Colin shifted in his chair as the timer ticked down towards zero. He was aware, on some deep primal level, of the hopes and fears of his entire fleet. The ones who had joined the mutiny, the rebels who had known their cause was hopeless and fought on anyway, the men and women he had rescued from the penal world…they all knew that this would be the moment when the rebellion became a true threat to the Empire, or was destroyed, shattered beyond repair. Colin had never been a gambler – he had regarded it as a poor habit, although he had sometimes taken money off Percival at the gaming tables – yet he knew that this was a gamble. It was easy, looking at the oncoming enemy fleet, to wonder if the naysayer factions had been right.
“Activate the drones,” he ordered.
There were seventy-two drones deployed in a rough shell in front of the fleet, each one configured to present an image of a superdreadnaught to any passive sensors, or even active sensors at long range. The Geeks had invented them and Colin had tested them extensively against the best sensors his superdreadnaughts had, making sure that the Empire couldn’t separate a drone from a real ship. It seemed that it required active sensors at very close range to penetrate the deception.
Percival would know that it was a deception, of course. Colin might have had a low opinion of his intelligence, but it wasn't that low. There was no way the rebels could have gotten their hands on seventy-two superdreadnaughts – eighty-one, counting the original ships – or Colin would have smashed Camelot and advanced on Earth, with very little in his way to stop him. But then, Colin had expected that too.
“All drones are active,” the tactical officer said. “They’ll be seeing them…about now.”
***
“Admiral,” the duty officer said, as the screen suddenly lit up with red icons. “We have new contacts…seventy-two additional superdreadnaughts!”
Percival’s voice cut through the chaos. “It’s a bluff,” he said, savagely. Penny blinked at the sudden decisiveness in his voice. “That’s how the bastard won at Khartoum.”
All of a sudden, it made sense. Back when Percival had been a mere Commodore, desperate to prove himself and win the coveted promotion to Admiral, he’d used Commander Walker to win an exercise. Penny had studied the battle and had been impressed; Commander Walker had used drones to lure the enemy forces out of position, then hit them when they were least expecting it. It had been a tactical masterstroke and Percival, at least, had good cause to remember it. Except…
“Admiral,” she said, slowly. “Wouldn’t he expect it too?”
Percival turned his chair to look up at her. “What do you mean?”
“He can’t have so many superdreadnaughts,” Penny said. “We know he can’t have so many superdreadnaughts, even if he had captured the entire sector fleet. So why is he playing a bluff he knows is going to be called?”
Percival said nothing, so she pressed her advantage. “Admiral, pull back the ships and combine their point defence with the battle stations,” she said. “If it’s a bluff, it won’t hurt us and if it’s covering for something…”
Percival slapped her, hard enough to send her rocking back on her heels. “He knows he’s walked into a meatgrinder,” Percival snarled. Penny barely heard him through the pain. He’d slapped her right in front of the entire command staff! He couldn’t have made her position as the Admiral’s Whore any clearer if he’d bent her over the tactical console and raped her from behind. “He’s trying to bluff us to win time to recharge his drives and flicker out. You are dismissed from my service. You will report to your quarters and wait there for reassignment. I will deal with you once the battle is won.”
Penny pulled herself to her feet, held herself ramrod straight, and strode out of the command centre, refusing to look at anyone or rub her face. Oddly, part of her felt relieved. Wherever Percival sent her, at least she wouldn’t have to put up with his presence any longer.
And, as much as she hated to admit it, there was a good chance that the bastard might be right.
***
“They think they’re calling our bluff,” Colin said, with heavy satisfaction. Truthfully, it might not have made any difference if the Imperial Navy starships had started to retreat, but at least this way it prevented any possibility of having to fight both sections of the defences at once. “Prepare to fire.”
He settled back into his chair as the datanet updated, with the arsenal ships in the lead. It had taken a great deal of careful planning to program the firing sequence, although Colin privately suspected that at least some of that effort had been wasted. The KISS principle had to be observed.
“Fire,” he ordered.
Chapter Forty-Six
Commodore William knew that few regarded him as an adroit tactician. In his fifty-two years in the Imperial Navy, he had made few mistakes…but he had no great successes either. His advancement had been fuelled by connections – his patrons were quite happy to deal with a man of limited ambition – and considerable seniority. He’d been a Commodore for over thirteen years and knew that there would probably be no further promotions in his career. On the other hand, command of a superdreadnaught squadron was a shining mark in a career file. Who knew where it would lead after he retired?
He couldn’t disagree with Admiral Percival’s assessment of the situation. If the rebels had hijacked superdreadnaughts from another part of the Empire, he would have heard something about it, if only whispers passed down through the grapevine. The superdreadnaughts he was advancing towards couldn’t be real, even though they were the most advanced decoys he’d ever seen, which suggested that the remainder of the rebel fleet could be nothing more than drones too. If Commander Walker was actually trying to distract them while causing havoc elsewhere...well, at least he wouldn’t look bad. After Stacy Roosevelt had lost an entire squadron of superdreadnaughts to mutineers, it was hard to imagine anything that would have made him look worse.
“Commodore,” the tactical officer reported, “we are entering firing range.”
“Good,” Commodore William said. He wasn't used to commanding sixteen superdreadnaughts instead of nine, but his officers were used to him and he had managed to add the newcomers into the datanet without causing undue disruption. Percival had ordered him to open fire as soon as he entered range, yet Commodore William intended to wait and see if he could separate the drones from the real starships. It was alarmingly possible that the original nine superdreadnaughts, the first ones to be detected, were drones and the real superdreadnaughts had been concealing themselves…or perhaps he was just driving himself mad with paranoia. There was no way to know for sure. “Prepare to engage…”
The display went mad as alarms howled through the massive ship. Thousands of missiles were spewing out of the enemy fleet, roaring towards his fleet. The superdreadnaughts were real! They had to be real. Nothing else could have produced that level of firepower, nothing else could account for it. The rebels had somehow obtained an entire fleet and were deploying it to attack Camelot. His thoughts raced round and round in circles, unable to accept what he was seeing. The rebels had done the impossible. They had assembled eighty-one superdreadnaughts with external racks and fired them in one massive volley.
He swallowed hard, cursing his own failure to order the drives powered up. He might have been able to escape, yet…that would only have meant disaster for him anyway. His career had just been destroyed, even with…it dawned on him that he wasn't dealing with the real problem, but there was no way to deal with it, or escape so many missiles. He could pick off two-thirds of them with his point defence and the remaining third would be enough to obliterate his fleet. Sixteen superdreadnaughts were about to die and it was his fault!
“Return fire,” he ordered, hoarsely. It wasn't the commanding voice he'd been taught to use at the Academy, but no one could have remained steady in the teeth of so many missiles. The fire of sixteen superdreadnaughts, external racks or no external racks, couldn’t hope to match the onrushing wave of destruction advancing
towards him. Hell, the rebels should have had problems trying to coordinate that many missiles, yet somehow they were controlling them perfectly. “All point defence weapons are cleared to engage. I say again, all point defence weapons are clear to engage.”
Sixteen superdreadnaughts carried a great deal of point defence and they were escorted by sixty-nine smaller ships, all linked into a datanet that hadn’t been designed to handle so many incoming missiles at once. Its designers had assumed that there were limits to how many missiles could be deployed; never, in their worst nightmares, had they imagined a missile storm like the one advancing towards them. There were so many missiles that their emissions seemed to blur into one another, making it harder to even begin targeting them. Hundreds of missiles vanished as the point defence network struck them down, but thousands survived to make it through and hammer against his shields. Red icons flashed and vanished on his display as the smaller ships were vaporised – the rebels hadn’t restricted their targeting to the superdreadnaughts alone – their shields and defences unable to stand up to the onslaught. His superdreadnaughts seemed to cling together – as if they could provide mutual support by moving closer – but it was already too late. A deluge of missiles fell upon them.
“Signal the rebels,” Commodore William ordered. His career and the opinion of Admiral Percival no longer mattered. “Tell them we surrender!”
“It’s too late,” the tactical officer said. “They’re entering terminal attack phase…”
The missiles slammed home. The superdreadnaught might have shrugged off one missile or ten missiles or even a hundred missiles, but so many impacting so close together was beyond her ability to survive. As fireballs blazed out on her shields, the shield generators failed, allowing the rebels missiles to slam into the hull and start to explode within the hull. A series of tearing explosions blew the flagship into nothing more than expanding plasma. The remainder of the squadron followed it into death seconds later.
***
“My God,” Colin breathed, as the final superdreadnaught vanished. No one had ever seen sixteen superdreadnaughts destroyed so rapidly, not even during the First Interstellar War. Since time out of mind, the tactics of space warfare had been determined by weight of fire and, now, the Geeks had introduced a whole new variable into the equation. The arsenal ships might be a one-shot weapon, they might not have the shielding or armour of superdreadnaughts, they might have the manoeuvring capability of a wallowing pig, but they had just changed the face of warfare. Every Academy graduate knew that if the first punch was heavy enough, there would be no need to throw a second.
He watched, as if from a far distance, as Commodore William’s missiles roared into his fleet. The Commodore obviously hadn’t been able to sort the real superdreadnaughts out from the decoys – or perhaps he just hadn’t had time to update his command missiles with the new data. Of course, the sudden wave of missiles – far more than nine superdreadnaughts could launch – had been a very convincing argument. Colin rather regretted Commodore William’s death, even if he had been on the wrong side. The aging naval officer had been a good and decent – if limited – man.
“Only a relative handful of missiles tracked our real ships,” the tactical officer said. “The remainder went after the drones.”
Colin nodded. One of the other great limiting factors in space warfare was that missile drives – while overpowered to a level no manned starship could survive – burned out quickly. Once the missiles realised their mistake, if they realised their mistake, they would have no time to seek another target before it was too late. The debris of the battlefield would have to be swept carefully, in case a stray missile hadn’t been programmed to destroy itself once it lost power, but they were little threat to an alert starship.
The Empire wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice, Colin knew, but for the moment it hardly mattered. Besides, if some of the other programs the Geeks had talked about became a reality, Colin would never have to worry about running out of tricks.
“Open a channel,” he ordered. He waited for the channel to open. “Admiral Percival, as you can see, my fleet is no bluff.” And now, he knew, he was bluffing. The arsenal ships would have to withdraw, reload from the ammunition ships and return before he could launch a second massive salvo. And even then, he might not have enough to crack the defences of Camelot. “I have killed thousands of your loyalists in proving that I can destroy you.”
He took a breath. “Surrender now and you will live,” he added. He didn’t want to make any promises, yet…did he have any choice? “If you continue to resist me, I will be forced to destroy Camelot and its orbiting facilities.”
***
Penny had done something she knew was stupid, but she no longer gave a damn. Instead of obeying Percival’s orders and going back to her quarters – which she barely used, as Percival had been fond of ordering her to sleep on the couch in his quarters – she had gone into the smaller back-up communications room and evicted the two officers on duty. They, at least, hadn’t heard about her disgrace and relief – and if they saw the mark on her face, they said nothing. She had watched in disbelief and horror as sixteen superdreadnaughts were rapidly destroyed. The rebels hadn’t been bluffing, yet…
She thought about it, tossing possibilities over and over in her head. They couldn’t have captured so many superdreadnaughts without Percival hearing about it and she’d heard everything that Percival had heard, apart from a handful of private discussions with Stacy Roosevelt. It had to be a trick of some kind, yet the missiles had been very real. How had they done it? She listened as the rebels broadcast their demand for surrender and shook her head. Percival wouldn’t have the sense to surrender, which meant that the fortress – and the other eight in orbit around Camelot – were about to be destroyed. Penny reached down and touched the pistol at her belt. She could use it, gun down Percival and surrender to the rebels.
The hatch opened and two Blackshirts – their eyes dull with the effects of the drugs they used – stepped inside. Penny read her fate in their eyes and reached for her pistol, but it was too late. One of them threw himself at her, knocked her to the deck and tore the pistol away, before yanking her hands behind her back and securing them with a single strip of malleable metal. He hauled her to her feet, searched her roughly, and started to march her towards the hatch – and stopped. Another pair of Blackshirts was standing there, holding stunners.
Her captor blinked. “Who are you?” He asked, in a cold dead voice. “What are you doing here?”
The newcomers stunned him and his mate. Penny swayed, barely able to keep her balance, as they collapsed to the ground like sacks of potatoes. The second pair of Blackshirts – they looked more alert, as if they hadn’t been taking their drugs – looked at her. She had the uneasy feeling that they were communicating with each other in a manner she couldn’t detect, or understand. Who were they?
One of the newcomers winked at her, lifted his stunner and shot her with it. There was a blue-white flash and then she collapsed into darkness. The last thing she heard, before the darkness closed in completely, was an unfamiliar voice giving orders in a tone that suggested he knew he would be obeyed.
“Take her to the ship,” he ordered. “This fortress will not remain intact much longer.”
***
Commander Alan Redfield felt nothing, but numb horror. His cousin’s sister-in-law, who happened to be related to someone in the Imperial Navy Personnel Department, had promised him a nice safe posting for his time in the Imperial Navy. Camelot had been safe enough; the world might be thoroughly unpleasant, but it was improving and the recreational facilities were first-rate. He'd even spent some of his leave enjoying a VR simulation, something rare outside the Core Worlds.
And now, death had come to the Camelot System. He couldn’t understand how the rebels had obtained so much firepower, but they had…and sixteen superdreadnaughts had been wiped out, just because their commanders had been unwilling to believe that there
was a real threat. Captain Quick, who had at least tried to warn her superior, had been slapped and dismissed. Alan shuddered in disgust. He had known that Captain Quick was the Admiral’s mistress – unwillingly, he guessed – yet he hadn’t realised how far Percival was prepared to go.
The Admiral himself was still in his command chair, staring at where the icons representing Commodore William’s superdreadnaughts had been. If he had heard the communication from the rebels – it had been on all channels; Alan had heard it through his earpiece – he gave no sign. He spoke no defiance nor craven surrender.
Alan took a breath. As Duty Officer, it was his job to alert the Admiral to any new developments, yet a word from Percival could wreck his career, despite his handful of well-placed family members. If the Admiral was prepared to destroy the woman who shared his bed, what would he do to a junior officer who lacked even that small contact with the Admiral? On the other hand, the sight of so many superdreadnaughts bearing down on him did tend to concentrate the mind.
Democracy 1: Democracy's Right Page 45