Hegemony (6 page)

All mine, thought Freya, with a mix of pride and irony. She ran a careless hand through short blond hair so pale it was almost silver and half-smiled. Pure luck that silver hair was in fashion at the Hegemon's court now. Not that she could make anyone believe that she had chosen her avatar's hair color to match her birth-body's natural color, with no consideration of current fashions. She had not wanted to radically change her appearance when she chose her biosim avatar, and apart from her coincidentally fashionable hair, her looks were somewhat the opposite of her sleek command. She was broad shouldered and short, with wide features and light hazel eyes over a snub nose. She had refused to spend money for a custom avatar, not wanting to compete with others who spent small fortunes on avatars individually made by famous designers. As it was she looked rather like a publicity vid of a young Fleet recruit; earnest, open features that were just cute enough to be photogenic, but in no way sleek. Maybe if she customized her avatar's face to look "older" she could aspire to the look of grizzled assault-ship commander. As it was she looked far too young, though with avatars looks were nothing to judge by. And for that matter, she would have considered a lumbering assault-ship a poor trade for the command of her agile, dagger like swift-ship.

She had fought to get this command, and fought hard. She could recall, with perfect clarity, her heady joy at being appointed to command the
Ice Knife
. A command so early in her career was an unambiguous nod of approval from Fleet Command. The attendant elevation of her social rank to
telestos
was almost lost in the sheer thrill of having her own ship; never mind the fact that she was now a noble of some consequence among the power structure of the Hegemony of Suns. It was rare, not unheard of, but rare, for a someone born to a commoner
demoi
family and then inducted into the
aristokratai
to attain any noble rank higher than
hetairos
, the lowest noble rank.

It was not rare, per se, for a commoner to make it into the Fleet Academy; about half of the young officers graduating the Fleet Academies came from
demoi
families, though only commoners (and a few scapegrace near-failure children of the
aristokratai
) had to go through the grueling ten thousand hours of Basic Selection training. On the other hand, that still came to less than one commoner in a million making it into the Fleet in any given tenkay. It was no easy thing for a commoner to get a chance to become
aristokratai
.

The Hegemony was an aristocracy in functional fact. The noble
aristokratai
held every position of political and military power, ran every aspect of the interstellar government across more than a hundred star systems. But it was a meritocracy as well. The children of the
aristokratai
received the best preparation and the powerful benefits of patronage, as well as access to the Examinations which, if passed, allowed the noble-born to short-cut around the most grueling parts of the Academies' curricula. But not even the noble-born automatically gained
aristokratai
status. Those failing the Examinations, or choosing not to take them, didn't get automatic access to the Academies, and even if they got in, had to pass the exact same harsh curriculum as any commoner accepted into an Academy.

Of course commoners,
demoi
, got no preparation beyond what they managed for themselves, and few had any patronage. But though the qualifications were exacting, qualified applicants
did
get a chance to enter the Academies. And if they made it through, a commoner could become
aristokratai
, just like their noble-born fellow applicants. But for a
demoi
-born like her to be promoted so high, so young, that was truly rare.

She had influence now, of course. Her performance in the Fleet was well above the high standards that defined the average. High enough that people had taken notice. There were high nobles,
acro-telestai
and
equetai
, who watched her and exchanged small favors to increase her chances for success. But they would not have done it had they not expected her to one day be able to return the favor, to them, or perhaps to their descendants.

And the result was this, her own swift-ship. Seven thousand tons of sensors and weapons... singularity reactor, plasma drives and reaction mass... and two dozen Fleet crew, all under her command.

The day she had taken command of the tiny ship had been the happiest day of her life. With equal clarity she remembered the sudden swooping disappointment when she learned that her swift, subtle new ship would be slaved to a lumbering assault-ship; an assignment that put paid to her ambitions of pirate-hunting bonuses and the ultimate desire of all swift-ship captains, an independent patrol.

Independent patrol was one of the things swift-ships were best suited to; there were hundreds, even thousands of supposedly empty star systems throughout the volume of the Hegemony of Suns, unoccupied, empty of valuable planets. But it was possible, even easy, for someone to set up shop in those empty systems, using them as a base for smuggling... or piracy. So the Fleet sent swift-ships to systematically patrol such systems; just dropping in to a system and taking a good look was usually enough to prove they were still empty, or to find out that they were not. For the most part, it was boring duty, as Freya could personally vouch from two tours of duty as crew on Fleet swift-ships, before she had earned her own command. On the other hand, if there was something in one of the supposedly empty systems, it was the discovering swift-ship that got to deal with it. Granted that sometimes the smugglers or pirates could FTL out of the system before they could be intercepted; just the same, sometimes they couldn't. The bonuses, and the prestige, that came to the captain and ship that captured or destroyed a pirate were substantial. And none of that was possible for a swift-ship tasked to escort an assault-ship.

And yet, it had not turned out to be as bad as she had thought it would be. Instead, over the course of the last nine thousand hours, being under the orders of Command-Captain Kai Ari-Kani of the
Conquering Sun
had proven to be a stroke of good luck almost as great as
Ice Knife
herself. Of
demoi
origins himself, he none the less had the perfect, easy manner of a multi-generation noble, not only confident enough in his competence to forgo excessive formality and micromanagement of his subordinates, but also confident enough in his
aristokratai
status to not seek to browbeat and dominate the mid-ranked nobles, like Freya, under his command.

Under Captain Ari-Kani's stewardship, the
Conquering Sun
had become a name associated with elegance and tactical brilliance. He had wielded his huge assault-ship with a lance-ship's high style, with none of the ponderous tactical formality that Freya had expected from an assault-ship commander. He had used the swift-ships to their best capacity as well, allowing them the freedom to use their speed and agility and allowing the swift-ship captains to run their own ships, to improvise, giving them every chance to shine.

And not only in space operations; his superbly picked crew and smoothly, even elegantly, run ship had made otherwise despised "show-the-flag" cruises a matter of enjoyment and political profit to his subordinate captains. Unlike many senior commanders, he had made sure that his superiors knew of and remembered his swift-ship commanders. Moreover, his insistence on a "civilized ship" meant that deep-space deployments were never without lively society: dinners, concerts, debates and discussions. It was utterly unlike anything Freya had ever previously encountered in the Fleet, and she had come to feel privileged to be one of his captains.

Ice Knife
was one of two swift-ship scouts that accompanied the
Conquering Sun
; the other swift-ship was the
Skyrunner
, a brand new ship with a brand new captain, which had joined the little fleet only six hundred hours ago, replacing the swift-ship
Ghostwing
, which had been reassigned to a coveted independent patrol.

Still, the very fact that
Ghostwing's
captain had gotten an independent patrol was proof that Freya's
Ice Knife
could one day get the same. For now though, the huge assault-ship and her escorts were detached on patrol duty for the next tenkay at least. Of course, patrol for an assault-ship was a different sort of mission from patrol for a little swift-ship. Assault-ships didn't often spend their time looking in on supposedly empty systems; instead, their patrol took them across the Hegemony's inhabited systems, stopping at empty systems only if Fleet Intelligence or Fleet Research Branch suspected there was something of interest there.

It was a substantial commitment of combat power to send one of the Hegemony's biggest capital ships on patrol, but nothing else served quite as well for a show-the-flag mission. The whole mission was basically politics, Freya supposed, but it had its upsides; she had gotten to visit more of the Hegemony's worlds than most Fleet personnel got to, and the "incidental" scientific survey and exploration work was fascinating in its own right. The three ships had explored star systems that had not been visited in generations, and taken detailed sensors data from dozens of uninhabited planets and moons for astronomical research. There was a satisfaction in doing this sort of work, in showing the Hegemony that the Fleet had more than just a military purpose.

Ice Knife
had just finished the restart of her singularity reactor. The little ships were just big enough to mount a small singularity reactor, giving them FTL capability as well as ample power for their drives and weapons. But a swift-ship's singularity reactor pushed the boundaries of the minimal possible size, and a swift-ship's femto-singularity was unstable compared to an assault-ship's. That meant that a swift-ship had far fewer total hours of operation before the reactor had to be shut down and restarted. And that was a major operation, usually requiring a large orbital anchorage station to supply the enormous power needed to form the femto-singularity. The
Conquering Sun
could, and did, stand in for an orbital anchorage, lending its power to restart the little swift-ships' reactors, but it was still a lengthy and complex process.

Skyrunner
still had almost two thousand hours of reliable estimated endurance on her reactor. The exact duration was unpredictable, so ships operated with highly conservative estimates, lest they find themselves out of power.

Ice Knife
might have had hundreds of hours of reactor power left before the  femto-singularity became irredeemably unstable, but the statistics said the probable stable endurance had elapsed, so the reactor was shut down, and the singularity allowed to safely collapse. Refitting the reactor and restarting it had taken almost a hundred hours in orbit of Yuro IV, connected with heavy duty power conduits to the
Conquering Sun
, sucking power hungrily from the assault-ship's vastly more powerful singularity reactor.

The actual restart was finally done, but there was still testing to be carried out and telemetry to gather before the
Ice Knife
was properly ready to get underway. Once the last static tests were done, the little squadron would accelerate hard for a good jump point, testing the reactor the hard way. Assuming it worked properly on the boost outbound, the two little swift-ships would then dock with the
Conquering Sun
and the huge assault-ship would carry them to the next system on their patrol route.

The little ships could manage their own FTL transits, but that would reduce the endurance of their femto-singularities. On the other hand, for the
Conquering Sun
the added mass of both swift-ships when she executed an FTL transit was barely noticeable.

All in all, there was no easy way Freya could find time or excuse to visit the surface of Yuro IV. A direct shuttle flight from the
Ice Knife
would commit the swift-ship's only shuttle and take hours to get down from this orbit, and then more hours to get back up. Shuttling over to the orbital hub of the elevator and taking a capsule train down would take even longer; the trains that ran from the surface to geostationary orbit took more than five hours each way.

In a true emergency, she could have demanded authorization to land her ship on the surface. The little
Ice Knife
was streamlined and able to reenter an atmosphere, but that was a risky and involved operation, and no planetary administration liked to have a singularity powered ship, even a small swift-ship, come too close to the planetary surface.

Had she been truly desperate for a chance to go ground-side, Freya could have paid a substantial sum of her personal money to rent an avatar down below and transferred herself by hyper-bandwidth data link. But neither the expenditure of money nor the example that would set was something she wanted. And anyway, an unimprinted avatar would take days to get properly acclimated to. And in the mean time, any sort of activity in an avatar that she was not properly acclimated to would be more along the lines of a punishment than a reward.