Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

He studied the display, keeping his expression as calm and composed as possible. Showing his subordinates his shock and dismay would have been unhelpful at best, disastrous at work. His crew was working away at their consoles, confident that Colin would find a way to get them out of this fix. Only a day ago, he’d overhead two crewmen refer to him as the Old Man and he’d thought that his heart would burst with pride. It hadn’t been a conventional ascent to Admiral’s rank, but he’d made it and he was accepted by his crew. Now all of his dreams were threatening to turn into dust.

The enemy fleet had actually jumped into the system some distance from the planet, so far away that part of Colin wondered if they’d had a major navigational error. It would have been believable if the fleet had arrived scattered all over the system, or if they’d been using commercial-grade computers and drives, but these were Imperial Navy warships. The enemy commander had flickered into the precise location he’d designated and Colin had a sneaking suspicion that he knew why. The enemy superdreadnaughts would have more than long enough to recharge their flicker drives before they entered missile range. They might not have deduced the true nature of the arsenal ships, but they had certainly deduced that most of the superdreadnaughts orbiting Camelot simply didn’t exist.

“We are picking up a transmission from the enemy fleet,” the communications officer said tonelessly. “They’re transmitting it to the entire system.”

“Let’s hear it,” Colin said. He doubted that the enemy commander’s words would make any difference. They all knew what the Empire would do to them if they were captured alive. “Put it through on speakers.”

“…Is Admiral Quintana, Commanding Officer of Sector 99,” a voice said. It sounded old, but determined. Colin had never met Admiral Quintana, but he knew him by reputation as a fussy old man with a mind like a steel trap. It didn’t bode well for the coming battle. An Imperial Navy Commander with powerful connections and a refusal to be tricked or bullied into making mistakes would be bad enough, but Admiral Quintana also had the firepower advantage. “I speak now to those who have lifted their hands against the Empire.

“If you stand down your ships and surrender without a fight, I am empowered to offer you transport to a stage-one colony, rather than execution or a penal world. Your rebellion will be forgiven, if not forgotten. If you refuse my kind offer, I will advance against your ships and defences and hammer them flat. The Empire cannot tolerate open insurrection. You have ten minutes to decide.”

Colin smiled. Without using the flicker drive, it would take the fleet at least forty minutes to approach Camelot and enter weapons range. There was no reason to add such a deadline, unless the enemy commander hoped that it would encourage a mutiny that would overthrow the original mutineers. Colin, for himself at least, had no intention of accepting the offer. Even if he trusted Admiral Quintana to keep his word — and the Admiral’s superiors to back his play, which he didn’t — it would be a betrayal of everyone who had died in the war to just surrender and allow the Empire to dump him on a colony world. He kept his hands folded in his lap, rather than reaching for the pistol at his belt, trusting his people not to shoot him in the back. No bullet or plasma burst cracked through his skull.

“The message is repeating,” the communications officer said. Colin nodded, sourly. There was no way they could jam it, not with such a powerful broadcast. Besides, that would suggest that the rebel leadership was worried… and that would never do. “They’re alternating the source of the transmission.”

“Curious,” Colin said. The enemy fleet had to be more worried than they were admitting, particularly if they were trying to hide their flagship. He wondered, absently, which ship it was, but the fleet database they’d captured on Camelot didn’t name Admiral Quintana’s flagship. He would normally command his sector from an orbiting battle station and only transfer his flag to a flagship when commanding an operation in person. “Open a channel.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said. “Channel open, sir.”

“Admiral Quintana, this is Admiral Walker,” Colin said. “We will not surrender. Join us; help us to reform the Empire… or stay out of our way. We will not be denied.”

He hit his console, hoping — praying — that the enemy commander would listen to reason. Colin was a tactical expert and he knew that the battle was going to be bloody. By keeping his ships on station in orbit, rather than sailing out to challenge Admiral Quintana directly, he would be combining the firepower of his starships and the captured orbital battle stations. In theory, that was enough firepower to stand off even three squadrons of superdreadnaughts, but in practice half of his battle stations would be unable to engage. And Admiral Quintana had been smart enough to come up with a simple way of countering the arsenal ships. Would he try to enter the planet’s gravity field or would he simply content himself with a long-range missile duel? There was no way to know.

“Send a signal to all ships,” he ordered. “Hold your ground and they will break over us.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said.

“And add; whatever happens here, we will not be forgotten as long as the human race endures,” Colin said. Even as he spoke the words, he wondered if he was telling the truth. The Empire had buried more history than he had ever understood, until he’d read some of the forbidden history texts on Jackson’s Folly or out in the Beyond. The generation that controlled the past controlled the future… and the Empire had worked hard to ensure that its history was the only one people remembered. It made him wonder how many great battles, or true leaders of men, or cowardly traitors had been buried, without anyone remembering their names or faces. “What we have started will live on.”

“He refused to surrender,” Brent-Cochrane said, with some amusement. He’d been surprised to discover that Admiral Quintana believed that the rebels would surrender as soon as they saw his fleet, even though they had fought savagely even when his own force had mouse-trapped them at Greenland. Whatever else one could say about the rebels, they were hardly cowards, not when a coward would never have dared to rebel. “I predicted that, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did,” Admiral Quintana agreed, without malice. He looked over towards the helmsman. “Continue the advance towards the planet.”

Brent-Cochrane settled back into his seat and tried to relax. The fleet had launched an entire swarm of probes as soon as it had entered the system, quartering space to ensure that the rebels weren’t trying to sneak a cloaked fleet in on top of them. It should have been impossible for the fleet to be surprised — there was nothing subtle or particularly clever about the operational plan — yet he knew better than to underestimate the rebels. And Admiral Quintana, for all of his concern, was treating them as a conventional opponent, rebels who would surrender as soon as they smelt the first whiff of grapeshot.

It was hard to gain reliable sensor images at such a range, but the rebel superdreadnaughts appeared to be remaining in orbit, rather than heading out beyond the gravity shadow and flickering away. Brent-Cochrane wondered just what they had in mind. The data suggested that the rebels were going to get brutally hurt even if they won the fight — and there was no way that they could survive a war of attrition. Maybe they intended to make a stand, or maybe all of the superdreadnaughts were drones and the rebel fleet had flickered out days ago, pre-recording the message for the Admiral’s benefit.