Democracy's Might

Chapter Fourteen

The darkness of interstellar space had always chilled Colin to the bone. There was nothing, but eternal darkness, broken only by pinpricks of light. If something went wrong with the flicker drive in interstellar space, it would be centuries before the fleet managed to limp into the closest star system — and by then the Empire would probably have regained control of the rebel-held territories. And yet, it was the ideal RV point for the rebels. There was no way the Imperial Navy would be able to locate them save through an impossible stroke of luck.

Colin stood in the observation blister, staring out at the stars. On this scale, even the massive superdreadnaught was tiny, utterly unnoticeable in the endless desert of interstellar space. He wanted to take the discussion to the conference room, but he refused to allow his groundless fears to get the better of him. Instead, he watched the stars — and listened as his subordinates spoke. There would be time for a formal meeting later, if necessary.

“We took out the defences of twelve worlds and hammered their ground-based facilities,” Commodore Jeremy Damiani said. “Resistance was marginal, although one enemy destroyer did manage to ram one of our destroyers broadsides, taking both craft out.”

Colin scowled. A destroyer was barely noticeable compared to the superdreadnaughts, but he felt each and every loss like a dagger in the heart. Besides, the rebels simply didn’t have as many ships to play with as the Imperial Navy. They could afford to keep pouring smaller ships into rebel territories indefinitely, forcing him to hold back his own ships to counter the threat — or allowing them to run riot behind his lines. He was marginally surprised the Imperial Navy hadn’t already started trying to raid his territories, although it was possible that they hadn’t yet recovered from the shock of the first rebellion. It had only been three months since Earth had realised that the Thousand Families had a rebellion on their hands.

Unless they were warned earlier, Colin reminded himself, again. He pushed the thought aside, angrily. There was no point in worrying about something he couldn’t change. If Percival had been honest with them right from the start we might never have got out of Sector 117.

“Good work,” he said. “Are you ready to proceed into the next sector?”

“As soon as we reload our missile tubes and external racks,” Damiani assured him. “The operation is underway now.”

Colin nodded. The Imperial Navy rarely practiced reloading its starships in interstellar space, even though the fleet train had once been the key to victory in the First Interstellar War. But then, the Imperial Navy had shipyards and repair bases everywhere and no prospect of a massive fleet deployment, not when there was no real threat to the Empire. Colin’s forces didn’t have that luxury. He’d forced them to practice deep-space reloading until they could do it in their sleep. They didn’t dare risk setting up a shipyard anywhere the Empire could find it.

“The freighter crews have brought you everything you could want,” Daria commented. “I think you have good reason to be proud of them.”

“I am,” Colin said. “Without their services, the offensive would have ground to a halt.”

The Imperial Navy’s officers tended to sneer at those assigned to operate the fleet train. They were seen as little better than merchantmen, officers and crew considered too unskilled to be allowed to serve on warships, yet not worth the effort of discharging from the navy. It wasn’t surprising that morale in the fleet train was often very low, or that they often delayed reloading just long enough to embarrass the warship crews. Colin knew he couldn’t allow himself that attitude, not now. Besides, the Imperial Navy’s attitude had grown up over centuries of peace. Right now, the fleet train was a necessity.

“Make sure you tell them that,” Daria said, tartly. “These aren’t naval personnel, you know. No offense.”

“None taken,” Colin said. Independent spacers were often more prideful than military or corporate personnel. If they felt shunned, they were quite capable of simply resigning from the fleet train and going home. “I’ll tour some of the ships once the reloading is complete, if that is acceptable.”

“It will do,” Daria conceded. She gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Are you still intending to advance on Tyson?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Colin said. “The base is in poor condition, according to the defectors, but given time they could turn it into a proper threat. And there are at least four squadrons of various starships stationed there. I’d prefer to destroy or capture them before we press onwards against Morrison.”

“They might just cut the ships loose,” Damiani pointed out. “We don’t need more raiders in our rear.”

“Or send them back to Morrison,” Colin agreed. All of his projections indicated that the Empire would make a stand at Morrison. It was the best place to face the rebel fleet, if they could mass enough superdreadnaughts in place to give Colin a bloody nose. Besides, they’d know as well as Colin did that he had to obliterate Morrison before he could advance on Earth. “No, we have to go after them as soon as possible.”

He tapped a switch, bringing up the latest intelligence reports. Tyson wasn’t an unusual military base, but there was a surprisingly large commercial presence too. Four orbital fortresses guarded a number of asteroid settlements, orbital industrial notes and a pair of small shipyards, as well as a heavily inhabited planet. And, unlike most of the other worlds Colin had occupied, it could be counted upon to remain loyal to the Empire.

There are five separate families involved, he thought, remembering how he’d worked his way through the intelligence summaries. They’re actually competing for manpower, so they can’t squeeze the population too tightly.

“Tyson will also require a heavier occupation force than any prior world,” he stated. How would the locals react when the rebels arrived? Would they stay neutral, join up with the rebels or actually remain loyal to the Empire? There was no way to know. “But I don’t want to secure the surface, beyond the planetary defence centres. We don’t want a repeat of Jackson’s Folly.”

“No,” Daria agreed. “Our reputation would not survive.”

Colin nodded. Jackson’s Folly hadn’t been saved by the mutinies. Admiral Percival had deployed a second squadron of superdreadnaughts to bring the planet to heel, which they’d done in characteristically brutal fashion, destroying the local defence force with ease. And then they’d landed Blackshirts… and the insurgency had begun. By the time Colin had liberated Jackson’s Folly for the second time, both sides had inflicted horrendous damage on each other. But the Empire had been winning the war.

They didn’t really care about the Blackshirts, Colin reminded himself, sternly. As far as they were concerned, they were expendable. There were plenty more where they came from. But we couldn’t afford those losses, even if we didn’t care about giving the Empire a propaganda victory. And we don’t really have to try.

He looked up at Damiani. “I want you to raid through the systems surrounding Tyson,” he ordered. “Don’t try to take and hold territory, just see if you can make enough of a nuisance of yourself that they send ships from Tyson to try and stop you. Anything that weakens the base’s defences might come in handy. Broadcast our standard call to arms as you approach each system — there may be some rebels there, willing to join us.”

“Understood,” Damiani said. He looked up at the star chart, mentally calculating travel times. “It will be a week before we’re in position to attack the first world.”

“I’ll move the main fleet to here,” Colin said, tapping a point a bare two light years from Tyson. “That should give us time to gather intelligence before we jump into the system itself. We can’t count on them simply surrendering when they see us approach, not here. I’d be surprised if they weren’t trying to rush reinforcements to Tyson already.”

“We really do need that FTL communicator,” Daria agreed. “It would be so much easier if our intelligence wasn’t out of date by the time we received it.”

Colin nodded. The only bonus was that the Imperial Navy would be in a worse state. By now, he was sure, Colin’s original message to the Empire had reached every last corner of the towering edifice, calling the discontented and the oppressed to war. There was still a trickle of starships coming in to join the rebel forces, starships that had mutinied against their commanding officers. Sooner or later, Colin knew, that would stop. The Empire would station Marines on every ship, preventing future mutinies. But everyone would know that mutinies were now possible…

He scowled. The closer they got to Earth, the faster the Empire could react to their presence — and the longer it took to ship supplies from the Rim to the fleet. Thankfully, the Geeks had built up huge stockpiles, but Colin had already made capturing Imperial Navy supply dumps a priority. But the Imperial Navy had to know that too. Colin wouldn’t be surprised to know that Tyson and Morrison had orders to destroy their supplies before falling into rebel hands.

If I’d been in their shoes, he thought, I’d make sure such orders were issued — and obeyed.

“And if wishes were fishes, we would all be splashing around in the sea,” Colin said, ruefully. “We’ll just have to make do with what we have.”

“Yes, sir,” Damiani said. “Speaking of which, I will return to my ships and supervise the reloading.”

“Inform me when you are ready to depart,” Colin ordered. “And good luck.”

He watched Damiani withdraw, then turned to look at Daria. “How is morale holding up?”

“So far, so good,” Daria said. “The real test will come when we face our first significant defeat.”

Colin nodded. The Shadow Fleet had been mouse-trapped once before — it had been a relief to discover that Commodore Brent-Cochrane had been killed at Second Camelot — and he knew it was quite possible that it could happen again. Just because Admiral Percival hadn’t been able to find his ass with both hands, a full sensor suite and someone screaming the instructions into his ear didn’t mean that the other Imperial Navy officers were incompetent. Maybe their main qualification for high rank had been ass-kissing, but they might be equally capable at kicking ass.

And which side would I be on, Colin asked himself, if Percival had promoted me instead of seeing me as a threat?

The thought reminded him that he hadn’t seen the evils of the Empire, not really. He had officers and men under him who had, men and women who had seen the worst and sworn not to tolerate it any longer, but the younger Colin had been a prideful ass, more intent on winning promotion and reward for his talents than any moral or ethical concerns Would he have turned a blind eye, he asked himself, if Percival had given Colin the rewards he’d been promised? He’d been far too self-centred in those days. Hell, even the mutiny had been more about taking the rewards he’d earned than anything else.

He looked back at the star chart and shivered. Morrison, by his calculations, would provide the first major test of the expanded fleet. If they lost the battle, they might lose the war. And he had no illusions about what the Empire would do to the worlds Colin had liberated. Local leaders would be butchered, taxes would be raised higher and massive occupation forces would be shipped in to keep the populations firmly under control. They would never have a hope of freedom again.

Or the Empire itself might collapse. Colin saw it all, in his mind’s eye. The economy would go, taking with it the strands that bound the Empire together. Entire star systems would be impoverished, military commanders would become warlords, Earth and hundreds of other worlds would starve… and the whole human race would fall into an endless night. It wasn’t enough to destroy the Empire, he reminded himself. He had to replace it with something better, something reformed enough to give everyone a stake in the system.

Daria coughed. Colin jumped. He’d almost forgotten she was there.

“So,” she said. “Credit for your thoughts?”

“I was just contemplating the future,” Colin admitted. “What we’ll do when we win.”

“Better catch your chicken before you cook and eat it,” Daria advised, dryly. “The future will come when it comes. Right now, your priority is to win.”

“True,” Colin agreed. “Very true.”

He held out a hand to her. “Shall we go visit the freighter crews?”

“Why, I thought you’d never ask,” Daria said, twisting her voice into a mocking aristocratic accent. “Let us go see those whose hard work keeps the fleet going.”

The spy had known that the rebels were organised, but she hadn’t really realised how organised until she’d spent a month on the rebel superdreadnaught. Unlike the Imperial Navy, where junior crewmen were often left at the mercy of NCOs and bullying rings, the rebels seemed determined to involve everyone in their work. The Senior Chiefs were strong and capable men, all skilled at drawing the very best out of their subordinates, while the officers took a keen interest in what the crewmen did. Indeed, quite a few of the officers were mustangs, crewmen who had been promoted to the ranks. The practice was rare in the Imperial Navy, but the rebels had adopted it with glee.

It seemed to be working out for them, the spy had to concede. Newly-minted officers might know how to salute, wear dress uniform and precisely just how much they should genuflect to higher-ranking officers, but they didn’t often know much about the practicalities of their job or just how closely they should be supervising their subordinates. They tended to leave such matters in the hands of the Senior Chiefs or NCOs, all the while concentrating on how best to take the credit while avoiding blame. But mustangs knew their compartment intimately, inside and out, and they were rarely scared of tough crewmen who might intimidate younger, more vulnerable crewmen. Overall, the efficiency rate had improved remarkably.

The spy found that galling — and not a little worrying. Being on the superdreadnaught was nothing like being on the asteroid, where it was a dog-ate-dog world at the best of times. She had been conditioned as part of her training, disloyalty to the Empire could only remain as an abstract concept in her mind. It wasn’t fair, she told herself, more than once; if she’d been able to switch sides, she might have tried. There were worse causes to die for than reforming the Empire. Hell, merely improving the promotion system alone might help staunch the bleeding.

But she had been conditioned and, sooner or later, her programming would push her into taking action, even at the risk of her own life.

It was astonishing, she had discovered, just how much information was openly shared between the decks. On an Imperial Navy starship, the crew were often kept ignorant of what was going on around them, but the rebels didn’t seem to care who knew where they were going. The spy found it unbelievable at first, right up until the information was proved accurate. Didn’t they realise they had a security problem… or didn’t they care? The spy had no illusions about the former. The Imperial Navy had attacked Sanctuary Asteroid and the only way they could have located the asteroid was through someone passing on the coordinates to Imperial Intelligence. Paranoia had kept the spy passive, despite the growing pressure from her conditioning. What if they were merely watching and waiting for her to betray herself before they acted?

But eventually the conditioning wore her down.

There was no such thing as a master override code for a superdreadnaught command core. If there had been, the spy knew, the Geeks would have taken advantage of it long ago. Everyone knew that the Geeks had unhealthy relationships with computers, even going so far as to directly link their brains to computer cores and dump information directly into their heads. If there had been a master code, the entire Imperial Navy could simply have been deactivated.

But there were a handful of backdoors, for someone who knew the right codes and how to use them.

The spy had been nervous as soon as she entered the access code, once she found a place to work where she could be certain of being undiscovered. It was impossible to remove the backdoors, she had been assured, without disintegrating the entire computer core and rebuilding it from scratch, but someone could easily have inserted a flag into the system to sound the alert when the backdoor was used. She braced herself, yet nothing happened. But if they were still waiting…

Carefully, she inserted a string of commands into the system, then shut down the backdoor and made her way out of the component. No armed Marines were waiting to grab her, no officers staring her in disapproval… she seemed to have managed to insert the commands and then pull out without detection. She was still sweating, however, when she reached the mess and picked up a tray of food. If she’d been detected, she knew there would be no hope of escape.

“You should have tasted the food before we rose up,” a voice said. She looked up to see a junior crewman, one of the old sweats. “It tasted like something someone scraped out of the back end of a cow.”

The spy smiled. “Horrible,” she said. Imperial Navy rations had never been very good at the best of times — and some senior officers had actually sold off the naval rations and replaced them with commercial crap, allowing them to pocket the difference. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

They were still deep in conversation when the superdreadnaught — and its fleet — resumed its journey towards Tyson.