Democracy's Right

Chapter Thirteen

“Anything to report, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Adam looked up as Commander Fox entered the compartment. “Nothing, sir,” he said. “Nothing to report… just as there was nothing to report every day for the past few months. There was nothing at all.”

Fox scowled at him. The Imperial Navy might have been responsible for maintaining the security of the various penal worlds throughout the Empire, but they were hardly going to waste competent or well-connected officers on the position. The penal worlds served as a dumping ground in more ways than one, with a joke running through the crews that if they screwed up again it was only a very short flight to their final and permanent posting. And, if the commanding officer wasn’t feeling generous, they wouldn’t be given a parachute or a drop capsule.

The Garstang System was officially off-limits to all civilian starships, but from time to time starships used it as a rendezvous point or a recovery location if their drives started to show signs of trouble. The Imperial Navy stations in the system didn’t usually bother to waste time tracking down the intruders, because there was nothing of value in the remainder of the system. As long as they didn’t try to breach the security stations surrounding the planet itself, Fix didn’t give a damn. It wasn’t as if he cared enough to waste time patrolling a handful of dead worlds. The system didn’t even have a gas giant or an asteroid field.

“Very good,” he said, finally. He’d managed the remarkable feat of nearly crashing his starship into another ship, disaster only being averted by quick thinking on the part of the ship’s commanding officer. He’d half-expected the Captain to execute him on the spot, but instead the Captain had promoted him and sent him to the penal world. It hadn’t taken long for Fox to realise that it was, in effect, a life sentence. The promotion was meaningless outside the system itself. “You stand relieved.”

Adam threw him a sloppy salute and headed out of the compartment, passing through the secured hatches and down into the interior of the station, while Fox settled himself down in the command chair. Standard Operating Procedure — SOP — insisted that at least three officers be on watch duty at any given time, but he just didn’t have the manpower to follow SOP to the letter; besides, it wasn’t as if they were a front-line station. His crew might be the Imperial Navy’s cast-offs and rejects, but he trusted them not to screw up too badly. Besides, he hadn’t been joking when he’d warned that some transgressions would result in the offender being dumped on the planet below.

Garstang had been an odd planet when the Imperial Navy had discovered it, a desert world orbiting a variable star. A runaway greenhouse effect combined with the occasional radiation bombardment from the local primary had resulted in a nearly-dead world with low levels of oxygen, habitable only to heavily-engineered settlers. The terraforming crews had, instead, dumped a massive biological packet on the planet’s surface and gone away to leave it to ferment. All of their computer models, they’d claimed afterwards, had said that the planet should have become a more habitable world. Ironically, they’d succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The terraforming crews hadn’t realised — or had professed not to realise, as there were billions of credits wrapped up in every terraforming mission — that Garstang wasn’t anything as close to dead as they had thought. The tiny signs of life on the planet’s surface — hardened lichen and comparable plant-like life forms — were only the tip of the iceberg. Deep underground, other forms of life struggled for survival, perfectly adapted to their environment. The sudden infusion of higher levels of oxygen and Earth-based forms of life provided a massive boost to the natives and, over seventy years, the planet flourished. Forms of animal life that had lived deep underground came up to the surface, where they established themselves as part of a new ecosystem. The entire planet had been reshaped. It was also unrelenting hostile to uninvited guests.

After the first attempt to plant a colony on the surface of the planet had failed miserably, the Ministry of Settlement had given up and converted the world into a penal colony. Every month, the freighters would arrive, carrying the human waste of the Empire — everything from rebels to murderers and paedophiles. The convicts were given a small amount of survival equipment, loaded into drop capsules — accompanied by their families, if they chose to accept permanent exile — and shot down to the surface. What they did after that, as far as the Empire was concerned, was their own affair. If they tamed the planet, the Empire could put in a garrison and take over; if they all died, the Empire had been saved the cost of an execution. Even criminals could be made to service the Empire.

The thought made Fox smile, because there were some benefits to serving on the orbiting platforms. Once they realised where they were going, convicts — particularly female convicts — became desperate to escape. There were no less than thirty female convicts on the orbiting platform, doing everything from cooking and cleaning to entertaining the prison guards. If any of them displeased the guards, or refused to do whatever they were asked, they could be transported down to the planet’s surface and abandoned. Indeed, they would eventually have to be sent down anyway, for they had all been sentenced to death. The Empire might start asking questions if they were found away from the system. It was a shame, Fox considered, for some of the guards were genuinely fond of their whores, but there was no help for it. If they hadn’t wanted to be sent to a penal world and abandoned, they wouldn’t have committed the crimes in the first place.

He leaned back and stared at the display. It was blank, of course; there was nothing else within the system, at least nothing emitting anything the array of passive sensors surrounding the planet could detect. He had sometimes wondered if there was a black colony hidden within the system — perhaps down on the planet itself — yet if there was, it would be very good at hiding. And besides, Fox didn’t care. They didn’t pay him enough to give a damn about black colonies or the many thousands of others who wished to hide from the Empire.

A ping emitted from the tactical console and he looked up sharply. Every month, the bulk freighters arrived, carrying their convicts… but few others visited the system. They might have been warned to remain alert, for fear that someone would try to liberate the convicts, yet no threat had ever materialised. No rebel group possessed the firepower to break into the system and recover prisoners from the planet’s surface, not even the legendary Captain Cordova. It was probably a freighter having drive problems, or an Imperial Navy warship come to call. His face twisted into a smile. The last time a warship had passed through the system, they’d had a great time.

He keyed the console and scowled as the icon popped up in front of him. It wasn’t a warship, but a bulk freighter; an old one, judging by the weird curves in its drive systems. The sensors insisted that its flicker drive was breaking down, although Fox couldn’t see any signs of it himself. Years ago, when he had been a promising naval officer, he’d been told that any jump where all the pieces appeared in the right order was a good jump; this freighter crew appeared to have been lucky. After all, their ship was intact.

And they shouldn’t be in the system at all, he reminded himself. His grin grew wider as he considered the bribes he could extract from the crew, in exchange for not revealing their visit to higher command. The Sector Commander would be very suspicious of any freighter that went into a restricted system without authorization. He might even issue a warrant for the crew to be hunted down and arrested as rebels. Who knew — perhaps the ship included some young and attractive female crewmembers.

He tapped the console and sent a standard challenge to the freighter. It was unlikely that the freighter posed any kind of threat — freighters weren’t warships, no matter how many weapons the foolish or desperate crammed into their hulls — but, just in case, he also sent the activation commands to the weapons platforms. It would at least suggest that he and his crew were on the ball if an inspection mission ever arrived although he’d been stuck on the platform for over ten years and there had never been a single inspection. The penal worlds were out of sight, out of mind; exactly how the Empire liked it.

The image of the freighter grew sharper as his sensors started to ping off its hull. It was terribly damaged, not by pirates, but by age and ill-use. Fox was mildly surprised that it was still intact, even though starships didn’t just decay. It looked as if the freighter crew were going to be very poor, which was unfortunate — for them. He was just going to have to do his duty and detain them as possible rebels.

Chuckling to himself, he keyed the intercom and ordered a boarding party. The men wouldn’t be too happy at being dragged away from their beds — if nothing else, the orbiting station had enough room for even a lowly crewman to have a large set of quarters — and their whores, but who cared what they thought? Besides, there might even be a reward in it for them.

“Yep, they’ve definitely got us,” Markus announced.

He looked over at his wife. Carola was young, but her face was already showing signs of age and stress, the same age and stress he knew his own face displayed. Gunboat pilots tended to live fast and die young, an inevitable consequence of the role, and those who survived grew old quickly. Gunboats were the smallest starships in existence — the smallest craft to carry an independent flicker drive — and they were almost defenceless. Even a glancing hit from a rail gun would destroy a gunboat. The Imperial Navy used them as scouts, rating the tiny ships and their crewmen expendable, not something that endeared them to their pilots. Markus, knowing that he was reaching the point where he would be removed from flight duty, hadn’t hesitated when he’d been invited to join the rebellion. At least his death would be meaningful.

“And they’re getting stroppy,” Carola agreed. “They’re demanding that we shut down our drives and prepare to be boarded.”

Markus grinned at her. While he was the prime pilot, Carola was co-pilot, communications, sensors and tactical officer rolled into one. If they’d been flying a standard mission, he would have been concentrating on evading enemy pursuit and point defence while she concentrated on actually gathering the information the fleet needed. As it was, they could actually afford to relax. Admiral Walker’s grand idea had seen to that.

He glanced down at the tiny console, watching as information flowed across the screen, right in front of him. The files hadn’t been too detailed on just how much firepower the Empire had installed to guard the penal world, but as the freighter limped closer to the planet, more and more orbiting weapons platforms came into view. There wasn’t enough firepower to deter a superdreadnaught, he was relieved to see, yet there was clearly enough to prevent any of the rebel groups from recovering their people. Judging from the planet itself, Markus couldn’t have sworn that any of the rebels would still be alive, or that they could be sorted out from the murderers or rapists or others who had thoroughly deserved the sentence to the penal world. He hoped that the Admiral had found a way of sorting through the convicts, or else their mission was going to be for nothing.

“Keep stalling them,” he said. The Imperial Navy officers on the platform were unlikely to be the sharpest pencils in the box. The chances were good that they wouldn’t be too worried about a simple bulk freighter, even if the crew balked at being inspected. The Empire wouldn’t care if the bulk freighter was rammed right into the planet, causing an impact equivalent to that of a medium-sized asteroid. They’d probably be delighted that all the convicts were dead. “Tell them that we’re having major systems failures.”

Carola laughed as she removed her earpiece. “They’re offering to make our systems failures worse unless we shut down the drives now,” she said. “I think they mean it. He’s roaring at us and everything.”

“What a melodramatic asshole,” Markus observed. He keyed a switch, transferring everything the freighter’s sensors had picked up into the secure storage node onboard the gunboat. “I’m flash-waking the drive now. Tell them that we’re attempting to recycle the flicker drive and shut it down.”

A dull hum echoed through the gunboat as the flicker drive came to life. Markus hadn’t admitted it — gunboat pilots never showed their fear, not even in front of their lives — but this was the part of the mission that most worried him. The weird energies released by an activated flicker drive couldn’t be shielded — or concealed — by anything short of a planet. If they were lucky, the platform would mistake the gunboat’s flicker drive for the freighter’s drive — the data packet they’d transmitted had warned that the drive was unstable — but if they weren’t lucky… actually, there was very little they could do. The bulk freighter might have been within missile range, yet the crew would have plenty of warning.

“They’re saying that the drive is clearly unstable and suggest that we abandon ship,” Carola said. They shared another grin. Under Imperial Law, an abandoned ship could be declared salvage and end up the property of whoever recovered it. The Imperial Navy wouldn’t want the bulk freighter, yet a real freighter crew would have had to pay massive bribes just to recover their ship. The big Family-owned shipping lines saw to that. “They’re even offering to send a shuttle to take us off the ship.”

“And their time is up,” Markus said. He keyed a final set of commands into the main computer. “Jump in three… two… one… jump!”

Admiral Walker’s idea, Markus had considered, was so simple that he’d wondered why no one had ever thought of it before. Or, perhaps, someone had thought of it and decided that it was far too risky to attempt even under strictly controlled conditions. When a starship flickered out, it created a twist in the fabric of time and space, a twist that could be extremely dangerous to anything nearby. Indeed, gunboat pilots were known for waiting around until a missile got close enough to be caught in the effect and flickering out, detonating the missile as they vanished. Flickering out from inside a mothership would cause horrific damage to the mothership, to the point where the Imperial Navy hard-coded safety systems to prevent anyone from being stupid enough to try it.

The bulk freighter, however, was expendable. Admiral Walker’s crew of Geeks had cut out almost the entire cargo bay section and replaced it with a single bay, with the gunboat positioned in the exact centre. If the freighter survived, it could be recovered and repaired; if not, it was, after all, expendable. When Markus hit the final switch, his gunboat flickered out, the signature of its disappearance being masked by the destabilising freighter drive. It might have been impossible to send a message at FTL speeds, but Admiral Walker’s tactic would allow the rebels some improved coordination — if it worked.

Markus swore as the entire gunboat shuddered so hard that he feared it would come apart. One of the dangers of the tactic had been that parts of the freighter would be sucked into the twist with them and wind up slamming against the gunboat’s hull. A second danger, a far more likely one, was that the mass of the freighter would randomly affect the jump, sending them to the wrong location or burning out the drives. Markus had used five years of experience to program the jump, along with the most sophisticated computers the Empire could produce, and even he was nervous. He would never have admitted it, of course.

“Success,” Carola proclaimed. The gunboat was tumbling wildly — the artificial gravity seemed to be fading away, suggesting that there was more damage they couldn’t detect — but they were alive. “We are in the right location.”

Markus laughed as the display lit up with IFF signals. Admiral Walker’s fleet was waiting for them. “Start uploading the data,” he ordered. He checked the damage-control system, which was covered in red lights. “And then tell them that we need a pick-up.”

Fox blinked in surprise as the entire freighter started to disintegrate. His first response was irritation — the freighter’s spokeswoman had sounded attractive and desperate — but as he studied the sensors, he found himself puzzled. There seemed to be no valid reason for the starship to disintegrate. It wasn’t unknown for a very badly tuned flicker drive to start weakening the vessel’s structure, but any freighter crew worth their salt would have known to watch for and avoid that. It looked almost as if they had tried to flicker out, only to have the drive fail spectacularly.

“Get the shuttle out there,” he ordered. His crew had, at least, responded quickly, even though they’d grumbled a great deal. He couldn’t really blame them. Savaging a bulk freighter — its manifest had stated that it was carrying farming tools, rather than anything interesting — wasn’t an easy task, even if the freighter was intact. As it was, it looked as if a single misjudgement could cause a disaster. “I want…”

He broke off as new red icons spangled into existence on the display. “Holy shit!”