To Summon the Blackbird: The Interstellar Blackbird

By Ken Doggett

Revolution in the outer fringes of the vast Solar Empire blossomed into a full collapse toward its inner core, leaving the scattered fringes isolated and disorganized. A powerful new rival to the old empire's ancient glory eventually arose from those ashes, a fringe empire growing far beyond the first few local star systems to crush all challengers in a series of brutal campaigns. Now the New Empire launches yet another campaign, and this one will take it deeper than ever into the old empire's former realm. Its target is the small Hellsbridge Sub-Federation Tri-System, but when the assault begins with a force that should have been overwhelming, the initial results are at first disappointing, and then disastrous. As reinforcements are fed into the battle, it quickly becomes a clash of interstellar empires, involving far more than Hellsbridge. A door has been opened into the deep unknown, and something is coming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutledge House
• Release date: Feb 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393508175

Ken Doggett

Science Fiction author Ken Doggett has been writing for many years, beginning with short stories published in prominent and not-so-prominent Science Fiction magazines: Space & Time and Shayol, among others. Now, like many modern writers, he has chosen to directly publish his novels and short-story collections.  He was born in Atlanta in 1945, grew up in next-door DeKalb County, and developed a love for reading right after he discovered the school library. He read almost everything, but was especially fascinated by the fantastic tales of spaceships, space exploration, and conflict among the stars. He soon became familiar with the writers who would influence his own work: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, John W. Campbell, and later, Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison. He graduated from Avondale High School just outside Atlanta, and after a stint in the U.S. Army assigned as a radio mechanic to the 2nd Armored Division at Ft. Hood, Texas, he worked in the field of electronics and electronic technology. After many years of reading all of those great Science Fiction stories, he decided, "I can do that," and wrote some of his own. In July 1981 he sold his first published story, Timestopper, to Amazing Stories. Eventually, with more of his stories reaching publication, he became a veteran writer in the Science Fiction genre.  But he has done more in the arts than write a few stories. He once thought he could draw and paint pictures, and he created and sold a few landscape paintings, both oil and acrylic. You can view some of these on his website. He currently lives in a rural farming community in Morgan County, Georgia, where he writes full time. 

Book preview

TO SUMMON THE

BLACKBIRD

A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

KEN DOGGETT

Copyright Information:

Copyright © 2015 by Ken Doggett

Cover art Copyright © 2016 by Ken Doggett

Poetry fragments adapted from The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.  All rights reserved.

For more about this author go to www.kendoggett.weebly.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

About the Author

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming...

CHAPTER 1

The ends of the commander's mustache drooped around the corners of his mouth, as if wilted by the sheen of sweat coating his blunt face.  His nostrils flared as his eyes moved down the row of missile batteries whose crews worked amid the hot, acrid stench to reload, and he had to force himself to take a breath of it.

So useless, this final effort.  It was the last stages of a war between two technologies, one so advanced as to seem almost like magic, the other struggling to hold it at bay, and the gap between them was immeasurable.

His glance roamed upward, into the night sky, as if he could see them striking here, striking now, at the very heart of the system.  Major's yellowish light was nearly invisible through the haze, and the night sky seemed darker than usual.  Minor had not yet risen.

The commander's eyes, burning from the smoke and dust that turned all activity beyond the perimeter lights into ghostly stirrings, fell on the nearest of the launchers, its rough, chisel-hewn skeleton seeming to waver in the heated air drifting upward from its massive launch tracks.  Its crew scrambled in a hell far worse than his own to assemble the stabilizer fins of the three-megagram missile they had just loaded onto it.

Not ready, not ready...Hurry it up!—

The commander slapped at a tickling on his neck, and then glanced at his palm for the telltale dot.  The tiny insects were swarming around him.

Primitive conditions, he thought, and primitive weapons.  He wiped his hand on his trousers, rubbing away the moisture from his neck.  He figured the power grid was failing, at least from what he could see in his limited surroundings, and no doubt the beam systems were down, too.  Had to be, if they were dragging out these...these antiques.  But the invaders' weapons were working well enough, to judge from the way the sky lit up, like lightning in a summer storm.  And no one needed to name them; their rumored exploits had preceded them.  An empire unashamedly imperialist—

Ready!  The shouts echoed down the line.

The commander turned and roared, to be smothered by a deeper roar, the crackling thunder of a dozen missiles, trembling on their launchers as they woke too suddenly from a sleep of generations.  And he could imagine that doomsday itself would have a sound not unlike it.  Smoke, dust, and gas spewed from the launchers, billowing from every section of the open framework cradling the missiles, and obscuring everything—the crews, the missiles, and the launchers.

But not the fire.  The missiles jumped from the launchers one by one, almost in cadence, and shrieked upward on the fire, now faster than the eye could follow, climbing into the stratosphere and beyond it, into space.

Rivulets of sweats rolled into the commander's eyes, and he blotted them on his sleeve.  Useless...

SQUAD LEADER LACU ROMBERTH heeled her craft over sharply, the two moons arcing across her frontscreen, and pointed its nose at the planet.  She checked to make sure her squadron had kept formation, and then peered ahead, straining to see what her instruments had already detected emerging through the cloudtops.  She was finding noticeably fewer contacts now; the enemy's defense craft had been decimated.  But here was something new—

Missiles, came the voice of her wingman.  They've gone primitive on us.

Target? Romberth said.  Anybody projected a target?

One of our fighter carriers.

Romberth had it now.  And not just any fighter carrier; the missiles had targeted the Imperial Command ship.  They would never reach it; too many defenses between here and there.  Nevertheless—

Intercept and kill, she ordered.

Multiple launches, her wingman said, from all over the planet.

One group at a time, Romberth answered.  Just concentrate on these and leave the rest to the other squads.  She had already locked onto several of the tubular devices.  Three had lost thrust, becoming invisible to the eye and depending now on their built-up velocity to carry them to their targets.  But all were brightly visible on Romberth's instruments.

What's this? her wingman said, urgency in his voice.  I think we've—

Romberth lost concentration, pulled back for a wider scan, and found more missiles, alarmingly close, and weaving crisscross patterns.  She yelled into her transmitter.  Evasive—now!

Her squadron scattered, leaving complex trails behind them, but the missiles were now almost mingling with the squadron.  Romberth nosed up hard and found herself head-on with one of the bullet-nosed defenders.

Its tiny steering jets were still making last-second corrections as it bored right into her.

THE FUSION BURST WAS noted and recorded by the sensing instruments aboard a distant fighter carrier.  The Imperial Command flagship was stationed at a point in space that gave it two advantages: an uncluttered view of the campaign, and reasonable safety from the main arena.  Results from the ongoing battles were streaming in, and though the details differed from those of previous campaigns, many threads of similarity linked them.

One constant was the man who occupied the command chair.  His planning and tactics may have been little better than those of his predecessors, but he had built a reputation for swiftness, and Muarsnebel-IV was quickly becoming just another in a long line of successes.

FleetCommander Paulu Guideran watched the bank of tactical dataports that lined the stark white walls of Control.  The colorful tactical display provided by the holostation in its niche and the yellowish lighting over the Nav, Weapons, Watch, and Tactical stations insinuated warmth into the whiteness.  The cool green glow of the large systems-monitoring lights that lined the forward bulkhead at floor level almost gave a sense of coziness to the small and now crowded control area.

The feeling of tight quarters resulted mainly from all of the duty stations being manned; Rickel, the WatchCaptain; Chaek, the Weapons Tek; Najani, the Tactical Tek; and Nav Tek Fortuni with all their assistants hovering close.  All good crew, and the three teks had been with him almost from the beginning of his first carrier command.

As he studied the dataport streams he paid particular attention to the activity near the two moons that the natives of the system called Major and Minor.  Strategically important, they had already been taken by armored ground troops, and Guideran knew that it was time to press the advantage.

Recall the pickets, he said to his Weps Leader.  The robotic carrier defenders were no longer needed in this final stage of the campaign, but tactical details had to be attended to.  Najani, move the reserve troop carriers up and provide suitable fleetfighter support.  We'll base the assault headquarters on the large moon.  When preparations are completed, configure for a planetary surface strike should it be necessary.

With that crucial order, the campaign would now evolve beyond his direct command influence.  He relaxed slightly, and allowed himself to soak up the steady activity around him.  His glance meandered among the teks and his WatchCaptain as they collated the incoming data and updated the streams.  Aiding them were the assistant tacticians at the auxiliary dataports on the other side of the bulkhead behind his command chair.  His eyes rested finally on the green, floor-level dataports.  Some held a steady light, while others blinked to some internal rhythm.  A few remained dark altogether as their particular functions were not in use at the moment.

Tuning out the workers and the lights, he began to backtrack, to reassure himself that he had overlooked nothing, had omitted no crucial safeguard along the way.  He had isolated the entire system to prevent interference from outside agents, which usually meant merchant trade that might attempt resupply; he had ordered the taking of the lesser defended ore-rich and agricultural inner planets, depriving the system of the bulk of its materiél; finally, after everything was in place, and with a large number of his forces freed from defense duty, he began the direct assault on Muarsnebel-IV.  And now, with its near-space defense fleet all but eliminated, the planet was vulnerable to surface attack.  At this moment, troops were being air-dropped for attacks on its strategic defense installations and its capitol.

Guideran tried to imagine how alien an experience this would be for its inhabitants.  In any ordinary moment the planet's trade lanes would be filled with fleets of a different sort, the merchants, and left with enough of those ordinary moments it would likely have continued as the system's political and cultural center for many generations to come.  It was known to have a stable government, with the support of its people over the entire system, and it had so functioned for many generations.  Such was the information gathered by the intelligence arm of Imperial Security.

Based on that arm's reliable performance in the past, culminating as always in an economy and precision of assault forces that were never less than victorious, the fall of Muarsnebel-IV was inevitable.

Paulu Guideran's only advice to his foes on that planet would have come too late.  They should have sought friendly relations with the Core Empire, and agreed to peaceful annexation.

PETRE ZUAR DOVE INTO the ditch and covered his head at the roar, hoping the light of the burning night sky wouldn't reveal his position to the defenders.  Then it was gone, the noise and the fire, as the missiles tracked higher and into the clouds.

...they had it easy, he heard Lon Felder mutter.  Felder had found the same ditch.

Zuar peered at his fellow soldier in the darkness.  Who had it easy?

The other teams—when they took the moons.  Light casualties, they say.  He nodded toward the lights.  And just look at that.

Zuar didn't need to look.  Their mission was to silence the missiles, but no one had told them how difficult it was going to be.  Three assaults already, and each one repulsed.  And the night air was so hot.  Why did it have to be so damned hot?  He turned over on his back and looked up at the murky sky.  At least we don't have to worry about leaky suits.

Felder grunted.  Sure, but what if they lob a missile at us?

Zuar laughed, rolled back onto his stomach, and inspected his weapon.  It had once looked so brutal to him—and did now, as the distant lights and the smoky glow of the sky bounced a steel-blue glint off the long tele-nozzle.  But now it was just another piece of equipment to worry about.

Felder was frowning.  What's so damned funny?

They can't lob any missiles at us.  Not this close.  Zuar ejected the nearly spent energy cartridge and clicked a fresh one to the interface flange.  I hear they're nuclear.

Felder stirred.  They're what?

Zuar turned and looked at Felder.  You never heard of nuclear?

Both grew quiet as they heard the scrambling of troops around them.  But it was a big area.  They were over a hundred meters from the outer fortifications of the launch area, and ditches and gullies and ravines crisscrossed everywhere.  It was a tedious, daunting task, Zuar imagined—reorganizing and massing the troops for the next assault.  All done in darkness.

Not his problem, though.  He merely followed orders, and liked it that way.  But he didn't care much for the way things were going on this one, the heavy fighting, the casualties, and still no progress.  The fortifications were still there, still strong, and no way of knowing if any damage was being done inside those walls.  Zuar was beginning to wish he were elsewhere, despite the liberal combat pay—if he lived to see it.

He slapped at his neck, and then held his palm close to his face, trying to examine it in the darkness.  So what are you going to do, he said to Felder, when this one's over?

Go home, I hope.

And do what?

Stay there.  No more 'Yes sirs,' 'No sirs,' and 'Right away, sirs.'

Zuar raked his palm lightly, and caught the tiny dot on the end of his thumbnail.  He had been on many inhabitable worlds, and thought they were mostly the same, but there was always something a little different on each one.  This one had little bugs that bite.  You're not going to do any celebrating—

Felder shushed him.  Zuar heard the far-off shouts.  The reforming effort was getting closer.  Zuar scratched at the itchy spot on his neck and wondered if the enemy could hear all that activity and figure out what was going on.  He glanced at the lights and sniffed.  No doubt they knew anyway.  Besides, by now they were probably numbed by all those missile launches.  Another one—

The light nearly blinded him as the crackling roar nearly deafened him.  He scrambled to the bottom of the ditch as a hazy violet beam smashed into an embankment just a few meters away.  He heard screams, some distant, some nearby, and imagined a shower of beams reaching out from inside the fortifications; they had been ready to shoot at anything that moved in the transient light of the missile launch.  Now it was dark again.  And quiet.

How much more power could they have? he heard Felder say.

He started to answer, and then remembered that the one thing common to all inhabited planets was dirt.  It all tasted the same.

He spat.  Don't know.  But they must still have some beam power left.

Local, I think.  Small stuff.

Zuar spat again.  Not small enough.  He wiped at the grittiness on his lips and peered at the fortifications, which were shrouded in a misty gray smoke except near the lights, and there they danced in a swirl of ghostly white.  So you're going home, and that's it.  No big celebration, no wild, expensive—

Right.  Nothing expensive.

Zuar began to chuckle, and stopped abruptly as a small stone rolled down beside him, followed by a scattering of sand in a miniscule avalanche.  He tensed, and looked up to see a pair of boots planted firmly at the top of the embankment.  Then he looked further at a clean-shaven chin and a pair of steely eyes not quite hidden under the deeper shadow of a massive helmet.

Are you two about ready to join the rest of us? the field officer said.

"Yes sir," Zuar barked.  Felder echoed it.  Zuar groaned as he cradled his weapon and scrambled to his feet.  Right away, sir.

AS FLEETCOMMANDER PAULU Guideran sealed the entry to his quarters, his WatchCaptain met him in the bright passageway.  Battle reports, sir.

Guideran took the packaged data chips, tucked them under his arm.  Summarize, he said.

Captain Rickel fell in beside him as they easily negotiated the gentle curve of the passageway, which meandered past the conference room and then led directly to Control.  The carrier's sixty-percent Imperial Standard gravity—0.6 ISG—took some getting used to at first, but both men were seasoned veterans and never gave it a thought.

Our forces control about three-quarters of the planet's land surface and both its moons.  Seventy-three missile-launch sites have been identified, and sixty-four eliminated.  Damage to our fleetfighters has been minimal, and of no military consequence.  Morale of the troops is high, but efficiency is low.  They've gotten lazy on this campaign, sir.

Guideran compressed his lips into a grimace.  Why is that?

The man shrugged slightly, which was uncharacteristic of him.  Besides laziness, a general laxness had also taken hold, and not just among the troops.

Well, sir, since this is the last campaign—

"I see.  And who made that announcement?"  He paused at the doorway of the conference room and looked in.  He did it for no reason except habit, and his WatchCaptain, familiar with the habit, waited beside him.  The room was dimly lit at the moment, and empty except for the conference table with its two rows of chairs, its tactical dataports and holostation.  One of the dataports was flashing the same data Rickel had just given him.  Guideran walked on.

No one, of course, sir.  But—

I see.  That silenced Rickel.  But with any luck, he was correct.  With the fall of Muarsnebel-IV the less densely packed star systems around the Core worlds would all be consolidated.  Muarsnebel would become just another of the surrounding outworld protectorates, and no further such campaigns would be needed.  An historic moment.

Commander has Control, the WatchCaptain called out as he and Guideran entered.

Guideran noted the activity, and noted also that the floor-level dataports were half darkened.  It was one of the many subtle details that announced to him the waning of the battle, and he wished only that his son could be here beside him, could watch history being made, and could know the part his father played in it.  But did the boy even care?

He shook off the emotion as soon as he recognized it.  The gloom, this melancholia, always attacked as the real battle waned.

UNDER COMMAND OF HIS field officer, Petre Zuar scrambled forward toward the next pool of light, isolated under a darkened, gray sky.  At the corner of the building he flattened himself against the wall and waited for his eyes to adjust.  Then, timing the impulse, he peered around the corner.  Powdered brick or sand or something peppered his face as a beam smashed into the wall just over his head, and he ducked back again.  He listened for a moment to the frying sound of the bubbling, half-molten brick, and decided that he had glimpsed enough to make his next shot accurate.  He wheeled around the corner, weapon leading, and fired at the figure he had just glimpsed.

But the figure had vanished, blending with the general scattering of a retreating enemy.  They still held a few of the buildings, and small battles raged within earshot.  They also held one entire section of the compound.  But Zuar had the satisfaction of knowing that no more missiles would be launched from this location.

He glanced behind him, motioned to the field officer, and took up the vigil again, scanning the well-lighted grassy area in front of him.  Beyond it was a large clump of trees, to his right a four-story building whose first two floors were obviously gutted, and to his left the splintering of a door and the shattering of glass as another unit from his own group took advantage of the lull to secure one more building.  The sound of faraway weapons fire broke the stillness, and then was silent.

The stench was overpowering, and the haze burned his eyes, and little bugs kept biting him on the face, neck, and hands, but it was all beginning to clear slightly—even the bugs—as the sky slowly brightened on the distant horizon.  Dawn, he hoped, and not the rumored doomsday weapon.

Six members of his field unit brushed past him, and he turned now to guard the rear.  The field officer motioned the rest forward.

Lon Felder was not among them.  Zuar hadn't seen him since they breached the outer perimeter.  He now wished he had thought to mention the idea of a pact to Felder, a blood bond, or something.  Comrades in arms, and all that stuff.  It'd be a shame if Felder was killed, with all that money saved up, and no one to give it to.

He felt a tap on his shoulder.  Time to move up again.  He hesitated for an instant, trying to figure out why he was experiencing a sudden wave of guilt, but he caught up just in time to see scattered beam fire from the trees beyond the grassy area.  He joined in, and it was quickly crushed as red and yellow personnel beams sliced through the trees, cutting the smaller ones down and setting the undergrowth ablaze.

Cleaning out the scattered nests.  That was what it amounted to.  And when it was over, he and the rest of the troops would be pulled out so that the Imperial Elite could come in and do whatever it was they did.  Zuar didn't want to know.  He scratched at the many itchy spots on his neck, shifted his weapon, and rubbed his eyes.  Then he heard shouts.

Another unit, four or five in number, was loping toward his own from the burned and windowless building to his left.  All secured, sir, one of them yelled to the field officer.  Zuar squinted at the hazy figures, and became suddenly interested in one of them as he made out the shadowy face under the helmet.

He slapped at his neck, brushed his hand on his shirt, and moved forward.  Felder, wait up!

CHAPTER 2

N obody can stand up to the Empire!

Flander Guideran was having trouble with his words.  They were starting to slur.  He swayed slightly, but his arm darted out instinctively, his hand gripping a half-full bottle of potent alcolo, and it provided just enough counterbalance to keep him on his feet.  He glanced around at the other boys gathered inside the small hut, and sensed vaguely that most of them were losing interest.  He brushed his thick, dark hair back from his face, and paused long enough to take another pull from the bottle.  He swallowed hard and pushed on.  It'll roll right over you, and that's a fact.  You know that bright star—

He had raised his arm, as if to point to the sky, but the bottle hit the low ceiling, jarred loose from his hand, and dropped to the floor with a sloshing, hollow thunk.  While his glassy eyes scanned the floor, someone picked it up before much of its contents spilled out.  He took the bottle absently as he contemplated for a moment the loss represented by the fuzzy wet spot spreading across the dirt.  Then he pointed upward with his free hand.

"—that bright star you see at night?—the one that goes so fast?—I mean...whoosh—"

"It doesn't go that fast," someone pointed out.

He swayed once, twice, and tried to focus his eyes on who said it.  Then he brought his hand down and tapped himself on the chest.  "We built it.  I mean, our ancestors did."

Someone else offered a snicker, and still he couldn't tell who it was.

"You think the Empire built it?  He snorted.  Ammar Station.  I even know its name.  Years ago.  Generations ago.  We built it.  Ammar Station."  He nodded once to emphasize his special knowledge, gleaned mainly from the personal dataport in his room at home.

By now it was obvious even to him that the members of his audience, being in various stages of intoxication themselves, had pushed their attention spans beyond any reasonable limit.  Only the walls of the tiny hut kept them from physically drifting away.

His own attention was now riveted on keeping his balance, and he decided to find a seat before the hard dirt became his only choice.  In the corner, next to a wide-open, glassless window, he found one on the old yellow crate.  It had once been a packing crate, made of some sort of synthetic that didn't decay, unlike nearly everything else in and around the hut, including the hut itself.  Since the crate wasn't designed to be a permanent part of any seating arrangement, dark cracks had appeared at all of its stress points and ran like webbing throughout the faded yellow.  He settled onto it heavily, and then peered through the window to watch the trees swaying in the strong wind.  It made him dizzy.

The weather was changing.  He could hear the creaks and groans in the timbers of the hut.  The short warm season was nearly over; he could tell by the wind outside, and even felt it occasionally as it whistled through the hut.  He couldn't sense any chill at the moment, but he knew it was coming soon.

The problem, it seemed, was that the planet named Ammar by its earliest settlers was just slightly further away from its star than it should be.  And it had been drummed into his head almost since birth that Ammar's year was about one-point-zero-two Standard Imperial Years long.  Three hundred and seventy days.  And it was no consolation to him that, cold as it would get here, he would find winter winds that could blow the life right out of him just a few degrees outside of the equatorial area.  They carried a lethal chill, those winds.  And he wondered how many of his so-called friends knew the reason for that.

He raised the bottle and gulped down another swallow, temporarily enjoying a freedom that would soon be severely curtailed.  Today, by the Imperial calendar, he had turned eighteen, and in all those eighteen Imperial years he had never been as drunk as he was at this moment.  But he had reason enough; it would be his last for awhile, and he had to make it a good one.  His mother had received word that his father would soon make one of his rare visits home, and Flander knew from experience what that meant.  He would have to walk the straight and narrow for awhile, at least until his father left again.

Talk to me, he yelled.  He felt as if he were drifting to the bottom of a deep hole.

And he was getting no response.  Not even from Antian, his closest friend, and he didn't recognize a lot of the others.  Lately he had seen more than a few strange faces around the hut.  They probably came for the liquor, and the fights, and were showing up now because they had only recently become old enough to know what it was all about.  Glancing at some of the boys, he tried to determine if he actually knew even those he thought he knew.

He watched them for a moment through his haze, and suddenly remembered his other reason for celebrating.  Since they insisted on ignoring him he took the alcolo bottle in hand and stood up on the crate.  After a pause to get his balance, he put two fingers into his mouth and blew.  The result was an ear-piercing whistle and, afterward, total silence.

I'm telling you, he shouted, I'm telling you we have a history of our own.  And we didn't always have—  He had dropped the bottle again.  This time he fumbled around in the dirt and picked it up himself while his captive audience groaned.  He kicked the crate out of the way.

"—didn't always have the Core Empire to...to...  He stopped abruptly, having put so much dripping sarcasm into the formal Imperial name that he lost his train of thought.  Anyway, that's what I want to do.  The history of the world.  Our world.  That's going to be my..."

Career? Antian volunteered.

Flander pointed the bottle at Antian and nodded once, emphatically, which made him lose his balance and threw him to the floor.  Sudden yelling from outside, followed by the noisy departure of his audience, brought his nose out of the dirt.  He managed to focus on Antian.  Where'd everybody go?

Fight outside, Antian said.

Flander struggled to his feet.  Fights were more common now, and not the mere scuffles they used to be.  Those not involved in the scuffling were getting a last frolic in the nearby lake before the cold weather set in.

Think they'll let you in on their secrets? Antian said.  He was swaying, which meant that either he was as drunk as Flander, or Flander was doing enough swaying for both of them.  The Empire, I mean.

Flander had to think about that.  Then he shrugged it off.  The Empire doesn't scare me.  He lifted his chin so that he could peer down his nose at Antian's skeptical expression.  My father is...my father is...

Suddenly he felt insulted.  "You know who my father is?  Who he really is?"

Antian shook his head.  But he looked eager to know, and that eagerness flashed like a beacon through the haze and made Flander stop.  Flander himself was unsure of what his father did, but as always he had put a few facts together with overheard comments, and what he came up with was something you didn't tell people around here.  And you certainly didn't brag about it.  But as he glared at Antian's eager expression he knew that he had to say something to finish the bragging he had started.

He's important.  Just believe it.  He tapped his chest with the alcolo bottle.  And I'll go where I damn well please.

I know one place you won't go, Antian said, no matter how important you think your father is.

Flander knew it, too, but he had grown tired of that stupid, cocky expression on Antian's freckled, pinkish face.  In retaliation, Flander let his eyes trace upward to the unruly red hair, and he opened his mouth to comment on it.  As he saw Antian's eyes narrow, he thought better of it.

For the second time in the space of a few moments, and despite his condition, Flander made a mature decision.  Antian may or may not have resented being a genetic throwback, almost a freak, on a world full of dark-haired, tan-skinned people, including even Antian's parents, but he wouldn't hesitate to fight over an insulting remark, and he considered them all insulting.  Flander turned his back on Antian, pressed the bottle to his mouth, and turned it up.

His throat burned and his eyes watered as the bottle seemed to suddenly dump its entire contents.  He swallowed, choked, swallowed again, and tried to open his eyes.

How about it, Flan? Antian insisted behind him.  "Is your father so important that you can even go there and get away with it?"

When Flander managed to get his eyes open, he turned and squinted at the other boy, knowing he should let it drop, and yet unable to resist the dare.

Believe it, he said.  And then he sat down and let the empty bottle drop to the floor.  If only his father could see him now, he thought.  And it was almost sobering.

His father would kill him.

THE HUGE CARRIER'S angled features gleamed dully under the lights as tractive beams snapped out and attached themselves to its main hull.  Now immobile, snared in an invisible web, the ship opened its lock to accept the pressurized debarking ramp that snaked out to meet it.  Before the ship traveled onward to Gramyne, it would be given a cursory check, minimal resupply, and a recharge of fuel.

FleetCommander Paulu Guideran had only just completed the many reports required of him by the bureaucratic tangle of the Empire.  He set aside the last bit of it, a single datachip holding the ship's deficiency list, and inserted the remainder of them into the system feed, allowing copies to be transmitted ahead to Gramyne Station.  Then he handed the chip over to his WatchCaptain, who would take the ship, crew, and the deficiency chip on to Gramyne for processing.  Guideran was the only one getting off at Ammar Station.

He left the ship, went into the mating dock, and took the lift down below the debarking ramp to the first rotating level, where the dock officer was waiting for him.

Congratulations, sir, on the Muarsnebel campaign, the officer said.

Guideran nodded, and allowed the trace of a smile to cross his face as he handed over a copy of the chip containing the ship's deficiency list.  Then he glanced back over his shoulder to take a final look at the ship that had been his home during all of the previous campaigns he had commanded.  But he could catch only a glimpse of it.

The space available to Ammar Station's limited docking facilities was barely adequate to provide the room needed to service a ship nearly half as large as the station itself.  Fighter carriers were by far the Empire's biggest vessels, the most massive ever built, past or present, by any known civilization.  Since Guideran could see only a fraction of its smooth hull from the sheltered dock, he turned and continued onward, trying to acclimate himself to the 0.27 ISG of the rotating station as he walked on, past the cargo loading area, and into the vast, echoing shuttleway of Ammar Station proper.  Soon enough he would have the full gravity of a planet to contend with.

As the open elevator car descended to the crowded floor, the echoes disappeared, to be replaced by the noise of pedestrian traffic.  The Imperial Standard Gravity here was 0.74, much closer to that of his ship, and his spirits began to rise again.

Maybe his return to an older section of the Empire, his home, helped a little.  But a sudden thought occurred to him that helped a little more.  It seemed reasonable that even though the Empire's practical expansion limits had been reached, much work remained within the Empire itself.  And with continued unrest in some of the recently acquired areas, most of that work would be military.  It wouldn't be quite the same; little need for sophisticated tactics and planning.  But he had a future yet.

He worked his way across the crowded concourse to the station's restricted area, showed his duty-status orders to the field officer at the gatehouse, and passed through to a relatively empty passageway.  Although the installation's docking areas had to be shared with civilian passenger traffic, this small part of the station was reserved for military use only.  But he welcomed the quietness.

Guideran paused at the door to the officer's lounge, and decided to detour through it.  The lounge was empty; no one else was taking advantage of one of the station's few observation windows.  He stepped up to the window even though it would give him a reminder of something he least wanted to see.

And a spectacular view it was.  The planet itself was the central attraction because the station circled it, but even though it was all in shadow at the moment, he could easily pick out the freight traffic, hauling up cargo from its surface.  The individual ships were lost in the darkness that was the nightside of the planet, but they would appear suddenly when they cleared the shadow, and sparkle in the rays of the still invisible sun before their arcing courses brought them nearer to the station and back into shadow.  As always, very little of the traffic was moving in the opposite direction, down to the planet itself, and the few surface-bound vessels he saw were passenger liners, not freighters.

Guideran knew what that small detail meant for Ammar.  He had seen it often enough in other places, usually in its beginning stages, and here it had been going on for generations.  Ammar was not one of the Core worlds; it was an outworld, a captured system, and it would never be anything more than that to the main part of the Empire.  He had seen the barren patches of poverty left to these people—even to his own, now-dead parents—and he had watched those patches grow.  An occasional outworlder, if talented in some way useful to the Empire, might rise to a better station, and more than a few of those, like himself, found their best futures in the military.  But most would stay and eke out a miserable existence on a dying world.

Guideran's eyes narrowed against the bright fire of the sun as it appeared at the northern limb of the planet and blazed over its generous icecap.  One thing that made Ammar's decline slower than most was that it possessed few natural resources, and since most of its surface was compacted under a layer of ice several kilometers deep, the little it had was impossible to get at without the use of destructive and expensive technology.  The Empire still had plenty of other worlds to draw from before it would cast its eyes on poor, barren Ammar.

Guideran noticed a second carrier ship maneuvering toward its berth for recharge and resupply before heading on to Gramyne—that of his alternate commander and long-time friend, Fieldleader Rutel Mandal, whose service and performance in battle had always been exemplary.  If they ever asked Guideran for a recommendation of who was to succeed him should he ever retire, Mandal was at the top of his list.

He suddenly turned away from the viewport as another officer came in.  Due to the station's rotation the planet was moving past it anyway.  He nodded at the man, and then hurried on to the headquarters level, hoping to catch a military shuttle to the surface.

He despised civilian liners.

FOR A MOMENT FLANDER Guideran merely stared.  Far away, on the other side of the ravine, a placard mounted on a high fence and almost huge enough to be read even from this distance glared its warning through the tangle of tree limbs.

He took a tentative step forward, trying to imagine the mysteries hidden in the forest he glimpsed behind the fence.  Then he looked again at the slope that angled sharply downward just beyond the toes of his boots.  But he was also aware of Lali beside him, and most particularly of Antian and his little brother, Laro, behind him.  And he still had a headache.

I don't think Flan wants to study Ammar history today, Antian said.

You can't make any kind of future out of that, Lali insisted for at least the tenth time since he had known her.

Then Laro spoke up.  If the First Empire was still around, and it got into a fight with the New Empire, who would win?

Antian laughed at his smaller brother, and even Flander chuckled at the terms the boy used.  Educators were always trying to change things, everyday things, like the way people talked, and he figured they were even trying to change the way they thought.  When he was Laro's age, it was called the Core Empire, not the New Empire—as if calling it new meant that it rivaled the old one.

We'd kick its butt, Antian said.

History class is over, Flander said, at least until we get across that fence.  Let's go.  Antian looked surprised.  He and Flander had been here many times, and once nearly halfway to the fence, but they had been too frightened to go any further.