Democracy's Right

Chapter Fifty-Two

“They’re approaching missile range,” the tactical officer said. “They’re launching additional probes.”

Colin nodded. The decoys had formed up with the rest of his ships, creating an impression of an entire fleet of superdreadnaughts waiting for Admiral Quintana and his force. The Admiral was probably trying to sort out the real ships from the decoys, a task the Geeks had sworn blind would be impossible. Colin wouldn’t have put money on it. In his experience, the word ‘impossible’ was only a reflection of the unknown.

“Keep countering them,” he ordered. The timer was ticking down to the point where he would have to open fire… and then, once it became clear he could only launch one massive salvo, Admiral Quintana would understand what he had done. “And bring up the point defence. I want them ready to engage at a moment’s notice.”

“Two minutes to missile range,” the tactical officer reported. “The enemy is scanning us and launching sensor probes.”

“Probably trying to pin down the command ship,” Admiral Quintana commented. Brent-Cochrane couldn’t disagree. “It won’t get them anywhere.”

He smiled. The Imperial Navy’s standard practice was to illuminate the flagship in order that all should know the greatness of the commanding officer. Against an opponent who could throw such massive salvos in one shot, it was nothing more than suicide. Admiral Quintana had kept his flagship stepped down so that it was indistinguishable from the remainder of the fleet, while using pinpoint lasers to send orders from ship to ship. The rebels would only be able to destroy the flagship through sheer luck. Luck had been on their side, Brent-Cochrane acknowledged, but it would take a vast amount of luck to get out of this one. They wouldn’t get that lucky break, he promised himself, whatever it took.

“Prepare to fire once we enter weapons range,” Admiral Quintana ordered. He smiled down at the display. “And then we will see what they have up their sleeves.”

An alarm chimed. “Admiral,” the Security Officer said, “I have lost contact with Marine… ah, with the Blackshirt CO. The link to their compartment failed.”

Brent-Cochrane stared in horror. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The rebels had made contact with others at Sector 99 — perhaps they’d had cells in place long before the mutiny at Jackson’s Folly — and the cells were now launching a mutiny of their own. The entire superdreadnaught might be under enemy control.

“Sir,” he said, “we have to lock the ship down, now!”

Admiral Quintana turned and gave him a puzzled look. “There is a rebel team onboard this ship,” Brent-Cochrane snarled. Part of him knew that if he was wrong, it would be the end of his career, but if he was right… his career didn’t matter, not against the danger of the rebellion spreading out of control. “We have to secure the ship before all hell breaks loose.”

“Check with the other sections,” Admiral Quintana ordered. He didn’t sound as if he believed Brent-Cochrane; after all, there had never been a successful mutiny on a superdreadnaught. But then, every superdreadnaught had an entire Marine Regiment allocated to provide internal security, not hated and despised Blackshirts. “I want them all to check in now.”

They waited while the communications officer ran through the checks. Several compartments, including two other security positions, refused to respond. Others reported that everything was normal, without any signs of trouble at all. Even Admiral Quintana was convinced that something was badly wrong. He sounded the internal security alarm and ordered a lockdown. All though the ship, blast doors swung down, isolating each and every compartment. The mutineers would be split up into hundreds of separate cells, where they could be mopped up easily.

“Get in touch with the troop transports,” Admiral Quintana said. “I want them to shuttle over an entire regiment of Blackshirts.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. He worked his console for a long moment. “Sir, several other starships are reporting onboard trouble as well.”

Brent-Cochrane cursed. No wonder the rebels were holding their ground. They knew that their allies were planning to take the superdreadnaughts intact and deliver them to the rebellion. They were just waiting to walk in and claim their new ships!

Admiral Quintana clearly agreed. “Launch missiles,” he ordered. Brent-Cochrane was fairly sure that no other commander had ever opened an engagement with enemy ships while there was a mutiny underway, but with the lockdown in place they should be able to regain control. “You are to continue firing until the enemy force has been destroyed.”

The superdreadnaught shuddered as she launched her first mighty salvo.

“They’re firing at extreme range,” the tactical officer said, as the display sparkled with a swarm of deadly red icons. Colin didn’t need anyone to tell him that the superdreadnaughts had flushed their external racks. Everything in the fleet larger than a destroyer had contributed to that massive salvo. There were so many missiles that even the Geek-designed systems would have trouble controlling them all. “They will enter point defence range in six minutes and counting.”

Colin nodded. The problem with firing at extreme range, as any tactician would admit, was that it gave the defenders plenty of time to plot intercept solutions and plan their defence. Admiral Quintana had side-stepped that problem with the overwhelming use of brute force; no defence, not even the combined datanet protecting the planet, could hope to stop them all. And, worse, as long as the enemy force remained out of the gravity shadow, Colin could throw enough missiles at them to shatter their fleet and they would just flicker away.

“Deploy missile pods,” he ordered. “You are cleared to engage with station-mounted weapons only.”

The tactical officer hesitated. “Sir…?”

“Do it,” Colin snapped. He understood the officer’s confusion, but there was no time for a debate. The stations packed far more missiles than his superdreadnaughts, or even the arsenal ships. They could fire for far longer without shooting themselves dry… and besides, firing only those weapons might suggest to the enemy commander that all of the superdreadnaughts were decoys. “Bring the point defence online and start tracking the enemy missiles.”

He settled back in his command chair. The enemy missile swarm suggested that they hadn’t settled on a final target set, but with so many missiles it wasn’t an immediate priority. They could afford to drench his defences and see what shot back. The arsenal ships, for all their undoubted use, possessed no point defence worth a damn. Once the enemy realised what they were and started targeting them, Camelot would be lost along with the arsenal ships.

Stanford cursed as the rumble of the missile launch echoed through the superdreadnaught. “They’re on to us,” he said. He’d been working the console — having used the palm-imprint of one of the dead Blackshirts to make it work — only to discover that its functions were limited. The Blackshirts hadn’t really been aware of the capabilities of their tools. He’d managed to rig a system so that the Blackshirt command network was dumped into his small portable terminal. “I think we’d better get out of here.”

He keyed the console and brought up the lockdown data, examining it quickly and comparing it with the known Blackshirt locations. Jamming the Blackshirt command network had been easy enough; the surviving senior Blackshirt would literally be unable to take command of his force. It was a shame he couldn’t trigger the remainder of the internal weapons, but he had to settle for jamming them before taking a key-card from one of the bodies. The senior officers hadn’t realised it, but they’d given the Blackshirts the ability to give their people access authority, authority Stanford had been able to usurp. The lockdown would impede the enemy more than it would impede him.

“Come on,” he ordered, picking up his weapon and heading for the hatch. It had sealed, of course, but a wave of the card in front of the sensor opened it up. Stanford keyed his radio, passing on the data and then a final wave of instructions. “Move in on your targets and take them out now.”

He muttered a curse under his breath as he started to run, pausing only to open the locked hatches and meet up with other allies. Time wasn’t on their side. All it would take would be the Admiral deciding to blow the ship and they would all die, without knowing if the rebellion had been successful or not. Twice, they encountered small groups of Blackshirts and shot their way through them, the Blackshirts recognising his uniform and hesitating just long enough for the mutineers to get in the first shot.

“We need to move quickly,” he said, once they all met up in one of the smaller corridors, just outside the CIC. He checked his terminal and swore. Now that the enemy was alert to their operations, the Blackshirts were moving and trying to recapture vital compartments. It was taking them longer than it should — Stanford had taken the precaution of wiping all access permissions apart from the ones he had created himself — but they were moving. The superdreadnaught shuddered again as it unleashed another salvo, adding a new danger to the whole enterprise. They might be killed by their own side. “And we also need to take the CIC intact. No shooting unless they fire first.”

There was a low rumble of agreement.

“But how are they doing this?”

Brent-Cochrane blinked at the tone in the Admiral’s voice. The Admiral had been speaking with the Chief Engineer when armed men had burst in behind him, firing live weapons in Engineering, of all places! The Engineer’s face had vanished from the display; a moment later, the communications link had failed completely. Engineering had been added to the list of compartments that had somehow been taken by the mutineers.

The ship rocked sharply as a missile slipped through the point defence to slam against the shields. It was only a single warhead, but the battle stations were giving almost as good as they were getting and it was only a matter of time before more slipped through. The rebel superdreadnaughts weren’t firing, leaving him to wonder if they were real… or if the rebels had decided to abandon Camelot in the face of superior force. None of the superdreadnaughts were using point defence either.

“They clearly planned carefully,” Brent-Cochrane said. Imperial Intelligence was supposed to have placed even more agents in the crew, yet they’d heard nothing. A paranoid thought flashed through his mind. Was it simple incompetence… or something more sinister? Was Imperial Intelligence, for whatever demented reason made sense to a spook’s mind, working with the rebels? “I think we may need to consider…”

A green icon flashed on the display. “Sir,” the tactical officer said, in a tone of a man who hoped that his superiors would not blame him for the disaster, “Admiral Owen has been destroyed.”

Brent-Cochrane blinked. The superdreadnaught hadn’t been under heavy fire, for she had been in the rear of the formation. There was nothing to explain the ship’s destruction, unless… he tapped his console and pulled up the records. It was clear as soon as he reviewed the live feed from the drones flying alongside the fleet. The superdreadnaught’s commander had triggered the self-destruct. His ship had to have been on the verge of falling to the enemy.

“Sir,” Brent-Cochrane said. A new light flashed on the display. The rebels — the mutineers — were trying to assert control of the ship from engineering. If they succeeded, the CIC could be sealed off and rendered harmless. “We need to trigger the self-destruct ourselves.”

Another console flashed. The flicker drive was powering down. “Impossible,” Admiral Quintana snapped. “I could not…”

He broke off as the sound of firing suddenly echoed in the distance. It took Brent-Cochrane a moment to realise that it was coming from the direct connection to the Blackshirts on duty outside the CIC. They were under attack. It wouldn’t be long until the mutineers penetrated to CIC and took over the ship.

“Sir,” Brent-Cochrane repeated. “You need to trigger the codes…”

Something flashed in the air. A knife appeared in Admiral Quintana’s eye, penetrating right into his brain. Brent-Cochrane lifted his weapon slowly as he saw the communications officer, one arm outstretched in a throwing pose. The treacherous officer had made it impossible to destroy the ship! He shot the communications officer as the hatch burst inwards and turned, firing towards the mutineers. He was still firing when four heavy blows slammed into his body and he collapsed into darkness.

Stanford watched the Commodore’s body fall to the ground and then looked around the CIC. Apart from the lone man, no one offered any resistance and it was easy to secure them and leave them for later attention. The chances were good that at least some of them would want to join the rebellion, but there was no time to test their loyalties now.

“Get in touch with the rebels,” he ordered, as he took the command chair. He checked his terminal and realised, to his relief, that the mutiny had secured all of the important locations. The remaining Blackshirts were isolated and could be dealt with at leisure. “Tell them that we want to surrender.”

He brought up the datanet console and checked the IFF signatures of the other superdreadnaughts. One of the ships was gone, he realised, but fourteen others had altered their IFF signals, confirming that they had been taken over by the mutineers. That might change, he knew, but for the moment they were secure. Hell, the loyalist superdreadnaughts might be on the verge of switching sides too.

“Quit firing at the rebels and prepare to fire on the loyalist ships,” he added. He hadn’t placed anyone on the smaller ships, knowing that if they took the superdreadnaughts more or less intact, they would be able to dictate terms to the other ships. The chances of being betrayed grew exponentially the more people he added to the conspiracy. “Get me a direct laser link to the friendly ships.”

He checked the call log as he waited for acknowledgement and smiled. Only two superdreadnaughts seemed to be completely free of mutineers, far more than he had dared hope. The remainder were either in the hands of his allies or being disputed. The Blackshirt transports were demanding orders from the Admiral. It seemed that he had ordered them to prepare to dispatch troops to the various superdreadnaughts, but then they’d lost contact with him.

“Detach yourself from the command datanet and form a new one,” he ordered, once he had made contact with his allies. Another superdreadnaught had fallen, leaving only ten as loyalist ships. The loyalists were panicking, uncertain of what to do. “I’m trying to talk to the rebels now.”

The first sign Colin had that all was not well with the enemy side was when one of their superdreadnaughts exploded for no apparent reason. It had been easy to tell that the ship had self-destructed — he knew perfectly well that his fortresses hadn’t fired on it, or at least not enough to destroy her — yet why? Ships did not explode for no apparent reason. Even a fused flicker drive would have merely rendered the ship unable to flicker away.

“Admiral, we’re picking up a message from the enemy flagship,” the communications officer said. “They’re saying that they had a mutiny and they want our support!”

Colin didn’t hesitate. It could have been a trick, or a trap, but not even the Empire would sacrifice an entire superdreadnaught just to bait a trap.

“General signal to the fleet,” he ordered. “The battle line will advance to support the friendly ships.”

He keyed another console and linked into the Marine command net. “Neil,” he said, “you can start getting your shuttles ready. I have a number of ships that you need to board.”

“They’re coming out to support us,” Stanford said, in relief. It had occurred to him that the rebels might not believe him, even if he had taken the superdreadnaught out of action. Two other superdreadnaughts had fallen to mutineers, leaving the remaining ships isolated and unable to act. The rebel crews had targeted them with energy weapons, just in case. He keyed his console and linked into the loyalist command net. They might not have known it, but the Admiral’s access permissions allowed him to go anywhere. “This is the rebel commander.”

He paused, choosing his words carefully. “We have you targeted with our energy weapons,” he said. “You cannot bring up your flicker drives in time to escape if we open fire. You can open fire yourself, but we will tear your ships apart at point-blank range. You cannot escape. All you can do is die bravely.

“If you surrender, you will be treated honourably,” he added. “You have two minutes to reply.”

The response was immediate. “They’re signalling that they want to surrender,” one of his allies reported. He’d worked in the communications department, even if he’d never served on the bridge. “It’s over.”

It took an hour before Colin was sure, but once there were armed Marines on each of the new starships and their loyalist crews had been removed, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. He had hoped that the message he’d sent would inspire others to revolt against the Empire, yet he had never expected… the mutinies had come in the nick of time. It hadn’t been planned from the start, although it would never be told that way. He smiled at the thought. The reports he would send back to Earth would claim that it had all been organised months in advance. The Empire would look as if it was composed of fools and if a few Imperial Intelligence officers paid for it with their heads… well, it was all to the good.

He stood in what had once been Admiral Percival’s private viewing blister and stared out at the new fleet. The rebellion had a real fleet now, one capable of challenging a second sector fleet or anything short of Home Fleet itself. The Empire would need to pull together a new fleet to destroy the rebellion and that would take time. Perhaps too much time; after all, the Empire was vast. The Imperial Navy was scattered over thousands of light years.

Colin looked out across the stars, thinking and planning.

The Empire had no idea what was coming its way.