Firstborn Page 5

  Dennison closed his eyes. The words seemed foolish. Better to be Dennison the failure than Varion the genius?

  What could I possibly have that Varion does not?

  Dennison hesitated. Around him there were sounds—breathing, grumbling, called commands. One of the Admirals cursed loudly.

  Dennison didn’t open his eyes. That Admiral’s curses—he knew what had caused them. “The battle for Tightendow Prime,” Dennison said. “Varion just took the eastern fighter flank, didn’t he?”

  “Actually, yes,” the emperor said.

  Dennison stood with eyes closed. “On the fifth screen. He is pressing toward the gunships in the western screen-sector. He is taking them now, though moments ago they seemed safe. On the first monitor, he is pushing toward the flagship. It will fall within ten minutes. On the ninth screen, Taurtan, he is leading your fighters into a trap. They are being cut off somehow—I don’t know how, but I know he is doing it. They are lost.”

  Silence.

  “On the eighth screen, the planet Falna, he is collapsing the front line. After that, he will find a way to push the gunships into retreat, breaking their firing lines and opening the way for his fighters.”

  “Yes,” the emperor whispered.

  Dennison opened his eyes. “I don’t know how he will do these things, your majesty. That is the difference between him and me. Somehow, he can make his dreams into realities.” Dennison turned toward the emperor. “Do we still have the bug in Varion’s klage transmitter?”

  “For all the good it does,” the emperor said. “We discover his orders only a few moments before they are carried out. Perhaps that has allowed us to survive this long.”

  “Just before he died,” Dennison said, “Kern told me that you might have found a way to fake the transmissions coming in and out of Varion’s ship.”

  “The long distance ones, yes,” the emperor said, frowning. “But it’s far better just to spy on him. If we started fabricating messages, it wouldn’t take long for Varion and his men to discover the trick. We’d trade a long-term tactical advantage for a few minutes of confusion.”

  “Your majesty,” Dennison said, “there is no more long-term. If Varion wins this day, then we are all dead.”

  The emperor’s frown deepened. He sat in thought for a moment, rubbing his chin. “What do you propose?” he finally asked.

  What am I proposing? Dennison thought. I’ve failed enough. Why pull the entire empire down with me?

  He started to tell the emperor he’d meant nothing by the comments, but something made him stop. Optimism and pessimism. He’d learned many things from watching Varion—tactics, strategy, how to manipulate a squadron. But it seemed he’d never learned the one thing that was most important.

  Confidence.

  “I’ll need a crew of technicians and aides,” Dennison said, “and these ten monitors beside your throne. Oh, and a tech who is familiar with that bugging system we have on Varion’s klage.”

  The emperor continued to sit in his command chair for a moment, looking up at Dennison appraisingly. Then, surprisingly, he stood, calling to one of the admirals. A few moments later a young technician was ushered into the command center.

  “You can hack the traitor’s klage data lines?” Dennison asked the thin man. “Sending false information to Varion’s ship?”

  The technician nodded

  “How long can you keep it up?” Dennison asked.

  “It depends,” the technician said. “He has no reason to suspect a bug in his transmitter—he doesn’t know about the technology. But changing his information will create some interference that his technicians should notice and pick apart. If I’d have to guess, I’d say maybe a half hour or so.”

  Dennison nodded thoughtfully.

  “My lord,” the tech continued. “It won’t be a very useful half hour. We can send false messages in, and we can block the real transmissions from his admirals. But we can’t stop orders going out from the Voidhawk, so the nine other battle groups will soon realize Varion no longer knows what is truly happening, and is relying on bad information.”

  “No matter,” Dennison said. “Prepare to hack the line. I want you to make it seem that the fleets in the other nine battles are doing exactly as I say. Instead of the real reports Varion’s commanders are sending, give him the fabrications I describe.”

  The technician nodded, gathering a small crew and moving to a set of consoles at the side of the room.

  “What good will this do us, Dennison?” the emperor asked quietly. “Buy us a little time, perhaps? Sow a little confusion?”

  “Yes,” Dennison said. “Make certain your admirals make good use of it.”

  “What of the tenth battle?” the emperor asked. “That’s the one where Varion himself commands in person. We can’t fool his own eyes—and that battle is happening the closest to the Point. If he wins there, he comes here, and none of our fleets will be able to stop him.”

  Dennison turned, glancing at the tenth map. The Voidhawk, Varion’s own flagship, flew there in its glory. Dennison looked away from the ship, scanning the screen, searching for a particular squadron of fighters. They were always at the forefront of the battles where Varion himself was present. It was led by a particular pilot: the woman who had walked beside Varion on Kress.

  Dennison walked over to the admiral who was contending with Varion in this tenth battle. “My lord, I need you to do something for me. Take five squadrons of fighters, and make certain to destroy every single fighter in that unit at mark 566.”

  “Five squadrons?” the admiral asked with surprise.

  Dennison nodded. “Nothing else is as important as destroying those fighters.”

  The admiral looked questioningly over at the emperor, who nodded. The admiral turned to obey the order, and the aging monarch looked uncertainly at Dennison, who returned to his side. Then the emperor stepped aside, gesturing toward his command seat, which sat before the ten smaller screens. “You’ll need this.”

  Dennison paused, then quietly sat down.

  “I’m ready,” the technician said.

  “Interrupt the feed,” Dennison said, taking a deep breath, “and show Varion exactly what I tell you.”

  The man did so, and Dennison took control of nine battles. Or, at least, he took fake control of them. The blips on his screens became lies. Fabrications, sent to Varion as a poisoned gift of knowledge.

  The knowledge of what it was like to be Dennison.

  Varion swung his fighters toward the gunship position on the planet Falna, intending to push back the imperial line. In real life, that’s exactly what happened. However, in the simulation, Dennison made a few changes. One of the imperial ships got in a lucky shot, and Varion’s fighter line took a hit in just the wrong place. The fake imperial line rallied, destroying Varion’s ships in a way that was unlikely, but not unreasonable.

  Dennison made such changes to each of the nine battles. Here, a squadron attacked at the wrong angle. There, a command ship’s engines failed at precisely the wrong moment. Individually, they were the kinds of small problems that happened in every battle. Nothing ever went exactly to plan. Yet all of these small bits of luck added up. As the nine conflicts raged in real life, Dennison sent Varion an increasingly invalid picture of his battle spaces.

  Whatever Silvermane tried, it failed. Fighter squadrons collapsed. Gunships missed their targets and then were destroyed by a random stray missile. Command ships fell, and sectors were lost—all in a matter of minutes, and across all nine battles.

  In Varion’s own vicinity, the five squadrons of imperial fighters did their job. The ships Dennison had targeted were gone in under a minute, though the major redirection of firepower left a hole in the central imperial line, making it collapse. Dennison paid no attention to that losing battle, or to the reports that the others were really fairing far worse than his simulated victories. He even ignored the emperor, who called for a chair, then sat quietly beside him, watching his
empire tumbling down around him.

  Dennison ignored all of this. For a moment, he was perfect. He was Varion, his every effort rewarded. His hopes were truth. His commands matched his dreams. He was a god.

  So this is what it is like to win, Dennison thought as his crew fabricated a victory for one of his squadrons, then sent it to Varion. This is what it is like to expect to win. Is this really what he feels all the time? Is he so sure of himself that he sees his entire life as merely a simulation, played out exactly as he desires?

  Well, for a few moments, he’ll have to live with being Dennison instead.

  Dennison made the tactical fabric of the conflicts collapse, caused Varion’s forces to be routed. The only battle Dennison couldn’t control was the one at which Varion himself was present. However, once the Silvermane was convinced he was losing in other parts of the galaxy, he began to make mistakes on his own front. He took more and more risks, struggling against the omnipotent force that was Dennison.

  “Revenge,” the emperor whispered. “Is this what you wanted, Dennison? Is all of this about playing a last, cruel trick on your brother before he takes our empire from us?”

  Yes, Dennison thought. This was his victory—his victory over Varion, his victory over a failed life. This was his moment: a perfect crescendo of battle, the entire universe bending to his will.

  Then it ended.

  “Someone must have noticed the bug!” the technician shouted as the viewscreens suddenly snapped back to the real battles. “The klage vibrations were a little irregular. I warned you!”

  Dennison sat back in the emperor’s command chair, releasing the breath he’d been holding. The room was growing quieter—the ten admirals hadn’t gained much during their respite. I’ve failed, Dennison thought. The deception hadn’t lasted long enough—Varion would now know he’d been duped. His communications now secure, he would easily retake command of the other battles.

  “What have you done?” the emperor asked Dennison with a haunted voice.

  Dennison didn’t respond. He sat motionless, staring at the ten screens. For a moment he’d almost been able to convince himself that he was Varion. A victor.

  “Your majesty!” a surprised voice called from the back of the room. It was the aging admiral, pointing at the screen. “Look! Look at the Silvermane’s forces. . . .”

  In the tenth battle, the one that Dennison hadn’t been able to falsify, several of Varion’s fighter squadrons had turned away from their assault. Then Voidhawk itself broke off its attack.

  “Your majesty, they’re retreating!” another admiral said with amazement.

  The emperor stood, turning toward Dennison. “What . . . ?”

  Dennison stood as well, stepping forward, toward the viewscreen. Could it be. . . . If Varion’s technicians had found the discrepancy and fixed it on their own before telling Varion what was happening . . . extending for just a few moments the time in which Varion believed he was being defeated . . . .

  Dennison watched Varion’s forces retreat, and in that moment he knew the truth. He could see it in the organization of the ships.

  He had won. His trick had worked. “In all the things Varion discovered or was taught,” Dennison said, a little stunned himself as he sat back in the chair, “for all his success, for all his genius, there was one thing he never learned. . . .”

  Dennison paused, reaching over to his datapad and looking for a specific data feed. He clicked the button, bringing up an image on the main viewscreen: the imaged that showed Varion’s ready room via the bug that Varion had always known about. The bug that he had allowed to remain because it amused him. It showed exactly what Dennison had hoped to see.

  There, presented on the enormous screen, was an image of the High Admiral. Lord Varion Crestmar the Silvermane, greatest military genius of the age, sat behind his desk in the Voidhawk. In his limp fingers he held a gun, a smoking hole blown through his own forehead.

  “He never learned how to lose,” Dennison whispered.

  Copyright © 2008 Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  Books by Brandon Sanderson

  Elantris (Tor, 2005)

  Warbreaker (Tor, 2009)

  THE MISTBORN SERIES

  Mistborn (Tor, 2006)

  The Well of Ascension (Tor, 2007)

  The Hero of Ages (Tor, 2008)

  THE ALCATRAZ SMEDRY SERIES

  Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Scholastic, 2007)

  Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones (Scholastic, 2008)

  Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia (Scholastic, 2009)

  Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens (forthcoming from Scholastic)

  THE WHEEL OF TIME

  The Gathering Storm (with Robert Jordan) (Tor, 2009)

  Towers of Midnight (with Robert Jordan, forthcoming) (Tor)

  A Memory of Light (with Robert Jordan, forthcoming) (Tor)

  THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE

  The Way of Kings (forthcoming) (Tor)