Democracy's Right

Chapter Forty-Four

“So I brought the arsenal ships to Sanctuary,” Daria concluded. She and the remainder of the rebel leadership had come onboard the General Montgomery at once, allowing Colin a chance to realise what had happened while he’d been retreating from Greenland. The rebellion had come uncomfortably close to total defeat. “Once we got there, we engaged them with maximum force.”

“Expending a great many missiles in the process,” Salgak said. The Geek seemed irked by the loss of so many missiles, even though losing the asteroid or the arsenal ships would have been far more worrying. “You used a great deal of overkill.”

“There is no overkill,” Daria said, firmly. She shot Mariko a wry glance. “There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘reload.’”

“The fact remains,” the Geek said, as his implants whirred in agitation, “that you fired off far more missiles than you needed to use.”

Colin tapped the table. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It won us time to evacuate Sanctuary and move to a new base. Even if the Empire knows what happened here, it will take them time to react, so the first priority is moving and re-securing the contents of this base.”

“It is already underway,” Cordova assured him. “The population will be dispersed elsewhere.”

“That leaves us all with a rather more worrying question,” Anderson said, flatly. “How did they find the base in the first place?”

Colin had been wondering about that himself. The timing was a little odd, to say the least. If Imperial Intelligence had known about Sanctuary prior to his mutiny, he would have expected Percival to drop in a squadron of superdreadnaughts or two, just so he could catch Colin when he returned from a raid. It actually suggested that Percival had received new intelligence, but from where? Had someone sold him the location of Sanctuary and the target Colin intended to hit next, or was it just a ridiculous coincidence?

“Unknown as yet,” Hester said. Her cold voice seemed calmer, somehow. “The logical solution is that someone sold us out to the Empire. Betrayal is a fact of life in the Beyond. I imagine that none of the prisoners would know who…”

“No,” Anderson said. He had already requested permission to interrogate the prisoners, but none of the captured Blackshirts were senior enough to know the identity of the Empire’s spies. Colin suspected that interrogating them was pointless, so they could be transported to the holding world until the end of the war, whoever won. “Imperial Intelligence would feel that no one had a need to know, perhaps including the commander of the battlecruiser squadron. It could be anyone.”

Colin shook his head. “It wasn’t someone who knew about the secret shipyards,” he said, “or the Empire would have targeted them first. Sanctuary is only important as a symbol of what we can do, not part of our supply line or future plans to build superdreadnaughts of our own. We know that some people can be trusted…”

“Not everyone knows about their existence, let alone their location,” Hester said, in her whispery voice. “I do not know their location.”

“What you don’t know,” Daria said, “you cannot be made to tell.”

“I know the logic,” Hester said, tartly. “I am merely pointing out that…”

Colin tapped the table again, harder this time. “That is very much a side issue at the moment,” he said. “The problem we face is much worse. We were forced to retreat from Greenland and our ships are damaged, while the Empire will probably start gloating over its great victory. We need to move fast or our would-be allies will start wondering if we’re going to lose.”

He thought about the message they’d sent, bouncing from relay station to relay station, all over the Empire. How many would be inspired by it? How many would risk everything to mutiny against their commanders and join the rebellion? How many would die in futile battles as the Empire clamped down hard on any traces of insurgency or resistance? How could he let them down? The rebellion must not fail.

The display lit up at his command. “How many arsenal ships do we have on hand?”

“Three squadrons of nine ships each,” Daria said. She didn’t seem surprised by the question, but then, someone with her accomplished political skills would understand the need to strike back as soon as possible. “The ones I… expended are being reloaded now.”

Colin nodded. He could see a handful of possible counters to the arsenal ships already… and even though Percival was an idiot, the commander he’d faced at Greenland was smart enough to think of the countermeasures for himself. They had to move as quickly as possible, if only because the Empire might well have sensor records of the arsenal ships in action. Once they got over their shock, they would evolve countermeasures. He reminded himself of that, time and time again. He didn’t dare fall into the trap of regarding the arsenal ships as an invincible weapon.

“Good,” he said. “In that case…”

He looked around the compartment, his gaze moving from face to face and judging commitment. “In that case,” he repeated, “it is time to go after Camelot itself.”

The reaction was immediate. Cordova, Daria and Hester seemed to love the idea. Salgak, Anderson and the others seemed to think that Colin had lost his mind. He could understand their position — Camelot was the most heavily-defended world in the sector, after all — yet he didn’t share it. Taking Camelot, and its facilities, more or less intact would ensure that the entire sector fell into his lap. Leaving Percival there ran the risk of all of his other gains and conquests being reversed. And besides, they needed a stunning victory and taking an Imperial Navy fleet base would give them just that. No one had taken an Imperial Navy base since the First Interstellar War.

“It won’t be easy,” Colin said, calmly. “We will be running a considerable risk.”

“It isn’t just a considerable risk,” Salgak said. “It is an insane risk. In two years, we would be deploying our own squadrons of superdreadnaughts, backed up by our own improved cruisers and destroyers. We would be in a far stronger position to wage war on the Empire — and to recover from a defeat — once we have our own shipping yards producing new ships. We can wait. Time is on our side.”

“Time is not on our side,” Hester said, flatly. Her cold eyes blazed defiance. “The Empire was shocked by our rebellion, true, and we’re a long way from Earth. The Core Worlds don’t have any idea that something has gone badly wrong. How long until that changes? The competent leaders on Earth will dispatch other starships to this sector, including a commander who actually has more than two brain cells, and crush every budding insurgency in sight. If we do not move to capitalise on our success now, we risk having the Empire swamp us through superior resources.”

She pressed her fingertips together, angrily. “We like to think that we can hide indefinitely in the Beyond,” she said. Her scar seemed to be pulsing with the intensity of her feelings. “How long can we hide shipyards and starships? How can we build ships without emitting radiation that will attract them to us? Sure, we can hide, but how long for? The Empire will eventually track us down… while putting the occupied worlds into a lockdown that will make it impossible for any insurgency to develop. We have to move now!”

“And we also have to reassure the Popular Front,” Daria added. “What it looks like, from the outside, is that we got our asses kicked at Greenland and our base in the Beyond has been exposed. The longer we leave it before we resume the offensive, the more rebels who will slip away from us, fearing that we have lost the urge to fight and win at all costs. Tell me something — in two years, will you still be arguing that we should wait, or will you pluck up the nerve to act?”

Colin frowned as the argument raged on. He wasn’t sure if he trusted his own feelings. In the Imperial Navy, an Admiral who brought home a defeated fleet might face the wrath of his superiors, no matter how steeply the odds had been tipped against him. Colin’s position, at least, was secure yet plunging headlong into Camelot might reverse that, if they lost. And, worse, there was his burning desire to avenge himself on Percival. Did he believe that hitting Camelot was a good idea for sound tactical reasons, or was it merely because he wanted to kill Percival personally? He asked himself the question, time and time again, but no answer appeared within his mind.

And then he remembered Jackson’s Folly. There had been no word, as yet, about the planet, but Colin was sure that Percival would have reoccupied the system by now. The planet and its inhabitants would bear the brunt of his rage and fury; legally, he could do almost anything to them and no one back on Earth would care. The only thing protecting it from his wrath was the interests of the Roosevelt Family and that might not last. They might decide to cut their losses and urge him to scorch the world. And that would kill upwards of four billion humans. It could not be allowed. If the rebellion had to stand for something, if the rebellion wanted to reform the Empire, it had to stop such atrocities.

“I believe that we should vote on it,” he said, finally. The argument had been on the verge of degenerating into a brawl. “All those in favour, raise your hands.”

He counted as the votes were taken. “The ayes have it,” he said, recalling old debates back at the Academy. “We will move against Camelot as soon as possible.”

“And win,” Daria added. “We have the firepower to take the planet now and then hold it against all comers.”

Colin nodded, a battle plan already forming in his head. “We will repair the superdreadnaughts and then move,” he ordered. “Officially, we will be preparing to return to Greenland and avenge our defeat there. No one outside this compartment is to know the actual target. Once the ships are ready, we will move at once and to hell with whatever dares to stand in our way.”

He lifted his mug of Imperial Navy-issue coffee. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a toast,” he said. “Success to us and disaster to the enemy.”

“They really did do some damage to this section,” the Geek said, as he stood with Colin near one of the damaged compartments. “They actually broke one of the armour plates and sent fragments flying into the ship. It was a good thing they didn’t manage to follow you through the flicker.”

“A very good thing,” Colin agreed, through gritted teeth. The Geek — he hadn’t given Colin any name, acting almost as if he were part of a hive mind — had a habit of pointing out the obvious. “Can you repair the damage in time?”

“Of course,” the Geek said, as if the question was somehow offensive. “We have Fabricator and we have most of the materials on hand. It is merely a question of producing a replacement armour plate and installing it on your ship. There are some minor improvements we could make to the hull, using experimental materials that we have discovered over the years, but I understand that you do not want anything new on your ship.”

Colin shook his head. One thing he had discovered about the Geeks was that they loved newness for the sake of newness. If he’d let them, they would have stripped out the tried and tested weapons the Empire had installed in General Montgomery and replaced them with their own designs. Colin had seen enough to know that some were very good designs and others had some serious flaws. They would all have to be tested carefully before he signed off on installing them within his starships.

Some of their other designs were far more reasonable for immediate deployment. Their ECM drones were far superior to the best the Empire could produce, offering Colin a handful of tactical advantages that would be denied to his opponents. While they hadn’t cracked the secret of faster-than-light transmission, they had managed to produce systems that compressed and extracted data at a far faster rate than the Empire, giving Colin a degree of tactical flexibility that the Empire wouldn’t be able to match. Their cloaking systems, too, were superior to the Empire’s, although they hadn’t completely eliminated the problem of turbulence caused by the passage of a cloaked starship. Indeed, Colin intended to exploit many of their inventions in his attack on Camelot.

“Just repair her to the original specifications,” he ordered. Whatever they produced in the future, he would have to fight the next battle with the weapons the Empire had designed and built. “What about the other starships?”

The Geek cocked his head, accessing their private band. It might as well be telepathy for it allowed direct mind-to-mind communication, something the Empire banned for reasons that escaped Colin. Or perhaps there was a very simple explanation; the mind techs used such systems for probing through a person’s mind and they didn’t want to share.

“They will all be ready for combat in two weeks,” the Geek said. He smiled, a strange smile that took up the exposed part of his face. “And then you must win or die.”

Colin nodded. “Of course,” he said, dryly. “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

He walked back slowly towards the bridge, pausing long enough to look into sickbay and check up on the crewmen who were slowly recovering from their wounds. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, yet he felt as if he had no choice, but to offer what support and comfort he could. The wounded, at least, seemed happy, even though they wouldn’t be on the superdreadnaught when it flickered out to Camelot. Colin had already resolved not to take anyone along he didn’t strictly need, even though both Hester and Daria had requested, then demanded, permission to accompany the fleet.

Two hours later, he stood in the shuttlebay and watched as the black-clad crewmen carried the caskets, one by one, into the launcher. The Imperial Navy’s funeral service was time-honoured, laid down by the First Emperor himself, and even the Thousand Families respected it. Colin waited until the senior crew and a selection of crewmen — chosen from the friends of the diseased — had arrived, before he began to speak. It was his duty as the fleet’s commander.

“We are gathered here today to say goodbye to our friends and comrades who were killed in action,” he said. There were lines in the service extolling the dead as being devoted servants of the Empire, lines he’d decided to cut out, for speaking them would be a sick joke. “They gave their lives so that we could live. For our tomorrow, they gave their today.”

He paused, feeling the weight of the squadron pressing down on him. A crewman had died when a shield generator had exploded too close to him, slamming his body hard against a bulkhead and rendering him a mass of blood and flesh. His coffin was closed and sealed. Another crewwoman had died when a burst of energy flared through the ship, vaporising her head and leaving the rest of her surprisingly intact. Her coffin, too, was sealed.

“They died upholding the values they believed in and we are diminished because of their deaths,” he said. It was hard, so hard, to choose the right words. “We — we who have chosen to seek to reform the Empire — feel now that we have lost something truly important, people who believed in our cause and gave their all so that the cause could go on. In their name we will not fail, for to do so means that they have died in vain. Their names will be remembered forever as the ones who died in order that our dream might live.”

He closed his eyes for a long second of silent meditation, as laid down in regulations, and then nodded to the drummer. The drummer started to tap his instrument, a long slow beat that had never failed to send a chill down Colin’s spine. At each high point, a casket was ejected into space, heading towards the local star. They would be lost within the vastness of space until they finally hit the star and vaporised. Very few Imperial Navy crewmen, even those who came from the Thousand Families, were ever buried in any other manner. Those who lived in space died in space.

“May they rest in peace,” Colin concluded, once the final casket had been launched. The watchers echoed him. “They will not be forgotten.”

Two weeks later, the superdreadnaughts were finally ready to move, accompanied by a small fleet of ships from the various rebel forces. The arsenal ships — the key to the operation — looked unremarkable compared to the other ships, but Colin hoped that that would keep the Empire from looking too closely at them. His other surprises should help with that, or so he hoped. Far too many devices had never been tested in combat.

“All ships, this is the Admiral,” he said, as he took his command chair. He’d insisted on running through full tests before signing off on the repair work, but there had been no errors. The Geeks did good work, which was more than he could saw for many Imperial Navy shipyards. The contractors were often more interested in making money than in doing a good job. “Prepare to jump.”

He settled back in his command chair. Whatever else happened, the die was about to be cast. Either they won, or they lost. There were no other options.

“Jump,” he ordered.