The dark hemisphere is little used except for starship landing facilities. Inguer and Vatthan are the largest star ports. ...
Outside in the perpetual nighttide of a military dockyard near Inguer, the dim, fog-shrouded world almost bashfully revealed itself in the feeble glow of three reddish-blue moons. Now and again, a restless breeze shredded the flowing mist enough that Brim could see a few irals of Truculent's frost-caked deck. Occasionally, there were glimpses of the glowing gravity pool below and sometimes the dark outlines of capable-looking patrol vessels berthed nearby, including a compact battleship of unique Lixorian design. He shook his, head. For all practical purposes, this end of the crazy world made even Gimmas Haefdon seem like a tropical paradise in comparison.
Five standard months—a lifetime, almost—had passed since Avalon and the luxury of the Lordglen House of State. Even the heady pleasures of Margot's bedroom dimmed in the pitiless, grinding confusion of all-out blockade warfare. The Princess herself had become a magnificent chimera, especially now that her messages had ceased to arrive again.
Theada completed his suite of checkouts, then, smiling wearily, he started aft toward the bridge exit (and the wardroom). Brim initiated still another long diagnostic routine on the master console and listlessly returned his gaze to the Almanac.
Resources and Industries Although half of the habitable land mass is forested, Lixor contains much productive land on which Lixorians have attained high efficiency in agriculture. Of the total land area, 9.9% is cultivated, 2.5% pasture. Chief agriculture outputs include grains, vegetable oils, fibers, and logus products.
Main natural resources are forests, a vast asteroid belt containing rich deposits of metal, and solar power. Other forms of energy are imported. Commerce (including a thriving armaments industry) employs 35% of the work population, agriculture 7%. Lixonan hullmetal is of special value for reaction-chamber vessels. Other ores produced are metallic zar'cinium, lead, copper...
Metallic zar'clinium, hullmetal, and a "thriving armaments industry": commerce indeed, Brim laughed grimly to himself. Everybody desperately needed Lixorian goods—Imperials and Leaguers alike (Truculent's own reaction chambers were encased in superb Lixorian hullmetal). He continued to read.
History and Politics
Lixor is a parliamentary democracy with a king as head of state and a prime minister as principal operating officer....
The Government holds permanent memberships in the Trans-galaxian Educational Cooperative, LANN, EC, and United Independent Trading Council. During the present hostilities, the nation remains neutral, maintaining time-limited, renewable trade agreements with all major powers. Approximately .1% of its Gross Product (GP) is distributed in aid to developing civilizations.
The Almanac, as usual, used polite words to describe what Brim (and disdaining people all over the galaxy) regarded as distinctly unpolite situation. The avaricious Lixorians sold everything and anything they could manufacture to both sides of the great galactic struggle with no compunction whatsoever—even while pontificating vociferously about their abhorrence of war. Brim shook his head.
Lixorians had it all their way, it seemed. Playing both sides against the middle they kept the major combatants constantly reminded of a (very real) need to "protect" irreplaceable Lixorian industries. So long as both sides depended on Lixorian output, neither dare to destroy it. And Lixorian coffers swelled accordingly—in conjunction with their small but expensive military space fleet which included ten very powerful space forts on "formed" asteroids placed strategically in orbits around their planet.
Defense
Full mobilizable strength exceeds 750,000. Military service is compulsory. A sphere of ten powerful, permanently manned forts constructed from large asteroids and towed into place protects the single inhabited planet. Each fort is armed with enormous disruptors of special Lixorian manufacture. The starfleet is powerful considering the size of the civilization it protects but is mostly limited to numerous small craft (mainly LightSpeed-limited torpedo and cannon-armed patrol craft) optimized in the direction of high acceleration and maneuverability for synergism with the space forts. Three small area-defense battleships of the Reneken class complete this efficient defense organization.
The right to buy Lixorian goods was negotiated by treaty every two Standard years, when prices were raised to the threshold of outright economic pain, then a few arberas more—all of which had to do with Truculent's arrival on the strange planet hardly more than a Standard day earlier.
With the present treaty only weeks from expiration, the Lixorian Prime Minister had at last "permitted" Greyffin IV's Imperial Government to petition for new terms. Truculent (outbound from battle-damage patching) was fortuitously available at the time and comandeered by the Admiralty to carry a team of economic negotiators who would hammer out details of the new agreement—but not sign it. That task was reserved far more impressive diplomats traveling aboard a powerful battlecruiser squadron with a highly classified arrival schedule.
Shortly after planetfall, Gallsworthy and Pym had taken one of the launches to fly Collingswood, Amherst, and the negotiators into a resort area near Tandor-Ra where bargaining sessions were scheduled to begin on the morrow. Now the destroyer and her crew awaited return of their principal members and the launch before returning to the blockade zone.
At last finished with his final set of diagnostic routines, Brim wearily pulled himself from his recliner and started aft toward the chart room and the bridge exit—the end of another seemingly endless watch.
He never made it from the bridge.
"Lieutenant Brim," Applewood called from the COMM console. "A KA'PPA for you marked, 'Most urgent emergency priority.'"
Brim raised an eyebrow and turned toward the signal rating—one whole section of his console was flashing the bright blue of a top-priority transmission.
"Overrode the bloody mail and Admiralty messages, it did, Lieutenant," Applewood grumped. "Have to restart the whole sequence now."
"For me?" Brim asked, ignoring the other's complaints.
"From the Captain," Applewood replied, his bald head shining in the strange moonlight. "Funny stuff goin' on, Lieutenant. COMM bands are full of craziness. Noise and strange talk—like Leaguer jargon, kind of. All over..."
Thoughts of rest forgotten, Brim hurried to the COMM console. "Let's have the message," he said, frowning.
Applewood generated a text globe. "MOST URGENT EMERGENCY PRIORITY FOR WILF
BRIM @ TRUCULENT FROM COLLINGS WOOD @ TANDOR-RA," the message began.
"CONFERENCE AREA UNDER HEAVY AIR BOMBARDMENT BY THREE LEAGUE
DESTROYERS', (BELIEVE TYPE NF-1 10). LAUNCH DESTROYED." The transmission stopped abruptly with the words, "YOU ARE IN COMMAND."
"Is that all?" Brim demanded.
"Don't think so, somehow," Applewood grunted as he busily tried to pick up more transmissions. "But my readouts indicate a time-out on the data stream. I think maybe they lost their KA'PPA, or..." He stopped in midsentence. "Here, Lieutenant," he said abruptly. "Here's somethin' else now. Broadcast in the clear—audio and video. Look." He activated a display globe: Citizens of Tandor-Ra: The League is aware your mediators are about to negotiate a new economic treaty with the Universal scum from the Empire. Heed this personal warning from Nergol Trianmc delivered by units of His mighty starfleets: