A brainbug that bit, and I decided to get rid of by writing out. This is chapter 1, there may be more if it comes to mind and if anyone bothers to comment.
The Zhodani are the semi-official 'bad guys' of the Traveller setting, but I've always thought that they had a point. It is Fifth Frontier War, may become increasingly AU as the plot goes on. Anything you don't understand, ask.
Few word explanations;
Qjiets- wind
Qlomdlabr- Supreme Council of the Zhodani
Iadr Nsobl- the corner province, rimward and trailward, bordering the Imperium and the Vargr Expanses
Meqlemianz- neighbouring province, overhanging the Marches and reaching out into sparse space full of pocket empires and minor races
Cruiser Oficer- Zhodani naval rank equivalent to junior Captain
Tavrchedl'- Thought Police (lit. "Guardians of our Morality")
Repair Dock 15, Dl’iavtlats Navy Yard, Iadr Nsobl Province, Zhodani Consulate
3469-3- Katzdievlstial-26 (014-1107 Imperial reckoning)
Yard Officer Tliqrirtlasche’s outer office was as exquisitely designed as one might expect, from a being at the centre of the social circle here and a renowned patron of the arts.
The effect of the paintings- real lumpy, physically textured pigment, requiring intuition and hand and eye- was to induce contemplation. Make a summoned contractor wonder if he or she really had been living up to their duty, make an officer called before the port admiral contemplate their future.
Scenes of sea and space, for the most part; magnificently executed, but almost completely conventional in nature.
Almost. In the details and the choices of subject, the particular parts of the theme that the artists had been instructed to emphasise- or had done so of their own accord and the Port Admiral had found acceptable- her idiosyncrasies and political leanings could be analysed.
Cruiser Officer Qresh’iezhdiepr Fiashtiavrqaf had plenty of time to do so in; he had been kept waiting for over an hour now.
That, in itself, was significant. It meant that either there had been an organisational screwup somewhere- and given the atmosphere of tension around the yard, such things were more than usually likely; that the admiral believed an unusually long period of contemplation would be good for him; or that she was taking an unusually long time to decide how to pass on the news, whatever it was.
That scene there; one of the early sublight colony ships in it’s boost phase, seen from just far enough off the line of thrust not to be blinded by the flare of the Orion pulse drive. Look closely at the planet beneath, and it was not Zhdant; so that was a first generation colony sending it’s own seed out into the universe. Expansionist tendencies, then?
First official contact with the Addaxur; the Zhodani explorers painted just a share larger than life, noble and imposing, the eight-limbed aliens a shade smaller and less stylish than they really were. Colonialist in outward form, but that slight skewing of the truth seemed to suggest irony.
The most militant, a raiding cruiser squadron of the Third Frontier War skimming a gas giant for refuelling. No actual shot being exchanged, but the ships were painted in distinctly heroic style, gleaming fresh and bold.
So, Qresh’iezhdiepr thought, not a Colonialist- would take expansion into barren, unclaimed space as second best, but she would prefer the Consulate to spread our wings over the rest of Humanity first and foremost.
Anti-imperial perhaps, as if we can afford to define ourselves in terms of our enemies. But measurely. Nothing beyond taste and nothing beyond rational calculation.
All only to be expected, as the commander of a naval yard supporting forces facing the Third Imperium. One part of one wall was a window, out on to the gridworks and gantries of the yard; one old Shianzpla- class battleship, half gutted- replacing her spinal mount and screens. That would be a two years’ task, and how much good would come at the end of it, who knew?
Two Viepchakl class, two thirds the size and twice the fighting efficiency, beautiful ships- long, sleek, blue-chrome lifting bodies, both of them, too, in for major refit.
Three Tleblnevr battleships, blunter and more looming, two seemingly complete and waiting for their sister to finish fitting out.
No small amount of heavy metal, then, plus the usual collection of cruisers and escorts. No firm word on what was going to happen to him. Assigned to yard duty? Possible- not what he would want, but he wasn’t the boss of the universe, and if that was where the consulate needed him, that was what he would do.
One of those ships out there? Promotion, onward and upward? Too much to hope for. Consciously, anyway.
Or was it going to be a case of- how had that mercenary put it? Captured in District 268, he had described his own prospects as “Yeah. Promoted. Shit-Burner first class.”
Thinking about that untamed frontier space and the uncivilised people it attracted, perhaps Tliqrirtlasche had a point. As a commander of an exploration cruiser, he had enjoyed himself, and thought he had done reasonably well. One first contact, one intensive follow up- a second contact, if you like- deals and contacts made, pirates suitably eliminated, for the greater good of the borderlands and the Consulate. So why had he been hauled out of that post and sent hundreds of light years along the rimward frontier?
Normally, he would expect more time to prepare, more information on what he was getting into. It was not the habit of the Zhodani people to drop one another in it like this.
‘Cruiser Officer Fiashtiavrqaf, you can go in now.’ One of the battle-armoured guards announced.
That made him uneasy too. The level of physical security around here- what were they expecting, a commando raid? The Third Imperium didn’t have any psionic personnel. Correction; none that it admitted to. Why did they think that it was necessary?
He reached out telekinetically, ‘flipped’ the opening lever; the door slid open for him, he walked into the inner office. Again security.
Yard Officer Tliqrirtlasche was relatively short by Zhodani standards; barely one metre eighty-five. Her silver-grey hair came down in a long plume behind her turban, her eyes were purplish-blue, and she wore the sash of the Consular Legion of Merit. She was relatively young for her rank, capable and determined.
No salutes were exchanged; why bother with empty formality?
‘It is good that you made it here so quickly. That means that you will have adequate preparation time…and I can sense that you have no idea what I’m talking about.’ She thought at him. ‘Have you outran your own orders?’
‘It seems so. I must apologise to the courier crew, if they ever do catch up.’ He replied, not mentioning the hour’s wait, but letting it simmer just below the surface of his mind.
She must have been thinking about how to tell him; she cut straight to the facts. ‘There will be another frontier war, as soon as we are ready to prosecute it. The trend of Imperial politics makes it inevitable; the probable consequences make a pre-emptive, defensive strike imperative.’ She sent the thought with no more than conventional regret for the damage and death that was likely to result. Possibly even a slight enthusiasm?
He took a deep breath. If it had gone all the way up to Consul level and back down again, presumably they had thought about it long enough and hard enough to decide that it really was inevitable.
‘I wonder. We can absorb their worlds, bring them within our system; are they able to do the same? Has there ever been any even vaguely realistic Imperial study of the problems of taking over a Consulate- held planet?’ Qresh’iezhdiepr asked.
‘That is one of the elements of decision; no. Such government as they possess seems determined to allow their people to believe the worst, and their only popular solution to the psionics problem is the same as it always was; pogrom.’ She sent with disgust.
The Imperials believed, or professed to believe, that Zhodani society was a ruthless, fascistic dictatorship of the mind, with the common people firmly under the yoke of the Thought Police. All they had to do was eliminate the leadership class, and the proles would fall gratefully into the arms of the Imperial megacorporations and start watching adverts again.
They didn’t seem to understand that the ‘leadership class’ they wanted to wipe out made up over twenty percent of the population.
‘It was a Solomani philosopher who said “Against stupidity, even the gods themselves contend in vain.” It seems to me that in picking another fight with the Imperium we may be doing exactly that.’
‘Gods?’ Tliqrirtlasche asked, baffled by the unfamiliar reference.
‘Mythological entities…description is fairly similar to the Tavrchedl’, come to think of it.’ Qresh’iezhdiepr replied, not entirely seriously. ‘Mind-reading watchers and overseers.’
‘Yes. The Imperium’s borders are closed; stagnation, their system is starting to lose it’s attraction, they have no values powerful enough to hold them together any more- a bag of broken glass. Or a political fragmentation bomb, ready to go off.’
‘Good in the long term. The very long term.’ Qresh’iezhdiepr said. ‘Not entirely closed; the spinward border of the Marches is not fully settled- the coreward edge of the great rift is within their economic reach, and it attracts the exiles and misfits from the rest of their society in high degree- I thought it was still policy to permit them at least that much of a safety valve.’
‘The Qlomdlabr has decided, in part due to the reports of the Meqlemianz provincial council, that the time for that policy is past. The Consulate’s interests would best be served by preventing further Imperial expansion, and doing all possible to worsen the situation within the Imperium.’ Tliqrirtlasche spelled it out.
‘So the war plan is to hit them hard enough, and force them to respond drastically enough, to provoke political crisis.’ Qresh’iezhdiepr sent. ‘Why does this strike me as reminiscent of a psychiatrist telling a patient to snap out of it by kicking them in the groin? If we hit them hard enough, we may give them that something to unite behind and then it would no longer be a frontier war, it would be the Solomani Rim all over again.’
‘The chief danger is that they are moving towards seeking such a conflict in any case. The fabled ”short victorious war”.’ The port admiral sent, sidebands expressing disgust-verging-on-contempt for what passed for Imperial strategic analysis.
‘What are the arguments against letting them? Allowing them to try and fail would have the same political effect, surely?’ the cruiser officer asked. Her eyebrows rose up behind her headgear, and he forestalled her by answering his own question. ‘Apart from the damage they would do, which we cannot allow to happen, they would be dictating the pace of events and we would be at a disadvantage in steering the war to an outcome that would come even close to being worth the price.’
‘Correct.’ Tliqrirtlasche responded, relieved- although not failing to note that he had used an archaic term closer to ‘blood-guilt’ than price, strictly speaking. ‘You’re not in favour.’
‘If that is what duty demands, then that is what has to be done.’ He sent the more or less conventional reply, with acceptable overtones of grim necessity. ‘My part?’
‘An interesting and demanding one.’ The port admiral said. ‘What is our most effective weapon system?’
‘Whichever deters the enemy so effectively you never actually have to use it, I would say; but in terms of fire combat- missiles.’ Qresh’iezhdiepr gave the conventional answer.
‘So says Combined Fleet Command, but there have been dissenting opinions. One of them made it as far as polarised composite.’ She clicked on a display panel; the image of a cone-shaped ship appeared above her desk. ‘Chtaidqlfravl class battlecruiser. One of a very small batch of quasi- experimentals, laid down and preserved in ordinary against the day. We had forgotten about this ship, almost.’
‘Hundred and twenty-five thousand tons- what’s so radical as to make her worthwhile, yet not sufficiently so as to have been no better remembered?’ the cruiser officer replied, trying to stop his heart beating too much faster. That was a larger ship than he had expected, larger than he had dared hope for; one wanted to serve, of course, and one rose according to the consulate’s need for your service- this could be interesting.
‘Chiefly her armament layout.’ Tliqrirtlasche replied. ‘Between repulsors, sand, laser and fusion point defence, countermissiles- there are so many defences in practise, the designer of these things considered missiles hardly ever live up to their potential.’
‘Largely energy based, then?’
‘I would prefer to use the term ‘massively.’ The port admiral opined. ‘There are three craft; one general layout testbed based on an Imperial heavy cruiser captured in the Fourth Frontier War, half finished- we’re working on her now. A largely complete three hundred thousand ton battleship which we’re still fitting out. This ship-‘ she expanded the holoimage and highlighted the weapons.
‘As a fallback for you, one hundred triple-rail launcher turrets, six thousand rounds in the ship’s magazines. One hundred triple sand and a hundred and forty-five triple laser turrets. The main armament is particle based. Three hundred turret-mount linear accelerators; fifty bay mount cyclotrons.’
Qresh’iezhdiepr radiated confoundment. He tried to think of the structural requirements, the enormous power drain so many electric hogs of accelerators would eat up and the size of the powerplant- barely feasible.
‘What does she sacrifice for that? And what’s her name?’
‘All pretence at being anything other than a murdering machine.’ Tliqrirtlasche stated. ‘I think she was never brought to active service- out of sheer distaste. Still, these are increasingly distasteful times, and victory is the least of the evils before us. And that isn’t even the worst of it. The spinal mount-’
Deleted for space and power?’
‘Exactly the opposite.’ The port admiral stated. ‘A purely structural keel- and coaxial particle accelerator mounts. Not even the Darrians mount multiple heavy weapons on a single hull. Triple primary heavy accelerators.’
‘That is…unprecedented.’ Qresh’iezhdiepr managed to send. ‘She must be cramped enough with guns and powerplant, and lean manned enough, to endanger the health of the crew. Come to think of it, what crew? Are there even that many accelerator-trained gunners and gunnery officers to hand?’ He forced his whirling mind down to the practicalities.
‘There will be, once you finish training them. She’s yours, as of now- what are you going to pick for her name?’
‘Tzalhqjiets.’ He said, out loud- the first actual spoken word said. ‘In anglic, Nightwind.’
‘Poetic of you.’ She thought.
‘The only thing about that ship that is.’ He sighed. ‘If the Consulate thinks I am the right being for the job, all I can do is live up to that trust- but I would like to know what the criteria were. The other obvious question- mission?’
‘The immediate objective of this war is to further burden the Imperium. They have only a handful of worlds in the Spinward Marches with the volume and quality of industry to maintain the disproportionate horde of cutting edge warships they persist in using. Glisten, Rhylanor, Trin, Mora.
Sieze or damage those worlds, and the tax bill for the rest of the Empire- it may, predictions say eighty percent, rise to a point where the Spinward Marches simply aren’t worth defending.
At the least, we will force them to contemplate the basis of a more lasting peace; bring them to the negociating table. Middle case, spark a crisis of confidence in the Empire and it’s leadership. At best…sever the entire Spinward Marches from the main body of the Imperium and reduce the common border to the cross- section of Corridor sector. That should win us enough of a stable basis for long term security on the rimward border to satisfy the most ardent Destinarian.’ The Port Admiral teased him there.
‘The final details of the plan may change according to tactical intelligence, of course, but the mission we have envisaged for your Tzalhqjiets is deep interdiction of Imperial reinforcements and support coming through Corridor.’
‘The role the Vargr have performed so spottily in our other frontier wars?’ Qresh’iezhdiepr sent, in tone somewhere between ‘I ask merely for clarification’ and ‘are you sure this is a good idea?’
‘I lost ancestors at Zivije; most of the nobility of Iadr Nsobl did.’ She replied. It had been a most notable defeat- pyrrhic, in theory, but it had been the last battle, the Imperium hadn’t needed another such.
‘The war plan allows for them and we will take what help they can give, but I will not depend on them, and I have persuaded the council accordingly- there will be others beside yourself.’
‘Good. I did not relish the prospect of- I know relatively little about their fleet’s truly heavy metal, but the Imperials call them Cauldron class, don’t they? Million tons, eight Hadrian class fifty-thousand ton riders. I think that would be a considerable overmatch.’ He understated. ‘Why Cauldron, incidentally? Is their cuisine really that bad?’ The cruiser officer asked, quipping to unravel some of the stress in the air.
‘Their term for a standing battle. Interesting combination of psychosis and logic; here are our scars and our bloodstains, here is our inspiration of battle to the death, beyond reason. Still dare to challenge us?’
‘Frankly, no.’ Qresh’iezhdiepr admitted. ‘I can harass, kill tankers and give false leads to chase…I should, in short, think like a pirate. Was that one of the reasons I got picked for this job?’ he realised.
‘That amongst others. Chiefly, because you are an explorer by training and temperament. I do expect Tzalhqjiets to be capable of engaging enemies well above her weight class- the battle simulators put her close to being an even match for a Tigress. I would not hand a murder platform like that over to anyone who I suspected might actually enjoy it.’
Nightwind (Traveller fic, Zho-centric)
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Eleventh Century Remnant
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
I know..."Why haven't you updated something that's actually any good, instead of this drivel?"
I will. But for the moment, I have to confess that there are a couple of resons for this; first is Power Projection, a hacked hybrid game taking the Traveller setting and rewriting the fleet combat system with a variant of the Full Thrust rules. It makes big ship combat so very much more practical.
Also, it's similar enough to something I'm already doing that I can use it as a springboard to reach out in a different direction.
The other reason is the brainbug of a psionic society; I want to write it out and see where it goes. The third reason is as a stylistic exercise. Sometimes, I get the feeling that I actually write in cinema. I can see the scene play itself out in my mind's eye, and take notes- looking over my own juvenilia, which include a bad clone of E.E 'Doc' Smith with a major mary sue in the middle, I used to be much better at doing interior monologue than I am now. In some respects, thank god (insert favourite deity here) I've grown out of that.
In others, I wish I could still do it.
Third thing is, I'm amazed this has got as many views as it has, beause the Traveller universe's IAR (Inherent Awesome Rating) frankly ain't that high.
Granted the Imperium's Tigress- class dreadnought can lob a salvo of 12,900 half-megaton detonation beam xasers, the system has the bad habit of making you calculate the secure warehouse space the navy needs to buy out at the nearest starport to maintain a ready supply of reloads, and the social unrest that would result and the disruption to legitimate trade down to the last tenth of a credit...hold on a minute. Nearly sixty-five hundred megatons?
All right, maybe the IAR is significantly nonzero after all. Most of this chapter is background, though.
Ch 2
The thing just plain looked evil. Relatively broad cone, front surface noduled and bobbled with weapon mounts, the occasional flat surface for a sensor antenna. Qresh put down the palmtop he was scrolling through and looked at the real thing; thought to the pilot to fly an orbit around the dark- hulled cone.
One hundred and twenty-five thousand displacement tons, nineteen million metric tons. Might float in an ocean of mercury, not much else. Polarising composite semicollapsed armour, that making up more than half the mass of the ship- good. Electrostatic antiparticle/antiplasma built in, maskers, noise and deceptive jammers visible in the cluster of turrets, top-line meson and nuclear damper screens. Drive plates and jump antennae on the slightly domed after surface; a very forward ship, designed to take an enemy ship quickly and brutally apart.
If that was what was necessary, that was what would have to be done. Qresh was not making empty mouth noises, nor was he fooling himself; he was an intendant- In Imperial social ranks a knight, in historical Solomani terms a member of the equestrian class.
In Imperial terms, that meant that in return for discharging a certain limited and largely traditional set of obligations, they received priviledge, wealth and power.
In Zhodani terms, that meant he had an ability above and beyond the common run, a gift that it was his duty to employ for the common good- that duty being a concept that ran as deep as the foundations of his soul.
There were a few rare examples, but by and large that social contract was withering in Imperial space, if not actually dead and gone. That was why they had to have a war.
The ability to destroy was as necessary for the good of the state as the ability of an artist to erase; remove the mistakes and the misfits, make room for a more perfect whole.
The aim was to need to exercise that ability as infrequently as possible. This was one of those times when it was, unfortunately, needed.
Why? He asked, looking at the turrets.
He was prepared to accept it, because people whose judgement he respected and who had spent a lot more time thinking about it than he had said that it was so. It was not possible that they could be wrong, not humanly possible that they could take their responsibilities so lightly as to make so absurd a mistake.
The Imperials believed seeing into someone’s mind gave you power over them; they were spectacularly, blindly wrong. Knowing someone’s hopes and blunders did not let you see them any more callously; walking a mile in their shoes did not make you hurry to cut off their feet.
Being inside someone else’s mind was not a cold, intellectual exercise. You could smell their dreams, feel what it was like to be them on a day to day basis. Since those fumbling, brutal beginnings when it had first dawned on them nine thousand years ago, one in five of the Zhodani people was capable of doing just that.
How could you hurt a man when you could feel his pain as your own? How could you let him be hungry, and miserable, and alone? Humans being humans, and Zhodani being an offshoot of human stock, there were always ways- but by and large, under the influence of psionic empathy, the Zhodani Consulate was the happiest, most contented culture the human race had ever been fortunate enough to invent.
It was also the most absolute tyranny the many branches and many millennia of humanity had ever known. Both statements were essentially true.
This unit was supposed to be deployed on a deep independent role, with other craft or without- the plan had not been finalised yet. What that meant for him, personally, was that he was going to be the tyrant-in-place. The other side of the coin was that once you took responsibility like that, once you accepted that there was something you could and should be doing, and set out to do it, then you carried the dreadful responsibility of making sure you got it right.
Noblesse oblige? The Imperials didn’t know the meaning of the term. All the burden of their futures, for the fourteen hundred crew of this ship and their mission’s contribution to the greater good of the Consulate, was going to be his.
Maybe once, long ago, before the human race had spread off Vland, off Sol- when the species was small and fragile, when there hadn’t been a big, stable interstellar society to reduce the worst you could do to the level of a rounding error, then the other branches of humanity might have been able to feel the same weight on their shoulders.
Were they really doing the Imperials any favours by opening their eyes in that way? Giving their society back it’s sense of weight and urgency?
Then again, there was living proof that the Consulate were not infallible, back in the space he had come from. Two minor states, dozen or so worlds each; one, the Darrian Confederation, descendants of an ultra-technological research colony. Scientifically minded, a mixture of private economy and state controlled infrastructure, and essentially militant pacifists; they accepted the necessity of defending themselves reluctantly, and did not set out to do harm to others if they could possibly help it- but they maintained the most advanced and most lethal battle fleet in known space.
The other, relics of a determined- to- the- point- of- brainwashing Solomani back to the past movement. Nordic-teutonic, with tweaked genomes for the purpose, they were a loose, tumbling, brawling conglomeration that called itself the Sword Worlds. Their official form of government changed regularly, but always boiled down to feudal anarchy, and they had no collective sense of responsibility or thought for the common good whatsoever.
So how come the Third Imperium had a good working relationship and mutual defence treaty with the cool rationalists, and the psychotic squabbling morons were in formal alliance with the Zhodani?
It was the biggest open secret of Consulate foreign policy, and an interesting psychological kink it made too; envy. On a level they would do better to acknowledge more openly, the Consulate leadership were deeply envious of anyone who could take the universe as lightly as the Sword Worlders.
That rough edge made the Consulate at times distinctly cool towards those cultures which most clearly resembled it, and in friendship and allegiance with races and subspecies of their own race they had nothing in common with.
All right, perhaps there was a bit of exophilia in the mixture. But mainly envy.
We are all at the mercy of our own minds, and although getting a stereoscopic view on what a wide, wild place the universe was made it slightly easier to cope with, it did not help the higher- ups.
If a problem shared is a problem halved, to use a loose but descriptive metaphor, then take a district of say, a thousand people. Every day, say, a hundred of those people are going to have their problems halved- but at the end of ten days, a thousand half- problems are going to find their way into the lap of the responsible Thought Policeman, who would almost certainly be half out of their mind with worry already. And so on to the next echelon.
Enough to lose the plot a little? Go and do something monstrously daft, like pick a fight with the Third Imperium?
On balance- it was a factor, but not a decisive factor. It would have tipped the balance slightly in favour of a decision that would have had to be made, anyway, and would have come out the way it did regardless.
On balance, the reason for him in this job was equally obvious. In the borderlands, the patchwork space of client states and renegade colonies that lay beyond both power’s formal grasp, he had come up against Imperial policies, and freelancers using second and third hand Imperial ships and tactics, often enough.
He had done most of it on detached patrol duty, the chief source of authority and court of appeal for a thousand Zhodani spacers weeks, sometimes months from home. It was his job to appear confident, to maintain the bearing of a commanding officer and do what the fourteen hundred of this ship, three hundred of whom would have some psychic talent of their own, expected of him.
He could do it. He had had to do it before. Didn’t stop him being scared shitless. He wasn’t sure he would have trusted a boss who wasn’t troubled about it. Even less trust someone who buckled under the load.
Well, the next thing to do was to board, get the feel of the ship, accept her from the caretaker crew, and then start bugging the personnel directorate for a proper combat crew.
Zhodani were, in a lot of ways, less superstitious than the common run of humanity, largely because so many of them could see what was out there anyway. The mess of sub-intellectual gibberish spirituality that hag-rode the rest of the human race was, to them, as silly as expecting to be murdered by the colour orange. The concept of the Genius Loci, the spirit of the place, was a historical-intellectual curiosity, nothing more.
Didn’t stop Qresh’s back feeling as if ice spiders were swarming all over it when he cracked the airlock. There was a receiving party there, of course, and he acknowledged them, but the first thing he tried to do was reach out, psychically and psychokinetically, and get a feel for the ship herself.
Cold, yes, as an operating fact; so much of Nightwind was powerplant and energy weapons, and it was dormant. Menacing- she was loaded to the structural and electrical limit with weaponry. That much, at least, was rational concern.
Strangely, the receiving officer was a full noble. An –stebr, in fact. The title formed the last two syllables of his name, in much the same way as the Intendant middle- class ‘Iepr’ did for Qresh.
There was well- suppressed jealousy there. Hidden, first recognised by it’s possessor then buried beneath the common good. ‘Welcome aboard, Cruiser Officer Qresh’iezhdiepr Fiashtiavrqaf. I, Dynamics Officer Iahstiavrqplstebr, relinquish command from the caretaker team to the commander of her combat crew.’
‘I accept command of Tzalhqjiets, in the name of the Zhodani Consulate.’
‘BCX-2211A5 is to be officially named Nightwind, then? Very portentous.’ The technician- constructor said.
It is indeed an extraordinary command,’ Qresh sent, ‘for a mere Intendant.’ Acknowledging that he was, in theory, an inferior. Psionic power was the main determinant of class; given how strongly heritage and upbringing influenced that, a system of the kind was pretty much inevitable. And not necessarily immutable.
Any Imperial citizen would have recoiled in horror at the Zhodani tyranny of birth- conveniently forgetting how the sheer size of their own space made a similar neo-feudalism equally inevitable.
With one important exception. The Psionic Olympiads, every three years- eight hundred and twenty-six Vilani days, where any Zhodani who fancied he had a spark of the talent could go to argue his case and prove his power, and be elevated from the proletariat to the middle class, or an Intendant earn a patent of nobility, thereby.
It was already close to time for the 3470th Olympiad; Qresh had had hopes of attending- but now, he expected to be deep in Imperial space when the time came around. Not the end. Faithful service had been known to qualify a man, as well.
Iahstiavrqplstebr had been fortunate in his birth, it meant that he had been thoroughly prepared to bear his burdens and do his duty, from the cradle upwards. And, Qresh reminded himself sharply, it was no more an intendant’s place to be jealous of a noble than it was a shore- based officer’s to be jealous of a line commander.
‘They chose you for a reason.’ The Dynamics Officer reminded him.
‘I know.’ Qresh said. ‘I’m still trying to distill my own ego out of the process so I can rationally consider what it was, and choose a crew to fit the purpose.’
‘Spread confusion and chaos, and undermine confidence.’
‘So I should choose a confused crew of chaos worshippers in whom I have no confidence, and hope they shake out? Why do I have the feeling that, against the Third Imperium, that might not be a bad idea?’ Qresh said.
‘I hope you can keep your sense of humour when the shooting does start. Far from home-‘ Iahstiavrqplstebr was about to remind Qresh about the responsibility he was about to bear, then realised that would be unnecessary. He was cracking bad jokes precisely as a device to help him carry the load.
‘You’d better give me the tour of the ship, so I can start to work out what sort of talents and attitudes I am going to need.’ Qresh said. ‘Actually, I think I might really be well served by slanting the mix towards potential rather than experience. It’s going to be a long, strange trip, deep into Imperial territory in an untried ship, and I will definitely need a cadre of veterans for the less experienced to learn from, but a crew with little to unlearn and much to prove seems to me to be just what the task at hand requires.’
I will. But for the moment, I have to confess that there are a couple of resons for this; first is Power Projection, a hacked hybrid game taking the Traveller setting and rewriting the fleet combat system with a variant of the Full Thrust rules. It makes big ship combat so very much more practical.
Also, it's similar enough to something I'm already doing that I can use it as a springboard to reach out in a different direction.
The other reason is the brainbug of a psionic society; I want to write it out and see where it goes. The third reason is as a stylistic exercise. Sometimes, I get the feeling that I actually write in cinema. I can see the scene play itself out in my mind's eye, and take notes- looking over my own juvenilia, which include a bad clone of E.E 'Doc' Smith with a major mary sue in the middle, I used to be much better at doing interior monologue than I am now. In some respects, thank god (insert favourite deity here) I've grown out of that.
In others, I wish I could still do it.
Third thing is, I'm amazed this has got as many views as it has, beause the Traveller universe's IAR (Inherent Awesome Rating) frankly ain't that high.
Granted the Imperium's Tigress- class dreadnought can lob a salvo of 12,900 half-megaton detonation beam xasers, the system has the bad habit of making you calculate the secure warehouse space the navy needs to buy out at the nearest starport to maintain a ready supply of reloads, and the social unrest that would result and the disruption to legitimate trade down to the last tenth of a credit...hold on a minute. Nearly sixty-five hundred megatons?
All right, maybe the IAR is significantly nonzero after all. Most of this chapter is background, though.
Ch 2
The thing just plain looked evil. Relatively broad cone, front surface noduled and bobbled with weapon mounts, the occasional flat surface for a sensor antenna. Qresh put down the palmtop he was scrolling through and looked at the real thing; thought to the pilot to fly an orbit around the dark- hulled cone.
One hundred and twenty-five thousand displacement tons, nineteen million metric tons. Might float in an ocean of mercury, not much else. Polarising composite semicollapsed armour, that making up more than half the mass of the ship- good. Electrostatic antiparticle/antiplasma built in, maskers, noise and deceptive jammers visible in the cluster of turrets, top-line meson and nuclear damper screens. Drive plates and jump antennae on the slightly domed after surface; a very forward ship, designed to take an enemy ship quickly and brutally apart.
If that was what was necessary, that was what would have to be done. Qresh was not making empty mouth noises, nor was he fooling himself; he was an intendant- In Imperial social ranks a knight, in historical Solomani terms a member of the equestrian class.
In Imperial terms, that meant that in return for discharging a certain limited and largely traditional set of obligations, they received priviledge, wealth and power.
In Zhodani terms, that meant he had an ability above and beyond the common run, a gift that it was his duty to employ for the common good- that duty being a concept that ran as deep as the foundations of his soul.
There were a few rare examples, but by and large that social contract was withering in Imperial space, if not actually dead and gone. That was why they had to have a war.
The ability to destroy was as necessary for the good of the state as the ability of an artist to erase; remove the mistakes and the misfits, make room for a more perfect whole.
The aim was to need to exercise that ability as infrequently as possible. This was one of those times when it was, unfortunately, needed.
Why? He asked, looking at the turrets.
He was prepared to accept it, because people whose judgement he respected and who had spent a lot more time thinking about it than he had said that it was so. It was not possible that they could be wrong, not humanly possible that they could take their responsibilities so lightly as to make so absurd a mistake.
The Imperials believed seeing into someone’s mind gave you power over them; they were spectacularly, blindly wrong. Knowing someone’s hopes and blunders did not let you see them any more callously; walking a mile in their shoes did not make you hurry to cut off their feet.
Being inside someone else’s mind was not a cold, intellectual exercise. You could smell their dreams, feel what it was like to be them on a day to day basis. Since those fumbling, brutal beginnings when it had first dawned on them nine thousand years ago, one in five of the Zhodani people was capable of doing just that.
How could you hurt a man when you could feel his pain as your own? How could you let him be hungry, and miserable, and alone? Humans being humans, and Zhodani being an offshoot of human stock, there were always ways- but by and large, under the influence of psionic empathy, the Zhodani Consulate was the happiest, most contented culture the human race had ever been fortunate enough to invent.
It was also the most absolute tyranny the many branches and many millennia of humanity had ever known. Both statements were essentially true.
This unit was supposed to be deployed on a deep independent role, with other craft or without- the plan had not been finalised yet. What that meant for him, personally, was that he was going to be the tyrant-in-place. The other side of the coin was that once you took responsibility like that, once you accepted that there was something you could and should be doing, and set out to do it, then you carried the dreadful responsibility of making sure you got it right.
Noblesse oblige? The Imperials didn’t know the meaning of the term. All the burden of their futures, for the fourteen hundred crew of this ship and their mission’s contribution to the greater good of the Consulate, was going to be his.
Maybe once, long ago, before the human race had spread off Vland, off Sol- when the species was small and fragile, when there hadn’t been a big, stable interstellar society to reduce the worst you could do to the level of a rounding error, then the other branches of humanity might have been able to feel the same weight on their shoulders.
Were they really doing the Imperials any favours by opening their eyes in that way? Giving their society back it’s sense of weight and urgency?
Then again, there was living proof that the Consulate were not infallible, back in the space he had come from. Two minor states, dozen or so worlds each; one, the Darrian Confederation, descendants of an ultra-technological research colony. Scientifically minded, a mixture of private economy and state controlled infrastructure, and essentially militant pacifists; they accepted the necessity of defending themselves reluctantly, and did not set out to do harm to others if they could possibly help it- but they maintained the most advanced and most lethal battle fleet in known space.
The other, relics of a determined- to- the- point- of- brainwashing Solomani back to the past movement. Nordic-teutonic, with tweaked genomes for the purpose, they were a loose, tumbling, brawling conglomeration that called itself the Sword Worlds. Their official form of government changed regularly, but always boiled down to feudal anarchy, and they had no collective sense of responsibility or thought for the common good whatsoever.
So how come the Third Imperium had a good working relationship and mutual defence treaty with the cool rationalists, and the psychotic squabbling morons were in formal alliance with the Zhodani?
It was the biggest open secret of Consulate foreign policy, and an interesting psychological kink it made too; envy. On a level they would do better to acknowledge more openly, the Consulate leadership were deeply envious of anyone who could take the universe as lightly as the Sword Worlders.
That rough edge made the Consulate at times distinctly cool towards those cultures which most clearly resembled it, and in friendship and allegiance with races and subspecies of their own race they had nothing in common with.
All right, perhaps there was a bit of exophilia in the mixture. But mainly envy.
We are all at the mercy of our own minds, and although getting a stereoscopic view on what a wide, wild place the universe was made it slightly easier to cope with, it did not help the higher- ups.
If a problem shared is a problem halved, to use a loose but descriptive metaphor, then take a district of say, a thousand people. Every day, say, a hundred of those people are going to have their problems halved- but at the end of ten days, a thousand half- problems are going to find their way into the lap of the responsible Thought Policeman, who would almost certainly be half out of their mind with worry already. And so on to the next echelon.
Enough to lose the plot a little? Go and do something monstrously daft, like pick a fight with the Third Imperium?
On balance- it was a factor, but not a decisive factor. It would have tipped the balance slightly in favour of a decision that would have had to be made, anyway, and would have come out the way it did regardless.
On balance, the reason for him in this job was equally obvious. In the borderlands, the patchwork space of client states and renegade colonies that lay beyond both power’s formal grasp, he had come up against Imperial policies, and freelancers using second and third hand Imperial ships and tactics, often enough.
He had done most of it on detached patrol duty, the chief source of authority and court of appeal for a thousand Zhodani spacers weeks, sometimes months from home. It was his job to appear confident, to maintain the bearing of a commanding officer and do what the fourteen hundred of this ship, three hundred of whom would have some psychic talent of their own, expected of him.
He could do it. He had had to do it before. Didn’t stop him being scared shitless. He wasn’t sure he would have trusted a boss who wasn’t troubled about it. Even less trust someone who buckled under the load.
Well, the next thing to do was to board, get the feel of the ship, accept her from the caretaker crew, and then start bugging the personnel directorate for a proper combat crew.
Zhodani were, in a lot of ways, less superstitious than the common run of humanity, largely because so many of them could see what was out there anyway. The mess of sub-intellectual gibberish spirituality that hag-rode the rest of the human race was, to them, as silly as expecting to be murdered by the colour orange. The concept of the Genius Loci, the spirit of the place, was a historical-intellectual curiosity, nothing more.
Didn’t stop Qresh’s back feeling as if ice spiders were swarming all over it when he cracked the airlock. There was a receiving party there, of course, and he acknowledged them, but the first thing he tried to do was reach out, psychically and psychokinetically, and get a feel for the ship herself.
Cold, yes, as an operating fact; so much of Nightwind was powerplant and energy weapons, and it was dormant. Menacing- she was loaded to the structural and electrical limit with weaponry. That much, at least, was rational concern.
Strangely, the receiving officer was a full noble. An –stebr, in fact. The title formed the last two syllables of his name, in much the same way as the Intendant middle- class ‘Iepr’ did for Qresh.
There was well- suppressed jealousy there. Hidden, first recognised by it’s possessor then buried beneath the common good. ‘Welcome aboard, Cruiser Officer Qresh’iezhdiepr Fiashtiavrqaf. I, Dynamics Officer Iahstiavrqplstebr, relinquish command from the caretaker team to the commander of her combat crew.’
‘I accept command of Tzalhqjiets, in the name of the Zhodani Consulate.’
‘BCX-2211A5 is to be officially named Nightwind, then? Very portentous.’ The technician- constructor said.
It is indeed an extraordinary command,’ Qresh sent, ‘for a mere Intendant.’ Acknowledging that he was, in theory, an inferior. Psionic power was the main determinant of class; given how strongly heritage and upbringing influenced that, a system of the kind was pretty much inevitable. And not necessarily immutable.
Any Imperial citizen would have recoiled in horror at the Zhodani tyranny of birth- conveniently forgetting how the sheer size of their own space made a similar neo-feudalism equally inevitable.
With one important exception. The Psionic Olympiads, every three years- eight hundred and twenty-six Vilani days, where any Zhodani who fancied he had a spark of the talent could go to argue his case and prove his power, and be elevated from the proletariat to the middle class, or an Intendant earn a patent of nobility, thereby.
It was already close to time for the 3470th Olympiad; Qresh had had hopes of attending- but now, he expected to be deep in Imperial space when the time came around. Not the end. Faithful service had been known to qualify a man, as well.
Iahstiavrqplstebr had been fortunate in his birth, it meant that he had been thoroughly prepared to bear his burdens and do his duty, from the cradle upwards. And, Qresh reminded himself sharply, it was no more an intendant’s place to be jealous of a noble than it was a shore- based officer’s to be jealous of a line commander.
‘They chose you for a reason.’ The Dynamics Officer reminded him.
‘I know.’ Qresh said. ‘I’m still trying to distill my own ego out of the process so I can rationally consider what it was, and choose a crew to fit the purpose.’
‘Spread confusion and chaos, and undermine confidence.’
‘So I should choose a confused crew of chaos worshippers in whom I have no confidence, and hope they shake out? Why do I have the feeling that, against the Third Imperium, that might not be a bad idea?’ Qresh said.
‘I hope you can keep your sense of humour when the shooting does start. Far from home-‘ Iahstiavrqplstebr was about to remind Qresh about the responsibility he was about to bear, then realised that would be unnecessary. He was cracking bad jokes precisely as a device to help him carry the load.
‘You’d better give me the tour of the ship, so I can start to work out what sort of talents and attitudes I am going to need.’ Qresh said. ‘Actually, I think I might really be well served by slanting the mix towards potential rather than experience. It’s going to be a long, strange trip, deep into Imperial territory in an untried ship, and I will definitely need a cadre of veterans for the less experienced to learn from, but a crew with little to unlearn and much to prove seems to me to be just what the task at hand requires.’