Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Might

She understood, even as her crews scrambled to reach their duty stations. The rebels — and it had to be the rebels — had launched their missiles on ballistic trajectories. They’d solved the problem of burning out the missile drives by simply not activating them at all, right up until the moment detection was inevitable. And then the drives had gone active.

Her point defence was still frantically powering up, she realised. It was too late.

Colin felt his smile grow wider as the fleet dropped its cloak and went to full military power, heading down into the gravity shadow. The sneak attack hadn’t worked perfectly, but it had worked well enough to let the missiles get close to their targets. Normally, the enemy’s confidence in their defences would be fully justified. Now… the Geeks had upset their calculations once again.

Not that stealth missiles are beyond the Empire’s powers , he thought. They just never put the concept into practical use .

“One minute to impact,” the tactical officer reported.

“Transmit our message after the first impact,” Colin ordered. “And then prepare to engage the enemy.”

Wilma watched helplessly as the first laser head detonated, sending a ravening pencil of energy lashing out and burning against her station’s shields. Others followed, punching through the shields and digging into her hull. The station groaned like a living thing as the hull was broken in a dozen places, then shuddered violently as contact nukes slammed in and detonated against the hull. Red lights flared up on the status display until the entire board seemed to be coated in red light, seconds before all power failed.

And then the world seemed to explode into light around her.

“Five of the fortresses are gone, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “Three more are badly damaged; the remainder are largely untouched.”

“Transmit the message,” Colin ordered. There was nothing the defenders could do, now, to prevent him from ripping the shipyard to shreds. But there was a chance to make them surrender. “And then take us into bombardment range.”

Lieutenant Kitty Fergusson had never expected to find herself in command of one station, let alone the entire defensive network. But her CO was enjoying himself on the moon, having anticipated a week or two without any real trouble, and her other superiors were either dead or out of touch. She eyed the expanding cloud of debris that had been Defence Station Alpha and shivered, barely able to keep her shock under control. A station that had been supposed to be damn near indestructible had been blown into fragments, with ease.

The whole situation seemed like a nightmare. She pinched herself, only to discover that it was real. The enemy fleet was neatly out of range of the intact fortifications, but it was perfectly placed to shatter the shipyard itself. Given a few minutes, trillions of credits worth of investment would be utterly destroyed. The rebels had pulled off a daring attack and won.

“Lieutenant,” the communications officer said, “we are picking up a rebel message.”

Kitty almost cringed. She knew she’d only been promoted because her relatives happened to include a number of loyal Bernadotte clients. And, she suspected, because her CO rather liked looking at her, even though he’d never tried to lure Kitty into bed. She couldn’t think of any tactic that might drive the rebels off, certainly not without devastating the shipyard in the process. And if she destroyed it herself, her family would be expelled from the patronage network and left to grovel for scraps in the gutters. She knew what happened to those who failed so disastrously.

And, even if she did want to fight, would the others follow her?

“Let me hear it,” she said.

“The battle is over,” the rebel leader said. “Your position is hopeless. You can choose between joining us, accepting internment or being slaughtered. If the former, you will be welcome; we will reward those who join us with promotion and responsibilities they could not have dreamed of under the Thousand Families. If you choose, instead, to be interned, you will be treated well. But if you choose to fight, you will be rapidly destroyed. You have five minutes to make up your mind.”

Kitty felt stares boring into the back of her head. She’d never really had to face tough decisions in her life, let alone one that might draw disagreement from her subordinates. The thought of them turning on her had been unthinkable only mere hours ago. Now, she had to consider their reaction. Would they follow her if she sought to fight? Or would they simply stick a knife in her back and surrender themselves?

But, in the end, she knew the fight was hopeless.

“Signal the rebels,” she ordered, quietly. “Tell them that we surrender.”

“They’ve surrendered, sir,” the communications officer said.

Colin let out a sigh of relief. Destroying the shipyard would have been easy, but they needed the shipyard to start rebuilding the damage caused by the war. But it was also possible that Home Fleet could sortie and recover the shipyard before the war could be brought to an end.

“Order the freighters to move in,” he ordered. “I want them everyone on the shipyard loaded onto the freighters as quickly as possible.”

He allowed himself a smile. The shipyard was useless without the trained personnel to run it — and the Empire didn’t have a large pool of trained manpower. Much of the people they did have had died at Jupiter or Wolf 359; even if they stripped smaller shipyards of their personnel it would still take weeks or months to restart operations. In the long run, Colin calculated, the Empire would be unable to put the shipyard back to work until the matter was settled, one way or the other.

“Send the Geeks a note of congratulations,” he added, “then take us back to the edge of the gravity shadow. It’s time to head onwards to Earth.”

The display showed Earth clearly, only one jump from Terra Nova. By now, Colin suspected, the Thousand Families would be utterly overwhelmed. They probably knew that Terra Nova had been attacked, if his calculations were correct. Unused to making quick decisions, they would have to decide between sending superdreadnaughts rushing back to Terra Nova — and they’d already missed the best opportunity for a genuine victory — or keeping them in position to defend Earth. Politically, he suspected, it would be impossible to decide before it was no longer an issue.

“Send a courier boat to the RV point,” he ordered. “I want a full download from Captain Cordova.”

He watched the courier boat flicker out, then he turned back to monitoring progress within the gravity shadow. Thankfully, there was no resistance. The shipyards and orbital fortifications were rapidly emptied of their personnel, allowing the freighters to start climbing back up towards the edge of the gravity shadow. Once they jumped out, the personnel would be held at the RV point until the war was over. Or, if it took too long to win, they would be shipped back to Morrison or Jackson’s Folly and put to work there.

“There’s too many people on the moon to evacuate,” the coordinator warned. “Sir…”

“Leave them,” Colin ordered, after a moment. The civilians wouldn’t be harmed by the Empire, of that he was sure. It would shatter the bonds holding the patronage networks together beyond repair. “Just make sure you confiscate all of the shuttles and anything else they could use to reach orbit.”

He watched as the remaining freighters flickered out, then glanced down at the report from the courier boat. Cordova had done well, according to the cloaked ship that had monitored Sol after Cordova had flickered out. The enemy had taken a bloody nose, then had been forced to watch helplessly as the rebels retreated, untouched and untouchable. They had to be fuming with rage…