Democracy's Might

Chapter Twenty

“That’s all of the freighters loaded, sir.”

“It’s about bloody time,” Commodore Viand snapped. He glared down at the display, which showed the freighters slowly disengaging from the supply dump. “Have they finally managed to slave their navigational computers together or are we going to have to make multiple jumps?”

“They have, sir,” the communications officer said.

Viand nodded. He knew he was being unfair, but he didn’t really care. He’d expected to be sent to Morrison to join the Imperial Navy squadrons there. Instead, he’d been detailed to convoy escort as bases surrounding Morrison were stripped of everything from spare parts to personnel to keep the Morrison Fleet operating. Given it’s condition, Viand rather suspected that it would take years before the fleet was ready for anything other than the scrapheap, but Admiral Wachter hadn’t asked his opinion before starting work.

“Then tell them to assume formation,” he ordered, tiredly. “Inform me as soon as we are ready to depart.”

He sat back in his chair, fighting down irritation at the civilians who had been conscripted into the Imperial Navy. None of them were very happy about it, despite being promised double-pay for their service. They’d only grudgingly gone to work and loaded up the freighters, dawdling as much as possible. If there hadn’t been a handful of naval personnel on each ship, Viand would have worried about them jumping in the wrong direction and taking their cargos to the highest bidder. Imperial Navy spares were highly prized along the Rim, if only because they tended to be better-built than the civilian-produced models.

And most of the civilian freighters were old, fifth or sixth-hand by the time they reached their current owners. They’d never bothered to install newer flicker drives, which meant that the convoy had to move some distance from the planet before jumping out and heading towards Morrison. Viand suspected, despite all the precautions, that the convoy would scatter immediately after the first jump. Civilian drives were never very accurate at the best of times and they were expected to jump in formation…

The communications officer broke into his thoughts. “Commodore, all ships are in formation,” he said. “They’re ready to depart.”

“Take us out,” Viand ordered. That had been pleasantly quick, compared to the loading. A task that should have taken two days had stretched out to a week, thanks to civilian attitudes to work. Perhaps they should have offered more money. “Match our speed to the slowest ship in the convoy.”

Dead Hand thrummed quietly as her engines came online, powering her away from the orbital supply dump. Viand fancied that he could feel the cruiser’s indignation at how she’d been treated, first stripped of half of her crew to work at Morrison and then assigned to escorting wallowing freighters from isolated supply dumps to the naval base. Dead Hand was designed for raiding enemy star systems, slashing in and launching missiles before pulling out again, hopefully unscratched. She wasn’t meant to be tied down as a convoy escort.

But you kept your ship in working condition, he thought, sourly. Admiral Wachter had complemented him in person. It was more than most commanders did at Morrison.

He shook his head in bitter amusement as the display changed, showing the formation. The starships should have moved together, but they were already spreading out. Civilians simply weren’t used to staying in formation and it showed. The heavier freighters seemed to wallow as they picked up speed, their smaller brethren moving ahead as if they were keen to get the whole experience over with. Viand couldn’t blame them, although he knew it would be years before they were allowed to return to civilian life. The warships hadn’t been the only ships at Morrison to be allowed to decay. If anything, the fleet train was in a worse state.

We told ourselves that we didn’t need it, he reminded himself. We had bases everywhere, allowing us to deploy wherever we wanted. Now… we’ve lost half the bases and we’re screwed.

“We’re approaching the jump point,” the helmswoman said.

“Slow to all stop,” Viand ordered, tiredly. A naval warship could jump at speed, but a civilian freighter didn’t really have that option. The ship would probably disintegrate mid-jump if it tried. “And check and recheck their calculations.”

He sighed. Minerva lay four light years from Morrison, a single jump for a warship. But for a formation of ancient civilian freighters? Viand had decided on four jumps, one light year apiece. It was playing it very safe, but he didn’t want to lose a single ship. The civilians might have exaggerated the fragility of their ships, yet he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

“Calculations running now,” the helmswoman said. “I…”

“Incoming missiles,” the tactical officer snapped, as alarms howled. Bright red icons appeared on the display. “Incoming missiles!”

“Bring up the point defence,” Viand snapped. He was shocked, but training rapidly asserted itself. “Clear to open fire; I say again, clear to open fire.”

“Reading five enemy starships,” the tactical officer said. “No; seven!”

Viand stared at the display. Five rebel starships, within four light years of Morrison? They had to have done nothing but travel from Camelot to Morrison since the Battle of Camelot. Or were they other mutineers? It was quite possible that other ships had deserted the Empire, particularly since potential rebels realised they were not alone. He pushed the thought aside as he looked down at the display. His squadron had been caught flatfooted and they were about to pay a terrible price.

“Point defence activating, now,” the tactical officer said. Viand silently blessed his own foresight in holding tactical drills while they were waiting for the freighters to load, even though he had only wanted to keep his crews occupied while the civilians took their sweet time to prepare their ships. “Enemy missiles thirty seconds from impact.”

Viand braced himself as the missiles flashed into the point defence envelope. They’d been taken so completely by surprise that there was little time to prepare a proper defence. He couldn’t help noticing that half of the missiles were targeted on the freighters, rather than the warships. It was an odd tactic, he thought, then he realised what the enemy had in mind. The attackers might want to take the freighters intact, but they knew help would rapidly arrive from Morrison. Instead, they were merely blowing the freighters into flaming debris.

“Got a lock on the enemy ships,” the tactical officer snapped. “Ready to return fire.”

“Return fire,” Viand ordered. The missiles were approaching his ships now, slipping into terminal attack mode. Only a handful had been downed by the point defence. “Fire a full spread and…”

The missiles struck home. Dead Hand shuddered, then lost her shields. Viand had only a moment to realise that four missiles had slammed into the hull before their warheads detonated, washing the entire world away in a flare of brilliant white light.

“Excellent shooting,” Jason Cordova boomed. The entire Imperial Navy squadron had been wiped out before it even managed to fire a single missile back towards its attackers. “Retarget the remaining freighters and continue firing.”

Commander Patrick Jones nodded, watching in disbelief as the freighters tried to scatter. If they’d been destroyers or gunboats, they might have made it. But they couldn’t hope to get out of missile range before it was too late. The second wave of missiles was already closing in rapidly, aiming to destroy rather than cripple. Patrick knew that the raiding squadron would need the supplies, but they didn’t want to risk tangling with a fully-alert military force.

He winced as several freighters dropped their puny shields, signalling their surrender. Firing in surrendering vessels was not considered approvable behaviour, but there was no alternative. Several other freighter crews had taken to the lifepods, abandoning their ships. It might keep them alive, he decided, as the second wave of missiles struck home. The remaining freighters disintegrated in balls of radioactive plasma, taking the enemy supplies with them.

“All targets destroyed, sir,” the tactical officer reported. She’d been a member of Cordova’s crew from the start, someone who hadn’t made any bones about being irritated by Patrick’s presence. He’d only been a mutineer for a year, if that. “The supply dump is scrambling gunboats.”

Cordova made a show of stroking his beard. “No need to fight them,” he said, “even though we came looking for a fight. Power up the drive, then jump us out to the first waypoint.”

Patrick braced himself as he heard the dull whine of the flicker drive powering up. Moments later, his stomach clenched violently and he had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting onto the deck. The compensators weren’t properly tuned, he thought, although no one seemed to care enough to fix them. They seemed to regard it as a feature of the ship and her eccentric commander.

“Jump complete, sir,” the helmsman reported.

Patrick glanced down at his console. “All ships report a successful disengagement,” he reported. Officially, his title was Fleet Coordinator, even though Cordova commanded a large squadron at best. Unofficially, he was charged with keeping an eye on Cordova and his crews. Reputations tended to be tarnished along the Beyond. It was quite possible that Cordova, as well as being an exile, was a pirate. “Missile expenditures…”

“Bureaucratic nonsense,” Cordova said, dismissively. He winked at Patrick. “Don’t worry about that, son. The commanders can handle their own missile expenditures.”

Patrick flushed. Cordova knew perfectly well why Patrick had been assigned to his crew and didn’t hesitate to tease him, rather than act offended. Patrick suspected that Cordova was not entirely sane any longer, although there was no way to prove it. Quite a few of the Rim’s inhabitants were unstable, particularly after being forced to run for their lives from the Empire’s expanding borders. And Cordova, the Imperial Navy CO who’d gone into exile rather than scorch a planet, could never go home again.

Unless we win, Patrick thought, as he forced himself to relax. Then we can all go home.

“Splendid shooting, all of you,” Cordova added, addressing the entire crew. “Our targets didn’t have a hope.”

He was right, of course. The Imperial Navy had been caught completely by surprise, allowing the raiders to fire their missiles at very close range. In future, they’d be harder to surprise, once word of the attack got out. But every ship they detailed to convoy escort and planetary defence was one that couldn’t be assigned to blunt the rebel advance,

“Take us to the RV point, then reload our magazines and resume our flight towards Earth,” Cordova ordered. “We don’t want to get there after they realise we’re coming.”

He grinned toothily at Patrick, then stood and strode off the bridge, his long frock coat billowing around him. Patrick couldn’t help feeling a twinge of admiration, realising just how Cordova had managed to retain the loyalty of most of his crew despite spending so long in the Beyond. But then, the crewmen couldn’t go home either. Some of them, from what he’d heard, had found new lives in the Beyond, but others had remained on the cruiser, hoping for a chance for victory.

And they would have remained endlessly flying through space if Admiral Walker hadn’t started a rebellion, Patrick thought. His stomach clenched for a second time as Random Numbers flickered again, jumping to the RV point. The freighters that made up the fleet train were already waiting for them. Without us, they would still be in the Beyond.

“Stand down from alert,” the XO ordered, once they had verified the presence of the freighters and exchanged ID codes. Their standards had been tighter than the Imperial Navy’s even before the rebellion had begun, Patrick had heard. But then, the Imperial Navy could afford to make mistakes while the Beyonders didn’t dare take too many risks. “Alpha crew; take some downtime. Beta crew will supervise the transfers.”

Patrick nodded, then stood as his replacement arrived at his console. There was a brief consultation — shift changes on Random Numbers were slightly less chaotic than they were on regular starships — and then he left the bridge, passing through the hatch and walking down towards the mess. The cooks, he’d been relieved to discover, were actually quite good, better than the ones on his previous starship. But then, they actually got to control what supplies they received from the logistics officers. Imperial Navy cooks had to make do with what they had.

He took a tray of food and sat down at a table, noting without surprise just how isolated he was from the rest of the crew. They might not suspect the secret part of his mission, but they resented his presence, Cordova didn’t take on many new crewmen and he forced those he did to prove themselves before trusting them with responsibility, let alone authority. Patrick, on the other hand, had never had to prove himself. His sole qualification for being a rebel was being caught up in the first set of mutinies, then agreeing to stay with Colin Walker once he had taken control of the ships.

It still astonished him to see how disciplined Cordova’s crew actually was. They’d been in exile for over twenty years, long enough to lose all cohesion… and yet they hadn’t, somehow. They wore makeshift uniforms — like their commander, there was a certain amount of individuality in each uniform — and they comported themselves like proper crewmen, not pirates or even independent shippers. Even the newcomers, the ones Cordova had recruited from the Rim, fitted in nicely. The ship was in excellent condition, no one urinated in the corridors and there was no bullying or molestation of younger crewmen. Patrick had been on Imperial Navy starships with less discipline.

He must have been a great commander, Patrick thought, as he finished his tray. The Imperial Navy must have been sorry to lose him.

Or maybe not, he added, in the privacy of his own mind. The qualities that made for a good commanding officer weren’t ones that the Imperial Navy always found reassuring. Perhaps they’d felt Cordova had had a personality cult even before he’d deserted the Imperial Navy or perhaps they’d suspected his loyalty. But they wouldn’t have assigned a scorching mission to a starship commander they didn’t trust. Even hardened sadists were known to balk at wiping an entire planet’s population out of existence. The Imperial Navy usually assigned such tasks to officers who had been properly conditioned beforehand, the ones who would obey orders without question, let alone doubts or scruples.

A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped.

“The Captain wishes to see you in his office,” Maze informed him. “You will come with me now.”

Patrick nodded. Maze was a towering black woman, her skin pieced with countless pieces of jewellery. There was no mistaking her sheer strength or her loyalty to her commanding officer, even though Patrick would have bet good money that she hadn’t been an Imperial Navy officer before Cordova deserted the Navy. Her attitude certainly suggested otherwise.

He stood and allowed Maze to lead him through the ship’s corridors and into Officer Country. Unlike an Imperial Navy starship, the hatch connecting Officer Country to the rest of the ship was unguarded. It wasn’t even locked, despite being closed. Patrick wasn’t sure quite what to make of it. Was Cordova showing that he trusted his crew or was he making an entirely different statement?

Maze opened the hatch to Cordova’s cabin, without bothering to knock. Cordova was seated at his desk, examining a holographic star chart. He glanced up as they entered, then pointed to a seat. Patrick took the seat, then waited. Maze slipped out of the room as quietly as she’d entered, leaving them alone.

Patrick couldn’t help looking around the cabin. Cordova didn’t seem to be much of a packrat, unlike some Imperial Navy officers he’d known; the bulkheads were largely bare, save for a single photograph placed against one section. It showed a dozen men and women standing together, smiling at the camera. Patrick wondered if they were part of Cordova’s graduation class at the academy, but they were all wearing civilian clothes. Remarkably fine civilian clothes.

“The attack was a great success,” Cordova said. In private, he didn’t seem so inclined to project his personality as far as he could. Patrick couldn’t help wondering just how much of that personality was actually real. For all he knew, Imperial Navy officers were quite different in private. “We smashed the ships without losses.”

“Yes, sir,” Patrick said. He still disliked the thought of blasting unarmed and surrendering freighters, but there had been no time to take prisoners. “It was a glorious victory.”

Cordova eyed him sardonically, then nodded. “We will be moving further towards Earth within the hour,” he added. “The real question is where we go from there. Contact will have to be made with the underground. And then…”

He looked up at the star chart. “Where do we go from there?”

Patrick listened as Cordova outlined possibilities. “Earth itself is a possibility; we’d definitely panic the Thousand Bastards if we attacked within the Sol System. God knows it hasn’t happened for hundreds of years, even during the First Interstellar War. But that would also encourage them to see to their defences. Colin would not forgive us.”

He shrugged. “Wolf 359 is another possibility,” he added. “Or Terra Nova. But both of them carry their own risks.”

“Wolf 359 is a Class-III shipyard,” Patrick pointed out. “If it could be taken intact…”

“I doubt it,” Cordova said. “And even if we did, we couldn’t hold it. But destroying the facility might be worthwhile.”

They talked for nearly an hour, discussing possibilities. In the end, they agreed that Wolf 359 would be an acceptable target, although it would need to be planned carefully. The shipyards were heavily defended even before the rebellion began.

“I meant to ask,” Patrick said, as Cordova poured them both a glass of rotgut. “Why did you spare the planet?”

Cordova gave him a sharp glance, as if Patrick had just touched a nerve.

“Because they didn’t deserve to die,” he said, finally. “Because they were sentenced to death, just for existing. And because they didn’t deserve to die.”