Democracy's Right

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Do you trust her?”

Daria nodded, although her eyes were hard. “I think that she is about as trustworthy as any member of the Thousand Families ever gets,” she said. Colin snorted. That wasn’t a particularly strong recommendation. “On the other hand, we do have testimony from her former crew and they think quite highly of her. She’s no Bleeding Heart” — the term for an aristocrat who set out to improve the lives of the poor, if they wanted it or not — “but she’s definitely someone we can work with.”

“We can also keep an eye on her,” Anderson said, reluctantly. He’d been one of the strongest voices arguing against keeping Lady Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham anywhere near the rebel fleet or the Popular Front. “If she decides to do something stupid, we don’t give her a second chance.”

Colin nodded. “Agreed,” he said. He looked up at Cordova, who was perched on a stool that allowed him to display his latest uniform to best advantage. Colin suspected that, if one of Imperial Intelligence’s assassins managed to get into the room and opened fire, Cordova would be the first target. He had the most striking appearance. “And how do you feel about her?”

Cordova didn’t look surprised at the question. “She has a great deal of potential,” he said. “If she’d had the resources of the Roosevelt Family behind her, she would have gone far. And she reminds me a little of myself, someone who was always held back by law and custom. I thought that I would give her the opportunity to rebel.”

Colin smiled. Unless he missed his guess, Cordova found Lady Hannelore — she would have to ditch the title if she wanted to join the Popular Front, at least in public — attractive. He supposed that he couldn’t blame him, not when she was pretty and charmingly intelligent to boot, but it risked opening up a security breach. He didn’t need Anderson to remind him of the time that Imperial Intelligence had used pillow talk between an officer and his mistress, who was working for Imperial Intelligence, to condemn him for aiding and abetting criminal acts against the Empire. The story had broken up relationships all over the fleet.

“We will see how she works out,” he said. He looked over at Colonel Frandsen. “How are the first batches of new recruits working out?”

Frandsen considered. It wasn’t usual for a Colonel to take part in training recruits — normally, even in the Marine Corps, they would rarely see anyone higher than a Captain until they had graduated — but nothing had been usual since they had rebelled against the Empire. Besides, Frandsen had insisted on monitoring the training himself and Colin hadn’t had the heart to refuse. They couldn’t afford mistakes caused by inexperienced officers and Frandsen had two tours at the Marine Corps Training Centre under his belt.

“Well enough,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “They’ve definitely got the promise. We weeded out a handful of trouble-makers and people who simply couldn’t follow instructions and the remainder are undergoing heavier training now. We’re short of equipment for them, but we are working on obtaining equipment from elsewhere.”

Daria smirked, rather like a cat. “It’s astonishing what falls out of a freighter’s closed hatches if you bribe the right person,” she said. “We may not be able to offer Marine-grade armour, but we can certainly obtain Blackshirt-level armour.”

“That will reduce our effectiveness to some degree,” Frandsen warned. “The Blackshirt armour isn’t configured to a specific user.”

“We’ll just have to live with it,” Colin said, grimly. The Popular Front had a surprising amount of industrial capability, but it wasn’t up to the task of delivering Marine-quality armour. The latest report from the Geeks had been that the Annual Fleet’s supplies had been unloaded and were being put to work now, fuelling the rebellion. “That leaves the question of our new ships. Where do we stand with those?”

Salgak looked up, his implants whirring and clicking as he spoke. “The preliminary arsenal ships are projected as being completed in three weeks,” he said. “We expect that there will be a short period of shakedown trials before the ships can be deployed as part of the fleet, but we will monitor the process closely and probably shave a few days off the working-up period for any later ships.”

Colin smiled. The Geeks were talking as if they were working slowly, but he knew that they were working at an astonishingly high-speed. No Imperial Navy shipyard could match them, not now they had the supplies from the Annual Fleet to work with and whatever other resources Colin could throw at them. Given twenty years, they might build up a fleet that would outclass the entire Imperial Navy, but they didn’t have twenty years. The Empire knew that they existed and, now, the news was spreading outside Sector 117.

He looked up at the holographic display, now reset to its default mode. The expanding circles suggested just how rapidly the message was moving through the Empire, towards Earth. In nine months, perhaps less, the entire Empire would know about the rebellion. The Thousand Families would react, certainly; they’d cut ships loose from Home Fleet and whatever other reserves they had on hand, sending them to the sector to reinforce Admiral Percival and seek out the rebel bases. Time was not on their side.

“Good,” Colin said. “Once we have a sufficient number of supporting ships on our side, we will move against Camelot and punch out Percival’s fleet. Until then…”

He looked around the room. Between Cordova, Khursheda and himself, a number of Imperial worlds had been hit. Apart from Piccadilly, none of them had been particularly important or wealthy, but the mere act of hitting them would give them prominence in Percival’s mind. He would be tempted to spread out his fleet in hopes of picking off one of Colin’s raiding parties, reducing the forces he had on hand to cover the most important worlds. Colin had no way of knowing if he would give in to that temptation. He had most of the systems under covert observation, but it took time for word to get from one system to another, leaving the information hopelessly out of date when he received it.

The rebels hadn’t had it all their own way either. Several of Cordova’s ships had been picked off when they’d run into a squadron of Imperial Navy heavy cruisers, who had chased them until the raiders could power up their flicker drives and escape. One of Khursheda’s cruisers had been destroyed by an Imperial Navy battlecruiser during a duel over a resource-rich system on the way back home from Camelot. If the war became a war of attrition, Colin knew, the Empire had far more ships and men to spend on such a process. His fleet would be ground away.

“We need to hit Greenland,” he said, reluctantly. Greenland was actually another Roosevelt system, with similar levels of defences to the last world they’d hit — and, this time, they wouldn’t allow a squadron of superdreadnaughts into firing range without ironclad proof of identity. His ships would have to duel with at least one fully-alert orbital battlestation and while his superdreadnaughts would have superior firepower, Colin knew that he was going to get hurt. “It’s the only other target that will force Percival to disperse his forces still wider.”

“Perhaps it is the logical target,” Hester said, in her harsh voice, “but it is not the target we need to hit.”

Colin looked up, surprised. When he’d allied himself with Hester and helped her to form the Popular Front, they had agreed that he — Colin — would have supreme authority over the military. There were no others along the Rim — with the possible exception of Cordova — who had his military training or experience, although he did have to admit that the Rim had thousands of ships and crews experienced in hit and run attacks. If there had been a major disaster, he would have expected some complaints over how he ran the military, but they’d won every major battle so far.

“We have links with Jackson’s Folly,” Hester pointed out. Colin frowned, somehow unsurprised. He’d carefully refrained from looking at any of the data collected by his observation ships in the system — apart from using it to track the Imperial Navy starships — hoping to avoid a sense of guilt, a sense that everything that Jackson’s Folly was enduring was because of him. He knew better, he’d read Stacy’s files… yet he couldn’t help the guilt. It was not logical, but it was true — and very human. “They’re suffering down there.”

Colin frowned, feeling the guilt clawing at his heart. Perhaps Hester saw it in him, because she chose to push harder. “The Blackshirts are destroying every hope and dream the planet ever had,” she said. Colin understood, suddenly, how Jackson’s Folly had gotten its hands on some of the Empire’s technology. They’d had links with the Rim! “We need to help them or there won’t be anything left when we finally defeat the Empire and liberate their worlds.”

“That may be tricky,” Colin admitted. He had nothing against helping Jackson’s Folly, but it would be a dangerous operation, all the more so because the Empire might have left one of Percival’s superdreadnaught squadrons in the system. An equal fight was all very well, but Colin would have preferred to cheat. Besides, if his superdreadnaughts were lost, the Empire would have won. “Let’s see.”

He tapped his console and brought up the latest from Jackson’s Folly. The timestamp under the display warned that the latest reports had been a week old by the time they’d been transferred to the asteroid and then inserted into the superdreadnaught’s datanet. Colin mentally edited that to nine days, as they’d spent two days refitting the ships, repairing minor damage and giving the crew a few hours of liberty on the asteroid.

The enemy superdreadnaughts were gone, but Jackson’s Folly was enveloped by over thirty starships, including two battlecruiser squadrons. The other ships were either monitors — positioned in low orbit to provide fire support to the troops on the ground — or destroyers, prowling the system for enemy starships. The latest reports suggested that Jackson’s Folly had a number of ships hidden in the asteroid belt, which emerged from time to time to pick off vulnerable Imperial Navy starships. The world had done a good job of preparing an insurgency to greet the Imperial Navy and the Blackshirts, but Hester was right. Without some outside help, the Follies were doomed. Stacy Roosevelt and her twisted kin would wind up inheriting a desert, a desert called peace.

“We could hit the orbiting ships,” Hester said. “It would buy the Follies some time to regroup before the Imperial Navy returns to the system to chase us out.”

“And what happens then?” Colin asked, seriously. “The Follies will just suffer worse…”

He broke off as a thought occurred to him. Stacy Roosevelt wasn’t foolish enough to gainsay orders from her Family, not now, not when she would be completely dependent on them. Her family had ordered her to take the world intact, which meant that she couldn’t order the world scorched. And, without her permission, Percival would never dare to order a scorching on his own. It would utterly destroy his career. An officer with a stronger connection to the ideal of the Imperial Navy might order the scorching anyway, destroying a threat to the Empire along with his career, but Percival didn’t have that sort of moral courage. Colin’s lips twitched. Immoral courage would probably be a better term for it.

“We hit; get in, get out and then give them the time they need to regroup,” he said, slowly. He didn’t want to get sucked into a maelstrom. “We cannot make a long commitment to Jackson’s Folly, not when it would pin us to one world.”

“We could do more,” Khursheda pointed out. “We could enter orbit and drop KEWs on any Blackshirt positions. We could destroy most of the occupation force. The Empire would have to fall back until they could round up more Blackshirts to replace the ones we killed…”

“And then they would have to pin down a squadron of their own superdreadnaughts to prevent us from doing it again,” Cordova added. “Or perhaps they would abandon the invasion until they got reinforcements.”

“There will still be a quite considerable workforce of trained workers — workers trained in starship construction and maintenance — on the surface,” Salgak said, in his mechanical voice. Colin smiled inwardly. Even the Geeks liked the idea! Or, at least, were willing to come up with ideas to justify the plan. “We could offer to take them with us to our own construction yards and use them to expand our own workforce. It would improve our own capabilities and help to eventually liberate their worlds.”

Colin kept his face expressionless as he thought. He couldn’t deny that they had a point, that Jackson’s Folly did need help — and that it would provide an opportunity for a cheap victory against the Empire. The downside was that it would force the Empire to rush in reinforcements and rule the planet with a harsher hand, regardless of anything resembling common decency. Or, perhaps, he might be wrong and Stacy Roosevelt would permit Percival to scorch the world and settle for merely occupying the daughter colonies.

He didn’t want to be responsible for mass slaughter. He’d worked hard to avoid leaving any signs that Jackson’s Folly was in any way responsible for his mutiny and rebellion. And yet, the Empire had invaded anyway. What was the use of the rebellion, the value of the Popular Front, if they failed to respond to a world that needed help? Colin knew that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of worlds needed help, yet he could do nothing to help them. Jackson’s Folly, on the other hand, could be helped…

“Very well,” he said. Besides, a smart commander knew not to go against the advice of all of his subordinates, at least not very often. “We will recon the system first, and then jump in and open fire. We won’t stay in the system for longer than a day at most. Commodore Ismoilzoda?”

“Yes, sir,” Khursheda said.

“You will prepare a fleet of fast personnel transports, ones that can carry as many people as possible, equipped with a fleet of shuttles,” Colin ordered. “I want those ships to accompany us to Jackson’s Folly. We will use them to take out as many trained workers and their families as are willing to go and can be stuffed into the ships. Don’t hesitate to push the life support to the limit. They won’t want to go without their families.”

“Yes, sir,” Khursheda said. “How soon do you want the ships?”

“As soon as possible,” Colin said. At least Jackson’s Folly was some distance from Camelot. They should be able to get in and out quite nicely without any warning reaching Percival, at least until it was far too late. “And then we will assemble the fleet and liberate the system, if only for a few weeks.”

By its very nature, Sanctuary Asteroid played host to inhabitants and guests from all over the Beyond. The coordinates had been spread so widely that far too many people knew about its location, including Imperial Intelligence. The spooks hadn’t bothered to pass the information on to the Imperial Navy, knowing that destroying a single asteroid wouldn’t do more than scatter the inhabitants and destroy whatever links it had to the rest of the Beyond. Far better, they had reasoned, to use the asteroid as a base for their own operations, ferreting out the far more interesting — and dangerous — colonies deeper into the Beyond.

The spy felt a sense of relief as she finally returned to the asteroid. Sanctuary hadn’t been used as the meeting place for the Popular Front, even though it was fairly public, and the spy had been nervous about her presence. If someone had thought to ask the right questions, or check her luggage before she left, it might have aroused suspicions. The Rim couldn’t afford anything reassembling due process; if they’d been suspicious, they would have put her out the airlock first and ask questions later. But Sanctuary was far more cosmopolitan and crowded; the spy could afford to get lost in the crowd. In her official capacity, as a senior officer for one of the rebel outfits, he went into a single shop and requested a private meeting. The shop, a cover business for Imperial Intelligence, honoured his request. There was a brief exchange of signs and countersigns and then the spy got to work.

“This is the headquarters of the Popular Front,” she said, passing over the datachip. She’d secured the data and encrypted it using a new encryption system, one directly from Imperial Intelligence. It should be impossible for anyone to decrypt it without the right code, although the Geeks would probably be able to do it if they had a reason to look. “I suggest you pass the information onwards.”

The shop’s owner — a man with thirty years of experience in Imperial Intelligence — nodded. “Of course,” he said, in agreement. He made the chip vanish with the ease of long practice. “We cannot charter a ship for it specifically, but there should be another ship coming in soon and they can take the information onwards.”

The spy nodded. The rebel group she worked for would have been horrified to discover that most of their supplies came directly from Imperial Intelligence. They would have been even more horrified when they realised that Imperial Intelligence could have destroyed them at any time. The spy sometimes wished that things were different, but Imperial Intelligence had done something to her head, back when he’d been inserted into the Rim. She could not be disloyal. Even the mere thought of disloyalty was painful. Obedience was all that she could do.

And even if something happened to her, afterwards, the information would reach the Empire.