And they hate us, he thought. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to a particularly unpopular cleric after they’d fled the homeworld. The ship’s doctor hadn’t been able to find all the bastard’s body parts. And eventually they turn on us.
He found himself mulling it over as he toured his ship from bow to stern, silently noting how efficient his crew had become over the last two months. He’d done everything in his power to encourage his people to talk and question, but . . . it hadn’t been easy. Too many questions were still a bad thing, according to the clerics. And yet . . . he’d heard the Commonwealth allowed its officers to question. And the Commonwealth had won the war.
If only we’d had more time, he thought, although he suspected that disaster had been inevitable from the start. Rumor claimed that the Commonwealth was growing stronger while the Theocracy had peaked out. Admiral Zaskar supposed the Tabernacle had decided it might be better to fight now, rather than risk war against a vastly superior foe at a later date. But they didn’t need to fight at all!
It wasn’t true, he admitted, if only to himself. The Theocracy had imposed itself on every world it had conquered, crushing their prewar institutions and grinding any resistance out of existence. Men had been forced to attend religious instruction, women had been stripped of all rights and forced to stay in their homes . . . children had been raised to be good little Theocrats, to the point where they believed they’d go to hell if they didn’t betray their parents. No one would want the Theocracy to occupy their world. Given a choice, the locals would have gone for the Commonwealth. The two systems simply could not coexist.
The galaxy wasn’t big enough for both of us, he thought as he gave orders for the fleet to set out before returning to his cabin. And one of us had to lose.
He sighed as he pulled up the planetary data for Falladine, Dorland, and Asher Dales. The data was out of date, of course, but he doubted things had changed that much. Asher Dales and Dorland couldn’t hope to muster resistance, even against a lone destroyer. He’d make them pay for betraying the Theocracy.
But tell me, a voice whispered at the back of his head, can you blame them?
No, Admiral Zaskar admitted. But does it matter?
He ran his hand through his hair. No, it didn’t matter. Moses might believe they could win, that they could reclaim their homeworld, but Admiral Zaskar knew too much to believe it. The odds of victory were very low. All that mattered was revenge. They would hurt the enemy until their luck finally ran out and they died.
The Commonwealth will not have an easy time here, he thought. That, at least, I promise them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ASHER DALES
“Captain,” Commander Patti Ludwig said. “We may have visitors.”
William looked up from his display. “Show me.”
Patti keyed her console. “Long-range sensors picked up an energy spike here,” she said, indicating a location two AU from Asher Dales. “It might have been a vortex.”
“Signal the planetary government, then order the remainder of the squadron to go into full stealth,” William ordered. An energy spike there suggested that someone was trying to sneak up on the planet. There was no reason for a friendly visitor to come out of hyperspace so far from Asher Dales. It would be grossly inefficient. “Launch two stealth probes and then take us into stealth too.”
“Aye, sir,” Patti said. The lights dimmed slightly, warning the crew that they were now in stealth mode. “Stealth engaged, sir.”
William sucked in his breath as he studied the sensor readings. They could be overreacting. It could be nothing more than a false alarm. But the survey of the system, in both realspace and hyperspace, hadn’t given him any reason to think there would be many random energy flickers so close to the star. Asher Dales was surprisingly quiet for a populated star system.
His lips twitched. There was a scientist who’d claimed, apparently seriously, that opening vortexes into hyperspace actually weakened the fabric of the universe itself. His fellows had scoffed—of course vortexes tore holes in the universe—but the scientist had insisted that the human race would pay a price for its deeds. One day, hyperspace might start flowing into realspace and then . . . well, no one actually knew. But the scientist insisted that the phenomena might bring civilization crashing down in ruins.
And no one really believes him, he thought as he watched the display. No one wants to consider that he might be right.
He dismissed the thought in irritation. He’d never liked waiting—he’d refrained from sounding battlestations to keep his crew from wearing themselves out before battle was actually joined—but there was no choice. There was no point in dispatching his other ships to hunt down the intruder. Someone who’d come out of hyperspace so far from the planet would probably be able to see Orbit Station, but it was unlikely that they’d observed the ships before he’d ordered them into stealth. And so . . .
His mind considered a list of possible options. The intruder, if there actually was an intruder, might just sweep through the system, then depart as stealthily as he’d arrived. That would be, in many ways, the worst possible case. William would never know the intruder had departed. And if someone had come out of hyperspace far too early, either through a navigational mishap or systems failure, they’d have started screaming for help by now. No, the intruder was definitely hostile. The unknown ship might already be crawling towards the planet, preparing to attack.
And they’ll see a defenseless globe, William thought. The handful of satellites orbiting Asher Dales were commercial models, not automated defense platforms. They
