The Disinherited by Steve White Read Free Book Online Page B

ships blundered into an outpost of their empire . . . an empire that has been slowly expanding for more centuries or millennia than we know, dedicated to imposing its own kind of unity on all the accessible galaxy. It is expansionism that has nothing to do with greed or glory, ambition or anger—rather, it has taken on a dour and leaden life of its own, and continues long after it has ceased to be profitable or even practical. Dismiss any thought of decadent overlords living in luxury on the labor of slaves. In fact, they've impoverished themselves to maintain a centralized state over a range whose frontiers take years of travel to reach even through the displacement points. Their empire is nothing more than a vast logistics base, a means that has become an end."
    DiFalco, like Kurganov, couldn't tear his eyes from the startlingly lifelike hologram. It wasn't precisely ugly, for ugliness implies deviation from an accepted and recognizable standard. Rather, there was a fundamental and indefinable wrongness about the thick two-and-a-half-meter image.
    "I assure you that you're seeing the species at its best—that is, at its most natural. This is a non-specialized leader type. The lower orders are bionically enhanced to make them efficient modular units of the runaway machine that is Korvaash civilization, and no resources are wasted on disguising the artificialities." Varien restored the star-diagram, to DiFalco's relief.
    "When they captured our scout ship, they captured our complete body of astrogational data—the concept of computer security was, of course, foreign to us. It was a windfall for them: all those displacement points we had already surveyed, plus our highly advanced civilization to be welded into the machine. Their unvarying rule mandates planetary extermination as the penalty for attacking or successfully rebelling against the Empire, but not for merely encountering it; we're earmarked for enslavement instead." Varien actually smiled. "The odd thing is that they're fair-minded by their own lights. Unfortunately, by our standards their lights are few and dim."
    Baleful red flares moved along one of the blue displacement-chains, branching off onto others as they made their cancerous way toward Tareil.
    "Their technology evidently stopped developing as soon as they discovered the secret of displacement points, for it is less sophisticated than ours—though more so than its apparent crudity would suggest. And the defender of a displacement point enjoys the advantage of knowing where the attacker must emerge, and at what heading. These factors have enabled us to delay their advance, even though we had to improvise defense forces after five centuries of peace. But their resources are effectively limitless, and their orientation military to the last detail of their lives. The result is not in doubt. We cannot stop them."
    For a long moment, they all sat in funereal silence. Then DiFalco finally decided what had been bothering him about the display.
    "Hey," he spoke suddenly. "All these little lights—your white ones and the red Korvaasha ones—haven't come anywhere near that route you pointed out earlier, the one that leads from Tareil to Alpha Centauri. What's the matter with those displacement points?"
    "The matter with them, Colonel, is that no one—Raehaniv or Korvaasha—knows about them. Except, of course, myself and my friends. Again, perhaps I'd better explain.
    "You'll remember that I invented the technique of displacement point travel. I also pioneered other applications of artificial gravity, although I hadn't originated it. Our economy is what I believe you would call liberal-capitalist: society has no objection to vast personal wealth as long as it is acquired by the rules, particularly the rules against technological innovation—but this latter restriction, as I mentioned, had been breaking down even before I came on the scene. To be brief, I am what you would call a multibillionaire several