Kennedy Hudner: Alarm of War

Post Diaspora 950

The Conspirators

In Darwin Space

The opening moves of the Dominion War took place two years before the first shot was fired, over a glass of vintage Merlot.

Three people sat in a room overlooking the Daskin Sea on Darwin, undeniably the most beautiful planet in the inhabited universe. Darwin had become a resort planet. It had craggy mountains that reached to the heavens, thousands of miles of pristine beaches, lush forests, a stable climate, moderate temperatures and no dangerous life forms of any kind.

Except for Man.

Darwin had become the headquarters of the League of Human Worlds. All of the organizations necessary to maintain normal relations among the far-flung worlds kept an office on Darwin. In the leading city of the planet, San Marino, nestled beside the Daskin Sea, there gathered diplomats, trade delegations, religious groups, doctors of the League Health Organization, academics, researchers of every interest and variety…and conspirators.

In a small, private hotel overlooking the harbor, three people discussed their common grievances. Michael Hudis lazily eyed his two guests. He was, technically, the Assistant Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the Dominion of Unified Citizenry, a minor functionary in a very large bureaucracy. Actually, he reported directly to the Citizen Director, who he had known since the dusty playing fields of grade school. His function was to do the bidding of the Citizen Director. Hudis’s value was that he got things done.

Today, he was fomenting a war.

It had taken four years to reach this point. A word dropped here, a gesture there. An offhanded comment at a diplomatic gathering, watching closely to see who laughed, who grimaced, who looked away, and who looked thoughtful. Seeds planted and their furtive offshoots carefully nurtured…and hidden. Carefully hidden, always hidden from the probing eyes of the Vickies. And finally, a very discrete invitation to this meeting, where people representing nations would freely speak their mind and state their intentions.

“The damn Vickies are killing us,” Elizabeth Dreyer complained. She was a Special Assistant to the Cape Breton National Security Advisor. She was supposed to be on Darwin for her honeymoon. “After the discovery of the worm hole to Sybil Head and the Dominion, we spent one hundred trillion units — one hundred trillion ! — to build the space port, repair docks and warehousing needed to handle the freight traffic to the new worlds. Cape Breton was the lifeblood of the new worlds for one hundred years, but then they discovered the wormholes to Victoria, and Cape Breton has been relegated to the status of a backwater port.”

She was a striking woman, with long tawny hair and flashing green eyes. Now her face was contorted and ugly, and it struck Hudis that she would not age well.

“We’ve no way of paying our debt burden,” she continued. “Our industry is moving to Victoria to be closer to the shipping nodes. Anyone with an ounce of ambition or wealth emigrates, and the ones left behind can barely scratch out a living. Victoria is sucking us dry.”

Her complaint was understandable, Hudis acknowledged. Cape Breton had been the gateway to the new worlds. It had enjoyed the good fortune to have been settled and industrialized before the wormhole to Sybil Head had been discovered, and that discovery had been followed almost immediately by the wormhole to what was now the Dominion. As more and more colonists had journeyed to the newly discovered planets, Cape Breton had been the system that had supplied them with everything from sugar to the colony ships they flew in, and had grown wealthy in the process.

Then calamity stuck. The new wormhole led to an entirely new system, which had not one wormhole leading into it, but seven. Worse yet, its wormholes were only a short distance from its principal solar system, which contained five inhabitable planets. The new system was a veritable treasure trove. Its discoverer, of English descent and proud of it, dubbed the system “Victoria Station” because it had so many entrances and exits. After a time, the name was shorted to “Victoria.” Victoria’s five habitable planets had been settled quickly, and Victoria was soon the acknowledged hub of the inhabited worlds. Each of the seven wormholes led to sectors containing at least one inhabitable planet. Virtually all of the commerce of the inhabited worlds passed through Victoria, and with it wealth that quickly made Victoria the richest of all of the systems.

And Victoria’s wormholes were strategically placed. It was four month trip from Cape Breton to the Dominion by the old route through Sybil Head, but it took only ten days to reach the Dominion through Victoria. Hudis gave a mental shrug as Dreyer continued her rant. It was little surprise that Cape Breton’s warehouses were empty and its ship yards vacant. Cape Breton was indeed a back water.

Dreyer finally sat back in her chair, her anger draining away. Hudis studied her, still trying to figure her out. Political neophyte sent on an important mission because she was a trusted minion? Or skilled political operative? She eyed him under hooded lids. “And the Dominion?” she asked. “Little wonder why you have an axe to grind after what the Vickies did to you in Windsor.”

Windsor! Hudis grimaced involuntarily. Windsor was a badge of shame, an on-going reminder that the Dominion did not rule over all of the inhabited planets within the sector. Windsor was a small planet, poor in resources and with a population of barely fifty million. Its chief export was people, mostly leaving Windsor to immigrate to the Dominion’s home planet of Timor. Then, fifteen years ago, the government of Windsor made a bold move. With great fan-fare and a planet-wide vote, Windsor seceded from the Dominion and sought to become a member nation of Victoria. The Dominion’s Central Committee had been caught flat-footed. Embarrassed, angry and anxious to teach headstrong Windsor a lesson it would not soon forget, the Dominion had dispatched four warships to Windsor, only to discover that Victoria had sent six warships of its own, carrying an ambassador who intended to recognize Windsor and welcome it to the Victorian family of nations.

The ensuing battle had been humiliatingly brief. Four Dominion ships were destroyed while the Vickies suffered two damaged. The Dominion had responded with a fleet of fifteen ships, forcing the Vickies to retreat, but then a fleet of ten additional ships came through the wormhole from Victoria. This time the odds were virtually even, which made the outcome even harder to bear. Nine of the fifteen Dominion ships were destroyed, while the survivors limped home, scarred and battered, their crews bleeding or dead. Three Victorian ships were destroyed and several others damaged.

Now, fifteen years later, Windsor remained a Victorian protectorate, a thorn lodged firmly in the Dominion’s side, with four Vicky destroyers in constant orbit above it. The Battle of Windsor remained the only large-scale space combat in the history of the League of Human Worlds. Relations with Victoria had resumed, after a fashion, but Hudis still remembered the bitter defeat as if it were yesterday. And, oh, how the Vickies had crowed about their victory! One man in particular, Vice Admiral Oliver Skiffington, took delight in commenting on the “abysmal ineptitude” of the Dominion military.

He who laughs last, Hudis thought.