“This world is ours,” the eldest man said. His beard was straggly, suggesting poor nutrition at the very least. Glen shuddered when he opened his mouth. Tooth decay was unknown on almost every settled world, but his teeth had clearly been decaying for years. And his voice ... he sounded so badly accented that it was hard to believe that he had ever been part of the greater human community. “We live here. We’re not leaving.”
Glen found himself torn in two. Part of him wanted to abandon the man, if not his children; part of him wanted to drag all of them into the shuttle and take them back to Dauntless, to see what sickbay could do for them. At the very least, some proper medical care might ensure that the little community lasted more than a dozen years. They hadn't even taken precautions against inbreeding! Glen knew that there were worlds that lacked taboos against incest, no matter how sickening the rest of the Federation found it, but they knew the dangers. This community would have to inbreed within a generation or two ...
“We’re going to give you medical treatment,” he said, finally. He nodded to the Marines, who hefted the men up and carried them towards the shuttle. The women didn't argue at all; the kids looked half-fascinated, half-terrified. To them, the healthy spacers must look like creatures from another world. “And then you can decide what you want to do with your lives.”
He took one last look around the settlement, then returned to the shuttle. Thankfully, the Governor’s planned political gesture included prefabricated settlements his crews could drop on the planet’s surface, after using plasma grenades to clear away the local ecology. It would be a crude settlement at best, yet the aliens would be capable of turning it into a proper place to live. Exactly who owned the planet was in dispute – the war had shattered the former system for claiming star systems – but most of the claimants could simply be bought off. If the Governor refused to pay, Glen suspected that he could make a convincing offer out of his own funds.
Particularly as they won’t be seeing much from this world, he thought. Unless the aliens produce something really interesting.
The shuttle rose up from the surface of the planet, taking him back to Dauntless. Glen watched through the sensors as the six freighters were rapidly emptied of their living cargo, hoping that the aliens finally found peace on Primus Omega – or whatever they choose to call it. The handful of starships the Colonial Militia had been pushed into assigning to the system would deter enemy attack long enough for the raiders to be tracked down – or the TFN to assign a squadron to the system.
He smiled, rather wanly, as he saw Susan waiting for him. The alien supervisor looked exhausted; she’d spent the last ten days on the freighters, trying to help take care of the aliens. From what Glen had heard the freighter commanders say, she’d largely been getting in the way.
“Captain,” she said. “This planet isn't a bad choice.”
“Few humans,” Glen agreed. “And plenty of room for expansion.”
Susan nodded. “You will have to keep the Mice and the Dragons apart,” she added. “The Mice seem to defer to the Dragons automatically by now, even though I think they’re actually more intelligent. But tests are unreliable.”
Glen smiled, then allowed her to walk with him up to the bridge. The flight through hyperspace had been nerve-wracking; if Glen hadn't known better, he would have thought that the storm was deliberately trying to delay them. As it was, a flight that should have taken a week had lasted ten days.
“Captain,” Danielle said, as he stepped onto the bridge. “We’re picking up an emergency message from Daring.”
“Put her though,” Glen ordered. Daring’s CO was the senior colonial militia officer in the system. “Captain Abercrombie, I ...”
“Save it,” Abercrombie snapped. Her war record was impressive, almost as impressive as Admiral Webster or Captain Fife. “We’re pulling out; you know why. And good luck with the buggers.”
Her image vanished from the display. Moments later, the tactical display showed the colonial ships opening portals and vanishing into hyperspace, leaving Dauntless alone.
Glen stared at the display, shocked and horrified. “What happened?”
“They picked up a heavily encrypted message from Fairfax,” Danielle reported. “And then they just left.”
“Contact the Governor,” Glen ordered. “Find out just what happened ... and why.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Nicola Morgan, formerly Lieutenant Nicola Morgan of Logistics Command, had not expected to find work after she’d been told that the TFN no longer had a place for her. She might have gone into the military after her brother had been killed, but she was no fighter; instead, she’d been streamlined into logistics and personnel management. It had been surprisingly fulfilling; she might have felt like an idiot in her uniform, but she was helping – no matter how indirectly – to protect the Federation and avenge her brother’s death.
She’d left the military with few expectations of anything beyond, perhaps, basic accountancy. She didn't have any skills that a mercenary group might find useful, let alone one of the autonomous system defence forces. All she really was, if she were being honest with herself, was an accountant, if a very skilled one. After all, she’d spent the last six months of her military career digging into older files and preparing cases against war profiteers, cases that had been picked up by her superiors before they'd gone into court. It had been a surprise when Harrison Montgomery had contacted her, offering her a job. Governor Wu, he’d explained, would need someone to monitor the colonial accounts in the Fairfax Cluster.
“And besides,” he’d added when he’d contacted her, “you simply don’t look very threatening.”
Nicola had to admit that was true. She was short, with mousy brown hair, dark brown eyes and a habit of staring at the deck whenever she was speaking to someone. Her superiors in the military had made allowances, no doubt because she wasn't in a position to infect others; Montgomery didn't seem to care if she looked at him, the deck or even watching entertainments though her implants, as long as she spoke clearly and concisely. She certainly lacked the dignity of her former superiors, or the calm discipline of the Federation’s most famous lawyers. Instead, she just looked completely ineffectual.
Montgomery had always been kind to her, unlike most of her other superiors. For that, if nothing else, she respected him.
But she had a feeling that she was going to disappoint him. No matter how she tried, she couldn't get a grip on how the colonies had even fought the war without bankrupting themselves. Their accounts were a mess; there were enough gaps in the records to take an entire squadron of superdreadnaughts through, gaps that suggested a considerable amount of money had simply disappeared. The local authorities hadn't helped by spreading out the accounts, separating out different records ... which wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't tangled up the network of accounts so badly that it was hard to see where the money was going.
“Perhaps that was the point,” Montgomery had said, when she’d brought it to his attention. “They have something to hide.”
Accounts, Nicola knew, didn't lie. People lied. A shifty accountant could bury money in one account, then shift it to another, but she could expose the missing money and eventually track it down. Interstellar economics simply couldn't survive if it was possible to cheat the system, at least on a very small scale. The inflation that had plagued the Federation during the early years of the war was proof of that. One could not claim to have more money, or simply produce additional money without proper backing. Eventually, such deceit caught up with the producer.
The colonies hadn't exactly been poor. Their populations might not have been wealthy, but even a small colony had a sizable amount of money bound up in its development. Somehow, they’d managed to leverage what they had to fund a war machine that, while no match for the Federation, was quite formidable in its own right. Nicola had to admit that she was impressed, but she was also worried about just how much money seemed to have gone missing. W
here had that money gone?
There had been thousands of financial transfers to and from the colonies after Bottleneck had been liberated, allowing the colonies to link up with the Federation once again. It seemed that the colonies had taken loans from just about everyone and promptly plunged the money into buying more warships and war material to continue the fight. And yet, there had been no central authority supervising the whole process. If the Federation had had problems with war profiteers, despite centralising financial authority on Luna, she dreaded to think about how many problems the colonies must have had.
But the records were vague, without any of the detail so beloved of Federation bureaucrats, as if they simply didn't care – or as if they were trying to hide something. God knew they’d been reluctant enough to let her anywhere near the files, no matter how harmless they thought her to be. And yet, the more she looked at it, the more a picture began to emerge. A handful of starships had been purchased by the colonies, then made to vanish. The funds that had been used to purchase them had been made to vanish too. As long as the balance seemed roughly even, it would be hard to detect ...
And then she realised that the purchasing agents were dead.
Or at least they were listed dead.
There had been no shortage of purchasing agents running through the Federation after Bottleneck had been liberated, each one charged with obtaining warships for the colonies ... and all perfectly legal, certified by both the colonies and the Federation. But all of the raider warships had gone through a single purchasing agency, with two active agents. And those agents were now reported dead. It would be impossible to get any answers from them now.
The picture seemed clear. Somehow, even while trying to get all hands on deck to fight the war, the colonies had been building up a secret military force. But why? The Federation would certainly know that it had sold the colonies the ships in the first place. Unless the intention had been to report the ships destroyed ... no, several of the sales had taken place after the end of the war.
Nicola shook her head. Human motives had always mystified her. Instead, she copied her results onto a datapad, then sent a message to Montgomery asking if they could meet for lunch. She was sure that the Governor’s Personal Assistant would know what the colonies had had in mind – and how best to deal with the situation.
And he would take her seriously. Sometimes, she felt that he was the only one who listened to her.
***
Governor Chandra Wu rubbed her sore temples as she stared down at the set of messages from everyone who had a claim on Primus Omega. The original settlement corporation had been shattered by the war and was effectively gone, but their assets had been sold off ... including shares in the planet itself. It was useless, at least without a major investment that seemed unlikely, yet that hadn’t stopped the claimants from lodging demands for compensation and issuing threats of court action.
They weren't the only ones contributing to her headache. The colonial representatives were furious with her ultimatum and they weren't shy about letting her know it. And the handful of investigators she had were being stonewalled, apparently by junior officials acting on their own. The thought made her snort bitterly; it was rare for juniors to act without a wink and a nod from their superiors, particularly when more was at stake than just the endless arguments between federal and local authorities. No, the colonies were showing their displeasure by delaying the investigation, clearly hoping that she’d get mad and do something they could formally protest in the Federation Senate.
And then there were the demands for compensation from the worlds targeted by the raiders. They believed that someone in her office had leaked the travelling schedule, ensuring that their worlds had been attacked; they wanted the Federation to pay to rebuild their shattered communities. Chandra wouldn't have objected if the issue hadn't been tangled up with the exact legal status of the Bottleneck Republic – or, for that matter, of the alien refugees. How, she asked herself, could anyone be so damn selfish? People were dying, lives were at stake ... and they were quarrelling over politics?
Maybe we should just move in and take over, she thought, even though she knew that it would be dangerous. The Federation didn't seem to have the nerve to actually act, even though it had just won a war on an unprecedented scale. These barbarians ...
There was a knock at her door. She found the switch that opened it and pressed it, then smiled tiredly as Harrison Montgomery walked in. Her assistant had been busy supervising the investigation, in-between helping her to write out messages for the Federation Senate and summarising the long streams of abuse she received from the local government. Maybe he had something new for her.
“You look tired,” Montgomery said. “You should take a rest.”
Chandra snorted. There were Governors who did little more than appear at state meetings and look good, while spending the rest of their terms enjoying themselves, but that wasn't an option for her. This was her one chance to claw her way into the centre of power where she belonged and she wasn't going to give it up, not for anything. And if that meant putting up with a pounding headache, she would damn well put up with it.
“That isn't an option,” she said, without heat. Montgomery, if anything, cared too much. He was always kind and solicitous, even to the most junior staff. She’d certainly never heard rumours of him abusing his position, unlike some other aides she could mention. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Montgomery said. “Nicola has turned up a series of discrepancies in the local files, discrepancies that link to what investigators discovered on the other side of the Great Wall. I’m afraid that the raiders are definitely funded by the colonies, Madam Governor. The evidence is conclusive.”
He dropped a datachip on her desk. “The local government funded them, for purposes unknown. But I can take a guess.”
Chandra eyed the datachip warily. Nicola wasn't a bad worker at all, but she had a tendency to absolutely bury her superiors in data, even though they rarely had the time to go through it and come to conclusions on their own. Sighing, she looked up at Montgomery. He looked deeply worried, which was unlike him. Her personal assistant was almost always calm, confident and firmly in control.
“Take a guess,” she said, sharply. “What do they have in mind?”
“They want to establish themselves as an independent power,” Montgomery said. “One that is free of both aliens and Federation influence. The raiders highlight the need for unity against outsiders, but also provoke a political crisis that helps encourage independence-minded colonials to vote for complete independence. If the Federation refuses to help, they can use it as a political tool; if the Federation does offer assistance, they can claim that it's all part of a plot to bring the Federation into the cluster to stay.”
Chandra made a face. Her headache was making it hard to think, but she was sure that there were problems with that logic. “What about Xenophon?”
Montgomery’s lips twisted. “Xenophon was inclined to hedge its bets against both the Federation and the so-called Bottleneck Republic,” he reminded her. “But now their defences have been smashed and a Colonial Militia starship died bravely in defence of their world. Right now, if there was a vote, I’d bet that the planet would vote to secede from the Federation and join the Bottleneck Republic.”
“Madam Governor, we have to stop this now, whatever it takes. I propose the deployment of the Bottleneck Squadron.”
Chandra couldn't disagree. The whole scenario was making a disturbing amount of sense. She’d been stonewalled enough in the past to know when someone was hiding something – and, often, the mere act of ducking for cover was enough to let her know that someone had something to hide. If the raiders really were backed by the colonial government ...
“They’re mad,” she whispered.
“They have an idealistic dream of life out here, far from Earth,” Montgomery pointed out, softly. There was an earnestness in his voice that surprise
d her, even as she found his argument persuasive. “If thousands of their own people have to die to make it come true ... well, they would hardly be the first humans to regretfully make sacrifices. There’s no shortage of examples throughout history.”
“I’ll call Admiral Porter,” Chandra said. She stood up, feeling her head spinning. “I want you to put together a summary of all the data, something I can send to the Federation Senate to back up these claims. Then we’ll take action, even if I have to stand behind him and push.”
“Yes, Madam Governor,” Montgomery said. “I shall see to it personally.”
***
The raiders were being quiet, too quiet.
General Gustav Mannerheim disliked quiet. In his experience, quiet just meant that the enemy was slipping into attack position, right behind him. It was why he insisted that all Colonial Militia starships maintain a full sensor watch at all times, no matter how quiet and peaceful the universe was supposed to be. A situation could move from boring to deadly dangerous in split seconds and those who were unprepared for a sudden shock could find themselves in deep trouble before they had a chance to recover. Even in his office, he kept his sidearm with him at all times. One never knew when trouble might appear.
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