Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

“I don’t understand,” she confessed. Wachter’s mind seemed to move in strange patterns, rather than anything she recognised. But then, her own mind had been badly damaged. “We can project an illusionary gravity field… but what practical good does it serve?”

“One of the problems with the flicker drive is that the larger the ship, the further you have to be from a gravity well to use the drive safely,” Wachter said, slipping into lecture mode. “So you can have gunboats and shuttles jumping into a planet’s atmosphere, but superdreadnaughts have to be well away from the gravity well to make their own jumps. We are so paranoid about losing a superdreadnaught that we program safety interlocks into the drives to prevent them from activating when they are too close to a planetary mass.”

Penny nodded. There was a story about an officer who had tried to jump a battlecruiser into a planetary atmosphere. No one knew what had happened after that, but he and his ship had never been seen again. The general conclusion was that the flicker field had snapped out of existence, scattering the ship’s atoms across five light years.

She smiled as light dawned. “They won’t be able to jump out,” she said. “They’d be trapped.”

“At least until they take out the safety interlocks,” Wachter said. He shrugged. “By its very nature, the trick will only work once. As the gravity field isn’t real , they might be able to jump out safely once the interlocks are removed.”

“Clever,” Penny said. She would never have considered the possibility — and neither would have Percival. He had only believed in brute force. It might have worked if he’d had the squadrons to apply it properly. “Why hasn’t this been done before?”

“The basic idea was discussed hundreds of years ago, but it rather relied on intimate knowledge of what the enemy’s technology was programmed to do,” Wachter said. “How often did that happen during the wars?”

Penny shook her head. She would have been surprised if it had happened at all.

But it would work here, she was sure of it. Wachter was right. They did know what technology the rebels were using — and how best to disrupt it.

“I’m putting you in command of establishing the network of stations we’ll need,” Wachter said. “Draw whatever resources the engineers require, but don’t let word get out to anyone of what we have in mind. The Geeks might figure it out if they see what we’re doing.”

He smiled at her. “And if it works,” he added, “we could win the war in one fell swoop.”

The darkness of interstellar space had always chilled Colin to the bone. There was nothing, but eternal darkness, broken only by pinpricks of light. If something went wrong with the flicker drive in interstellar space, it would be centuries before the fleet managed to limp into the closest star system — and by then the Empire would probably have regained control of the rebel-held territories. And yet, it was the ideal RV point for the rebels. There was no way the Imperial Navy would be able to locate them save through an impossible stroke of luck.

Colin stood in the observation blister, staring out at the stars. On this scale, even the massive superdreadnaught was tiny, utterly unnoticeable in the endless desert of interstellar space. He wanted to take the discussion to the conference room, but he refused to allow his groundless fears to get the better of him. Instead, he watched the stars — and listened as his subordinates spoke. There would be time for a formal meeting later, if necessary.

“We took out the defences of twelve worlds and hammered their ground-based facilities,” Commodore Jeremy Damiani said. “Resistance was marginal, although one enemy destroyer did manage to ram one of our destroyers broadsides, taking both craft out.”

Colin scowled. A destroyer was barely noticeable compared to the superdreadnaughts, but he felt each and every loss like a dagger in the heart. Besides, the rebels simply didn’t have as many ships to play with as the Imperial Navy. They could afford to keep pouring smaller ships into rebel territories indefinitely, forcing him to hold back his own ships to counter the threat — or allowing them to run riot behind his lines. He was marginally surprised the Imperial Navy hadn’t already started trying to raid his territories, although it was possible that they hadn’t yet recovered from the shock of the first rebellion. It had only been three months since Earth had realised that the Thousand Families had a rebellion on their hands.

Unless they were warned earlier , Colin reminded himself, again. He pushed the thought aside, angrily. There was no point in worrying about something he couldn’t change. If Percival had been honest with them right from the start we might never have got out of Sector 117.

“Good work,” he said. “Are you ready to proceed into the next sector?”

“As soon as we reload our missile tubes and external racks,” Damiani assured him. “The operation is underway now.”

Colin nodded. The Imperial Navy rarely practiced reloading its starships in interstellar space, even though the fleet train had once been the key to victory in the First Interstellar War. But then, the Imperial Navy had shipyards and repair bases everywhere and no prospect of a massive fleet deployment, not when there was no real threat to the Empire. Colin’s forces didn’t have that luxury. He’d forced them to practice deep-space reloading until they could do it in their sleep. They didn’t dare risk setting up a shipyard anywhere the Empire could find it.

“The freighter crews have brought you everything you could want,” Daria commented. “I think you have good reason to be proud of them.”

“I am,” Colin said. “Without their services, the offensive would have ground to a halt.”

The Imperial Navy’s officers tended to sneer at those assigned to operate the fleet train. They were seen as little better than merchantmen, officers and crew considered too unskilled to be allowed to serve on warships, yet not worth the effort of discharging from the navy. It wasn’t surprising that morale in the fleet train was often very low, or that they often delayed reloading just long enough to embarrass the warship crews. Colin knew he couldn’t allow himself that attitude, not now. Besides, the Imperial Navy’s attitude had grown up over centuries of peace. Right now, the fleet train was a necessity.

“Make sure you tell them that,” Daria said, tartly. “These aren’t naval personnel, you know. No offense.”

“None taken,” Colin said. Independent spacers were often more prideful than military or corporate personnel. If they felt shunned, they were quite capable of simply resigning from the fleet train and going home. “I’ll tour some of the ships once the reloading is complete, if that is acceptable.”

“It will do,” Daria conceded. She gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Are you still intending to advance on Tyson?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Colin said. “The base is in poor condition, according to the defectors, but given time they could turn it into a proper threat. And there are at least four squadrons of various starships stationed there. I’d prefer to destroy or capture them before we press onwards against Morrison.”

“They might just cut the ships loose,” Damiani pointed out. “We don’t need more raiders in our rear.”

“Or send them back to Morrison,” Colin agreed. All of his projections indicated that the Empire would make a stand at Morrison. It was the best place to face the rebel fleet, if they could mass enough superdreadnaughts in place to give Colin a bloody nose. Besides, they’d know as well as Colin did that he had to obliterate Morrison before he could advance on Earth. “No, we have to go after them as soon as possible.”