Space Carrier Avalon

by Glynn Stewart

  He tore his gaze away from the sensor feed as the tanker approached the fuel dump, a separate station in orbit around Terra Nova. It too was human technology, allowing vast quantities of HE3 to be stored well away from the planet’s surface – and the civilians who had colonised the new world. The planners hadn't realised that having the fuel dump would make it far easier for a hostile force to dominate the planet – or perhaps they had, intending that they would be the hostile force. William had heard a hundred conspiracy theories about what the Federation intended to do with Terra Nova in the long term. Doling out fuel to power the colony’s fusion reactors was such an easy way to control the planet that he’d be surprised if it had never occurred to the planners.

  The tanker shuddered gently as she made contact with the platform and started to transfer the fuel. William left the automated systems to get on with it while he reviewed more of the sensor take from the system – and the planet below. The Hegemony military base, established right on top of Gagarin City, seemed to have grown larger in the months since he’d last surveyed the planet. They kept the human population under strict control, forbidding any further expansion, although many humans had managed to slip out of the city and into the undeveloped regions of the planet. Some reports suggested that there was even a small insurgency underway on Terra Nova. It couldn't come close to evicting the Hegemony from humanity’s planet.

  There were no new orbital fortifications beyond a small network of orbital weapons platforms. The Association, which had produced much of the Galactic military doctrine, had believed that starships were a better investment than orbital fortresses, pointing out that starships were mobile and could be moved from one system to another. Some of the most important worlds had heavy fixed defences – the Hegemony homeworld was supposed to be heavily fortified – but most colony worlds were barely defended. The OWPs could stand off a pirate ship, yet a small squadron could blast its way through them in minutes. Privately, William suspected that the Association needed to rethink its doctrine. It had been so long since the Cats had fought a proper war that they’d lost the habit of continually questioning and rewriting their contingency plans. If human military forces had lost that habit in a few years of peace, and had to redevelop it in a hurry when war appeared out of nowhere, how much harder would it be for a race that hadn't fought for thousands of years?

  But maybe it wasn't entirely a bad thing, from humanity’s point of view. Most of the Galactics had learned from the Association, concentrating on starships instead of orbital defences. There would be flaws in their doctrine, weaknesses that could be exploited by a human naval force with the willingness to fight back against the Hegemony and the other galactic bullies. They’d learn, of course – some of them had probably been learning in the brushfire wars – but could they learn as fast as humanity?

  The Association claimed that most races shared the same basic level of intelligence. Some races had traits that bent them towards one kind of thinking or another, or lacked the emotions that drove humanity, yet there were no races that thought significantly faster than anyone else. The cultural stasis that had gripped most of the galaxy came from the Association, from its stagnation and slow decline, not from anything intrinsic to the Galactics. As the established order continued to disintegrate, war would break out again and again until a new order was established, one dominated by a race that had managed to adapt quicker to the change in the galactic balance of power. It was hard to imagine the Funks having such imagination, yet they’d come to terms with the existence of other forms of intelligent life quicker than humanity. And they’d been in the Iron Age when they’d been contacted by the Association.

  He glanced up as the console bleeped, warning him of a flight of shuttles heading towards the tanker. They flashed past at full speed, lighting the ship up with their weapons systems as they made their approach before vanishing into the darkness of space. Such crude intimidation was typical of the Hegemony, an unsubtle reminder of their power. But then, Pelican was not only unarmed – she was defenceless. A single burst from a phase cannon would cut right through her hull and destroy the ship.

  The tanker shivered again as the final drop of HE3 was extracted into the fuel dump, which disconnected itself rapidly from Pelican. There was no point in asking for shore leave on Terra Nova, even if his orders hadn’t specified that he was to return to quantum space as soon as possible. The Hegemony mostly refused to grant permission, and even when they did Gagarin City was a depressing place these days. William was old enough to remember the hope felt by the colonists that they would build a new world, a new melting pot that would take the best from humanity’s disparate cultures and create something newer and stronger than Earth. Their dreams had come to an end the moment the Hegemony had bullied Earth into surrendering the planet. He looked down at the blue-green globe and shivered, despite himself. The humans on the planet below were living in bondage, slaves to an alien race. They would never be anything other than a client race, if they were allowed to live at all.

  “Take us back to the gate,” he ordered quietly.

  His orders had stated that he was to attempt to determine if the Hegemony had placed any watching starships in the outer system, if possible. Humanity had established a small asteroid mining station before the Hegemony had taken over, but the Funks had shown no interest in either forcing the miners to work for them or shipping in their own labour to take their place. It was so much easier to bully Earth out of raw materials – and efficient, if they weren't actually paying for it themselves. A handful of commercial drive fields could be detected near a couple of the mining asteroids, but nothing else. It didn't really mean anything and only a politician would think otherwise. Space was vast and a starship that stepped its drives down to the bare minimum – or cloaked – would be almost impossible to detect with passive sensors. The entire Hegemony Navy could be hiding there and they’d never know about it.

  The viewscreen shifted as Pelican continued to lumber towards the gate. To human eyes, the gate didn't look very impressive. It seemed to be nothing more than a ring of metal over twenty kilometres in diameter. To advanced sensors, it was far more complex, existing simultaneously in normal space and quantum space. William didn't pretend to know how they worked. Few did, outside the research laboratories – and the Association itself. The Cats were normally obsessive record keepers, with a mania for paperwork that made even the worst of humanity’s bureaucrats look like a piker, but they were curiously silent on how they first discovered how to open a permanent gateway into quantum space. Some of humanity’s historical researchers, mining the records of a society thousands of years older than humanity, speculated that the breakthrough had happened by accident. Others, the more controversial researchers, claimed that someone else had given the Cats the technology. William privately believed the former. Apart from rumours, there was no proof that there was any spacefaring race older than the Cats – and they had built the Association.

  “Transmit our ID and request that they open the gate,” he ordered. The Funks would probably hit them with another service charge, just to rub their superiority into the puny humans one more time. Or maybe they’d just be glad to see the human ship leaving the system. A starship, even a freighter, could make one hell of a mess if it deliberately rammed the planet. “Pay them if necessary.”

  “Another fifty credits,” the pilot reported. He shook his head. “They do make a good thing of it, don’t they?”

  “Bastards,” William agreed. Ahead of them, a shimmer of light appeared inside the gate ring, a chink in the normal universe leading directly to quantum space. As always, it fascinated and repelled him in equal measure. There was something profoundly unnatural about quantum space. It wasn't a realm for humanity, or any other race. “Take us out of here, and then set course for the RV point.”

  They’d been given very specific orders before they’d undocked from Jupiter Station. Pelican and her crew was to depart the normal shipping line to Earth once th
ey’d cleared the ring and head instead to a point roughly a light-year from Terra Nova. Quantum space didn't quite map onto normal space perfectly, one of the reasons why early explorers had tended to get lost and never return home. The navigation beacons were all that made interstellar commerce possible. Once they reached the RV point, they were to wait. The orders puzzled him because they made little sense. Maybe the higher-ups knew what they were doing, but he wouldn't have put money on it.

  He took the helm himself, allowing the pilot a chance to get a cup of coffee and a snack before returning to duty. Quantum space could shift from placid to dangerous very quickly, forcing any starship travelling within the dimension to be ready to change course at any moment. Even the merest energy storm could wipe out an entire unwary fleet. He’d been a young cadet when Earth had heard that seventeen starships built by an alien race had been caught up in a storm and vaporised. If even the Galactics couldn't master quantum space, what hope did humanity have of taming the alternate dimension?

  It was rare to see another starship in quantum space away from the shipping lanes. Indeed, even on the shipping lanes commercial ships rarely saw other starships unless it was a deliberate interception. Pirates had been known to hover around the gates and engage unwary freighters, forcing them to surrender and looting their holds before casting them loose to be destroyed by quantum space’s energy storms. Some pirates were true sadists, torturing their victims before killing them; others took hostages and extracted ransoms from their relatives before returning them alive, if they bothered to keep their word.

  He blinked in surprise as a handful of starships appeared on the display. They were human starships, small teardrop-shaped cruisers and bulky assault carriers, waiting for his ship. He stared, unable to quite believe his eyes, until he realised that they had to be planning a war. Or perhaps the war had already started and no one had bothered to inform him...no, that couldn't be right. The Hegemony would never have let him close to Terra Nova if they’d been at war with the human race. Maybe it was just the fleet exercise the media had been waffling about for the last month before he’d left Jupiter. But so close to Terra Nova...?

  There was a brief pause as ID codes were exchanged and verified, and then the data dump began. William felt the first flash of excitement – and fear – as he realised what it meant. There was only one reason to want an up-to-date survey of any system; the fleet in front of him planned to attack Terra Nova – and the Hegemony starships in orbit around the human colony. It would be suicide… or would it? There was no shortage of rumours about human technological advances, even if the Galactics pooh-poohed the suggestion that a race as young as humanity could possibly have anything to teach them. The Association had stagnated, unable to develop further – or had the Cats simply lost interest in basic research? They were the richest and most powerful culture the galaxy had ever seen. What more did they need?

  A face – Admiral Sampson – appeared on the display. “Good work,” he said gruffly. “I’m going to have to ask you to remain with the support ships now.”

  “I understand,” William said. They’d be paranoid about someone warning the Hegemony before it was too late. It was insulting, but he understood. And there really wasn't any other choice. “Good luck, sir. Give the bastards hell.”

  Chapter Eight

  The humans who first set eyes on the Mer’fuk had immediately thought of them as lizards or snakes, even though their evolutionary path was very similar to humanity’s. Unlike Earth, their homeworld had been dry and resources were scarce, forcing the early Mer’fuk to compete savagely for resources. Their successful leaders were the ones who claimed and held the most territory, using it as the basis of their power and forcing lesser Mer’fuk to submit and serve them in exchange for food and water. It was a trend that drove them onwards even after the Association had given them spaceflight and the First Empress had united their world under her iron heel.

  Lady Dalsha reclined on her command stool and studied the males working busily below her, feeling her gaze on the back of their necks. Males couldn't be trusted to do anything other than fight or breed – trying to get them to consider the long-term effects of their actions was impossible – and they would slack off, or start picking fights with each other, if she and her fellow females left them to their own devices. It was the females who had built and led the clans, who had masterminded the wars that had seized vast territories for exploitation and – finally – led them out into space. If males ruled the world – as they did with some of the lesser races – they would probably have destroyed themselves by now, either through a civil war or attacking one of the stronger races in the galaxy. The Association might be decadent, with no fire left in its blood, but it still had numbers. They could have crushed the Hegemony if they’d been willing to accept bloodshed.

  The thought made her smile. Males were expendable – with four males for every female, the Mer’fuk could afford to lose a few million in a war without seriously threatening the existence of the race. It would have been acceptable if the war had brought vast new territories, or destroyed a formidable enemy; it might even have been considered cheap! She couldn't really comprehend why the Association seemed unwilling to bring the other Galactics to heel – they had to know that the lesser races were climbing towards the point where they would be able to fight the Association openly and win – but there was no need to push the issue. A few hundred more standard years and the Hegemony would be all-powerful, the new ruler of the galaxy. And they would not be so foolish as to allow the lesser races so much latitude. They could do as they were told or they would perish and vanish from the universe.

  She looked up towards the holographic image of Terra Nova – such a strange name for a planet, but the human settlers had had the right to name it – and smiled again. The Empress, hallowed be her name, had forced the humans to surrender their colony on pain of war and total destruction. Once the Association had finally, cravenly, surrendered the rest of humanity to the Hegemony, the soft-skinned race would be taught their true place in the universe. Their clever little people would serve the master race or die, begging for mercy that would never come. There was no room in the universe for those who didn't have the will to do what needed to be done to safeguard their interests. The strong would survive; the weak would become slaves – or perish.

  But humans were a strange species. Human culture was infecting the galaxy, even the Hegemony itself. Males loved many human entertainments, even though their plots were awful and their special effects laughable. The Empress had banned it, of course, but males defied the females whenever they thought they could get away with it – if they bothered to reason it out that far. Humans had the strange notion that the sexes should be equal and that the population should participate in the decision-making process. It was a seductive concept to the more thoughtful males – and even to females so lowly as to be only a bare step above the males. Of course they wanted a democracy! The concept of the strongest being the supreme ruler, the concept that had driven the Hegemony to the stars, was under threat from an assault they were ill-prepared to counter. It wouldn't be long before the Empress forced the final showdown and crushed the upstart human race. She would prove to the universe – and her own people – that human ideas were nothing compared to the united power of the Hegemony.

  A male stepped towards her, bowing in submission. “Great Lady,” he said, “the soft-skins on the planet below have sent yet another petition for your attention.”

  Lady Dalsha fluttered her crest in disdain. Even crushed, even beaten, humans were irritating. Why did they expect that pestering her would get her to give them what they wanted? Let them come up with something she wanted, or a way to threaten her, and then she would listen. Nothing would be allowed to detract from their role as a client race. They weren’t useful as fighters either. Some of the human mercenaries who had taken service with the Galactics had impressed the Empress’s advisors enough that they’d insisted on landing a larger garr
ison than normal, but the colonists hadn't put up an impressive resistance. Even when she’d ordered their religious buildings smashed they hadn't fought back. They were weak.

  “Ignore it,” she ordered, bluntly. The foolish male should have known not to bother her, but males weren't known for reasoned understanding of orders. Too strong a rebuke and he’d probably keep everything from her, including something she needed to know. “Do not even bother to send a reply…”

  An alarm hooted through the compartment, causing the males to hiss in alarm. “Report,” Lady Dalsha ordered, her tone calm and composed. Dominating males was easy as long as one refused to be flustered. “What is happening?”

  “Multiple quantum gates, opening right on top of us,” the sensor officer reported. He was unusually clever for a male, and much less aggressive. It was a shame that he couldn't be used for breeding stock, but the Hegemony needed aggressive males much more than it needed ones who could count to nine without taking off their boots. “They’re far too close to the planet!”

  Lady Dalsha, for a very brief second, experienced absolute disbelief. The Association was alarmingly cautious about risks that any lesser race would have taken in their stride. They never established a quantum gate in planetary orbit and warned of the dangers of opening a gateway too close to a planet’s gravity well. The Hegemony had risked coming in closer, but the unknown intruders were coming in closer still, alarmingly close to her fleet. Had one of the other Galactics decided to destroy her force before it could be reinforced from the main fleet?

  “Battle stations,” she hissed. They’d kept their drives and weapons powered down – after all, who would dare attack them here? It might have been a mistake, even though doctrine was inflexible. “Raise shields. Prepare to engage the enemy.”

  * * *

  Tobias let out a breath he hadn't realised he’d been holding when Nimitz slipped back into normal space. Humanity’s scientists had claimed to prove that one could emerge from quantum space far closer to a gravity well than the Association believed possible, but no one had known for sure until they’d actually done it. Fifteen cruisers and their supporting destroyers had appeared from nowhere, heading right towards an unwary enemy fleet. The sensor take from active sensors – there was no point in trying to hide when the entire system would have detected their arrival – showed that the Hegemony ships were right where Captain Zeller’s report had indicated. They certainly weren't ready for a fight.