Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

“Shut it off,” Percival ordered, harshly. The voice vanished from the command centre. Penny wondered, absently, if he had realised that everyone in the system was hearing the message. There was no way to jam the emergency channel, even if doing it hadn’t been a direct violation of Imperial Navy regulations. “Order Commodore William to continue his advance and engage the enemy.”

Penny looked down at him. “Admiral,” she said. “Do you not wish to make a response?”

“No,” Percival snarled. His face had purpled alarmingly. “I will make my response in missile fire!”

Penny nodded, bitterly. The rebels had offered to allow Percival to go anywhere he wanted, even all the way back to the Core Worlds, but that would be a disaster for the Admiral. His patrons would desert him, he would get the blame for the disaster and he would finish his days on a penal world, if they didn’t simply execute him for gross incompetence. The Roosevelt Family wouldn’t breathe a word in his defence. Penny doubted that anyone would even try to defend him. They’d want to bury him as quickly as possible before turning their attention to crushing the rebels.

She shook her head slowly. Percival was caught between two fires. Only destroying the rebel fleet — perhaps not even that — could save him from nemesis. He couldn’t even accept the rebel offer and hide somewhere in the Beyond.

To a man like Percival, being cut off from the Empire and its power structure would be a fate worse than death.

Colin sat back as he finished making his speech. He would have been astonished if Percival had surrendered, even after Colin had offered to guarantee his safety and free passage to anywhere he wanted to go in the Empire. Perhaps he didn’t trust Colin to keep his word. Hell, Colin wasn’t sure if he trusted himself to keep his word; having Percival in his hands would be a great temptation. He could draw his pistol and put a bullet through his head, or torture him to death, or even just crush his skull with his bare hands. The possibilities were endless.

He smiled and shook his head. They hadn’t won the battle yet. He watched the display as the enemy fleet started to pick up the pace, heading right towards Colin’s fleet on a least-time course. The red spheres that marked weapons range were growing closer. So far, not even the Geeks had been able to devise missiles with longer ranges than standard-issue Imperial Navy designs, although they swore that they were working on it. Colin suspected that they wouldn’t change the face of space warfare as much as might be expected, although they would make assaulting a planet easier.

Colin shifted in his chair as the timer ticked down towards zero. He was aware, on some deep primal level, of the hopes and fears of his entire fleet. The ones who had joined the mutiny, the rebels who had known their cause was hopeless and fought on anyway, the men and women he had rescued from the penal world… they all knew that this would be the moment when the rebellion became a true threat to the Empire, or was destroyed, shattered beyond repair. Colin had never been a gambler — he had regarded it as a poor habit, although he had sometimes taken money off Percival at the gaming tables — yet he knew that this was a gamble. It was easy, looking at the oncoming enemy fleet, to wonder if the naysayer factions had been right.

“Activate the drones,” he ordered.

There were seventy-two drones deployed in a rough shell in front of the fleet, each one configured to present an image of a superdreadnaught to any passive sensors, or even active sensors at long range. The Geeks had invented them and Colin had tested them extensively against the best sensors his superdreadnaughts had, making sure that the Empire couldn’t separate a drone from a real ship. It seemed that it required active sensors at very close range to penetrate the deception.

Percival would know that it was a deception, of course. Colin might have had a low opinion of his intelligence, but it wasn’t that low. There was no way the rebels could have gotten their hands on seventy-two superdreadnaughts — eighty-one, counting the original ships — or Colin would have smashed Camelot and advanced on Earth, with very little in his way to stop him. But then, Colin had expected that too.

“All drones are active,” the tactical officer said. “They’ll be seeing them… about now.”

“Admiral,” the duty officer said, as the screen suddenly lit up with red icons. “We have new contacts… seventy-two additional superdreadnaughts!”

Percival’s voice cut through the chaos. “It’s a bluff,” he said, savagely. Penny blinked at the sudden decisiveness in his voice. “That’s how the bastard won at Khartoum.”

All of a sudden, it made sense. Back when Percival had been a mere Commodore, desperate to prove himself and win the coveted promotion to Admiral, he’d used Commander Walker to win an exercise. Penny had studied the battle and had been impressed; Commander Walker had used drones to lure the enemy forces out of position, then hit them when they were least expecting it. It had been a tactical masterstroke and Percival, at least, had good cause to remember it. Except…

“Admiral,” she said, slowly. “Wouldn’t he expect it too?”

Percival turned his chair to look up at her. “What do you mean?”

“He can’t have so many superdreadnaughts,” Penny said. “We know he can’t have so many superdreadnaughts, even if he had captured the entire sector fleet. So why is he playing a bluff he knows is going to be called?”

Percival said nothing, so she pressed her advantage. “Admiral, pull back the ships and combine their point defence with the battle stations,” she said. “If it’s a bluff, it won’t hurt us and if it’s covering for something…”

Percival slapped her, hard enough to send her rocking back on her heels. “He knows he’s walked into a meatgrinder,” Percival snarled. Penny barely heard him through the pain. He’d slapped her right in front of the entire command staff! He couldn’t have made her position as the Admiral’s Whore any clearer if he’d bent her over the tactical console and raped her from behind. “He’s trying to bluff us to win time to recharge his drives and flicker out. You are dismissed from my service. You will report to your quarters and wait there for reassignment. I will deal with you once the battle is won.”

Penny pulled herself to her feet, held herself ramrod straight, and strode out of the command centre, refusing to look at anyone or rub her face. Oddly, part of her felt relieved. Wherever Percival sent her, at least she wouldn’t have to put up with his presence any longer.

And, as much as she hated to admit it, there was a good chance that the bastard might be right.

“They think they’re calling our bluff,” Colin said, with heavy satisfaction. Truthfully, it might not have made any difference if the Imperial Navy starships had started to retreat, but at least this way it prevented any possibility of having to fight both sections of the defences at once. “Prepare to fire.”

He settled back into his chair as the datanet updated, with the arsenal ships in the lead. It had taken a great deal of careful planning to program the firing sequence, although Colin privately suspected that at least some of that effort had been wasted. The KISS principle had to be observed.

“Fire,” he ordered.

Commodore William knew that few regarded him as an adroit tactician. In his fifty-two years in the Imperial Navy, he had made few mistakes… but he had no great successes either. His advancement had been fuelled by connections — his patrons were quite happy to deal with a man of limited ambition — and considerable seniority. He’d been a Commodore for over thirteen years and knew that there would probably be no further promotions in his career. On the other hand, command of a superdreadnaught squadron was a shining mark in a career file. Who knew where it would lead after he retired?