Democracy's Light

Chapter Twenty-Two

The first waypoint was only a light-year outside the Cottbus System. In theory, it should have been impossible for Admiral Wilhelm to track them to the waypoint, but Katy wasn’t in the mode to take chances. As soon as the entire surviving fleet flickered into the first waypoint, she ordered them to flicker directly to the second waypoint, before they paused to take stock. It wasn’t good news.

“We went into battle with twenty-seven superdreadnaughts,” she said, finally. Goscinny, she was relieved to see, looked just as stunned as she was. She’d been expecting a round of second-guessing — she rather expected she would face the same once she returned to Earth — but instead he looked merely stunned. If he’d been on a space yacht, as he’d wanted, he would have probably been killed. “We escaped with eleven destroyed and seven more badly damaged. I would prefer not to take them into combat if I could avoid it.”

Goscinny looked up at her, his eyes wide. “Can you avoid it?”

“I don’t know,” Katy said. She pulled up a starchart of the Cottbus Sector and scowled at it. Assuming that Admiral Wilhelm and his allies controlled all of the uncontacted sectors, as well as Cottbus itself, they would have enough firepower to pose a serious threat to the Shadow Fleet. Colin would have taken steps to ensure that extra firepower would be rushed to the sector, if needed, but on interstellar scales that help would be very slow in coming. “He’s not going to remain at Cottbus, that’s for sure.”

She got up and started to pace. “He deliberately set an ambush for us and blew hell out of my fleet,” she said, aloud. Admitting even that much was painful, but there was no choice. At least this time no one had been left behind, which meant that Admiral Wilhelm wouldn’t have anyone to probe for intelligence… although he might not have needed their help. “There is no way that the Provisional Government will let that pass.”

“Don’t forget trying to assassinate one of their members,” Goscinny reminded her.

Katy smiled tiredly. She needed sleep and a long bath, but she wasn’t going to get either of them. Her crewers would be working desperately to restore as much as they could, but she had to worry about the fleet… and the impact on the Empire. It was almost a relief to think about something else, but she couldn’t do it for long.

“How true,” she agreed, dryly. The Provisional Government would probably regard the death of one of their own more seriously than the death of thousands of her crewmembers. “I don’t think they’ll forget that in a hurry.”

She looked back at the display and winced. “They’re going to attack Hawthorn,” she said, flatly. “They probably control the remaining Imperial Navy bases in their area of the Empire — fuck, there’s no way to know just how far their influence spreads, not yet. They have to take out Hawthorn for the same reason we had to take out Morrison, because it’s blocking their advance on Earth. The only difference is that their attack will succeed.”

Goscinny looked at her, shaken. “Are you sure?”

“They have the firepower to blast through the remains of their fleet and everything that Admiral Godwin has under his command,” Katy said, flatly. The memory of their confident departure from the planet was mocking her now. “They have to push their advantage as far as it will go and that means a drive on Earth. If they can capture and occupy Earth, that’s curtains for the Provisional Government and probably for the Empire. Admiral Wilhelm will inherit a ruin.”

“That’s not possible,” Goscinny said. “One fleet can’t do that much damage…?”

“Why not?” Katy asked him bleakly. “We did.”

She turned back to the display. “I have some harsh decisions to make, Minister,” she said. It had been the first time she’d used his title since they’d left Earth and it brought him up short. “I’m going to have to dispatch one of the destroyers, one of the intact ones, back to Earth. You’re going with it.”

Goscinny started to protest, but Katy spoke over him. She wasn’t interested in a debate. “It’s not arguable,” she said, firmly. He scowled at her, but held his peace. “You don’t have a purpose here any longer, not now that diplomacy has failed so… comprehensibly. You have to make them understand that we need everything we can held at Earth to defend the planet.”

“You don’t want reinforcements?”

“I’d love reinforcements,” Katy said, flatly. “I’m not going to get them. Colin is going to need them at Earth. I can’t hold anywhere short of the first-rank worlds, so I’m going to harass them as much as I can until they drive me out of the sector. I should be good at it. I did it during the early stages of the war before First Harmony, or even First Morrison. I want you to make sure that Colin understands that we’re not going to have a comprehensive defence line before Earth itself.”

“And the first-rank worlds?” Goscinny asked. His voice tightened noticeably. “What about Gaul?”

Katy felt a twinge of pity for him. She’d been glad to leave her own homeworld, but Goscinny had spent all his life serving a single world. He’d worked to preserve it from the Empire’s wrath… and, when that had failed, thrown himself into making the Provisional Government work. Gaul had had a harsh lesson in the underlying truth of the Empire and Goscinny, at least, had never forgotten. The choice was between victory — permanent victory — or death.

“Gaul is on the other side of Earth,” she said, choosing not to mention that if Admiral Wilhelm chose to waste his missiles on Gaul and the other first-rank worlds, it would only work in Colin’s favour. She doubted that Goscinny would accept that argument as valid. It was far too cold-blooded for a man who had a deep attachment to his homeworld. “I think that it will be safe as long as Earth itself is safe.”

She leaned forward. “I’ll give you a copy of my preliminary report,” she concluded. “Good luck.”

She’d wondered if Goscinny would protest, or insist on remaining with the remains of 2^nd Fleet, but instead he merely nodded. She was almost disappointed in him, although there was nothing he could do onboard the superdreadnaught, but get in the way. Besides, she would need him back on Earth, just to explain to Colin exactly what had happened.

Colin will understand, part of her mind whispered. He’d commanded at First Morrison, but who had he had looking over his shoulder? Only rebels whose survival and future, such as it was, depended on victory. He hadn’t had a real Parliament, or civilians, who would demand a say in matters. No one else will…

The thought was unpleasant, but there was no point in avoiding it. A disaster of such magnitude — and she didn’t delude herself as to the sheer scale of the disaster — meant that someone would have to take the blame… and, in the Empire, it would have been the highest-ranking person without powerful patrons. In Colin’s new Empire, it would be her. The Provisional Government would second-guess everything she’d done and, eventually, demand her removal from command. It would almost be a relief.

She keyed her communicator as Goscinny was escorted out of her cabin to the shuttlebay, where he would board a shuttle and be transferred to the destroyer Zipper, along with some of her wounded. The sheer number of wounded crewmen, some of them seriously injured, had overwhelmed her stasis tubes, forcing her medical corpsmen to perfect emergency surgery under poor conditions. Her beautiful superdreadnaught had had its first baptism of fire.

And if I’d had the Havoc with me, she thought, it would have been blown out of space.

“Senior crew, status meeting, my office, thirty minutes,” she ordered, and headed off to sickbay. The doctor would protest, of course, but he would give her the stimulant she needed. She would sleep it off later, assuming that there was a later. Until then…

“We lost over four hundred crewmen, either dead or injured, in the battle,” Captain Chalker said. Katy listened to his words, keeping her face impassive while her insides twisted under the blow of his words. Each one felt like a knife in the gut. “Every one of the stasis tubes has been filled, while others have been injected with hibernation drugs and placed out of the way until…”

He allowed his voice to trail off. Katy wasn’t sure why he wasn’t blaming her for the death and destruction. She hadn’t hesitated to blame incompetent superiors back before the rebellion… and it was what she deserved. She pushed the self-pity aside with an effort and focused on his words. Colin would probably relieve her of command, just to ensure that someone was publicly taking the blame, but until then her duty was to the men and women under her command. It wasn’t something she could shirk.

“Overall, we’re in better state than we deserve to be,” he continued. “Engineering says that we took no fatal damage, so most of the damaged systems can be repaired or replaced, given enough time. The weapons mountings on part of the hull will have to be replaced — and, until then, we’re looking at only eighty percent of our point defence being active. The missile tubes, at least, can be rapidly cleared and reloaded.”

Katy nodded in honest relief. The interior of the superdreadnaught — any superdreadnaught — was mainly armour, power generation systems and weapons, with complex systems to move the missiles from their storage bays to their launch tubes. The Empire had pioneered superdreadnaught design hundreds of years ago and even a badly damaged superdreadnaught could still rotate missiles through the hull and fire them from undamaged tubes. The Jefferson could still fight, at least, although she wouldn’t care to go into battle again without a short spell in a proper repair yard.

“We were the lucky ones,” the tactical officer said. His voice hardened, despite some of the looks cast in his direction by the younger officers. They wouldn’t have seen a defeated fleet before. “The remaining superdreadnaughts took heavy damage as well. Seven of them are barely capable of defending themselves against a destroyer-sized vessel, let alone anything more dangerous, and really should be pulled out of the line of battle entirely. They’re good for nothing, but soaking up missiles.”

“I think we can find a better use for them than that,” Katy said, sharply. They were all too tired for a proper discussion and discipline, she suspected, would be way down. Crew morale, bad enough after taking such a beating, would only worsen under the influence of little sleep and desperate repair efforts. “I assume they can all still flicker?”

“The flicker drives are mounted under heavy armour,” the tactical officer said. That didn’t prove anything, Katy knew; the power plants might have been damaged enough to render FTL travel impossible for sheer lack of power. It wasn’t too likely — that sort of damage would probably destroy the ship outright — but it had to be watched. “They’re all capable of flickering, although probably not at one hundred percent accuracy.”

“Such as it is,” Katy said, drawing up the reports and studying them on her terminal. She had to blink to force her eyes to focus. The computer systems on the superdreadnaughts would have calculated the damage automatically — although she knew from bitter experience that such systems were sharply limited — and it wasn’t good. There was no escaping the need for a shipyard. “All right. This is what we’re going to do.”

The assembled officers looked back at her. They didn’t look sharp, or aware, merely too tired to feel anything. Such tiredness could kill, Katy knew, and had done in space, but she couldn’t send them all to bed. Not yet. They’d just have to depend on stimulants, despite the dangers, for a few more hours before they could sleep. It was just another problem for her to solve.

“The seven damaged superdreadnaughts are to be dispatched back to Earth at once,” she ordered, finally. She’d made a mistake by not holding the Zipper long enough to send it along as an escort, although pirates would still hesitate to go near the superdreadnaughts. The mere thought was a humiliating reminder of how far 2^nd Fleet had fallen. “They are to be escorted by the 45^th and 46^th Squadron, or at least their remaining ships. They will transport back to Earth as many of the seriously injured as we can pack onboard.”

She paused, noting the relief on some faces. “Before we send them back, however, we are going to pull everyone, but a skeleton crew off those ships,” she continued, ignoring the glances. “I want the engineers, the weapons tech, the medical corpsmen — everyone — off those ships and onto the remaining ships. We’re going to have to repair the other ships on the fly and we’re going to need them. We’re not out of the war yet.”

Her gaze swept the room. “Let’s not hide from the truth, shall we?” She snapped, gauging their response. She knew what they were thinking. They were the Shadow Fleet, the fleet that had toppled an empire! They didn’t get their asses kicked so firmly. It just didn’t happen to them! The younger crew hadn’t been with the fleet at First Morrison; they hadn’t picked up the attitude that came from knowing that you were frequently out-massed and outgunned. They’d seen the destroyed loyalist starships during the war — the first war, her mind chattered — but they hadn’t connected it with something that could happen to them. “We got our behinds firmly kicked, didn’t we?”

She allowed her voice to harden. “We were lured into a trap” — it was clear in hindsight — “and we were hammered,” she snapped. “It’s not the end of the war. We took losses and defeats in the last war and we still won. We can win this war… and we will win this war. Defeat would mean that all of our struggles had been futile.”

One hand thumped the table, hard. “We will proceed to Hawthorn and prepare there to meet the coming offensive,” she said, her voice challenging them to dissent. She would have squashed any disagreement firmly. “Admiral Wilhelm will come for Hawthorn and we will hammer him before we break off and act as a pain in his rear. He won’t be able to relax or concentrate on the drive on Earth while we’re in his rear… and, by doing so, we will ensure that we will win the war.”

Her voice lowered. “We are going to work as hard as we can, and perhaps a little harder, to get these ships back into fighting trim, but we are going to do it,” she said, coldly. “We are going to bring these ships back to life and we will fight, standing between the Empire and the threat of a military rule. He expects us to break. He expects us to keep running until we’re back out on the Rim. He expects us to surrender… and he’s dead wrong.

“I expect that each and every one of you will put forward one hundred percent effort to repair these ships and prepare for the next round,” she concluded. “We took a beating and morale is in the crapper, but we’ve not lost yet. If you slack, or you allow others to slack, you will find me the worst fucking nightmare in your life.” Her voice hardened. “And you can bet on that, understand?”

It was two days before the damaged superdreadnaughts were ready for their return to Earth, but the time had not been wasted. The superdreadnaughts hadn’t been entirely cannibalised, but the engineers had stripped out almost all of the spare parts and emergency supplies, along with most of the remaining missiles. The Battle of Cottbus hadn’t lasted that long, not now she’d had a chance to calculate it properly, but it still surprised her. It felt as if they’d fought for days before they’d retreated.

“They’re ready to flicker out,” the communications officer informed her, when she took her place on the Flag Deck. The crew looked as exhausted as Katy felt, although she had ordered rigid sleep periods for the entire crew, but they didn’t look beaten any more. They had her to thank for that. Katy had been a ruthless, if understanding, taskmaster over the past two days and the fleet had some of its morale back. They were going to need it. “Captain Patel wishes you good luck and asks if you wouldn’t reconsider.”

Katy surprised herself by laughing. Captain Patel was an analyst in his spare time and she’d had him studying the sensor records of the battle, matching the IFF signals from the enemy ships to the Imperial Navy database. The picture he’d built up hadn’t been a comforting one. There had definitely been ships from at least four different Sector Fleets in the line of battle, too many to be a simple coincidence or merely a case of the records being out of times. Admiral Wilhelm wasn’t alone. He had allies.

“Tell him that he’s going to be needed at Earth,” Katy said firmly. Captain Patel wouldn’t have a comfortable flight. His superdreadnaughts were stuffed to bursting with wounded, while the medics had transferred all of the stasis tubes to his care. “Clear him to depart now, if you please…”

Nineteen icons vanished from the display. “They have flickered out,” the tactical officer remarked, calmly. The display stabilised, showing the remaining starships and the maintenance bugs buzzing around them. “Local space is clear.”

“Good,” Katy said. She would have been astonished if Admiral Wilhelm had managed to track them down, or even if they encountered a rogue starship. “Set course for Hawthorn. It’s time to get back into the battle zone.”