Democracy's Light

Chapter Thirty-One

Lieutenant Oliver Zulu looked down at his console and sighed. Another few million kilometres of nothing. Absolute nothing. Wakanda might have been one of the first-rank worlds, but it wasn’t a particularly important first-rank world. Indeed, it was whispered by the lower-ranking officers that the only reason the Empire hadn’t abandoned their normal procedure of quietly screwing as much as they could out of the first-rank worlds and just grabbing Wakanda was because they had plenty of corrupt officials of their own and didn’t need more. There were times when Zulu, who had risen as far as he ever would in the Wakanda Space Navy, would have liked to join the Shadow Fleet, just to escape the ever-present corruption that surrounded the Navy.

He scowled down at the display and scowled. It said something about the highly-dubious ‘success’ of Wakanda that the system had the lowest number of spacecraft of any first-rank world, let alone a tiny and largely primitive defence force, including ships that dated back to the days of the Dathi War. The planners kept telling everyone that fame, riches and successes were just around the corner, but hardly anyone believed them any more. If their plan had been to make Wakanda unattractive as a world to pillage, and therefore defend against the Empire, it had been a stunning success. It had also drained the spirit of Wakanda and ensured that it had the highest emigration rate of any first-rank world. They preferred to live under the Empire than their own people.

And some of them just couldn’t wait for Admiral Wilhelm. Only brutal repression and lack of forward planning had prevented a coup from carrying off the government and replacing it with something that would have been, by any standard, far better for the people. Some of the junior officers hoped that the Shadow Fleet would come and liberate Wakanda from its own government, others, older and wiser, knew that it wouldn’t happen. Wakanda, like all the other first-rank worlds, had autonomy. It was hard to think of a single world that had abused the status more than poor Wakanda, home of some of the poorest humans in the universe. It didn’t help that the government and its lackeys lived in a style that outshone even the vast depravities of the Thousand Families.

“Eyes on your screen,” the commodore snapped, catching Zulu’s eye. He was a big boor of a man, who boasted of his service in the Imperial Navy before returning to Wakanda, claiming to have commanded superdreadnaughts and participated in hundreds of engagements with rebel forces. Zulu privately suspected that the truth was that he hadn’t commanded anything more advanced than a garbage scow. He certainly seemed to have no idea of the capabilities and limitations of the men under his command. “We want to know the minute anything enters the system!”

Sure we do, Zulu thought, trying to convince himself that the commodore was merely being bombastic. The advance of Admiral Wilhelm and the fall of the Imperial Navy base at Hawthorn had caused the government to panic, all-too-aware that their own people would prefer Admiral Wilhelm to their rule. They’d put the Space Navy on alert and tried desperately to build up the defences, only to run into funding problems at once. Wakanda was not regarded as a good credit risk and richer worlds, intent on improving their own defences, had little to spare. They didn’t even have sensors capable of tracking ships in the outer solar system. If Admiral Wilhelm’s forces flickered in only a few AU away, they would be completely missed until they opened fire. Zulu’s awareness of what was around the orbital defence fort was almost completely non-existent.

“And the rest of you, look lively,” the commodore continued. Zulu sighed as the berating continued. He’d served under a handful of officers who had been sadists and tyrants, but at least they’d known what they were doing. The commodore’s only qualification for his post had been that he was a relative of the current head of government, the United Clan. “I don’t want to see even one of you slacking off…”

Zulu tuned it off and entertained himself with a mild fantasy of rolling a fragmentation grenade into the commodore’s quarters one night. He hadn’t ever attempted to turn fantasy into reality — if he was caught, his entire family would suffer — but it kept him warm at night. besides, the commodore believed that a man should be known by the scale of his appetites and was therefore awesomely fat, causing some of his subordinates to take bets on when he would pass away from a heart attack. It said something about his general indolence that he hadn’t even bothered to use cosmetic surgery to reform his body, although he was always bragging about his enhanced penis, something that was well outside Zulu’s funds. If the Wakanda Space Navy had allowed women to serve the commodore would have been unstoppable…

He snapped back to attention as an alarm sounded, calling everyone to attend. “I have a contact,” he said, pushing as much excitement into his voice as he could. So few craft visited the system that he barely had time to run proper tracking exercises on them all. The only regular arrivals were a bare of dingy freighters belonging to the government that seemed rather less space-worthy than something from the early days of space travel. “One starship, flickering out above the gravity shadow.”

The commodore waddled over to his station. “I see,” he said, his breath stinking of something Zulu would prefer not to think about. When the remainder of the crew struggled to live on rations, packed by government-owned factories and tasting of very little, if they were lucky, the commodore had the services of a private chef and as much food as he could stomach. “Hostile?”

“Unknown, sir,” Zulu said, carefully not allowing any scorn into his voice. The commodore had a long memory for slights and insults from those he considered his inferiors. “I think it’s a destroyer, but it’s hard to tell with these sensors and they could be jamming us…”

“Or maybe you’re just incompetent,” the commodore sneered. His eyes fell on the red icon as it twisted and vanished in a flicker of light. “Have they gone?”

“Yes, sir,” Zulu said. He pushed as much concern into his voice as he dared. “I think that was a reconnaissance flight, sir. We have to put the defences on alert.”

“Oh, really?” The commodore asked. His voice didn’t bother to hide anything. “Do you think, a person who has never served off-world, that Admiral Wilhelm would not take one look at our defences and choose to leave us alone?”

It would be more likely that he would die laughing and his successor would order the attack, Zulu thought. Whatever the commodore, and his family, thought about the defences, Zulu himself had no such illusions. They wouldn’t stand up to a concentrated attack from a pair of battlecruiser squadrons, let alone the might of Admiral Wilhelm’s fleet. The government had tried to bury the warnings from the Provisional Government on Earth, but Zulu had seen enough to know just how little hope Wakanda actually had.

He was still trying to find a way to explain that to the commodore, without an automatic death sentence, when the alarms started to chime again. Seven massive starships had emerged outside the designated emergence zone, far too close to the planet for comfort. The sensors still couldn’t pick up sufficient detail, but it was clear that they were superdreadnaughts. Nothing smaller could have produced such a signature. The display kept updating, revealing the presence of more starships spreading out to escort the larger capital ships, but Zulu didn’t know why they were bothering. If they had bothered to read their copy of Jane’s Fighting Starships, they would know just how weak the defences actually were. Seven superdreadnaughts — let alone the two additional superdreadnaughts that appeared a moment later — were overkill.

“We have multiple emergences,” he said, calmly. Part of him was proud by how calm his voice was, in contrast to the Commodore, who had gone so pale that Zulu wondered if he were about to collapse, while the remainder of him saw certain death in the very near future. Wakanda’s never-to-be-sufficiently-damned government wouldn’t see sense and surrender at once. “I am reading approximately forty-two starships forming up on attack vectors.”

The commodore seized on the key word. “Approximately?” He demanded. Zulu wondered why he was even bothering to pretend to be surprised. The commodore’s real knowledge of space warfare and technology was almost non-existent. “how do you not have an exact count?”

“Because they are using their ECM to spoof our sensors and I only have accurate tracks on forty-two of them,” Zulu replied, patiently. “I count two minutes before they enter engagement range of the starships.”

The Wakanda Space Navy was slowly assembling. The Cottbus Fleet could have charged right into the gravity shadow and engaged some of the ships at once, but instead they were waiting, lurking right on the edge of the shadow. It took Zulu only a second to understand why. If the defenders were kind enough to line up to be slaughtered, Admiral Wilhelm — if he were actually present — would be happy to accept the favour.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake, he thought, sourly. It was an Imperial Navy saying, one of the many trite sayings that passed for wisdom from time to time, but it had a core of solid truth. He looked up at the commodore and took in his pale and shaking face. There would be no inspiring leadership from a man whose only normal decisions involved eating and sleeping. He was utterly unsuited to his role.

“Sir,” he said, more gently than he would have believed possible, “you have to warn them?”

The commodore’s piggish eyes glared at him. “Warn them of what?”

“They’re lining up to be slaughtered,” Zulu said, and explained as best as he could. If the vectors kept merging, the Wakanda Space Navy would find itself unable even to escape the trap they’d walked into with their eyes wide open. They literally wouldn’t even have a chance to fire back at their enemies. “Sir…”

“My uncle is in command of the fleet,” the commodore said, dismissively. Somehow, questioning him had brought back part of his old personality. Zulu hadn’t missed it. “I’m sure that he understands the situation far better than a lowly sensor tech. Tend to your knitting and leave the brave decisions to others.”

Zulu rolled his eyes. “We’re picking up a signal on general channels,” a communications tech said, before the discussions could get any worse. “It’s coming up automatically.”

Admiral Wilhelm’s face appeared in front of them. “This is Admiral Wilhelm, commanding the Cottbus Sector fleet,” he said, calmly. Zulu could just hear the competence dripping from his voice and knew that his commanders were no match for the man, even if they’d had equal levels of technology and starships. “By the power vested in me, and my fleet, I declare this system to be part of the Cottbus Union, with all the rights and responsibilities that that implies. Stand down your starships and defences and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with deadly force.”

He paused. “There will be no further warnings,” he concluded. “Any attempt to engage my fleet will result in the destruction of your forces and the imposition of punishment taxes and other retribution.”

His image vanished from the display. “This is the Clan Head,” a voice said, without a display. Zulu, who’d had a small side bet going with himself that the government would be trying to flee the planet just about now, was mildly impressed, although he suspected that the truth was that they hadn’t even bothered to plan out an emergency escape for their own people. “In the name of Wakanda, I reject your claim to authority. Any further attempt to impose your authority on us will be met with deadly force and soundly defeated…”

Zulu covered his head with his hands as the Clan Head went on, and on. It was a bluff. He knew it was a bluff. Worse, Admiral Wilhelm would know that it was a bluff. Worst of all, the people bluffing didn’t know that it was a bluff. They truly believed the crap that the Wakanda Space Navy spewed out to justify its existence, when a few investments and a slight lack of corruption would have paid much greater dividends. They might believe that it was only the Space Navy that had kept Wakanda from being attacked by pirates, or even the might of the Imperial Navy itself, but Zulu knew better. Wakanda simply had nothing worth the effort of taking it.

His display chimed. Admiral Wilhelm had gotten tired of listening to the Clan Head’s empty posturing and had issued orders to his fleet. As Zulu watched helplessly, one by one, the superdreadnaughts slipped into the gravity shadow, on a direct course for the Wakanda Space Navy and the other defenders. They were coming on faster than he had seen any ship entering a gravity shadow before and it would be bare seconds before they engaged…

“Now we’re going to see something,” the commodore said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “My uncle will kick them back out of the system.”

Zulu had the nasty feeling that he was half-right. They were going to see something.

“They’re locking missiles onto the Space Navy,” he reported, as calmly as he could. The enemy ships weren’t even bothering to hide or conceal their own emissions. They had locked on and were preparing to fire. His display sounded another alarm and he winced. “They’re opening fire.”

The Wakanda Space Navy had never invested seriously in missile production, with the effect that they had missiles that dated back several hundred years, without any of the more modern penetration aids. Admiral Wilhelm, by contrast, had hundreds of modern missiles and he wasn’t shy about using them. Before the Wakanda Space Navy had even managed to launch a single salvo, two of the superdreadnaughts — just two — had unleashed hell towards their opponents. Their missiles were unimaginably fast, equipped with the latest sensors and targeting systems… and the contrast was hopelessly unbalanced. The Wakanda Space Navy just didn’t stand a chance.

They fired, their missiles plodding towards their targets… and then the enemy missiles roared into their formation. The Black Panther, a battleship that dated all the way back to the foundation of the Empire and the fleet’s flagship, was targeted by twenty missiles, but ten would have been more than sufficient. The battleship blew apart into a burning fireball, lost with all hands. They hadn’t even had a chance to launch any life pods and escape the doomed ship.

Zulu couldn’t take his eyes off the display. A pair of cruisers that comprised Wakanda’s only modern ships — although with a definition of ‘modern’ that would have surprised most purists — were wiped out almost simultaneously. A flight of gunboats, useless for anything, but the simplest boarding action, were picked off neatly with individual missiles. The point defence network, barely capable of operating under the best of conditions, shattered and the remaining ships were blown apart, one after the other. Ships that had been outdated years before the Geeks and Nerds started to upgrade rebel ships to outmatch Imperial Navy ships died, one by one, and no one escaped alive. His console wasn’t showing even a single life pod.

“My God,” he breathed. There were over two hundred thousand personnel in the Wakanda Space Navy and two thirds of them had been on the starships. They were all dead… and the engagement wasn’t even over. The enemy ships were pushing through the debris, such as it was after the fearsome exchange of fire, and advancing on the orbital defences. Zulu knew, with a kind of numb disbelief, that they would have absolutely no trouble with the handful of orbiting fortresses, including his own. “We’re all dead.”

He looked around for the commodore. He was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing, a faint smell drifting up to touch Zulu’s nostrils. He’d just seen his uncle die, Zulu remembered, and watched the world turned upside down. It would have been easy to feel sorry for him, but Zulu remembered the way he’d treated his subordinates and no longer cared. He looked over at the communications officer and winced.

“Contact them,” he ordered. He no longer needed to care about the commodore. It was almost worth the possibility of imminent death. “Tell Admiral Wilhelm that we surrender.”

There was a long pause. “I’m picking up nothing from the incoming fleet,” the communications officer said. His voice twisted sharply as another voice, screaming something, rose up and then faded. “The Clan Head is screaming at us to pluck up our nerve and fight.”

“Ignore him,” Zulu ordered, savagely. He mentally traced out a firing pattern for the city of T’Challa. It would have been easy to destroy it, so easy, and Wakanda would be free of its government. Why could they not have done it before? “Repeat the signal…”

An alarm sounded. Admiral Wilhelm’s ships were locking their weapons on the station. They wouldn’t have any problems destroying it. The shields were outdated and the point defence network was already broken without having fired a single shot.

“I don’t think they’re interested in surrender,” the communications officer said. “I think…”

“No shit,” someone said, from the rear of the bridge. Zulu heard the note of defeat, and yet of victory, and smiled. They had escaped the government and were free men, for the few seconds it would last. “Should we not fire back?”

Zulu shook his head. “Why bother?”

The superdreadnaughts opened fire.

A minute later, the final defenders of Wakanda died at their posts.