Democracy's Might

Chapter Seventeen

“This is a planet,” Howell said, as the shuttle plunged into the atmosphere. “It is surrounded by atmosphere…”

“Shut up,” Sidney snapped. He was used to asteroid settlements and starships, not fragile planets. It was hard for him to even imagine who would want to live on a planet. They were untamed, even the ones that had been extensively terraformed for human habitation, and limited. One could build anything in space, but not on the surface of a planet. “I don’t want to think about it.”

“Oh?” Howell jeered. “Is the big bad Marine scared of a planet?”

The shuttle rocked. Sidney glared at Howell, then concentrated on not throwing up in the confined space. Travel in space was normally smooth, but flying through a planet’s atmosphere was rough and dangerous. He hadn’t felt naked and helpless when he was making his way through enemy-held territory, not even when the imps had attacked Sanctuary Asteroid, yet he felt helpless now. But then, all the training in the universe wouldn’t help if the shuttle fell out of the sky.

He accessed the live feed from the shuttle’s sensors in the hope it would make him feel better, but it just sent shivers down his spine. The planet’s capital city was spread out on both sides of a massive river, which was flowing down towards the giant ocean. There was nothing like it in space, not even the asteroids designed and built for people who had engineered fish-like gills into their bodies. He saw boats making their way over the water, heading towards the city. It was easy to wonder, he decided, just how limited the locals felt. In space, there was always room to expand — or go elsewhere, if one didn’t like the neighbours.

“All right, listen up,” the Sergeant barked. “The people of this planet may not be pleased to see us. They will fear us, they will resent us, they may worry what we might bring down on their heads. You are to treat them with respect and courtesy — and you are not to resort to force unless there is no other choice. Anyone who defies me on this will regret it.”

He lowered his voice. “For most of you, this is your first time among the civilians,” he added. “Civilians can do damn stupid things. They will make threatening sounds, they will make rude gestures, they will delight in trying to make your job harder. Some of them won’t believe that we can hurt them, others will be too damn stupid to care. Remain calm, remain in control and use lethal force only as a last resort.”

The shuttle shuddered, then dropped down towards the city. Sidney had a glimpse of large stone buildings before the link dropped out, a second before the shuttle hit the ground. A dull thump ran through the craft; planetary gravity caught at him a moment later, tugging him downwards even as he stood up and jogged towards the hatch. Tyson had a slightly higher gravity than standard, he noted absently. Not enough to cause problems, but enough to be noticeable. But they’d trained under much worse conditions.

“Spread out,” the Sergeant snapped. “1^st Platoon, remain with the shuttles; the rest of you, follow me.”

The planet was big, Sidney realised, as he stared around in astonishment. No asteroid settlement was so… unbounded. There were certainly no towering stone buildings in asteroids, at least none of the ones he had ever seen. The buildings themselves were protected by stone walls, although one glance told him that people could easily start climbing over the defences and breaking into the compound at any moment. A glance at his HUD revealed that crowds were already gathering on the far side of the wall.

He followed the Sergeant up to the building, where several wealthy-looking men were gathered outside, waiting for the Marines. There was a brief moment of conversation between the Sergeant and the welcoming committee, followed by orders for the Marines to secure the perimeter. Sidney pushed aside the air of unreality that threatened to overwhelm him and led his detachment down to the gate. Outside, the crowd was growing bigger and nastier by the second. The civilians, judging by their clothing, came from all walks of life. But they were bound together by a desire to riot…

“As long as they stay outside, leave them alone,” the Sergeant reminded them. “But be prepared to act if they break down the gates or come over the wall.”

Sidney stared at the crowd in growing horror. It was a jumbled mass of humanity, but every so often he saw an individual face. A young man, barely older than himself; a girl barely entering her teens; an older man with a tired worn expression; a woman old enough to be a grandmother. None of them looked happy, he realised; the crowd was pushing them forwards, even though some of them clearly wanted to escape. And weapons were being passed out; sticks, stones and even a handful of bottles. It took him a moment to realise that they were loaded with gas, ready to set fire to the building.

Their resentment was almost palatable. It felt odd, as if they didn’t really resent the Marines, merely their presence. Sidney realised, in a flash of insight, that the crowd wanted to get its hands on the planet’s former governors. They’d betrayed the population, somehow, even though Sidney couldn’t really imagine how it was their fault. The Thousand Families were based hundreds of light years from Tyson. None of the governors had known that the rebellion was about to begin.

He shuddered. The Marines wore lightweight powered armour and the crowd didn’t look to have any weapons capable of penetrating their protection, but if it came down to a fight a lot of civilians were going to die. Sidney had been through a modified training course, including one horrific simulation where they’d been shown precisely what happened when the suit was matched against unarmoured people. Bones had been shattered like twigs, skulls had been smashed to pulp; none of the simulated enemies had even been able to break into the suit and drag the Marine out.

The crowd grew louder and nastier. A handful of rocks came sailing over the wall, seemingly tossed at random. They didn’t come close to any of the Marines. Even so, Sidney’s hands felt sweaty as he gripped his rifle. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt any of the civilians, but he knew they would have no choice if the walls collapsed. It looked as though the crowd was putting intense pressure on the stone.

“We’re transferring the governors and their staff to the shuttles,” the Sergeant said. “Once the complex is clear, we’ll pull out.”

He must have decided that the buildings are indefensible, Sidney thought. The crowd was getting louder, several young men working hard to psych up the rest for a charge. Or expendable.

A dull roar of anger echoed through the air as the crowd saw the governors being pushed towards the shuttles. There was a loud crack as the gate broke open. Sidney cursed out loud, despite the order to maintain strict communications discipline, then lifted his rifle and fired warning shots over the crowd’s heads. It didn’t work. The pressure of the people at the rear kept pushing the people at the front forward, even if they’d changed their minds after seeing the Marines up close. Sidney braced himself, unsure of what to do. If they opened fire, there would be a massacre.

“Deploy gas,” the Sergeant ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Post said.

Sidney watched as gas shells crashed down amongst the rioters. Blue gas sprayed everywhere; the rioters disintegrated into a churning mass of panicky civilians as the gas worked its way into their eyes and throat. They stumbled everywhere, some of them knocked to the ground and trampled by their fellows; Sidney saw a young boy crushed to death before he could do anything to intervene.

“RETURN TO YOUR HOMES,” the Sergeant bellowed, through his suit’s loudspeaker. His voice drowned out the panic from the crowd. “GO HOME, REMAIN THERE.”

“You know,” Howell remarked, as the rioters slowly dispersed, “I thought we were meant to be liberating these people.”

Sidney rolled his eyes. Who could trust planet-dwellers to have any common sense? The rioters had only managed to hurt themselves. There were at least a dozen bodies on the ground, mixed in with choking people who had had a bad reaction to the gas. But at least the Marines hadn’t had to chop the crowd to pieces. There was no such thing as strength in numbers when one side was armed with plasma cannon and rail guns.

“They’re stupid panicky idiots,” the Sergeant said, sharply. Behind them, the first shuttles took off, clawing for sky. “Do what you can for the wounded, place the bodies somewhere out of the way. Hopefully, we won’t have to set up an administration for the entire planet.”

Sidney reflected on the Sergeant’s words as they patrolled the outer edge of the walls — and then the nearby streets, ensuring that looting and rioting was kept as far from their positions as possible. Planet-dwellers didn’t seem to have the intrinsic concern for their environment of the space-born. The moment the planet’s government had surrendered, he saw, the civilians had started to riot. And there was nothing he and his comrades could do.

The populace, those they saw, looked bitter and resentful. Sidney shook his head in disbelief. Didn’t these people know they’d been liberated from the Empire? But it looked as though they honestly didn’t care — or didn’t realise that it would be better after the Thousand Families were destroyed. And yet… he shook his head, grimly. These people had been lucky. The Empire hadn’t come down on them too hard. They had no conception of what life was like elsewhere…

By the time they were finally recalled to the ships, he was thoroughly sick of the population on the ground.

It wasn’t too surprising, Colin knew, that there were a handful of cabins in the superdreadnaught that were thoroughly wired for sound, despite being intended for senior officers. Imperial Navy officers and crewmen had no right to privacy, no matter what they thought; Imperial Intelligence heard and saw everything that took place on the starship. It seemed to have escaped their attention that there was so much data they couldn’t hope to analyse it all, Colin had decided, although Anderson had pointed out that the intimidation value alone was worth the effort. Colin, after all, had held most of his planning meetings on Jackson’s Folly.

Admiral Ravi Lanai, according to her file, wasn’t an experienced officer. Colin had expected someone older, with more time on a command deck, but he had to admit that was nothing more than prejudice. Ravi had certainly given him a hard time, even if she hadn’t managed to stop the rebel advance. But he knew that she hadn’t had the firepower to win. The question, Colin knew, was if her superiors would see it that way.

He nodded politely to her as he opened the hatch and stepped into the cabin. Ravi was seated on a sofa, reading her way through a book. She looked older than Stacy Roosevelt, as if she hadn’t really bothered to have her body kept young. But then, she did project an air of maturity that would have been utterly out of place on Stacy’s teenage body. Colin shuddered at the memory, then sat down facing Ravi. Maybe there was time to have a proper talk.

“Admiral,” he said, carefully. “You fought well.”

Ravi’s lips quirked. “As did you.”

Colin waited, then continued when it was obvious she wasn’t going to say anything else. “I understand that you want to return to the Empire,” he said. “Can I ask why?”

“It’s my duty,” Ravi said, simply. “My family have always been loyalists.”

“I read your file,” Colin said. “You’ve been quite lucky.”

Ravi nodded, but said nothing.

“Your people speak well of you,” Colin continued. “We have only had a relative handful of recruits from your crews, despite the beating they took at our hands. Quite a few of them have insisted on returning to the Empire. I think you had quite a bit to do with their loyalty.”

“Thank you,” Ravi said.

Colin studied her for a long moment. Ravi had been lucky. With so many competing interests in the system, she had been able to carry out her duty with only a minimum of political interference. She was unlikely to rise any higher, but then she was already high enough to suit her ambitions. Besides, when she retired, she could look forward to quite a few patrons ensuring that she had a comfortable retirement. The smarter patrons knew to ensure that they looked after their clients until the end of their lives.

“They’re going to die,” Colin said. He didn’t know for sure that whoever was in command at Morrison would kill the returning crewmen, but he knew how Percival had treated those who’d had enough loyalty to return home. They’d been interrogated and brain-sucked, then dumped on Camelot. Colin had rescued some of them when the planet had been taken, but others had died before he arrived. “And you too, for that matter.”

“I still have to report,” Ravi said, stubbornly. “And I would prefer not to be interned.”

“You will be blamed for the defeat here,” Colin warned her. “They’ll look for someone they can hold to account — and you will make an easy scapegoat. If you’re not interested in joining us, you should consider being interned. We won’t treat you badly…”

Ravi looked up, her dark eyes meeting his. “Why do you care?”

Colin hesitated, then admitted the truth. “The Thousand Families are going to be destroyed,” he said. “But there is still going to be an Empire afterwards — and an Imperial Navy. You could serve, Admiral. We need officers who can inspire such loyalty and devotion in their men.”

“But that would be a betrayal,” Ravi said. She didn’t take her eyes from his face. “How do you know that whatever you create, whatever replaces the Empire, will be better than its predecessor?”

“I know that the Empire cannot be allowed to go on,” Colin countered. “It is draining the lifeblood from humanity. It has pretty much reached the limits of worlds it can simply invade, occupy and start exploiting. Already, the Thousand Families are turning on each other. What happens when their struggle turns physical?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Ravi pointed out. “How do you know that your Empire will be better than our Empire?”

Colin frowned. “I have faith,” he said. “We can solve most of the problems caused by the Empire, break up the power and economic blocs that keep it under control…”

“And then… what?” Ravi asked. “You don’t know you’ll do better. What will you do the moment someone defies you? Or wants to leave the Empire? Human disunity almost killed us once; are you prepared to accept disunity and the risks that come with it… or will you use force to keep the Empire together? And if you do, Commander Walker, what makes you any better than the Thousand Families?”

She looked at Colin’s hands, then smiled. “Are you going to beat me for disagreeing with you?”

Colin realised that he’d clenched his fists. Slowly, he unclenched them and clasped his hands behind his back, fighting for calm. Ravi was right, he had to admit; shattering the Thousand Families and their grip on power would unleash forces that might tear the Empire apart. But he still believed that those forces could be accommodated. If each planet had internal autonomy, it would be harder for outsiders to exploit them…

“No,” he said, coldly. “If you won’t join us, we will make arrangements for you to be transported to Morrison.”

“Thank you,” Ravi said, primly. She picked up her book and opened it, looking down at the page. “Was there anything else?”

Colin scowled in irritation. “Merely that I think you’re wasted,” Colin said. “You’ll be killed at Morrison, killed for losing to superior force. They won’t stop looking for scapegoats just because you fought well. And I doubt your patrons will lift a finger to help you.”

“I know the risks,” Ravi said, closing her book. “But I am loyal to the Empire.”

“I had that certainty once too,” Colin admitted. He stood, then looked down at her. “I hope you survive, Admiral. We will need people like you after we win the war.”

He strode out of the cabin, then nodded to the Marine on duty outside. “Don’t let anyone see her,” he ordered. “She can be transferred to the freighter once the life support is checked out.”

“Yes, sir,” the Marine said.

Colin’s communicator buzzed. “Admiral,” his XO said, “a space yacht has just entered the system. They’re broadcasting a message, requesting to speak with you.”

“A yacht?” Colin repeated. The only people who could afford dedicated pleasure starships were the aristocracy. Someone from the Thousand Families? “Do we have an IFF?”

“Nothing that matches anything in our database,” the XO reported. “What do you want to do?”

Colin considered it, briefly. “Tell them to keep their distance,” he ordered. It was possible that someone had placed a bomb on the starship, but it wouldn’t be powerful enough to take out the entire fleet. “Have the Marines board the ship, then check out the passengers. If they are clean, they can be brought onboard and I’ll speak to them. If not, we can deal with it at once.”

“Yes, sir,” the XO said.

“And ask Daria to join us,” Colin added. The fleet train had arrived just after Tyson had fallen. “She should be a part of any discussions.”