CHAPTER 23
Alexander and Nazar were at dinner in Alexander’s stateroom, a chess board between them. Nazar had taken to the game quite readily, and as Alexander was no expert, he soon proved to be a potent opponent to the Overlord. Nazar was so adept, in fact, that Alexander was completely absorbed in an attempt to draw the present match out to a respectable length before his inevitable defeat. Therefore, when an urgent communiqué from the Gagarin interrupted the evening meal Alexander gladly accepted the rescue.
After taking the report he sighed, cradling his wine. “You know we’re not up against a beginner over there. There is someone in the Alliance hierarchy with a backbone. I see no other way they could move so quickly to the offensive after the thrashing we gave them on the frontier. Imagine the effort just to get the Syraptose and the Quotterim back in the fold. Incredible! I am impressed.”
“I imagine this is the work of their new Grand Admiral. They are definitely Golkos. We’ll know who they are in a decurn or so, and then I can procure the dossier for you.”
“That will be fine,” Alexander replied, his voice far away. “It has begun in earnest. I can scarcely believe it. We’ve spent so much time talking about its eventuality, even to the point of our raid on the Golkos-Seer’koh, but it scarcely seems real to me.”
“Alexander, that is a strange statement seeing as you dispatched your strike forces to Syraptose and Quotterim an eternity ago,” Nazar observed. “I remember you sketching out your invasion plans during the Chem civil war. This is hardly unexpected, especially as you planned for this eventuality decants ago. I know you too well to think you are having second thoughts.”
“No. I’m not having second thoughts, but it’s the first serious move in this galactic game. You’ve practiced and prepared for it, but until the game is underway and you take that first hit there is a surrealism about it. It is unreal. But there it is; it has begun. The Alliance has found their stomach. The three strike forces have already entered Terran space, and our forces will shortly begin engaging them.”
“Seven hundred ships spread out on three invasion routes to delay what amounts to three Galactic armadas,” Nazar smiled. “I’d not miss this for anything Chem could offer, unless it were a war against the Golkos. It’s just wonderful! Such brash gall! I’d not have believed any defense possible unless I’d heard your plans myself. I’d wondered how you were going to tackle the problem of fighting at superluminal velocities. Superluminal battle has been considered impossible for the entirety of our space faring history, and for good reason. A superluminal field is very susceptible to fluctuation, thereby negating the field. Firing from within the field is as disruptive as absorbing fire. The field can be protected by the ship’s shields, but only at the expense of power to the superluminal field. When one considers the additional impossibility of targeting a specific ship at superluminal velocities the reasons for abandoning any form of superluminal combat is obvious. The very impossibility of the dilemma must be what intrigued you. I must say your strategy is again elegantly brilliant.”
“Please, Nazar, no eulogizing before the proof,” Alexander cautioned. “Besides, I cannot quite get myself to consider it combat. It’s more like shooting fish in a barrel, albeit very fast and hard to see fish. We’ll see how our intrepid Grand Admiral reacts. The Alliance, thus far, has helped. I expected them to proceed to Terra at flank speed, but it appears they are satisfied with standard cruise. That gives us more than enough time to accomplish the plan, for the present at least.”
“It is their formations,” Nazar observed. “They are attempting to maintain their strike formations in superluminal flight. With over two thousand ships on the Golkos Seer’koh front that is a colossal feat. I believe your fleets have taken the wiser course of action by moving in squadron sized packets, with the fleet in a loose formation. That also makes it more difficult for scans to estimate the number of ships in a superluminal signature. The size and configuration of the signature constantly change, thereby increasing the margin for error.”
“Yes, the Alliance seems bent on maintaining a large unwieldy formation through their advance,” Alexander said. “It's an ancient problem to march or sail in a formation that is at once defensible on the move and able to deploy rapidly at the onset of battle. Our commanders ran into the same problems in superluminal when our fleets were created. We solved these problems by improving the ship’s autopilots over the galactic standard, something I would have thought patently impossible considering our complete unfamiliarity with the equipment. Fortunately, however, the principles are largely the same as those of our aircraft autopilots. The circuitry is still beyond us, I’m told, but the logic commands in the imprinted software are not. Our engineers actually modified some of the software we use in games to alter the autopilot programming, making it more responsive at higher superluminal factors. I was rather surprised, Nazar, that the Alliance had not done the same.”
“You must remember, Alexander, that Alliance technology, and that is to say Galactic technology, has been established for hundreds of kicellia. There is little need for the gradual progression of technology that led to the current empires. You would say we stagnated, because of all the cultures in the known galaxy the only ones I know of which advance for the sake of advancement are Terrans. The rest of the galaxy enjoys the consistency of the status quo. We jockey for position and make minor changes in the relevancy or irrelevancy of principles, but on the whole our cultures and our technology advances at a very even and gradual rate. There are no meteoric rises in ability, such as Terrans are used to.
It would have been patently impossible for one of the other cultures to make the paradigm shift from a water and air based military to a space based military; even though you have already done so. The change is too great. That is one of the great disadvantages for the Alliance. Whether they fully realize their difficulty I cannot know. Originality is not a beneficial character trait in either the Golkos or the Seer’koh; especially in the upper echelons of their military. Still, there are a few clans in the Golkos ruling class which are noteworthy for their recalcitrance and energy. More often than not their effect is merely antagonistic, but every once in a while some daughter or son of worth and power rises from the ashes of their ancient families. There is one such Golkos commander by the name of Khandar. I must assume that he has found a way to gain control of the military. He is their most capable general, and a glory seeker. Our dossier describes Khandar as bold and innovative by Galactic standards.”
“Galactic standards?” Alexander muttered, somewhat amused by the term; and guessing Nazar’s meaning.
“I must be careful of my words as they are in context with yourself, Alexander. You are too proud to accept even the praise of a friend, but the fact remains that you and your warrior ancestors are changing our definitions of war and warfare. Maybe we are simply rediscovering what was painfully obvious thirteen kicellia ago to my ancestors. They, as do you Terrans, lived war. We, their descendents, proud though we may be, live only the ritual and tradition they have left us. My conclusion is that our creativity is atrophied. We must relearn what you do instinctually. It is the price the Chem have paid for peace; a price the galaxy is on the verge of paying.”
“It is a price well worth paying if any surety of its reward could come of it,” Alexander told him slumping heavily in his chair. “Do not criticize the feat of your thirteen millennia of peaceful existence, Nazar. It is easy to make war. Cowards make war with greater facility than the brave make peace. I look at what I have done, and though I can find few acts or events that I would change still I would that they had not been necessary. I am guilty, nonetheless, of destroying this peace of yours. It bothers me to think that my name will, at the very least, go down in galactic history as the warlord who brought an end to the galaxy as we came to know it. Yet what bothers me more, Nazar is that I do not know if I have the strength of the courageous being who would somehow find a peaceful end to this destruction. I realize, and I accept, that I feed off the glory. Will I then be remembered as a Napoleon, dying despised? Napoleon allowed his political greed, if you will, to overcome his sensibilities and destroy much of the glory his genius won. I would rather not leave this stage as a despot.”
“Your magnanimous victories hardly label you as such. Certainly your name is feared and respected throughout the known galaxy, Alexander, but there is no brand of evil burned upon your brow. Rather the opposite. I know for a certainty that this Alliance war is taxing on their home systems. It is an interesting irony that Galactic legend still holds such powerful sway over the character of our people, and yet these same people by and large revere the man they know as Alexander. Indeed, this is a most unpopular war on both sides. Each feels the necessity to make war, and in their own minds each is justified. However, there is also an underlying sadness. I guess from my limited knowledge of your people Alexander that whether they realize it or not this is not the way they envisioned meeting their galactic neighbors.”
“In all actuality, this is often how we feared contact would be made,” Alexander told him. He sighed, adding, “We have a strange sense of destiny, we Terrans. We always envisioned contact to be made violently, with the fate of our civilization at stake. There is a damnably perturbed secret desire to in us to be battered by overwhelming odds to the point where all is nearly lost, then to rise up, bloody but indomitable, and destroy our foes. That is the paradox of Humankind. The strangest thing in all of this is the fear of Terra by the Galactics. Certainly no Terran envisioned that.”
“Nor have the Galactics, to be perfectly honest, until now. Though we lived with the “Legend of Alexander” there is a difference between legend and reality. Fear can be healthy for a being, but the Galactics have taken it to extremes. They fear you far more than legend has it. This may be more because the Galactic populace thinks they know you, Alexander, and they are as afraid of being wrong about that as they are the “Legend of Alexander.” Somehow the legend would be all the more terrible if this enlightened and powerful being we know as Alexander was to be the barbarian of legend as well. Alexander has stirred our opinions about ourselves. He’s made an entire galaxy realize their level of over-civilization.”
The Chem man thought for a moment before coming to a conclusion. “I would say our “edge” is gone. We are like a sword left to dull and rust with disuse. That is the intriguing thing you offer us, and what we fear to lose if we are wrong about you, Alexander: our youth renewed. Yet that in itself is a dangerous gift. We can see too much of our youth and reject it, or have it thrust upon us forcefully and be destroyed by it. With gifts must come wisdom, both from the bestowed and the bestowed. That is Alexander’s contribution beyond war.”
Alexander massaged his temples, saying, “Nazar, you are at your most dangerous when you are in a philosophical mood. I must say seriously that I can only hope to be what the Galactics have seen in me, not what they fear I am. I bear the same burden with my own people as well. I hope I am enough of an ox to bear the weight.”
Nazar laughed. “You were made to bear such weight, Alexander. More than any other being I’ve known, even to Nazeera, you relish the weight upon your shoulders. It feeds your need to be important, and your resolve to succeed. That being said any lesser use of you would have been a waste. Besides, this drama is too deliciously fascinating not to occur. Galactic history would be poor indeed without the audacious rise of Alexander, Overlord of the Terran Empire!”
“It is not the rise of the Empire over which I worry Nazar, it is the eventual fall.”
“What of it? Every empire falls, Alexander. Did not your namesake tell us “It is the striving forward which matters?” He was wise. What use is honor or bravery if a people are too worried over future consequences to take the least of risks? Where would Terra be now if Terrans hid their heads Scythian-like in the sand when this crisis rolled upon them? Their civilization, their history, their future would have been in the hands of others. Fortune smiled that the judges would have been the Chem, but it could just as easily have been the Golkos.”
“Yes fortune favored us there,” Alexander nodded.
“No. History favors those who make their own fortune. That you know. You’ve said it often enough.”
“I’ve said it through many lives,” Alexander smiled. “You know, Nazar, there’s a fair amount of Viking in you. You’d have made a wonderful pirate.”
Nazar beamed. “A Viking, eh? Well now, that is uncommonly kind of you. I’m forced to agree, as I’d look wonderfully fierce in horns!”