Democracy's Right

Chapter Seven

“Commodore, Markus Twain reports that she is finally ready to jump,” Lieutenant Cohen reported. “All ships have now reported ready.”

“Finally,” Commodore Sonja Warren said, not bothering to hide her irritation. “Helm; begin jump preparation. I want to jump to the next waypoint before someone else goes wrong.”

“Aye, Commodore,” the helmswoman said. “Jump preparation begun; jump in two minutes precisely.”

Sonja scowled down at her hands, reminding herself not to snap at her crew. The assignment to escort the Annual Fleet to Sector 117 — and command of over thirty starships, the largest formation outside the Sector Fleets — was a indication of how much trust the Admiralty had in her abilities, but it was one of the most tedious assignments in the Imperial Navy. It was quite possible for a battlecruiser like Pegasus to make the trip from Earth to the Rim in under six months, yet escorting fifty bulk freighters ensured that the trip would stretch out to nearly nine months. The freighters were old, had far less precise drives and simply took longer to recharge before they flickered onwards to their next waypoint. It didn’t help that, in order to ensure security, they had orders not to go within a light year of an inhabited system. Her crew were tired and needed shore leave, but there was no chance of that until they set foot on Camelot.

She relaxed slightly at the thought. The next jump would take them to within two light years of Camelot, then there would be one final jump and they would be home free. Admiral Percival’s Sector Fleet could take over escort duties for the individual ships as they were scattered to the various inhabited worlds in the sector, allowing her crews — and Sonja herself — to have a well-earned rest. She had no idea what the shore leave facilities were like on Camelot, but she would have been happy just to go off duty for a few weeks and spend it all in bed, alone. It would be so lovely to have some guaranteed peace and quiet.

“Attention all ships,” the helmswoman said. “Jump in one minute and counting. Slave navigational computers to Pegasus: I say again, slave navigational computers to Pegasus.”

Sonja kept her face expressionless, even though she wanted to roll her eyes. For some reason best known to themselves, the Admiralty had insisted on concealing the waypoint coordinates from the freighter crews, even though they’d shared them with Admiral Percival and his command staff. The Annual Fleet might be the most desirable target for pirates — or the independent black colonies along the Rim — in the entire sector, but no pirate fleet could hope to rally the firepower to defeat the convoy’s escorts. Hell, she would have been delighted if they had tried. Blowing pirate ships into flaming debris would have broken the monotony.

The Empire was more than a little paranoid when it came to industrial nodes and stations, to the point where all of the standard Imperial-approved designs were firmly controlled by one or more of the Thousand Families and their corporate interests. Sector 117 needed an industrial base of its own, one that could support an expansion in the sector’s economy, yet the population would never be allowed to build one of their own. Instead, at great expense, they had been forced to import the industrial nodes from factories closer to Earth, keeping them dependent upon the Empire. Sonja didn’t know for sure, but she would have bet half her salary that Imperial Intelligence had added in a handful of their own components, ensuring that the Empire knew what had been built in the nodes — and when. It didn’t really matter in this case, at least. She knew that the freighters would eventually be unloaded at worlds that were already firmly under the Empire’s thumb. The Roosevelt Family had seen to that.

She checked the live feed from the display as the seconds ticked away and the freighters slaved themselves to the command ship. She doubted that any of their commanders were happy about it — she wouldn’t have wanted to slave her ship to any other ship, whatever the reason behind it — but they couldn’t argue. They came from the Family-owned shipping lines and would know better than to rock the boat too much. It would have serious career repercussions. No merchant career, no matter how illustrious, could survive a complaint from the Imperial Navy.

“Thirty seconds to jump,” the helmswoman said. She looked absurdly young for her position — or perhaps that was because Sonja herself felt old and tired. There were only two more jumps, she reminded herself, and then they would be safe and sound. “Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…”

Sonja caught sight of her own reflection in the display and smiled to herself. Unlike many other well-connected commanding officers, she hadn’t bothered to design her own uniform, or even decorate her flagship in whatever style she chose. She wore the basic blue of the Imperial Navy, contrasting oddly with her short black hair and sharp face. She realised that she looked tired and promised herself at least four hours of sleep once the coming jump was completed. Her XO could handle the pause while the freighters recharged their flicker drives and braced themselves for the final jump. Or perhaps she just wouldn’t have the time. Her ship’s doctor had been nagging at her about her physical exam, the one she’d been dodging for the last year or so. Sonja hated being poked and prodded — she suspected that the doctor made it uncomfortable on purpose — but regulations were clear. Every crewman, even the starship’s commander, had to undergo a complete physical exam every five years. Her time was definitely running out.

The thought made her smile grew wider. She had played the great game of patronage carefully, trading patrons when necessary, until she had finally reached the command she sought. The Imperial Navy had been good to her and she would serve it loyally for as long as she could, yet even the greatest of connections couldn’t save her from the physical examination. Even the Imperial Navy, a patronage-riddled entity, drew the line there. A commander who might collapse while on duty was a danger to everyone, including herself.

“…Three, two, one,” the helmswoman said. “Jump!”

The Annual Fleet flickered out towards its next waypoint.

Colin sat in the sinfully comfortable command chair on the bridge of the General Montgomery, silently swearing to himself that he would have the chair pulled out and replaced with a properly uncomfortable one as soon as he had the time. He didn’t understand how the various commanders of the superdreadnaught had avoided falling asleep while on duty, although in Stacy Roosevelt’s case her falling asleep on the bridge could only have improved efficiency. Her Flag Captain has probably been relieved to hear snores coming from her command chair.

He shook his head and stared down at the datapad in his hand, flicking through the files on the superdreadnaught’s crew. He hadn’t been surprised to discover that the Thousand Families kept their own files on their clients, although he had been surprised to discover that they routinely shared them. Or maybe it was just between patrons; Stacy Roosevelt had access to most of Admiral Percival’s files, including Colin’s own. He had read it with a certain amount of amusement, and private relief that Stacy was out of reach. Percival had pulled no punches; Colin had been damned as overly ambitious, which was true enough, but also for having desires far above his station. Percival, in what he had doubtless considered the greatest of wit, had written about the common-born officer with ambitions to rise to the very top and join the aristocracy. Percival’s final comment — that Colin should spend the rest of his life on an isolated patrol base — would probably come back to haunt him. Colin doubted that even his connections could save him from nemesis.

The next file related to a crewwoman who had refused a superior’s advances and ended with the suggestion that she should never see promotion again, at least until she changed her mind and opened her legs for her superior. Colin shook his head in disbelief. He had always known that he had a vindictive streak — he’d considered doing horrible things to Stacy Roosevelt, purely out of a desire for revenge — but this was far beyond anything he had ever considered. Colin was mildly surprised that the crewwoman hadn’t been transferred to somewhere unpleasant — a far-off asteroid mining colony, perhaps — yet perhaps her superior’s lust had not dimmed. Or perhaps he just hadn’t wanted to commit anything to the files. Not all members of the Thousand Families were bastards. The superior’s social equals might have had a few things to say about his conduct.

Colin tapped the file, marking it — and the crewwoman — for later attention, and went on to the next file. He’d reasoned that if he read the secure files and noted the crewmen who had bad reports from their superiors, those crewmen would make ideal recruits for the rebels and he could recruit them. The crewmen who had good reports might be less trustworthy, although Colin knew that the reports themselves weren’t exactly perfect. One of the comments in his own file had come from a superior officer Colin had only met once, back before he’d accepted Admiral Percival’s offer of patronage. It hadn’t been a pleasant comment, which struck Colin as vaguely amusing; he’d barely remembered the meeting himself.

An hour later, he put the file aside and stared around the bridge. The superdreadnaught’s flag bridge was massive, as befitted a command ship and one of the most powerful starships in the Empire, but Colin found it oddly exposed. Even the battlecruiser’s bridge had been more cramped than the superdreadnaught’s. Dozens of consoles were scattered around, each one manned by a crewman, including several that Colin had transferred from the Observation Squadron. They’d spent the last few days drilling endlessly until Colin was fairly sure that the fleet could operate as a unit, although they wouldn’t know for sure until they went into battle, or at least conducted some live-fire drills. They would have to wait until they’d secured the Annual Fleet and then escaped out beyond the Rim. And once the fleet was there…

Don’t count your chickens before they have hatched, he reminded himself, as he studied the massive holographic display floating in the centre of the bridge. Camelot’s star, an oddly-variable G2 star, was a bare two light years away. On a human scale, it might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy, but anyone who graduated from the Imperial Navy’s Academy — to say nothing of the far-tougher OCS — would know just how stellar geography played a role in naval combat. It was quite possible that Admiral Percival’s Sector Fleet would be able to respond to a distress call from the Annual Fleet — one brought by a destroyer or picket boat that escaped the attack — and get there in time to wreck Colin’s plan. Colin would have preferred to attack at the fleet’s last waypoint, but Stacy Roosevelt’s timing had been inconvenient. And, of course, once the fleet arrived at Camelot, attacking it would be impossible.

He clicked his wristcom and brought up a display he’d programmed into it the day they’d flickered out, away from Jackson’s Folly. The bulk freighter he’d given to the loyalists had been carefully selected, for its flicker drive was in poor condition. It was perfectly safe, it would just take Stacy and the rest of the loyalists at least two weeks to return to Camelot, four days after Colin ambushed the Annual Fleet. The vindictive side of his nature kept reminding him that he could have programmed the ship to take the loyalists straight into the local sun, but he forced it down. A mass slaughter, he kept telling himself, would only make it harder for others to surrender.

“Admiral, the drills have been completed,” Flag Captain Jeremy Damiani reported. Stacy Roosevelt’s former Flag Captain had volunteered to serve with the rebels — and, after reading his file, Colin had understood why. Stacy had poured so much poison into his file that Damiani didn’t have a hope of transferring to any other position — or patron. Colin wasn’t entirely sure if he trusted the man, but he was short on experienced officers and besides, there were armed Marines scattered throughout the superdreadnaught. “Your ship is ready for battle.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Colin said, gravely. It felt weird to be called Admiral, yet he’d taken the title for himself. It also felt bittersweet. He would never command a starship again, lord and master under God; he would never know the joys and sorrows of independent command. He was devoted to his cause — after everything he’d done, the Empire would never forgive him or his followers — yet part of him still wanted to command. “Are the external racks loaded and deployed?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Damiani said. “We are ready for Sucker Punch.”

Colin felt an odd twinge of guilt at his words. He cared very little for the commanding officers of the Annual Fleet, but he cared a great deal about the crewmen onboard the ships. Many of them — indeed, perhaps most of them — would want to join the rebels, if they were offered the chance. Colin didn’t dare offer them that chance. A freighter might take hours to repower its drive and flicker out, leaving the freighters sitting ducks for his fleet, but the same couldn’t be said of the military ships escorting the civilian vessels. A destroyer or a courier boat would only need a few minutes to repower and spin up the flicker drive, jumping to Camelot to alert Admiral Percival. Colin held Percival in the deepest of contempt, yet even he would react quickly to anything threatening the Annual Fleet. He didn’t dare risk allowing anyone to sound the alarm, which meant that he had to destroy the escorts as quickly as possible, without offering or accepting surrender.

You’re a hypocrite, he told himself, tartly. You say that you don’t want to engage in mass slaughter, yet you are willing to plan the deaths of hundreds of thousands just to ensure that you can loot the fleet in peace.

He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Good,” he said, instead. He glanced down at the display. It was empty, apart from the shaded icons representing his fleet, lurking under cloaking fields. The second they opened fire, the escorts would know that they were there and even where they were, but by then it would be far too late. Or so Colin hoped. If there was one other lesson that was pummelled into the heads of young cadets at the Academy, it was KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The simpler an operational plan, they’d been told, the less that could go spectacularly wrong. “And all we have to do now is wait.”

“Yes, sir,” Damiani said. “Admiral… how long are we going to wait?”

Colin understood his concern. The information they’d recovered from Stacy Roosevelt’s files had been the latest she’d had, but it had been nine months out of date when it had been sent to her. It was quite possible that the Annual Fleet’s commander had decided to change the waypoint coordinates, or even decided to risk jumping from their last waypoint direct to Camelot. Colin and his rebel fleet could wait for weeks without knowing what had happened, or that they’d missed their target.

“As long as it takes,” Colin said. It wasn’t entirely hopeless. One of Daria’s ships had the Camelot System under permanent observation. They’d know if the Annual Fleet arrived and that the rebels had missed their chance. “We lose this and we have to go back to Plan B.”

Damiani frowned. “Plan B?”

“I’m still working on it,” Colin admitted. He had a contingency plan, but it wasn’t one he wanted to share, not yet. “Without the Annual Fleet, we’d take much longer to build up a rebel fleet…”

“Admiral,” the tactical officer barked. “Contacts! I have multiple starships, flickering in right on top of us!”

Colin braced himself as new red icons flared into existence on the display. The tactical computers were already categorising them, separating the freighters from their escorts, before assigning new targeting priorities to the datanet. The superdreadnaughts and battlecruisers were already linked together; now, with their targets finally in range, they were targeting the enemy ships and preparing to fire.

“Fire,” Colin ordered, quietly.

The superdreadnaught shuddered as it unleashed the first massive broadside. Even without the external racks, a superdreadnaught could launch over three hundred missiles per salvo, but the external racks tripled the superdreadnaught’s throw weight. All nine superdreadnaughts had fired in the same moment, their missiles linked into the datanet and roaring towards their targets, backed up by ECM and decoys designed to make it harder for the enemy tactical computers to defeat the incoming salvo. It was overkill, as Colin’s council of war had pointed out, but he didn’t dare take chances. They had to win their first battle.

“Impact in forty seconds,” the tactical officer said.

Sonja relaxed slightly as the jump completed, feeling the knot of tension in her stomach slowly unlocking and fading away. At least they’d been jumping from rest, rather than at high speed. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience for the freighter crewmen, of course, but her crews could handle the sensation. A combat jump, on the other hand, would have been much more dangerous and uncomfortable.

“Get me an updated count on the ships,” she ordered. She wouldn’t have put it past the civilian ships to somehow screw up the coordinates — even if they were slaved to her ship — and appear somewhere else. Civilians couldn’t be trusted. Every naval officer knew that. “I want them all located…”

“Commodore,” the tactical officer interrupted. Sonja whirled around, her rebuke fading away as she took in his tone of panic. She’d never heard him badly shaken before, even when they’d jumped alarmingly close to an asteroid and almost rammed it. “We have incoming missiles! We’re under attack!”