Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

She smiled as the first missiles struck home and the asteroids started to disintegrate under the pounding. They might not have been spinning, which would have sped the entire process of disintegration up, but they hadn’t been designed to contain the effects of nuclear blasts, even without secondary explosions among the stores. One by one, they blew apart into a wave of rocky debris, most of it falling down towards the planet below. She keyed her console and checked, quickly, but allowed herself a sigh of relief when it became clear that there wasn’t going to be anything large enough to survive the passage through the atmosphere and wreck destruction on the surface.

“Mission accomplished,” the tactical officer said.

“Good,” Katy said. She smiled at the icons representing the useless orbital defences. Their crews, either down on the planet, floating in orbit, or even remaining at their posts, had to be going mad with frustration. “Helm, take us out of her.”

An alarm sounded as new icons flickered into existence. “Admiral, we have a single superdreadnaught squadron,” the tactical officer said, grimly. “Should we engage?”

Katy shook her head. It was tempting… and they should have had the advantage, but it was too risky. She had to keep her fleet intact. It was the only consideration she would allow herself.

“No,” she said, finally. If nothing else, they’d definitely burned Admiral Wilhelm’s beard. There was no point in risking heavy losses, not now. “Helm, take us out of here.”

The stars vanished as the fleet dropped back into flicker space, leaving the destroyed supply dump behind. She smiled as soon as the fleet stood down from battle stations. After that raid, morale would be going through the roof… and Admiral Wilhelm would have to reconsider his plans.

We might even have stopped him from advancing , she thought, and smiled again.

Lieutenant Oliver Zulu looked down at his console and sighed. Another few million kilometres of nothing. Absolute nothing. Wakanda might have been one of the first-rank worlds, but it wasn’t a particularly important first-rank world. Indeed, it was whispered by the lower-ranking officers that the only reason the Empire hadn’t abandoned their normal procedure of quietly screwing as much as they could out of the first-rank worlds and just grabbing Wakanda was because they had plenty of corrupt officials of their own and didn’t need more. There were times when Zulu, who had risen as far as he ever would in the Wakanda Space Navy, would have liked to join the Shadow Fleet, just to escape the ever-present corruption that surrounded the Navy.

He scowled down at the display and scowled. It said something about the highly-dubious ‘success’ of Wakanda that the system had the lowest number of spacecraft of any first-rank world, let alone a tiny and largely primitive defence force, including ships that dated back to the days of the Dathi War. The planners kept telling everyone that fame, riches and successes were just around the corner, but hardly anyone believed them any more. If their plan had been to make Wakanda unattractive as a world to pillage, and therefore defend against the Empire, it had been a stunning success. It had also drained the spirit of Wakanda and ensured that it had the highest emigration rate of any first-rank world. They preferred to live under the Empire than their own people.

And some of them just couldn’t wait for Admiral Wilhelm. Only brutal repression and lack of forward planning had prevented a coup from carrying off the government and replacing it with something that would have been, by any standard, far better for the people. Some of the junior officers hoped that the Shadow Fleet would come and liberate Wakanda from its own government, others, older and wiser, knew that it wouldn’t happen. Wakanda, like all the other first-rank worlds, had autonomy. It was hard to think of a single world that had abused the status more than poor Wakanda, home of some of the poorest humans in the universe. It didn’t help that the government and its lackeys lived in a style that outshone even the vast depravities of the Thousand Families.

“Eyes on your screen,” the commodore snapped, catching Zulu’s eye. He was a big boor of a man, who boasted of his service in the Imperial Navy before returning to Wakanda, claiming to have commanded superdreadnaughts and participated in hundreds of engagements with rebel forces. Zulu privately suspected that the truth was that he hadn’t commanded anything more advanced than a garbage scow. He certainly seemed to have no idea of the capabilities and limitations of the men under his command. “We want to know the minute anything enters the system!”

Sure we do , Zulu thought, trying to convince himself that the commodore was merely being bombastic. The advance of Admiral Wilhelm and the fall of the Imperial Navy base at Hawthorn had caused the government to panic, all-too-aware that their own people would prefer Admiral Wilhelm to their rule. They’d put the Space Navy on alert and tried desperately to build up the defences, only to run into funding problems at once. Wakanda was not regarded as a good credit risk and richer worlds, intent on improving their own defences, had little to spare. They didn’t even have sensors capable of tracking ships in the outer solar system. If Admiral Wilhelm’s forces flickered in only a few AU away, they would be completely missed until they opened fire. Zulu’s awareness of what was around the orbital defence fort was almost completely non-existent.

“And the rest of you, look lively,” the commodore continued. Zulu sighed as the berating continued. He’d served under a handful of officers who had been sadists and tyrants, but at least they’d known what they were doing. The commodore’s only qualification for his post had been that he was a relative of the current head of government, the United Clan. “I don’t want to see even one of you slacking off…”

Zulu tuned it off and entertained himself with a mild fantasy of rolling a fragmentation grenade into the commodore’s quarters one night. He hadn’t ever attempted to turn fantasy into reality — if he was caught, his entire family would suffer — but it kept him warm at night. besides, the commodore believed that a man should be known by the scale of his appetites and was therefore awesomely fat, causing some of his subordinates to take bets on when he would pass away from a heart attack. It said something about his general indolence that he hadn’t even bothered to use cosmetic surgery to reform his body, although he was always bragging about his enhanced penis, something that was well outside Zulu’s funds. If the Wakanda Space Navy had allowed women to serve the commodore would have been unstoppable…

He snapped back to attention as an alarm sounded, calling everyone to attend. “I have a contact,” he said, pushing as much excitement into his voice as he could. So few craft visited the system that he barely had time to run proper tracking exercises on them all. The only regular arrivals were a bare of dingy freighters belonging to the government that seemed rather less space-worthy than something from the early days of space travel. “One starship, flickering out above the gravity shadow.”

The commodore waddled over to his station. “I see,” he said, his breath stinking of something Zulu would prefer not to think about. When the remainder of the crew struggled to live on rations, packed by government-owned factories and tasting of very little, if they were lucky, the commodore had the services of a private chef and as much food as he could stomach. “Hostile?”

“Unknown, sir,” Zulu said, carefully not allowing any scorn into his voice. The commodore had a long memory for slights and insults from those he considered his inferiors. “I think it’s a destroyer, but it’s hard to tell with these sensors and they could be jamming us…”