Knight's Move (41 page)

After all, what was the point of having a nice house to live in if the next barbarian to come along simply took it?

“The Federation has persistently refused to provide warships to take some of the burden from the Colonial Militia,” the President reminded Asimov.  “They are unlikely to change their minds ...”

“Then pull ships away from the alien refugee camps,” a representative shouted.  “Or send the damn buggers straight to hell.”

“These bastards are madmen,” Asimov shouted back.  “Their message made
that
damn clear!  We need starships and troops, not words and empty gestures.”

The General cursed under his breath.  There was no way to avoid the tactical dilemma facing the Colonial Militia.  In order to pose a deterrent to pirates, it had scattered ships over star systems like confetti ... but the raiders, it was clear, were not deterred by one or two starships, not when they operated a small squadron of their own.  The Colonial Militia would need to meet their squadron with a squadron and
that
would be difficult.  If nothing else, they would be leaving more targets open to the raiders as the militia concentrated their ships.

They’d made such hard choices during the war, damning low-population or otherwise useless worlds to enemy occupation to preserve their strength for the decisive battles.  Most civilians might like to believe otherwise, but the General knew that no matter how hard they’d fought, the colonies would have been screwed if the TFN hadn't taken the brunt of the Dragon offensive.  The Colonial Militia had been battered almost to uselessness during the later years of the war.  It was why there were still so many ancient starships and starfighters still in service, along with a number of customized designs.  They simply couldn't be replaced quickly, if at all.

And we cannot guard every possible target in enough force that the enemy are deterred from attacking
, he thought, sourly. 
There is no solution to this cold equation
.

“So we remove the aliens ourselves,” a representative snapped.  “Let’s just kill them all ourselves!”

“You would give in to these monsters?”  Someone else shouted.  “They didn't just kill
aliens
, you know.”

The General rolled his eyes as the President gravelled for silence.  There were definitely days when he missed the war.

He wasn't sure just what the raiders had in mind – they’d gone to a great deal of trouble just to exterminate the alien camps – but he understood why some planets wanted to just submit to the raider demands and remove the aliens themselves.  They’d barely survived the war against the Dragons, who had given humanity the choice between surrender and slavery or fighting like mad bastards.  Now, there was a human enemy, one who might be less unpleasant than the Dragons.  And if the message from the so-called Colonial Liberation Front was telling the truth, the planets that removed the aliens would be safe from attack.  It would be horrendously tempting ...

Sure it would
, he thought, coldly. 
It isn't humans who would be shoved out into the cold, just aliens.  And who gives a shit about them
?

Racism and xenophobia had always been part of human nature.  It was amusing to look back over a thousand years of human history and realise that humans had discriminated against one another because of skin colour, rather than anything rational, but it hadn't been as funny at the time.  Skin colour had just been a way to raise barriers between one group of humans and another; religion, sex and even age had been used at one time or another.  But now there were real aliens and somehow racism was acceptable once again.  Why not?  The aliens weren't human, could never be human ... and some of them had posed a deadly threat to the human race.

We won
, he thought. 
And now we have to deal with the aftermath
.

***

Governor Chandra Wu knew that she was unpopular.  When one was focused on the bigger picture, it was natural that one would incur the displeasure – even hatred – of those who couldn't see beyond their own rice bowls.  Or their planets, she reminded herself, remembering the politicians who were steadily resisting the expansion of Federation power on the grounds it might infringe upon their planet’s autonomy.  What did that matter when there were vast numbers of starving humans and aliens left by the war?  Or billions upon billions of credits worth of destroyed infrastructure?

From a strictly local point of view, she could understand their attitudes.  Why should Terra Nova, oldest of the colony worlds, send money and supplies to help rebuild Garston, a colony world with only a couple of million settlers?  It wasn't as if Garston was a daughter planet settled directly from Terra Nova.  No, Garston had been settled by a group that had wanted no connection with the rest of humanity at all ... which had become a sick joke when the planet had been attacked and occupied by the Dragons.  But Chandra knew that the human race had to work
together to survive and prosper.  Local concerns had to take second place to the overall health of the Federation.

It would have surprised her hosts, she acknowledged, that her views on aliens weren't too different from theirs.  Aliens fell into two categories; those that presented a threat to humanity and those that were incapable of defending themselves from the first category.  The Mice, largely incapable of fighting, had been natural slaves for the Dragons.  They’d been spread out over hundreds of star systems, told to breed millions more of their kind ... and there hadn't even been a single uprising.  Give humans such an advantage and control of so much infrastructure, Chandra knew, and the Draconic Empire would have been thoroughly crushed in a brutal revolution.  Instead, the Mice had just toiled away until the human invasion had liberated them.

The Dragons presented a threat because their culture
made
them a threat.  If they were integrated into the Federation and taught a better way to live, would they remain dangerous to humanity?  She doubted it; there were no shortage of worlds or resources in the endless reaches of space.  And the Mice ... if they couldn't look after themselves, surely they could become part of the Federation, which would protect them.  The human race had a duty to the aliens it encountered, a duty that it could not be allowed to shirk.  It was their burden to protect and reshape alien cultures until they could coexist safely with humanity. 

But the chaos left behind by the war had to be handled before the grand project could go ahead.  It shocked and dismayed her to realise that the colonies were not interested in handling the chaos, merely in getting it as far from them as possible.  Yes, the scars of the war went deep, but did they really go
that
deep?  It was outright racism, plain and simple, to herd aliens into concentration camps and abandon them on poor worlds that couldn't or wouldn't do anything to help them.  If the colonies were reluctant to take advantage of alien labour, which they were, they could at the very least treat the aliens decently ...

She shook her head, looking down at the chip Harrison Montgomery had passed to her.  It was proof that certain people within the Fairfax Cluster had directly conspired against the aliens, using factions within the Colonial Militia to target and exterminate the alien camps, slaughtering thousands of aliens.  They were committing genocide on a terrifying scale and it had to be stopped.  Whatever happened, she told herself, it had to be stopped.

The doors leading into the governing chamber loomed up in front of her.  By law, she could call a meeting of the colonial representatives at any point, but it was unnecessary.  According to Montgomery, the colonial government had been arguing ever since the news of Xenophon reached Fairfax.  Someone within the government had not only betrayed the aliens, they’d also betrayed their own people.  They had to pay.

She kept her face expressionless as she stepped into the chamber, even though the racket as representatives shouted at one another was shocking to someone used to the more genteel debates on Earth.  But then, there was something almost
honest
about the open anger of the colonial representatives.  On Earth, Senators and Congressmen were almost chillingly polite to one another while they calculated where best to stick the knife.  They’d had years in office to get used to how best to manoeuvre to get what they wanted from government.

“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.