Colin nodded, keeping his face under careful control. The locals hadn’t waited for any permission to descend on the Blackshirts, who, trapped without orders from superior authority, had fought back savagely. Blood had run through the streets on Jackson’s Folly, yet without support from high orbit, they had been doomed. There were only a handful of survivors, for the bases that had been isolated from the civilian population had simply been picked off from orbit. Colin’s Marines had taken their transports with the intention of using them to add additional lift to take people off the planet.
“And I wish your rebellion luck,” Java added. “I do not feel that we should offer you any overt support. The reports on the planet will say that you kidnapped the workers and their families. I hope that you understand.”
“We do,” Hester said. “And if you want a place with us…”
“Maybe after my planet is free,” Java said, angrily. “I will not desert my post.”
Colin watched him leave, escorted back to the shuttle for transport back down to the surface. “Poor bastard,” he said, finally. “I wish we could do more for him.”
Hester smiled, creating a striking effect on her scarred face. “There is nothing we can do until the Empire is defeated,” she said. “His attitude is quite commendable.”
***
“Move along, calmly,” Neil ordered. “Don’t push or run; there are enough spaces for everyone.”
The line of refugees didn’t look calm, although they were at least resisting the temptation to run. The workers had known that their families were being held hostage for their good behaviour, yet they hadn’t known – or had chosen not to believe – just how badly their families were being treated. Neil had watched, through his armour, as husbands were reunited with wives and children, many of who were scarred or worse. Not all of the families had been happy to leave either. Some were scared of the Empire; others were scared of the unknown. The Blackshirts had told them, often enough, what the insurgents would do to them if they were captured. The fact that the insurgents were more likely to welcome the freed hostages than kill them seemed to have escaped their notice.
Or perhaps it was deliberate, Neil thought, trying to distract himself from the sight of a man and woman holding each other tightly, crying their eyes out. They hadn’t chosen to be separated; they’d missed each other dreadfully when they’d been apart. Their lives had been twisted and broken by the Empire…he looked away, towards a line of kids, and shuddered. The bastards who had casually hurt the children would suffer before they died. The Blackshirts didn’t understand the concept of restraint either.
Each of the Blackshirt transports carried nearly twenty thousand stasis tubes, each one capable of holding a grown adult or perhaps two children in suspension. They would be transported to the Beyond and decanted at one of the Geek-run facilities, once living quarters had been prepared for them. The other transports, the ones rounded up by the Freebooters League, had smaller compartments, but Neil was privately hopeful that they’d be able to lift out over two million workers and their families. It helped that the Blackshirts had done the hard work of rounding up most of their families and transporting them to orbit, saving time. Other families had declined the offer and scattered into the wilderness, hoping to remain undetected. Perhaps they’d make it if the rebellion succeeded, but if not…Neil felt a moment of pity. The Blackshirts would show no mercy if they caught up with the families.
He watched a pair of lovers walk into the compartment, share a final kiss and then climb into the tubes. A flickering curtain of blue light appeared, holding them suspended like flies in amber. They would be released – no time would have passed for them – when they reached their new home, where they would be welcomed and encouraged to work against the Empire. Some of the children were scared, despite everything their parents could say, and medical staff moved in with sedatives. They’d wake up after the transport had reached its destination.
“Quiet down,” he snapped towards a pair of men, who were pushing at others. One of them had been badly scarred by a neural whip, but that didn’t make it acceptable, not when there were women and children ahead of them. Neil knew that cold logic ordained that the trained workers had to go first, yet he’d chosen to ignore those imperatives and ensure that the children were suspended first. He doubted that Admiral Walker would object. “There is room enough for everyone.”
It took several hours to load up the transport, but Neil welcomed it, not least because it didn’t give him any time to brood. By the time the last of the refugees was loaded onboard, the Marines were tired, with their tempers beginning to fray. Neil sent some of them to their bunks, ordering them to get a good long rest before they went back on duty, yet he kept himself awake. There was just too much to do. He led the remaining Marines back onboard the shuttle and detached from the transport, leaving the prize crew to start the task of taking it into the Beyond. Neil was watching as it vanished in a flash of light, flickering away towards the first waypoint.
He yawned, despite himself, as another transport started to move over towards the orbital station. Some of the transports hadn’t come empty. Various rebel groups had been building armies and had insisted on deploying them to Jackson’s Folly, intent on having a go at the Empire’s finest. Neil had told them – as had Admiral Walker – that it was futile, but they had insisted. They’d wanted their own crack at the Empire and, eventually, the rebel leadership had given in.
Neil frowned as the shuttle docked with the new transport, allowing him to take command and supervise the loading. Could it be, he wondered, that Admiral Walker and his allies had decided that some of the rebel groups were expendable? There were certainly hundreds of groups that were effectively worthless, intent on throwing themselves into the Empire’s gaping maw. Had Admiral Walker decided to allow them to seek a glorious death, knowing that they would be killed? It would be unusually cynical for Admiral Walker, but Neil could easily see Hester Hyman or Daria considering such an action necessary.
And if the groups were willing – no, begging – to go face death…
He pushed the thought out of his mind as he strode into the transport. Time was ticking away and no one knew how long it would be before the Empire returned to Jackson’s Folly. They might well have less time than they thought.
***
Colin paced the command deck as the final set of transports completed loading up. He’d been surprised to discover – although perhaps he shouldn’t have been – that several native-built freighters had been hidden within the system, their drives and anything else that might attract attention powered down. They’d been rapidly reactivated and put to work, allowing him to transport out more people than he’d believed possible. Even so, time was ticking away…
They'd completed transferring supplies down to Jackson’s Folly hours ago, although that had been a fairly simple task. Colin had watched as Java and his various subordinates had taken delivery of the supplies, before fading back into the underground to prepare for the next invasion. If there was a next invasion…in Admiral Percival’s shoes, Colin would have refused to launch another invasion until he received reinforcements from the Empire. It was a shame that the rebels didn’t have any source close to Percival himself. Colin knew what Percival had to deploy against his forces, but what did he intend to do? Gauging intentions was an important part of intelligence work and Colin had no way of knowing what Percival was actually planning to do. Defeat the rebellion, obviously, before it got out of control…but how did he intend to do that?
“Admiral,” the communications officer said. “The transports are signalling that they’re casting off now.”
Colin nodded. The orbital manufacturing complexes orbiting Jackson’s Folly were now without the workforce that made them work. They were still intact – Colin hadn’t even taken the opportunity to upload something nasty into their computers – but without their workforce, a whole new force would have to be trained up before the Empire could make use of th
em. They had the time…but did they have the patience?
“Good,” he said. He hated to cut and run, leaving the system completely defenceless, but there was no other choice. Besides, if they were really lucky, Percival would be diverting his superdreadnaughts towards Jackson’s Folly, allowing Colin to wreak havoc elsewhere. Only a fool would seek to command an interstellar war as if he could micromanage it, so Colin knew better than to count on it, but it would be useful if the superdreadnaughts were distracted. “Order them to flicker out now.”
The display updated rapidly as the transports flashed and vanished into flicker space, reappearing seven light years away at the first waypoint. There, they would be escorted back to the Beyond, where they would be unloaded, adding new strength to the rebellion. In the meantime…the rebel fleet had other plans, plans Colin had drawn up before the council had insisted on raiding Jackson’s Folly. They had been delayed long enough.
Colin smiled. Hester had – reluctantly – agreed to go back on the transport fleet, removing one worry from Colin’s mind. Hester might be too old to lead the fight in person, but she was an inspiration. The rebellion needed her, perhaps more than it needed Colin. Or perhaps that was just a kind of reverse vanity. It hadn’t been Hester who had captured nine superdreadnaughts and given the Empire its first serious fight in centuries.
“Helm, set coordinates for the reserved waypoint,” he ordered, calmly. Behind him, Jackson’s Folly would wait for the Empire to return, like a woman awaiting her rapist with a hidden knife. The Empire wouldn’t have any difficulty reassuming control over the high orbitals, but the ground would suddenly be much harder, if only because they would have to ship in a whole new army. “Take us out of here.”
His smile darkened as the superdreadnaught flickered out of the system, heading deeper into the Empire, heading towards Greenland. The second major Roosevelt-owned system and the perfect target, at least as far as Colin was concerned, for hitting it would drive the Roosevelt Family to fury. And Percival, the failed Admiral, would lose all hope of promotion.
And then Colin would come for him too.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I assume,” Percival said, in a cold hard tone, “that you have an explanation for this?”
Standing ramrod straight, her arms at her side, Captain-Commodore Angelika McDonald slowly counted up to fifty under her breath. She’d transmitted a report to Admiral Percival as soon as Violence had flickered into the system, hoping to discourage him or one of his subordinates from bombarding her with requests for details, but it hadn’t worked. Admiral Percival had ordered her to report to him as soon as possible, using words that clearly meant right damned now.
“Yes, sir,” Angelika said. She knew what Percival meant, but she was damned if she was going to allow him to place the blame on her. “I retreated in the face of superior firepower.”
“You fled in the face of the enemy,” Percival snapped. His piggy eyes glared at her, boring in on her face like twin laser beams. “The board of inquiry will...”
That did it. “With all due respect, Admiral,” Angelika said, “perhaps you would care to explain how a handful of smaller ships are expected to defeat a squadron of nine superdreadnaughts?”
His face purpled alarmingly, but she pressed her advantage. “If you hold a board of inquiry into the battle, the board will discover that I fought as long as I could and then withdrew from the system, rather than getting my command destroyed for no reason,” she added. “Once you ordered the superdreadnaughts withdrawn from the Jackson’s Folly system, the rebels could come knocking on the door any time they liked. It was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Furthermore,” she said. “I will not accept a tame board of inquiry. As is my right under Imperial Navy Regulations, I demand that the supervising officer be drawn from the nearest sector and made fully appraised of all of the important facts before holding the inquiry.”
Percival stared at her, as if he were hoping that she would wilt under his gaze. Angelika felt, oddly, as if she was in a battle, one she would win as long as she held her nerve. She’d worked closely enough with Percival to know that he was both a coward and, despite his pretensions, alarmingly exposed. His patrons would shift away once they realised that they would be tarred with the same brush of failure, Percival’s failure. He was the man on the spot when the rebels stole nine superdreadnaughts and vanished, never mind that Camelot was far too far away from Jackson’s Folly for him to exercise any real control.
She found herself silently hoping that her patrons wouldn't let her down, for the regulations she’d cited could be put aside by a senior officer with sufficient patronage, or political clout. Or, for that matter, Percival could try to appoint one of his cronies to run it, just to ensure that it voted the right way. Her career had either been boosted beyond measure, or destroyed. But then, even a tame court-martial would expose Percival’s own failings and his enemies would have a chance to destroy him.
“I realise that you retreated in the face of superior firepower,” Percival said, finally. Angelika grinned inwardly. He’d surrendered, no matter whatever face he chose to put on defeat. “Even so, there is the issue of the loss of Jackson’s Folly or the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Blackshirts, all of which need to be discussed.”
“There’s very little to discuss,” Angelika said, calmly. “The Blackshirts were on a hostile planet when their covering forces had to leave the system.” She thought about pointing out that if she’d stood and fought, the monitors would have been destroyed along with her force, but pushed the thought aside. “The locals will have taken their revenge by now. Imperial Law allows for only one response.”
“There is nothing we can do until we make contact with one of the superdreadnaught squadrons,” Percival said, weakly. “The rebels...”
“...Will have retreated from the Jackson’s Folly system, leaving us nothing, but a rebellious planet and probably a few unpleasant surprises in orbit,” Angelika said, interrupting. Who knew – perhaps Percival could be driven into having a heart attack. His death would strengthen the Empire. “If you send back a squadron of destroyers, you would be able to recover the system without serious losses.”
Percival stared down at his priceless wooden table, muttering under his breath. Angelika took the moment to look over at the Admiral’s aide and wink at her. The aide – a tall blonde woman with a jacket tighter than regulations allowed – looked back at her, expressionlessly. Angelika would have bet half her salary that the aide was smarter than Percival and resented being placed in a position where she had to turn his half-baked ideas into reality. If she could be turned, she would make a powerful ally, but Angelika lacked the patronage or clout to reach out and make an offer.
“And are you prepared to escort that force?” Percival demanded, finally. “Or will you remain here until your squadron is reformed?”
Angelika felt her lips thin angrily, but resisted the temptation to make sarcastic remarks. Camelot, as an Imperial Navy Sector Headquarters, was heavily defended at all times, but as she’d returned to the system she’d seen new weapons emplacements and hundreds of new orbital weapons platforms. There were so many of them that she suspected that System Command would have some problems controlling them all as a unit. If she’d been in command of the system, she would have decentralised it, but Percival was too much of a control freak to allow it. Besides, he had plenty of enemies and one of them might take advantage of a decentralised network to attack him.
“Yes, sir,” she said, refusing to rise to the bait. An accusation of personal cowardliness wouldn't look good on her record, although – coming to think of it – she couldn't remember any time in which Percival had been in serious danger. The man was a coward as well as a sadist. “My ships are already being restocked by the facilities at this system. Once the loading is complete, we will return to Jackson’s Folly and reclaim the system.”
Carefully, of course, she added privately. Whatever she had said to Percival
, it seemed to her that the rebels might reason it out the same way – and deliberately lurk in the system to ambush her when she returned. Or perhaps they would be off wreaking havoc on the other side of the sector and wouldn't know that Jackson’s Folly had been reclaimed for the second time. There was no way to know until she returned and investigated the system.
She smiled, as if she’d just had a bright idea. “Perhaps you would like to accompany us?” She added. “The crew would consider it a boost to their morale if their commanding officer was to be flying with them towards certain victory.”
Percival hesitated. “I fear I cannot leave this base,” he said, stiffly. Angelika snickered inwardly, knowing what he truly meant. He could have left Camelot in the hands of his XO and accompanied the fleet to Jackson’s Folly, if he had wished to do so. “I will embark on a grand tour of the sector once the rebellion has been destroyed.”
“Of course, sir,” Angelika said. She stood to attention and saluted. “And with your permission, I will return to my ship and wait for the loading to be completed.”
“Go,” Percival growled. “And Captain, if you fail to reclaim the world for the Empire, just don't bother coming back.”
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