Democracy's Light

Chapter Five

“And thank God that that’s over!”

Admiral Katy Garland looked up as Colin entered, watching as he pulled his uniform jacket off and draped it over a chair, before taking a position facing her. She’d been surprised to be called back to the High City so quickly — it had been weeks since she’d been assigned to escort convoys from Earth to several first-rank worlds — but truthfully she was surprised to have been promoted at all. She had been the senior officer of the Shadow Fleet to be taken prisoner at First Morrison.

“Bad night at the office?” She asked, dryly. She’d known Colin when he’d been a mere Commander and, even though he was now effectively the ruler of the Empire, she found it hard to scrape and bow. If she knew Colin, and she did, he would have hated such deference from an old friend.

“They’ve invented new ways to square the circle and make two plus two equal five,” Colin said, rolling his eyes. An orderly brought him a large mug of coffee — of a brand that, prior to the Fall of Earth, had only been available to the Thousand Families — and he sipped it gratefully. Katy, who’d tried every kind of coffee in the Empire, privately found it a little bitter. “Half of them think that they shouldn’t be paying taxes and tithes now and the other half want the first lot to pay more. Sorting out who owes what isn’t going to be easy and now…”

He shook his head. “That’s an issue for another time,” he said. “How determined are you to keep the Havoc?”

Katy blinked. The Havoc, technically the Havoc-II, as the first Havoc had been crippled and scrapped at First Morrison, was her flagship, an Invincible-class battlecruiser. It was an older ship than the newer Geek-built starships, but it had been refitted just after the Fall of Earth and she’d been assigned it as her flagship. It wasn’t quite the same as having sole command of such a glorious starship, but it was as close as she would come to command, ever. Even without the stigma of being captured, she was too high-ranking to command again.

“Very determined,” she said. An Admiral should command from a superdreadnaught, according to the Great God Tradition. The Imperial Navy had existed for over a thousand years and nothing as minor as a rebellion and the universe turned upside down would change its habits in a hurry. She’d fought tooth and nail to keep the Havoc as her flagship and only Colin’s intervention had convinced the Navy Board to allow her to have her way. “I thought that Joshua had agreed not to press the issue?”

Colin shrugged. Katy could see their point, at times, but she didn’t care. A battlecruiser depended more on speed than firepower and armour. Salvos that a superdreadnaught could laugh off would blow it into flaming plasma, but she had always detested the ponderous superdreadnaughts. A superdreadnaught might have been safer for an Admiral, by far, but she disliked that logic. An Admiral should share the risks with her officers and men.

“We have a problem out towards Cottbus,” Colin said, and rapidly outlined the situation. “We don’t know exactly what’s going on out there, or just what Admiral Wilhelm is playing at, or who’s playing with him… but we suspect that it’s not going to be good. At best, he’s posturing to get better treatment, but it’s already cost us several hundred lives and I’m not laughing.”

He leaned forward. “I want you to take command of a task force I’m dispatching to Hawthorn and deal with the problem,” he continued. “I trust that you can command three squadrons of superdreadnaughts from the Havoc without much difficulty?”

Katy scowled. He had, perhaps intentionally, placed her in a blind. If she continued to command from a lowly battlecruiser the odds were that the enemy wouldn’t realise and would concentrate all their firepower on the superdreadnaughts. The Havoc simply didn’t carry enough firepower to be noticeable when superdreadnaughts clashed in the night. If she moved her flag to a superdreadnaught, she might never be able to return to a battlecruiser. It was a problem that would require some thought.

“It should be possible, assuming that it’s a well-drilled force,” she said, carefully. She picked up a terminal and ran through the limited information on Cottbus and the Sector Fleet assigned to Admiral Wilhelm. “Only three squadrons of superdreadnaughts?”

“They’re all new Independence-class ships,” Colin said. He didn’t miss the gleam in her eye. The Independence-class superdreadnaughts had been built by the Geeks and had nearly twice the effective firepower of a General-class superdreadnaught, a missile-armed brute. Nine of them could take on eighteen Generals with a fair chance of coming out ahead. “I’m going to detach several squadrons of escorting starships and at least two squadrons of the latest arsenal ships as well, just to add to your firepower. You’re going to be fairly weak in the supporting elements, I’m afraid, but we can’t spare you anything else at the moment unless we get another Tenaha.”

“I see,” Katy said. The Tenaha Sector had thrown its lot in with the new order and the Provisional Government as soon as Earth fell to the Shadow Fleet. They hadn’t had a large arsenal of capital ships, but they’d had several squadrons of escorting ships, which had promptly been added to the Imperial Navy’s roster. The sheer magnitude of the problem, however, seemed to defy easy solutions. “I take it that there’s no sign of relief on the horizon?”

Colin shook his head. “The first-rank worlds have assigned several of their squadrons to the general pool of escort vessels, but they’re concentrating on trying to acquire superdreadnaughts now, so their production of smaller ships is actually being hampered because experienced personnel are being assigned to the larger ships,” he said. “The Geeks are doing what they can, but we need to build up a hard core of superdreadnaughts ourselves before someone on the Rim starts trying to cause trouble…”

“Which might have just begun,” Katy injected.

“Exactly,” Colin said. “Oh, the good news is that we’re killing pirates every time we encounter them, but there are so many that it’s only a drop in the bucket. We just don’t have enough ships to escort every convoy and every time we delay a convoy — when we can delay a convoy — it has an effect on the local economic situation.”

He shook his head. “I doubt that we’ll have many starving worlds,” he added, “but there are enough worlds on the edge that the slightest disaster might tip them over into civil war and mass unrest.”

Katy followed his logic and winced. The Empire, to give it due credit, had insisted on every newly-settled world becoming capable of feeding itself as fast as possible, avoiding some of the disasters that had plagued early colonisation efforts. The problem was that not every world, particularly the later ones, lived up to that promise… and they didn’t always have the infrastructure to repair damaged components or farming units. The Empire had exploited that problem ruthlessly — she remembered the Annual Fleet, which the Shadow Fleet had captured in its first raid on the Empire — and as long as the Empire had been in existence, it had worked fine. Now… the entire system was falling apart and billions of lives were at risk.

“I see,” she said, finally. It made her wonder if Colin ever regretted having started the rebellion. “How does this all play into the tax situation?”

Colin smiled, humourlessly. “They want protection in exchange for their taxes, but we need the taxes in order to build them the ships to protect them, but because we’re not protecting them they’re trying to invest elsewhere, such as in their own shipyards…”

He allowed his voice to trail off. “The bottom line, Katy, is that we need to squash this problem with Admiral Wilhelm as quickly as possible,” he concluded. “That’s why we’re sending you out there.”

An image of the Empire’s sectors appeared in front of him. “You’ll be several weeks from Earth, even assuming we manage to keep that section of the ICN up and running, so I’ll expect you to use your own judgement,” he said. “Take the fleet to Hawthorn, scout the Cottbus region and find out what’s going on. If you find that you don’t have the firepower to take him out, stay back, conduct a tactical survey of the sector and wait for reinforcements.”

“In other words, a return to raiding,” Katy said, wryly. Colin nodded cynically. The Shadow Fleet had raided worlds on the long march towards Morrison, if only to unsettle the Thousand Families and force them to spread their forces thin, but it had barely worked. Admiral Wachter had been too canny to fool that easily. “Do you want me to take out his shipyard?”

“If you can capture it, Kathy will be delighted,” Colin said. Katy had to smile. She liked Kathy Tyler, even though she could be far too enthusiastic half the time. “If not, then take it out and hamper his plans to build up a new navy. If we can’t have it, we can’t let him use it.”

“Yes, sir,” Katy said. She stood up. “Am I to assume that there’s a time limit?”

“Admiral Wachter is issuing orders for the new squadrons to form up at Jupiter,” Colin said. “Once you get there, make a quick analysis and decide how quickly you can flicker out.”

“I’m going to run through at least one combat drill first,” Katy said, firmly. The Shadow Fleet had had a higher rating for drilling than the old Imperial Navy — the new one, which Colin and Joshua had been founding, took drilling very seriously — but the crew might well be untested. “Once that’s completed, I’ll let you know when we can depart.”

“Of course,” Colin said. He stuck out a hand. “May God go with you.”

The only title that Major Vincent Anderson had allowed himself was Security Officer, a title that had a rather dark history within the Imperial Navy. An old-style Security Officer was required to watch the crew of their starship for any signs of disloyalty, subversion or dissatisfaction, and, once they had confirmed a possible suspect, to carry out a rigorous interrogation. The crewman, once they had been though the interrogation, would probably be blacklisted for life, even if they had been innocent. It hadn’t been a career that Anderson had enjoyed and, when he’d realised the scope of Colin’s conspiracy against the Empire, he had chosen to join it rather than expose it. It was something that would have earned him a death sentence, if he’d been caught deliberately failing in his duty, but as he’d remarked to Colin at the time, the Empire would have been hard-pressed to decide on which charge they were actually going to shoot him.

And, much to his private surprise, the rebellion had won.

Anderson had refused promotion, choosing to remain as Colin’s spymaster and security expert. Colin, he’d decided long ago, was the key figure of the rebellion and the Provisional Government. Without his authority and status, the Provisional Government would fall apart, leaving the old order poised to recover its power and position. He’d ensured that the High City was packed with his spies and surveillance devices, using them to identify several plotters against the Provisional Government, and he’d adopted a pro-active attitude towards them. It was astonishing how incompetent some of the would-be bombers had been. They’d managed to blow themselves up with their own explosives.

But the High City was a security nightmare. There hadn’t been an overall security network since the Empress had been disposed, forcing him to work hard to establish a blanket network, one he knew had far too many holes. Even the smallest and least-influential of the Thousand Families had a security staff, who swept their apartments daily for bugs, while the more powerful ones had their own intelligence networks. The nightmare haunted him daily. While he tracked down incompetents, or people who talked too much at the wrong places, what might the competent ones be doing?

He tapped on the door and waited until it opened, allowing him to step into Colin’s apartment. Someone like Colin could have had almost any apartment in the city just for the asking, but he’d chosen a small office near the Parliament Building, which at least had the virtue of being easy to guard. The Marines had put everyone, including Anderson, who wanted to enter through a proper security check, ensuring that no obvious threat could get through and threaten Colin. Anderson wasn’t reassured. Someone who really wanted to get rid of Colin could smuggle a fusion bomb into the city, or, for that matter, an antimatter bomb onto the planet. He didn’t even want to think about how many of Colin’s enemies might have access to shipkiller missiles…

“Vincent,” Colin called, from his chair. He looked, Anderson noted, as if he hadn’t been sleeping again. Anderson didn’t blame him for that. Sleepless nights seemed to be the price for running the Empire. “Any major problems on the horizon?”

Anderson shrugged. The Empire was vast, utterly mind-bogglingly vast. He followed politics as closely as anyone else, these days, and he knew just how many possible problems were looming in the future, just under the surface of everyday politics. The real danger, he had already decided, came from the independence movements close to Earth, starting with Mars. The workers there were already talking about a unilateral declaration of independence…

“Far too many,” he said. There were so many possible threats that it was hard to tell which ones were truly serious. “The easiest problem today was we caught another bureaucrat with his hands in the till.”

Colin scowled. There was a joke, in the Empire, that the Moon was the planet of bureaucrats. There were, quite literally, millions of bureaucrats on the Moon, charged with actually keeping the Empire running, as inefficient as it was. They might not all be corrupt, but too many of them accepted bribes, or simply stole money from the departmental accounts, just to keep their own livelihoods going. The Empire had once had so much money that they could skim all they liked, but now… now, losing almost anything would be a major problem.

“I take it we have proof?” He asked, finally. “We have images of him taking money?”

“Enough to move to a public trial,” Anderson assured him. The Empire had no right to remain silent. Once arrested, the criminal would have his mind read to confirm or disprove his guilt. “I can have him arrested tomorrow and then hold a very public trial, before shooting him down to a penal world on a one-way trip.”

“Another one,” Colin said. “Why do I feel like the person who was charged with cleaning out a stable?”

“It’s been going on for years,” Anderson reminded him. “Once this poor bastard is dealt with, we can keep an eye on his friends and see how many of them continue to steal. I’d like to deal with them all, but…”

“Then we’d have to run the place ourselves,” Colin said, wryly. The bureaucrats were vitally important to running the Empire, at least until the new order was up and running properly, and they couldn’t all be dumped on a penal world. Anderson could only hope that they didn’t know that. In five years, or perhaps ten, there would be enough newcomers to change the culture permanently. “Is that the most serious problem?”

“Hardly,” Anderson said, and ran through a list of possible problems. “There was one curious little datum that I picked up last week…”

Colin leaned forward. “And that is…?”

“Two people have been spending time together,” Anderson said. “Daria and Lord Tiberius Cicero have been meeting, fairly regularly, over the last few weeks.”

Colin lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know why?”

“I can’t get a bug into the Cicero Residence in the High City,” Anderson admitted. The failure gnawed at him, even though he had learned, rapidly, just how experienced the Thousand Families were at security matters. They had had no choice. Their rivals had seen to that. “All I can tell you is that the shortest time they spent together in private was two hours and the longest time was nine hours. Just what they were discussing…”

“I see,” Colin said, finally. Anderson realised, suddenly, that he hadn’t known until now. It would be nice to believe that it was something innocent, but somehow he had difficulty believing that it was friendship, or even romance. Tiberius, after all, had an engagement now, to a girl called Alicia. “They might have been discussing the shipping crisis.”

“Perhaps,” Anderson said. He had to admit that it was a likely story. The Cicero Clan had been hit badly by the sudden shortage of shippers — after they’d decided to revert to being freelance and join the Freebooters League. “I still don’t like it. They could be discussing anything.”

“I know,” Colin said, “but is that grounds for stopping them?”

Anderson considered it. Imperial Intelligence would have been suspicious of any ‘secret’ conversations and meetings, forcing some commanders to work overtime to ensure that they had invited all the spies to their meetings… or the spies would have told their superiors about the ‘secret’ meetings. Colin, on the other hand, had grounds for paranoia that far exceeded all the Thousand Families, but he was determined not to create a police state. Imperial Intelligence was being brutally reformed. They would not be permitted to waste time while the Provisional Government was reshaping the Empire, let alone influence the outcome and play kingmaker.

“I wish I knew,” he concluded. His instincts were telling him that something was wrong, but he couldn’t take that to Colin, could he? “Now, the current state of play regarding the reporters…”