Democracy's Right

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Welcome to Sanctuary,” Cordova announced, as they stepped off the shuttle and into a massive rocky hanger deck. Unlike visiting an Imperial Navy starship, or a private firm, there was no welcoming party to greet them. “What do you think of the place?”

Hannelore looked around her, but it was nothing special, not unlike the habitats she had visited and intended to create at Tyler’s Star. There seemed to be no security, apart from a single flight controller, and nothing barring the way into the heart of the asteroid. She couldn’t see any safety systems, but she found herself hoping desperately that they were there. A space habitat was not always a safe place to live.

She’d actually enjoyed the two weeks she’d spent on the Random Numbers. Cordova had been the perfect gentleman, encouraging her to talk about her own life and asking insightful questions about the High City on Earth, even some that suggested that he had some insider knowledge of the place. In return, he’d told her about the Popular Front, about hundreds of rebel and insurgent groups working together to force the Empire to reform, or destroy it. Despite herself, Hannelore had found herself horribly intrigued and fascinated. Could it be that the Empire could be reformed, rather than destroyed? She’d known, of course, just how badly the system was rigged. The Roosevelt Family might even have managed to take the whole Tyler’s Star project off her hands and give it to one of their allies. She’d kept it as quiet as she could in hopes of avoiding their interest.

Cordova had explained, regretfully, that while she wasn’t a prisoner in a standard sense, the rebels couldn’t allow her to go home. The truth was that Hannelore didn’t want to go home. If she went home now, she would be exposed as a failure, along with the whole Tyler’s Star project. The Thousand Families wouldn’t throw her into the gutter to die — there were standards, even for the lowest families — but they wouldn’t allow her another chance to prove herself. She would be given a small stipend and expected to join the thousands of family members partying, drinking and drugging themselves to death. The only alternative would be to retreat into herself and mind everyone else’s business, like Great Aunt Grace. The memory of the long-nosed elder woman, poking herself into everything, made her shudder. She was not going to wind up like that.

“It looks like an ordinary asteroid habitat,” Hannelore said, as they passed through a small airlock and into a bustling crowd. She’d shopped at the great shops on Earth, yet there was something about the market in front of her that drew her attention. Great piles of clothes competed with books and datachip stores, while some of the sellers were openly displaying weapons or other illegal supplies. She picked up one of the books and discovered, to her surprise, that it was written in a language she didn’t recognise. The Empire had attempted to stamp out all languages apart from Imperial Standard, yet she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised to discover another language — or thousands of them — thriving along the Rim. “Or maybe…”

She saw Cordova smile as it sank in. There was nothing fake about the market in front of her, none of the urgent need to be fashionable surrounding the High City’s great shopping malls, or none of the fugitiveness that surrounded the shops for the lower classes. There was no fear in the air, no sense that the Imperial Tax Authority might descend on the shoppers to demand its cut of the proceeds, or that the Blackshirts might march into the compartment and arrest everyone just for being in the presence of subversive literature. The people living along the Rim or out in the Beyond might live in permanent fear, terrified that the Empire might one day discover them and send starships to capture or destroy their asteroids, but they didn’t let it wear them down. The kind of grinding, ever-present fear she’d sensed on other worlds simply didn’t exist here.

“Of course,” Cordova said, when she finally managed to put it into words. “The people here are free! They can do what they like and if they don’t like their companions, they are free to set up an asteroid habitat of their own and live apart from them. We have millions of different groups out here. Look!”

His long finger pointed towards a pair of short figures, moving from stall to stall. The two green aliens, almost child-like in their motions, seemed to be welcome on the asteroid, rather than being hissed at as they would be on most Imperial worlds. The Empire encouraged anti-alien feeling and racism, yet the Rim seemed to accept all comers. The two aliens, she noted through numb shock, were also doing the one thing that would guarantee them a death sentence back in the Empire. They were carrying weapons… and no one seemed to find that alarming.

She looked away, her gaze sweeping across the market. Now she knew to look for the signs, she could see that most of the people within view were also armed; indeed, she would have bet good money that the ones who appeared unarmed were actually carrying concealed weapons. They weren’t carrying stunners either, but outright weapons, ranging from pistols to submachine guns and even plasma rifles. She’d been told that the Empire had a monopoly on plasma technology, but like so much else she’d been told about the Rim and its people, she was starting to realise that that was a lie. There was an entire vibrant culture hidden away among the uncharted stars.

The sound of heavy footsteps and mechanical whirring announced the presence of a cyborg, striding through the compartment without concern. Hannelore felt sick as she saw how the metal implants had been worked into the man’s flesh, yet he seemed alive and unconcerned — and no one else seemed concerned either. The crowds parted to allow him to pass and he strode on into the heart of the asteroid without a backwards glance. On an Imperial world, he would have been arrested for improper — if not illegal — use of physical implants. Such technology was reserved only for the ruling elite.

“My God,” she breathed. Perhaps she wasn’t free of prejudice after all. “What was that?”

“That, my dear, was one of the Geeks,” Cordova announced. She wondered, suddenly, if he had arranged for them to encounter one of the cyborg-men. Or perhaps it had just been a lucky encounter. “If they had the freedom of the Empire, they would create great things, new technologies that might reshape the human race. But they don’t — that man would be under automatic sentence of death if he set foot on an Imperial world…”

“I know,” Hannelore said. She felt a sudden wave of… culture shock, she guessed. She was tempted to ask if they could return to the cruiser, yet she didn’t want to miss anything. She felt almost like a child on her first visit to a resort world. “What else is there here?”

Cordova grinned and walked her through the massive asteroid. Sanctuary had started life as a seven-kilometre nickel-iron asteroid, one that had been mined extensively before the rebels had moved in and converted it into a base of operations. Indeed, because of its semi-public location, it served almost as a regional capital for the Rim, with starships and crews coming in to sell their wares and pick up additional supplies. Hannelore guessed that those starships included pirates, but Cordova explained that, out on the Rim, the difference between pirate and legitimate trader was blurred. If the pirates were selling goods the Rim desperately needed, very few people would ask questions.

“We don’t allow slave traders here,” he explained, as they walked past a storefront advertising — of all things — farming equipment. “That’s not uncommon in parts of the Rim, but they’re not allowed to come here. Other than that… if they can sell whatever they bring, they’re welcome to come. It helps keep us all alive.”

Hannelore nodded slowly, her mind spinning. The Thousand Families might have been like the asteroid’s population, back before the First Interstellar War and their rise to supreme power. It almost made her heart ache for the days when simplicity and legality had been the order of the day, rather than the deeply corrupt edifice that bore down on the entire galaxy. The First Emperor, the man who had built the Empire only to be disposed by his over-mighty subordinates, was probably turning in his grave. His lips twitched. No one knew, at least according to legend, what had happened to the man. Rumour had it that he was still out there somewhere, waiting for the call to action, the call to save the Empire. She shook her head. It was just a legend, of course, probably started by the people who had quietly murdered their former Emperor. There was no way to know for sure

“Most of your crew wanted to join us,” Cordova said, as they entered a set of private quarters. Cordova, it seemed, maintained a residence on the asteroid, but the compartments were barren and dull. Hannelore understood. His real home was on his ship, surrounded by his loyal crew. “Where do you stand?”

Hannelore hesitated. As a loyal subject of the Empire — and as a scion of the Thousand Families — her duty was clear. She should denounce him to his face, demand transport back to Earth and refuse any further cooperation. That was absurd; Cordova would just laugh at her, no matter what she said. She was in no position to dictate terms, a lesson that one of her distant relatives on her mother’s side had taught her. He’d been taken alive by pirates and demanded his release, only to have his face slashed badly before he’d been ransomed back to his family.

And then… what did she have to go home to? Nothing, but disgrace; she would spend the rest of her days as a lotus eater, nothing more. No hope of a future, no hope of rising high, no hope of using her intelligence to carve out a place for her. She would become a laughing stock, like so many others. The Thousand Families stood together against the outside world — that was a lesson they had learned a long time ago, during the rise of the Second Emperor — but they were merciless to failures from their own ranks.

“I do not know,” she admitted, finally. Part of her was tempted to ask if she couldn’t just disappear into the Beyond and try to forget where she came from. The rest was uncertain. “What do you want from me anyway?”

Cordova smiled. “I think that I have a friend who would like to meet you,” he said. He held out a hand — in the formal style of the High City, much to her surprise — and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”

Hannelore had grown up in the High City, where the younger members of the Thousand Families had access to all kinds of cosmetic surgery and body-sculpting technology. She had been surrounded by girls who changed their faces and bodies regularly to follow fashion — large breasts had been pushed out by small tight breasts, only to be replaced in their turn by medium breasts; albino skin had been supplemented by dark chocolate skin, then an unholy green skin that had their elders chattering in horror — and had grown used to physical beauty. The boys hadn’t been much better. They’d spent weeks in the shops, having their muscles enhanced until they all looked as if they’d spent years building up their physical strength. Most of them hadn’t known how to maintain their muscles and had ended up returning to the shops time and time again, just to have them rebuilt.

Hester Hyman was striking, mainly because she chose to wear her scars. Her face had been pretty once — even though it had probably had the hard-worn features that most commoners displayed — but now it was marred by scars, including one that looked as if it was going to spilt open at any time. Her hair, shading to white, was tied up in a severe bun; she wore nothing, but a simple combat mesh. Hannelore had wondered if it was a form of reverse vanity, before she realised just how many enemies Hester would have gunning for her. She seemed to be unarmed, but Hannelore suspected that she carried at least one weapon, perhaps more. And then she was surrounded by a set of hulking bodyguards…

“Welcome to our lair,” Hester said. Her voice was deathly cold, the result — Hannelore realised suddenly — of torture at the hands of Imperial Intelligence. Hester’s throat was scarred too, as if someone had tried to cut her throat and hadn’t quite succeeded. It was all part of the effect and even though Hannelore was smart enough to realise it, she found herself impressed. Hester was the strongest woman she had ever met. “I trust that it meets with your approval?”

Hannelore didn’t know what to say. “It’s been interesting,” she admitted, finally. She had never imagined that she would be making small talk with Hester Hyman, a woman who had a colossal price on her head. “I rather enjoyed it.”

“Good,” Hester said. The time for small talk was clearly over. “The Popular Front needs you. Would you be interested in joining us?”

Hannelore blinked. “You want me to join a rebellion against the Empire?”

“A project to reform the Empire,” Hester said, her wintery voice admitting nothing else. “I have been speaking to your crew while you were being shown around our asteroid base. They were very complementary about you. They felt that you had definite promise. Our ally felt the same way.”

Hannelore stared at her. “You had a rebel spy in my complex?”

“Something like that,” Hester said, vaguely. She waved a hand, indicating that there would be no further discussion about any intelligence agents. “The fact remains that you won respect from people who had no reason to respect you. We could find a place for you in the Popular Front.”

“Committing treason,” Hannelore said. It surprised her how little the concept bothered her. She had no reason to be loyal to anyone outside her own family… and really, her two families had regarded her as more of an unwanted nuisance than anything else. After all, she was a living reminder of a failed policy. “What would you want me to do?”

“We need someone to assist us in coordinating the industrial project,” Hester said, calmly. “You have experience in handling such matters. You would be working with several different factions, all of which suspect that the other factions intend to secretly screw them when they get the chance. And, if we fail to build a fleet that can stand up to the Empire, we will be destroyed when the Empire finally responds to us. We cannot count on Admiral Percival’s replacement sharing his same level of incompetence.”

She smiled, as if at a joke that wasn’t really funny. “I had to urge people not to try to assassinate him,” she added. “He serves us better where he is.”

Hannelore chuckled. She had only met Admiral Percival once and she hadn’t been impressed. “I see,” she said. “Why do you want me for the job?”

Surprisingly, the answer came from behind her. “Because we will need to break up the alliances that hold the Thousand Families together,” a woman’s voice said. “If we put a person from the Families in a high position, it sends a signal to the others that there is a possible compromise, that we won’t kill them all when we win.”

Hannelore turned. She hadn’t even sensed the woman behind her until she had started to speak. The woman was tall, with long red hair, a heart-shaped face and a smile that seemed to light up the room. She wore a standard shipsuit, one that clung to her body and exposed every curve. Behind her, there was a smaller oriental girl, with dark eyes that seemed to be focused on Hannelore’s face.

“This is Daria, the leader of the Freebooters League, and Mariko,” Cordova explained, calmly.

“You may have some time to decide,” Hester said. Her whispery voice drew Hannelore’s attention back to her. “Once you have made up your mind, you can inform the good Captain of your decision.”

“One question, them,” Hannelore asked. “What happens if I say no?”

“We have a small isolated colony world that we have been using as a prison,” Daria explained. “If you refuse, we’ll leave you there until the war is won or lost. It is a great deal more civilised than a penal colony, but you won’t be able to affect the war in any way.”

Including betraying the rebel leadership to the Empire, Hannelore realised.

She thought about it as Cordova escorted her back to his quarters and explained that he’d had a second bed put in for her personally. Unlike many of the lads from the High City, he hadn’t even tried to take her to bed. Hannelore wasn’t sure if he was just being polite, or if he had no interest in her at all, or… she pushed that thought aside and considered the rebel offer. If she said yes, the Empire would condemn her as a traitor and her family would disinherit her…

And then there was the other question; were the rebels sincere when they offered her the post, or did they just want her to be window-dressing?

She looked over at Cordova, who was reading something on a datapad. Somehow, she found it hard to believe that he was lying to her, or perhaps she didn’t want to believe it. It could be just Stockholm Syndrome kicking in…

Hannelore shrugged and made up her mind. She would take the rebel offer, assuming they were sincere. If not… well, she would be in a position to do something about it.

“Call your leader,” she said, sitting up. “Tell her that I have decided to accept.”

“Splendid,” Cordova said, holding out a hand. “Welcome to the Popular Front.”