Democracy's Light

Chapter One

“It was a raid, of course.”

“I highly doubt it,” Admiral Markus Wilhelm said, as he replayed the brief encounter between his command fortress and the eight cruisers. “If they had intended to raid the defences, they certainly would not have come within range of my fortresses, would they?”

Lady Madeline Hohenzollern scowled at him. Markus Wilhelm was a short barrel-chested man, wearing a carefully tailored uniform that somehow made him the focus of every person in the room. As the Hohenzollern Sector’s Commanding Officer, he had once been one of her clients, carefully promoted and rewarded to ensure his loyalty to the Hohenzollern Clan. Six months after the Fall of Earth and the success of the Rebellion, she needed him, more than he needed her. The question she had never been able to answer — yet — was if he knew that. So much had changed in the two years since Colin Harper, a lowly battlecruiser first officer, had first raised the standard of revolt, right on the other side of the Empire.

“They came here to demand that you submitted to their authority and renounced your ties to the Clan,” she said, shortly. “You had no choice, but to open fire.”

Wilhelm shrugged. “I had hoped that I would be able to induce them to dock — all nine of them — and replace their crews with people loyal to me,” he said. “They smelt enough of a rat, however, to ensure that any perfidy on my part would be noticed… and so I destroyed them.” He shrugged again. “We always knew that we wouldn’t be able to remain unnoticed forever.”

“How true,” Madeline said. “And now, what will the rebels do?”

She’d fled Earth in the wake of the surrender, after Home Fleet had been blasted to plasma by the rebel Shadow Fleet, and set course for the Hohenzollern Sector. Her Clan owned almost the entire sector, including the massive shipyard complex orbiting Cottbus, and it was a natural place to begin her counterattack. The discovery that the rebels — and the entire population of the Empire — hated her and her Clan enough to tear them apart had shocked her… and filled her with new determination to return in triumph and wreck vengeance on her foes.

When she’d reached Cottbus, however, she’d been surprised to discover that Admiral Wilhelm had already been making preparations for continuing the war. Admirals had been officially discouraged from forming links with their compatriots — in the old days, Imperial Intelligence would have looked sharply at any Admiral who didn’t have a rivalry with his neighbouring Admiral — but Wilhelm had somehow linked up with at least three other Admirals… and apparently had been doing so even before the Fall of Earth. She’d attached herself to him at once, hoping that she would be able to exercise control, but she was completely dependent on him and knew it.

“They’ll come here, of course,” Stacy Roosevelt said, from her position in the corner of the room. Her perfect face twisted into a moue of disgust. “They’ll come here and die.”

Wilhelm and Madeline shared a long look. Stacy Roosevelt had first-hand experience of rebel perfidy… when they’d stolen an entire squadron of superdreadnaughts out from under her nose, instantly transforming Colin Harper from yet another Rim Warlord to a genuine threat. She’d been returned, probably in the hopes that her presence would hamper the Empire’s war effort, and attempted to take control of the Roosevelt Clan in the wake of the murder of its head, officially at rebel hands. (It still bothered Madeline that she had no idea who had ordered the assassination, although there was no shortage of suspects.) She’d succeeded just in time for the Roosevelt Clan to collapse completely… and had insisted on accompanying Madeline to Cottbus, convinced that she was the victim of a ghastly plot. The only thing she was good for, in Madeline’s increasingly exasperated opinion, was cannon fodder.

“Eventually, yes,” Wilhelm agreed, his own exasperation carefully concealed. He seemed to think that there might be a use for her in the future. “They do, however, have vast problems; someone else might have decided to rebel against the rebels as well. The implications of them having sent a squadron of cruisers to pass on their message are interesting. They may not feel that they have the strength to send out a stronger message, in stronger ships.”

He nodded towards the display. “And in any case,” he continued, “the delay suits us well. The longer we have to prepare, the better. If they give us long enough, we can start dictating terms to them. Perhaps it is time to commence stage two.”

Madeline followed his eyes. Cottbus had been a major industrial hub even before her Clan had taken it over and developed it into one of the Empire’s major success stories, a world that produced goods and supplies for an entire sector. Now, the tempo of activity that had begun when news of the rebellion finally reached Earth had only increased, with new starships under frantic construction and older ones being repaired and refitted to modern standards. Home Fleet, and most of the inner Sector Fleets, had been allowed to degrade, but Wilhelm was rapidly restoring his ships to battle condition. They would be a formidable threat if the rebels allowed them time to build up and deploy towards Earth.

The combined firepower of three sectors was a formidable force, even with the starships suffering from benign neglect. Seven squadrons of superdreadnaughts, twelve squadrons of battlecruisers and hundreds of heavy cruisers, light cruisers and destroyers, if they remained concentrated, would force the rebels to sit up and take notice. They might not be able to retake Earth yet — Wilhelm had disabused her of that notion right at the start — but the rebels would be forced to either come to terms with them or make a major deployment of their own to counter the loyalist forces. They might have been good, but standard doctrine warned that a three-to-one advantage was required in space warfare… and making such a commitment would draw almost the entire rebel fleet into the sector, away from Earth. The possibilities were endless.

“Stage two is doomed to failure,” Stacy said, petulantly. She’d been excluded from that planning session and resented it. She thought that she was important merely because of her name and social status, but Madeline outranked her and Wilhelm didn’t care. “Why the hell should they respect us?”

Madeline smiled. “If we tell them that we liberated this sector from the evil and oppressive rule of the Hohenzollern Clan, but we don’t intend to join the new order, they’re going to have to make some hard decisions,” she said. “They can talk to us — after all, they’re going to want the shipyards here if nothing else — and respect us as equals, allowing us to send representatives to their new Parliament. Carefully chosen representatives, of course. If they want to try to take us by force, what sort of message will they send to the other worlds and communities in the Empire?”

“If they invade this sector at once,” Wilhelm added, “they’ll tell them that they’re just the same as the old order, only more ruthless. If they start building up to confront us, they’re going to have to continue expanding their own armed forces, when they really need to reduce their commitment to building new starships and work to repair the economy. I suspect that eventually they’ll decide to invade us anyway… but by then, we will be formidable enough to convince them that it might be a bad idea.”

He strode over to his desk and tapped a command into his terminal. “We’ve chosen very carefully,” he said. “The people who will be going to Earth as our official representatives to their new Parliament are all very closely tied to the Hohenzollern Clan and myself. They will speak for us and put forward the view that while we have no objections to rejoining the Empire, we insist on policies that will prevent further disruption, such as altering the economic base of the Empire, or in giving aliens and slaves civil rights and suchlike. All a stall, of course, but they will have to pretend to take it seriously.”

Madeline nodded. The Empire wasn’t particularly racist, at least where humans were concerned; it was a nonsensical concept when skin colour could be changed as easily as a suit of clothes. Madeline herself, in her younger days, had been black, then green, then orange and finally palest white, all in line with the dictates of the fashion gurus of the High City. Aliens, however, were a different story. After the Dathi War and centuries of anti-alien propaganda, the average human detested and loathed the eight known alien races within the Empire, although very few had actually met an alien in person. The rebels might have spoken in terms of taking humanity’s collective boot off the aliens’ collective neck, but it would horrify billions of people, while raising unreasonable expectations in the minds of aliens that remembered, however dimly, a universe that had had no humans. Would they do unto humanity as humanity had done unto them?

It wasn’t a minor fear. No one knew what had driven the Dathi to their war, but everyone knew that it had meant certain death for the human race… and every human world they encountered. A thousand years after the last Dathi had been exterminated, the scars of the war still resounded in humanity’s soul, a memory of the time when humanity had united into the Empire. No one would do anything to risk another war on such a scale… except, perhaps, the rebels.

“And if they don’t?” Stacy demanded. She didn’t understand. “Why should they?”

“There are a thousand worlds, give or take a few hundred, that are probably on the verge of seeking independence,” Wilhelm drawled, lazily. “The first-rank worlds will want to turn their autonomy into real independence. The second-rank worlds will want to speed up their progress towards first-rank. The third-rank worlds will merely want to be rid of the overseers and supervisors.” He shrugged. “If the rebels move to squash us, and they could, they will convince others that they’re going to be forced to remain where they are, or worse. After all, the autonomy of the first-rank worlds was broken at Gaul, wasn’t it?”

Madeline kept her face blank through long experience. She had played a major role in the decision — flawed, she saw now — to order Gaul, a first-rank autonomous worlds, scorched for harbouring contacts with the rebels. The Battle of Gaul had been a disaster of the first-rank — she smiled bitterly at the pun — and convinced the remaining first-rank worlds that the Empire had become a mad dog and needed to be put down, regardless of the cost. They’d added their forces, as primitive and weak as they were, to the rebel Shadow Fleet… and brought down Home Fleet in a pitched battle in the solar system. It had been unbelievable, but the core of the Empire had been defeated… and she’d had to run and hide.

Wilhelm took her silence for assent. “They’re done something they shouldn’t have done and allowed billions of people to develop expectations of what’s going to happen in the new order,” he continued. “That’s going to ensure that the steady decline of the Empire becomes a collapse, unless they lock the brakes on tight, and if they do that… they’re going to have several rebellions on their hands. They really need time to let the air out gradually and reshape the Empire, but we’re not going to give them that time. In a year or two, maybe less, people are going to start asking why they even bothered to rebel at all?”

“I remain unconvinced,” Stacy said, finally. She glared up at the display, showing the best guesses as to the location and disposition of rebel forces, as if it were a personal enemy. “We should launch an immediate strike against…”

“And you will be silent,” Wilhelm said, pleasantly. His tone brought her up short. Even she couldn’t miss the underlying threat. “Your incompetence cost the Imperial Navy its only chance of nipping the rebellion in the bud. You will be silent unless you are spoken to, or you will be removed to far less pleasant accommodation — Butcher, perhaps.”

Stacy stared at him. Butcher was a penal world, one where the plants and most of the animals were implacable hostile to the human settlers, forcing the colonists — mainly criminals and rebels — to fight constantly for survival. The plants might not have been intelligent, although the researchers were uncertain on that score, but they certainly enjoyed eating human flesh. Butcher had a horrific reputation and a constant appetite for new victims — quite literally. It didn’t help that the plants were thoroughly inedible and poisonous. The handful of people who ate them died in screaming agony.

“I will…”

She turned, abruptly, and left the chamber. Madeline smiled to herself. For the first time since her father had died, someone had actually managed to get through to Stacy and convince her of her proper place in the universe. Her hard core had shattered, revealing the coward underneath. Wilhelm had a loyal command staff and complete authority over the system. He could do anything to her and, now, they both knew it.

“Well done,” Madeline said, finally. She wondered, grimly, if the underlying lesson was intended for her. Stacy couldn’t be a threat — her very incompetence worked against her — but she was something different, wasn’t she? “You actually got her to sit up and pay attention.”

“Yes,” Wilhelm said. His next words left her in no doubt. “And I expect you to pay attention as well. How many other operations have been… compromised because of a high-ranking idiot with connections to the right people?”

Madeline hesitated. “I have no idea,” she said, finally. She took a wild guess. “A dozen?”

“Try thousands,” Wilhelm said, smiling coldly. “From the start of the rebellion itself to the decision to scorch Gaul, a person with more connections than brain cells managed to take an operation that should have worked properly and destroyed it, dead in its tracks. If rebel propaganda is to be believed, everyone who took part in the early mutinies was thoroughly pissed on by their superiors, high-ranking idiots all.”

He leaned towards her, his cold eyes holding hers. “I will not allow that to happen here,” he said. She hadn’t realised that he could command such… presence. “I will not allow you, or Stacy, whose test scores suggested that she wasn’t fit to command a garbage scow, to damage this operation. You will offer your advice, but I will be in command of the entire operation. If I catch you attempting to sabotage it in any way, I will make you wish that you had remained behind on Earth, understand?”

Madeline caught herself. She wasn’t used to facing pressure, not so close and personal. The Clan had been her protection, her sword and her shield, safeguarding her from the realities of the universe and ensuring that she was never threatened… until the rebellion came and displaced her from her rightful place. Pride, sheer damned pride, kept her facing him. The urge to just surrender was almost overwhelming, backed up by fear of the possible consequences, but she couldn’t — she wouldn’t — give in.

“The Hohenzollern Clan made you,” she protested, weakly. It sounded weak even to her, the voice of a little girl trying to protest to her mother. “We brought you up from nothing and made you our…”

“Slave,” Wilhelm interrupted. “You made me your slave, fit only to scrape and bow before you, but now… now you need me, more than I need you.” Madeline remembered her thoughts — it seemed like hours ago — and winced inwardly. “You will obey me and I will place you back where you belong, or you can try to rebel against me… and believe me, that won’t be easy.”

It wouldn’t be, Madeline knew. Wilhelm had worked hard in the months since hearing of the rebellion… and, she realised now, must have had something like this in mind all along. He’d managed to replace or reassign junior officers who were equally dependent on the Hohenzollern Clan, or other elements of the Thousand Families, and had ensured that they were replaced with people who were loyal to him, their patron. In the old days, he could still be handled, countered, or replaced, but now… now, the entire Empire was up for grabs. A competent officer in his position could go far.

“Well?” Wilhelm asked her, almost conversationally. He sat back, no longer looming over her, but the threat of sudden change was very real. “Are you going to work for me now?”

“Yes,” Madeline said, finally. There was little point in holding out. He almost certainly wasn’t bluffing about sending her and Stacy to Butcher… where no one would care who they were, if they were lucky. If they were unlucky… well, there were thousands of people there who hated her Clan, not without reason. The sudden shift in the balance of power made her dizzy and she knew she needed time to think, but Wilhelm wasn’t letting her think. He had her over a barrel and knew it.

He smiled. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, sir,” Madeline said, finally. It was a complete surrender, but who knew? Maybe there would be another shift in the balance of power before too long. If the remaining Thousand Families, on Earth, needed her… there might be another shift. “I will work for you.”

“Excellent,” Wilhelm said, projecting an image of false bonhomie. It was another tactic to disorient her and she knew it, but she was ashamed to admit that it was working. Months ago, she would have done the same thing herself… and Wilhelm had clearly been learning from her. “The representatives had been selected, their transport is prepared… and all that remains is to bid them farewell. Shall we go?”

Madeline nodded, not trusting herself to speak.