Democracy's Might

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Jump completed, sir.”

Colin nodded, grimly. It had taken longer than he’d expected to repair his fleet, something that had left him feeling increasingly antsy as the days wore on. His most optimistic calculations suggested that it would take at least two months for the Morrison Fleet to repair its own damage, but it was quite likely that Admiral Wachter wouldn’t wait to go on the offensive. He, as much as Colin himself, understood the value of keeping the enemy off balance

“Take us towards the planet,” he ordered. “But do not take us into the gravity shadow.”

Tabard had been settled in the same year as Morrison itself, but it had never really taken off into a fully-developed world. The files suggested that the system’s lack of a gas giant had muted investment, even though there were gas giants only a handful of light years away. By now, there were only a handful of facilities in the system, all belonging to minor families or the planetary government. Oddly, Tabard’s sheer lack of importance ensured that the planet had a degree of independence others would never be able to enjoy.

Unless one happens to renounce technology altogether, Colin thought, as the squadron shook itself down into formation. Then you would have nothing the Empire wanted, apart from a potential dumping ground for criminals.

He looked down at the reports from his ships, grimly. Seven weeks of intensive work had repaired most of the damage, but some of the ships really needed some time in a proper shipyard. The engineers had warned him that they couldn’t be overstressed or their makeshift repairs would collapse, something that Colin had found darkly amusing. People didn’t go to wars to relax and nor did their starships. The best he could do was keep the damaged ships in the rear.

“Picking up a courier boat,” the sensor officer reported. “She jumped out; destination unknown.”

Probably Morrison, Colin thought. Admiral Wachter would know that Colin and a dozen rebel starships were attacking the system within moments, assuming that all went according to plan. If he took the bait… Tabard was barely four light years from Morrison. His response force could be on the way within minutes. And if the enemy didn’t take the bait, Colin could at least wreck the system’s facilities in the course of testing his repaired ships.

“Transmit the standard warning,” he ordered. “Tell them to evacuate their facilities or die on them.”

The planet came closer in the display, barely defended and utterly vulnerable to anything larger than a destroyer. Colin wasn’t surprised — and a little relieved — to see the orbital installations hastily launching lifepods, most of them rapidly dropping out of orbit and heading down towards the surface. The system CO had probably taken one look at the nine superdreadnaughts on his display and crapped himself. Maybe he’d be executed for not even firing a shot at the rebels, but at least he’d preserved his people’s lives.

Alarms shrilled as new icons flickered into the system. “Contact, sir,” the tactical officer said. “Two squadrons of superdreadnaughts and escorts; I say again, two squadrons of superdreadnaughts and escorts.”

“Good,” Colin said. He glanced at the status display — the flicker drives were powered up, ready to jump — then smiled. “Alter course towards them.”

He didn’t expect to win — he didn’t even intend to stay in the system long enough to fire a second barrage — but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was giving the enemy a fright… and accomplishing the second half of the plan.

“Send a signal to Seeker,” he added. “She is to follow her special instructions, then rejoin the fleet later.”

The spy had worked hard over the past seven weeks, much to her private annoyance. Her conditioning kept pushing her to sabotage the ship, forcing her to believe that she could get away with it without being detected. Maybe, on an Imperial Navy starship, it would have been right, but the rebels were far better trained than the average naval crew. They checked and rechecked everything, catching even the tiniest of mistakes. There was no way that outright sabotage could have gone unnoticed. Besides, the best she could do was blow up the superdreadnaught. The rebels would still have the rest of their fleet.

She had tried to distract the conditioning, which nagged at her relentlessly, by gathering data on the rebel fleet. The damage control officers were allowed to access all kinds of information, even material that would have been denied to them under normal circumstances. She’d taken it, stored it in her datapad and told herself that she was doing good. But, now the Imperial Navy had met them at Tabard, she had to send them the data. There was no way her conditioning would allow her to delay a moment longer.

Obeying the orders from her supervisor, she clambered into the tubes and crawled towards the access point. There were few crewmen who really liked the tubes; she’d worked hard to develop a reputation as someone who could navigate them with ease. It ensured that her supervisor often sent her out on her own, without a partner who would notice her activities and alert the Marines. The rebels, thankfully, believed in allocating people to the sections where they could do the most good. Ironically, it should have worked in their favour, but now it worked against them.

She reached the access point, spliced in the datapad and went to work.

Colin smiled to himself as a message blinked up in his personal display. The spy had gone to work, precisely as anticipated, and was trying to upload information to the enemy. Hopefully, the spy hadn’t noticed that most of the information the newcomers had been allowed to access was fake and badly understated, but it wouldn’t matter. The important thing was that they now knew where they could find the spy.

“Get him,” he muttered. “Hurry.”

He turned his attention back to the display. The enemy fleet wasn’t slowing; instead, it was actually picking up speed, as if the CO was determined to play a mad game of chicken. Or, perhaps, force his way into energy range. Colin grinned to himself, then checked the tactical display. They would be in medium range in two minutes. And then they would see…

Sidney had no problems navigating the tubes. As a native of an asteroid settlement, he was perfectly aware that sometimes he just had to crawl through tubes, even if the tubes were so thin that it seemed they were closing in on him. He clutched his stunner in one hand as he came out of the tube and turned to see a young woman fiddling with a datapad. She let out a gasp as she saw him, then grabbed for the pistol at her belt. Whatever she was, Sidney realised, she’d had some good training. She had the pistol out of her holster before he zapped her with the stunner. She let out a little gasping sound and crumpled to the metal deck.

He keyed his throatmike as he stepped forward, keeping the stunner pointed at her head. “I found her,” he said, as he knelt down beside her. They’d been warned to take no chances, so he pulled her hands behind her back and secured them, then tied her ankles together. “Just one person, Sergeant.”

“Understood,” the Sergeant said. “Are you sure she’s out of it?”

Sidney checked the girl’s vital signs. “Yes,” he said, shortly. “She’s definitely stunned.”

“Good,” the Sergeant said. “The others are on their way now. Once they’re with you, help them carry her to the brig. Leave her modifications alone. The engineers will deal with them.”

“Crewman Third Class Natasha Rosina,” Anderson’s voice said. “One of our newcomers, definitely. And she would have been in position to betray the asteroid too.”

“Understood,” Colin said. “Take care of her. I’ll see you once the battle is over.”

He closed the channel, just as the enemy ships came into range. “Lock weapons on target,” he ordered. “Fire!”

The five arsenal ships that had been pretending to be superdreadnaughts fired as one, launching over ten thousand missiles towards the enemy ships. Colin’s actual superdreadnaughts fired a moment later, adding their own weight of fire to the barrage. The enemy ships seemed to flinch as the missiles roared towards them, then returned fire. Colin allowed himself a tight smile, then gave the order. The entire fleet flickered out without further ado.

“Jump complete, sir,” the helmsman said. “We escaped without losses.”

Colin smirked. The enemy fleet had probably powered up its flicker drives too, assuming that Admiral Wachter had overridden the beancounters who whined about wear and tear on expensive machinery. In peacetime, they would have had a point. Keeping a flicker drive powered up shortened its lifespan by at least half. But now, with massive missile swarms an ever-present threat, such whining should go out the airlock.

“Seeker will join us later,” he said. The destroyer’s orders had been to cloak, then observe the result of the missile barrage. Colin would have preferred to believe that the enemy squadron was utterly destroyed, but he knew better than to count on it. “Stand down from battlestations; take us back to the rest of the fleet.”

He stood. “XO, you have the bridge,” he added. “Contact me as soon as we reach the fleet.”

There were five armoured Marines on duty outside the brig compartment, with two more inside. The ship’s doctor was examining a naked figure lying on a bed inside the first cell, with yet another Marine and Anderson standing next to her. Both of the men looked concerned — and irked. The girl had spied on them for months and they’d only noticed through sheer luck.

“She’s basically normal, physically,” the doctor said. “No implants that I can detect, a limited amount of gene-splicing… nothing really dangerous. The only significant point is a modified gene for null-gravity environments, one that isn’t catalogued in the database. It might just have come from the Beyond.”

“Or it might have been devised by Imperial Intelligence,” Anderson rumbled. “Something to prove her credentials.”

“Perhaps,” Colin said. “And no one suspected anything?”

“Her supervisor gave her a glowing report,” Anderson said. “She was liked by everyone, it seems. And she had a partner, one Crewman Rogers. He refused to believe the truth when I told him.”

Colin winced, feeling a moment of sympathy for the young man. It wasn’t easy to form a relationship with a girl, not on an Imperial Navy starship. Below decks, life could be very hard for the women. They were not only outnumbered significantly by the men, they were often chased by their superior officers too. And the very worst ships had the female crewmen forced into prostitution… it was one of the things everyone knew happened, but did nothing to stop. Colin had won the loyalty of Shadow’s crew by taking a stand against such gangs.

“No need to harass him,” Colin said. “Check him out with a lie detector, then let him go.”

“We know how she accessed the datanet now,” Anderson said, changing the subject. “If she refuses to cooperate, we can duplicate it for ourselves.”

The spy let out a gasp, her entire body jerking against the restraints. Colin watched, grimly, as the doctor placed an injector against her neck and shot something into her bloodstream, explaining that it was a mild sedative. It was quite possible, Colin knew, that the spy had been conditioned to commit suicide as soon as she was captured. The sedative, combined with the restraints, might make it impossible.

Her eyes jerked open. “I…”

“Relax,” the doctor said. “You’re safe.”

Anderson grunted, unpleasantly. The doctor shot him a sharp look. There would be time for an intensive interrogation later, but for the moment they had to prevent any suicidal programming from activating. If the spy didn’t believe herself to be in real danger… she jerked again, her hands straining against the restraints. Colin shook his head, but refused to turn away. There was no way the spy could believe she was not in danger.

The girl convulsed, then went limp. Alarms sounded as her entire body sagged. The doctor swore, then pushed another injector against her neck. But it was already too late.

“The command to commit suicide was too strong,” the doctor said. There was a bitter tone in her voice. “The moment she realised she was caught, her conditioning ordered her to die.”

Anderson scowled. “There was nothing you could do to save her?”

“I could have kept her permanently sedated or stuffed her into a stasis tube,” the doctor snapped, tartly. “But I doubt I could have kept her awake and alive. You would probably need direct brain linkage to pull anything out of her and we don’t have the equipment. And if we did, I wouldn’t. It would be grossly immoral.”

“Imperial Intelligence does it all the time,” Anderson said.

“I rest my case,” the doctor countered. She looked over at Colin. “I’ll give her an autopsy, but I don’t think I’ll uncover anything particularly significant. There was nothing special about her, merely her brain and her forced obedience to orders.”

Colin leaned forward. The girl looked so innocent, in death. “You’re sure she was forced?”

“She was quite definitely conditioned,” the doctor said. She shrugged, expressively. “But apart from that… we’ll probably never know. She could have been captured, turned into a spy and sent back to the Beyond or she could have volunteered for the job. If she’d changed her mind later…”

Colin shivered. Conditioning would have ensured she couldn’t have changed sides, no matter what she discovered about the Empire. She might have wanted to join the rebels, only to be held in place by her mental bondage. In the long run, it would have killed her. But until then she would have served the Empire faithfully.

His wristcom buzzed. “Admiral,” the XO said, “we have returned to the fleet.”

“Good,” Colin said. There was no time to waste. “Start reloading the arsenal ships and our missile tubes.”

He closed the channel, then looked over at Anderson. “What do you want to do with her reputation?”

“Tell everyone that she was forced into servitude,” Anderson said, shortly. “Too many people liked her, really. We tell them that she was conditioned and they’ll accept her as a martyr. Hell, we can turn her into another propaganda story.”

Colin hesitated. He didn’t like the thought of using a young woman’s death for propaganda, even though they would never know just why she’d served the Empire. But then, at least they would get something out of the whole affair apart from the awareness that they’d caught one spy. Who knew how many others there were?

“Make sure you secure the datanet thoroughly,” he warned. “If someone else tries to use those backdoors, I want to know about it.”

“Understood,” Anderson said. He took one last look at the body, then stepped backwards. “With your permission, sir, I will start spreading the word.”

Colin nodded, then turned and walked out of the brig.

“Seeker rejoined the fleet thirty minutes after our arrival,” Colin said, an hour later. “She reported that we took out three enemy superdreadnaughts and damaged two more.”

“Excellent,” Daria said. “And you caught the spy.”

Colin nodded, looking around the conference room. Too many faces were missing. Jeremy Damiani, of course, was either a prisoner or dead. Salgak and the rest of the Geeks were on their starships; Hester and Hannelore were back on Jackson’s Folly, working frantically to organise the rebellion’s industrial base. If the attack on Morrison failed for a second time, all their efforts might prove futile. The Empire would have all the time it needed to launch an offensive of its own.

But they lost Wolf 359, Colin thought. The courier boat had arrived just before he’d taken the squadron to Tabard. Cordova had scored a stunning victory, one that fully justified the rebellion’s faith in him. Right now, the Empire would be reeling. Entire families would be teetering on the brink of collapse. There would be no better time to resume the offensive.

“The spy’s message included the claim that we were not ready to resume the offensive,” Colin said. It had been tricky to make sure the spy picked up on it, but the message had been recorded and deciphered. They’d succeeded. “That is, of course, a lie.”

He took a breath. “We’re going back to Morrison,” he said. “We have the new weapons, new tactics… and this time we will not underestimate our enemy. This is how we are going to proceed.”

The plan was simple enough, but the basic equation hadn’t changed. He still had to knock Morrison out before advancing into the Core Worlds, knowing that failing to do so would leave the Morrison Fleet in his rear. And he was far too aware of just what an aggressive Admiral could do with the Empire’s preponderance of mobile firepower. Hell, given enough time, the Empire could cut loose entire squadrons of battlecruisers and send them to raid Colin’s rear. No, there was no alternative. They had to knock Morrison out — and soon.

And Admiral Wachter would know it too.

“Go back to your ships,” he ordered, finally. “We will leave in one hour.”

Daria hesitated, waiting until the others were gone. She even waved Mariko out, although Colin was sure that the tiny girl would be waiting on the other side of the hatch. It was rare to see them apart, even though they were clearly a mismatched pair.

“Good to see you enthused again, Colin,” she said. “I was worried for a while.”

“Thank you,” Colin said, sourly. It was funny, “I just had to learn from defeat.”

“Hell, we had to do that all that time,” Daria said. “Why do you think the League is composed of bastards? Never give up, that’s our motto. Whatever happens, never give up.”