Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

“That’s mine,” the Admiral protested, as Fox pulled him along. He had to be away from the sand before something very nasty came swimming through the ground and emerged to attack them. “You thief, you…”

Fox started to obey and then stopped. Why should he obey? It wasn’t as if the Admiral was still an Admiral. He wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been abandoned by his patrons and condemned to a life of servitude. Fox felt his mouth falling open into an unpleasant smile. The Admiral could be killed, right now, and no one would give a damn.

“I hope there’s something good to eat,” the Admiral continued, unaware of Fox’s inner thoughts. “I haven’t had a good meal since…”

It was his tone that finally drove Fox over the edge. Once they were safely away from the sand, he turned around and slammed the flat of his palm into the Admiral’s chest. Percival doubled over, choking and coughing, retching as he fell to the ground. Real physical pain would have been a rarity to him, Fox knew; who would have dared to lay a finger on his body, no matter how obnoxious he decided to be?

“Shut up and listen,” Fox snarled. The Admiral had curled into a ball, peering up at Fox as if he were on the verge of collapse. He’d been told that some convicts never did recover from the shock of discovering the true nature of their world, red in tooth and claw. “Your former rank means nothing! You have no way of contacting your friends or allies! You are alone and dependent on our good will. If you work hard, we will take you in and allow you to stay with us. If you don’t want to do that, just stay here or wander off and something will be along to kill you sooner or later. The choice is yours.”

He walked off, not looking back. He hadn’t been joking. If the Admiral joined the community, he would work as hard as anyone else or be expelled into the wilderness, where he would surely die or join the remaining bandits — no, they’d probably kill and eat him on sight. He had enough blubber on him, even after his period of imprisonment, to feed an entire bandit gang for a few days.

After a moment, Percival picked himself up and tottered after him.

“This meeting is hereby called to order,” Hester Hyman said. She was standing at one end of a long table, made from Old Earth wood. The Popular Front’s council had transferred itself to Camelot as soon as the second round of mutinies had saved the world from recapture, determined to build a new political structure within Sector 117 and further afield. “We have come a very long way.”

Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham tuned her out, aware that Jason Cordova — sitting next to her — was doing the same. The first day of any political meeting was sure to be nothing, but boring, even though the representatives had more sense than to waste time arguing over the size and shape of the conference table. Now that the sector fleet had been captured, it hadn’t been difficult to overwhelm the local garrisons and liberate the other worlds in the sector, freeing them to join the rebellion. The Roosevelt Family’s secret stockpiles of war material and even a handful of unregistered shipyards would end up powering a war intent on bringing down the Families, once and for all. Her own task, coordinating the conversion of the local industrial base into a base that could support a massive war against the Empire, was already underway. There were few who disagreed or sought to talk peace with their former masters.

The Beyond itself was undergoing some changes, once the details of Operation Purge had been recovered from Admiral Percival’s sealed databanks. The Beyond had been shocked to discover just how much the Empire had known about them, including a number of places that had been thought to be undiscovered and undetectable. Some had packed up and headed further away from the Empire; others had come forward and added their own resources to the growing Popular Front. The Empire had no idea of the sheer level of hatred and discontent along the Rim, or of how many people would come and join the rebellion as it established itself. Hannelore herself had been shocked to discover just how much was hidden out beyond the Rim, or even within it.

She wasn’t too sure of her own position at times, but Cordova had vouched for her and most of the Popular Front seemed to trust him, even if not all of them liked the renegade Captain. Hannelore herself wasn’t too sure, but she could see another person hidden under the act, a person who only emerged when they were in private. Cordova had said little about his origins, yet she was sure that he came from higher social roots than he’d been prepared to admit. Besides, who was she to comment about someone’s birth? In the Popular Front, noble birth was a handicap, rather than a boon.

The three representatives from Jackson’s Folly looked tired, yet determined. Admiral Percival had been toying with plans to scorch sections of their worlds — even though he had been unable to simply throw the entire planet into the fire in the hopes that it would make the daughter colonies be more reasonable — and they knew that the die was cast. If the Popular Front succeeded, Jackson’s Folly and her daughter colonies would be free; if not, they would all be thrown into the fire. There could be no negotiations, save from a position of strength. If the Empire could be reformed, well and good, but if not they were prepared to burn the Empire to the ground. Hannelore couldn’t blame them, even though she feared their determination. After the war was over, they would have to find some way of living together or the Empire would splinter down into civil war — another civil war.

She settled back in her seat as Hester continued to speak. The Follies were quite right. The die had been cast and there was no going back. She was committed now, as were they all.

The spy knew that she had been lucky to remain undetected, even though the rebels were now aware of her existence. At least William Derbyshire, Imperial Intelligence’s Head of Station, had been smart enough to purge his files before the rebels took the station, leaving them with no direct lead to her identity.

She couldn’t believe how lucky the rebels had been, as if the universe itself had been conspiring against the Empire. The mutinies in the Sector 99 Sector Fleet would only be the beginning, for Admiral Walker and his allies had tapped into a rich vein of discontent. How many people in the Imperial Navy, the spy asked herself, would share the sense that no matter how competent and capable they were, they would never be able to advance? There would be thousands; no, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. If even a tenth of the Imperial Navy decided to join the rebels, the Empire would have a real fight on its hands.

The spy settled down in her hiding place and started to wait. There would be a chance to make contact with Imperial Intelligence again, for some who came over to the rebels would be working for the Empire, and then she would have a new link to her superiors. And even if that didn’t happen, she knew her duty. There would be a chance to strike a blow at the very core of the rebel leadership. All she had to do was wait and it would come.

The two weeks since the Second Battle of Camelot had been crazy, but Colin had always found time to go to the observation blister and stare out at his growing fleet. The Imperial Navy starships, the ships from the Beyond and new designs the Geeks had put into production… a fleet capable of holding its own against a comparable Imperial Navy fleet. Earth didn’t even know it yet — the first reports of the rebellion, assuming that one of Percival’s subordinates had sent an unofficial signal to his patrons, wouldn’t be at Earth for another month — but the Empire was in serious trouble. Colin and his fleet would be able to advance quite some distance before the Empire started putting together a superior fleet to stop them. And by then the whole equation would have changed.