Democracy's Light

Chapter Thirty-Six

Charlie looked around the small room as their escorts closed the door behind him. It was a fairly basic storeroom, with a handful of chairs and a table placed in the centre, which suggested it was one of the hundreds of unofficial clubs for junior officers. The practice was fairly common, all over the Empire, and he’d even heard that it was encouraged, if only because of tradition. A junior officer was too lowly to club with the officers and too high-ranking to club with the enlisted men. Creating a club for themselves was regarded as a sign of something, although Charlie could never remember what. Knowing the pre-revolution Imperial Navy, it might just have been a willingness to stay out of the senior officers collective hair.

The handful of young officers in the club seemed to agree with that assessment. They were all around eighteen to thirty, all apparently Midshipmen. They wore civilian clothes in a colourfully garish display, for all the world as if they were carefree young men and women, but it was hard to disguise what they were. They hadn’t yet learned to hide their military training from an experienced eye. Peter, it seemed, had done them proud.

“We cannot trust them,” a woman said. She looked barely out of her teens, her voice suggesting an origin somewhere in the outer sectors. “We don’t even know who they are.”

Charlie kept his face blank as Sasha spoke calmly into the silence. Being so exposed worried him, but there was little choice; besides, no one in the room would be safe if they were discovered. They had to make use of whatever rebel structure existed on Cottbus, hiding from Admiral Wilhelm and Imperial Intelligence alike, if they wanted to end the war quickly. If that meant taking a risk…

“We’re from Earth,” Sasha said, calmly. “I admit that we cannot prove that easily to you, but yes, we represent the Provisional Government.”

“The same Provisional Government whose fleet just got its ass convincingly kicked at Wakanda,” someone said, from the back of the room. Charlie had seen him, barely, with his enhanced eyes. A more baseline human might have missed him completely. “The same Provisional Government whose ships were forced to retreat from this world. Why should we ally ourselves with you when you could betray us at any moment?”

“The fleet was lured into an ambush set by your commanding officer,” Sasha replied, her voice still calm. They could have cut their way out of the meeting, using the weapons implants buried under their skin, but that would have cost them the chance to make contact with the rebels. “Do you want to serve permanently under him, or do you want a chance to rise in a new system?”

Quinn smiled. “We received word about the rebellion nearly a year ago,” he said, flatly. “By the time we had anything set up to take advantage of it, the Admiral had made his move and locked up the aristocrats in their own cells.”

Charlie blinked. “The aristocrats?”

“The Hohenzollern and some other silly bitch,” the female doubter said. There was a note of dark amusement in her voice, somehow chilling when compared to her pretty face. “The Admiral used them and then dumped them in their own cells.”

Charlie nodded. That answered one question, at least. The reconstructed Imperial Intelligence had been trying to locate Lady Hohenzollern, and hundreds of other Family Members who’d fled Earth after its fall, but they’d found little trace of them. Had they all made their way to Cottbus, or the Rim, or somewhere else?

“And he clamped down hard,” Quinn agreed, unaware of Charlie’s thoughts. “He disrupted some of our cells and scattered others, sending some of the most important cell leaders to different star systems. He didn’t purge us, so I doubt that he knew what he was doing, but he disrupted us quite effectively.”

His voice was sour, bitterly amused. “We’re only just pulling back together again,” he said. “Why should we trust you to help us?”

“Because we’re the only ones who can,” Sasha said. “You can’t take the planet now, or you would have done so already. With our help, you could secure the orbital fortresses, the shipyard, and the other vital targets. That’s enough firepower to deter even four sector fleets.”

Charlie nodded, thinking hard. It was difficult to safeguard any system from internal sabotage, but Colin and the remainder of the original conspiracy had had an unfair advantage. They’d had years, while waiting for the Empire’s decision to carve up Macore as a favour to the Roosevelt Clan, to lay their plans and make them as foolproof as possible. Quinn and his fellows might not have been suspected — their very freedom was proof of that — but they had been rendered powerless, long enough to allow Admiral Wilhelm to secure his own grip on power. He’d done it without even knowing who they were.

“Perhaps,” the male doubter agreed. He came into the light, revealing a scarred face, marked for life. A series of regeneration treatments would have removed the scar, but he’d chosen, instead, to keep it. It said something about his character. “And what happens to us, if we rebel and manage to convince the Admiral not to attack at once, when he finds out the news?”

“And why should we rebel?” The female doubter added. “The Admiral doesn’t have a few hundred relatives who have to get posts because of who their great-uncles fucked one cold night a century ago. Where do our interests lie?”

Sasha smiled dryly. “You already know the answer to that, or you wouldn’t be meeting with us,” she said. “Admiral Wilhelm intends to impose military rule. You know that — hell, you’re part of it, just as much as the reprogrammed SD Troopers and the policemen he’s been recruiting to help garrison worlds that he takes from the Empire. He wants a war of conquest against the remainder of the Empire, shattering systems that have existed for hundreds of years, just for his glory — and your deaths.”

She leaned closer. “You’re all junior officers,” she said. “In the old Imperial Navy, you would be lucky to rise above Commander, unless you found a powerful patron. In the new Imperial Navy, the one created by Colin Harper, you would rise to the levels your talents allowed. You wouldn’t have to suck up to senior officers, or spend time sucking the cocks of the powerful, not when your own competence could get you into high rank. Is that not worth fighting for?

“And even if you decide not to rebel, what then? What happens when Admiral Wilhelm needs new crewmen for his new ships? He’s taking on the entire galaxy, for God’s sake! What are the odds of any of you surviving the next ten years?”

She looked around the room, her eyes moving from face to face. “And consider this,” she concluded. “Military rule never ends well. The Empire is far too complex for the Imperial Navy to dictate the rules and expect them to be kept. There’s already been one rebellion and Admiral Wilhelm won’t even have the legacy of thousands of years to keep him in power. What happens when he dies, or when the four Admirals begin scrabbling over who gets to be Emperor, or… how many possibilities can you think of? Where do your loyalties lie?”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “We swore loyalty to the Empire,” Quinn said, finally. “We were younger then. We didn’t know what the Imperial Navy was really like…”

“But you know now,” Sasha pressed. “You have the choice between supporting Admiral Wilhelm in his attempt to burn down the Empire and replace it with his rule, or join the Provisional Government.” She looked over at the two doubters. “The Imperial Navy and the Shadow Fleet have accepted thousands of people who started out on the wrong side, even including Admiral Wachter. You would be free to join at your current ranks and work your way up the ladder. If you managed to take Cottbus, you would have one hell of a bargaining chip.”

A younger woman, barely out of the Academy, laughed. “We heard that anyone who took a starship and brought it to the Shadow Fleet would hold command,” she said. “We would have an entire planet under our command, right?”

“The planet would have to become a democratic state,” Sasha said. “The Provisional Government intends to give each and every planet in the Empire effective first-rank status, including Cottbus and Earth itself. You would be welcome to assume command of the defences, or of the shipyard, or even of some of the starships here.”

Quinn silently canvassed his fellows. “You make a good case,” he said, finally. “I believe that we should join you, however…” He shrugged. “We have to discuss it in private, if you don’t mind.”

One of the handful of enlisted men came forward and escorted Sasha and Charlie out of the club and into a smaller room, which was as bare as a prison cell. Charlie spent a quick moment scanning it for listening devices, but found nothing, not even a simple location beacon. They didn’t talk as they waited as patiently as they could, enhanced ears straining for signs of discussion, or argument. Charlie found himself pacing backwards and forwards, even in the tiny room, knowing just how vulnerable they were. If Quinn and his compatriots decided to sell them out…

He scowled. Sasha had told the truth, but Cottbus was a far larger target than a starship, even a superdreadnaught. Taking even one of the orbital fortresses would be difficult, while the fixed defences were backed up by three squadrons of superdreadnaughts. They would have to be taken as well, unless they could be countered somehow… or was that actually true? What would the superdreadnaughts do if they suddenly found that the orbital fortresses were in the grasp of rebels and traitors? Would they attack at once, or would they wait for Admiral Wilhelm to come running back from wherever he was to recover his base?

And if he decides to stay away, we’ve won, he thought. If Quinn cooperates, we could win the war in one fell swoop.

It was tempting to discuss it with Sasha, but they couldn’t guarantee their privacy, so he waited, pacing, until she finally ordered him to take a seat and wait. They could hear raised voices now, the inner heart of the rebellion arguing over its course of action, and Charlie winced. Quinn had been lucky, so far, but if they were arguing then they might splinter. He’d studied the records of the successful — and unsuccessful — mutinies carefully. Several of the unsuccessful ones had been defeated, not though the efforts of the authorities, but by the mutineers having a falling out and betrayal. If Quinn went the same way…

We can’t even call on the Admiral to help, he thought, grimly. Even if we knew where she was, we couldn’t call on her to help.

The door opened and Quinn stepped in. “We decided to join you,” he said, without preamble. There was a grim note in his voice. He had no illusions, Charlie was relieved to see, about the difficulty of their task. The first mutinies had been easy, but the successive ones had been much harder. “I hope that your help is worth the risk.”

“Oh, trust me,” Sasha said. “It is.”

The next two days passed quickly. Quinn, it turned out, had had cells of rebels scattered all over the planet, most of them in lower-ranking positions that could be used to help confuse the security forces. The Admiral had scattered the cells, but in doing so, he had unwittingly created a second danger. The various rebels had been able to make contact with others who shared the same views, spreading the mutinous sentiments far and wide. Admiral Wilhelm’s base was rotting away under him.

But it wasn’t going to be easy, Charlie warned, and Quinn accepted the lesson. The Admiral’s security forces were carefully positioned to block any rebellion, even if he did have more faith in his people than Admiral Percival had ever shown. The rebels needed to gain control of the high orbitals — or, at least, the fifteen fortresses circling the planet — or the rebellion would be a bloody failure. He doubted, somehow, that Admiral Wilhelm would hesitate to bombard the planet to punish the rebels; despite his claims, there was no trace of a democratic government. Cottbus was controlled directly from the orbiting command fortress and if there was any resistance, Charlie hadn’t seen any evidence of it. The old government, the one established by the founding Clan, was clearly no longer in existence. He couldn’t decide if it were an improvement or not.

He looked down at the computer console in front of him and smiled. The nice thing about computers was that they did as they were told. The access backdoors that Imperial Intelligence had programmed into every system the Empire had produced helped — no one could have shut them all down — but the access they had obtained through Quinn and his people was far more useful. With a little ingenuity, the computers had been convinced that Charlie and Sasha were personnel with every right to go where they pleased, including the orbital fortresses. Quinn himself had been assigned to a rotating personnel pool that saw him on the fortresses every fortnight for a week-long period — apparently to ensure that they kept their edge — but again, it was easy to alter the system so that the rebels were all on the fortresses at the same time. It was even possible to have messages sent from rebel to rebel without monitoring programs picking them up and reporting them.

“It is important not to overuse this facility,” he’d warned, when he’d introduced the secret communications system to the inner circle of conspirators. The news about Admiral Garland’s recent raid had sent the entire planet into a state of shock, forcing Admiral Wilhelm’s viceroy to start running more persistent security measures. “The monitoring programs should class them as part of the general data download shared between the fortresses, but too many signals might alert a human operator, who might not be one of us.”

The second problem had been weapons. The Imperial Navy, in stark contrast to the Shadow Fleet, tended to keep weapons out of the hands of its junior officers and enlisted men, although it saw to it that they had proper weapons training. Colin had solved that problem by enlisting the Marines on his side, but Quinn had no Marine contacts… and, in any case, Admiral Wilhelm’s Marines and tame SD Troopers were not allowed on the fortresses. It was a fairly basic precaution; Admiral Percival, too, had banned Marines from his ships. The only access to the weapons locker on each of the fortresses belonged to the Captain, forcing Charlie to take the risk of uploading new commands into the network, clearing the leader of the rebels to open the weapons lockers at the right time. They had also risked giving the rebels the covert operations pistols that they had brought with them on the Neddy Seagoon.

“These will not shoot through battle armour, so be careful whom you try to shoot,” Sasha had explained, to the handful of rebels who had attended her brief tutorial. The tiny pistols looked rather like children’s toys, ones that might be found in any stocking, but they were deadly in the right hands. “They don’t set off security scanners, so you can smuggle them onto the fortresses without setting off all kinds of alerts, but be careful. If the security forces find even one of these, they will know who is to blame.”

Sandra hadn’t been happy to be left almost completely out of the plans, but someone had to remain behind, if only to report on what had happened to the other two agents. Her links with Andy Gillingham might be useful, while it also gave her an excuse to operate separately from them, although none of them had any illusions about how long that would last. If Admiral Wilhelm’s people caught any of them, it wouldn’t take them long to locate the remaining two members, or at least to put out an alert.

“You two had better be careful,” she’d said, when Sasha had told her the plan. “If you don’t come back, I’ll kill you personally.”

Charlie was still smiling at the thought when he boarded the shuttle, hidden in the midst of a group of other enlisted men, some of whom had been summoned from all over the planet. Admiral Wilhelm had been rotating his personnel, for no clear reason, but it worked in their favour. Very few of the enlisted men and women would know each other if they had never worked together before, so they wouldn’t notice that they suddenly had two newcomers. Even if they knew some of their fellows, they wouldn’t know all of them, or so the plan went. If they were wrong…

He put it out of his mind as the shuttle lifted off the ground and headed towards the command fortress. If they were wrong, they were dead. If they were right, they might still die, but they would have given it their best shot. There was no reason to be nervous. The panic caused by the raid on Schubert provided more than adequate cover for their mission.

But I’m still nervous, he acknowledged, if only to himself. It had been years since he had had to pose as an enlisted man, but the skills had never been forgotten. It helped that the Empire only expected enlisted men to obey orders and show no initiative of their own. There were no portholes in the shuttle — it had been designed for lower-ranking personnel, not tourists or senior officers — but he could imagine the atmosphere giving way to the darkness of space. It might become his tomb

And that, he thought, with a flicker of amusement, would be a damn silly way to die.