Renegade (38 page)

Silence for a moment.

Trace swallowed her food, and washed it down with some juice. “I don’t know what kind of civil war it would be. Worlders versus Spacers. Pretty hard to win a war from the bottom of a gravity well, against people at the top of one.”

“Not everyone in space is a Spacer,” said Lisbeth. “Debogande Inc employs thousands of them. Well, millions, actually. Half of all Spacer manpower has Worlder origins, if not actual citizenship.”

“She’s right,” Erik conceded. “You’re one yourself, Trace. And I would be one, if my family didn’t have Spacer citizenship for life.”

“Fleet don’t count,” said Trace, unconvinced. “Most of Fleet aren’t political beyond the war. About half of my marines are Worlders like me, but the whole Spacer/Worlder thing just doesn’t interest them.”

“You think it might start interesting them?” Lisbeth replied. “If it was revealed that Fleet’s leaders are plotting to crush any attempts at Worlder political activism? Like, I don’t know, say if the Worlders were recruiting Captain Pantillo to their cause? Imagine a Spacer as popular as him, known to Spacers everywhere, elected to Spacer Congress? What if he was given senior leadership… and quite likely he would have been. He could have made an argument for increased Worlder Congress powers that could have brought lots of Spacer Congress with him.”

Erik gazed at her, reconsidering the notion that maybe
he
was the Debogande most suited to politics. “Lis, did you talk about this much with Mother or Father?” She looked suddenly evasive. “What did they say?”

“Well you know Mother. She doesn’t like to talk politics at home. Dad’s the talker, but he says that’s only because he doesn’t know anything.”

“Still more than most people,” said Erik. “What did he say?”

Lisbeth sighed. “He said there was talk in Congress that the Family were employing too many Worlders. Spacer Congress of course. And taking lots of Worlder investment. Which he said is nuts, it’s only about… oh, twenty-seven percent of total investment? Worlders put their money in Worlder things, mostly. But sure, we’ve been recruiting heavily with Worlders because they’re ninety percent of the human population and that’s where the talent is. And we pay well for good talent, and it’s a way to get a leg up on those companies that won’t do it…” She shrugged. “It’s good business, that’s all.”

“I hear lots of stories about how Worlders don’t adjust to Spacer life,” Shahaim added. “High attrition rate, you spend thousands training them but they don’t last more than a few years. Go back home to sunlight and beaches.”

“Well yes it’s a problem,” Lisbeth agreed. “But we’ve been working on this fancy psych-program to predict those who won’t make the transition. And Cora’s been helping set up a model for new internships, we’re taking lots of graduates in their mid-study break, find them work for six months, see who likes it and who doesn’t.”

“I wonder if anyone’s done any studies on where those peoples’ loyalties lie after five or ten years,” Erik murmured. Toying with his food. “I mean during the war, anyone living in space is patriotic for Spacer Congress and Fleet because they know tavalai or sard could hit them anytime. And so much of the economy is Fleet-based, so all their jobs kind of depend on it. But now there’s peace… I wonder how the Spacer Congress support base would hold up if Spacer industries kept employing Worlders? Who more and more kept their old loyalties?”

“Exactly,” Lisbeth agreed. “What if they’ve looked at those trends and reckoned that in twenty or thirty years, Spacer Congress won’t have the numbers to keep Worlder Congress from an equal, democratic say? Parity between Congresses?”

“Over Fleet’s dead body,” Kaspowitz muttered. “That’s what they said in the Academy the whole time I was there. Humanity’s killer demographics — we let Worlders take control, we wipe ourselves out.”

Erik’s uplink blinked, and he held a finger to his ear — the universal signal to let others know he was uplinked. “This is the LC?”

“
Sir… we’ve got an issue down in ceta-b. You’d better come and see.”

“What is it?”

“
Our chah'nas prisoner sir. He’s dead.”

E
rik stood
in the doorway of the chah'nas’s quarters, arms folded, and stared in disbelief at the mess. The prisoner was on the floor beside the bunk, arms sprawled. There wasn’t a lot left of his head, and both the bunk and the wall behind were splattered with blood and brain.

Erik turned and looked at Sergeant Ong, Echo’s Third Squad leader, who’d been stuck with this duty. “Sergeant. How the
fuck?
”

Ong looked unhappy. “I’m sorry sir, we…”

“You think I want a fucking apology? How does an apology help me?” Ong looked more unhappy. Trace leaned on the outside of the doorway, offering her Sergeant no assistance. “How? The fuck?”

“The tavalai sir. Chis. Said he needed a walk.”

“He’s been shot in the leg.”

“Crutches sir. It’s not too bad, the Corpsman let him go with Private Cowell as escort. He must have learned we had a chah'nas aboard, he… he caught Private Cowell unawares outside this room. Got his gun, hit the door, shot the prisoner. He’s strong sir. Probably military training, not just a scientist.”

“Sergeant, you’ve been fighting tavalai for what? Twelve years?” He glanced at Trace.

“Thirteen,” she said.

“You know they’re strong. You know most of their civvies in hostile territory have at least basic military training, some of them advanced. You also know they’ll lie about it when asked. None of this occurred to you?”

“No excuses sir,” said Ong. “Private Cowell was not properly warned to take suitable precautions, it’s my fault. I take full responsibility.”

“You’re damn right,” said Erik. “And maybe my fault too for forgetting that
Phoenix
marines are great at killing stuff and shit at guarding it. Go, get. The Major will deal with you later.”

He left. Erik gave Trace a brief glance in case he’d overdone it. Her unconcern told him he hadn’t. She peered in the doorway. “Aggressive little linguist, isn’t he?”

Erik swore, strode to the neighbouring quarters and opened the door. There seated on the bunk was Chis, wounded leg out before him. A marine stood opposite, rifled pointed at the tavalai’s chest.

“Why?” Erik demanded of the tavalai.

Chis blinked at him, slow and remorseless. “Why do you think?”

Erik pointed at the room next door. “He didn’t do anything to you. He’s from a ship called the
Tek-to-thi.
We captured him in a completely separate operation in Argitori System. Nothing to do with what happened to you and your friends here.”

“If you say so,” said Chis. “Will I be punished?”

“Do you care?”

“Not especially,” the tavalai said coldly.

H
euron was an M-class star
, sedate and golden yellow. To humans it was remarkable, because it reminded them of the home they’d lost a thousand years before. A similar sized sun, four rocky inner planets, then some big gas giants in the middle orbits. For Fleet, the giants were where the action was, big lunar systems with lots of mining and settlements.

But fifteen thousand years before, the fourth and last of the rocky inner worlds had been settled by the tavalai. It was pretty and green, but tavalai were picky, and found the atmosphere too thin, and the gravity too low. Many tavalai born on Apilai, as they called it, migrated to more exciting worlds in the tavalai heartland, and Apilai’s population never rose above a hundred million. Having won the system from the tavalai in battle thirty-two years earlier, humans had already doubled that, identifying the system as strategic, and moving huge transports with infrastructure spending and incentives for settlers. Humans found Apilai nearly perfect, and the Colonial Administration, which answered to both Spacer and Worlder Congresses, happily reported that in another twenty years with reproduction incentives and birthing tanks, Apilai population would hit the full half-billion.

Fleet were not entirely thrilled, because large Worlder populations forced Fleet to play a more defensive role, and increased Worlder political clout in that strategic system. But evacuating a hundred million tavalai who did not want to leave was not an option either, and nor was allowing those tavalai to remain the majority population on Apilai. Further, Heuron was such a strategic system that Fleet were going to be here in large numbers anyway, in which case the big Apilai population did not force any particular strategic realignment. And limited though Spacer-Worlder financial transactions were, a big Worlder economy in Heuron did add clout to system finances, and depth to local industry and talent production.

What made Heuron so vital to Fleet was its location — squarely on the far quarter flank of where human and tavalai space intersected, and close to where sard space began. Alo space, too, was a mere two jumps ‘above’, relative to its position upon the galactic plane, and for reasons known mostly to them, alo found it agreeable to put a permanent presence on Heuron such as they rarely put in any non-alo space. Thus Heuron had become a command-and-control centre for coordination between the triumvirate allies, despite being somewhat distant from chah'nas space. It had been a mustering point for many Fleet invasions and thrusts of the last thirty years, and remained a key hub in the merchant network, both military and civilian. For total human starship traffic, it was second only to Homeworld.

“Berthing list,” Shilu announced as they came through, following the final, course-correcting velocity dump to match their path to that of Heuron V’s.

“Copy, I got that,” said Shahaim, glancing over the list while Erik listened with one ear to Rooke’s ongoing conversation over jumpline integrity in Engineering. Heuron V was a monster system, seven starship-capable stations, hundreds of colonies, many of them former-tavalai but not all. The biggest was Hoffen, a 400+ berth behemoth in Lagrange between Tepanai, Heuron V’s largest moon, and Heuron V itself. “Nav buoy says Hoffen has eighty-six free berths about the gravity rim, and two free at the hub.”

“Com, query them,” said Erik. “Request one of those two hub berths. Say minor battle damage.”

“Com copies, requesting one of the hub berths,” said Shilu. Shahaim gave him an anxious look. Docking at the gravity rim, a combat carrier’s rotation cylinder was of course locked in place. This put three quarters of the crew cylinder out of action, particularly the marines back-quarter, which would be effectively upside down in dock. Usually this worked fine, since marines in hostile environments wanted to be out on the dock anyway, and marines in non-hostile environments wanted to hit the bars and other entertainments. Docked at the zero-G hub,
Phoenix
could keep the crew cylinder rotating, and keep back-quarter in full operations.

Stations knew this, and combat carriers under any kind of suspicion (meaning alien) were frequently denied a hub berth for that reason.
Phoenix
arriving in Heuron was suspicious in itself. Now requesting a hub-berth was more-so. But they had no choice, because for what was planned, marines were not optional.

“Lots of ships outbound,” said Geish, cycling through the new marks that Scan was throwing onto his screen. “I’m reading… seventeen outbound, nine of them warships, looks like a whole bunch of different headings. All of those nine are on priority departure, they’re breaking regular lanes, moving real fast.”

“So where are they going?” Shahaim wondered.

“Station feed says we’ve had another… thirty plus departures in the last day,” Jiri added. “That’s an awful lot of people leaving all close together.”

“Sir,” said Shilu, “I’m getting a lot of chatter off that buoy. It’s not on the official channels, the… the merchant channels are just crowded. I think the freighters have been loading stuff onto it.”

“Have a listen and give me a summary,” said Erik, not wanting to wade through a bunch of civilian messages. Any number of things could grab the attention of freighter captains so that they’d want to leave messages for other captains — price fluctuations, company collapses, legal actions. Something else had caught his eye. “Berth 117.
Diamond
. That’s Homeworld VIP transport.”

Kaspowitz gave him a quick stare. “Ali’s here. So that’s where he went.”

“Maybe not just Chairman Ali,” said Erik, starting to bite his nail, then remembering Trace’s admonishment. “Maybe Chairman Joseph too.” The two most powerful members of Spacer Congress. Erik’s Uncle Thani was the third, and everyone had wondered where they were, during the Homeworld parades. “Damn strange that number one and two in Spacer Congress weren’t present for the parades. It’s not like they didn’t have advance notice, and it’s not like politicians to miss great photo-ops.”

“Almost like they were using the parades as a distraction,” Kaspowitz added.

“Exactly.”

“Sir,” said Shilu. “The… all the traffic on the buoy is just one thing. Fleet’s passed an ordinance, and Chairman Ali signed it.”

“I’m sorry to sound dumb,” said Shahaim, “but what’s an ordinance?”

“Emergency legislation,” said Erik. “It bypasses the usual Congress vote in an emergency, just needs the head of Fleet and Spacer Congress to sign it. What’s it say?”

“Um…” Shilu was still listening with one ear. “It seems they’re putting a fifteen percent limit on Worlder ownership of Spacer assets. Also, um… limitations on Worlder citizenship, they’re saying any Worlder working for a Spacer institution for more than two years has to give up Worlder citizenship for Spacer.”

“Oh good god,” said Erik. And stared blankly at his screens. Had it all been for this? Was this the start of whatever the Captain had been fighting to prevent?

“I’m not sure I understand,” Shahaim said cautiously. “Fifteen percent… is that a lot?”

“Debogande Enterprises is about twenty-seven percent owned by Worlder interests,” said Erik. “To cut it by twelve percent… well. That’s about four times Fleet’s annual budget.”

“Fuck,” said Shahaim, wide-eyed.

“Yes,” Erik agreed. “They’re trying to cut the Worlders out of space entirely. Cut off their influence, cut off their citizens getting jobs in space, turn them all into Spacers after two years, can’t vote in Worlder elections any more, can’t get Worlder benefits… hope most of them won’t bother coming up here in the first place if there’s no long term prospect in it.”

“Gives Spacer authorities legal power over Worlder citizens,” Kaspowitz said grimly. “Can’t touch them if they’ve Worlder IDs. With Spacer IDs they can slap on travel restrictions, detain, question, blackball, the works. On security issues, Fleet can fuck around with Spacer civilian rights all they like, we’ve seen it before. Worlder civvies, not so much.”

“I’m…” Shilu fiddled with some incoming feeds, adjusting reception. “I’m getting some TV from Apilai. News feeds it looks like.” He blinked, then stared back at Erik. “There’s riots. A Spacer admin building’s on fire.”

Erik gritted his teeth. “And all this while everyone’s been marching up and down in parades on Homeworld. What a farce.”

“Always said marching was overrated,” said Kaspowitz. “Scan, check mark ID thirty-one, I think that’s two ships instead of one. Looks like an intercept in progress.”

“Hold on,” said Geish, double checking. “Um… yeah, good catch Nav. I have no transponders on either at this moment, but it looks like a sub-lighter and an FTL, probably a warship.”

“Could be another one of your family’s LC,” Shahaim remarked.

“Yeah, mommy’s not gonna be happy,” Erik muttered. “Get me a roster of all registered sub-lighters insystem, how many are we talking?”

“Hang on,” said Jiri. As Scan Two, he took all the secondary Scan functions Geish was too busy to manage. The most up-to-date roster on all insystem traffic would come from the stations. “I got it, Hoffen Station feed says eight hundred and ninety registered sub-lighters, eight hundred and nine of them currently operational, the rest in repair and overhaul. If you’re interested, I’ve got… sixty-two registered to Debogande-related industries.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sounds a bit low?”

“Dammit,” Erik muttered, and opened some new com links. “Hello Lisbeth? Lisbeth, I’m going to patch you, Jokono and Hiro into the bridge feed, please tell them to stand by.”

“
Sure yes, hold on.
” A pause as she did that. Some questioning looks around the bridge — it was irregular to let anyone from regular crew listen in on bridge chatter, let alone civilians. “
Erik we’re all here, go ahead.”

“Guys, Chairman Ali and Chairman Joseph are both here, presumably Supreme Commander Chankow is too. That’s the top leadership of Fleet and Spacer Congress both. They’ve passed an Ordinance restricting Worlder ownership of Spacer assets to fifteen percent, and said Worlder citizens can’t work for Spacer entities for more than two years without taking out Spacer citizenship and losing Worlder rights. All hell’s breaking loose, we’ve got ships running to all corners presumably to either spread the news, or to enforce it, and it looks like we’ve got Fleet interceptions of civilian sub-lighters taking place.” Even as he spoke, Geish flashed another two impending interceptions up on his screen.

“
Well Erik, look, that’s…
” Lisbeth took a breath, sounding flustered either from the situation, or from actually being asked to give advice to the commander of a combat carrier in a serious situation. “
They can’t do that outside of martial law, I’m pretty sure. I mean I did some law on the side with my degree, and Mother’s taught me a whole lot more that affects the family. This sounds dangerously close to a coup, they need Worlder Congressional approval before doing anything that might affect Worlder business interests, and fifteen percent would be… well that’s economic vandalism, lots of people are going to be hurt by this. Working class even worse than us rich folk, it’ll be the station hands and techs who get laid off first, you watch. That’s a big chunk of Spacer business finance, Spacer business isn’t anywhere near as self-sufficient as these Fleet chauvinists like to think, we all take Worlder money and fifteen percent just isn’t going to cut it!”

Erik couldn’t help but feel a little pride. For a concise analysis on zero-notice, to bridge-crew who might not be as business-savvy as the heiress to such a massive fortune, it wasn’t bad at all. “Well Worlder reaction isn’t good, there’s some rioting on Apilai and Fleet are intercepting some civilian ships, probably they’re keeping tabs on those they think might be trouble. Which suggests there’s some kind of organised Worlder politics here that could fight back… and we’ve all heard of Heuron Dawn, but I hadn’t thought it was that widespread. Hiro and Jokono, can you guys add anything?”

“
LC it’s Jokono. Heuron Dawn is on the domestic security watchlist. In a martial law situation, that would give Fleet the authority to crack down pretty hard. Detention without trial for up to a month without legal representation, for one thing.”

“Hiro, you used to work for Intel. Any idea how big Heuron Dawn is?”

“
Well they’re not actually an organised political party,”
came Hiro’s voice. “
It’s more of an unofficial thing, they keep their membership secret but the estimate is that about a third of Apilai’s local congress are members. There’s even talk they have some local tavalai support, but I think that’s mostly a Spacer smear campaign. Intel consensus was that they’re not a militant group yet, but had the potential to become one if things got serious. I think this situation meets that definition.”

“
In which scenario,”
Jokono added, “
the local Spacer security agencies would have orders to crack down on anyone with known Dawn ties. Private companies mostly, employment agencies, anyone in Spacer jurisdiction employing Worlders or Worlder sympathisers.”

“Yeah, and suddenly that two year Worlder employment restriction starts to make sense,” said Erik. “They don’t want Worlder patriots like Heuron Dawn building a base of support in Spacer jurisdiction. Thanks guys, I’d like all three of you to stay patched into Coms and listen to the chatter, see if you can help us figure out the situation.”

“
Of course Erik, we’re on it,”
said Lisbeth.

“Helm,” said Erik as he cut the com, “this looks like an opportunity to me. Under normal circumstances we’d have to stick to traffic guidelines, but this looks like a security situation. Fleet are intercepting local vessels, we’ve no idea if any of them are threatening to Fleet, we’re incoming with battle damage into a blind situation and we’re on a two minute light delay from station which will make a detailed assessment of the situation difficult.”

“I agree,” said Shahaim. “There’s a good security argument to boost V and go in fast. We could cut out a whole thirty hours of approach, buy ourselves some more time.”