Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

The display updated as the two shuttles raced away from her ship. Once the Marines were onboard and the manufacturing ship was secure, they’d take it to the first waypoint and wait for Admiral Walker and the other ships. The captured ship would be taken directly to the Geeks, where it would be used to produce additional material to supply the rebellion. The crew, if they refused to join the rebellion, would be transferred to the uncharted colony and left there until the war was over. Her lips twitched in sour amusement. The rebels, if they went on at such a rate, would end up building up a larger prison world than the Empire.

“The Marines have secured the ship,” the communications officer reported. “They’re warning that it will be at least another hour before the ship can flicker out.”

“We can wait,” Khursheda said. If there did happen to be an Imperial Navy superdreadnaught squadron within range, they would have to abandon their conquest and flicker out… or maybe not. “Tell them to move the ship to this location” — her hand danced over the console, designating a position several light seconds away — “and power down everything, but the essentials.”

“Aye, Commodore,” the communications officer said.

Khursheda sat back in her command chair. The Imperial Navy might return to the system before she could depart, but in that case she would literally hide the manufacturing ship right under their nose. She checked the timer and smiled. Now… all they had to do was wait for the time to leave.

“We’re coming up on the planet now,” the helmsman said. Jackson’s Folly loomed ahead of them on the display, a lovely green-blue world surrounded by red icons. Colin’s probes and sensor teams had been struggling to sort out the Imperial-held space facilities from friendly — or at least harmless — facilities, but it was a nightmarish struggle. There was far too much debris in orbit.

“Dispatch Marine teams to the orbital manufacturing facilities,” Colin ordered. According to the intelligence they’d picked up, the facilities the locals had built — the facilities Stacy Roosevelt had been so eager to capture intact — were currently occupied by the Blackshirts, who supervised the workers while holding their families hostage. Even so, it wasn’t a safe place to be a Blackshirt; the locals were alarmingly good at trapping and killing the invaders. It helped that the Blackshirts were neither trained nor equipped to operate in orbit. “Prepare to isolate targets on the ground.”

The Blackshirt commander — General Branford, according to intelligence — had been smart, smart enough to shut down his advanced tracking systems and try to hide. Colin’s own sensors could track some movement on the planet’s surface, but it was hard to distinguish between enemy movement and friendly activity. His communications officers were attempting to listen to communications from the planet’s surface, yet they were finding it hard to pull out anything useful from the babble. Only a handful of Blackshirt signallers were still transmitting, marking their locations as targets for KEW strikes.

Colin scowled. In some ways, it was the single most dangerous part of the operation. His superdreadnaughts — the only ships with large supplies of KEW projectiles to drop — were going to be operating close to the planet, so close that they would be trapped within its gravity shadow. If an enemy fleet happened to arrive, Colin would find himself trapped against the planet, forced to punch his way out rather than simply flickering to safety. And if that enemy fleet happened to consist of superdreadnaughts… Colin liked to think that the Popular Front could go on without him, but it wasn’t certain. Nothing was truly certain in life. He’d been living on borrowed time since he’d launched a mutiny against the Empire.

He smiled, pushing the dark thoughts aside. “Inform the Marines that they are cleared for launch,” he added. Whatever happened, he knew that his people would give their all. “They may engage the enemy at will.”

Colonel Neil Frandsen hooked into the assault shuttle’s sensors as it launched from the Marine transport, the pilot already gunning it down towards the planetary surface. Neil allowed himself a moment to enjoy the sight of a lovely world before he started to check up on the other shuttles. One had developed a drive fault and was being held back — a problem that occurred more frequently than the Marines liked to admit — but the remaining ninety were already spinning through space.

“Prepare to flicker,” he ordered. The shuttles were so small that they could flicker — with reasonable accuracy — far closer to the planet than any capital ship. Unlike the penal world, where there had been no counter-fire to speak of, Jackson’s Folly was occupied by the Blackshirts, who knew that they could expect no mercy from the locals. “On my mark… flicker !”

The shuttle seemed to go black for a terrifying second, then it was suddenly buffeted by the atmosphere as it materialised in the air. The craft lurched suddenly, dropping several feet before the drive systems caught on and powered it through the air, leaving him feeling delighted. They’d survived the jump! He linked back into the Marine combat network and noted the absence of two shuttles, both having vanished during the jump. If they were lucky, their drives had failed or they’d reappeared somewhere else. If they were unlucky, they had materialised within the planet and had been killed before they’d had any time to realise that something had gone wrong.

“I am picking up enemy sensors,” the pilot reported. Through his mental link, Neil could see them as red bands of light sweeping through the sky. As he had hoped — when he had sold Admiral Walker on the plan — their sudden appearance had alarmed the Blackshirts. “They are attempting to lock onto us.”

“Good,” Neil said. He laughed, knowing that non-Marines would consider him insane. “Go to evasive manoeuvres and call in strikes from high overhead.”

“Don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs,” the pilot countered. The gee-forces increased as the shuttle started to slip into evasive manoeuvres. The small formation was coming up on Freedom, the city that had served as the capital of Jackson’s Folly. It looked like a war zone now, even from the shuttles. “Time to ejection is two minutes and counting.”

Neil grinned. This, the chance to make a forced landing on a hostile planet, was what he lived for. It was what war was all about, something that the Imperial Navy would never understand. And as for the Blackshirts… his grin widened. Killing them never got old.

“Sir, we have incoming enemy shuttles,” the operator reported.

General Branford cursed. He had hoped that digging into Freedom — the absurdly-named city — would provide a degree of protection from orbital strikes. His men had trapped most of the city’s population in with them, using them as shields against both insurgents and rebels. As far as he could tell, there had been no link between Jackson’s Folly and the mutineers, but now one was definitely forming. Besides, Public Information had to get some things right, if only by accident.

“Order them to open fire as soon as the enemy enters range,” he ordered, coldly. The enemy commander had to be a Marine. No one else would be insane enough to flicker into the atmosphere, just to mount a raid. It had to be a raid. If the rebels had the firepower to defeat the Imperial Navy, they’d be off trashing Camelot or even Earth, rather than liberating Jackson’s Folly. No, it was a raid. “And then order the forces on the ground to disperse.”