End of Empire
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: As usual, I own none of this. Rating: K. Time: Centuries after my stories beginning with The Pilot.
"Please go on in, Captain Castle."
Captain Richard Castle, Imperial Space Navy, walked into the office. He began to salute Rear Admiral Korsakoff, the head of fleet intelligence, but quickly changed to a bow when he saw that also in the room was the Earl of Morne, His Majesty's Viceroy to the Alpha Crucis Sector.
"My Lord." Castle said. The earl merely waved at Castle.
He turned to the senior officer present, Fleet Admiral Aileen, Countess of Scarborough, and saluted. She returned the salute with such force that Castle thought she probably wanted to destroy something. Well, she probably did. He then saluted Admiral Korsakoff, who returned a rather sloppy salute.
"Please sit down, Captain." The Viceroy said. "We have coffee from Moka, if you'd like some."
Without his saying anything, a servitor wheeled over and handed Castle a cup of coffee.
"You've had a very long mission, Captain, but we'd like to hear your impressions." The Viceroy said.
"My Lord, my ship's computers are being downloaded into the Intelligence data banks for analysis…"
"Just your impressions, Castle." Korsakoff said. He spoke just as the fleet admiral looked like she was about to explode.
"Yes. Of course." He took a moment to gather his thoughts. He hadn't expected this. "I entered the domain currently held by former Fleet Admiral Vaughn in the…"
The Viceroy interrupted.
"Captain," he said with a smile, "we've taken to referring to Vaughn as the usurper and to Bracken as the rebel."
"Of course, My Lord. I entered the Edo Sector very easily. There is very little patrolling between the usurper's area and Alpha Crucis. Given the speed and stealth abilities of my ship, it was easy, but I believe an express boat could easily get through."
"We've received five express boats from the Empire since you left." The fleet admiral snapped.
"And of course Captain Castle would have no way to know that." The Viceroy said gently.
"Once inside the three sectors, Edo, Sutlej and Santa Guillermo, I had two missions. One was to find if there was any evidence of opposition on a broad scale to the usurper. I'm afraid I was unable to find any. There are no unusual troop movements nor any signal traffic indicating any unrest. There may be, but at a very low level."
Fleet Admiral, the Countess of Scarborough, looked like she'd explode, but didn't.
"My other mission was to determine if the usurper was building up his fleet. He is, and all of his shipyards seem to be working around the clock building warships."
"As our shipyards." Scarborough snapped.
"Yes, yes, Aileen," Said Morne, "but we have very few shipyards and he has many. What else, Captain?"
"I checked the border regions to check on the barbarians. There's no sign that the usurper is recruiting barbarian allies. Many merchant ships are convoyed by warships and there is still trade between the usurper's area and the barbarians."
"I realize that the term barbarians is the accepted term for those who live beyond the Empire." The Viceroy said, "But that seems to unnecessarily denigrate them. They do have faster than light ships, nuclear weapons, and stable governments."
"We should not allow trade between Alpha Crucis and any extra-Imperial planets. We're helping our enemies, and the so-called Free Traders are little more than spies for the barbarians." The countess said loudly.
"Now, Aileen." Said the Viceroy, "remember that we have allies among the so-called barbarians. There's Caddo'e, the Roxalani, and the Peshfillean to name the most important. They provide a buffer zone between us and the real barbarians and do provide useful naval assets."
"And we get useful intelligence from the Free Traders. And it's not like our trade routes, or the location of our most poorly protected planets are some sort of secret." Korsakoff added.
The countess avoided looking at the Viceroy but glared at everyone else.
"Please continue, Captain." Korsakoff said.
"I then checked for the location of the usurper's main fleet units. They're located centrally in the Sutlej sector, but he does move them around so that the Empire will never know exactly where his battle fleet is. In addition, I checked the border between the loyal Empire and the usurper's area. It's quite heavily patrolled. It would be impossible for either merchant ships or warships to reach us through the usurper's area."
"Did you learn anything else of great interest about the usurper's area?" Korsakoff asked.
"Not based on what I only remember."
"You then went to the rebel's area?" The Viceroy asked.
"Yes, My Lord. I found that there are virtually no naval units of either side along their common border. Civilian traffic flows freely and I believe the traffic is heavier than before the rebellion."
"Logical." Said Korsakoff. "They can't trade with the loyal parts of the Empire, so they trade with each other."
"I fear the situation in the rebel's area is the same as in the usurpers." Castle continued. "There's no sign of any unrest and everything indicates the rebel's shipyards are hard at work building warships. The border with the barbarians seems normal. There are no barbarian auxiliaries that I could find, merchants are convoyed near the border and there appears to be more trade with the barbarian states."
"What about the rebel's fleet? Where is it?" The countess demanded.
"Like the usurper's fleet, the rebel keeps his main battle fleet well back from the loyal Empire. They move about a bit but seem to be concentrated around the Athabascan sub-sector."
Korsakoff nodded.
"Makes sense. There are plenty of good bases in that area to support a main fleet."
"Captain, can you see anyway that we could attack either of those traitors successfully?" The countess demanded.
"Given the disparity between the forces of the five larger, wealthier and more powerful sectors held by the enemy, and our own forces, I can see only disaster if we attacked."
"And besides," the Viceroy said before the Countess of Scarborough could erupt, "we have specific orders from the emperor to remain on the defensive and not to initiate hostilities under any circumstances."
The Viceroy turned back to Castle.
"So, I believe what you are saying is that there's no way we could contact the loyal Empire since all five sectors between us and the Empire are held either by the enemy and the rest by barbarians. Except, for the occasional very fast express boat."
"Yes, My Lord."
"Thank you, Captain Castle for that most enlightening briefing."
Castle got up, bowed, saluted and left.
Once he was out of the suite of offices being used by the Viceroy, he met with two of his senior officers. Unusually, neither one was human. One, Commander Beau was a Vorlag. He was the engineer officer for Castle's ship, His Imperial Majesty's Ship Zephyr. Beau also made sure that the ship's officer's wardroom had the best food and drink in the fleet.
The other officer was Commander Short Tail, a Kzin, a race that appeared to have been descended from something like Earth's tigers. They were a very warlike species. Because humans could not properly speak the Kzinti language, each Kzin usually had a nickname in Anglic. Short Tail had had most of his tail shot off in battle. Although he could have had the tail regrown, he preferred to let everyone know he'd been honorably wounded in battle. You did not want to suggest that the part of his anatomy that was shot off indicated where he was in relation to his foes. Short Tail was the Zephyr's sensor officer.
The Zephyr was a fleet scout. It was approximately twenty percent larger than a destroyer but had much more powerful engines. Its stealth equipment was the bleeding edge of technology as was its intelligence gathering sensors. It could outrun any ship known to the Empire, assuming any ship could locate it. Its armament was slightly less than you'd find on a much smaller frigate, but fighting was not its primary or even secondary job.
"How did the briefing go, sir?" Beau asked.
"Badly. I need to get to the tank."
"Why do you need to go to the tank?"
"I need to think. To figure out what to do."
"Won't the fleet tell us what to do?"
"That's the problem. Our fire eating fleet commander wants to fight someone so badly that if she has to, she'll divide the fleet into two parts and fight herself."
"An honorable and respected way for a Kzin to solve the problem." Short Tail said. "But that sort of thought would explain why we lost all of our wars against the humans. Lost badly. So, to use the human expression, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We're much happier when we're winning wars."
"How did the Viceroy react?" Beau asked.
"The Earl of Morne knows all about how to maneuver through the Imperial Court, and the Imperial Bureaucracy, but he's not a wartime leader. Luckily, the Emperor has ordered that we stand on the defensive. Unfortunately, he has the look of a man who feels he has to do something with no idea what to actually do."
"So why do you need to think?"
"Because our two leaders will think up something stupid to do given half a chance. I'd like to come up with a plan that has an actual chance of success. I'll have no trouble talking Korsakoff into whatever I come up with and I can only hope he can talk the Fleet Admiral and the Viceroy into it."
The tank was a holographic representation of the galaxy and everything in it. You could start with the whole Milky Way galaxy and work yourself down to the most insignificant airless rock in a completely insignificant solar system.
Castle began with the whole galaxy. The Miky Way was, depending on who was doing the counting, about one hundred thousand light years across and at its thickest, some ten thousand light years. It contained between two hundred billion and four hundred billion suns and uncounted planets. Castle noticed a small blue spot at the edge of the Orion Arm of the galaxy. That was the Empire.
He focused on the Empire. It was a rough globe, a very rough globe, about a thousand light years across. The Empire contained some one hundred thousand inhabited planets that were represented in the House of the Planets. There were several times as many planets and moons that were also under Imperial control. These included mining colonies on uninhabitable planets and moons, scientific outposts, military bases in spots that were strategically important, planets inhabited by non-humans that the Empire didn't want to be bothered admitting to the Empire but needed to keep an eye on, and many, many more.
Castle focused on the Alpha Crucis sector. It was also a globe containing one thousand and twenty-four inhabited Imperial planets and an equal number of planets and moons that for one reason or another the Empire had an interest in.
The Alpha Crucis sector was also separated from the rest of the Empire by a gap of one hundred and fifty-six light years. This area, called the Desert, had no inhabitable or valuable planets. The only thing in this vast desolation was Imperial Navy Base called Midpoint. This was a miserable rock orbiting a red dwarf star and was roundly hated by all the naval personnel who were stationed there. But Midpoint was necessary for communications with what had been loyal Imperial sectors.
Around the perimeter of the Alpha Crucis sector, except where the sector abutted the now rebel worlds were barbarians star nations. As Admiral Korsakoff had said a few, a very few, were allied to the Empire. Most were hostile.
"We're surrounded." Short Tail said. "No matter where we attack, we'll find foes to test us."
"And destroy us." Beau added glumly.
"The idea is to try to survive and not to die gloriously. Let's look at what military forces we have." Castle said.
"Damned little." Muttered Short Tail.
TBC