Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [107]
Now, Picard thought, for the first time with a touch of pity, I understand the awful overengining of starships in this universe. When all you had to do, when all you knew how to do, was find new worlds to conquer, and conquer them, you needed speed and power more than anything else. And longevity. Heaven only knew how long some of these ships’ missions actually were. Some of the farthest-traveling ships, if he was any judge, might have been traveling for—he shook his head. Thirty years? Forty? He shook his head, wondering whether in such cases assassination of officers above you might not actually be understandable. Either because you were tired of looking at them and dealing with their behavior for year after weary year, or because you could see no other way of advancement.
He saw now the nature of the trap into which the Empire had fallen. From what little he had read of its history, he could understand quite well what had happened. They had spread as widely as they could through the Galaxy and conquered everything in sight. They had subjugated every sentient species, destroyed all the ones that would not submit or were too alien to negotiate with them or couldn’t understand at all what the Empire wanted. They had now succeeded in exterminating, or dominating, almost all life with which they had come in contact. And at the end of it all, they had been stopped, not by any ethical or moral force, uprearing in indignation … but by the simple, quiet, patient dark, in which everything ended sooner or later.
Beyond the edges of the now-separated Sag Arm, in all directions, reached great starless deserts of empty space—well, empty enough for Picard, though Hwiii might argue the point. The emptiness reached out on both sides—twelve or thirteen thousand light-years to the next arm in either direction. Above the arm, and below it, was nothing— unless you counted the Magellanic Clouds, a million and a half light-years to the Galactic south. The arm itself was cut off from its coreward “parent” branch by a gap thousands of light-years wide. The Empire had been quarantined by the Galaxy itself. Picard looked at the map, judging the time it would take to cross even the smallest of those gaps, toward the core. Even with their engines, he thought, with their durability —even with ships running smaller crews, such as this one—no ship from the Empire can now possibly reach any new, inhabited world in less than ten years. Possibly twenty … and at high-warp speeds. And even these ships won’t take that for long. He shook his head. For these people, there are literally no more worlds to conquer.
He remembered Worf saying, “How can it be otherwise?” This was the final truth of the prophecy at which Kirk and Spock had each arrived independently: an empire based solely on expansion fueled by conquest will conquer until it dooms itself … and this one had.
They had nowhere else to go. They had looked out into the darkness and finally seen the whirlwind they would soon reap. They had spent more than a hundred years teaching all their people the ruthlessness that had to be channeled inffconquest. When there was nothing left to exercise that ruthlessness upon, those people would turn upon each other. The Empire would tear itself apart, die at its own hands, mad.
But they were survivors. Picard knew—few better—the lengths to which desperation will drive any organism, and an organization sooner than a single man. He stood up and walked slowly over to those windows, ignoring again the sight of the disordered and empty bed. In the past decade, or two, the Empire must have been brought most forcefully to this decision as it came up against