Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

“Of course, sir,” Khursheda said. The thought of action had galvanised her, even though she’d only been a Commodore for the last two weeks. Colin had plenty of enthusiastic younger officers and crewmen, but he was short of experienced commanding officers and he was unwilling to risk bringing in too many strangers from the Rim. Some of them, he knew, would be Imperial Intelligence operatives, or perhaps they would have been cashiered for very good reasons.

“Don’t risk your ships,” Colin added. “If you find yourself in a position to exchange fire with Percival’s ships, don’t unless you have a heavy firepower advantage. We cannot afford to lose you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Khursheda said. Her dark face seemed to light up. “We won’t let you down.”

“Excellent,” Colin said. He looked up at Cordova. “You have the most interesting part of the operation.” Cordova smiled, as if he already knew what Colin was going to say. “You will be raiding the enemy’s smaller interests and mining facilities.”

“Behaving like pirates,” Cordova said. He sounded vaguely disapproving, although the way he stroked his beard suggested that he enjoyed the thought. Indeed, looking at the outfit he wore, Colin wondered if Cordova thought that he was a pirate king. It was possible… yet, unlike most pirates, there were no atrocities to Cordova’s name. Or perhaps, he thought in the privacy of his own mind, no known atrocities. “My crew will doubtless enjoy the chance to loot.”

Colin nodded, hiding his disapproval. He wasn’t too surprised — Cordova and his ship had been fugitives from the Empire since before Colin had been working for Admiral Percival — yet it was somehow disappointing, like finding an idol unexpectedly tarnished. And then, Cordova would also have command of many of the starships that had been donated to Colin’s cause — including many real pirates, hiding under the rebellion’s flag. Perhaps Cordova was the right choice after all; his reputation would never allow him to turn a blind eye to atrocities. He guarded his reputation like the older spinster women of the Thousand Families guarded their honour.

“Which leads neatly to another point,” Colin added. “No atrocities. I want there to be none at all. I want you to make it clear to your men that I will punish any atrocity in the harshest possible manner, even if I have to hand them over to the Empire myself. We cannot allow anything to blacken our reputation.”

“Public Information will turn us all into dangerously insane terrorists, whatever we do,” Hester said, her voice harsh and unfeeling. “Whatever it takes to overthrow and destroy the Empire, we will do it. The Empire will not allow us to tell our side of the story.”

“The rumour mill will be more accurate,” Colin said, refusing to allow either of them to distract him. The Empire might have its own version of events, an official version that would be slavishly followed by every media outlet in business — if they wanted to remain in business — but the rumour mill, running through starship crews and groundside officers, would be much more accurate. A fake atrocity, one created from whole cloth by Public Information to discredit the rebellion, would be noticeable. A real one, however, would also be noticeable. The rumour mill would carry the word that Public Information, for once, had told the truth. “We do not have a choice.”

He looked up at Cordova, holding the bigger man’s eyes with his own. “No atrocities,” he repeated. “I am counting on you to ensure that they do not take place.”

“There will be no atrocities,” Cordova promised. His booming voice admitted of no doubts, or fears. “If any under my command dare to prey on helpless captives, I will kill them personally, in a manner so horrific that none will dare to follow in their footsteps.”

“Good,” Colin said. He wasn’t about to admit it, but allowing Cordova to command the additional starships would get two headaches out of his skull. Cordova would have a command consummate with his status and Colin wouldn’t have to worry about breaking highly-independent ship crews into something reassembling military discipline. “Hester… what is the status of insurgent cells on Imperial worlds?”

Hester looked thoughtful. Colin had asked her before, several times, but she had always been reluctant to discuss the issue. Colin, occupied with other matters, had allowed that particular matter to slide. It wasn’t something he could do any longer.

“There are hundreds of cells on hundreds of worlds that are willing to rise up against the Empire,” Hester said, in her whispery voice. “And yet, they know that if they rise, they will be killed. The Empire will come and put the rebellion down as brutally as possible and the survivors will be crushed under grinding taxes.”

Colin nodded. Even the Empire, which had a limitless supply of men to convert into Blackshirts, had difficulty maintaining a sizable force on the surface of each and every world in the Empire. But then, it didn’t matter. There were plenty of planetary populations that could have destroyed the Blackshirts in a single night, only to discover the Imperial Navy’s superdreadnaughts flickering into their system and coming to lay waste to their worlds. Hester was right. The insurgents would not risk showing their hand until they knew that their world was secure.

“We can start slipping more weapons into their bases,” Colin said. If nothing else, the Rim was awash in weapons, from ones manufactured by hidden colonies to weapons that had been diverted from the Empire’s stores. “And then they will be ready when we finally capture Camelot and liberate the sector.”

He looked up. He was tired, so tired, yet he was also happy. After everything he’d done to reach this point, there was still no end in sight… but he was no longer alone.

“I have faith in us,” he said, hoping that his words would inspire. “We can win this war. We will win this war.”

The spy had been growing impatient for the last four days, waiting for a chance to get off the asteroid. No such luck; the resistance leaders had insisted — in a rare display of unanimity — that no one was to leave until they had completed their business and departed. The spy cursed their logic as much as she admired their effectiveness. She could have warned the Empire that an attack was about to be launched — even though she had no idea of the target — if only she could get off the asteroid!

As calmly as she could, she returned to his work and waited. There would be a chance to slip back onto one of the more well-known asteroids soon enough, and then she could make contact with an Imperial Intelligence undercover team. And then, the spy told herself, there would be a chance to stop the rebellion dead in its tracks.

For a crazy few minutes, just after Onslaught had flickered into the Jackson’s Folly system, Penny had thought that the mutineers had returned to the system and engaged the Imperial Navy. Five superdreadnaughts were posturing at a smaller task force of four superdreadnaughts and assorted smaller ships, going through a ballet that was both complex and extremely simple. The absence of weapons fire and the IFF signals transmitted from the superdreadnaughts revealed — to her slight embarrassment — that the starships were doing something rarely seen in the Imperial Navy, random drilling.

It wasn’t, she noted as her battlecruiser linked into the datanet serving as umpire for the duel, a live-fire exercise. The Imperial Navy frowned on live-fire drills, both because of the cost and because of the danger. Penny had been a child when the crew of a superdreadnaught had accidently armed a missile within the launch tubes — they’d somehow cut it free of the safety systems that should have prevented the missile from arming before it was launched — and detonated it inside the ship. The superdreadnaught had survived the blast — it was lucky that the other warheads had not detonated, as that would have vaporised the entire ship — yet her Captain had been unceremoniously cashiered from the service and her entire surviving crew had been blacklisted. Imperial Intelligence, according to some of the files she’d seen ever since she’d become Percival’s aide, had suspected it was deliberate sabotage, but the people responsible had died in the blast. There was no way to know for sure.