Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

“The aliens we know are no threat to us,” Frandsen said, flatly. “They have no military power, nothing they can use against us… a single starship could destroy any one of their worlds and there would be nothing they could do about it.”

“The last time we trusted aliens,” Thomas countered, “we were nearly exterminated as a race. And that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been disunited, ready to weaken ourselves by fighting over who got to be in charge. We cannot risk that happening again.”

“And yet there is no proof of a threat from aliens in the Beyond,” Frandsen pointed out. “Or do you know something that was kept from the rest of us?”

Thomas flushed, and then realised that Frandsen was trying to get under his skin. He pushed his anger down and concentrated on the topic at hand. “I swore an oath to serve and protect the Empire for as long as I live,” he said. “I won’t deny that there is room for improvement, but maintaining the fundamental unity of the human race is far more important than allowing everyone to head off in a different direction. How long would it be before we started fighting each other? Your grand rebellion might succeed only to break up as you fought over who actually got to replace the Empire and take power.”

Frandsen smiled. “I understand your position,” he said. He sounded sad, yet there was something in his voice that worried Thomas. “I felt the same way myself once. I used to believe in the ideals of the Empire. And then… I was ordered to commit mass slaughter on behalf of the Empire. I refused.”

He looked up, his eyes meeting and holding Thomas’s eyes. “And one day you’re going to have to make the same choice yourself,” he said. “What do you think would have happened to the people on this asteroid if you’d succeeded?”

Thomas shook his head. “Better to kill them, to kill everyone in the Beyond, than to wreck the Empire,” he said. He pushed as much pride as he could into his voice. “It remains the only thing holding the human race together and we need unity, or the aliens will destroy us.”

“You’re one of the Followers of Darwin,” Frandsen said.

Thomas shook his head. The Darwinists believed that all races were in permanent competition, one that could only end with one race destroying all the others. They had urged the extermination of every known alien race and at least one of their members had actually put theory into practice. They claimed it was an issue of the survival of the fittest. Thomas believed that they were purely racists, nothing more. As long as the aliens were controlled and knew their place, he had no objection to bringing them into the Empire.

“No,” he said. “I think…”

He broke off as Frandsen’s wristcom bleeped. “My commander has returned,” Frandsen said. He stood up. “If you won’t join us, your men will be transported to a place where they will be safe, at least until the end of the war. You may find yourself being tapped for messenger duty.”

Thomas watched him leave. As the hatch hissed closed behind the Marine, he shook his head. Frandsen talked a good game, he knew, but preserving the Empire was vital. It was all that kept humanity from tearing itself apart, weakening it to the point where the aliens could rise up and exterminate the human race. He rattled his chains mournfully and settled back in his chair, trying to find some comfort. God along knew how long they were going to leave him there.

“So I brought the arsenal ships to Sanctuary,” Daria concluded. She and the remainder of the rebel leadership had come onboard the General Montgomery at once, allowing Colin a chance to realise what had happened while he’d been retreating from Greenland. The rebellion had come uncomfortably close to total defeat. “Once we got there, we engaged them with maximum force.”

“Expending a great many missiles in the process,” Salgak said. The Geek seemed irked by the loss of so many missiles, even though losing the asteroid or the arsenal ships would have been far more worrying. “You used a great deal of overkill.”

“There is no overkill,” Daria said, firmly. She shot Mariko a wry glance. “There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘reload.’”

“The fact remains,” the Geek said, as his implants whirred in agitation, “that you fired off far more missiles than you needed to use.”

Colin tapped the table. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It won us time to evacuate Sanctuary and move to a new base. Even if the Empire knows what happened here, it will take them time to react, so the first priority is moving and re-securing the contents of this base.”

“It is already underway,” Cordova assured him. “The population will be dispersed elsewhere.”

“That leaves us all with a rather more worrying question,” Anderson said, flatly. “How did they find the base in the first place?”

Colin had been wondering about that himself. The timing was a little odd, to say the least. If Imperial Intelligence had known about Sanctuary prior to his mutiny, he would have expected Percival to drop in a squadron of superdreadnaughts or two, just so he could catch Colin when he returned from a raid. It actually suggested that Percival had received new intelligence, but from where? Had someone sold him the location of Sanctuary and the target Colin intended to hit next, or was it just a ridiculous coincidence?

“Unknown as yet,” Hester said. Her cold voice seemed calmer, somehow. “The logical solution is that someone sold us out to the Empire. Betrayal is a fact of life in the Beyond. I imagine that none of the prisoners would know who…”

“No,” Anderson said. He had already requested permission to interrogate the prisoners, but none of the captured Blackshirts were senior enough to know the identity of the Empire’s spies. Colin suspected that interrogating them was pointless, so they could be transported to the holding world until the end of the war, whoever won. “Imperial Intelligence would feel that no one had a need to know, perhaps including the commander of the battlecruiser squadron. It could be anyone.”

Colin shook his head. “It wasn’t someone who knew about the secret shipyards,” he said, “or the Empire would have targeted them first. Sanctuary is only important as a symbol of what we can do, not part of our supply line or future plans to build superdreadnaughts of our own. We know that some people can be trusted…”

“Not everyone knows about their existence, let alone their location,” Hester said, in her whispery voice. “I do not know their location.”

“What you don’t know,” Daria said, “you cannot be made to tell.”

“I know the logic,” Hester said, tartly. “I am merely pointing out that…”

Colin tapped the table again, harder this time. “That is very much a side issue at the moment,” he said. “The problem we face is much worse. We were forced to retreat from Greenland and our ships are damaged, while the Empire will probably start gloating over its great victory. We need to move fast or our would-be allies will start wondering if we’re going to lose.”

He thought about the message they’d sent, bouncing from relay station to relay station, all over the Empire. How many would be inspired by it? How many would risk everything to mutiny against their commanders and join the rebellion? How many would die in futile battles as the Empire clamped down hard on any traces of insurgency or resistance? How could he let them down? The rebellion must not fail.

The display lit up at his command. “How many arsenal ships do we have on hand?”

“Three squadrons of nine ships each,” Daria said. She didn’t seem surprised by the question, but then, someone with her accomplished political skills would understand the need to strike back as soon as possible. “The ones I… expended are being reloaded now.”