First Strike Read Online Free Page A

superiors,” he said, finally. “If we gave them enough of a bloody nose, they’d probably give up on trying to take our space.” He shrugged. “But it would have to be a   very   bloody nose to deter them from pressing on with the fight. Their Empress will be putting her own life at risk if she surrenders without their population being convinced of our superiority. Maybe less so if we start the war...”
    He looked up. “Are we so advanced that we can attack them even without superior numbers? I’ve heard rumours...”
    Sampson snorted. “Give us fifty years of uninterrupted development and we could roll over the Association any time we liked,” he said, dryly. “The Galactics don’t seem to have the same impulse we have to keep pushing the limits of technology. Most of them got their technology off the Association and never bothered to develop anything for themselves.”
    “But we don’t have fifty years,” Joshua said quietly. “Do we have enough to give them a bloody nose now?”
    “I think so,” Sampson admitted. “The technology we do have is enough to give them a handful of nasty surprises. But it won’t be enough to give us crushing superiority. I’d prefer to keep all of the new technology under wraps until we could deploy it against the entire Hegemony and smash it before it has a hope of developing its own technology, but we won’t have that time. After the first couple of battles... who knows?”
    A holographic chart appeared over the table. Joshua studied it thoughtfully, his mind instinctively mapping out the trade routes his small fleet used, moving from quantum gate to quantum gate. The economics of the gate network ensured that stars with their own gate received more traffic than stars without gates, but the network grew thinner out towards the Rim. Earth and the rest of the Nine Stars hadn’t received gates until they’d been constructed by human engineers. The Hegemony now owned Terra Nova’s gate, forcing human technicians to maintain it. It was quite possible that the Hegemony wouldn't be able to maintain the entire network if it did absorb large chunks of the Association.
    “We need to do something to keep the Hegemony off-balance,” Sampson said, seriously. His gaze never left Joshua’s face. “As you presumably know” – he smiled thinly – “the Hegemony actually has strong trading networks running through the more lawless regions of space here. They’ve settled some of their…   client   races on Tauscher, which is actually one of their more restless worlds. ONI estimates that the Hegemony actually needs to keep a major ground force on the planet just to keep the settlers under control.”
    “The other Galactics keep running in guns,” Joshua commented. Tauscher sat in the middle of the trading lanes, giving the other Galactics a vested interest in supporting the settlers to keep the Hegemony busy. There were several pirate bases nearby, largely ignored by the Hegemony because some of their backers were   from   the Hegemony. “I’ve never actually been there.”
    “We need you to go there now,” Sampson said. He tapped a switch and the display shifted, revealing a comparative fleet list. The Hegemony had more minor combatant units than the Federation Navy had   starships . “They can't pull too many of their superdreadnoughts off the borders without risking war with someone bigger and tougher than us, but they can detach light units and send them our way. We need to give them a major threat in their rear.”
    Joshua chuckled. “With my trading fleet? You   do   realise that only a couple of my ships are armed and   none   of them are genuine warships?”
    “We purchased a handful of ships from various sources over the years,” Sampson said. The Association attempted to register starships, but the registry was hopelessly out of date and often lost track of starships after they’d moved onto the third or fourth pair of hands. Whatever else could