Democracy's Right

Chapter Fourteen

“Jump completed, sir,” the helmsman reported.

“Enemy tactical sensors are scanning us,” the tactical officer added. “I think they can’t believe their eyes.”

Colin smiled. He knew how he would have reacted if he’d been in command of the base and had suddenly seen nine superdreadnaughts and over a hundred smaller ships bearing down on him. It was possible that the Imperial Navy crewmen would believe that they were legitimate starships on a legitimate mission, but he’d decided not to try to use the fake IFF signals. The Geeks swore blind that Colin’s fleet would be able to pretend to be either of Percival’s remaining superdreadnaught squadrons, yet Colin wanted to hide that capability until they hit a far harder target than Garstang.

The planet grew in the main display as his fleet headed towards the network of orbital weapons platforms surrounding the penal world. It didn’t look healthy, not to Colin’s eyes, a sign of a world at war with itself. Unlike most marginally-habitable worlds, Garstang’s native ecology had proven itself able to fight the infusion of Earth-native plants and animals, creating a nightmarish environment for the unwilling colonists. Eventually, it would settle down into a balanced position — the terraforming crews had been certain of that — but for the moment it made an ideal penal world. Colin couldn’t keep his eyes off it. If his rebellion failed, most of his crew would be sentenced to a penal world, although he himself would be publically executed. The Empire would never show mercy to his men.

“They’re hailing us,” the communications officer said. “They’re asking what we’re doing here.”

Colin’s lips twitched. Admiral Percival clearly hadn’t warned the penal colony that nine superdreadnaughts had fallen into enemy hands, or that they might be raided by rebel forces. The Imperial Navy crew on the platforms had to know that something was wrong — the fleet bearing down on them included some very non-standard starships — yet they might not realise just how badly they were screwed. His lips tightened into a humourless smile. A single salvo of missiles from his fleet would utterly destroy the planet’s defences and allow him to recover as many of the prisoners as he could without any fear of being interrupted.

Provided, of course, that we can find that picket ship, he thought, sourly. The superdreadnaught’s massive arrays of tactical sensors were probing space — there was no point in trying to hide — but they hadn’t located the picket ship. Colin wasn’t too surprised. As long as the crew was careful, they could just keep their heads down, power up their own flicker drive and jump out. The thought was bleakly amusing. Where could they go to get reinforcements capable of taking on nine superdreadnaughts? There was only one place they could go — Camelot — and that was several days away.

“Open a channel,” he ordered. “This is Admiral Walker of the Shadow Fleet.”

He smiled, knowing how the enemy crewmen would be reacting. The Shadow Fleet was a legend, even though Colin suspected that the Popular Front — or whatever they ended up calling themselves — wouldn’t want to keep the name. Still… he could use it for the moment and, with any luck, it would serve to confuse the enemy.

“You are ordered to surrender at once,” he continued. “If you comply with all of our orders, you will not be harmed. Deactivate the planetary defence grid. Do not attempt to purge your computers or activate any destruct systems. You have one minute from this message to comply.”

He leaned back in his command chair and waited for the seconds to tick away. Purging a starship’s computers would make it hard to use the ship, at least until the computers could be rebooted and reprogrammed, but it was hardly fatal. The computers on the orbital platform, on the other hand, were vitally important. They contained the records of who had been sent to where on the planet’s surface. It didn’t take much imagination to realise that searching an entire planet — a planet with no technology that could be detected from orbit — was not going to be an easy task. Colin knew that it would take years to accomplish and there was no way he could keep his fleet in one place that long. It would be easier to contact Percival and offer to surrender.

“Target the automated platforms,” he ordered. There were thirty seconds before they deadline ran out. “Prepare to fire.”

“I’m seeing things,” Lieutenant Adam burbled. He stank of alcohol and sparkle dust. It wasn’t forbidden when off duty — and forbidding it wouldn’t have been very effective in any case — but Fox felt a twinge of disgust. “They’re a figment of my imagination.”

“You have no imagination,” Fox snarled at him. He’d wondered if his sensors had been having flights of fancy when the superdreadnaughts arrived, but every sensor told the same story. The wreckage of the bulk freighter had been forgotten as the superdreadnaughts ploughed their way towards his station. Their blocky ugly image — the very picture of a blunt instrument — was now displayed on all of his consoles. Their tactical scans were so powerful that they were threatening to blind some of his more sensitive sensors. “Inject yourself with a cleanser and then take the tactical console.”

He ignored Adam’s fumbling in the compartment’s medical dispenser as he stared at the superdreadnaughts, his mind racing. What was he to do? A tactical genius like Admiral Joshua Wachter could not have pulled a victory from the jaws of defeat, not with nine superdreadnaughts bearing down on him. The defences hadn’t been designed to stand up to anything heavier than an assault cruiser. If he surrendered, the Empire would not be happy with him and he might find himself the latest convict on the planet’s surface; if he fought, the results would be certain death. It didn’t take a simulation to tell him that any fighting could only have one result.

“Answer them,” Adam said. Fox looked up with a snap. The seconds had been ticking away while he’d been frozen by his own thoughts. “Tell them that we surrender!”

The naked panic in his voice disgusted Fox, yet he understood; to his shame, there was nothing else they could do, but surrender. Adam might have been a coward — it was why he had been sent to the penal world’s orbiting station in the first place — yet he was right. Fox might have fought if there had been a hope of victory, but that hope was simply non-existent. A single superdreadnaught would have rolled over his station — probably without even having its paint scratched — and then liberated the prisoners anyway. Nine superdreadnaughts would just do it quicker.

He keyed the console. “This is Commander Fox,” he said, calmly. As long as they were talking, there was still a chance that he could game the outcome. “If we surrender, what guarantees do you offer for my men and me?”

There was hardly any pause before the reply, a sign of just how close the superdreadnaughts were to his station. “We will guarantee that they and you will remain alive,” the voice said. It was as cold and harsh as the winters on an icy world, one far from a warm star. “We make no other promises. Surrender now or die. There will be no further discussions.”

Fox bowed his head. At least they would live… if the speaker chose to keep his word. It was tempting to believe that he wouldn’t, but he knew that if they fought, they died. There really was no other choice.

“Deactivate the defence grid,” he ordered Adam, who was already standing by the tactical console. He flicked a switch and linked back into the communications system. “We surrender; I say again, we surrender. The defence grid is deactivated.”

“Good,” the voice said. “Armed Marines are on their way. I strongly advise you to comply with their orders and do nothing to irritate them.”

“I understand,” Fox said, caught between fear and puzzlement. Armed Marines? Who were these people? They couldn’t be the Shadow Fleet. Even at its height, the Shadow Fleet of legend had never included superdreadnaughts, or the Empire would have taken it a great deal more seriously. The only thing he could think of was that it might be a security test, yet why would they bother? It made no sense to him at all. “We will comply.”

He switched the channel again, connecting him to the other stations on his platform. “We are going to be boarded,” he said, flatly. “You are ordered to comply with their requests” — he didn’t want to say orders — “as far as possible. They have promised that they will leave us alive as long as we cooperate. That is all.”

Fox sat down in his command chair and waited to see what would happen. On the display, the defence grid had gone completely off-line, but the newcomers weren’t taking any chances. They were keeping their shields up and their weapons ready to deal out death to anyone who interfered with them, while shuttles were being launched towards the station, following an evasive pattern that looked vaguely familiar. The speaker had talked about Marines, he recalled, and the shuttle pilots were flying Marine-standard flight patterns…

He just didn’t know what to make of it. Who were these people?

“Ugly station,” Colonel Neil Frandsen muttered, as his shuttle flew right towards the orbital platform. The Empire hadn’t bothered to invest much love in the design; it was a boxy platform, covered with airlocks and launching tubes for transport pods. It even looked old, as if the workers couldn’t be bothered painting it properly before completing the assembly and releasing it into orbit. But then, hardly anyone was expected to see it. No one cared about the opinions of the convicts, the Imperial Navy personnel on duty would be the dregs of the system and the rest of the Empire wouldn’t be permitted in the system. “Take us right towards the VIP entrance.”

The pilot chuckled as the shuttle levelled out and arrowed towards an airlock near the top of the boxy platform. Neil watched, unconcerned, as they passed deactivated weapons stations, each one only requiring the touch of a button to bring it to life again. The station’s crew could kill thirty Marines, if they opened fire, but then the fleet outside would reduce the station to flaming debris, all of which would fall into the planet’s atmosphere and probably set off another environmental change.

He keyed his suit’s radio. “Commander Fox, you will assemble your command crew in the main compartment,” he ordered. “Any officer or crewman found out of place will be unceremoniously shot.”

“We understand,” Fox’s voice said. Neil’s expression twisted with disgust at the whining sound. Fox sounded very much as if he would like to fight, yet didn’t quite dare to open fire — or, for that matter, to purge the computers and trigger the self-destruct. “We will comply.”

A dull thump echoed through the shuttle as the pilot brought her in to dock with the airlock. Neil checked the computers and was relieved to discover that Marine-grade incursion software was capable of inserting itself into the station’s computers and subverting them. It was a pity that such systems couldn’t be used without a physical link into the computers, but the Empire — paranoid about the Geeks and Nerds — had constructed the systems to avoid such intrusions. It wouldn’t have mattered. If worst came to worst, Neil and his men could have burned right through the station’s hull and vented it into space, while they were secure in their armoured suits.

The airlock hissed open and Neil marched right in, ignoring the half-hearted protests from two of the younger Marines. Admiral Walker might be too important to risk, Neil knew, but the day a Marine became too important to risk was the day that he needed to resign. His own actions after his relief, he understood now, had been more about getting himself killed than about doing anything constructive. The Marines had understood. Few others would have been that understanding, or sympathetic.

He glanced from side to side as he moved through the corridor and into the control section. It was smaller than he had expected, but then, the Imperial Navy hadn’t bothered to spend large sums on a penal planet station. There were more important places to spend money on, such as senior officers’ quarters or luxuries for the Thousand Families. Commander Fox looked exactly as Neil had pictured him, a young man with an old face. His record suggested neither competence nor political connections.

“Secure them,” he ordered. He grasped Fox’s hands himself, pulling them behind the man’s back and wrapping a pair of memory cuffs around them. The metal flowed into place; comfortable, but unbreakable. He waited until the remaining twelve crewmen were subdued before continuing. “Commander Fox; why are there other people on your station, not within this compartment?”

Fox couldn’t look into the darkened visor covering Neil’s eyes. “You ordered my crew to be brought up to this compartment,” he stammered. He had to know that Neil could have crushed his neck using his suit’s augmented muscles, even by accident. “The others on this station are not part of my crew.”

“Rules lawyer,” Neil snarled. Fox looked terrified. A sudden change in his body’s heat emissions suggested that he had wet himself. “Who are they?”

“Workers,” Fox said, finally. “They’re convicts who come to work for us in exchange for safety and food and others and…”

His eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted. Neil shook his head with disgust and lowered him to the floor, dropping him with all the elegance of a sack of potatoes. “Guard them,” he ordered the first platoon, and marched out of the compartment without bothering to check if his two bodyguards were accompanying him. He wanted to see for himself. The interior of the station was dull and depression. It surprised him that, even after serving nearly a decade on the station, Commander Fox and his men hadn’t bothered to try to make it like home. They might not have been allowed children on their base, yet they could have decorated…

He checked the station’s security systems and frowned. All of the remaining life-signs were gathered in one of the cargo bays, so he led his small group there. The station didn’t actually store much between convict flights, just in case the convicts somehow managed to get up to the station and take over. The prisoner transports would bring most of their supplies, which would then be distributed by Fox and his men. It was a neat little system, with the slight problem that a few delayed fights and Fox and his crew would start to starve. Their food processors were hardly the latest models.

“In here,” he said, as they finally reached the hatch. It wasn’t coded shut, but it hardly mattered. Anyone inside the cargo bay — unless they had a powered armour suit of their own — was trapped. There was no other way out, apart from the main hatch which led out into space. “Check the environmental systems and then open the hatch.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected when he opened the hatch, but what he saw surprised him. There were thirty-seven women within the compartment, all young and stunningly pretty — and naked. Some looked as if they had been the victims of abuse; others looked as if they were cared for, even loved. They all cowered away from the Marines, almost as if they feared the Marines more than their masters. Neil couldn’t blame them. Inside the armoured suit, he was just a faceless monster. They couldn’t possibly know who or what he was.

It was easy to tell their story. They would have been selected from the female convicts and offered the choice between working on the platform… or being launched down to the surface of the planet in a one-way pod. Neil had worked with Marines ever since he had joined the Corps and he understood; some of the women looked abused because they were abused, others looked unharmed because they had been unharmed. Some of Fox’s men would have seen them purely as receptacles for their lust, while others would have allowed themselves to develop emotional attachments to their girls. Who knew — perhaps the girls felt the same way too. It wasn’t as if life on the surface of the planet would be much better.

Warning lights flashed up in his HUD and he scowled. He hadn’t realised that he was squeezing his own hands so tightly until the alerts sounded, warning them that he might damage his own suit. Part of him wanted to go back to the command section and pop Fox’s head like a grape, the other part knew that Fox and his men had merely made the best of a bad posting. There were few who would have resisted temptation.

“Take them to the shuttles,” he ordered, finally. He doubted that any of them were truly dangerous. The station’s crew would have to be insane to allow a known murderess or serial killer onboard. Of course, given that no one knew how Hester Hyman had escaped from her prison ship, it was possible that someone had been that stupid and she’d merely taken advantage of it. “And then secure the remaining station. It’s time to start scanning the records.”

“We have all the records downloaded, sir,” the communications officer said. “They’re being routed to intelligence now.”

Colin nodded, shortly. They only had a handful of intelligence officers — Anderson was the most senior — who had volunteered to join the rebellion. They couldn’t be trusted in any case; Colin only trusted Anderson because he could have blown the whistle at any time and wrecked the whole plan to mutiny before it had even got off the ground. Still… he’d found some volunteers from Daria’s people and, between them, they could start locating the prisoners the underground wanted liberated.

“Good,” he said. The Colonel was already returning to his transport ship, leaving a pair of Marines on the station along with the secured prisoners. “Prepare to land the landing force.”