Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

“Down here,” he ordered, as he led his team towards where the freighter had been docked. There was a hatch there set within the rock that resisted him when he tried to open it with an armoured hand. He chuckled as his lips quirked in wry amusement. That was against Imperial Law and carried a mandatory sentence of twenty years in prison. The rebels were guilty of yet another offence, one more serious than most. It hardly mattered. One of his team carried a set of explosive charges and used one of them to blow their way into the airlock. Somewhat to his surprise, no hail of fire greeted them as they forced their way into the asteroid.

“Deploy sensor bugs,” he ordered, as he followed the first four into the asteroid. It was rather disappointing to his eyes. For all that the Security Officer had talked about the asteroid, warning them of the many dangers and temptations they would face once they forced their way into the rebel stronghold, it was depressingly normal. The inner airlock had an emergency forcefield to prevent the air from leaking out, although no one dared take off their helmets. Selective depressurising of compartments was a neat way to get rid of unwanted guests. “Contact the ships and tell them to send the second wave down to join us.”

He smiled as the images of the interior of the asteroid started to build up in his HUD. The sensor bugs could move far faster than any human and were completely invisible to the naked eye, although the rebels had access to Marine-issue systems that could probably pick them up without trouble. Sanctuary — and that, he considered, was a rather inappropriate name — was starting to take shape and form, plotting out the various passageways and compartments. As his team expanded and started to advance into the unknown, he found himself waiting patiently for the hammer to fall. The rebels wouldn’t tamely accept their violation of their base, not when they’d had their chance to surrender and had refused it.

“The remaining ships are secure sir,” his deputy said. The rebel ships had either tried to escape — whereupon they’d been picked off by the waiting battlecruisers — or had been bitterly defended. Their crews had finally been beaten and either killed or captured, with their boarders trying to get them away from the asteroid and into the waiting arms of the Imperial Navy. The technical staff could analyse their computers, do some number-crunching and hopefully find the location of more rebel bases. “We’re on our way to join you.”

“Have one of the ships moved to the main hatch and used to block it,” Thomas ordered, calmly. The sensor bugs were finally picking up traces of real people, lying in wait. “Once that’s done, have the other airlocks opened and start expanding the bridgehead. We need to press our advantage as quickly as possible.”

Neil had finally had the chance to get into his armour — one of his Marines had brought it to him, before running back to join the defenders massing towards the spaceport — before the enemy troops had started to break their way into the asteroid. He’d been relieved the moment that he realised that the attackers, whoever they were, weren’t Marines. It had lasted until he’d realised that whoever was in command was smarter than any Blackshirt commander he’d ever met. He’d taken a number of starship crewmen as prisoners without any of the atrocities that commonly followed in their wake.

“Move the 1 stand 2 ndplatoons up to cover the entrance points,” he ordered, calmly. “I want 3 rdplatoon to get up to the surface and start moving in on their rear.”

“3 rdreports that the enemy support is too close to the surface to risk contact,” the CO of 3 rdplatoon said, through the Marine datanet. “We can risk it once the enemy craft have been drawn towards the spaceport.”

Neil scowled. “Understood,” he ordered. A Blackshirt commander would have ordered them to make the attack and to hell with how many good men were killed attempting to do the impossible. “Stand by for…”

“Sir,” one of the operators said. “The starship crews are ready to fight!”

Neil swore. He’d known from the start that there was no way to protect the starships concealed within the spaceport and had ordered the crews to abandon their ships and make their way to safety. Instead, they’d ignored him and chosen to make their own stand… in the most fragile part of the asteroid! He opened his mouth to issue new orders, to tell them to get the hell out of there, but it was too late. They were already in position and couldn’t fall back without being seen.

“Damn them,” he muttered. Could he help them? If he ordered the two platoons to advance… no, that would throw away his men and some of the trainees for nothing. They couldn’t get into a pitched battle so close to the hull or all hell would break loose when the battlecruisers started firing directly into the asteroid to support their people. “Order the two platoons to hold position.”

None of the operators objected, but he knew what they were thinking. He’d abandoned the starship crews, leaving them to die. And the hell of it, he knew, was that part of him felt the same way. The cold logic of war was sometimes not enough to warm his heart.

Jane Chaney braced herself as she crawled through the tube, holding her breath for as long as she could. The interior of the tube stank badly of oil and gas, as well as other stenches that entered the asteroid whenever a visiting starship opened its airlocks and started to air out its interior. For Jane, who had stowed away on a starship that had visited her very fundamentalist home asteroid back when she had been nine, it was the sweet smell of home. And her new home — after four years of working her passage on a dozen different starships — was under threat. There was no way she was going to allow the invaders to enter the asteroid unopposed.

She swore under her breath, using words the chief engineer on her first starship had taught her, as her developing breasts caught on the side of the tube. Jane, like many other children born on asteroid habitats, had matured slowly, even as she had developed mentally at a far greater rate than many other kids her age. She had even travelled disguised as a boy for most of the time, after learning that many spacers developed a flexible attitude to planet-bound rules of morality and whole new standards of beauty. Where once she had been able to squirm through the tightest of tubes without problems, her developing body was now betraying her, leaving her wondering if she was going to wind up caught in a tube she could once have traversed without a sound. After the fighting was done, she would have to give serious thought to her own future.

The sound of hard footsteps echoed from below her as she reached the hatch. At some point, back when the rebels had been building their habitat, they’d installed small tubes and connecting tunnels for some reason best known to their leaders. Jane suspected that they’d designed them to move from place to place unseen — after all, it was what she used them for — even though most of them were too small for an adult. She rubbed her breast angrily as she peered down through the semi-transparent hatch. Most girls and all guys might speak in favour of breasts, but they were nothing apart from a pain to her. How the girls with really big breasts got along she didn’t know.

“Ok, you bastards,” she muttered, as she saw the black suits of armour making their way down the corridor. It didn’t seem to have occurred to them to look up, but then… in her experience, no one ever did. It was how she had hidden from a lecherous second officer on her fifth freighter, a second officer who had been surprised and horrified to discover her real sex. The idiot had thought that she was a boy! “I’ve got you now.”