“I didn’t say that,” Vaughn demurred with a smile.
“No, but I can tell you think it,” Marius shot back. “What happens if the price is too high?”
“It’s good to know, given what they’re offering, that you consider some prices to be too high,” he said.
Marius scowled, taking the point.
“I suppose it all comes down to trust, really,” Vaughn said thoughtfully. “Do you trust the Brotherhood to have humanity’s best interests in mind?”
“I’m not comfortable with it,” Marius admitted. “I don’t want an unelected elite dictating Federation policy.”
“Oh? And what, exactly, is the Senate?” Vaughn shrugged. “You know as well as I do that decisions made light years away are never as good as decisions made on the spot. The Senate causes problems for colonists and out-worlds simply by insisting on unified regulations, or worse yet, levying taxes that the poor colonists are simply unable to pay. And it doesn’t matter if the Senate actually means to cause harm or not—the fact of the matter is that the Senate is causing harm. The Senate isn’t designed to respond to democratic pressure from the out-worlds, which provokes rebellion and revolt.”
“Like the Inheritance Wars.” Marius ran his hand through his hair. “I wish I knew what to do.”
Vaughn laughed.
Marius gave him a quizzical look.
“I know you very well,” Vaughn said. “You’ve already made up your mind; you just want me to help clarify it. You want to preserve the Federation, while the Brotherhood also wants to preserve the Federation. You want to beat the warlords before they become too entrenched to stop, and the Brotherhood also wants to beat the warlords before they become too entrenched to stop. You want to stop Outsider raiding fleets pillaging the Rim, and of course the Brotherhood--”
“I get the point,” Marius said. “We have interests in common.”
“I don’t know enough about the Brotherhood to comment,” Vaughn said. “I will say this; they’re not going to leave you dangling on the edge of a long chain. You will probably end up being recruited into their senior leadership and becoming one of the people who set its course. You will have an opportunity to shape the future of the Brotherhood, and ensure that it doesn’t end up as much a parasite as the Federation Senate.”
“I see,” Marius said. “Toby…are you one of the Brotherhood?”
“If I was, would I tell you?” Vaughn snorted.
Marius raised an eyebrow.
“No, I’m not one of their agents, or controllers,” Vaughn said. “I used to know a couple of Marines who claimed to be in the Brotherhood—there aren’t many in the Marine Corps, supposedly—but I never knew for sure. They could have just been bullshitting me.”
He grinned. “One of the Marine Training Holograms has a program where an infiltrator from the Recon Force slips into a meeting of the rebel headquarters, only to discover that all of the rebels are, in fact, other infiltrators…”
“I take your point.” Marius nodded slowly. “I’ll watch my back.”
“And so will I,” Vaughn replied. “The Brotherhood might not want to threaten or kill a mere cadet, or lieutenant, but someone in your position…if they felt you were a threat, they might decide to deal with you permanently.”
Marius gave him a questioning look.
“You have a fleet that is loyal to you and a certain slight reputation for tactical competence,” Vaughn reminded him sardonically. “You could root out most of the Brotherhood if you tried. And I bet you anything you want to put forward that they’ve already considered the possibility.”
“The latest recon probes report that there are now nine hundred fortresses facing us,” Commodore Arunika said several hours later at Marius Drake’s normal daily briefing. “The best case estimate—worst case from our point of view—is that Admiral Justinian could not have produced more than two hundred fortresses, considering the limited amount of time on the one hand and the fact that if he’d tried for more, it would have required the diversion of most of his industrial output. Simple logic tells us, therefore, that most of the fortresses are actually nothing more than ECM buoys. But without actually charging into the system and seeing which ones fire on us, there is no way to tell the difference at this range.”
“So in other words, we cannot launch an attack through the Asimov Point,” he said with a nod. “Thank you for the briefing, Commodore. We will consider other alternatives after lunch.”
He wasn’t particularly surprised at her information. A full-force attack could be very costly, as Admiral Justinian had found out during his first and second offensives. Somehow, they needed to find another way to deal with Justinian before the Senate ordered them to launch a direct assault, even though it was against all military logic.
He waved for her to remain behind as the officers filed out of the briefing compartment.
“I’ve thought about your offer,” he said once they were alone. “I accept.”
“That’s good to hear,” Arunika said with a smile. Her smile grew wider as she held out her hand. “Welcome to the Brotherhood, admiral. I look forward to working with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
When on detached duty, separated from higher command, a captain will handle matters as he sees fit. Naturally, different captains have interpreted these regulations in different ways.
FNS Midway, The Hive System, 4095
“Anything to report?”
“Negative, captain,” the sensor officer said. “The system is as quiet and dark as the grave.”
“It is a grave,” Roman pointed out dryly. The Midway was floating in space, twelve light minutes from the single Asimov Point, cloaked and watching through every one of her passive sensors. “Maintain a steady watch and continue to deploy passive sensing platforms. Inform me once all of the platforms have been deployed.”
He looked up at the star chart in the holographic tank and smiled. A fluke of astrometry had placed the Marx System alarmingly close to The Hive System, only a mere four light years apart. In the days before the continuous displacement drive, they might as well have been in separate galaxies, but now even a commercial-drive ship could cross that distance in a week.
It said something about the taboo most people felt regarding The Hive that relatively few shipping companies had taken advantage of the opportunity when the continuous displacement drive had been licensed for commercial starships. Even now, after so long, the system was abandoned. Or at least there were no signs of any habitats or starships. If some remnant of The Hive still existed, they were very well concealed. They knew what would happen if they showed themselves.
Just before the Inheritance Wars had begun, back during the political ferment that culminated in the Battle of Spider Bite and the start of the first war, a scout ship had stumbled through the Asimov Point and surveyed the system. Finding nothing of particular interest, the settlement rights had been sold to a development corporation, which had started to ship in settlers, industrial nodes and all the other equipment intended to help get a new colony settled and self-sustainable. The Bainbridge Protocols had been taken seriously in that age and the development company hadn’t stinted, even with the wars weakening the economy. The Hive—it had been called Morning Glory at the time—should have been a success.
Instead, a little surprise the scouting parties had missed had destroyed the entire colony and threatened the entire Federation.