Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

He scowled as the last of the planet’s governing class was finally evicted out of the airlock, his overweight body spinning in space as he clawed hopelessly for salvation, or a rescue that would never come. The man had been a murderer many times over, just through sheer stupidity and ignorance. He’d had no choice, but to make a brutal example of the Wakanda Space Navy, even though it was definitely overkill. The new government he had installed on the planet, one loyal to him with the forces required to back up its demands, could only be an improvement, but Wakanda was too far gone to be saved. Shock treatment was required, but he didn’t have the time, ort the motivation. It would be a project for a more peaceful time.

“The fat arsehole will be burning up in a few hours,” Captain Keene assured him. He’d served with Admiral Wilhelm long enough to be completely trusted. “The people down on the surface will cheer.”

“Perhaps,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed. The people of Wakanda would be nursing their wounds after their government had put their revolution down so savagely. They certainly didn’t have the experience or determination to rebuild their shattered world. He rather suspected that most of the younger population would try to emigrate, leaving the older population to die, unless they were recruited into his forces first. There were worlds governed by the worst of the Thousand Families, the ones so embarrassing that they were effectively banned from Earth, that were better run. “It’s not our concern anyway.”

He took one last look at the dwindling figure, drifting down towards the planet as tradition dictated for the death of a traitor, before pushing it from his mind. An overweight person was apparently a powerful person on Wakanda, for reasons that might even make sense, given that the planet was barely capable of feeding its teeming masses. The planet would just have to learn — he smiled thinly — to trim the fat. If they didn’t learn, the consequences of their disastrous government would catch up with them and impose their own solution.

“Come on,” he said, and led the way out of the airlock’s control room. Keene followed him silently until they finally reached his flag cabin. Without Carola, whose taste was so much better than his own, he had stripped out most of the artworks and placed them in storage, replacing them with a large tactical display. It was blinking alarmingly when they entered and he pulled up the message… and swore.

“They hit Ysalt,” he said, and swore again. The rebels had hit back hard… and, somehow, had picked a near-perfect target. The effectively-complete destruction of the supply dumps would impose strict limits on how far his fleet could operate, a desperate attempt to buy time… that would work, unless he could find a way to operate without the supplies. “They didn’t occupy the world, but they didn’t have to waste their time trying.”

He scowled as Keene read through the message. Ysalt hadn’t been particularly important for centuries and he’d counted on that when he’d developed it as a supply base, but the rebels had managed to locate it and destroy the supplies. His ships needed the supply of missiles and spare parts to operate — even though the best efforts of the Wakanda Space Navy had inflicted absolutely no damage whatsoever — and that supply had just been savagely reduced. The rebels had somehow managed to make a fleet train work without supply bases and convoys, but he hadn’t had the time to set up a similar system. It was a weakness, he saw in cold hindsight, that he had believed that they couldn’t take advantage of. He had been wrong.

Keene’s mind was working along similar lines. “They’re forced us to reroute supplies directly from Cottbus,” he said. Admiral Wilhelm nodded. There was no reason why that wasn’t possible, but it would merely add more delay, not least in getting the instructions back to Cottbus to do just that. Worse, they would have to rely on a convoy system… and that would mean diverting escorts from the war front. “That affects our ability to carry out the next stage of the plan.”

Admiral Wilhelm stared at him. “Tell me something I don’t know, please,” he said, unable to keep the slow-building anger out of his voice. “I know the consequences as well as you do, perhaps better.”

His Flag Captain cleared his throat. “We fired off twenty percent of missile stocks on the superdreadnaughts that engaged at Wakanda,” he said, consulting a datapad. That, too, had come back to haunt them. A more restrained approach to the task of trashing the Wakanda Space Navy would have been less spectacular, but more helpful in the long run. Fired missiles didn’t re-materialise out of nowhere, whatever some computer game simulation designers thought. “Two-thirds of the fleet didn’t even enter the system and they still have full missile loads. The fleet’s combat power has not been significantly reduced.”

“Not now,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed, sourly. He appreciated his aide’s attempt to take the best possible view of the debacle, but he was no Family scion, deaf to all, but good news. In a sense, he was entirely correct. A fleet like the one he commanded -according to standard doctrine — couldn’t be broken up by a fleet that wasn’t at least equal in firepower. Pre-war training had assumed that a three-to-one advantage was required to guarantee success, but pre-war analysts had never anticipated arsenal ships. “It will come back to haunt us later.”

He tapped the controls and called up a standard starchart, looking down at the Empire from high above. Tactical icons, representing his forces, glowed brightly, outshining dimmer icons that represented his intelligence crew’s best guess at rebel dispositions. The information could be — probably was — outdated by now, but it looked alarming, on the surface. It was, in fact, still a highly advantageous situation — to him.

But it wouldn’t last. He was operating deep within unfriendly territory — he had no illusions as to how the first-rank worlds would view him — with very limited support. The rebels might not have a force capable of breaking his fleet that they could spare from defence duties, but it hardly mattered. He could turn on the first-rank worlds and wreck havoc, but that would drain his arsenals and give the rebels time to concentrate their forces. The war would go on for years, but once the rebels struck back at Cottbus, the outcome would be certain. After his ambush of the rebel fleet — which, far from being broken, had wrecked his supply bases at Ysalt — he didn’t expect mercy, even if he offered to surrender. His only choice was to continue the war.

And there were only a handful of targets that might prove decisive.

“An interesting problem,” he mused, finally. He stoked his beard while concentrating his thoughts, noting absently that it had been weeks since he had heard anything from Carola, even though the intelligence network he’d ‘inherited’ from Lady Madeline Hohenzollern. He was more worried about her than he cared to admit, although he was fairly sure that the rebels would do nothing to harm her, at least until it was safe to do so. He would wreck a terrible revenge if they hurt one hair on her head. “We have a window of opportunity, so where do we strike?”

A Flag Captain had to be his Admiral’s alter ego, offering advice and caution, whatever the situation. “AlphaCent is heavily defended and actually hard to approach safely,” Keene said, after a moment. The binary star system — with a third companion star far too close for comfort when the flicker drive was concerned — could be dangerous for interstellar starships. “They would certainly have warning of our coming and they wouldn’t allow us to take the shipyards intact.”