The Oncoming Storm Read Online Free Page B

construction as it floated in high orbit around the planet. It looked crude, like a brick orbiting the planet, but she knew it was a technological marvel, allowing humanity to pulse messages through hyperspace without an open vortex. And yet she also knew that it was incredibly vulnerable. Dozens of automated Orbital Weapons Platforms surrounded the StarCom, while other orbital fortifications and gunboats were nearby, ready to protect it if necessary. Tyre was the only Commonwealth world that had more than one StarCom, but losing this one would be disastrous. They’d wind up dependent on starships to carry messages from star to star, crippling the speed of information as it flowed around the Commonwealth.
    She shook her head and then allowed her gaze to drift towards lights orbiting the planet. It was hard to see much at this distance, at least with the naked eye, but she knew what they were: giant orbital industrial nodes, space habitats, and shipyards, some of them owned by her family. Few human minds could truly comprehend the sheer scale of industry surrounding the planet—and yet it was smaller than Earth’s legendary asteroid belt. But Earth was gone now, the Sol System devastated by the Breakaway Wars. Tyre might be the single greatest industrial node remaining in human space.
    Unless the Theocracy has a larger industrial base of its own, she thought, morbidly. No one knew anything about the internal layout of Theocratic space, at least nothing more detailed than they had known prior to the Breakaway Wars. Most of the worlds within their sphere had been stage-one colonies, barely capable of supporting themselves, but a handful had funded their own settlement and produced small industrial bases of their own. How far had they progressed, she asked herself, under Theocratic rule? There was no way to know.
    She shook her head as they flew away from the planet, the twinkling lights blurring into the ever-present stars, then turned her attention to the files her father had given her. Much of the data was, as she’d expected, drawn from naval databases, but some came from independent civilian analysts. Naval officers tended to scorn; Kat, who had seen some of the analysts who worked for her father, knew better. Civilians often had a different—and sometimes illuminating—way of looking at the universe. It was, at the very least, an alternate point of view.
    The first file tabulated shipping losses along the border. Kat worked her way through it and slowly realized that her father had, if anything, underestimated the situation. The losses were tiny in absolute terms, but they were steadily gnawing away at the Commonwealth’s merchant marine. It would be years before the big corporations were undermined fatally by their losses, yet the smaller companies and the independents were in big trouble. She was astonished that the problem hadn’t made the mainstream media, no matter what the bigger corporations said. But then, it would be a brave editor who went against the will of his ultimate superior.
    If the losses are made public, insurance rates will soar, Kat thought. She could see why her father and the other CEOs wanted the matter to remain quiet. But sooner or later, someone is going to notice anyway. Or are we compensating the colonies for destroyed ships out of our own pockets?
    The next file detailed other problems along the border. It wasn’t easy to mine large tracts of hyperspace—energy storms and gravity waves ensured the mines wouldn’t stay in place for very long—but the Theocracy had been doing it, showing an astonishing persistence and a great deal of paranoia. Kat couldn’t help agreeing with the analyst’s conclusion: no one, not even the most bloody-minded state in human history, would expend so many resources on mining hyperspace unless they had something to hide.
    Or perhaps they don’t want us to spread ideas about freedom into their space, Kat thought, remembering a handful of refugees she’d