The Republic of Mannerheim openly abhorred and despised the genetic slave trade and the outlaw Mesan transstellars which promoted it . . . which was one of the things that made it so valuable to the Mesan Alignment. The fact that Mannerheim's system-defense force was one of the most powerful of the entire Solarian League, and that there was absolutely nothing to associate it with Manpower or the Mesa System's government, didn't hurt, either. As such, it would have been handy, the Alignment had thought, to tuck its secret arsenal away someplace everyone knew was absolutely useless yet was simultaneously close enough to Mannerheim for the MSDF to keep a protective eye on it. Of course, there had been downsides to the proposition, the worst of which was that it would also have been close enough to Mannerheim for someone to innocently stumble across things the Alignment didn't want anyone stumbling over. The chance of someone actually doing that had been remote, to say the least, of course. When it came to concealing things, ten light-years might as well be ten thousand, unless there was something to prompt some busybody into making the trip in the first place.
What no one had expected—until the survey team the Alignment had sent to Felix under cover of the Jessyk expedition completed a thorough analysis of the system primary's emissions—was that there would have been plenty of reason to make the trip, if only anyone had known that Felix was associated with a major wormhole junction. Not on anything like the scale of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, perhaps, but still considerably larger than most, with no less than four secondary termini.
They led to several interesting places (including the Darius System, which actually had been chosen as the site for the MAN's arsenal), and the Alignment had kept the Felix Junction's existence as "black" as they had the entire colony in Darius.
In fact, although the Alignment had known about it for better than two T-centuries, the MSDF had first become aware of it less than ten years ago. Officially, at least; many of the senior MSDF officers who knew about the Alignment had also known about the Felix Junction from the very beginning. As far as the bulk of the MSDF was concerned, however, Mannerheim had discovered the junction only eight and a half T-years ago, and the decision had been taken to keep its existence a secret because it had only two secondary termini . . . and because the Republic intended to make sure that when its existence became generally known, it was also firmly established as belonging to Mannerheim.
Fortuitously, from the Alignment's perspective, establishing that ownership was going to be complicated and (even better) time-consuming. Useless as the Felix System had turned out to be, colonization rights to it had been purchased by a Solarian corporation better than five hundred T-years ago. Since then, they had passed through the hands of at least a dozen levels of speculators—always trading downward, once the newest owner discovered how difficult it would have been to attract colonists to the system when there were so many other, more attractive potential destinations. By now, there were actually four separate corporations which claimed ownership, and none of them were likely to relinquish their claims without seeking at least some compensation to write off against their bad debt.
If Mannerheim suddenly showed an interest in the system, someone was going to wonder why. Aside from the Jessyk survey (which had been poaching on someone else's property, not that one would have expected that consideration to weigh heavily with Jessyk, of course), no one had ever bothered to update the original survey of the system. But if Mannerheim started offering to acquire the colonization rights, that was almost inevitably going to change, since the contending "owners" would certainly suspect (correctly) that Mannerheim knew something about it that they didn't. So they'd go and take a look for themselves, in the course of which they would discover the junction for themselves. At which point all manner of litigation, claims, counterclaims, and demands for immense compensation would come frothing to the surface.
So Mannerheim had the perfect cover for keeping the junction's existence under wraps while it very carefully and quietly, through a web of agents and arm's-length associations, sought to acquire ownership of Felix for itself without anyone's noticing. Those members of the MSDF who were not themselves Mesans but who were aware of the Felix Junction's existence knew exactly why they were supposed to keep their mouths shut about it. And they didn't know that the "official" survey information which had been shared with them didn't include the Darius Terminus . . . or the SGC-902-36-G Terminus.
"To be honest, Sir," Captain Granger's voice was very serious, almost somber, "that's only part of the reason for my own reservations about this operation. We're not planning on moving in on Verdant Vista, anyway. Not until we need a back door into the Haven Quadrant, at any rate, and we've waited around for two hundred years without doing that. I know that's probably going to change in the not too distant future, but the decision about when to finally use it is going to lie with us, and not anyone else, as long as no one figures out what's going on, at least. And we're all pretty much in agreement that the Manties aren't really likely to be able to do that. I'm damned sure they're not going to keep feeding survey ships into a terminus nothing ever comes back from, at any rate! So there's no need for the attack or any of its . . . collateral damage."
What you mean, Addie, is there's no need to kill everything—and everybody—on the planet, Trajan thought, more than a bit grimly. And if I had the guts to openly admit it, that's really what's bothering me about it, too. We don't have to kill all those people just to use a wormhole terminus that happens to be associated with their star. At this point, there's no way in the galaxy they could possibly put together a force of their own that we couldn't blow out of the way without even working up a sweat. Once we do that, who cares who "owns" the planet? For that matter, we could take it away from them any time we wanted to. Or, at least, if they flatly refused to surrender, we'd be legally justified in sending down the troops or even bombarding them until they saw reason.
He knew the arguments in favor of the operation. Even agreed that the concerns behind them were well taken. The fact that the 'Kingdom of Torch' didn't have a navy now didn't mean it couldn't acquire one. Or, for that matter, even borrow one. There was that treaty Cassetti had negotiated with it, for example. And the Republic of Erewhon had shown clearly enough where its sympathies lay. So, yes, it was always possible a genuine military threat could evolve in Verdant Vista.
From that perspective, it could be argued that creating a situation in which no one lived in Verdant Vista anymore was the most economical way to protect the secret. And the advantage Verdant Vista would offer when the Alignment's military operations inevitably intruded into the Haven Quadrant were huge. A direct wormhole connection to the quadrant from the Alignment's primary military base? Any commander in history would have killed for that kind of an advantage!
But would he have killed an entire planetary population to get it? Or, for that matter, to fend off a "threat" to it that would probably never materialize anyway? One he'd have plenty of time to factor into his plans later if it did look like materializing, come to that? Trajan asked himself. That's what sticks in your craw, Addie . . . and in mine. And it's the reason we're both so damned pissed off with Ganneau, too, isn't it? Because what he did to that Manty survey cruiser is exactly what "Manpower" is planning on doing to the entire damned star system.