Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

He called up Gillingham’s file and read it thoughtfully. There was nothing there to suggest that he was under suspicion; indeed, most of his boasts to Sandra had been plain fact. He was an important figure, he was being promoted as fast as he could manage it — and earn it, unlike most of the pre-war superior officers — and he didn’t seem to have any rebel leanings. Sandra’s covert interrogations had convinced her that while he was a decent man, he was also loyal to Admiral Wilhelm, the person who had given him the chance to shine. Given time, she could alter that, conditioning him to their side, but the more changes she made, the greater the chance that it would be picked up upon by counter-intelligence. Once Gillingham had been identified as their unwitting ally, they would certainly be exposed and captured. He doubted that Admiral Wilhelm would order them treated as standard prisoners of war.

And there was no escape from the planet. Admiral Wilhelm’s ban on any starships leaving the planet, apart from his warships, would have an effect on the system’s economy, but that wouldn’t be an immediate threat. The three agents could have vanished into the underground and completely disappeared from view — a planet was a large place, after all — but that would have ended any chance they had to strike back and complete their mission. The problem was that he couldn’t see any way to complete the mission anyway. It wasn’t that easy to trigger the self-destruct systems on orbital fortresses, or the shipyards, which meant… what?

Somewhere, there will be a rebel , Charlie thought, and smiled. He called up other files and started to skim through them thoughtfully. Admiral Wilhelm might talk the talk about wanting to bring democracy to his sector, but so far it was nothing, but military rule. He might have embraced the concept of rewarding competence, unlike most of the other Admirals, but there would still be winners and losers. The only task would be to find them.

He checked the sensor in Sandra’s room, unsurprised to see that she and Gillingham were making love again with a passion that seemed genuine, at least on his side, and carefully placed the terminal in the secure box. Sasha had been out exploring the Cottbus nightlife, learning where the fault lines lay between the Imperial Navy and the criminal sector, and it was time to meet her. Between them, they could find a rebel, no matter how reluctant, and build him up into a real threat.

The Vacuum Sucker was a fairly typical spacers bar. It was large, cheap and cramped; Charlie was unable to move quickly, just for the sheer press of bodies. Given it’s rating in the guide, it probably hosted only crewmen and junior officers, mainly the handful of mustangs in the Imperial Navy. Admiral Wilhelm had embraced the concept of promoting mustangs to command rank with all the fervour of the converted and the results had been impressive. Like Colin before him, he had seen the potential that was ruthlessly suppressed and had taken advantage of it, even though he was maintaining his own power base at the same time. How long would it be, Charlie wondered as he searched for Sasha amidst the crewers, before someone arose to challenge him?

He smiled as he passed through a handful of girls towards one of the private booths at the rear of the bar. Spacers were easy marks for women of easy virtue and hundreds of them, some working professionals, others merely out for a good time, gravitated towards every spacer bar in the city. They would give their victim a good time in exchange for being wined, dined and feted with presents, rather like girls like them had been doing since time out of mind. The spacers, who didn’t have anything to spend their money on while in space, took part quite happily, seeking someone — anyone — so that they wouldn’t have to spend the nights alone. The bar, and the hundreds of other establishments, even offered rooms for the night, although several couples in darkened corners hadn’t bothered to wait. He watched, tracking how the women moved and pulled their marks out of the mass of spacers drinking and laughing as they celebrated the battle, and shook his head. There might have been little difference, at bottom, between them and Sandra, but at least Sandra had style.

The buzz of conversation rose up around him and he listened, carefully, without seeming to listen. It was a skill he’d learnt back when he’d been recruited into Imperial Intelligence and it served him well. The main body of clientele were from the orbiting fortresses, cheering their victory, even if the fleet had largely won the battle. There was an ongoing rivalry between fortress crews and starship crewmen — even though there was supposed to be an ongoing exchange program between the two divisions of the fleet — and it turned violent at times. Most of the discussions involved resentments, real or imagined, about how the starship crews were going to win glory in the Empire, while they were stuck at home. It reminded him of Colin’s speech before the Battle of Earth. The fortress crews might have been a vital part of Admiral Wilhelm’s war effort, but they didn’t feel that way.

He slipped into the booth and nodded politely to Sasha and her dining companion. He was a young man, at least in appearance, but Charlie could pick out the subtle clues that suggested that he was at least fifty years old, with an expression to match. Charlie pegged him at once. He had been passed over for promotion, not once, but many times, and wore his bitterness on his sleeve. His face might have been handsome under other circumstances — he suspected that he’d changed it in hopes of becoming more successful — but now, it had a worn, almost hangdog look.

“This is Peter,” Sasha said, introducing him. “Peter, this is Charlie, an associate of mine.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Peter drawled. His voice alone might have explained his lack of promotion. It was filled with a curious mixture of arrogance and fear, like a dog that expected to be kicked again. “Is he going to help me get promoted as well?”

Charlie couldn’t help himself; he checked, quickly, to see if the counter-surveillance field was operating. Even using it was dangerous, assuming that Admiral Wilhelm’s forces ran a security sweep, but there was an odd kind of security in the bar. Very few security officers, even the dreaded SD Troopers, would enter such a bar without heavily armed backup. The crewers might turn on them, secure in the sheer weight of numbers, and beat hell out of them. It had happened before.

“Don’t worry,” Sasha said, shooting him a glance. “We can’t be heard here.”

Peter, who had clearly been drinking heavily, kept talking with a surprising lack of discretion. It wasn’t hard to guess that he had been involved in several rackets to supply Imperial Navy technology onto the black market, nor that he knew most of the smugglers and criminals in the port personally. To hear him talk, he was a great successes at the gaming tables, but Charlie suspected that the truth was that he lost heavily and was deeply in debt to the local criminal fraternity. Admiral Wilhelm’s sweep, as soon as he’d taken overt control, had wiped out most of the criminals, but like cockroaches, they were very hard to kill. Enough remained to keep Peter firmly in their debt, even if they were keeping their heads down…

Idiots , Charlie thought, coldly. Imperial Intelligence had plenty of experience operating in such an environment. They can get us pretty much whatever we want .

He listened as Peter, his tongue loosened by all the drink, chatted away about everything and nothing. He was a second-level supply clerk — not even a Midshipman, as he complained — on the command fortress, but that was about as far as he could hope to rise. A properly-run organisation would have disposed of him long ago, unless there was no choice… and Admiral Wilhelm was clearly short of experienced crewmen. If he’d been on a superdreadnaught, he would have been discharged years ago, or sent somewhere where he could drink himself to death peacefully. He didn’t see it that way, of course. To him, his lack of promotion prospects was the result of conspiracy by his jealous superiors, who feared what he would do if promoted to higher rank. The irony, Charlie decided, was that they might have been right. A lowly supply clerk couldn’t do that much to rot away at the Imperial Navy, but someone more senior…