Opening Moves Read online

  “Our colonies.” Corr'tane answered first. “They aren't big enough, are they?”

  For a moment Tear'al regarded him with probing eyes. “No, they are not. Even if we split the population evenly with two billion on each viable world, even with twenty years we couldn't develop that sort of infrastructure. Hells, even if we had the time: most of these worlds couldn't support that kind of population any way! Solid M-class planets like Karashan are a rare commodity. The state will encourage moving to the colonies, but even so we might, at best, relocate a few hundred million people during the coming decades. No, if we evacuated to the colonies two thirds of our people would starve to death within a few weeks. Maybe all of them if fighting for the limited food broke out.”

  “Oh gods.” Pyshana collapsed back. “It's over. How many could we save?”

  “It isn't over, yet,” Tear'al shook his head. “The Dominion has not been idle. There is a way to save most of our people.”

  “By moving them to planets that can already support those numbers, with an infrastructure of that magnitude in place,” Corr'tane nodded, already seeing the darker context the situation was pointing them towards.

  “Where?” asked his sister.

  “The Ukhuri?” he thought out loud. “No, no. The Pact of Ten Suns!”

  “Exactly!” the officer grinned. “Seems you are as smart as they said.”

  “I thought we weren't asking aliens for help?” Pyshana wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “We're not asking anything,” Tear'al chuckled. “We need developed worlds for our people to settle on, so we will take them. We're going to invade the Pact and occupy their planets for colonization.”

  Pyshana said nothing. This was a day of being left speechless by events. Corr'tane however had always worked through things faster, cooler.

  “I doubt they'll let you land on their worlds,” he said.

  “We've already begun a military build-up. In eight to ten years we'll have enough ships to overwhelm any opposition. Still, we predict speed will be key in this offensive. We will need to remove populations from planets quickly to give our people time to settle in and colonize without fighting.”

  Corr'tane didn't need an explanation as to what 'removing populations' meant in this context. In the sunlight beneath the shade of a tree they were casually discussing genocide on an untold scale. It seemed so bizarre. If he'd looked at it objectively he might even have laughed. Or cried. He didn't know. He hadn't shed tears in a long time, and he had resolved never to do so again.

  “You have methods for this?” he asked calmly.

  “We have ideas, hopefully something you can help with,” Tear'al shrugged. “It is for the good of our people. Always remember that.”

  Pyshana finally found her voice again. “So, that's it? The plan is to conquer our neighbors and seize their planets for ourselves?”

  “It's the only way to save our people in such a short time,” Tear'al explained. “We have no other options: we must do this or our race dies. To put it bluntly: we don't have the industrial prowess to create new off-world homes for fifteen billion people. But we do have the means to take these homes from others. And I would like to enlist your help. We could use your skills in the coming events. Join us.”

  “And if not?” Pyshana quizzed.

  “Then nothing. We proceed as planned and nobody will believe you and your doomsday stories. You will be homeless, unemployable and ultimately powerless,” the naval intelligence officer stated coolly. “Don't get me wrong: this isn't a threat. We don't want you to suffer. We are offering you help and a chance for you to help our people. Isn't that the whole point of you being here: saving our race?”

  It was. Corr'tane had always wanted the Ashani to achieve a place of greatness at the head of the galactic community. All his work had been aimed at making his people the best. Even his childhood dream of granting immortality through science had its foundation in trying to serve the Ashani people, not his desire for personal glory. Now that need of his people was greater than ever, and he could have a role in helping them if he wished it. All he had to do was just to say yes. All he had to do was to become complicit in xenocide.

  “My vehicle is waiting.” Tear'al stood and looked to an expensive black air car waiting at the edge of the green. “If you accept my offer, come with me and we'll begin immediately. If not... Well, then I wish you well.” He began to walk away, once more entering the sunlight.

  Even such an accepted thing taken purely for granted would someday never happen again.

  “Well?” Pyshana asked as the intelligence officer left. “Do we trust him?”

  “We only have two choices,” her brother mused. “Either we go with him or we fail ourselves. He's given us a chance to make a difference, to do a greater service to our people than we could have dreamed of. Do you see what we have now? Hope.”

  “Hope? What hope?! We have to defeat a dozen separate alien empires first! How can we do that?”

  “We are Ashani,” Corr'tane said proudly. “We've practiced war since the beginning of history, sister! Do you remember the tales of Orrosh Fastprancer and his battle with the carrion beasts? How Pautal Sharpclaw descended into the hells and wrestled with demons? Or take a look at the countless wars we've fought against each other. War is in our nature. We will win in the end, but the quicker the better. We can do that, and you can help if you can aid the navy to chart new foldspace routes to move our fleets quickly into battle.”

  “And you, brother? What about your contribution?” she said with a hint of accusation. “He was talking about mass murder, genocide. Could you do that?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation or emotion, though he felt the inner turmoil as he made the decision. “If that's the price of keeping our race alive then I will personally kill every other sentient in the galaxy.” He regarded his sister with a cold stare. “You know what is at stake, you know what we are risking. Whatever happens we must work for the survival of our people in their hour of need.”

  “History will call us demons.”

  “No, it won't,” Corr'tane smiled, baring his glistening teeth. “Because history is written by the victors, and we will be the victors. And when we're done and our people safe, there won't be anyone left to who'll dare to contradict us.”

  He looked at the party over by the brook again. The young officers were done with their mock fight and had started eating with their adoring companions. He wondered absentmindedly if those soldiers would survive the coming war, if they would earn glory or run like cowards. Would they have children before then with these girls they were with, and would these children also be expected to fight in the most desperate times? Either way, they faced death. War at least offered a chance of survival. To simply sit peacefully and wait for the inevitable would doom them all.

  He stood and began walking to the vehicle, his mind totally made up and his resolve iron. Corr'tane smiled inwardly as his sister sighed and jogged to catch up. Once again they were inseparable. He paused at the truck's door, looking down at the green grass surrounding his shoes, watching as it slowly unbent after being stepped on and scenting the aroma of the freshly cut lawns outside the academy in the sun kissed morning. It was something worth fighting for, worth dying for, even worth being damned for.

  He got in the vehicle and settled back. The simple motion carried with it a sense of finality. The old Corr'tane and the life he had led were gone, left out in the hazy sun to be revisited only in dreams. He came to terms with his new life. It was going to take a long time to fully accept what he was to become, but accept it he would.

  He did not protest or resist as the door slammed shut. The deafening sound echoed in the confines of the passenger compartment and the dark windows murdered the sunlight streaming in. The darkness swept forward to engulf Corr'tane in the blackness and the cold for the next decade. When he emerged from it again it would be to herald the start of Armageddon.

  P h a s e 1

  ~ * ~ />
  C H A P T E R 1

  Toklamakun, Independent Star System

  March, 2796 C.E.

  War never changed. The strong preyed on the weak, and the weak suffered. Corr'tane knew there were a handful of members of High Command who had come to respect the Makani, that they looked upon the rather simple people standing up to the Dominion's attack on them as courageous and stalwart warriors. He was rather amused by the concept. The Makani were idiots, brave and valiant fighters, but idiots still. His smile became a wide grin as one of their few cruisers blazed brightly in his tactical display for a few moments as the searing heat of its reactor consumed the whole vessel in white light before fading to black embers.

  The scene above the rather barren world was one of one-sided slaughter. Dozens of warships floated through space, dead and empty, hollowed out of life by the sudden attack which had swept into Makani space mere hours before. It had been a lightning strike by all definitions of the word, an exercise in speed and impact which the Dominion's navy was rapidly mastering. The surprise attack had caught the defenders of Toklamakun unprepared and out of position, allowing the forces of the 1st Expeditionary Fleet to treat them as little more than target practice.

  The men and women aboard Corr'tane's flag bridge were neither strapped into their shockframes, nor did they wear the skintight space suits that would serve them as a last line of defense against death in the airless cold of space. No, Strategos 2nd Tier, Corr'tane's dreadnought was far away from the fighting, watching the battle's progress safely from the rear. His hands clasped behind his back, his long black ponytail mane almost touching them, he walked around the large tactical display in the flag bridge's central holotank in slow, deliberate steps, eying the conquest of the star system from every possible angle.

  He was young, possible the youngest Ashani ever to be deemed worthy to wear the crimson tunic of a Strategos, a commander of a whole fleet, even though he did only belong to high command based on his leadership of the armed forces' bioweapons program. The high-collared jacket reached down over his thighs and was held in place by a black belt adorned by a belt buckle styled after a blazing golden sun. The same symbol repeated itself twice on two black patches on his collar. Four blazing suns, two on each side, and two golden stripes around his tunic's sleeves, symbolizing the highest military rank below the High Strategos himself. Four lines of colorful service ribbons covered the right chest of the uniform tunic, and he wore an aiguillette of braided gold cord on his right shoulder. Yes, he was young. But he had earned his position.

  While most of the fleet was still occupied with slowly tightening the noose around what was left of the enemy's space forces, several cruiser divisions had abandoned the ongoing rearguard action and were gathering nearby asteroids to be used as ammunition for planetary bombardment. Corr'tane realized with a sense of delicious irony that their civilization would be bombed back into the stone age by its very own resources.

  Toklamakun was a cold, arid world. An M-class planet in the outer range of habitability, it lay rimward of Karashan, occupying a strategically valuable location less than forty light-years away from a point where the territories of three members of the Pact of Ten Suns met. As an additional advantage it was out in the boondocks of the local galactic arm. The volume of interstellar trade going in and out of the system would have paled compared to the shipping visiting a mid-level colony of the Dominion. Toklamakun was poor in minerals, poorer in capital and poorest in consumer interest. The political and economic attention of the rest of known space lay elsewhere: at the unstable border between Ukhuri and their former overlords, the Rasenni; in the conference chambers of multi-stellar corporations; on the eternal territorial and commercial squabbles between the member nations of the league that bore the grandiose name of Pact of Ten Suns.

  A missile fired from the Ashani lines obliterated an entire squadron of Makani interceptors, its multiple five hundred kiloton warheads erupting in a spread pattern for maximum effect. Nuclear flowers blossomed, evaporating smaller crafts and bathing the vicinity in lethal radiation. Before the light even dimmed, the searing fire of plasma lasers from a Sunchaser-class heavy cruiser's main battery holed two more warships.

  Corr'tane continued to watch the battle with a sense of irritated amusement. Didn't the Makani ever learn? They were woefully outnumbered and outgunned, their technology comparably primitive and their single world a rather pointless and barren place. Deep down on an emotional level he could understand his enemy's tenacity. For them to fight on was totally pointless. They had no hope of victory and yet they still attacked, they still tried to harm the Ashani battle line, and to a man they were cut down. To repeat the exact same action in the exact same circumstances and expect a different result was the definition of madness. Maybe he'd be doing the galaxy a favor by removing them.

  Still, the Dominion had chosen to maintain a facade of legitimacy. While nobody would lift a finger to intervene for the sake of a handful of Makani, it was dangerous to be careless.

  An attack on Toklamakun? What a preposterous idea! The Dominion's valiant naval forces had been on a sector-wide pirate hunt and had stumbled into Makani space just in time to witness the tragedy of a large asteroid hitting the poor planet. Now they were here to offer humanitarian aid and, since no central authorities existed anymore, establish a semblance of order again.

  The justification was as thin as the layer of dust and ash that would soon fill Toklamakun's atmosphere for years to come. But as long as the Ashani controlled the system it really didn't matter. As long as no details found their way to the large newsfeeds the fate of Toklamakun wouldn't register in a volatile galaxy where great powers were staring at one another from behind fortified borders. Only a handful of ships that weren't part of the Dominion's navy had managed to make a run for it and transition into foldspace to escape the system.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Strategos Tear'al, the same officer who a decade ago had recruited him into the upper echelons of Ashani society. They stood together in silence for a few moments by Corr'tane's ship's main holotank, watching the distant battle slowly fade in intensity as the last defenders were removed from orbit and peace returned. It was the peace of the grave.

  “A most satisfying test,” Tear'al commented proudly. “Our forces are operating at their peak, command and communications systems are flawless, our training is unmatched, the fire of our determination all consuming. At last we are ready.”

  Corr'tane closed his eyes and breathed deeply. So this was it. The moment long in the making, the point of no return they had been working ceaselessly toward these long years, with the threat of extinction always bearing over them. The day had come. “They were easy prey,” he replied after a pause. “A single system entity, rich in fighting spirit but poor in resources and power. So were the Aetu. But the worlds of the Pact will be harder to subdue.”

  “Harder, but not impossible.” Tear'al stood a little straighter and raised his chin. It was a pose he often went into before extolling the greatness of his people. “We have the best soldiers in the galaxy and the best ships. Our dreadnoughts are unmatched in their firepower and our fighters the deadliest known to exist.”

  Imperceptibly he sighed. Over the years he had discovered the head of the Dominion's Naval Intelligence Directorate was in fact hugely pompous and filled to bursting with his own self-importance. For as long as Corr'tane had known him, he recognized the man's inability to accept that he could be wrong, that it was quite possible that all the well-laid plans and schemes they had come up with to save their race might not actually work, and that they would all be going straight to hell.

  His mind wandered, a luxury he did not often allow, and rested on a day ten years ago near the beginning of their association.

  * * * * * * *

  “Welcome to your laboratory, Corr'tane,” he had said with a flourish as he opened the heavy doors to his new home. It had revealed a vast complex built over three separate sub-levels beneath one of Ka
rashan's main military research centers and included dozens of sealed rooms and isolation chambers for handling any imaginable substance he could have dreamed of. In that instant it had been like being a ten year old waking up on his name day again, his smiling parents waiting to present him with an armful of gifts as he and his sister joyfully ripped open the packaging with wide-eyed delight and childish giggles as each new surprise was exposed. He had actually run into the center of her new facility with that same wide smile of pure joy and spun around looking up at the high white roof. “This is amazing!” he had exclaimed. “I can use this whole facility?”

  “All yours,” Tear'al had smiled back, Corr'tane's enthusiasm obviously contagious. “The strategoi have great confidence in you. They've seen your work and recognize just how damn smart you are in your field. If there's anything you want, just ask and it'll be yours. Any drug, any chemical, any machine, and any member of staff, anything. It's all yours.”

  A figure arriving at the door caused Tear'al to snap to attention like he was on a parade ground. The new arrival was a middle aged male Ashani decked out in the crimson tunic of a naval officer of high rank, perhaps even a Strategos. Corr'tane's youthful playfulness immediately evaporated and he scrambled to present himself under the hard eyes of the senior officer.

  “Corr'tane.” It was a statement, not a question. “I'm glad to see you accepted our offer. The Dominion has need of your talents. Does our humble facility meet your expectations?”

  “Humble? Gods, oh yes!” he nearly squeaked and gushed before his self-control reasserted itself, pummeling down his enthusiasm and chastising him for acting like a teenage schoolgirl in front of such a dignitary. “I mean, yes sir. It's beyond what I could have realistically expected. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity.”

  The older man smiled a little. “Good.” He chose to overlook his boundless enthusiasm and earlier joviality. “But you must remember these facilities are not for your personal amusement.”