Armies clashed, armed with strange, powerful weapons. Machines swarmed through the air, ran in sleek low-slung deadliness over the earth. Men died, Protégé soldiers, civilians.
the new nobility would fight among themselves, first with protégé armies. rivalry would build.
A long sleek shape dropped on a pillar of white fire into a desert landscape. Landing legs extended, and a hatchway opened.
technological progress would continue to an interplanetary-transport level, then fossilize. none of the contending factions on visager could afford to divert sufficient resources to reestablish stardrive.
A huge city, buildings reaching for the sun. It took a moment for John to recognize it as Oathtaking, and then only by the shape of the circular harbor and the volcanoes that ringed it. Suddenly one of the giant towers vanished in an eye-searing flash.
one party among the nobility attempts to use the fallen chosen lines against the other. instead they rise against the nobility planet-wide, attempting to restore the old system. the protégés revolt. maximum entropy results.
Rings of violet fire expanded over the sites of cities, rising until the fireballs spread out against the top of the atmosphere.
probability 87%, ±6%, Center added.
John sat, shaken. I’m just a kid, he thought. Not even good enough to make the Test of Life, a gimp. What’m I supposed to do about all this?
“Why can’t you do something?” he asked. “You came from the stars, you’ve got another Federation—land a starship and tell people what to do!”
“We can’t,” Raj said. “First, we don’t have the resources. There are only four worlds in the Federation, so far. There are thousands needing attention. And even if we could, that would just set us up for another cycle of empire, decline and war like the First Federation. The new worlds have to climb out on their own with minimal interference, and do so in the right way.”
correct, Center said. a true federation may achieve stability in an dynamic and mobile sense. a hegemony imposed from without could not.
“You want me to . . . somehow to stop the Chosen from taking things over,” John said.
He felt a flush of excitement. It was a little like what he’d felt last week, when the housemaid looked back over her shoulder at him as she plumped the pillows and smiled, and he knew he could right there and then if he wanted to. But it was stronger, deeper. He could affect the destiny of a whole planet. Save the whole world. He, John Hosten with a pimple on his nose and a foot that still ached when he used it too hard, despite all the surgeons could do.
specifically, you will act to strengthen the republic of santander, Center said. with my advice and that of raj Whitehall, you will rise quickly and be in a position to influence policy. such intervention will drastically increase the probability of the republic emerging as the dominant factor in the cycle of wars which will begin in the next two decades.
“The Republic will conquer . . . unite the world?”
no. that probability is less than 12%, ±3. observe:
Troops in the brown uniforms and round hats of the Republic marched out of a city: Arena, in the Sierra. Crowds lined the streets, hooting and whistling. Sometimes they threw things.
santander lacks the organizational infrastructure to forcefully integrate foreign territories.
“No staying power,” Raj amplified. “They can get into wars, and if you push them to the wall they can mobilize like hell, but when it’s less vital than that, they don’t like paying the butcher’s bill or the money either. They’ll get into wars occasionally, and piss away men and equipment and then decide it’s no fun and go home.”
correct. santander will exercise a general hegemony, increasingly cultural and economic rather than military. this will inaugurate a period of intense competition within a framework of minimal government. such episodes are unstable but tend to rapid technological innovation.
“The Republic will go into space because it gives you as much glory as war and it’s less frustrating,” Raj explained.
observe:
A cylinder taller than a building lifted into the air in a blue-white discharge. The next view was strange: a white-streaked blue disk floating in utter blackness, ringed by unwinking stars. It wasn’t until John saw the outline of a continent that he realized he was seeing Visager from space.