The Three-Edged Sword

The Three-Edged Sword

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Dear Readers

The four books in the When the Empire Falls series were written in 2008 and represent my first major attempt at creating a space opera. (The other major attempt, the Democracy’s Right series, can also be found on my website for free.) As you will see if you read them, elements that eventually became part of The Empire’s Corps were first explored within these texts.

I have been working on revising this universe and eventually writing them out again, using what I have learned in 5 more years of writing. If enough people think that there is potential in the storyline, I will return to it. As these are very much drafts (with spelling errors and other problems) please don’t let me know about problems in the text. I will do a complete rewrite if I return to this universe.

I don’t feel comfortable offering these books for sale. However, if you want to tip me, please visit the cookie jar -

Have fun!

Chris

Understanding is a Three-Edged Sword; Your Side, Their Side, and the Truth.

Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5

Prologue

They say that understanding is a three-edged sword; your side, their side, and the truth. Now…we don’t know what is true, not any longer; the Grey War and the mysteries of the past have wiped away all certainty…and even the knowledge that we – humanity – are on the right side in the war – the war that may be now within shouting distance of being lost.

Certain facts are clear. The Imperials – a powerful and very old alien race – invaded Earth, a thousand years ago. Their Empire was strong and powerful…until the day they told us that the Empire was withdrawing from the Human Sector, leaving humanity alone to face the new threat lurking out beyond the rim. Apparently unaware of the growing threat, the Imperials left humanity to struggle alone, first against pirates, under the command of the enigmatic Captain Morgan, and then against the Greys. The Greys, as powerful and advanced as the Imperials, lured a human fleet into a trap, and then struck directly at the human world of New Brooklyn.

Aware at last of the danger of the situation, the newly created Human Union fought to establish a defence line as the Greys advanced against Earth, finally winning a victory with the aid of an Imperial gift; the illegally created slave-girl Corey. The Greys, beaten back for the time being, launched a savage series of attacks against other human worlds, hammering away at the Human Union. The situation was dire and Earth could not stand alone; there seemed to be only one thing to do – send a starship to ask the Imperials for help directly. As Captain Erickson set off on his long voyage, he was unaware that events were reshaping the path of the war.

Hurt, perhaps humiliated, by a human raid on New Brooklyn, the Greys struck back against Roosevelt, an American-ethnic world. Instead of landing on the planet, the Greys devastated its orbital industry, sending the remains of dozens of asteroid habitats into the planet’s atmosphere, and killing billions of humans. Demanding revenge, unaware of the actions of a human traitor that had led to the attack, the human fleet struck at New Brooklyn, winning a second great victory against the Greys. What they found, as they landed on the planet, terrified them; the Greys regarded humanity as nothing more than breeding stock for sinister experiments of their own. Peace no longer seemed possible…

Erickson’s mission led him to Tarn, where he helped a fragmenting sector pull itself back together to face the Greys, and encountered other Imperials and a fully operational shipyard. The starships were dispatched back to Earth as Erickson continued his long flight, passing through a shipyard wrecked by the Kijamanro, and finally entering the Butler system. There, he discovered that the Bulterians intended to tickle the sleeping dragon called the Kerr – a race that had somehow managed to remain isolated from even the Imperials – and was greeted by treachery as the Bulterians attempted to destroy his ship. Escaping in the nick of time, he took his ship to Centre itself, unaware of the Grey battlecruiser that had shadowed him all the way to Centre. The Grey starship attacked…and almost destroyed the Vanguard; only a force of enhanced humans, serving the Imperials, saved his ship.

Locating a Grey base, aided by superdreadnaughts recovered from Tarn, disturbed by knowledge that the Imperials had known about the Greys from the days after the Invasion, humanity launched a major attack against the Greys. Betrayed to the enemy, the human force was ambushed and badly damaged, escaping only at the cost of dozens of starships, starfighters…and the commanding officer of the Sol Picket. Even as the Imperials agreed, reluctantly, to aid humanity, human researchers found out one new terrifying piece of information about the Greys; they shared a common heritage with the Imperials…and had clearly grown from the same stock.

The Greys and the Imperials were the same race.

So what was really going on?

***

Admiral Klamath sat back in his command chair and waited patiently for all of his starships to check in. The fleet had travelled from Butler, once known as the jewel of the Empire, towards the Kerr Exclusion Zone, a limit drawn at twenty-light-years around Kerr. They had reached the Phase Limit surrounding Kerr without incidence, proving that the older records had been correct. There was no need for the exclusion zone at all.

It was, Admiral Klamath believed, typical Imperial paranoia; there was no known record of a starship going missing outside the Kerr system itself. The Kerr – or something – might protect their own secrets with a thoroughness Admiral Klamath could only admire, but the Imperials had made their task much easier. The image on the display was proof of that.

Half-hidden behind impossibly large chunks of metal, the shattered Dyson Sphere could be seen from several light years away, proof of a technology that rivalled, at least, the Empire’s technology. The Imperials had never tried to build a Dyson Sphere, or a Ring; common Butler belief had it that the sphere had been created by the Kerr…and then abandoned or destroyed. The Imperials, in setting up the exclusion zone soon after they had defeated the Kijamanro and established their Empire, had prevented any of the Bulterians from visiting the Sphere; they had denied the Bulterians access to a place that their religion venerated as holy. Some Bulterians – and Admiral Klamath was among their number – worshipped the Kerr…and the Imperial refusal to allow them to approach the Kerr directly rankled. It had been nearly two hundred years since the Bulterian underground had realised that the Empire was about to fall…and Admiral Klamath had spent much effort in ensuring that the older races – the senior races – in the Empire were prepared to take over as much of the Empire as possible. The human Erickson’s ranting about the Greys suggested that humans would never be one of the senior races; they lacked any sense of proportion.

But then, what could you expect from a race that had refused to master space travel before the Imperials arrived to shake Earth out of its complacency?

“The fleet has checked in,” the communications officer said. Admiral Klamath had never learned to use his communicator implant to the full level required for direct command of the fleet, but it hardly mattered; he’d drilled his crews until they could have performed the most complicated manoeuvres in their sleep. “they’re ready for the advance.”

“Excellent,” Admiral Klamath said. The bright light of the Kerr star glowed ahead of them. He had nearly three hundred starships, moving to meet the gods of Bulterian legend; how could they refuse to see him when he honoured them in such a fashion? “Take us into the system…”

The Bulterian legends were clear on how the gods were to be approached; Admiral Klamath had matched them as best as he could to the realities of the situation. They would enter the system without shields, without intrusive scans; they would seem as meek and mild as a fleet composed of over a hundred superdreadnaughts could seem. He doubted that the Kerr would be intimidated by his fleet – although part of him dared to wonder what might happen if they were – and so he would try to remain a supplicant.

Time passed. “Nothing, sir,” the sensor operator said. They could have reached one of the Kerr planets by now, but he’d ordered that they kept the speed down to bare minimum. “I’m picking up nothing, nothing at all.”

Despite himself, Admiral Klamath began to doubt, wondering if something had gone very wrong, so long ago. Had the Imperials somehow defeated the Kerr? It would be just like them to have succeeded – and then never breathed a word of it to anyone else. Had the gods just left them? Had something else happened? He wondered, grimly, if he dared send a signal to the Kerr worlds, asking them for permission to approach. He hadn’t made up his mind when everything changed…

“Energy spike,” the sensor operator snapped. Her voice was deeply shocked. “It’s right on top of us!”

Admiral Klamath swung around to stare at the blossoming light on the display.

It was a move he was never to complete.

Chapter One: Animals and Predators

“The prey awaits us,” Admiral Kazak said, as the Kijamanro fleet entered the Suhail System. The Kijamanro had once owned the system – and the Suhail natives on the planet ahead of them – until the Imperial animals had defeated them in combat and forced them to abandon their empire. Their close acquaintance with the Imperials had left the Kijamanro with nothing, but contempt; could there be any greater sign of the essentially animal nature of the Imperials than their refusal to exterminate the Kijamanro?

Admiral Kazak didn’t understand it. To some extent, only a handful of his kind could ever hope to understand it…and they were the rare few born without a sense of smell. Unlike their more fortunate brethren, they were unable to mate because they were unable to smell the females, but they also lacked the instinctive hatred of any normal Kijamanro for anyone – anything – that smelled different to them. They had once been a tribal race, until interbreeding – normally conducted through rape – brought them all closer together…and then they’d encountered an alien race. It had been hate at first sight; the newcomers had accidentally given the Kijamanro the keys to the stars. Two hundred years later, the Imperials had driven them back to their homeworld…and tried to reform them. It hadn’t taken.

The display filled up with tactical icons as the fleet drove further into the system. Admiral Kazak knew better than to assume that all animals were dumb – some of them, such as humans, had a certain natural cunning – but the Suhail seemed terrified of the Kijamanro. It was hard to blame them, of course; even he knew that animals had some feelings, but not feelings that had to be taken into account. Some of the higher caste Kijamanro had kept Suhail as pets, before the Imperials had crushed them; Admiral Kazak had given thought to doing it himself, once the empire had been re-established. When they met the Imperials again, Admiral Kazak was determined that they would do it from a position of strength.

“We are being hailed,” the communications officer – a lower-caste female – reported. Admiral Kazak eyed her with interest; she wasn’t in season, but treated properly, she could be made to submit to him anyway. He forced the thought aside, remembering Imperial punishments for such actions with a shudder; there were more important matters to worry about. “They’re demanding that we withdraw from this system at once.”

A hiss of reptilian laughter ran around the command centre. None of the Kijamanro would take such a demand seriously, not from animals. The Suhail weren’t even Imperials, or humans; even had they been either of the dangerous races, they lacked the firepower to make certain of a victory. He’d stalked them for weeks, while one assault fleet destroyed several Imperial Fleet targets; he had made sure that they lacked anything that could stand off his fleet. Thirty-seven warships and nearly a hundred converted freighters did not make a force that could oppose what had once been an Imperial fleet.

His tongue flickered out of his mouth; a Kijamanro leer. He had planned it, making use of all of his cunning and his knowledge that the animals could be beaten, using his conviction that the Empire was on the brink of falling apart to force forward plans to seize the fleet. They’d even staged a series of small rebellions, with ‘loyal’ forces fighting on the Imperial side, just to ensure that the Imperial Fleet moved plenty of firepower into the sector. Once the Imperials had begun to withdraw, he’d struck at them…and taken much of the fleet for himself. Once he’d destroyed the Imperial bases on the surface of the planet, the Kijamanro were suddenly free to recreate their own empire…and extract revenge for what the Imperials had done to them.

“Send back a demand for surrender,” he ordered. The thought made him smile even more; so few of their enemies would surrender, knowing what was in store for them, but the bloodlust was dimmed – slightly – by the distance between him and the animals. Had he been close to them, they would have had to submit or die; at this distance, he could control himself to the point where he could attempt to gain control of the Suhail starships; they would be needed when the time came to face the Imperials. “Let’s see how gullible they are.”

There was a long chilling pause. “No reply,” the communications officer said. Her body twitched nervously; she knew that she could be blamed for the failure and punished however Admiral Kazak wanted to punish her. The Imperial Fleet’s discipline had been replaced with Kijamanro discipline; a superior could do anything to an inferior…and get away with it. “Admiral, they are not replying at all.”

“It’s hardly a problem,” Admiral Kazak said, reassuring her as best as he could. She would have to be in the right frame of mind for later. The Suhail clearly weren’t as stupid as he had hoped they would have been; he would have taken their starships and then slaughtered them all, on the grounds that they were too dangerous to have around. Animals who had mastered advanced technology were too likely to refuse to accept their proper role in a Kijamanro society. “Tactical, bring up the weapons arrays…and prepare to engage the enemy.”

He studied the display as they drew closer. The Suhail weren’t trying to do anything smart, although they had only a few options; he himself would have ordered a retreat, rather than waste time trying to put up a fight. If they fled to another colony, or even to their cousins the Sadal Melik, they would have been much more dangerous in the future. Instead, they were determined to make a fight of it, which was…stupid. Even if they had some new trick up their sleeves, to use the human expression, they couldn’t hope to defeat him in open combat.

“They are launching starfighters,” the tactical officer reported. “Admiral, your pardon; some of those bulk freighters are starfighter carriers.”

Admiral Kazak said nothing. If that had been the Suhail ace in the hole, it had been badly played; they should have attacked his force right from the start, instead of trying to hold the starfighters in reserve. As it was, they’d been lucky; he could have really hurt them just by destroying the carrier before they launched; it was proof, if nothing else was required, that the Suhail Home Guard hadn’t spent enough time doing more than drilling to look good. It might have impressed the Imperials, but actual tactical skill was lacking…and they would have no time to learn from their mistakes.

“Launch our own starfighters,” he said finally. The tactical officer looked relieved; he might well have expected to pay for the unexpected surprise with his head. It would not have been fair, as the Imperials deemed such things, but it was the Kijamanro way. Who cared what animals thought? “I want to clear their starfighters away, and then the battleline can advance to meet the enemy.”