Empire from the Ashes

CHAPTER THREE

Gerald Hatcher and his fellows rose courteously as Marshal Tsien entered the conference room, his shoulders straight and his face impassive. He was a big bastard for a Chinese, Hatcher reflected, taller even than Vassily, and broad enough to make two of Hatcher himself.

"Marshal," he said, holding out his hand. Tsien took it with the briefest of hesitations, but his grip was firm. "Thank you for coming. Won't you sit down, please?"

Tsien waited deliberately for his "hosts" to find seats first, then sat and laid his briefcase neatly on the table. Hatcher knew Frederick and Vassily were right in insisting that he, as the sole charter member of Earth's new Supreme Chiefs of Staff with no prior connection to the Imperials, must serve as their chief, but he wished he could disagree. This hard-faced, silent man was the most powerful single serving military officer on the planet, critical to their success, and he did not—to say the least—look cheerful.

"Marshal," Hatcher said finally, "we asked you to meet us so that we could speak without the... pressure of a civilian presence—yours or ours. We won't ask you to strike any 'deals' behind your leaders' backs, but there are certain pragmatic realities we must all face. In that regard, we appreciate the difficulties of your position. We hope—" he looked levelly into the dark, unreadable eyes "—that you appreciate ours, as well."

"I appreciate," Tsien said, "that my government and others which it is pledged to defend have been issued an ultimatum."

Hatcher hid a wince. The marshal's precise, accentless English made his almost toneless words even more unpromising, but they also showed him the only possible approach, and he reached for it before prudence could change his mind.

"Very well, Marshal Tsien, I'll accept your terminology. In fact, I agree with your interpretation." He thought he saw a flicker of surprise and continued evenly. "But we're military men. We know what can happen if that ultimatum is rejected, and, I hope, we're also all realists enough to accept the truth, however unpalatable, and do our best to live with it."

"Your pardon, General Hatcher," Tsien said, "but your countries' truth seems somewhat more palatable than that which you offer mine or our allies. Our Asian allies. I see here an American, a ConEuropean, a Russian—I do not see a Chinese, a Korean, an Indian, a Thai, a Cambodian, a Malaysian. I do not even see one of your own Japanese." He shrugged eloquently.

"No, you don't—yet," Hatcher said quietly, and Tsien's eyes sharpened. "However, General Tama, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Staff, will be joining us as soon as he can hand over his present duties. So will Vice Admiral Hawter of the Royal Australian Navy. It is our hope that you, too, will join us, and that you will nominate three additional members of this body."

"Three?" Tsien frowned slightly. This was more than he had expected. It would mean four members from the Alliance against only five from the Western powers. But was it enough? He rubbed the table top with a thoughtful finger. "That is scarcely an equitable distribution in light of the populations involved, and yet..."

His voice trailed off, and Hatcher edged into the possible opening.

"If you will consider the nations the men I mentioned represent, I believe you'll be forced to admit that the representation is not inequitable in light of the actual balance of military power." He met Tsien's eyes again, hoping the other could see the sincerity in his own. The marshal didn't agree, but neither did he disagree, and Hatcher went on deliberately.

"I might also remind you, Marshal Tsien, that you do not and will not see any representative of the extreme Islamic blocs here, nor any First World hard-liners. You say we represent Western Powers, and so, by birth, we do. But we sit here as representatives of Fleet Captain Horus in his capacity as the Lieutenant Governor of Earth, and of the five men I've named, only Marshal Chernikov and General Tama—both of whom have long-standing personal and family connections with the Imperials—were among the chiefs of staff of their nations. We face a danger such as this planet has never known, and our only purpose is to respond to that danger. Towards this end, we have stepped outside traditional chains of command in making our selections. You are the most senior officer we've asked to join us, and I might point out that we've asked you to join us. If we must, we will—as you are well aware we can—compel your obedience, but what we want is your alliance."

"Perhaps," Tsien said, but his voice was thoughtful.

"Marshal, the world as we have known it no longer exists," the American said softly. "We may regret that or applaud it, but it is a fact. I won't lie to you. We've asked you to join us because we need you. We need your people and your resources, as allies, not vassals, and you're the one man who may be able to convince your governments, your officers, and your men of that fact. We offer you a full and equal partnership, and we're prepared to guarantee equal access to Imperial technology, military and civilian, and complete local autonomy. Which, I might add, is no more than our own governments have been guaranteed by Governor MacIntyre and Lieutenant Governor Horus."

"And what of the past, General Hatcher?" Tsien asked levelly. "Are we to forget five centuries of Western imperialism? Are we to forget the unfair distribution of the world's wealth? Are we, as some have," his eyes shifted slightly in Chernikov's direction, "to forget our commitment to the Revolution in order to accept the authority of a government not even of our own world?"

"Yes, Marshal," Hatcher said equally levelly, "that's precisely what you are to forget. We won't pretend those things never happened, yet you're known as a student of history. You know how China's neighbors have suffered at Chinese hands over the centuries. We can no more undo the past than your own people could, but we can offer you an equal share in building the future, assuming this planet has one to build. And that, Marshal Tsien, is the crux: if we do not join together, there will be no future for any of us."

"So. Yet you have said nothing of how this... body will be organized. Nine members. They are to hold co-equal authority, at least in theory?" Hatcher nodded, and the marshal rubbed his chin, the gesture oddly delicate in so large a man. "That seems overly large, Comrade General. Could it be that you intend to—I believe the term is 'pad'—it to present the appearance of equality while holding the true power in your own hands?"

"It could be, but it isn't. Lieutenant Governor Horus has a far more extensive military background than any of us and will act as his own minister of defense. The function of this body will be to serve as his advisors and assistants. Each of us will have specific duties and operational responsibilities—there will be more than enough of those to go around, I assure you—and the position of Chief of Staff will rotate."

"I see." Tsien laid his hands on his briefcase and studied his knuckles, then looked back up. "How much freedom will I have in making my nominations?"

"Complete freedom." Hatcher very carefully kept his hope out of his voice. "The Lieutenant Governor alone will decide upon their acceptability. If any of your nominees are rejected, you'll be free to make fresh nominations until candidates mutually acceptable to the Asian Alliance and the Lieutenant Governor are selected. It is my understanding that his sole criterion will be those officers' willingness to work as part of his own command team, and that he will evaluate that willingness on the basis of their affirmation of loyalty under an Imperial lie detector." He saw a spark of anger in Tsien's eyes and went on unhurriedly. "I may add that all of us will be required to demonstrate our own loyalty in precisely the same fashion and in the presence of all of our fellows, including yourself and your nominees."

The anger in Tsien's hooded gaze faded, and he nodded slowly.

"Very well, General Hatcher, I am empowered to accept your offer, and I will do so. I caution you that I do not agree without reservations, and that it will be difficult to convince many of my own officers to accept my decision. It goes against the grain to surrender all we have fought for, whether it is to Western powers or to powers from beyond the stars, yet you are at least partly correct. The world we have known has ended. We will join your efforts to save this planet and build anew. Not without doubts and not without suspicion—you would not believe otherwise, unless you were fools—but because we must. Yet remember this: more than half this world's population is Asian, gentlemen."

"We understand, Marshal," Hatcher said softly.

"I believe you do, Comrade General," Tsien said with the first, faint ghost of a smile. "I believe you do."

Life Councilor Geb brushed stone dust from his thick, white hair as yet another explosive charge bellowed behind him. It was a futile gesture. The air was thin, but the damnable dust made it seem a lot thicker, and his scalp was coated in fresh grit almost before he lowered his hand.

He watched another of the sublight parasites Dahak had left for Earth's defense—the destroyer Ardat, he thought—hover above the seething dust, her eight-thousand-ton hull dwarfed by the gaping hole which would, when finished, contain control systems, magazines, shield generators, and all the other complex support systems. Her tractors plucked up multi-ton slabs of a mountain's bones, and then the ship lifted away into the west, bearing yet another load of refuse to a watery grave in the Pacific. Even before Ardat was out of sight, the Terra-born work crews swarmed over the newly-exposed surface of the excavation in their breath masks, drills screaming as they prepared the next series of charges.

Geb viewed the activity with mixed pride and distaste. This absolutely flat surface of raw stone had once been the top of Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo, but that was before its selection to house Planetary Defense Center Escorpion had sealed the mountain's fate. The sublight battleships Shirhan and Escal arrived two days later, and while Escal hovered over the towering peak, Shirhan activated her main energy batteries and slabbed off the top three hundred meters of earth and stone. Escal caught the megaton chunks of wreckage in her tractors while Shirhan worked, lifting them for her pressers to toss out of the way into the ocean. It had taken the two battleships a total of twenty-three minutes to produce a level stone mesa just under six thousand meters high, and then they'd departed to mutilate the next mountain on their list.

The construction crews had moved in in their wake, and they had labored mightily ever since. Imperial technology had held the ecological effects of their labors to a minimum impossible for purely Terran resources, but Geb had seen Chimborazo before his henchmen arrived. The esthetic desecration of their labors revolted him; what they had accomplished produced his pride.

PDC Escorpion, one of forty-six such bases going up across the surface of the planet, each a project gargantuan enough to daunt the Pharaohs, and each with a completion deadline of exactly eighteen months. It was an impossible task... and they were doing it anyway.

He stepped aside as the whine of a gravitonic drive approached from one side. The stocky, olive-brown Imperial at the power bore's controls nodded to him, but despite his rank, he was only one more rubber-necker in her way, and he backed further as she positioned her tremendous machine carefully, checking the coordinates in her inertial guidance systems against the engineers' plat of the base to be. An eye-searing dazzle flickered as she powered up the cutting head and brought it to bear.

The power bore floated a rock-steady half-meter off the ground, and Geb's implants tingled with the torrent of focused energy. A hot wind billowed back from the rapidly sinking shaft, blowing a thick, plume of powdered rock to join the choking pall hanging over the site, and he stepped still further back. Another thunderous explosion burst in on him, and he shook his head, marveling at the demonic energy loosed upon this hapless mountain. Every safety regulation in the book—Imperial and Terran alike—had been relaxed to the brink of insanity, and the furious labor went on day and night, rain and sun, twenty-four hours a day. It might stop for a hurricane; nothing less would be permitted to interfere.

It was bad enough for his Imperials, he thought, watching the dust-caked woman concentrate, but at least they had their biotechnics to support them. The Terra-born did not, and their primitive equipment required far more of pure muscle to begin with. But Horus had less than five thousand Imperials; barely three thousand of them could be released to construction projects, and the PDCs were only one of the clamorous needs Geb and his assistants had to meet somehow. With enhanced personnel and their machinery spread so thin, he had no choice but to call upon the primitive substitutes Earth could provide. At least he could lift in equipment, materials, and fuel on tractors as needed.

A one-man grav scooter grounded beside him. Tegran, the senior Imperial on the Escorpion site, climbed off it to slog through the blowing dust to Geb's side and pushed up his goggles to watch the power bore at work.

Tegran was much younger, biologically, at least, than Geb, but his face was gaunt, and he'd lost weight since coming out of stasis. Geb wasn't surprised. Tegran had never personally offended against the people of Earth, but like most of the Imperials freed from Anu's stasis facilities, he was driving himself until he dropped to wash away the stigma of his past.

The cutting head died, and the power bore operator backed away from the vertical shaft. A Terra-born, Imperial-equipped survey team scurried forward, instruments probing and measuring, and its leader lifted a hand, thumb raised in approval. The dust-covered woman responded with the same gesture and moved away, heading for the next site, and Horus turned to Tegran.

"Nice," he said. "I make that a bit under twenty minutes to drill a hundred-fifty-meter shaft. Not bad at all."

"Um," Tegran said. He walked over to the edge of the fifty meter-wide hole which would one day house a hyper missile launcher and stood peering down at its glassy walls. "It's better, but I can squeeze another four or five percent efficiency out of the bores if I tweak the software a bit more."

"Wait a minute, Tegran—you've already cut the margins mighty close!"

"You worry too much, Geb." Tegran grinned tightly. "There's a hefty safety factor built into the components. If I drop the designed lifetime to, say, three years instead of twenty, I can goose the equipment without risking personnel. And since we've only got two years to get dug in—" He shrugged.

"All right," Geb said after a moment's thought, "but get me the figures before you make any more modifications. And I want a copy of the software. If you can pull it off, I'll want all the sites to be able to follow suit."

"Fine," Tegran agreed, walking back to his scooter. Geb followed him, and the project boss paused as he remounted. "What's this I hear about non-military enhancement?" he asked, his tone elaborately casual.

Geb eyed him thoughtfully. A few other Imperials had muttered darkly over the notion, for the Fourth Imperium had been an ancient civilization by Terran standards. Despite supralight travel, over-crowding on its central planets had led to a policy restricting full enhancement (and the multi-century lifespans which went with it) solely to military personnel and colonists. Which, Geb reflected, had been one reason the Fleet never had trouble finding recruits even with minimum hitches of a century and a half... and why Horus's policy of providing full enhancement to every adult Terran, for all intents and purposes, offended the sensibilities of the purists among his Imperials.

Yet Geb hadn't expected Tegran to be one of them, for the project head knew better than most that enhancing every single human on the planet, even if there had been time for it, would leave them with far too few people to stand off an Achuultani incursion.

"We started this week," he said finally. "Why?"

"Wellllllllll..." Tegran looked back at the departing power bore, then waved expressively about the site. "I just wanted to get my bid for them in first. I've got a hell of a job to do here, and—"

"Don't worry," Geb cut in, hiding his relief. "We need them everywhere, but the PDCs have a high priority. I don't want anybody with implants standing idle, but I'll try to match the supply of operators to the equipment you actually have on hand."

"Good!" Tegran readjusted his goggles and lifted his scooter a meter off the ground, then grinned broadly at his boss. "These Terrans are great, Geb. They work till they drop, then get back up and start all over again. Enhance me enough of them, and I'll damned well build you another Dahak!"

He waved and vanished into the bedlam, and Geb smiled after him.

He was getting too old for this, Horus thought for no more than the three millionth time. He yawned, then stretched and rose from behind his desk and collected his iced tea from the coaster. Caffeine dependency wasn't something the Imperium had gone in for, but he'd been barely sixty when he arrived here. A lifetime of acculturation had taken its toll.

He walked over to the windowed wall of his office atop White Tower and stared out over the bustling nocturnal activity of Shepard Center. The rocket plumes of the Terran space effort were a thing of the past, but the huge field was almost too small for the Imperial auxiliaries and bigger sublight ships—destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and transports—which thronged it now. And this was only one of the major bases. The largest, admittedly, but only one.

The first enhanced Terra-born crewmen were training in the simulators now. Within a month, he'd have skeleton crews for most of the major units Dahak had left behind. In another six, he'd have crews for the smaller ships and pilots for the fighters. They'd be short on experience, but they'd be there, and they'd pick up experience quickly.

Maybe even quickly enough.

He sighed and took himself to task. Anxiety was acceptable; depression was not, but it was hard to avoid when he remembered the heedless, youthful passion which had pitted him in rebellion against the Imperium.

The Fourth Imperium had arisen from the sole planet of the Third which the Achuultani had missed. It had dedicated itself to the destruction of the next incursion with a militancy which dwarfed Terran comprehension, but that had been seven millennia before Horus's birth, and the Achuultani had never come. And so, perhaps, there were no Achuultani. Heresy. Unthinkable to say it aloud. Yet the suspicion had gnawed at their brains, and they'd come to resent the endless demands of their long, regimented preparation. Which explained, if it did not excuse, why the discontented of Dahak's crew had lent themselves to the mutiny which brought them to Earth.

And so here they were, Horus thought, sipping iced tea and watching the moonless sky of the world which had become his own, with the resources of this single, primitive planet and whatever of Imperial technology they could build and improvise in the time they had, face-to-face with the bogey man they'd decided no longer existed.

Six billion people. Like the clutter of ships below his window, it seemed a lot... until he compared it to the immensity of the foe sweeping towards them from beyond those distant stars.

He straightened his shoulders and stared up at the cold, clear chips of light. So be it. He had once betrayed the Fleet uniform he wore, but now, at last, he faced his race's ancient enemy. He faced it ill-prepared and ill-equipped, yet the human race had survived two previous incursions. By the skin of their racial teeth and the Maker's grace, perhaps, but they'd survived, which was more than any of their prehistoric predecessors could say.

He drew a deep breath, his thoughts reaching out across the light-years to his daughter and Colin MacIntyre. They depended upon him to defend their world while they sought the assistance Earth needed, and when they returned—not if—there would be a planet here to greet them. He threw that to the uncaring stars like a solemn vow and then turned his back upon them. He sat back down at his desk and bent over his endless reams of reports once more.

Alheer va-Chanak's forehead crinkled in disgust as a fresh sneeze threatened. He wiggled on his command pedestal, fighting the involuntary reflex, and heard the high-pitched buzz of his co-pilot's amusement—buried in the explosive eruption of the despised sneeze.

"Kreegor seize all colds!" va-Chanak grunted, mopping his broad breathing slits with a tissue. Roghar's laughter buzzed in his ear as he lost the last vestige of control, and va-Chanak swiveled his sensory cluster to bend a stern gaze upon him. "All very well for you, you unhatched grub!" he snarled. "You'd probably think it was hilarious if it happened inside a vac suit!"

"Certainly not," Roghar managed to return with a semblance of decent self-control. "Of course, I did warn you not to spend so long soaking just before a departure."

Va-Chanak suppressed an ignoble desire to throttle his co-pilot. The fact that Roghar was absolutely right only made the temptation stronger, but these four- and five-month missions could be pure torment for the amphibious Mersakah. And, he grumbled to himself, especially for a fully-active sire like himself. Four thousand years of civilization was a frail shield against the spawning urges of all pre-history, but where was he to find a compliant school of dams in an asteroid extraction operation? Nowhere, that was bloody well where, and if he chose to spend a few extra day parts soaking in the habitat's swamp sections, that should have been his own affair.

And would have been, he thought gloomily, if he hadn't brought this damned cold with him. Ah, well! It would wear itself out, and a few more tours would give him a credit balance fit to attract the finest dam. Not to mention the glamour which clung to spacefarers in groundlings' eyes, and—

An alarm squealed, and Alheer va-Chanak's sensory cluster snapped back to his instruments. All three eyes irised wide in disbelief as the impossible readings registered.

"Kreegor take it, look at that!" Roghar gasped beside him, but va-Chanak was already stabbing at the communications console.

More of the immense ships—ninety dihar long if they were a har—appeared out of nowhere, materializing like fen fey from the nothingness of space. Scores of them—hundreds!

Roghar babbled away about first-contacts and alien life forms beside him, but even as he gabbled, the co-pilot was spinning the extractor ship and aligning the main engines to kill velocity for rendezvous. Va-Chanak left him to it, and his own mind burned with conflicting impulses. Disbelief. Awe. Wonder and delight that the Mersakah were not alone. Horror that it had been left to him to play ambassador to the future which had suddenly arrived. Concern lest their visitors misinterpret his fumbling efforts. Visions of immortality—and how the dams would react to this—!

He was still punching up his communications gear when the closest Achuultani starship blew his vessel out of existence.

The shattered wreckage tumbled away, and the Achuultani settled into their formation. Normal-space drives woke, and the mammoth cylinders swept in-system, arrowing towards the planet of Mers at twenty-eight percent of light-speed while their missile sections prepped their weapons.