Christopher Nuttall: Democracy's Light

“Emergence,” the helm officer said. “Captain, we have emerged precisely in the designated emergence zone.”

Captain Martin Salaam smiled as the cruiser reverted to normal space, so gently that all he felt was a twist in his stomach. “Excellent,” he said, as the display started to fill up with icons. The flicker drive made precision impossible — which was why designated emergence zones were so vast, even by interplanetary standards — but the helmsman had done well. He’d also been lucky. “Communications, transmit our IFF and the data packet to System Command.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. By now, the defenders of Cottbus would be responding to the unscheduled arrival of the cruiser squadron, although they would probably suspect its purpose. Cottbus might be several thousand light years from Earth, but they would know about the Rebellion and quite probably about the Fall of Earth. “I’ve transmitted the signal.”

Salaam nodded, leaning back into his command chair and studying the display thoughtfully. Cottbus was almost exactly on the opposite side of the Empire to most of the fighting and looked relatively untouched, although several starships had defected from the Sector to join the Rebellion. Two squadrons of superdreadnaughts lurked along the outer edge of the gravity shadow, while hundreds of smaller ships and commercial vessels piled their trade throughout the system. Cottbus, one of the industrial hubs for the sector, looked to be gearing up for war.

Garry Owen and her fellow cruisers had been dispatched from Earth in the wake of the final battle, when the Thousand Families had surrendered their authority to the Provisional Government. The mission, directly from Admiral Harper himself, had been simple enough, but dangerous; they were to update the various Imperial Navy bases and starships on what had happened and, hopefully, accept their loyalty to the new regime. It wasn’t going to be easy. The higher the rank, the more likely it was that the officer would be a client of the Thousand Families, or someone else with a vested interest in keeping the Empire as it had been before the Rebellion. It was quite possible that Admiral Wilhelm would agree to join the new order… or that he would order his ships to rebel against the rebels.

Salaam’s lips twitched. He’d been a junior officer when the rebellion had begun and he’d seized control of Garry Owen by leading a mutiny against her former Captain, a tyrant with wandering hands. Admiral Wilhelm was unlikely to find anything to love in him, let alone the others who had formed the original conspiracy that had toppled the Empire. An alliance of Rim-dwellers, renegades, freebooters, first-rank worlds and mutinous Imperial Navy officers would be anthemia to him, although in the absence of any surviving faction from the Families, he would have to rebel in his own name if he decided to oppose the Provisional Government. He didn’t have a reputation as a tyrant, an officer who would be removed from command in the general house-cleaning of the Rebellion, but he would fear for his own future.

And I wonder what he intends to do with all of those superdreadnaughts , he thought, as he took in their heightened state of preparedness. A civilian would not have understood, but to an experienced officer — and Salaam was experienced — there were a thousand cues as to the state of the hovering giants of space. They weren’t the degraded beasts of Home Fleet, or of the Morrison Sector Fleet before Admiral Joshua Wachter introduced Admiral D’Ammassa to the joys of breathing hard vacuum, but fully-armed and refitted ships, itching for battle. Admiral Wilhelm, or whoever was in charge, was clearly determined to build up as powerful a fleet as possible.

“We are receiving a communication,” the communications officer said. “They’re ordering us — all of us — to proceed at once to rendezvous with the command fortress.”

“Disregard,” Salaam ordered. “The Caidin is to remain outside the gravity shadow and keep watch. The remainder of the squadron are to follow us.”

The sheer size of the defences impressed him as the squadron tilted into the gravity shadow and heading down towards the command fortress. It was a massive station, fully twice as vast as a superdreadnaught, so large that it was visible against the blue-green glow of the planet beyond. All of that ponderous tonnage, he knew, would be weapons and support systems; no orbital platform needed to worry about drives, or anything beyond very limited manoeuvring capability. There was enough firepower packed into the station’s bulk to vaporise an unshielded superdreadnaught in a single shot… and there were no less than fifteen of them, orbiting the planet in high orbit. Below the platforms, surrounded by automated missile and energy weapon platforms, were dozens of asteroids, mainly floating industrial habitats.

He pulled up the briefing data from the computers and scanned it quickly. Cottbus had been claimed by the Hohenzollern Family back in the founding years of the Empire and, as a Family-owned enterprise, had blossomed. The workers down on the planet would live in a state of neo-feudalism, born and bred to serve as workers for the Hohenzollerns… and probably unaware of anything beyond their own world. Some such worlds, such as Pollack, had managed to nurture rebellious groups regardless, but others had not… and no one knew where Cottbus stood. The presence of so many ships and orbital defences was probably a bad sign. No one could dominate a planet without unquestioned control of space.

“Direct link from Caidin ,” the communications officer said, suddenly. “They’re being ordered to join us and rendezvous with the command station.”

Salaam winced. “Tell them to disregard and remain where they are, unless directly threatened,” he ordered. “I’m starting to have a very bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah,” the helmsman said. “I feel like I’ve been asked to fly right into the lion’s jaws.”

“Captain,” the tactical officer said, suddenly. “I’m picking up targeting emissions from the command station!”

Salaam swore. It could be just a drill, but Imperial Navy Regulations specifically forbade lighting anyone up with targeting sensors unless you intended to shoot at them, or in the midst of a properly prepared and planned exercise. No one in their right mind would risk it, unless they intended to open fire…

”Evasive manoeuvres,” he snapped. They were far too close to the command station and even though they were outside energy range, the station could fire enough missiles to overwhelm their combined point defence without even trying. “Contact the Caidin and order them to move… ”

“Missiles fired,” the tactical officer said. “Incoming…”

The station blossomed with death, launching nearly five hundred missiles into the squadron. Salaam closed his eyes, even as the point defence opened fire, knowing that it was far too little, too late. Barely thirty seconds after the fortress opened fire, the missiles struck home and blasted Garry Owen into an expanding ball of plasma.

High overhead, Caidin turned to run, barely dodging a pair of battlecruisers that flickered in and attempted to engage the light cruiser. The cruiser flickered out, just in time to avoid a spread of missiles from the lead battlecruiser, carrying a desperate warning back to Earth.

The old order wasn’t dead.

Not yet.

“It was a raid, of course.”

“I highly doubt it,” Admiral Markus Wilhelm said, as he replayed the brief encounter between his command fortress and the eight cruisers. “If they had intended to raid the defences, they certainly would not have come within range of my fortresses, would they?”