bound to be, given that his race held most of the cards, and any degree of freedom would be an improvement over what the Hudathans had prior to signing.
The key to the agreement’s appeal, if there was any, would be in the treaty’s clarity and simplicity. The essence of the document was that the Hudathans would resume their status as a sovereign state, would be entitled to a representative in the senate, would be free to engage in nonmilitary commerce with other members of the Confederacy, would pay their fair share of taxes, and, with one significant exception, would be subject to the mutual defense pact. The qualifier, the all important restriction, stated that the Hudathans would not be allowed to build, maintain, or operate a spacegoing navy.
The responsibility for transporting Hudathan troops to and from their home planet or colonies, should they be permitted to retain some of the worlds previously under their control, would fall to other spacefaring races such as the humans and Ramanthians. Because without a navy, and the independence that went with it, there would be very little chance that the Hudathans would try their hands at conquest.
This was a bitter pill to swallow, one that not only hurt the Hudathan’s pride, and made them dependent on other races. Something their inborn sense of survival argued against.
But facts were facts, and DomaSa, who had spent a great deal of time observing the senate, knew that this was the best deal he and his people were likely to get for the next hundred years or so, and it certainly beat the alternative, sitting on Hudatha until their own combative culture turned inward and destroyed them, or the planet was torn apart. Besides, even the most superficial study of human history revealed what extremely short memories they had, a fact that augured well for the future.
And so it was that an agreement was reached, that ChienChu and DomaSa returned to space, and that Admiral Dero Delany Kagan IF remained behind.
The marker, which stood alone on the rocky, often windswept plain, was cut from hull metal, and bore the best inscription that ChienChu could come up with. A poet named Carl Sandberg provided the words:
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo, Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
6
Power never takes a back step—only in the face of more power .
Malcom X
Malcom X Speaks
Standard year 1965
Somewhere beyond the Rim, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings
Far out in space, beyond the largely imaginary border that the Confederacy referred to as the Rim, the very fabric of space and time was momentarily altered. Hundreds of ships appeared, glittered like minnows, and swam through the surrounding darkness.
The Hoon’s scout ships detected the other fleet the moment it dropped hyper, issued an electronic challenge, and were answered in kind. Recognition codes were received, analyzed, and validated. Signals were sent, courses were altered, formations were merged, and for the first time in more than two hundred years the fleet was whole.
Whole, but divided, since the original Hoon, which had divided itself into two identical halves in order to cover more space and increase the odds of finding the Thraki, had yet to reintegrate itself. A process of highspeed bilateral updating, which if successful, would result in an artificial intelligence that incorporated all the knowledge and experience each entity had gained during the years of separation. A substantial gain that could lead to a high chance of success.
However, the same minds that had granted the computer the capacity to split itself in two had enacted certain safeguards as well. One such safeguard included a complicated matrix of truth tables intended to ensure that neither of the two halves had been corrupted during their years apart.
Neither entity felt any qualms regarding the test, not at first anyway, viewing the process as entirely natural.
Hoon number one,
The key to the agreement’s appeal, if there was any, would be in the treaty’s clarity and simplicity. The essence of the document was that the Hudathans would resume their status as a sovereign state, would be entitled to a representative in the senate, would be free to engage in nonmilitary commerce with other members of the Confederacy, would pay their fair share of taxes, and, with one significant exception, would be subject to the mutual defense pact. The qualifier, the all important restriction, stated that the Hudathans would not be allowed to build, maintain, or operate a spacegoing navy.
The responsibility for transporting Hudathan troops to and from their home planet or colonies, should they be permitted to retain some of the worlds previously under their control, would fall to other spacefaring races such as the humans and Ramanthians. Because without a navy, and the independence that went with it, there would be very little chance that the Hudathans would try their hands at conquest.
This was a bitter pill to swallow, one that not only hurt the Hudathan’s pride, and made them dependent on other races. Something their inborn sense of survival argued against.
But facts were facts, and DomaSa, who had spent a great deal of time observing the senate, knew that this was the best deal he and his people were likely to get for the next hundred years or so, and it certainly beat the alternative, sitting on Hudatha until their own combative culture turned inward and destroyed them, or the planet was torn apart. Besides, even the most superficial study of human history revealed what extremely short memories they had, a fact that augured well for the future.
And so it was that an agreement was reached, that ChienChu and DomaSa returned to space, and that Admiral Dero Delany Kagan IF remained behind.
The marker, which stood alone on the rocky, often windswept plain, was cut from hull metal, and bore the best inscription that ChienChu could come up with. A poet named Carl Sandberg provided the words:
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo, Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
6
Power never takes a back step—only in the face of more power .
Malcom X
Malcom X Speaks
Standard year 1965
Somewhere beyond the Rim, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings
Far out in space, beyond the largely imaginary border that the Confederacy referred to as the Rim, the very fabric of space and time was momentarily altered. Hundreds of ships appeared, glittered like minnows, and swam through the surrounding darkness.
The Hoon’s scout ships detected the other fleet the moment it dropped hyper, issued an electronic challenge, and were answered in kind. Recognition codes were received, analyzed, and validated. Signals were sent, courses were altered, formations were merged, and for the first time in more than two hundred years the fleet was whole.
Whole, but divided, since the original Hoon, which had divided itself into two identical halves in order to cover more space and increase the odds of finding the Thraki, had yet to reintegrate itself. A process of highspeed bilateral updating, which if successful, would result in an artificial intelligence that incorporated all the knowledge and experience each entity had gained during the years of separation. A substantial gain that could lead to a high chance of success.
However, the same minds that had granted the computer the capacity to split itself in two had enacted certain safeguards as well. One such safeguard included a complicated matrix of truth tables intended to ensure that neither of the two halves had been corrupted during their years apart.
Neither entity felt any qualms regarding the test, not at first anyway, viewing the process as entirely natural.
Hoon number one,
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