My second 'more likely than a virus' story:)
[Oops, it got longer than I thought when I started it!]
How the Imperium Fell: Now the Truth can be told
1116, A cold planet in the Swordworlds: Emperor Strephon and The Chairman of
the High Council for the Zhodani Consulate meet in the utmost secrecy at the
request of the Emperor. In 1114 the Consulate had sent a secret delegation to
Capitol/Core to inform the Emperor of the result of a several hundred years
long project of theirs.
To make a long story short, the Consulate had long ago found an Ancient
artifact in the ruins on Zhdants moon(1). The artifact was a device that
enhanced and focused the innate psionic power of teleporters so that one
person marginally skilled in teleportation could teleport himself with
full equipment and up to five (depending on strength) non-psionic individuals
or warbots over interplanetary distances. Furthermore the device automatically
compensated for differences in vector and potential energy.
Now the Zhodanis, in a manner similar to when the Imperium copied the
first black globe, had managed to start producing copies of the device.
The Zhodani delegation to Core informed the Imperium of this up to then
highly secret development and assured that it would be used in the case of
an Imperial attack upon the Consulate or with the consulate allied states.
Their claims were proven in a demonstration where a volunteer Zhodani and
five warbot dummies teleported from a Zho cruiser to a Imperial cruiser
over Jewell while both ships were engaged in heavy maneuvering on
interplanetary range from eachother.
The Imperial High Command was terrified. The fact that the Imperial
defence budget consumed 50% of the Imperial GNP had been hidden by creative
accounting by the IISS and the Department of Finance intentionally giving
too high figures for planetary GNP and the Navy and the Megacorps officially
claiming that the military ships were incredbly cheaper than in reality.
Originally just a few percent went to military ends, but the several hundred
years long arms-race with the Zhodanis had led to a gradual increase.
As to not alert the Zhodanis and other enemies that the Imperiums economy
too weak to sustain this level of spending a policy of forging GNP and Ship
costs begun and while the Zhodani soon penetrated it it still fooled the
Solomani and other enemies.
Emperor Strephon immediately ordered that a countermeasure be found and
installed on all Imperial warships. A countermeasure already existed:
Additional psionic shielding installed in all ship, but it was horribly
expensive. The already existant shielding in the ships was one of the
secret posts in the Navy budget that sucked up immense amounts of money
for repairs and maintainance of the frail and experimental electronics.
Now the economists revealed to Strephon that the Imperial economy simply
couldn't handle the strain of equipping all, or even the most important
ships with this new and even more expensive and difficult-to-maintain
anti-teleport psionic shielding. It would collapse totally.
Forced into a corner by the "The Zho's *will* attack us, it is just a
matter of time, and any peace-treaty on their part is a scam, so we *must*
have this new shield" faction in the high Imperial Nobility and Military
led by Dulinor of Illelish and the economic realities Strephon had no choise
but to start playing his trump cards.
The first card played was the Darrian Option: A sizeable fraction of the
Corridor fleet got a transfer order to the Solomani Rim while the similar
number of ships in the Rim got a transfer order to Corridor. This was
officially called a 'unit exchange manuever'. In reality it travelled towards
the Darrians but stopped in deep space outside the border. A fleet courier
continued on and delivered a message from Emperor Strephon to the Darrians.
The message was that unless the Darrians attacked a long list of Zhodani
systems with their 'Maghiz device' a.k.a the Star Trigger, elements of the
Imperial Corridor Fleet would sterilize all Darrian worlds with nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons. The Darrian response was that unless certain
coded and outwardly normal messages continued to be transmitted over the
Imperial Xboat Network from Darrian to certain places in the Imperium,
preplaced Maghiz devices would be triggered on several places in the
*Imperium*.
The fleet left.
The second card was the Ultraviolet Option, an extension of the old Project
Blackheart. Several imperial deep penetration fleet intruders equipped with
non-standard propulsions: Jumpdrives who's sinks could be charged by enormous
deployable solar arrays thus removing the need for travelleing close to
planets would enter the Consulate using their solar-arrays to complement
wilderness refuellings on cometary nucleii in interstellar space and in
surprise attacks bombard the major Zhodani HiPop worlds with nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons.
Just a few weeks after the five ships had departed a new delegation from
the Consulate arrived at Regina bringing proof that all five ships had been
intercepted and destroyed before even leaving the Spinward Marches sector.
Their message was that "We expected as much from you untrustworthy Imperials,
but we will overlook it. But try something more and we will crush you."
Strephon had secretly been on Regina to direct first the Darrian option and
then the Ultraviolet option without the time delays, and he now requested
an immediate summit. The location agreed on was the Sworldworlds. Zhodani-
allies but almost in the Imperial sphere of influence.
Emperor Strephon travelled there to try to cut a deal not too unfavourable
to the Imperium, but at least one person in his entourage viewed this as an
capitulation and spilled the beans. Word about what was happening spread
with a 2Jump6 fleet courier across the Rift to Illelish where Dulinor put
the plan he had prepared on the off chance that Strephon "chickened out" as
he put it.
So while Emperor Strephon signed an agreement in which the Imperium
permanently gave up all claims for any area spinward of the current positions
in the Marches and coreward of Deneb and spinward of the Windhorn rift,
reduced the size of the fleet with 75% and declared the Spinward Marches as
a demilitarized zone, Archduke Dulinor travelled towards Core to perform
a coup.
Strephon got wind of the assassination when his ship was attacked in
Corridor and set off for his retreat position to rally his forces. Meanwhile
Dulinors coup had run into trouble. His co-conspirator Lucan who had
promised to help back Dulinor by preparing incriminating evidence of
Strephons 'treason' in exchange for the position of Archduke of Deneb had
all the while planned to dispose of Varian, rally the Imperial Marine Guards
to crush Dulinor and the Illelish Guards and assume the throne himself.
So when Dulinors aide came to fetch Lucan and get the datafiles from him Lucan
killed him along with Varian and several others.
Dulinor had by the way planned to dispose of Lucan as soon as he had
the evidence he planned to use during his adress to the populace after
seating himslef in the Iridium Throne. When he never got the evidence the
plan fell apart and he had to invent some other justification on the spot for
assassinating "Strephon". He then left the palace for Illelish to rally his
fleets around himself and deal with that upstart Lucan.
During the intense civil war that followed both Lucan and Dulinor squeezed
every last quarter credit out of every world they could lay their hands on.
The reason for this was that they needed their money to prepare their
fleets for the expected Zhodani attack, an attack that never came. When the
Imperium fragmented the Conslate decided that the danger from the Imperium
was gone for the forseable future and sent a messenger to Norris where they
told him that if he'd feel like breaking the agreement by not implementing
DMZ they would have nothing against it, since they wanted their flank
protected. But if he ever tried to move against the Consulate...
The Imperial Economy that had a hard time supporting the enormous military
spendings normally couldn't hope to survive the Civil War when everybody
raised it's percentage of the GNP to 70% or more. It broke down as the
Imperium fragmented. Lucan was hit the less because while he had
raised the secret taxes like everybody else except Norris, he had left the
actual economical management to the experts, unlike for example Dulinor that
had tried to control every last credit with disastrous results. The
production fell and the navies started to cannibalize commercial shipping
when they couldn't afford to repair their hideously expensive ships due
to the depression.
As the productivity went down, the taxes went up to support the expensive
navies and as the taxes went up, the productivity went down until vast
areas of the area that had formerly been the Third Imperium lay without
naval protection and outside the routs of the merchant ships.
(1)This device was in fact the reason for the devastating plague that hit
Zhdant after their first moon landings: The meeting between moon and Zhdant
chirpers (the latter members of the expedition) activated the plague. During
it's incubation time it was brought down to Zhdant by humans and chirpers
testing the device. Even though they knew what the device did the moon-
chirpers lacked the technical skill to energize the device themselves before
the Zhodanis landed.
When the first chirpers begun to die on the moon it was too late: The plague
had spread to the Zhdant chirper population and soon it targetted the humans
on both Zhdant and the moon. No living thing survived on the moon and on
Zhdant all chirpers and 90% of the humans died.
- -bertil-
- --
"No, it isn't stolen. If I had added a part about how Margaret holds a
speech from a gravtank outside the Moot, *then* it would have been stolen."
"Hmm, perhaps I should post it to alt.conspiracy too?"