Christopher Nuttall - The Trafalgar Gambit

This time, it was harder to hide the rage.

“With all due respect, Senator, I discovered very quickly that sharing my operational plans with the governor meant that they were shared with the pirates,” Marius told her. “I told the governor about a planned ambush; the pirates somehow avoided it. I told him that I planned a raid on a pirate base; the base was empty when I got there and rigged to blow with antimatter. I told him to keep the information in confidence and not to share it with anyone, not even his wife, yet somehow the information got out.”

“Governor Barany is a man of the highest reputation,” Alison said. “How dare you accuse him of…supplying information to the pirates?”

“The evidence is in his bank accounts,” Marius said, throwing his last card onto the table. “He has a whole series of payments with no discernible source and…”

“Impossible,” Alison said. She turned to her fellow Senators. “The admiral is attempting to excuse his own failures by blaming the governor! I move that we consider this in closed session.”

There was a brief moment of silent communication. “I disagree,” Chang Li said. Her almond eyes sought out Marius. “We need to send more starships into the sector to protect the population.”

“At a colossal cost,” one of the Conservative Senators pointed out. “Deploying an entire fleet into the Rim would strain our logistics quite badly and—”

“There are human lives at stake,” Marius snapped, unable to control himself any longer. “Right now, billions of human lives are at risk of being kidnapped, killed, or simply wiped from existence. And here you are, worrying about cost!”

There was a long pause.

“I think, admiral, that you had better withdraw,” Brockington said. “We will inform you of our decision in due course.”

“The governor is one of her men, of course.”

Marius didn’t turn as the Grand Senator came up behind him. Instead, he stared out of the massive window, looking down towards the towers of Federation City. Centuries ago, the city had been built to serve as a home for the Federation’s Government, back after the First Interstellar War had taught the human race the value of unity. Now, it was just like any other city on Earth: massive towers, teeming slums and a monstrous overpopulation problem. The punishment for any crime, these days, was deportation, yet it was never enough to keep pace with the growing population. Sooner or later, the teeming mass of humanity was going to rise up and drag the entire planet down into a nightmare.

“You spoke truth to power,” Grand Senator Rupert McGillivray said dryly. “What makes you think that that will go unpunished?”

Marius turned. McGillivray was old, perhaps the oldest man in the Federation. His white hair and short, white beard were an affectation—he could have altered it at will—but the slow motion of his walk and the way his body shook told the true story. Traditionally, a Grand Senator who reached such an age—his detractors claimed he was senile—should resign, but McGillivray had held onto his chair. As the last of the Imperialist Faction—the faction that had provoked the Blue Star War—he was effectively impossible to dislodge.

“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…”