Stardogs (51 page)

There was a silence in the roost-tower. Shari took a deep breath. “This is Denaar. There is no Space-Station here, and this is not an Empire world. I am Shari Tamar Alstenn-Wienan. Over”

There was a silence. A long silence. Then, “Did you say Denaar? You mean the Denaari motherworld…. Princess! Princess Shari? But you’re supposed to be dead! The whole revolution started because you’d been murdered!”

“They tried, but failed, Lieutenant. And who the hell said you could start the revolution without me?”

Events shape decisions nine times out of ten. Mark Albeer did not want to return home, because he was a lowly bodyguard, and she was a Countess. Besides, outside of an arena of scarcity, he was sure she wouldn’t look twice at him. Caro Leyven didn’t want to go because Mark didn’t. She didn’t give a damn what his rank or station in life was. But if he didn’t want to go back, she wouldn’t. She’d run rather short of contraceptives, and hadn’t yet told him that she was pregnant. Would he want her when she went bulgy? She hoped so, because now that she was pregnant, she found that what she really wanted was a baby.

Sam didn’t want to go back… not to the life he’d led before, not with her. And he was not going without her. They had shared too much. Also, he was rather a different man after having died, however briefly. Still, the Yak did not part with their own easily. If he went back, sooner or later the family would find him. Although, by the sounds of it he could be reasonably safe on Arunachal… Tanzo wasn’t leaving Sam, and wasn’t leaving Denaar, in that order.

Shari didn’t want to return to her old life of fear and deceptions either. Even the hardships of being a castaway had been better. But events had caught up with all of them. And how they dealt with those events is another story.

APPENDIX I

FUTURE HISTORY.

2040 Joan Cheng makes contact with Stardogs. Human Diaspora begins

Hans Wienan forms Space Development and Control League with the blessing of virtually all major powers, with directors drawn from the ruling elite of the G8 families. League moves to contain Joan Cheng and isolate her. Only earthside contact brief meeting in RSPCA office, Knightsbridge, London. Thereafter access denied.

2041-2055 Exploration and contact with other Stardogs established. Hans Wienan personally recruits new pilots. Attempts by G8 to restrict access to space division of colonial rights. The Texas Rebellion is brutally put down. A secret message begging for help is sent to RSPCA official from Joan Cheng.

2055-2103 The colonial period. With 432 worlds on Stardog routes found, colonial expansion outstrips Earth control. Wealth flows to Earth, little returns. But all flows both ways were taxed by the League. The League only revealed 130 of the less viable worlds to Earth, and colonized the others for a secret powerbase.

2104 The Brandahar rebellion. Stage-managed ‘revolt’ against Earth taxation. The League is ‘forced’ to assist rebels until Earthgov came up with better conditions for League, including rider recruitment legislation. Then the rebellion is brutally crushed.

2104-2130: Colonial retreat by Earthgov. Sybaritic life on Earth by rich is pestered by religious fanatics, convicts
etc.
which are dumped by Earthgov. They are sent off on League transports without Earthgov bothering to find out where they go. These malcontents are the source of the Imperialists future troops.

2131 The Post of Managing Director is declared hereditary. Earthgov protests. The great embargo of earth follows. It is stage-managed to leak just enough to keep Earth dependent on Interstellar trade. From this point the league League’s own secret service begins to increasingly become all-powerful.

2135 End of the embargo with the ‘Council of planets agreement.’ This is a puppet council controlled by the League

2215 The Starkadd Coalition: An attempted and partially successful coup by the once-puppet planetary councilors. League control of planets in the coalition is shattered, although they still have control over Interstellar travel. The League panics. Planets are isolated, and Selim Alsten-Wienan, a rising young thug, is made into a new ‘Emperor’, and given access to mercenaries on former convict worlds of Carab, Selbourne, Canto and New Tambor.

2215-2393 With the League artfully manipulating supplies, the colony worlds are maintained (the League does not wish to lose its tax base, or labor pool) but militarily crippled while the new ‘Empire’ picks off worlds one by one.

2393 The fall of Phillipia, the most powerful, populous, mineral rich and verdant of colony worlds. Salman Alsten-Wienan II declared Supreme ruler of human Space.

2412 Last isolated open resistance brutally suppressed on isolated worlds such as Arunachal, and New Texas. Minor guerilla skirmishes continue.

2459: Declining numbers of League children forces the guild to take the step of recruiting new blood, with Managing-directorship and Security only being reserved for pure Wienan’s.

2488 Turabi I, having arranged for the assassination of his father, ascends the throne.

2507 Now

APPENDIX II

GENERAL BACKGOUND INFORAMTION

The Denaari: A silica-bat, egg-laying semi-marsupial species. A wingspan of +-25 feet, a bodyweight of +- 30 kg. Bi-lateral species, ie: Two eyes (vision more into uv. spectrum), two ears, (higher frequencies), scent, pressure, and temperature sensors on either wingtip. A single magnetic sensitive barbel. A face like a walrus (with tusks for mineral-mining.) Dexterous toes (three) and wingclaws (3). Therefore they counted in 12’s. Food: Able to use solar energy and also farmed crystals, grown in carefully maintained terraced mountain soup-ponds. Society: More structured than human society, with gene-dictated castes: Not warlike, but given to individual combat. These are largely ritual battles. Also practice genocide of ‘non-humane’ groups. On planet this meant nest-minders (eggwarmers) would withdraw their heat, and destroy gene lines of chicks, this had been extrapolated into passive extermination of non-emotive sentient alien species. They live/d in colonies in rookeries presided over by a senior egg-layer, Egg layers are bigger and higher fliers, (egg-layers are less emotive and more inclined to fight than eggwarmers) sex ratio 4 egg warmers to 1 egg layer. Female carries and lays the egg, the males warm egg, and then pouch-rear the young. The female can lay more eggs than males can rear.

Denaari homeworld: A tectonic hell-hole. A lot of mountains, some impossibly huge. A lot of volcanoes. Relatively little water. Geo-sculpting by wind rather than water erosion. Wind is almost incessant. G: 0.82 earth normal. Temperatures at Equator. 5-20o. Temperature at poles in winter approx. -170o. Humanly habitable up to +- 30o line. No major seas or lakes. Few streams and small rivers from high altitude precipitation in Subtropical region of stable ancient plate chosen for launch-imprint center. Mountains are old and wind-worn on the plate at the launch center. The area was probably Denaari idea of the pits to live in. Vegetation, pre-dominion breakdown was non-existent. Life forms are numerous but only accidentally inimical. Many are modified
ie.
rock-burrower miners, Mineral drifters (tiny balloons deflating and burrowing into new mineral sources), solar sheeters which cover hillsides and collect sunlight, and then lay high-energy eggs (harvested by Denaari) before tumbleweeding. In the breakdown, Zoos and several botanical museums lost specimens, which have colonized a few wet bits. There is now a small carbon-based biota, including vicious predators. Now rock-leguvaan, bouncer-hyrax, jagular, and sliver-python, diamondback pseudosnake, red-mottle thrush and feral peccary occur in the wild. The vegetation is more varied, plainly from a number of sources, occurring wherever there is water.

The Denaari Dominion: 432 worlds settled + homeworld. Ruled by gene-selected, gene modified castes, egg-layers ruled and decided, but eggwarmers controlled succession. A flying species, therefore they had no roads, but had communal rookery type dwellings. A society where gene-tailoring was second nature. Very little was ever made of inanimate material, but they shaped lifeforms to their ends. Even a Denaari toothbrush was alive. They had a Buddhist-like life-religion about animal forms. Originally no plants lived on the mother planet. Some of the worlds of the Dominion also had no carbon-based lifeforms, and these were most popular and largest settlements. Early settlers cleared vegetation and altering climates before the vegetation / carbon-animal relationship was understood. Worlds were selected for lower G, colder, drier thinner atmosphere, preferably with abundant mountains for eyries. Numerous humanly habitable worlds (ocean-planets, jungle worlds, hot worlds, higher G worlds) known, but were not colonized or on Dog-routes. Earth only had an observation station, a small one, because of intelligent life there. It was not considered suitable for colonization. Alien societies were assessed and if inhumane: prevented from attaining space travel or destroyed. They were assessing earth, when ‘plague’ destroyed them in part of a conflict with the Sil.

The Imperium: The first Emperor, Selim Alsten-Wienan, was little more than a figurehead, a front-man for the League’s opposition to the Starkadd Coalition of planetary Councilors (which itself had begun life as a league puppet). However some of the worlds he drew his mercenaries from would change the nature of the conquest. He originally styled himself as The Leader of the Peoples’ Liberation Struggle for a Democratic Federation of Planets. In the first load of those who had been forcibly settled on Selbourne were a small lunatic fringe of plotters from Earth, almost all of whom could be found in the pages of the now meaningless
Almanac de Gotha
. In a cargo which was otherwise composed of unassociated dregs of Europe they had proved the most cohesive group. Before later ships of convicts had arrived they had assumed total feudal control, which they maintained, destroying new rivals, or, if these were too strong, raising them to the peerage. The bickering fiefdoms and endless postage-stamp duchies had provided a rich supply of younger sons to make skilled officers. Canto, one of the main sources of cannon fodder, also had a strong feudal-type robber-baron system. The officers wanted payment not in money but in hereditary fiefdoms. The League, to whom the form of politico-social system was unimportant, as long as they maintained control, was happy to oblige. Of course their man had to have a higher title, that was all. With the children of Selim intermarrying with the Selbourne peers, the dream of the original Almanac de Gotha rebels of a return to rule by divine right or at least by genetic right was achieved. Names were assumed from the Holy Roman Empire. The aspirations they brought were of course passed on to the future emperors, reaching its peak in the rule of the Emperor Vespasia. The Empire had known nearly a century of relative peace and steady increase in bureaucracy. By the start of the reign of Turabi I, the system was groaning from increasing taxation and the employment of nearly a third of all people in the civil service. The army, once powerful, had become little more than a brutal riot-police for suppressing the increasingly restive populace.