Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

Colin nodded. He could see a handful of possible counters to the arsenal ships already… and even though Percival was an idiot, the commander he’d faced at Greenland was smart enough to think of the countermeasures for himself. They had to move as quickly as possible, if only because the Empire might well have sensor records of the arsenal ships in action. Once they got over their shock, they would evolve countermeasures. He reminded himself of that, time and time again. He didn’t dare fall into the trap of regarding the arsenal ships as an invincible weapon.

“Good,” he said. “In that case…”

He looked around the compartment, his gaze moving from face to face and judging commitment. “In that case,” he repeated, “it is time to go after Camelot itself.”

The reaction was immediate. Cordova, Daria and Hester seemed to love the idea. Salgak, Anderson and the others seemed to think that Colin had lost his mind. He could understand their position — Camelot was the most heavily-defended world in the sector, after all — yet he didn’t share it. Taking Camelot, and its facilities, more or less intact would ensure that the entire sector fell into his lap. Leaving Percival there ran the risk of all of his other gains and conquests being reversed. And besides, they needed a stunning victory and taking an Imperial Navy fleet base would give them just that. No one had taken an Imperial Navy base since the First Interstellar War.

“It won’t be easy,” Colin said, calmly. “We will be running a considerable risk.”

“It isn’t just a considerable risk,” Salgak said. “It is an insane risk. In two years, we would be deploying our own squadrons of superdreadnaughts, backed up by our own improved cruisers and destroyers. We would be in a far stronger position to wage war on the Empire — and to recover from a defeat — once we have our own shipping yards producing new ships. We can wait. Time is on our side.”

“Time is not on our side,” Hester said, flatly. Her cold eyes blazed defiance. “The Empire was shocked by our rebellion, true, and we’re a long way from Earth. The Core Worlds don’t have any idea that something has gone badly wrong. How long until that changes? The competent leaders on Earth will dispatch other starships to this sector, including a commander who actually has more than two brain cells, and crush every budding insurgency in sight. If we do not move to capitalise on our success now, we risk having the Empire swamp us through superior resources.”

She pressed her fingertips together, angrily. “We like to think that we can hide indefinitely in the Beyond,” she said. Her scar seemed to be pulsing with the intensity of her feelings. “How long can we hide shipyards and starships? How can we build ships without emitting radiation that will attract them to us? Sure, we can hide , but how long for? The Empire will eventually track us down… while putting the occupied worlds into a lockdown that will make it impossible for any insurgency to develop. We have to move now!”

“And we also have to reassure the Popular Front,” Daria added. “What it looks like, from the outside, is that we got our asses kicked at Greenland and our base in the Beyond has been exposed. The longer we leave it before we resume the offensive, the more rebels who will slip away from us, fearing that we have lost the urge to fight and win at all costs. Tell me something — in two years, will you still be arguing that we should wait, or will you pluck up the nerve to act?”

Colin frowned as the argument raged on. He wasn’t sure if he trusted his own feelings. In the Imperial Navy, an Admiral who brought home a defeated fleet might face the wrath of his superiors, no matter how steeply the odds had been tipped against him. Colin’s position, at least, was secure yet plunging headlong into Camelot might reverse that, if they lost. And, worse, there was his burning desire to avenge himself on Percival. Did he believe that hitting Camelot was a good idea for sound tactical reasons, or was it merely because he wanted to kill Percival personally? He asked himself the question, time and time again, but no answer appeared within his mind.

And then he remembered Jackson’s Folly. There had been no word, as yet, about the planet, but Colin was sure that Percival would have reoccupied the system by now. The planet and its inhabitants would bear the brunt of his rage and fury; legally, he could do almost anything to them and no one back on Earth would care. The only thing protecting it from his wrath was the interests of the Roosevelt Family and that might not last. They might decide to cut their losses and urge him to scorch the world. And that would kill upwards of four billion humans. It could not be allowed. If the rebellion had to stand for something, if the rebellion wanted to reform the Empire, it had to stop such atrocities.

“I believe that we should vote on it,” he said, finally. The argument had been on the verge of degenerating into a brawl. “All those in favour, raise your hands.”

He counted as the votes were taken. “The ayes have it,” he said, recalling old debates back at the Academy. “We will move against Camelot as soon as possible.”

“And win,” Daria added. “We have the firepower to take the planet now and then hold it against all comers.”

Colin nodded, a battle plan already forming in his head. “We will repair the superdreadnaughts and then move,” he ordered. “Officially, we will be preparing to return to Greenland and avenge our defeat there. No one outside this compartment is to know the actual target. Once the ships are ready, we will move at once and to hell with whatever dares to stand in our way.”

He lifted his mug of Imperial Navy-issue coffee. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you a toast,” he said. “Success to us and disaster to the enemy.”

“They really did do some damage to this section,” the Geek said, as he stood with Colin near one of the damaged compartments. “They actually broke one of the armour plates and sent fragments flying into the ship. It was a good thing they didn’t manage to follow you through the flicker.”

“A very good thing,” Colin agreed, through gritted teeth. The Geek — he hadn’t given Colin any name, acting almost as if he were part of a hive mind — had a habit of pointing out the obvious. “Can you repair the damage in time?”

“Of course,” the Geek said, as if the question was somehow offensive. “We have Fabricator and we have most of the materials on hand. It is merely a question of producing a replacement armour plate and installing it on your ship. There are some minor improvements we could make to the hull, using experimental materials that we have discovered over the years, but I understand that you do not want anything new on your ship.”

Colin shook his head. One thing he had discovered about the Geeks was that they loved newness for the sake of newness. If he’d let them, they would have stripped out the tried and tested weapons the Empire had installed in General Montgomery and replaced them with their own designs. Colin had seen enough to know that some were very good designs and others had some serious flaws. They would all have to be tested carefully before he signed off on installing them within his starships.

Some of their other designs were far more reasonable for immediate deployment. Their ECM drones were far superior to the best the Empire could produce, offering Colin a handful of tactical advantages that would be denied to his opponents. While they hadn’t cracked the secret of faster-than-light transmission, they had managed to produce systems that compressed and extracted data at a far faster rate than the Empire, giving Colin a degree of tactical flexibility that the Empire wouldn’t be able to match. Their cloaking systems, too, were superior to the Empire’s, although they hadn’t completely eliminated the problem of turbulence caused by the passage of a cloaked starship. Indeed, Colin intended to exploit many of their inventions in his attack on Camelot.