Democracy's Right

Chapter Forty-Seven

“She’s stepped down her scans,” the pilot said, as the assault shuttles flew towards the massive orbital fortress. “I think the surrender is genuine.”

“Or they’re tracking us on passive sensors and they’re planning to blow us apart when we get into point-blank range,” another Marine put in. Wisecracking was an old Marine tradition, if only to serve as a barrier against tension, but few would argue that it sometimes went too far. “We might be the first to find out that it is a trick.”

Neil shrugged, knowing that the motion — and his scowl — would be invisible inside his armour. If the defenders intended to fire on the Marines, there would be no warning, not now that they’d gotten into energy range. Weapons designed to tear through starships and induce atomic fission in their component molecules wouldn’t have any trouble vaporising the Marine shuttles — and, as the blast would be moving at the speed of light, the first notice they’d have of its presence would be when the shuttles exploded.

The Imperial Navy didn’t have much practice at surrenders; wrack his brain as he might, he couldn’t remember the last time an Imperial Navy warship surrendered, unless he counted the mutiny Admiral Walker had led. No full-sized orbital fortress had ever surrendered to an outside force, not when the First Interstellar War had promised nothing, but destruction for humanity. Whatever the Dathi had in mind for humanity, in an alternate reality where they had won the war, their treatment of prisoners of war had been appalling. Humanity hadn’t taken long to return the favour — and grow out of the habit of trying to take prisoners. It was quite possible that it was a trick, although God alone knew what Percival thought he could get out of it. Perhaps he was thinking of the chance to take some hostages of his own, or maybe a few bargaining chips? There was no way to know for sure.

His lips twitched humourlessly. Percival had no way of knowing, but each of the shuttles carried a full-sized warhead powerful enough to damage the station if it was detonated inside the shuttlebay. It wouldn’t be enough to break through the armour if detonated on the hull, yet if it went off inside the fortress it would wreck the entire station. No one was sure if the station would actually survive, but it would definitely render the station useless for the foreseeable future. It would probably not be worth attempting to repair the station at all.

He peered though his implants as the station grew closer, growing larger and more daunting all the time. The station’s mass was relatively equal to a superdreadnaught’s, but its boxy exterior was covered in weapons and point defence systems. He knew, from previous exercises, that the interior of the station was designed to resist a boarding party as much as it was designed to make fighting off an invading fleet relatively simple. The Imperial Navy used comparable stations to hold down rebellious worlds and, from time to time, resistance groups had managed to get armed fighters onboard. Neil had investigated one such action seven years ago and had concluded that the rebels had succeeded through paying hefty bribes.

“They’re opening the main shuttlebay for us,” the pilot said. “They’ve opened the flight management system to my computers and there is no sign of trouble.”

“Ah, but there wouldn’t be, would there?” Neil asked. He glanced down at the plan of the rotating station in his HUD. “Tell them that we are diverting to Shuttlebay Four” — a shuttlebay closer to the station’s command centre than the main shuttlebay, normally only used for inspection flights — “and that we will be docking in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said. He didn’t question Neil’s order, for it was a common boarding practice when Marines boarded potentially-hostile ships. If the station’s crew had arranged any unpleasant surprises for them, the Marines wouldn’t oblige them by coming in the entrance they’d selected. “They’re opening the other shuttlebay for us now.”

Neil felt the tension rise as the shuttle rose up towards a glowing hatch and flew into the station. Normally, the station would have insisted on using a tractor beam or a gravity field to ensure that there were no accidents, but there was no way he would have agreed to that when boarding a station. Instead, the pilot put them down on the deck, using the shuttle’s drive fields, and the Marines dived out of the craft and onto the deck. No hail of fire greeted them. There was no one there at all, apart from a single crewman who was looking rather bemused.

“Welcome onboard,” he stammered. Neil smiled to himself. The surrender might have been sent out in Percival’s name and none of the other stations would dare object, but the command station — he wondered, absently, if the station had a name — had suffered what was, in effect, a mutiny. The whole situation was dangerously unstable and could explode at any minute, which was why he’d brought four whole companies of Marines along and assigned them to the boarding party. “Ah… Commander Redfield sends his compliments and invites you to join him in the command centre.”

Neil grinned. He’d been right. No one knew how to surrender. The thought was almost amusing. It wasn’t as if there were drills for surrendering a station. “Good,” he said. “I’m afraid that more of my men are going to be boarding the station and securing vital locations. Please inform Commander Redfield that any resistance will result in harsh punishment. My people have orders to use deadly force.”

The man’s face drained of colour. Neil rolled his eyes behind his helmet. Of course; who else would hold a position on a massive fortress, apart from a coward. The man was certainly afraid to contradict him, although that wasn’t a problem. It might make the occupation easier.

“Yes, sir,” the man said, finally. “Ah… should I escort you to the command centre?”

“Of course,” Neil said. “Lead the way, please.”

He followed the officer through the station’s passageways, concealing his surprise at how few crewmen they encountered. A quick query of the station’s datanet — unlocked for them to access as part of the surrender terms — revealed that most of the crew had been ordered to go to their quarters and remain there, while the Blackshirts had been sent to the gym. It was large enough to contain an entire company of Blackshirts for a brief period, although Neil didn’t hesitate to dispatch several platoons of Marines to keep an eye on them. The Blackshirts might not accept any orders to surrender and try to put up armed resistance. Luckily, they weren’t wearing proper armour, allowing the Marines to vent the compartments and suffocate them if necessary. Neil wasn’t inclined to take chances.

The command centre’s hatches had been locked open, allowing him to stride right into the nerve centre of the station. Commander Alan Redfield — a young man with a developing paunch — looked up at him nervously, then stood to attention and saluted. Neil returned the salute, just before noticing a grossly-overweight man lying on the deck, groaning. Admiral Percival looked just as ugly as he’d been told.

“Welcome onboard,” Redfield said. Neil suspected that he meant it. The prospects of a Blackshirt mutiny had to have been floating through the Commander’s mind. “I surrender this station and the planet to you.”

“I accept your surrender,” Neil said, equally formally. He wasn’t sure if Redfield had the authority to surrender the planet, but if someone on Camelot wanted to try to hold out it would last as long as it took to drop a KEW on their base. Very few planets had ground-based planetary defence centres, if only because taking them out always tore up the real estate and inflicted vast damage on the planetary surface. “I believe that my commander will wish to make an offer to you all, but until then I have to treat you with some care.”

“I understand,” Redfield said. He didn’t sound unhappy about it, but then… it was clear that he believed that he was lucky to be alive. The images of over eighty superdreadnaughts surrounding the planet floated in space, suggesting that the sensors on the fortress couldn’t tell the real superdreadnaughts from the drones. “Sir… what about him?”

He gestured to Percival, who was clearly trying to wake up from his unwanted slumber. The bruise on his face suggested that someone had knocked him out.

“We’ll take him into custody,” Neil said. Admiral Walker would probably want to deal with him personally. Neil didn’t care. He might never have known Percival personally, but the bastard represented everything that was wrong with the Empire, from power without accountability to corruption and decadence. “We don’t want someone to damage him before we can decide what to do with the bastard.”

He smiled. Judging from the damage someone had inflicted on the Admiral, it was clear that Admiral Walker hadn’t been the only person he’d managed to offend. If he’d been winning friends and influencing people at his usual rate — if Walker’s stories were to be believed — he’d be lucky to survive long enough to stand trial.

“That leaves the others,” he said. “How many other high-ranking officers are here?”

“Commodore Roosevelt is down on the planet,” Redfield said. Neil grinned, remembering his last meeting with Stacy Roosevelt. If it hadn’t been for her connections, she would have been shot for gross incompetence; even with her connections, she would never see command again. “Captain Quick, the Admiral’s former… aide was relieved of duty. She was sent to her quarters.”

“Good,” Neil said. He shook his head. “I think you had better go to your quarters, at least until we have this station firmly under control.”

It took thirty minutes to confirm that the station was occupied, once the Blackshirts had been surrounded and disarmed. Neil had expected trouble, but once he’d started to pump the air out of the gym they’d become very reasonable very quickly. The Blackshirts had marched out with their hands held high and had been searched and stripped, before being transferred to one of the freighters which would provide transport to the prison world. There were so many Blackshirts on the surface now that it probably rated as a first-stage colony — or would, if there had been an equal number of women on the surface. There were no female Blackshirts — and the others who had refused to join the rebellion were sent to the other side of the planet.

“We searched the station,” a Marine reported. “There is no sign of Captain Quick.”

Neil frowned, puzzled. The station’s internal sensors were superb, far superior to anything they’d deployed outside the station. It should have been impossible for anyone to hide for long, even if they knew enough about the sensor network to circumvent it in some compartments. His mind drifted back to the report of a gunboat jumping out of the station — a risky trick that could have torn the station apart — and wondered if she had been on the ship. It would have been a ballsy stunt, but doable.

“Leave it for the moment,” he said, finally. Tracking down one officer wasn’t a priority for the moment. “We have other fish to fry.”

Four hours after the station had been declared secure — and the planet had surrendered at gunpoint — Colin was welcomed onboard the station by the Marines. The Colonel showed him around, allowing him a chance to inspect Admiral Percival’s quarters before introducing him to some of the surrendered officers. All of the battle stations had surrendered, although their senior officers couldn’t be trusted. They’d been separated from their men and transported onboard the prison barge. Colin had no idea what would become of them in the future — although he would have to decide it soon enough — but it didn’t matter. Manning the stations was the important issue for the moment. Percival’s fleet might have been smashed, but the Imperial Navy was far from defeated. It might take them a few months to put together a more powerful force, yet Colin knew that one would be on the way sooner or later.

The Marines had, at his request, assembled most of the station’s officers and men in one of the big shuttlebays. Colin remembered, in a sudden flicker of déjà vu, speaking to his men following the first mutiny. Then, he’d spoken from the heart, telling them that the mutiny might fail and that they might all die for his cause. Now… now, whatever else happened, the Empire’s faith in its own superiority wouldn’t survive, even if the Popular Front was destroyed. The next rebellion might topple the Empire completely.

Or perhaps the Empire will reform of its own accord, he thought, as he stared out over the waiting ranks of personnel. And maybe the horse will learn to sing.

“There isn’t much I can say that wasn’t said in the message we introduced into the Interstellar Communications Network,” he said. Whatever else happened, whatever else he did, he wasn’t going to try to bullshit them. They deserved better than that. “We intend to force the Empire to reform, to break the stranglehold of the Thousand Families and create a new order that will allow each and every one of us to rise to the level we deserve, rather than the level determined for us by birth. We will give the worlds the right to determine their own affairs and remove the stain on our honour caused by the frequent crushing of rebellions. I invite each and every one of you to join us.

“I wish I could promise you a victory, but the truth is that we are far from the end of our war,” he added. He’d cribbed the next line from one of the banned history books he’d read while in the Beyond. “All we have done here is merely the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. The Imperial Navy is strong and the Thousand Families will feel sure that they are fighting for their own survival. There will be others who will believe that the Empire’s ultimate purpose justifies any amount of repression and who will fight us, not for evil reasons, but out of a deep concern for the future of the human race. There is no guarantee of victory.

“If you wish to join us, please make your intentions known to one of the Marines,” he concluded. “If you wish to remain with the Empire, you have a number of possibilities. We can repatriate you to the Empire or transport you to an isolated world in the Beyond that is capable of feeding and housing you until the war is over, one way or the other. We will not punish you for choosing to believe that the wording of your oaths is more important than the sentiment behind them. We all swore to uphold the Empire, yet who is the true enemy?

“Whatever choice you make, I guarantee you one thing. We will attempt to accommodate you as much as possible.”

He saluted them and turned, leaving the compartment before they saw just how much his choice of words had affected him. He’d dreamed great dreams, yet part of him had never quite believed that he would make it, that he would be caught and killed long before he reached his goal. And now his old tormentor was his prisoner and the sector was effectively in his hands. No other world in the sector could stand against him now. Given a few months, he could use the sector to add to his industrial resources, putting together a creditable challenge to the entire Empire.

But the Empire would know that as well, he knew. They’d send the Imperial Navy to reclaim or destroy the lost worlds. And the Popular Front would have to defend them. It was strange, but true; their strength was also their weakness. The rebellion had taken worlds now and had to fight to keep them, which would keep their forces tied down in their defence. The tactical situation had changed, but perhaps not improved.

“Let me know what they decide,” he said, to the Marine. He had three other visits to make. “I want to see Percival.”

Penny came back to awareness slowly, more aware of the dryness in her throat and the throbbing in her temples than she was of her surroundings. She could feel that she was lying on a bunk, with something wrapped around her wrist. A restraint, she wondered, before realising that it felt too light to be a restraint. Her eyes opened suddenly and she realised that she had been left in an unfamiliar compartment, one that seemed to throb with energy. She sat up and nearly collapsed as her head suddenly swam, a wave of dizziness passing through her skull. Memory returned and she realised that she had been stunned. Wherever she was, it wasn’t Percival’s station.

“Welcome back to the living,” a voice said. She looked up to see a man sitting by the side of her bunk, a man she didn’t recognise. He was a tall lanky fellow, with short untameable hair and long delicate hands. He couldn’t have been more different from Percival. “How are you feeling?”

“Awful,” Penny said. Her voice sounded thick in her own ears. “Where am I?”

“All in good time, my dear,” the man said. He reached out to touch the band around her wrist and she realised that it was a medical sensor. “You need a shower and a change and then we will talk.” He nodded towards a pile of clothes on a small table as he stood up. “I’ll leave you alone now, but you’re not stupid enough to believe that you are unobserved.”

Penny watched him go, before she managed to stand up and stagger towards the tiny bathroom. As promised, there was a small shower waiting for her. Undressing was a hassle, but her own curiosity pushed her onwards. Wherever the ship was taking her — and she was sure that she was on a starship — it had to be better than Camelot.