And even then, they somehow would have to learn how to tap into the Big Generator. I don’t know anybody who knows how to do that — not from scratch, anyway.”
The Empress could barely move. “My God, where does that trail lead? Disloyalty in our ranks? That’s exactly what led to the downfall of the Third Empire. And I suspect the first and second ones as well.”
“Thus my fear of dark clouds on the horizon, my lady,” the spy whispered. “When the storm hits, it might be some time before it is clear skies again.”
A much deeper silence engulfed the room now. Even the fire fell quiet. The Empress’s face had turned ashen. Her hands began to shake, and she could barely hold her glass. The very thought of lèse-majesté in the Empire’s military was enough to make her chest tighten and her brow moisten with sweat. She hoped her façade would not fail her now.
Finally she broke the spell.
“You have always provided great advice and counsel for me,” she said to the spy. “I pray this occasion is no different.”
But the spy just slowly shook his head. “I wish it were not so, my lady,” he said. “But I have no advice. Only that we must be vigilant — about many, many things.”
He drained his drink and got up to go.
“If there was only a science to these things,” he mused. “If only someone had come up with a way to predict events of the future. Five minutes from now. Five days. Five years. Five centuries…”
“No such science exists,” the Empress said sadly. “Unless it is hiding in the heart of the poet. So we remain at a disadvantage, not knowing what the future will hold.”
The spy laughed grimly. “Everything we can do — and yet the thing that we want the most, we don’t have.”
She finished her drink and watched her glass slowly disappear.
“Such as it is with life,” she told the spy, “No matter how long some of us might live…”
11
There were two major players in the Empire’s military hierarchy.
The Space Forces (SF) were the element that projected the Empire’s policies to the far reaches of the Galaxy. The Inner Defense Forces, more readily known as the Solar Guards (SG), were responsible for all security inside the Pluto Cloud.
Or at least that’s how it was supposed to be.
It was one of the many ironies of the Fourth Empire that the Solar Guards could be found in just about every corner of the Galaxy, while many vessels of the Space Forces fleet spent their time cruising close to the Pluto Cloud, where the Empire’s major repair, refurbishing, and training facilities were located.
The two services did not get along. Their top officers hardly spoke to one another, and when they did, they rarely agreed on anything. They used different types of equipment, flew different types of starships, and issued entirely different kinds of weapons to their soldiers. They even had different orders of rank and different styles of uniforms. The Space Forces wore blue with yellow trim, the Solar Guards wore black with red.
The Space Forces — comprised of the Navy, the Army, and the Air Service — were essentially mobile infantry and a means to get them where they wanted to go. The Solar Guards were more paramilitary, an army of policemen. They had spent much of the past three centuries cruising the Galaxy, working on countless investigations, some of them legitimate (such as tracking down tax outlaws), but many more done on a whim. As a result, the Solar Guards conducted their own wars and the Space Forces conducted theirs. The two services had never fought side by side against a common enemy.
The Space Forces liked to think of themselves as the senior, more professional service. Indeed, their roots went back more than a thousand years, a history that somehow survived the last two Dark Ages.
The Solar Guards, on the other hand, were the upstarts, established just three hundred years before.
While they boasted just half the number of men in arms as the Space Forces, their troops were considered more specialized, better trained, more ruthless. And, as keepers of the Inner Flame, they were also closer to the Imperial seat of power. Much time and effort were spent by the Space Forces to make sure their views and visions were not underrepresented before the Emperor. The top officers of the Solar Guards, however, excelled in wreaking havoc with any Space Forces initiatives.
The main conflict between the two rivals was philosophical. The Solar Guards believed the Empire’s best path to success was to reclaim as many of the Galaxy’s planets as possible, as quickly as possible, and bring them into the Empire’s fold. The Space Forces were dedicated to the same goal, but they believed the best way to accomplish it was to go after the troublesome planets first — and bring the more peaceful, law-abiding planets back in gradually. So it was not a question of expansion, but how quickly that expansion would be carried out.
But what determined which worlds were troublesome? It was not a black-and-white issue. The Galaxy was divided into hundreds of millions of sectors, but for the most part, those systems in the center, called the Ball, were peaceful, loyal, and solid in their support for the Emperor. The worlds out on the fringe were more problematic. The farther one went from the center of the Galaxy, the more lawless and wild the planets became. Yet among these worlds were peaceful civilizations as well, many of them lost for more than a millennium and not even aware they were part of the Empire.
In bringing the rule of the Fourth Imperial Dynasty to the Galaxy, neither the Space Forces nor the Solar Guards could claim a spotless record. The Empire had more than ten trillion men under arms. Perfect performance was an unlikely possibility, to say the least, especially with the frightening superweapons the Empire possessed.
But the Spaces Forces, at least, recognized their errors and sometimes went to great lengths to correct them.
The Solar Guards didn’t have time for such soul-searching.
There was a third service within the Empire forces.
This was the Expeditionary and Exploratory Force, known to all simply as the X-Forces.
The X-Forces were comparatively small. They had about a tenth the number of troops as the Space Forces, fewer than half that of the Solar Guards. The X-Forces mandate was to fly to the Outer Fringe and identify those planets lost since the last Dark Age and even beyond. In many ways they were the scouts before the cavalry.
While most of the big starships flown by the X-Forces carried their share of troops, they also lugged around many forms of humanitarian aid, plus scientists, physicians, and representatives of the Empire’s diplomatic corps. Very often the first time the people of a reclaimed world even saw the Empire’s banner it was painted on the side of an X-Forces vessel. Sometimes working in secret, sometimes not, the men and women of the Expeditionary and Exploratory Force were truly the professionals and went about their far-flung jobs accordingly.
As such, the X-Forces had absolutely no political power anywhere in the Galaxy.
Which was why they were not invited to this very secret meeting.
Up the absolutely straight banks of the First Canal, about twenty-five miles north of the center of Big Bright City, was an area of preserved woodlands known by the archaic name Chesterwest.
An enclave of nature in the midst of the sprawl, the trees grew so thick in Chesterwest, some parts seemed perpetually bathed in twilight. One part, a place known as Sector Cello, was an especially isolated area, famous for its nearly impenetrable woodlands and countless places to hide. That’s why the Space Forces and the Solar Guards had selected it as the best location to hold their very clandestine meeting.