Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

“We will not fail again,” Colin said. “Dismissed.”

Daria nodded and strode out, followed by Mariko. The others followed, stepping through the hatch until Colin and Anderson were the only two left in the compartment. Colin turned to look at the security officer as the hatch hissed closed and quirked his eyebrows.

“There’s something I didn’t want to bring up in front of everyone else,” Anderson said. “My analysts have been plodding through the recordings of the battle.”

Colin nodded. It was rare for intelligence analysts to produce anything immediately useful during a battle, but post-battle analysis often revealed useful facts that could be taken into account during future operations. But then, the truly important fact was one Colin had already deduced. The enemy CO was crafty and enjoyed an unprecedented freedom of operation. Whoever he was, Colin knew, he had fought well and given the rebels their first real defeat.

“This included a great deal of enemy message traffic,” Anderson continued. “Much of it was useless, of course, but a couple of interesting factoids did emerge. Sir… the enemy commander is Admiral Wachter.”

Colin cursed his own oversight. How the hell had he missed that ? But then, Wachter had been removed from his last post on active service for daring to question the Imperial Navy’s personnel management schemes. And that had been before Colin had even joined the Imperial Navy.

“He’s a living legend,” Colin mused. “Why him?”

“He is minor aristocracy,” Anderson pointed out. “They might consider him a safer bet than someone with no aristocratic ties at all.”

“Or they might think they would be empowering a second Empress,” Colin countered.

“Or they might think it’s time to shit or get off the pot,” Anderson said, crudely. “What does it matter, Colin, if the Thousand Families are destroyed by us or another Empress takes power? They’re still screwed.”

“And they might manage to beat another Empress,” Colin mused. He shook his head. “He does live up to his legend, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson agreed.

Colin smiled, then looked up at the star chart. Morrison was still glowing an angry violent red. And with Admiral Wachter in command, who was really surprised? But Colin couldn’t afford to allow the man’s reputation to blind him…

Next time , he promised himself, it will be different .

There was little significant about Wolf 359. It was a red dwarf star, nearly eight light years from Earth, surrounded by a medium-sized asteroid field and a couple of rogue comets. The sheer uselessness of the system, at least when it came to housing large numbers of humans, had contributed to the Sandakan Corporation’s decision — back before the Thousand Families had been established — to build its primary industrial facility in the system. It might force them to ship their products to other star systems, but it was theirs . Even after the Thousand Families had taken control of the human race, Wolf 359 was still their private fiefdom.

“Impressive,” Cordova muttered, his tone — for once — serious. “Anyone would think they were worried about being attacked.”

“Anyone would be quite right,” Commander Patrick Jones pointed out, dryly. “An attack here would be disastrous.”

The Sandakan Family was one of the most powerful of the Thousand Families, but they had invested almost solely in starship production rather than spreading out their portfolio. It was why they continuously pressed for greater shipping contracts for their shipping lines, he suspected, and why they were so nervous about damage to Wolf 359. Indeed, their investment was so concentrated that it made him wonder if they too weren’t suffering from a cash shortage. It was quite possible that Roosevelt wasn’t the only one of the Thousand Families in danger of bankruptcy.

But Wolf 359 was very secure. A hundred shipyard structures, including a giant Class-III shipyard, hung in orbit around the red star, surrounded by over two hundred industrial nodes and a hundred heavily-armed fortresses. And they were backed up by dozens of starships, including a superdreadnaught squadron that seemed more active than any of the squadrons they’d observed on their way from Jackson’s Folly to Wolf 359. A direct attack against the shipyard would be futile.

“It would put them at death’s door,” Cordova agreed. It was odd how he seemed to understand the Thousand Families, although most Imperial Navy officers had at least a passing familiarity with how the system worked. “Let’s see if we can open it for them, shall we?”

He grinned at his own joke — as if it wasn’t from a well-known piece of public entertainment — and then turned to face his crew. “Have you reprogrammed the flicker drive?”

“Aye, sir,” the engineer said. “And installed the replacement systems. But it will be risky…”

“I know,” Cordova said. “But remember, risk is our business.”

Patrick winced. There was one obvious weakness to the whole structure, one that Cordova had gleefully pointed out as soon as they’d started looking at the reports from the stealthed drones. Indeed, it was so obvious that Patrick had racked his brains trying to understand how it could be a trap. But it seemed that the Sandakan Family had never considered just how crazy some of their enemies could be. The system had never been threatened, not even during the First Interstellar War. They’d grown lax… and careless.

Cordova stood and moved over to his command chair. “Power up the drives,” he ordered. “We jump in ten minutes.”

Patrick took his seat and braced himself. The Imperial Navy would have recoiled in horror from what Cordova had in mind. Even the most idiotic Admiral would have had second thoughts. But Cordova had seen the possibilities and started to outline his plan before Patrick could think of any proper objections. And his crew were just going along with it…

He shook his head in disbelief as the drives started to power up. Whatever happened, they were going to make history. He just hoped that they survived the experience.

“The gunboats sent a message, sir,” Lieutenant Lester reported. “They found nothing.”

Commodore Amir Sandakan nodded, sourly. Wolf 359 was never visited, save by the family’s starships and the occasional smuggler who thought he could slip into the shipyard and make a few new contacts. Normally, they were chased away quickly by the security patrols, if they didn’t think better of it after looking at the brooding fortresses. Besides, the Sandakan Family paid the best rates in the Empire. There were few discontented workers in the massive complex and those who were openly discontented tended to leave quickly.

“Tell them to return,” he ordered. The brief detection of a flicker pulse might have been nothing more than a glitch… or a starship, jumping out instead of jumping in. Maybe someone had tried to sneak into the system, then withdrawn as covertly as they had arrived. “We can run a tracking exercise on them as they come.”

“Understood, sir,” Lester said.

Amir turned and looked up at the massive display. There had been no way to avoid realising that Wolf 359 had been slowing down for years, ever since the Empire had stopped producing new superdreadnaughts. Indeed, demand for smaller starships and commercial starships had been falling too. The more he’d looked at the figures, the more he’d started to realise that the family was on the verge of serious problems. It took a major investment to keep Wolf 359 operating and that investment might no longer be forthcoming…