Democracy's Right

Chapter Forty-Two

“Keep monitoring them,” Cordova ordered. The next flight of troop shuttles was already leaving the battlecruisers, heading into Sanctuary. “Send the update to the command team.”

Hannelore looked up from where she had been sitting, hugging herself. All of the post-sex bliss had faded away, leaving her numb with horror and dismay. Cordova had ordered the crew to establish an undetectable laser link with Sanctuary, yet there was nothing else that he could do, but watch — and record the transmissions coming out of the asteroid. He’d told her that they could be used for propaganda, as another example of the Empire’s beastliness, but it was no consolation. She was watching the death of a dream.

She wanted to cry. It was an effort to keep her voice level. “Is there nothing we can do?”

“Nothing,” Cordova said. He sounded calm, yet she could detect his own anger and frustration underlying his voice. “Unless the superdreadnaughts get back in time to intervene, we can do nothing, but watch.”

Neil scowled down at his display as another section vanished, as surely as if the invaders had somehow deleted it completely. The Blackshirts were knocking out sensors as they advanced, flowing out into the innermost core of the asteroid. It was lucky that Sanctuary wasn’t a typical asteroid, but in some ways it hardly mattered. There were fewer fixed defences deeper within the asteroid. The Blackshirts — he hoped — didn’t know it, yet they’d broken through the main defences. It was all down to improvised defences and tactics now.

“Keep updating Captain Cordova,” he ordered. He’d come up with a plan to get Hester, at least, off the asteroid and over to the Random Numbers before it was too late, but she’d refused to abandon Sanctuary. Neil would have argued, yet she’d explained that if she ran — and left the defenders fighting till the last — her reputation would be forever destroyed. The Rim ran more on personal prestige than proper chains of command and no one would ever follow her again. Her second-in-command, who hadn’t been anywhere near Sanctuary, would be undiminished by the disaster and would be able to take over the rebel group and carry on the war. “Pull the defenders back from Sector 45-67; they’re about to be outflanked.”

He shook his head. The invaders were about to burst into the market, where a team of defenders waited for them. It was going to be a very unpleasant encounter.

Thomas watched as another explosion shattered the rebel position, allowing the Blackshirts to move forward to their next target. He’d decided — after the second encounter with a rebel strongpoint — to bring up an HVM launcher and use it against the rebel positions. HVMs were supposed to be reserved for shooting down aircraft and armoured vehicles — it was easy for a person in an armoured combat suit to evade them — but they also made short work of the rebel positions. For the last five minutes, his team had been exchanging shots with a group of Marines, who kept popping up, firing a few bursts and then falling back before they could be engaged. The tactics were the tactics of delay, yet they were working alarmingly well.

He smiled, sourly, as new data popped up inside his HUD. Standard asteroid design — and there was no sign that the rebels disagreed — was to limit the number of connections between the spaceport and the asteroid proper. The expanding map of the asteroid suggested that they’d definitely found their way into the core of the asteroid, where people lived and worked and plotted rebellion. The sensor bugs were still encountering jamming, yet they were starting to overcome it as they penetrated further into the asteroid. There were entire sections that had no jamming at all.

The hatch ahead of them disintegrated, throwing chunks of metal towards his men, who ducked. This time, there was no hail of fire from pre-prepared positions, leaving him to wonder if they’d killed all of the defenders. No, he told himself; that wasn’t likely. The population had to know that they’d be for the chop once the Empire captured them, something that would encourage them to keep fighting. The real question was why had they only faced such limited resistance?

His lips quirked humourlessly as the first team advanced forward, through the hatch. The Blackshirts had lost over ninety armoured soldiers, with another thirty too badly injured to be allowed to remain in the assault. It hadn’t been a light struggle at all, not even slightly. And he was considering it mild!

“Stay alert,” he ordered, as the team advanced into a massive chamber, the largest they had yet seen. The sensor bugs were unable to penetrate far into its vastness. “I want everyone to be very careful.”

Molly wanted to scratch as she crouched behind a clothes stall in the market, hoping that her armoured form was invisible to anyone with bad intentions. A day ago, she would have allowed herself an hour or two to pick her way through the clothes in front of her, perhaps picking a handful to purchase and take back to her sleeping quarters. Now… all she cared about was how much cover they could give her against plasma bursts and the honest answer was not much. She giggled, despite herself, as she caught sight of her teammate. His armour was covered with ladies underwear.

The market had been evacuated along with most of the other public spaces, leaving the deserted chamber with an oddly sinister air. The stallholders had complained loudly about having to leave their wares in place — as if anyone was going to have the time to steal it with the Blackshirts bearing down on them — and had been reluctant to leave, but the Marines hadn’t listened to arguments. The only sound in the chamber was the noise from the pet stall, where a dozen parrots and a handful of dogs were competing to see who could make the most noise. Molly wasn’t sure if the Blackshirts would be frightened by the eerie sounds, but they sure as hell sent a shiver down her spine.

She winced as the hatch exploded outwards, hopefully catching a few of the enemy in the blast. Their demolitions expert had rigged it to explode, noting that it might catch a few of the enemy, but that it would also lure the Blackshirts into entering the market the right way. He’d claimed that they wouldn’t go looking for the other entrances if there was one right in front of them. Molly wasn’t sure if she believed him, but her commander had clearly decided to gamble. He’d ordered him to rig the explosives and then fall back to where he could lay more traps in their path.

Molly looked up as the first Blackshirt entered the chamber, weapon at the ready. A handful of others followed him, clearly nervous and twitchy. The dogs started barking again and the Blackshirts swung around, unleashing a hail of plasma bolts towards the pet stall. The stall exploded, killing most of the animals, although a handful of parrots flew up high and rained down verbal abuse on the Blackshirts. The Blackshirts started to fire on them before their commander, who clearly had a leveller head than most of his men, ordered them to hold fire.

“Fire,” Molly’s commander ordered. If they’d planned the distraction, they could hardly have done better. “Hit the bastards!”

She popped up and opened fire, along with the rest of her team. The Blackshirt position seemed to disintegrate as five of them were gunned down instantly, followed rapidly by two more as they turned and started to run out of the chamber. An HVM was fired into the chamber, but without a solid target it flew over their heads and detonated against the far wall, leaving an unpleasant scorch mark on a mural the asteroid’s children had created, a week after the asteroid had been declared habitable. She flinched back as the first grenade was thrown into the chamber, only to land some distance from their position. The Blackshirts were clearly disorientated, but that wouldn’t last.

Molly flinched back as a hail of fire came back at them from outside the chamber. There were hardly any real defences in the compartment and the stalls either exploded or caught fire quickly. Her own stall caught fire, sending flaming clothes everywhere. She jumped back, firing as she moved, only to be struck by another burst of plasma in the leg. Plain flared through her as she collapsed to the ground, despite the best efforts of her suit. The position was falling apart and no one had time to help her.

“Go,” she shouted, at a young man who had started to drag her away. The Blackshirts would be on them before they got more than a few meters towards the hatch. “Get out of here!”

He dropped her and ran. Molly felt dazed, the effect — she realised — of a sedative working its way through her body. Her suit was trying to save her, even though there was no hope of either safety or liberty. She heard the sound of running feet and realised, dully, that she was surrounded by Blackshirts. She pulled her hand out of the armoured glove and flipped up a hidden compartment within her arm. They had all been told that it was there, yet she had never dared even consider touching it before. Arms pulled at her helmet, disconnecting it from the suit and exposing her bare head to their gaze.

Molly saw five men in dark armour staring down at her. She knew what happened to women who were captured by the Blackshirts, even some men if they were unlucky. The Blackshirts were carefully conditioned to encourage them to commit the most awful of acts on a whim. They would pull her out of her suit and… it might have been the drugs, but she had never felt so calm in her life. Her finger caressed the switch, the suicide button, as she wondered if there was enough explosive in the suit to take them all with her.

“Fuck you,” she said, and pushed the button. Her world exploded around her.

“The bitch committed suicide!”

Thomas smiled at the indignation in the corporal’s voice. “Never mind,” he said, wryly. “There will be other women later.”

He grinned as he forwarded new orders to the assault party. Slowly, but steadily, the entire asteroid was opening up in front of them. It wouldn’t be long now.

“It won’t be long now,” Neil said, to Hester. His Marines were falling back as the Blackshirts advanced, using their numbers to make up for what they lacked in tactical flexibility. It was growing harder to command his forces as the Blackshirt jamming hacked away at his control systems. “They’re nearly here.”

“We can hold this place long enough to detonate the bomb,” Hester said, in her hissing voice. The latest report from the Random Numbers showed yet another flight of assault shuttles landing at the spaceport, carrying another unit of Blackshirts into the fray. There had to be thousands on the asteroid now. “There may still be hope.”

Neil looked at her and shook his head. “We can’t hold out much longer,” he said. Sanctuary wasn’t designed like a typical asteroid, which meant that the Blackshirts would have to work at finding the command centre. It wouldn’t take them as long as Hester seemed to think. The process of elimination alone would cut entire swathes of the asteroid out of their calculations. “I think we’d better get ready.”

Hester smiled a strange smile. It looked odd when half of her face was badly scarred. “Maybe,” she said. “If they come close to the command centre, Neil, we will begin the detonation sequence.”

“The rebels are retreating into their inner core,” the coordination officer said. He was currently linked into the Blackshirt command system, listening to the orders the Blackshirt commander was issuing to his men. “We’re winning.”

Angelika smiled to herself. A few more hours and the asteroid would be hers. Once her people controlled it, the prisoners would be transported onto her ships and secured, while an elite team from Imperial Intelligence searched the remains of the asteroid thoroughly. The Blackshirts were already taking prisoners as the defenders collapsed, sending them back to the rear in chains. Her fingers keyed her console and she brought up an image of seven rebels, chained to their seats, being transported to her ships. They wouldn’t be able to do anything, even kill themselves, before her interrogators had sucked their minds dry.

“Good,” she said. With the fighting having moved into the heart of the asteroid, she’d pulled her battlecruisers back, just in case the superdreadnaughts decided to return. She’d feared running into them, but the odds were that they were off causing havoc somewhere else. That was bad news for whoever they hit — Admiral Percival would be looking for more scapegoats — yet they’d lost their base and much of their support in the Beyond. How long would the rebellion be able to go on without their base? “Have the prisoners transported to the interrogation cubes at once.”

A new alarm flashed up on her console. “Captain, we have nine contacts, superdreadnaught-sized,” her tactical officer said. Angelika felt her blood run cold. Was she going to be cheated of her victory by the rebel superdreadnaughts? “They’re…”

He relaxed suddenly. “They’re heavy freighters, Captain,” he said, in relief. Angelika smiled, despite herself. That had been a close shave. She’d been within seconds of ordering an emergency flicker somewhere else, anywhere else. Even her contacts and patrons wouldn’t have been able to save her once the post-battle analysis suggested that she’d fled from nine heavy freighters. Even if the rebels had loaded as many weapons and shields as they could into freighter hulls, they wouldn’t be able to stand up to her ships. Heavy freighters — the design, she saw, was a common one throughout the Empire — moved through space like wallowing pigs. They were certainly as ugly as pigs. “I am picking up no IFF signals.”

“Rebels,” Angelika said, with heavy satisfaction. She was tempted to open fire and expunge her shame in their blood, but if she could take their computers intact, they might lead her to more rebel bases. The odds were good that Commander Walker had established a supply dump somewhere in the Beyond and if it could be located, his superdreadnaughts would run out of weapons and spares pretty soon. “Order them to surrender and prepare to be boarded.”

“Aye, Admiral,” the communications officer said. There was a long pause. “There’s no response.”

“They’re trying to run,” the tactical officer said. Angelika snorted. The rebel ships had come out of flicker at high speed and were trying desperately to cancel their speed and turn around before it took them right into her waiting arms. Even if they’d installed military-grade drives on those hulks, they would still be unable to turn around and escape before she caught them. “I think they’re unable to dampen down their drive field without burning out the crystals and wrecking their drive nodes.”

“Terrible,” Angelika said, dryly. The rebel freighters were coming into range now, unable to evade her weapons. “Launch an assault shuttle to each of those ships and board them. Take the crews prisoner and they can be interrogated along with the rebels.”

“Aye, Captain,” the tactical officer said. He paused. “Captain, I have some weird readings, I… Jesus Christ!”

Angelika stared in horror, unable to believe her eyes. The freighters had opened fire, not with the popguns normally issued to commercial ships, but with missiles — thousands of missiles. No superdreadnaught could have unleashed such a barrage, even with external racks; there were over three thousand missiles coming from each freighter. Twenty-seven thousand missiles were bearing down on her ships — nothing, maybe not even an entire fleet of superdreadnaughts could survive such an attack. Her point defence wouldn’t even stop a handful of them before the rest broke through and destroyed her ships. Her great triumph had just collapsed in front of her.

Training reasserted itself. There was only one way out. “Jump out,” she ordered. The flicker drive had been held idling, just in case the superdreadnaughts arrived and attempted to redress the balance. “Jump us out of here…”

“It’s too late,” the helmsman shouted. The drive was still powering up. There wasn’t even enough power to make a random jump and hope they didn’t arrive as billions of disconnected atoms. “It’s too late…”

The tidal wave of missiles slammed into her ships and the entire battlecruiser squadron disintegrated. There were no survivors.

Neil somehow managed to gather himself long enough to close his jaw. He’d been a Marine for longer than he cared to remember and had seen far too many battles in space, yet he’d never seen anything like that, not even in drills. It had been centuries since the Empire had called together enough superdreadnaughts to launch so many missiles at once, but the launching ships were only freighters. How had they fitted so many missile launchers into the ships? And, coming to think of it, who was in command of the ships? Admiral Walker certainly hadn’t told him about the possibility.

“We are being hailed,” one of the operators said. Neil dragged himself back to reality. With their battlecruisers gone, the invaders could either surrender or die and he didn’t care much which one they chose. He dispatched a string of orders to his Marines, ordering them to hold position and demand surrender. “The commander of the ships would like to speak with you.”

“Put him through,” Neil ordered. If nothing else, they’d get some answers. “Who is it…?”

The display screen lit up, revealing a very familiar face. “Good afternoon, Major,” Daria said. Her face cracked into a brilliant smile. “I do hope I’m not late?”