Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Gaul is on the other side of Earth,” she said, choosing not to mention that if Admiral Wilhelm chose to waste his missiles on Gaul and the other first-rank worlds, it would only work in Colin’s favour. She doubted that Goscinny would accept that argument as valid. It was far too cold-blooded for a man who had a deep attachment to his homeworld. “I think that it will be safe as long as Earth itself is safe.”

She leaned forward. “I’ll give you a copy of my preliminary report,” she concluded. “Good luck.”

She’d wondered if Goscinny would protest, or insist on remaining with the remains of 2 ndFleet, but instead he merely nodded. She was almost disappointed in him, although there was nothing he could do onboard the superdreadnaught, but get in the way. Besides, she would need him back on Earth, just to explain to Colin exactly what had happened.

Colin will understand , part of her mind whispered. He’d commanded at First Morrison, but who had he had looking over his shoulder? Only rebels whose survival and future, such as it was, depended on victory. He hadn’t had a real Parliament, or civilians, who would demand a say in matters. No one else will…

The thought was unpleasant, but there was no point in avoiding it. A disaster of such magnitude — and she didn’t delude herself as to the sheer scale of the disaster — meant that someone would have to take the blame… and, in the Empire, it would have been the highest-ranking person without powerful patrons. In Colin’s new Empire, it would be her. The Provisional Government would second-guess everything she’d done and, eventually, demand her removal from command. It would almost be a relief.

She keyed her communicator as Goscinny was escorted out of her cabin to the shuttlebay, where he would board a shuttle and be transferred to the destroyer Zipper , along with some of her wounded. The sheer number of wounded crewmen, some of them seriously injured, had overwhelmed her stasis tubes, forcing her medical corpsmen to perfect emergency surgery under poor conditions. Her beautiful superdreadnaught had had its first baptism of fire.

And if I’d had the Havoc with me , she thought, it would have been blown out of space .

“Senior crew, status meeting, my office, thirty minutes,” she ordered, and headed off to sickbay. The doctor would protest, of course, but he would give her the stimulant she needed. She would sleep it off later, assuming that there was a later. Until then…

“We lost over four hundred crewmen, either dead or injured, in the battle,” Captain Chalker said. Katy listened to his words, keeping her face impassive while her insides twisted under the blow of his words. Each one felt like a knife in the gut. “Every one of the stasis tubes has been filled, while others have been injected with hibernation drugs and placed out of the way until…”

He allowed his voice to trail off. Katy wasn’t sure why he wasn’t blaming her for the death and destruction. She hadn’t hesitated to blame incompetent superiors back before the rebellion… and it was what she deserved. She pushed the self-pity aside with an effort and focused on his words. Colin would probably relieve her of command, just to ensure that someone was publicly taking the blame, but until then her duty was to the men and women under her command. It wasn’t something she could shirk.

“Overall, we’re in better state than we deserve to be,” he continued. “Engineering says that we took no fatal damage, so most of the damaged systems can be repaired or replaced, given enough time. The weapons mountings on part of the hull will have to be replaced — and, until then, we’re looking at only eighty percent of our point defence being active. The missile tubes, at least, can be rapidly cleared and reloaded.”

Katy nodded in honest relief. The interior of the superdreadnaught — any superdreadnaught — was mainly armour, power generation systems and weapons, with complex systems to move the missiles from their storage bays to their launch tubes. The Empire had pioneered superdreadnaught design hundreds of years ago and even a badly damaged superdreadnaught could still rotate missiles through the hull and fire them from undamaged tubes. The Jefferson could still fight, at least, although she wouldn’t care to go into battle again without a short spell in a proper repair yard.

“We were the lucky ones,” the tactical officer said. His voice hardened, despite some of the looks cast in his direction by the younger officers. They wouldn’t have seen a defeated fleet before. “The remaining superdreadnaughts took heavy damage as well. Seven of them are barely capable of defending themselves against a destroyer-sized vessel, let alone anything more dangerous, and really should be pulled out of the line of battle entirely. They’re good for nothing, but soaking up missiles.”

“I think we can find a better use for them than that,” Katy said, sharply. They were all too tired for a proper discussion and discipline, she suspected, would be way down. Crew morale, bad enough after taking such a beating, would only worsen under the influence of little sleep and desperate repair efforts. “I assume they can all still flicker?”

“The flicker drives are mounted under heavy armour,” the tactical officer said. That didn’t prove anything, Katy knew; the power plants might have been damaged enough to render FTL travel impossible for sheer lack of power. It wasn’t too likely — that sort of damage would probably destroy the ship outright — but it had to be watched. “They’re all capable of flickering, although probably not at one hundred percent accuracy.”

“Such as it is,” Katy said, drawing up the reports and studying them on her terminal. She had to blink to force her eyes to focus. The computer systems on the superdreadnaughts would have calculated the damage automatically — although she knew from bitter experience that such systems were sharply limited — and it wasn’t good. There was no escaping the need for a shipyard. “All right. This is what we’re going to do.”

The assembled officers looked back at her. They didn’t look sharp, or aware, merely too tired to feel anything. Such tiredness could kill, Katy knew, and had done in space, but she couldn’t send them all to bed. Not yet. They’d just have to depend on stimulants, despite the dangers, for a few more hours before they could sleep. It was just another problem for her to solve.

“The seven damaged superdreadnaughts are to be dispatched back to Earth at once,” she ordered, finally. She’d made a mistake by not holding the Zipper long enough to send it along as an escort, although pirates would still hesitate to go near the superdreadnaughts. The mere thought was a humiliating reminder of how far 2 ndFleet had fallen. “They are to be escorted by the 45 thand 46 thSquadron, or at least their remaining ships. They will transport back to Earth as many of the seriously injured as we can pack onboard.”

She paused, noting the relief on some faces. “Before we send them back, however, we are going to pull everyone, but a skeleton crew off those ships,” she continued, ignoring the glances. “I want the engineers, the weapons tech, the medical corpsmen — everyone — off those ships and onto the remaining ships. We’re going to have to repair the other ships on the fly and we’re going to need them. We’re not out of the war yet.”

Her gaze swept the room. “Let’s not hide from the truth, shall we?” She snapped, gauging their response. She knew what they were thinking. They were the Shadow Fleet, the fleet that had toppled an empire! They didn’t get their asses kicked so firmly. It just didn’t happen to them! The younger crew hadn’t been with the fleet at First Morrison; they hadn’t picked up the attitude that came from knowing that you were frequently out-massed and outgunned. They’d seen the destroyed loyalist starships during the war — the first war, her mind chattered — but they hadn’t connected it with something that could happen to them. “We got our behinds firmly kicked, didn’t we?”