“I like to think that the government would do the right thing,” Marius said honestly. “Didn’t they see the records from hijacked ships and ruined planets?”
“Of course they did,” McGillivray said. “What makes you think they care? Everyone in the Senate is focused on keeping and expanding their power bases. Dead colonials along the Rim don’t vote; wealthy citizens in the Core Worlds do so, frequently. Pleasing them is far more important than trying to stop the pirates.”
He shrugged as he took one of the seats that allowed him to stare out over Federation City. The sun was setting in the distance.
“Admiral, no one of your high position can afford to be ignorant of politics,” McGillivray said. “I know; you reached your position through merit and you deserve it, but merit alone isn’t enough these days. There’s a total deadlock in the Senate and no one is going to go out on a limb and suggest that sending a few hundred additional units out to the Rim might be a good idea, even with a clear and present threat to the entire Federation.”
Marius nodded dismally. “But they’re playing fast and loose with the security of the entire Federation,” he repeated with emphasis. “How long is it going to be before we face an even greater threat?”
McGillivray smiled. “Are the new aliens a danger to the Federation?”
“I don’t know,” Marius admitted. “The Senate banned us from sending survey missions out to their space; hell, we know very little about them. The real danger is that they will get organized as a unit if we give them time, perhaps allying with the pirates and rebels. They have to know, by now, what life as an alien in the Federation is like.”
The thought was a bitter one. The First Interstellar War had left a legacy of xenophobia running through the Federation. No alien race could be permitted to threaten humanity ever again. Aliens were second-class citizens even on their own homeworlds, denied weapons or access to spaceflight. They were banned from Earth and the Core Worlds, while the out-worlds often used aliens as a source of cheap labor. Marius had no more love for the aliens than the average human, yet even he was prepared to admit that no rational alien race would want to join the Federation.
Of course, the Blue Star War had made it clear what would happen to any race that refused to cooperate.
“True,” McGillivray agreed after a pause. He leaned forward, assuming a lecturing pose. “The Conservatives want to keep things as they are, because they’re effectively in charge of half the galaxy. They’re allied with most of the big interstellar corporations because the corporations want to keep the laws and procedures they already have…”
“Keeping them on top,” Marius put in.
“Precisely,” McGillivray said. “The Socialists are trying to challenge this by distributing federal largesse to the population of the Core Worlds, the planets that can make or break Senators. In theory, they can effectively buy votes because they promise to keep the money flowing. In practice, what they’re actually doing is damaging the tax base; the big corporations have the legal framework to escape taxation, or they’re moving operations out to the out-worlds. So the Socialists raise taxes on smaller businesses and individuals, which makes their continued survival impossible, which means they’re actually expanding the pool of needy people who need federal support to survive. Worse, because most of the Core Worlds are actually significant, raising taxes there is politically dangerous, so they start taxing the out-worlds, which causes massive resentment and a black market.
“Back when we had the Imperialist Faction, all three were balanced, but now…” He shook his head. “My family was there when the Constitution was first written,” he said slowly. “And now I may live long enough to see the Federation tear itself apart.”
Marius blinked. “Surely it’s not that serious…”
“Oh, yes it is,” McGillivray insisted. “You remember how reluctant they were to send ships to the Rim? They’ve been cutting the military to the bone in order to fund their pet projects; they’ve been cutting back on everything. The Survey Service has effectively been disbanded. The Asimov Point Monitoring Service has been placed on indefinite hold. They’ve even been skimping on ICN funding for the Rim and…”
Marius held up a hand, as etiquette demanded. A message had just downloaded into his implants. “They want me to head back to the Admiralty,” he said flatly. He would have time to think about McGillivray’s words on the way. “Thank you…”
“Thank you,” McGillivray said. He winked. “It’s astonishing how few people pay attention to me these days.”
Admiralty House—the headquarters of the Federation Navy—was on the other side of the continent from Federation City. No one knew, now, why it had been built there, but it was tradition and, as such, could not be interfered with by mere mortals. Marius had his own theory; the Snakes, the first alien race humanity had encountered, had bombarded planetary defense centers with abandon, ignoring the danger to civilian populations. Building the HQ so far from the civilian population might just save civilian lives if the enemy took the high orbitals and chose to bombard the planet before invading.
The shuttle raced towards the city at several times the speed of sound. It was a sign of haste that the Admiralty had assigned his transport to the first available craft, rather than wait for an aircar. Someone in the Senate must have lit a fire under someone’s ass. Marius didn’t mind. The shuttle might be disarmed, but it felt more…natural than a luxury aircar. Sitting behind the pilot gave him time to rest. There was no point in trying to think, not after hearing from both the Senate and Grand Senator McGillivray. He’d find out what was waiting for him when he landed.
He looked up sharply as an alarm shrilled. It was the planetary defense alarm, an alarm that was never used, even in drills. The Solar System wasn’t under attack—was it?
A moment later, the looming shape of Admiralty House—coming into view in the distance—vanished in a flash of blinding light.
Chapter Three
As the homeworld of humanity, Earth is the single most heavily defended world in recorded history. Only a madman would try to breach the defenses and claim Earth for his own—or so we are told. History is all about people doing the unexpected and, one day, Earth’s defenses may be challenged from an unsuspected direction.
Near-Earth Orbit, Sol System, 4092
Although he was on the command deck, Commander Jacob Fallon had been slacking off when the attack began. In theory, he was currently in command of Earth Defense Station Three. The truth was that command networks and override protocols linked all of the defense stations—and automated orbital weapons platforms—into a single, coherent whole. With Commodore Peking on Earth Defense Station One for a conference with Port Admiral Gordon, the commander of Earth’s defense network and the Home Fleet, the crew of EDS3 had been relaxing. Nothing had threatened Earth since the First Interstellar War, centuries ago, and few members of the crew expected anything ever would.
Fallon came to his feet as alarms shrieked, dropping his small—and, technically, illegal—data terminal on the deck as the main display wall lit up with red icons. He’d never seen anything like it outside of drills, and even then the drills hadn’t been too intense; after all, everyone knew that attackers could not reach Earth without fighting their way through half the Federation. There would be plenty of time to reconfigure defenses and reallocate resources to deal with any new threats.