Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

“Lieutenant,” Midshipwoman Fanny said, interrupting his thoughts. He saw no reason for formality on his command deck, but Fanny was young and ambitious — and desperate to escape the ICN. She was also pleasant on the eye, so Neil saw no immediate reason to authorise her transfer. “The Dauntless is transmitting a long message packet, priority one.”

Neil lifted his eyebrows. He didn’t dare tamper with priority one messages — that would mean certain death if he were caught — yet even they had to be checked by the censor. He keyed his console, transferring the data packet to his own system, and swore aloud as he took in the headers. The message wasn’t just priority one; it was tagged with an Imperial Intelligence sticker, ensuring that it would go right to the top of the system. Worse, the second tag ordered a general broadcast to everywhere outside the system, but not into Camelot itself until a certain time. He found himself scratching his head. Neil liked the ordinary and the message was as outside the ordinary as it was possible to get, at least without the battlecruiser opening fire and blowing him and his station to vapour.

“Interesting,” he said, without committing himself to anything. The only reason he could think of for a blanket message was to ensure that everyone got it — at least everyone with the right code key to unlock the message. No, he realised, as he read through the final headers; the later tags contained instructions for the message to decipher itself, without the need for a code key. Someone wanted to broadcast a message to everyone within the Empire. The message would route itself through every last communications system it could reach, twisting and turning like a living thing. “I wonder why…”

“Sir, the battlecruiser is demanding a receipt,” Fanny insisted. She sounded nervous. No lowly Midshipwoman would want to handle a message with tags that came right from the highest authority in the sector. “They want us to confirm that we will send the message as soon as the next courier boat arrives.”

Neil scowled to himself, thinking hard. There was something odd about the message, odd enough to make him wonder if he shouldn’t check with Imperial Intelligence’s offices in the Camelot System before forwarding the message. Except… if the message was genuine, and he had no reason to believe it wasn’t, he would get into considerable trouble by delaying it, even for a few hours. He knew the schedules of the courier boats by heart and there was no way he could get a signal to Camelot and back before the message had to be transmitted. If the signal was false, he would be a hero, but if it was genuine… he’d be lucky not to be assigned to a penal world.

And, even if the message was false, he would have ignored perfectly legitimate codes. Imperial Intelligence would not be amused, perhaps even punish him for ignoring them, even though he’d done the right thing. They would be looking for a scapegoat and he knew, from long experience, that shit always flowed downhill. He would be the one who received the blame. He agonised for a long moment, and then made up his mind.

“Copy the signal into a burst transmission to Camelot, then transfer it into the buffer and transmit it to the next courier boat to arrive,” he ordered, finally. Having prepared the groundwork, it was time to cover his ass. “I’ll attach a message to it stating that I cannot verify that the message was approved by officers on Camelot. That should suffice.”

“Yes, sir,” Fanny said. Neil saw her jacket, carefully opened to reveal a little of her cleavage, and smiled to himself. Fanny was a survivor. There was no doubt of that. With a couple of patrons and perhaps some luck, she would rise high. “The next courier boat is due in two hours, seventeen minutes.”

And would be gone again in two hours, thirty minutes, unless something went badly wrong with the drives, Neil knew. “Yes,” he agreed, dryly. “We had better not delay then, had we?”

Khursheda watched from her ship as the ICN station accepted the message, copying back the message headers to confirm receipt. She said a silent prayer under her breath that the system would work perfectly, before looking up at the helmsman and ordering him to jump them out to where the rest of the squadron was waiting for them. They’d pushed their luck too far already.

The message headers did far more than just direct the message to its proper destination, she knew; they ensured that no one would attempt to unlock the message’s encryption before it was too late. The message — a declaration of rebellion would be forever moving ahead of any warning, any order to stop the message and erase it from the ICN. The Empire would have to wipe it completely — which would be difficult, as it would be bouncing back to the sender every few weeks — and change all of the codes. One of the headers, one normally assigned to Imperial Intelligence, would ensure that the automated systems just allowed it to slip through the censors. No one would look at it, she hoped, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to decrypt it in time.

She smiled as the battlecruiser flickered out of the system. The Empire insisted on maintaining complete control over the planetary datanets, although there were datanets — on Earth and the Core Worlds, mainly — that defied easy control. They could normally wipe any subversive message from the network without more than a tiny percentage of the planet’s population seeing it. Now… the message the rebels had created included the codes that would tell the monitors to ignore it, to let it pass through without comment. The entire Empire would see the message and know that a rebellion had begun.

Neil watched without undue surprise as the courier boat flickered into the system, dumped a massive data packet into the ICN station’s filters and accepted the transfer of an equally large data packet from Neil’s crew. As he had expected, there was no word from Imperial Intelligence’s base on Camelot. The courier boat waited long enough to recharge its drives and then flickered out, heading for its next destination. Neil turned back to his own work and pushed the message out of his mind. There were two corporate messages that he’d held back that had to be slipped into the next data packet, just in time to prevent anyone from wondering if they’d been deliberately delayed.

Nine hours later, just after he went off duty, had a long rest and returned to his station, a Blackshirt transport flickered into existence, right next to the station. Neil barely had time to wipe his own secured data store within the network before they stormed aboard, arrested him and his entire crew, transferring them to their ship. It seemed that the message wasn’t real after all. Neil gathered that after the Blackshirt commander, who looked deeply frightened, had driven a fist into his chest while screaming obscenities at him. The message had been faked, using codes that shouldn’t have been in private hands.

And, in the finest traditions of the Empire, the messenger was going to be shot.

“Let me do the talking,” Brent-Cochrane said, as the shuttle slowly drifted into the massive orbital fortress’s hanger bay. Penny gave him a single raised eyebrow, which made him smile. The way he was dressed, Percival might well have a heart attack on the spot, or find it hard to restrain homicidal impulses. “You stay quiet and pretend to be a good little aide.”

Penny shrugged. Brent-Cochrane had worn the standard dark blue dress uniform of a Commodore, but instead of wearing the blue cap, he’d donned a shining white cap with gold braid. Traditionally, only the supreme commander of a particular formation — a mere squadron, even of superdreadnaughts, wouldn’t be enough — would wear such a cap and wearing one to a meeting with the Sector Command was both an unsubtle insult and a subtle message to Percival’s supporters. Percival would see it as a challenge to his authority, yet he could do little about it, not with the level of connections enjoyed by his younger subordinate. He would have to grin and bear it, although part of Penny hoped that he would suffer a heart attack and die.