Democracy's Might

Chapter Six

“I don’t think they trust me very much,” Hannelore said, as she stepped through the airlock into Random Numbers. “I keep getting suspicious glances.”

“Not on my ship,” Cordova said. He closed the airlock behind them, then led the way towards Officer Country. “You’re more than welcome here.”

Hannelore gave him a sharp glance. “You know what I mean.”

Cordova said nothing until they were inside his cabin with the hatch firmly closed, then turned to face her. “Trust is not something given freely along the Rim,” he said, seriously. “I don’t care to recall how long it took me to gain the underground’s trust, even though I had a whole heavy cruiser under my command. You’re an aristocrat from an aristocratic family and not all of them can see past it. Not yet.”

“And yet they trust me to handle procurement and industrial production,” Hannelore said. “I have ample opportunities for sabotage.”

“There’s a shortage of qualified personnel,” Cordova reminded her. “But they wouldn’t be too trusting of anyone new, no matter where they came from. It takes time to build up trust — and it can be lost in a moment, if the wrong thing is said or done.”

He grinned at her. “Can I stop being serious now? I hate it.”

Hannelore rolled her eyes. Cordova seemed larger than life. His body was massive, his golden hair and beard made him look like a gallant pirate out of a child’s book and he even carried a sword at his belt. The outfit he wore looked thoroughly absurd, the fashion of a bygone age. And he was rarely completely serious, except when he was with her — or Colin, who he seemed to respect. There were times when Hannelore wondered if he was bipolar.

She suspected, judging by his reaction to her comment, that he had aristocratic blood in him too. It wasn’t the only clue. He’d spoken to her of the High City more than once, showing a familiarity that could only have been gained through living there for a while. Few non-aristocrats were allowed anywhere near the city, apart from servants — and the servants were conditioned for complete loyalty. No, Cordova had to have been an aristocrat once. And then he’d walked away from it all.

It made him more… moral than her, she decided. She had only decided to throw her lot in with the rebels after Cordova had captured her mining platform, although in her heart she had always been a rebel. After all, she could easily have stayed in the High City and sunk into a life of luxury. Instead, she’d tried to build a fortune for herself — and, when offered the chance, she moved over and joined the rebels. She had little true reason to love the aristocracy. Even her name was a reminder that her family hadn’t wanted anything apart from someone to bind two families together. And it had failed.

“I managed to get the fleet train organised for you,” she said, pushing her memories back into the back of her mind. If the rebels won, she would be well-placed to extract revenge; if they lost, she would have worse problems than bad memories. “You’ll have all the supplies you need, I hope.”

“I hope so too,” Cordova agreed. “None of the ammunition expenditure projections I’ve seen have ever been anything other than understatements.”

“They were trying to save money,” Hannelore said. She’d seen similar charts when she’d been a mining engineer. It was astonishing how little concern a manager thousands of light years from her complex had shown for the men and women working in deep space. “But I have crammed forty freighters with missiles, spare parts and repair crews.”

The thought made her smile. It was astonishing just how many starships there were in the Beyond — and just how many of them had signed up with the rebellion. But many of their crews had balked at hauling freight, pointing out that there was no glory in it. Hannelore had had to point out, more times than she cared to remember, that rebel starships couldn’t fight without missiles, which had to be delivered to the front lines by freighters. And then there were the problems with missile supply… if they hadn’t captured the supplies at Camelot, the offensive might have had to be delayed for several months.

“That’s a relief,” Cordova said, bluntly. “We’re not going to be operating in friendly territory.”

Hannelore couldn’t disagree. Pirates required an infrastructure to operate — and the Imperial Navy had long since purged the Core Worlds of hidden pirate bases, supply dumps and repair yards. There was no shortage of smugglers in the region — the Empire’s high taxes had seen to that — but none of them were likely to support even a single pirate ship, let alone a whole squadron. Cordova and his crewmen would be on their own.

Rebel logistics were a nightmare, even without the endless bureaucracy that characterised the Imperial Navy. There was no ready-made network of bases, forcing her to organise freighter convoys to transport supplies from Sector 117 to the front lines. The further Colin and his fleet moved from their bases, the harder it would be to maintain the offensive. Hannelore had actually put out a standing request that all enemy freighters be captured instead of destroyed. The Shadow Fleet desperately needed them.

The freighter crews had been right; there was no glory in hauling freight. But without them, the offensive would grind to a halt.

“Make sure you come back alive,” she ordered. She couldn’t go with him, as much as she might want to. She’d accepted her own duties on Camelot. “I’ll miss you.”

Cordova unbuckled his jacket, then dropped it on the deck. “I’ll miss you too,” he assured her, as he pulled her into his arms. “Just remember to keep studying logistics.”

Hannelore rolled her eyes, then smiled as he started to open her shipsuit. It was odd, but making love with Cordova was more exciting than making love to anyone in the High City. Maybe it was the excitement of being a rebel, matched with the certain knowledge that she would be executed on the spot if she was ever caught… or maybe it was the awareness that Cordova, for all his faults, lived life. It was more than could be said for any spoilt brat from the High City.

Afterwards, she held him tightly. She didn’t want to let him go.

“I had to speak to a few freighter crews,” Daria said, as she and Colin sat down to breakfast the following morning. Her bright red hair seemed to glow under the light, drawing attention to her face. “Not all of them were happy serving under Hannelore.”

“Bastards,” Colin said, shortly. “I thought the Beyond didn’t give a damn where you came from, only who you were.”

Daria shrugged. “They tend to make an exception for aristocrats,” she said. “But she definitely isn’t a spy.”

Colin tended to agree. Anderson had kept a close eye on Hannelore ever since she joined the rebellion, but even the professional paranoid had had to admit that Hannelore seemed loyal to her new cause. Besides, like Colin himself, she had ample reason to be dissatisfied with her position in the Empire. She could never have risen higher, no matter how well she did.

“I’m a mutineer,” Colin pointed out. “Cordova is a deserter. Hester is a rebel. How many half-reformed pirates do we have under our banner?”

“People are stupid,” Daria said, dryly. “You should know that by now.”

She shook her head. “I also had to speak to a couple of officers who were eagerly looking forward to looting, raping and burning their way across the Empire. We’re going to have trouble with them. I can tell.”

Colin nodded. The Empire had sowed hatred wherever it went, even on otherwise harmless and unimportant worlds. In the wake of the rebel conquests, administrators and other imperial personnel had found themselves under attack from their former subordinates and brutally slaughtered. Colin had found himself forced to offer safe havens to the officials, knowing that a bloody slaughter would only harden hearts on the other side. No one would surrender if they thought they were merely going to be killed anyway.

There were plenty of administrators — Admiral Percival, for one — Colin would happily kill himself. He had no problems understanding why the locals would want to slaughter every official they could catch. But it created a political nightmare for the Popular Front.

And it would get worse if his subordinates started committing atrocities in his name.

“Keep a sharp eye on them,” he said, finally. “And if they do start committing atrocities, we’ll have to deal with them.”

He gritted his teeth at the thought. People were rarely logical. If they saw their fellows punished, it was quite likely that they wouldn’t see the justice in it. If the atrocity didn’t look like an atrocity, or if they believed the victims deserved what they got, they would start wondering about Colin. And then he might face a mutiny of his own.

“By now, Public Information will probably have told everyone that we’ve scorched the entire sector,” Daria pointed out. “Do you think it will matter?”

She had a point, Colin knew. The Empire’s propaganda machine was the only part of the bureaucracy to be genuinely efficient. By now, he suspected, the Empire’s counter-narrative would already be on its way back out towards Camelot and Jackson’s Folly. He wondered, absently, just what angle they would take. Would Colin be branded a pirate, a mutineer or someone who had merely been misled? Or would they simply claim that the Shadow Fleet had been captured and its former crewmen executed by rebels? They wouldn’t want to suggest that a mutiny could be successful.

Colin rather doubted they would succeed. He’d been a naval officer long enough to know that there were plenty of ways to exchange information without Imperial Intelligence getting wind of it, even if it was just whispered conversations in the washrooms or beside one of the heavy drive units. Word of the mutinies would have spread through the entire navy by now, suggesting to capable and ambitious crewmen that they might want to try their luck. Even a failed mutiny would tie up the Empire’s resources for quite some time…

… And if they put more Blackshirts on the starships, mutiny was almost guaranteed.

It galled him to be thinking like a calculating bastard, rather than a naval officer. The thought of having crews tormented by drug-addled imbeciles should have been horrific. Instead, he almost welcomed the thought. More mutinies would help the cause immeasurably. But each of them would be triggered by human suffering.

Daria reached over and touched his arm. “Colin?”

Colin started. “Yes?”

“You zoned out for a moment,” Daria said. She looked concerned, surprisingly so. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Colin said, ruefully. Showing weakness was a deadly mistake in the Beyond — and in the navy. “I was just wondering about the cost.”

Daria snorted. “Are you having doubts?”

She pushed on before he could answer. “Before we liberated these sectors,” she said, “the population lived in a nightmare. None of them dared breath easily. The knock on the door could come at any time, whereupon they could be dragged out of their homes, beaten halfway to death and then taken to penal camps. Their children could be taken away, their property could be seized… they’d just vanish. And, if they were lucky, the worst that would happen was that they spent the rest of their lives in a penal camp.

“Hundreds of worlds were exploited, stripped of natural resources to feed the Thousand Families. Entire planets became debt slaves to the corporations, their population forced to labour endlessly or die. Those who dared to rebel were crushed with overwhelming force, their lives destroyed by the Empire. Do you really think that some additional pain, now, is worse than what they have suffered over the centuries?

“Maybe it was understandable that no one resisted when resistance seemed futile. But now there is hope, now there is a Popular Front… and you, the rebel leader. Now, everyone who hates the Empire has someone to rally around. It will be costly — but will it be worse than leaving the Empire in place?”

She stopped, breathing hard.

“True,” Colin agreed. “But I still worry about the cost.”

“I think that proves you’re human,” Daria said. “Do you think the bureaucrats worry about the human cost?”

Colin shook his head. Entire planetary populations had been uprooted, families had been broken up and scattered across several different star systems — and that had been through a desire to rationalise the Empire’s work, not genuine malice. The Empire had done terrible things to planets that had revolted against central control, believing it needed to make examples out of resisters. Colin had seen a planet that had been bombarded back to the Stone Age and another that had been permanently deprived of technology. And that didn’t count the worlds that had simply been scorched clean of life.

It would grow worse, he knew, when the Thousand Families turned on themselves. They’d barely been expanding any more, at least until they’d discovered Jackson’s Folly. And if the Follies hadn’t looked like an easy target for exploitation, they might have been left alone.

“Good,” Daria said. “I worry too. But I also know that failing to swallow the medicine, no matter how unpleasant, will ensure that we do not succeed.”

Colin nodded, then finished his breakfast. It had astonished him, when he’d first transferred his flag to General Montgomery, to discover the sheer level of luxury Stacy Roosevelt had enjoyed. Her quarters had been crammed with artwork, showing a complete lack of taste, while she’d had over forty servants to tend to her needs. It said something about her, Colin had decided, that all of her servants had joined the rebellion the moment they’d been offered the chance. When he’d had a moment, he’d transferred the artwork to help with fundraising and thrown out most of the remaining decorations. The compartment still felt absurdly large for anyone, even an Admiral.

And how many officers, he asked himself, were only promoted because of their connections?

“We will succeed,” Colin told her, firmly. He changed the subject quickly. “Where’s your shadow?”

“Connecting with a few people who don’t want to meet me face to face,” Daria said. “Not all of them are my fans. They might want to meet you though.”

“They’ll have to hurry,” Colin said. “We’re leaving as soon as possible.”

He tapped a switch, activating the star chart. He’d looked at it so often over the past couple of weeks that he felt he’d memorised it. Countless stars were green, indicating that they were of little tactical interest, but a handful were yellow or red, indicating important industrial nodes or naval bases. Morrison, sitting barely a month from Earth, was the darkest red of all.

Colin scowled, wishing he knew just who was in command of the base. Who would the Empire choose? And would it be someone actually competent?

He shook his head. There was no way to know until they were closer. Much closer.

The spy had plenty of practice at playing her role. As a trained starship engineer, she was simply too important to be discarded for a mere suspicion, something Imperial Intelligence had relied upon when they’d primed her for her role. The Rim had a shortage of trained personnel, ensuring that any newcomer with the right skills was warmly welcomed. It helped that her files — which Imperial Intelligence had carefully inserted into the right networks — contained a sob story about rape, sexual abuse and other matters that would encourage someone to make a run for freedom.

But she could barely contain her astonishment as her shuttle approached the giant superdreadnaught. There were hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of volunteers joining the rebellion. The Rim had sent thousands of workers, but so too had Jackson’s Folly and hundreds of other worlds that had been enslaved by the Empire and then liberated by the rebels. She couldn’t believe the sheer scale of the activity taking place in orbit. If she hadn’t been conditioned to be completely loyal, she might have considered joining the rebels herself.

A dull mummer of excitement ran through the shuttle as it landed in the shuttlebay. The spy stood and joined the eager throng as they made their way out the hatch and down onto the deck, where they were met by a handful of grim-faced engineering officers. They’d all be tested, of course; there were so many people who wanted to join the rebel fleet that some of them had probably lied about their qualifications. The spy had no worries on that score. Even without her files, she had enough experience maintaining starships that she could be an engineering crewwoman without arousing suspicion. And, once her cover was secure, she could start laying her plans.

“Follow me,” one of the crewmen said. “And don’t wander off.”

The spy concealed her amusement as he led them through a long corridor and down into the engineering compartment. Her companions seemed awed by the sheer size of the superdreadnaught. But in space, there was no real reason why someone couldn’t build a starship the size of a small moon, if they were prepared to waste the resources. It was planet-side industry that suffered from odd limitations.

As she had anticipated, the test was simple, absurdly simple. A quarter of her comrades still failed, however, and were marched back to the shuttlebay. The remainder were escorted to cabins and told to settle in. There was some grumbling — the general expectation had been that they would get to grips with the Empire at once — but the spy was not surprised. Hurry up and wait was an old military saying.

She smiled, inwardly, as she lay on her bunk. This time, she told herself, it would be different. The rebels would not get lucky again.