Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

Their building was a short brown oblong, standing out from the remainder of the High City by how dingy and used it looked. It was an appearance he suspected to have been deliberately designed to make the point as clearly as possible. There should have been, in theory, two thousand MPs within the building, but there were barely five hundred elected under the new rules, each one trying to feel out their place in the grand scheme of things. The Empire, outside the first-rank worlds and Macore, had had very little experience with democracy and it showed.

The shuttle came down on the lawn in front of the Parliament Building and a team of armed Marines surrounded it. Colin had been embarrassed, at first, to have such a reception, but he’d changed his mind after the first assassination attempt. As he disembarked from the shuttle, the lead Marine ran a scanner over his body, checking his identity against the central database and ensuring that he wasn’t carrying anything dangerous, beyond the pistol he wore on his belt. In an Empire where an unsuspecting dupe could carry a bomb, or worse, into the heart of power, such precautions were necessary, even if Colin himself hated them. He would have hated, he had to admit, being dead more. The Marines escorted him into the building and into the general conference room.

“Welcome back,” Daria said, as he entered. “I was starting to wonder if you wouldn’t make it.”

Colin smiled tiredly. Daria somehow managed to keep looking as young and pretty as ever, despite being something over fifty years old — her real age was a mystery, even to him — while he had a sneaking suspicion he looked rather like a tired and haggard man. She could have passed for twenty-one, her body growing into womanhood, but her eyes showed her real age. She was one of the sharpest people he’d met, with a brain like a razor. She had, somehow, managed to forge the Freebooters into a legitimate political force. He had to admire her for that, if nothing else.

He glanced around the remainder of the table and smiled, tiredly. The room hadn’t been decorated in the classic Imperial style, for which he was silently grateful. It was bare and functional, but little else. He’d had new terminals, computers and security systems installed, but his only other concession to comfort had been a small drinks cabinet. He had intended the room to be functional and businesslike. It was almost a shame that he couldn’t start pushing matters onto Parliament, but they weren’t ready. He could barely keep the Empire together himself.

“We have had something of a development,” he said, finally. “I will allow Grand Admiral Joshua Wachter to brief you.”

That was another compromise, one that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Grand Admiral Joshua Wachter had been about the only senior officer who’d fought on the other side to come out of it with an intact, and even enhanced, reputation. Given nothing, but his own ingenuity, Joshua had given the Shadow Fleet a bloody nose and its first significant defeat. If the Thousand Families had backed him to the hilt, instead of sticking a metaphorical knife in his back, the war would have gone the other way. Colin still had nightmares about the moment when his ships had been — apparently — locked out of flicker-space with a wall of missiles bearing down on their positions.

And politics had dictated that Joshua be given a place in the Provisional Government.

“We received a dispatch boat from Hawthorn four hours ago,” Joshua said, in his dry voice. He could be inspirational or businesslike, as he chose. “The ship was dispatched as soon as the Caidin returned to Hawthorn, reporting that Cottbus is apparently in rebellion against the Empire.”

Colin winced. Cottbus was the third major industrial hub in the Empire… and the only one outside the Inner Worlds. The Hohenzollern Family had developed it in conjunction with several other Clans in hopes of breaking the Cicero stranglehold on starship construction, including superdreadnaughts. Cottbus had one of the three Type-I Shipyards… and the ability, he presumed, to expand the shipyards to produce more superdreadnaughts. The world hadn’t been a dynamo of research and development — very few worlds, under the Empire, had carried out advanced research and development — but it should have had promise. It was one of the reasons why he had devoted so much effort to securing it.

“The report is fairly simple,” Joshua continued. “The cruisers were ordered to dock at the command fortress, but the CO decided to leave one of the cruisers out of the gravity shadow, just in case of trouble. The command fortress opened fire as soon as the cruisers entered close engagement range and all eight were destroyed. The Caidin was very lucky to evade a pair of battlecruisers, but it flickered out and was able to return to Hawthorn. It downloaded a full report to us, but unfortunately we have very little data beyond the basic sensor data.”

He paused. “The evidence strongly suggests that Cottbus intends to be in rebellion against the Empire,” he concluded. “The sensors suggested that the fleet elements seen within the system were all refitted and ready for battle. I suspect that we must consider the entire sector, perhaps including the surrounding sectors, to be under hostile control.”

Colin scowled as the strategic display appeared in front of them, showing known and suspected dispositions for the Imperial Navy. Cottbus was far enough from Earth to have some degree of effective independence — the Hohenzollern Family or Clan could have been up to anything there, up to and including building superdreadnaughts for placing one of their own people on the throne — and it would be weeks, at least, before they could get a major fleet out to Hawthorn, let alone launch a probing attack on Cottbus itself. In a very real sense, they now faced the same problem the Empire had faced when he’d started the rebellion… and the Empire had lost. It was a bad precedent.

“That leads us to a simple question,” Lord Tiberius Cicero said. “Who is behind this… sudden burst of rebelliousness?”

“Unknown as yet,” Joshua replied, evenly. Colin’s scowl deepened. He had had little choice, but to co-opt the Cicero for the Council, although it was something else that worried him. Joshua was an experienced naval officer who was loyal to the Empire as a force for the benefit of humanity. The Cicero was the Head of his Family and someone who stood to lose, literally, everything if the reform process went too far. He didn’t trust Tiberius, even though he admired the bravery of a man who’d travelled alone to the enemy’s flagship to talk peace, but without him, he dreaded to think what sort of economic chaos would be unleashed. The entire mess was quite bad enough already.

“There are several Admirals in that sector, almost directly opposite Macore and Morrison, who will have suspected that they were on the shit list,” Cordova said, from his position. Cordova was someone else who couldn’t be trusted completely, although there had been no sign of any treachery on his part. If nothing else, no one else would have him. “They’re not really wrong, either. I suspect that several of them have managed to get together as a unit and start preparing a counter-attack against us.”

“And given enough time,” Kathy added, from her position, “they can use Cottbus to build up their own forces and wreck huge damage on our positions.”

“So we don’t give them the time,” Daria said, flatly. Her green eyes went very cold and hard. “They think that we can’t deal with them in time. We have to move, now, to prevent them from counter-attacking.”

The argument went backwards and forwards for several minutes, while Colin listened carefully, keeping his own counsel. Daria was right, in a sense, but the Imperial Navy was overstretched. It was hard enough maintaining enough superdreadnaughts to cover all of the critical targets, while there were never enough smaller craft to provide convoy escorts and protection for interstellar freight. Hundreds of worlds were in a serious state, knocked back hundreds of years in development, and he couldn’t help them all. He could barely keep the economy going.