Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

He scowled, looking from face to face. They all considered him absurdly young — and they were right, in an Empire where the wealthy could expect to live for over two hundred years. And they thought of him as inexperienced, which was also true. He didn’t have the decades of experience each of them had in fine-tuning their patronage networks. But he liked to think that he had the galactic perspective they lacked.

“That was not a problem as long as we didn’t face a serious threat,” he said. They knew it, they had to know it, but it needed to be said. “But now we do face a threat, one that may well overwhelm us and destroy everything our ancestors have built. This is not the time to allow corruption and decay to damage the system. We have to get ready to fight for our lives — and half of us have forgotten how !

“We’ve never needed to really fight in living memory. It was easy to make the decision to annex Jackson’s Folly, even though it took years of arguing to make the decision we all knew was inevitable anyway. We have annexed dozens of other worlds, none of which could really hope to resist our overwhelming firepower. And if they took out a handful of smaller ships… so what? We had plenty more where they came from. As long as we held the biggest stick in the known universe, we never had to actually fight .

“But now we are facing a united rebel force that has superdreadnaughts of its own,” he reminded them. “We are facing people who want to destroy us and piss on the remains, who have access to the prospective new technologies of the Geeks and Nerds, who are the people we rejected because they had too much integrity or ambition to become part of our patronage networks. The enemy may be thousands of light years away, but our backs are pressed against the wall. By the time they get to Morrison, let alone Earth, we must be ready to face them!”

He took a deep breath. “If we fail to get ready,” he added, “we may as well surrender now and save time.”

“Surrender is not an option,” Lord Bernadotte snapped.

“Then we have to get ready to fight,” Tiberius snapped back. “Admiral Wachter is cleaning out people who have, put bluntly, helped to ruin a naval base we desperately need. Why exactly are we objecting?”

“Because he could build a patronage network of his own, then turn on us,” Lord Rothschild pointed out, in a tone that might be used to explain something to a particularly stupid child. “We have never trusted anyone with so much power since the Empress…”

“Except if we don’t let him have his head, we will lose when the rebels arrive in orbit,” Tiberius countered, feeling his face heat. “Tell me something. How many of the ordinary crewmen at Morrison would have switched sides if the rebels had reached them before Admiral Wachter?”

“None of them,” Lord Bernadotte said. “They’re loyal…”

He broke off as several listeners snorted rudely. They all knew that the first rebels had mutinied against their commanders — and that they’d been joined by others, thousands of others. The superdreadnaughts the rebels had taken couldn’t have been operated without a full crew, certainly not in combat. No, this was worse than mutiny. Captured crews had switched sides without hesitation.

“I read the report very carefully,” Tiberius said, pressing his advantage. “The ordinary crewmen lived hellish lives. Their pay was frequently delayed. They were at the mercy of bullying rings operated by stronger crewmen. Discipline, in short, was absolutely non-existent. And, lest we forget, several ships from Morrison did vanish when they heard the news of the rebellion. Why should the other crewmen not join the rebels?”

One of the older lords leaned forward. “Gratitude?”

“Try using gratitude on a dog that’s been kicked once too often,” Lady Madeline said. “We should try to forestall another series of mutinies through better treatment.”

“We could also deploy more Blackshirts,” Lord Bernadotte pointed out. “There’s never any shortage of recruits.”

Tiberius scowled. Blackshirts were good at teaching newly-occupied planets the futility of resistance, but they were unwelcome on older worlds and downright dangerous on starships. Between their ignorance, the drug-conditioning and general aggressive attitude, their mere presence provoked hatred and rage among the host population.

“But we are being forced to expand our training and conditioning programs,” Lord Rothschild countered. “We simply cannot supply Blackshirts in enough numbers to keep threatened planets under control.”

“We have no choice,” Lord Bernadotte insisted. He stood to lose badly if the rebels continued their advance, or if worlds under his control revolted against outside authority. “The Blackshirts are one of the few trustworthy forces we have under our control.”

“That’s because they’re addled into obedience,” Lord Rothschild reminded him. “You give a Blackshirt something out of the ordinary to handle and he’ll fall apart.”

“The conditioning keeps them loyal,” Lord Bernadotte snapped. “We need loyalty now, more than ever.”

Tiberius sighed. There were billions of Blackshirts in the Empire, which seemed a huge number until one actually looked at the map. Deploying them across thousands of separate planets meant that there were relatively few Blackshirts for each world, even if they were only deployed to the rebellious ones. Besides, the new demands on the imperial shipping network ensured that transporting Blackshirts — or anyone else, for that matter — would proceed slower than they might wish.

We cut out all the slack, he thought. It had never occurred to him just how tightly the Empire was bound together until they started trying to call up commercial spacers to serve in the military. Thousands had simply deserted, taking their ships with them; others had obeyed, reducing the number of freighters hauling fright between the stars. In hindsight, it might have been better to ask for volunteers rather than simply trying to conscript everyone they could. But it had been the first panicky reaction and by then the damage had been done.

He recalled the latest set of predictions from the family’s analysts. Unless something quite remarkable was done, interstellar shipping was going to slow down quite remarkably for years, shattering the economic bonds that held large parts of the Empire together. Even if the rebels were beaten tomorrow, they’d noted, it would be centuries before all the damage was repaired.

Irritated, he slapped the table. The others stopped arguing and glared at him.

“We need to gamble,” he said. “Admiral Wachter is the best naval officer currently at our disposal — and he’s right. Morrison was allowed to rot away, by the officers he has relieved of their duties and then imprisoned. There will be time enough afterwards to repair the patronage networks.”

Lord Rothschild gave Tiberius a long considering look. “And if you’re wrong about his loyalty?”

“There are precautions we can take,” Tiberius said, coldly. “But we also need to bear in mind, at all times, that our first priority is defeating the rebellion. Infighting only helps their cause.”

He paused, knowing that he had their complete and undivided attention. “And we need to break the logjam and appoint someone to serve as Home Fleet’s commander,” he added. “We have put the question of for far too long.”

“Pity no one knows what happened to the Empress,” Lord Bernadotte muttered. His family had once been one of her supporters, at least until she’d actually declared herself Empress and claimed supreme power. “We could have used her.”