Hegemony Resurgent Book I: Exodus

Inglesmond, March 5, 2785:  Kline Shipping, Penthouse.

“Your daughter is here, sir.”

“Send her in, Darcy.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jackson frowned as he looked out over the blazing cityscape, finally  looking over at the door, waiting for his daughter to come in. It opened and he was once again struck by how much she looked like her mother.

But there was no sense woolgathering—not if he wanted June to live longer than her mother had.

“Dad, I hate to be annoying, but could this have been done by vid? We’re up to our elbows with the emergency rearmament program, they’ve got everyone at the university working over time and—“

“June…” Jackson shook his head. “Sit down, please. I need to tell you something.”

June frowned. “Dad?”

“Please.”

She sighed, and sat down, running her hands through her hair in the sign of nerves she hated so much. “Okay, what is it?”

“Inglesmond is doomed.”

She blinked. “Um, things are—“

“You know that my company always had to be a little more… clever. We were never the big shipping firms, and I spent a lot of money on our intelligence gathering. Minoru Kurita is going to go for the First Lordship—maybe next year, maybe this year. The others will follow. And without Kerensky, without the SLDF…” He shook his head.

“We survived Amaris, Dad.”

“Because Amaris wanted to hold the Hegemony and there were two sides, him and Kerensky. Here?  There are five sides. And none of them have enough power to overwhelm the others.” He shook his head. “Intentions and Predictions may not be military, and they didn’t see exactly what happened, but I had quiet notes that the League was about to self destruct two years before the coup. The SLDF intelligence had their own worries but… well, Cameron.”

“How does this spelled doomed?”

“Even with all the damage Amaris and Kerensky did, the Hegemony has as much or more, and more advanced industrial capacity than the house lords. Even our world has bigger shipyards than all but the largest house shipyards. Whoever gets us, is a long way towards winning.”

“But nobody can…” His daughter wasn’t stupid. “So they’ll destroy it rather than let someone else have it.”

“And they’ll get more desperate. If even two of the houses allied, this would be over in a year. But they won’t. Everyone wants to be king. And we can’t hold them off. We don’t have the strategic depth and Kerensky left with the only force that might have stopped them.”

“So what do we do?”

“How’s the Long Jump project coming along?”

She blinked. “Um, the one that reduced the last test ship’s KF core to junk? It’s making lots of junk.”

“But can it work?”

“Sort of…maybe, but it won’t work more than once.”

“My daughter, giving up?”

“Do you want the math or the idiot’s guide?”

“I flunked math.”

“Fine. The longer a jump the more… fluctuations in the core. Damping them out puts more stress on the core, that’s why 30 light years has been the limit, and why misjumps sometimes get you further—but wreck your KF systems. In this case, the KF core would be wrecked. The math is super complex, even for me, but it’s conclusive. There’s no way to damp out the fluctuations.”

“How much do you need to modify the drive?”

“Not much, it needs a LF battery, but the tonnage of the new systems in negligible… and did I mention it wrecks the drive, because I think I mentioned it wrecked the drive, and nobody is going to let you take jumpships, anyway.”

"I’m not taking them,” Jackson touched a button and the image came up.

“Haven?” 

“I bought it for scrap.” Jackson said. “Turns out when everything’s going to hell and Amaris’ response to habitats that don’t surrender fast enough is nukes, all the rich people who wanted to get off of Haven were willing to sell cheap.”

“Cheap. First of all, dad, it’s not a jumpship. Secondly, it’s four million tons—“

“Oh my daughter, not even out of her twenties and already suffering from the visionary myopia modern education puts in—“

“Dad, I can throw this glass at you.”

“That’s the other problem with kids, no respect for their elders. Fine, why is the limit for any theoretical jumpship 2.5 million tons?”

“Because as you get beyond that, instabilities in the core will lead to fracturing after even a few jumps.”

“And how many could a four million ton ship get?”

June frowned, flipped out her noteputer, muttered… “Two, maybe three.”

“And how many long jumps?”

“One, and—“ She blinked, stared at her father, who nodded encouragingly. “The long jump would wreck the core, so the problem with duration isn’t an issue and…”

“And a ship that large can fabricate a new core from the remains, and even if it can’t…” Jackson shrugged. “Self-contained, self-sustaining biosphere. We could slowboat it if we can’t fix the drive.”

“Or die horribly when the thing misjumps…we’d have to put the drive core along the core lighting systems…”

“I fear we’re going to die horribly anyway, if we stay here.”

“You really think it’s going to be that bad?”

“No. It will be worse.” He shook  his head. “And by the time everyone realizes how bad it is…they’ll be in too deep to back out.”

“Fine. But if we die, I told you so.”

“I’ll take that bet.”

****

Haven

It had taken nearly three days to get to Haven. Dad had ordered it boosted out of orbit, and even jumpships, with their .1 G station keeping drives could get very far under continual thrust. Haven was nestled near to an asteroid, the completed core shrouded in its protictive shields, while it was prepared to be mounted inside the central core.

June was there to take the measurements needed for the long jump modifications which needed an analysis of the mass outline of the complete ship. Her team was also there helping mount the 80 jump collars.

She was sitting on  a porch of one of the little cabins the rich loved. Above her, she could see the other side of the cylinder, park lands and little lakes dividing up the homes and faux villages.  She’d wondered if they were going to tear them down—but no.

Because the limits of the ship weren’t space, they were life support. There was no sense in sticking people in like kindling.

By the time they were finished, the technical displacement would be over 8 million tons, with the reinforcement needed to keep the habitat from flying apart.

Doing this on a warship would be insane—but spacestations were built to different standards.

Even if the core doesn’t kill us, stress on the station frame…

Two or three jumps. Maybe four, before they started risking the station. And that many only because they were budgeting months between regular jumps, let alone the long jumps which would require them to more or less pull the core and refabricate it.

“And we return to our breaking story! Minoru Kurita has declared himself First Lord of the Star League! Joining us is our blue ribbon panel of experts to talk about what this could mean!”

“Well, Jennifer, one thing it means is there will be a lot more bluster and saber rattling.” One man said in a measured voice. “But we have to ask whether or not anyone is going to be willing ot actually engage in a full scale conflict over this. I think, what we’re moving into is a period of increased border conflicts, as leaders show their people that they’re unwilling to back down…and then after that everyone will get down to negotiating.”

“I see. What about you, Councilwoman Janks?”

“Inglesmond needs to be prepared to defend itself. However, I find it unlikely we will face serious attacks—we are a  powerful, industrialized world. Put simply, none of the House Lords would be willing to let another one make enroads in this region, and so we can depend on them to assist us, out of self interest if nothing else.”

“I see! Well, on another note, it looks like this anouncement has spurred the markets, and stockholders can look to a very good, 2786…”

She turned the show off. Then June looked down at the message from dad.

One word.

Hurry.

“June, presuming this works, we have the max range figures.”

“How bad?”

“1400 light years is pressing it.”  The tech shrugged.”Beyond that, there’d be no way to effectively control the destination so we could end up anywhere…”

But fourteen hundred… over forty six jumps, if you accounted for downtime, more than a year, even if they left a trail. It was enough.

“We have candidates for the jump,’ she said. “Start running the numbers.”  The Star League had telescope arrays, visible light and radio alike with kilometer wide arrays. Outside of worlds shielded by nebulas, there probably wasn’t a single system within 4,000 light years that wasn’t charted. Dad had candidates each one suited to their standards.

But which one they were going to would be decided at the jump.

Another method to make certain nobody could follow. June opened up her noteputer again, and noticed another story.

Nukes were being used on the frontier between the Combine and Lyrans… no news on who.

But if they’re using them just on the frontier… She shook her head. They had more work to do.

*****

“Maybe I should go with you.” Mark glanced at Jackson They were both sitting on the porch of one of Jackson’s rural houses. It was dusk, the warm air full of the sounds of insects. “You were always a smart SOB, and one thing you knew was when to back out—and you’re selling your family’s company. Everything it took three hundred years to make, and you’re selling it for space stations, hardware… And people.”

“Do you want to come?” Jackson asked his competitor.

“Nah. Mary’s buried here, God rest her soul. Whatever happens, Inglesmond is my home. But this…”

“What?”

“You’re not getting everyone you want, lots of people figure they can ride this out. Maybe even make money on it. So now you want me to convince the Department of Child Welfare to let you bring a shit-ton of kids up to Haven, for… education.”

“Can’t hurt.”

“And when the ship jumps?” At Jackson’s look, Mark shrugged. “I’m not an idiot and I did digging. Nobody else cares because you own it, and you haven’t been pulling military equipment. But… I can do this, but what are the kids for.”

“A new world.” Jackson said. “Mark, you may not believe me, but things are going to go bad. We’re leaving. AS far as we can get away from the whole Goddamned rotted structure.  And if things go as bad as I think they are, there isn’t gonna be any money for kids with nobody to watch after them. They’ll either be drafted, or just abandoned.”

“Mmmm…” Mark paused. “And with you, will they be cared for or used as cheap labor.”

“You think I’d do that, Mark?”

“No. But I need to hear it from you. If I do this, whatever happens to those kids is on me. I need your word.”

“You’re too damned honorable for your own good.” Jackson nodded. “My word, Mark.”

“Good. I’ll talk to my people in the government. Now let’s eat. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah.” Jackson nodded, looking at his rival and friend. And I’ll never see you again. Maybe I’m wrong and you’ll be sitting here twenty years from now, everything fine, wondering where Jackson’s panicked flight took him.

Lord. It isn’t too much to ask for that to be the case, is it? Please let him still be here, twenty years from now.