the war. Taking out the battlestation alone didn't suggest pirates, it suggested terrorists or a military force. And the method they’d used suggested fanatics ... he skimmed through the message the raiders had transmitted and swore out loud. If defenceless planets were told that the only way to avoid attack was to get rid of the aliens, their governments wouldn’t hesitate. After all, they were only aliens. It wasn't as if they were human.

  Gritting his teeth, he called the Chief Engineer. “I need you to reconfigure the freighters to transport the aliens to another world,” he said, shortly. “How long would it take?”

  “Give us at least two days,” Stocker said, after a moment. “The freighters would need life support pods, at the bare minimum, then heat, lighting and food. I think they’d be pretty unpleasant unless we tear out the bulkheads and rebuild the interior completely ...”

  “I don’t think we have time,” Glen said. He remembered some of the stories he'd been told in the Academy. Federation Navy personnel had often located freighters crammed with refugees fleeing the Dragons, only to discover that the life support had been overloaded and crashed, leaving the refugees to suffocate and die. The Marines who had been the first to enter the holds had been shocked by the sight. “Just get them set up so we can keep them alive.”

  “... Understood, Captain,” Stocker said. “I’ll round up the engineering crews and start work at once.”

  “Ask the supervisor we picked up from Tyson’s Rest if she wishes to assist,” Glen suggested. Sandy should have made that suggestion, but Sandy was gone ... and there was no way to know where she was now. “She may be able to offer useful suggestions.”

  He closed the channel, then looked over at Helena. “Take us into high orbit, then hold position,” he said. “Cooke, you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Cooke said. “I relieve you.”

  Glen walked into his office, sat down at his desk and read through the rest of the information package. The Governor had issued an ultimatum ... reading between the lines, it was clear that it hadn't gone down very well. Half of the colonies seemed to think that she should be told to go to hell, others seemed inclined to agree to give the aliens a single world provided that it wasn't one of theirs. In the end, they’d settled on a largely-abandoned world that had been torn up pretty badly during the war. It wouldn't be a very pleasant place to live, but it should be safe.

  “We need to get some more hulls out here,” he muttered. Using a superdreadnaught or two to hunt raiders was like trying to use a hammer to swat flies, but they could easily provide cover for the new alien world. Perhaps a squadron could be detached from Bottleneck and dispatched to protect the aliens. If nothing else, it would relieve the strain on the Colonial Militia. “But the Governor doesn't seem inclined to ask for more help.”

  He read through the political briefing, noting with a snarl of distaste the weasel words written into the Federation’s statement. It was hard to tell, even after three readings, if the Federation was actually committing itself to military action or not. Chances were, he suspected, that the Federation itself wasn't sure what it would do if the Bottleneck Republic declared independence. It wasn't as if the colonies themselves were that important, but their departure could encourage a whole wave of independence movements, which would fragment the Federation while it was still trying to recover from the war. And Knight Corporation – and countless others – would risk collapse if the Federation fragmented.

  You’d think Theodore would have tried to give me some proper instructions, he thought sourly, as he read the rest of the files. But then, I never listened to him, even when he resorted to threatening me with military boarding school.

  There was a chime as someone pressed the buzzer on the far side of his hatch. “Come,” he ordered. The door hissed open to reveal Susan, wearing the naval outfit Sandy had provided for her. It was technically against regulations, but there was little else for her to wear. “What can I do for you?”

  Susan came forward until she was standing right in front of his desk. “Say it isn't so, Captain,” she said. “They’re not just ... going to throw the aliens off their world.”

  “That’s what they want to do,” Glen said. Clearly, Stocker had taken his advice and asked Susan for her opinion. “And we don't have the power to stop them.”

  “They agreed to take on the responsibility of looking after the aliens,” Susan protested, loudly. “They can't just abandon it!”

  Glen sighed. Civilians. He’d met too many, at dinners and parties his brothers had insisted he attend, to have any kind of tolerance for their idealism mixed with ignorance. On the face of it, Susan was entirely correct; it was wrong to throw the aliens out into space, even if a single world had been designated as a permanent homeworld. But, practically speaking, the colony’s government probably felt it had no choice. Jorlem was almost completely defenceless and, as a largely unimportant world, had no way of convincing the Colonial Militia to tie a handful of ships down permanently.

  “They didn't agree to the responsibility willingly,” Glen pointed out. It was always easiest to duck a responsibility if one felt forced into assuming it. “And they have an entire planet of humans to consider ...”

  “So they’re just going to cram them all into stinky dark freighters and hope that they survive the trip,” Susan said, loudly. “They’ll die!”

  “We can keep them alive,” Glen said. It would take a week to reach the new alien homeworld. A straight-line course would take two days, but hyperspace’s latest storm showed no sign of fading away before they left. “It won’t be pleasant, but ...”

  “It’s inhuman,” Susan wailed. “You can't treat them like this!”

  Glen rubbed his forehead. Sandy should have dealt with the girl, providing a barrier between her and the Captain. But Sandy was off on her mission ... Glen sighed, wondering just what she would have said to a crying woman-child. Would she had tried to comfort the girl or merely slapped her? Or was that just wishful thinking?

  “I think that we have no choice,” Glen said. He’d already considered taking some of the aliens onboard Dauntless, before running the calculations and confirming that it wouldn't be more than a handful of aliens. “The alternative is to let the local gove
rnment massacre the aliens themselves.”

  Susan stared at him in absolute horror. “They can't do that!”

  Glen sighed out loud, shaking his head. He hadn't scanned Susan’s file, but judging from her age she’d grown to maturity long after the Federation Navy had pushed the Dragons away from Earth and started to advance into their territory. There had been no doubt, in the later years of the war, that humanity would win. The Federation’s combined industrial base had produced enough starships, starfighters and sheer firepower to ensure that the Dragons were steamrollered to death.

  But she hadn't had to make the hard choices, nor had many of her generation. Who lived? Who died? Who was considered important enough to rate a spot on an evacuation ship? Who had to be left behind on a world that was about to be occupied? Who was to be given a rifle and told to make the enemy bleed? Who was to be told to run and hide? And who was to be euthanized – killed – to ensure that they didn't waste resources? Or, for that matter, that they didn't collaborate with the enemy.