Democracy's Light

Chapter Thirty-Four

The planet of Wakanda, Admiral Wilhelm decided, after his brief victory tour, was a dump. It wasn’t just the government, or what was left of it after outraged crowds vented their feelings on everyone they could reach, or the damage left after police skimmers had used heavy weapons on unprotected crowds, but the very feeling of despondency that seemed to lie everywhere. The slums surrounding the spaceport, filled with more unproductive men, women and children than he’d ever seen in his life, the crumbling cities, the obvious criminal gangs preying on anyone who wasn’t well-protected… the entire planet was falling apart. He’d skimmed through one of the government’s broachers, trying to convince the people that all was well, and had had to laugh. Wakanda had no past, no present… and no future.

He scowled as the last of the planet’s governing class was finally evicted out of the airlock, his overweight body spinning in space as he clawed hopelessly for salvation, or a rescue that would never come. The man had been a murderer many times over, just through sheer stupidity and ignorance. He’d had no choice, but to make a brutal example of the Wakanda Space Navy, even though it was definitely overkill. The new government he had installed on the planet, one loyal to him with the forces required to back up its demands, could only be an improvement, but Wakanda was too far gone to be saved. Shock treatment was required, but he didn’t have the time, ort the motivation. It would be a project for a more peaceful time.

“The fat arsehole will be burning up in a few hours,” Captain Keene assured him. He’d served with Admiral Wilhelm long enough to be completely trusted. “The people down on the surface will cheer.”

“Perhaps,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed. The people of Wakanda would be nursing their wounds after their government had put their revolution down so savagely. They certainly didn’t have the experience or determination to rebuild their shattered world. He rather suspected that most of the younger population would try to emigrate, leaving the older population to die, unless they were recruited into his forces first. There were worlds governed by the worst of the Thousand Families, the ones so embarrassing that they were effectively banned from Earth, that were better run. “It’s not our concern anyway.”

He took one last look at the dwindling figure, drifting down towards the planet as tradition dictated for the death of a traitor, before pushing it from his mind. An overweight person was apparently a powerful person on Wakanda, for reasons that might even make sense, given that the planet was barely capable of feeding its teeming masses. The planet would just have to learn — he smiled thinly — to trim the fat. If they didn’t learn, the consequences of their disastrous government would catch up with them and impose their own solution.

“Come on,” he said, and led the way out of the airlock’s control room. Keene followed him silently until they finally reached his flag cabin. Without Carola, whose taste was so much better than his own, he had stripped out most of the artworks and placed them in storage, replacing them with a large tactical display. It was blinking alarmingly when they entered and he pulled up the message… and swore.

“They hit Ysalt,” he said, and swore again. The rebels had hit back hard… and, somehow, had picked a near-perfect target. The effectively-complete destruction of the supply dumps would impose strict limits on how far his fleet could operate, a desperate attempt to buy time… that would work, unless he could find a way to operate without the supplies. “They didn’t occupy the world, but they didn’t have to waste their time trying.”

He scowled as Keene read through the message. Ysalt hadn’t been particularly important for centuries and he’d counted on that when he’d developed it as a supply base, but the rebels had managed to locate it and destroy the supplies. His ships needed the supply of missiles and spare parts to operate — even though the best efforts of the Wakanda Space Navy had inflicted absolutely no damage whatsoever — and that supply had just been savagely reduced. The rebels had somehow managed to make a fleet train work without supply bases and convoys, but he hadn’t had the time to set up a similar system. It was a weakness, he saw in cold hindsight, that he had believed that they couldn’t take advantage of. He had been wrong.

Keene’s mind was working along similar lines. “They’re forced us to reroute supplies directly from Cottbus,” he said. Admiral Wilhelm nodded. There was no reason why that wasn’t possible, but it would merely add more delay, not least in getting the instructions back to Cottbus to do just that. Worse, they would have to rely on a convoy system… and that would mean diverting escorts from the war front. “That affects our ability to carry out the next stage of the plan.”

Admiral Wilhelm stared at him. “Tell me something I don’t know, please,” he said, unable to keep the slow-building anger out of his voice. “I know the consequences as well as you do, perhaps better.”

His Flag Captain cleared his throat. “We fired off twenty percent of missile stocks on the superdreadnaughts that engaged at Wakanda,” he said, consulting a datapad. That, too, had come back to haunt them. A more restrained approach to the task of trashing the Wakanda Space Navy would have been less spectacular, but more helpful in the long run. Fired missiles didn’t re-materialise out of nowhere, whatever some computer game simulation designers thought. “Two-thirds of the fleet didn’t even enter the system and they still have full missile loads. The fleet’s combat power has not been significantly reduced.”

“Not now,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed, sourly. He appreciated his aide’s attempt to take the best possible view of the debacle, but he was no Family scion, deaf to all, but good news. In a sense, he was entirely correct. A fleet like the one he commanded -according to standard doctrine — couldn’t be broken up by a fleet that wasn’t at least equal in firepower. Pre-war training had assumed that a three-to-one advantage was required to guarantee success, but pre-war analysts had never anticipated arsenal ships. “It will come back to haunt us later.”

He tapped the controls and called up a standard starchart, looking down at the Empire from high above. Tactical icons, representing his forces, glowed brightly, outshining dimmer icons that represented his intelligence crew’s best guess at rebel dispositions. The information could be — probably was — outdated by now, but it looked alarming, on the surface. It was, in fact, still a highly advantageous situation — to him.

But it wouldn’t last. He was operating deep within unfriendly territory — he had no illusions as to how the first-rank worlds would view him — with very limited support. The rebels might not have a force capable of breaking his fleet that they could spare from defence duties, but it hardly mattered. He could turn on the first-rank worlds and wreck havoc, but that would drain his arsenals and give the rebels time to concentrate their forces. The war would go on for years, but once the rebels struck back at Cottbus, the outcome would be certain. After his ambush of the rebel fleet — which, far from being broken, had wrecked his supply bases at Ysalt — he didn’t expect mercy, even if he offered to surrender. His only choice was to continue the war.

And there were only a handful of targets that might prove decisive.

“An interesting problem,” he mused, finally. He stoked his beard while concentrating his thoughts, noting absently that it had been weeks since he had heard anything from Carola, even though the intelligence network he’d ‘inherited’ from Lady Madeline Hohenzollern. He was more worried about her than he cared to admit, although he was fairly sure that the rebels would do nothing to harm her, at least until it was safe to do so. He would wreck a terrible revenge if they hurt one hair on her head. “We have a window of opportunity, so where do we strike?”

A Flag Captain had to be his Admiral’s alter ego, offering advice and caution, whatever the situation. “AlphaCent is heavily defended and actually hard to approach safely,” Keene said, after a moment. The binary star system — with a third companion star far too close for comfort when the flicker drive was concerned — could be dangerous for interstellar starships. “They would certainly have warning of our coming and they wouldn’t allow us to take the shipyards intact.”

“Which would leave us effectively defenceless,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed. The rebel forces massed at AlphaCent, perhaps the second most sensitive location in the Empire, wouldn’t be the pushovers that the Wakanda Space Navy had been. He was confident of a victory, but the cost would be steep… and they wouldn’t be able to replace their missiles quickly. They would have to withdraw almost at once, all the way back to Cottbus itself, just to reload. Who knew what the rebels could get up to in that time? “It would also be pointless destruction.”

He altered the display slightly. “And Earth itself?”

Keene considered it. “Victory, complete victory, if we win,” he said. “The rebel Provisional Government would have to stand and fight. They wouldn’t have a choice, unless they wanted to retreat and leave us with Earth. That leaves us with a more interesting problem — do we have the firepower, with us now, to defeat the rebels in battle above Earth?”

Admiral Wilhelm smiled darkly. Lady Madeline Hohenzollern’s intelligence network was actually fairly good when it came to political matters — although if they had known that Madeline was currently cooling her heels in one of his more unattractive cells, her friends and relatives would probably have been less eager to help — but the network wasn’t so good with military problems. It wouldn’t be able to address specific questions, such as how many starships were deployed to defend Earth, or who was in command of the Shadow Fleet, or anything else that might have been useful for anyone planning an offensive. It might not have mattered. The odds were that he didn’t know anyone who would be in a position of power in the Shadow Fleet. Colin Harper, the rebel leader, had been a mere Commander before the rebellion. The other leaders were equally obscure.

But he knew enough to gamble. “I believe so,” he said, carefully side-stepping the obvious question. The cold hard laws governing interstellar warfare told him that he had no choice, but to seek a quick victory — or accept defeat. The rebels still had control over far more industry and, given time, they could make continuing the war impossible. He recited, slowly, words that Carola had taught him, just before she’d departed for Earth onboard the Victorious.

Keene blinked. “Sir?”

“We have to move on Earth, one final throw of the dice, or accept defeat,” Admiral Wilhelm said. Keene would understand, as well as himself, that the plan had miscarried badly enough to require extreme measures. They hadn’t anticipated the loss of the supply dumps. “So… we move on Earth, and damned be he who first says, hold, enough.”

He cast his gaze back to the display, watching the sway of tactical icons, each one representing a starship or an orbital defence fortress, and smiled. Earth was, in theory, heavily defended, but at the same time, it presented almost unique challenges for the defenders. The sheer level of habitation and industry in the system was staggering to contemplate. Humanity’s birthworld might have been nearly deserted, apart from the Thousand Families, their servants and now the Provisional Government, but the remainder of the system was heavily populated. An attacker who was prepared to be careful had some advantages that would be denied the defenders.

His mouth broadened into a smile. “They’ll see us coming, of course,” he said. There weren’t that many targets worthy of his fleet. “They’ll know we’re on the way, but they won’t realise the true danger, until it’s too late.”

He straightened up and turned to face Keene. “Captain, contact the other ships and inform them that we will be flickering out within the hour for the first waypoint, and then proceeding directly to a waypoint only a few light years from Earth. Tell them that when we rendezvous there, I want to see their starships at the peak of their condition. I want to see trained crews and sparkling decks. I’ll confer with the other Admirals. You work on the Captains.”

“Aye, sir,” Keene said, rising to his feet.

“And tell them,” Admiral Wilhelm added, “to prepare for victory.”

He smiled as the hatch hissed closed behind Keene. The other Admirals would object, of course, but they would know that there was no choice. They had to make for Earth and, win or lose, they would make a grab for true power, or bring the entire system crashing down. The old order would never be restored.

Carola Wilhelm was starting to see why prison had been such an effective deterrent, at least for someone used to all kinds of mental simulation. Her cell was a small metal cube, three meters by three meters, with a bunk, a sink and a toilet, nothing else. It hadn’t taken her more than a minute to search the entire cell, revealing nothing beyond an uncomfortable pile of bedding and a single plastic cup. A quick check revealed that the cup was unbreakable and suicide, even if she had been contemplating it, wasn’t a possibility. The cell was impregnable by anything short of cutting lasers and perhaps fission blades… and somehow she had forgotten to bring them with her. She hadn’t been searched when she’d been escorted into her new home, but the closest thing she had to a weapon were her fingernails. Escape was impossible.

She lay on the bunk, staring at nothing. There was little in the cell to entertain her, or even to force her to use her mind, not even a possibility of escape. She counted sheep, or played games of chess in her head, but no amount of thinking could distract her from the fact she was bored. She had expected interrogators to come into the cell and start shouting questions, even if they didn’t break out the torture kits, or truth drugs, and she would almost have welcomed the distraction. Instead, she had been left in the cell… and she had no idea how long it had been since she had been a free woman. Going by meals, which arrived through a slit in the wall, she had been there for at least a week, but it was hard to tell. She didn’t even have a pen to make marks on the walls.

The door clicked, bringing her to instant attention. A thin light shone in from outside, revealing a tall slender form, very definitely female. Silhouetted, it was impossible to make out her features, but Carola knew who it was, who it had to be.

“Gwendolyn,” she said, surprised at how hoarse her voice had become. She normally talked throughout the day. “What a pleasure to see you here.”

Gwendolyn leaned forward. When she spoke, her voice was far more serious than Carola remembered. “There isn’t much time,” she whispered. “Getting into here took longer than I expected and the replacement guards will be on shift soon enough. Listen carefully. Your husband took Wakanda around a week ago, interstellar time.”

Carola blinked. “Wakanda?”

“A first-rank world, on the edge of Sector 19,” Gwendolyn said, flatly. Carola nodded, remembering. Wakanda had been so obscure that she hadn’t heard of it until Admiral Wilhelm had begun discussion war plans. It certainly hadn’t remained in her mind. Wakanda was an interstellar backwater. “We don’t know exactly what happened, but its fairly clear that he took the planet.”

“I see,” Carola said. She frowned, cursing her own mind. The stay in jail had taken some of the edge off her thoughts. It felt as if she were trying to think through cotton wool. “Where am I, anyway?”

Gwendolyn gave her an odd look. “Navajo Detention Centre,” she said, after a moment. Carola had worked out that she wasn’t on the moon, in the dreaded Luna Detention Centre, but she didn’t know any other detention centres on Earth. It had been a surprise to learn that they existed. “We need your help.”

“We?” Carola asked, for all the world as if she was a queen — no, an Empress — receiving a supplicant. “Who is this we, Gwendolyn?”

“Figures of influence who want the war to end,” Gwendolyn said. “We can get you free from this place and out to your husband, in exchange for you agreeing to mediate between us and him.”

“Indeed?” Carola asked. It was tempting to agree, but now that the war had started in earnest, hardly necessary. Gwendolyn and the rest of her kind, aristocrats all, didn’t understand that Admiral Wilhelm’s victory meant their end. “And why should I agree to that?”

“Because otherwise you might not survive the next few weeks,” Gwendolyn said. Carola, who had expected the threat, was unmoved. “You don’t understand what is happening here.”

“Don’t I?” Carola asked. It felt so good to unburden herself of scorn and hatred. “You’re rats deserting a sinking ship.”

Gwendolyn seemed amused. “Maybe,” she said, a thin smile playing around her lips, as if she knew something that Carola didn’t know. “Or maybe not. Will you help us?”

Carola smiled. “Sure,” she lied, smoothly. It would provide a few moments of amusement until the end of the war. “Why not?”

“Good,” Gwendolyn said. She glanced down at the timepiece on her wrist. “I’ll be back here soon enough. Goodbye.”

She left, the door clicking and locking behind her.

Carola smiled as she lay back on the bunk. The game was afoot again.

She was quite looking forward to it.